Winterfair Gifts Read online

  Winterfair Gifts

  Lois Mcmaster Bujold

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Winterfair Gifts

  From Armsman Roic's wrist com the gate guard's voice reported laconically, "They're in. Gate's locked."

  "Right," Roic returned. "Dropping the house shields." He turned to the discreet security control panel beside the carved double doors of Vorkosigan House's main entry hall, pressed his palm to the read-pad, and entered a short code. The faint hum of the force shield protecting the great house faded.

  Roic stared anxiously out one of the tall narrow windows flanking the portal, ready to throw the doors wide when m'lord's groundcar pulled into the porte-cochère. He glanced no less anxiously down the considerable length of his athletic body, checking his House uniform: half-boots polished to mirrors, trousers knife-creased, silver embroidery gleaming, dark brown fabric spotless.

  His face heated in mortified memory of a less expected arrival in this very hall—also of Lord Vorkosigan with honored company in tow—and the unholy tableau they'd surprised with the Escobaran bounty hunters and the gooey debacle of the bug butter. Roic had looked an utter fool in that moment, nearly naked except for a liberal coating of sticky slime. He could still hear Lord Vorkosigan's austere, amused voice, as cutting as a razor-slash across his ears—Armsman Roic, you're out of uniform.

  He thinks I'm an idiot. Worse, the Escobarans' invasion had been a security breach, and while he'd not, technically, been on duty—he'd been asleep, dammit—he'd been present in the house and therefore on call for emergencies. The mess had been in his lap, literally. M'lord had dismissed him from the scene with no more than an exasperated, Roic ... get a bath, somehow more keenly excoriating than any bellowed dressing-down.

  Roic checked his uniform again.

  The long silvery groundcar pulled up and sighed to the pavement. The front canopy rose on the driver, the senior and dauntingly competent Armsman Pym. He released the rear canopy and hurried around the car to assist m'lord and his party. The senior armsman spared a glance through the narrow window as he strode by, his eye passing coolly over Roic and scanning the hall beyond to make sure it contained no unforeseen drama this time. These were Very Important Off-world Wedding Guests, Pym had impressed upon Roic. Which Roic might have been left to deduce by m'lord going personally to the shuttleport to greet their descent from orbit—but then, Pym had walked in on the bug butter disaster, too. Since that day, his directives to Roic had tended to be couched in words of one syllable, with no contingency left to chance.

  A short figure in a well-tailored gray tunic and trousers hopped out of the car first: Lord Vorkosigan, gesturing expansively at the great stone mansion, talking non-stop over his shoulder, smiling in proud welcome. As the carved doors swung wide, admitting a blast of Vorbarr Sultana winter night air and a few glittering snow crystals, Roic stood to attention and mentally matched the other people exiting the groundcar with the security list he'd been given. A tall woman held a baby bundled in blankets; a lean, smiling fellow hovered by her side. They had to be the Bothari-Jeseks. Madame Elena Bothari-Jesek was the daughter of the late, legendary Armsman Bothari; her right of entrée into Vorkosigan House, where she had grown up with m'lord, was absolute, Pym had made sure Roic understood. It scarcely needed the silver circles of a jump pilot's neural leads on mid-forehead and temples to identify the shorter middle-aged fellow as the Betan jump pilot, Arde Mayhew—should a jump pilot look so jump-lagged? Well, m'lord's mother Countess Vorkosigan was Betan, too; and the pilot's blinking, shivering stance was among the most physically unthreatening Roic had ever seen. Not so the final guest. Roic's eyes widened.

  The hulking figure unfolded from the groundcar and stood up, and up. Pym, who was almost as tall as Roic, did not come quite up to its shoulder. It shook out the swirling folds of a gray and white greatcoat of military cut, and threw back its head. The light from overhead caught the face and gleamed off ... were those fangs, hooked over the out-slung lower jaw?

  Sergeant Taura was the name that went with it, by process of elimination. One of m'lord's old military buddies, Pym had given Roic to understand, and—don't be fooled by the rank—of some particular importance (if rather mysterious, as was everything connected with Lord Miles Vorkosigan's late career in Imperial Security.) Pym was former ImpSec himself. Roic was not, as he was reminded, oh, three times a day on average.

  At Lord Vorkosigan's urging, the whole party poured into the entry hall, shaking off snow-spotted garments, talking, laughing. The greatcoat was swung from those high shoulders like a billowing sail, its owner turning neatly on one foot, folding the garment ready to hand over. Roic jerked back to avoid being clipped by a heavy, mahogany-colored braid of hair as it swept past, and rocked forward to find himself face to ... nose to ... staring directly into an entirely unexpected cleavage. It was framed by pink silk in a plunging vee. He glanced up. The outslung jaw was smooth and beardless. The curious pale amber eyes, irises circled with a sleek black line, looked back down at him with, he instantly feared, some amusement. Her fang-framed smile was deeply alarming.

  Pym was efficiently organizing servants and luggage. Lord Vorkosigan's voice jerked Roic back to focus. "Roic, did the Count and Countess get back in from their dinner engagement yet?"

  "About twenty minutes ago, m'lord. They went upstairs to their suite to change."

  Lord Vorkosigan addressed the woman with the baby, who was attracting cooing maids. "My parents would skin me if I didn't take you up to them instantly. Come on. Mother's pretty eager to meet her namesake. I predict Baby Cordelia will have Countess Cordelia wrapped around her pudgy little fingers in about, oh, three and a half seconds. At the outside."

  He turned and started up the curve of the great staircase, shepherding the Bothari-Jeseks and calling over his shoulder, "Roic, show Arde and Taura to their assigned rooms, make sure they have everything they want. We'll meet back in the library when you all are freshened up or whatever. Drinks and snacks will be laid on there."

  So, it was a lady sergeant. Galactics had those; m'lord's mother had been a famous Betan officer in her day. But this one's a bloody giant mutant lady sergeant was a thought Roic suppressed more firmly. Such backcountry prejudices had no place in this household. Though she was clearly bioengineered, had to be. He recovered himself enough to say, "May I take your bag, um ... Sergeant?"

  "Oh ... all right." With a dubious look down at him, she handed over the satchel she'd had slung over one arm. The pink enamel on her fingernails did not quite camouflage their shape as claws, heavy and efficient as a leopard's. The bag's descending weight nearly jerked Roic's arm out of its socket. He managed a desperate smile and began lugging it two-handed up the staircase in m'lord's wake.

  He deposited the tired-looking pilot first. Sergeant Taura's second floor guest room was one of the modernized ones, with its own bath, around the corridor's corner from m'lord's own suite. She reached up and trailed a claw along the ceiling, and smiled in evident approval of Vorkosigan House's three-meter headspace.

  "So," she said, turning to him, "is a Winterfair wedding considered especially auspicious, in Barrayaran custom?"

  "They're not so common as in summer. Mostly I think it's now because m'lord's fiancée is between semesters at University."

  Her thick brows rose in surprise. "She's a student?"

  "Yes, ma'am." He had a notion one addressed female sergeants as ma'am. Pym would have known.

  "I didn't realize she was such a young lady."

  "No, ma'am. Madame Vorsoisson's a widow—she has a little boy, Nikki—nine years old. Mad about jumpships. Do you happen t' know—does that pilot fellow like children?" Mayhew was bound to be a magnet for Nikki.

  "Why ... I don
't know. I don't think Arde knows either. He hardly ever meets any in a free mercenary fleet."

  He would have to watch, then, to be sure little Nikki didn't set himself up for a painful rebuff. M'lord and m'lady-to-be might not be paying their usual attention to him, under the circumstances.

  Sergeant Taura circled the room, gazing with what Roic hoped was approval at its comfortable appointments, and glanced out the window at the back garden, shrouded in winter white, the snow luminous in the security lighting. "I suppose it makes sense that he'd have to wed one of his own Vor kind, in the end." Her nose wrinkled. "So, are the Vor a social class, a warrior caste, or what? I never could quite figure it out from Miles. They way he talks about them you'd half think they were a religion. Or at any rate, his religion."

  Roic blinked in bafflement. "Well, no. And yes. All of that. The Vor are ... well, Vor."

  "Now that Barrayar has modernized, isn't a hereditary aristocracy resented by the rest of your classes?"

  "But they're our Vor."

  "Says the Barrayaran. Hm. So, you can criticize them, but heaven help any outsider who dares to?"

  "Yes," he said, relieved that she seemed to have grasped it despite his stumbling tongue.

  "A family matter. I see." Her grin faded into a frown that was actually less alarming—not so much fang. Her fingers clenching the curtain inadvertently poked claws through the expensive fabric; wincing, she shook her hand free and tucked it behind her back. Her voice lowered. "So she's Vor, well and good. But does she love him?"

  Roic heard the odd emphasis in her voice, but was unclear how to interpret it. "I'm very sure of it, ma'am," he avowed loyally. M'lady-to-be's frowns, her darkening mood, were surely just pre-wedding nerves piled atop examination stress, on the substrate of her not-so-distant bereavement.

  "Of course." Her smile flicked back in a perfunctory sort of way. "Have you served Lord Vorkosigan long, Armsman Roic?"

  "Since last winter, ma'am, when a space fell vacant in the Vorkosigans' armsmen's score. I was sent up on recommendation from the Hassadar Municipal Guard," he added a bit truculently, challenging her to sneer at his humble, non-military origins. "A count's twenty armsmen are always from his own District, y'see."

  She did not react; the Hassadar Municipal Guard evidently meant nothing to her.

  He asked in return, "Did you ... serve him very long? Out there?" In the galactic backbeyond where m'lord had acquired such exotic friends.

  Her face softened, the fanged smile reappearing. "In a sense, all my life. Since my real life began, ten years ago, anyway. He is a great man." This last was delivered with unselfconscious conviction.

  Well, he was a great man's son, certainly. Count Aral Vorkosigan was a colossus bestriding the last half-century of Barrayaran history. Lord Miles had led a less public career. Which no one would tell Roic anything about, the most junior armsman not being ex-ImpSec like m'lord and most of the rest of the armsmen, eh.

  Still, Roic liked the little lord. What with the birth injuries and all—Roic shied away from the pejorative, mutations—he'd had a rough ride all his life despite his high blood. Hard enough for him to just achieve normal things, like ... like getting married. Although m'lord had brains enough, belike, in compensation for his stunted body. Roic just wished he didn't think his newest armsman a dolt.

  "The library is to the right of the stairs as you go down, through the first room." He touched his hand to his forehead in a farewell salute, by way of paving his escape from this unnerving giant female. "The dining's to be casual tonight; you don't need t' dress." He added, as she glanced down in bewilderment at her travel-rumpled loose pink jacket and trousers, "Dress up, that is. Fancy. What you're wearing is fine."

  "Oh," she replied, with evident relief. "That makes more sense. Thank you."

  * * *

  Having made his routine security circuit of the house, Roic arrived back at the antechamber just outside the library to find the huge woman and the pilot fellow examining the array of wedding presents temporarily staged there. The growing assortment of objects had been arriving for weeks. Each had been handed in to Pym to be unwrapped and undergo its security check, re-wrapped, and as the affianced couple's time permitted, unwrapped again and displayed with its card.

  "Look, here's yours, Arde," said Sergeant Taura. "And here's Elli's."

  "Oh, what did she finally decide on?" asked the pilot. "At one point she told me she was thinking of sending the bride a barbed-wire choke chain for Miles, but was afraid it might be misinterpreted."

  "No..." Taura held up a thick fall of shimmering black stuff as long as she was tall. "It's seems to be some sort of fur coat—no, wait—it's a blanket. Beautiful! You should feel this, Arde. It's incredibly soft. And warm." She held a supple fold up to the side of her head, and a delighted laugh broke from her long lips. "It's purring!"

  Mayhew's eyebrows climbed halfway to his receding hairline. "Good God! Did she...? Now, that's a bit edgy."

  Taura stared down at him in puzzled inquiry. "Edgy? Why?"

  Mayhew made an uncertain gesture. "It's a live fur—a genetic construct. It looks just like one Miles once gave to Elli. If she's recycling his gifts, that's a pretty pointed message." He hesitated. "Though I suppose if she bought a fresh new one for the happy couple, that's a different message."

  "Ouch." Taura tilted her head to one side and frowned at the fur. "My life's too short for arcane mind-games, Arde. Which is it?"

  "Search me. In the dark all cat blankets are ... well, black, in this case. I wonder if it's intended as an editorial?"

  "Well, if it is, don't you dare let on to the poor bride, or I swear I'll turn both your ears into doilies." She held up her clawed fingers, and wriggled them. "By hand."

  Judging by the pilot's brief grin, the threat was a jest, but by his little bow of compliance, not an entirely empty one. Taura observed Roic, just then, refolded the live fur into its box, and tucked her hands discreetly behind her back.

  The door to the library swung open, and Lord Vorkosigan stuck his head out. "Ah, there you two are." He strolled into the antechamber. "Elena and Baz will be down in a little—she's feeding Baby Cordelia. You must be starving by now, Taura. Come on in and try the hors d'oeuvres. My cook has outdone herself."

  He smiled up affectionately at the enormous sergeant. While the top of Roic's head barely came up to her shoulder, m'lord just about faced her belt buckle. It occurred to Roic that Taura towered over him in almost exactly the same proportions that ladies of average height towered over Lord Vorkosigan. This must be what women looked like to him all the time.

  Oh.

  M'lord waved his guests through to the library, but instead of following them, shut the door and motioned Roic to his side. He looked thoughtfully up at his tallest armsman, and lowered his voice.

  "Tomorrow morning, I want you to drive Sergeant Taura to the Old Town. I've prevailed upon Aunt Alys to present Taura to her modiste and fix her up with a Barrayaran lady's wardrobe suitable for the upcoming bash. Figure to hold yourself at their disposal for the day."

  Roic gulped. M'lord's aunt, Lady Alys Vorpatril, was in her own way more terrifying than any woman Roic had ever encountered, regardless of height. She was the acknowledged social arbiter of the high Vor in the capital, the last word in fashion, taste, and etiquette, the official hostess for Emperor Gregor himself. And her tongue could slice a fellow to ribbons and tie up the remains in a bow-knot before they hit the ground.

  "How t' devil did you—" Roic began, then cut himself off.

  M'lord smirked. "I was very persuasive. Besides, Lady Alys relishes a challenge. With luck, she may even be able to part Taura from that shocking pink she favors. Some damned fool once told her it was a non-threatening color, and now she uses it in the most unsuitable garments—and quantities—it's so wrong on her—well, Aunt Alys will be able to handle it. If anyone asks for your opinion—not that they're likely to—vote for whatever Alys picks."

  I shouldn't dare do othe
rwise, Roic managed not to blurt aloud. He stood to attention and tried to look as though he were listening intelligently.

  Lord Vorkosigan tapped his fingers on his trouser seam, his smile fading. "I'm also relying on you to see that Taura is not, um, offered insult, or made uncomfortable, or ... well, you know. Not that you can keep people from staring, I don't suppose. But be her outrider in any public venue, and be alert to steer her away from any problems. I wish I had time to squire her myself, but this wedding prep has gone into high gear. Not much longer now, thank God."

  "How is Madame Vorsoisson holding up?" Roic inquired diffidently. He had been wondering for two days if he ought to report the crying jag to someone, but m'lady-to-be had surely not realized her muffled breakdown in one of Vorkosigan House's back corridors had included a hastily-retreating witness.

  By m'lord's suddenly guarded expression, perhaps he knew. "She has ... extra stresses just now. I've tried to take as much of the organizing off her shoulders as possible." His shrug was not as reassuring as it might be, Roic felt.

  M'lord brightened. "Anyway, I want Sergeant Taura to have a great time on her visit to Barrayar, a fabulous Winterfair season. It's probably the only chance she'll ever have to see the place. I want her to look back on this week like, like ... dammit, I want her to feel like Cinderella magicked off to the ball. She's earned it, God knows. Midnight tolls too damned soon."

  Roic tried to wrap his mind around the concept of Lord Vorkosigan as the enormous woman's fairy godfather. "So ... who's t' handsome prince?"

  M'lord's smile went crooked; something almost like pain sounded in his indrawn breath. "Ah. Yes. That would be the central problem, now. Wouldn't it."

  He dismissed Roic with his usual casual half-salute, a vague wave of his hand in the vicinity of his forehead, and followed his guests into the library.

  * * *

  Roic had never in his whole career as a Hassadar municipal guardsman been in a clothing store resembling that of Lady Vorpatril's modiste. Nothing betrayed its location in the Vorbarr Sultana thoroughfare but a discreet brass plaque, labeled simply, Estelle. Cautiously, he mounted to the second floor, Sergeant Taura's massive footsteps creaking on the carpeted stairs behind him, and poked his head into a hushed chamber that might have been a Vor lady's drawing room. There was not a garment rack nor even a mannequin in sight, just a thick carpet, soft lighting, and tables and chairs that looked suitable for offering high tea at the Imperial Residence. To his relief Lady Vorpatril had arrived before them, and was standing chatting with another woman in a dark dress.