A Civil Campaign b-12 Page 4

  "We were just finishing," said Vorkosigan. "Why are you here , Ivan?" He added under his breath, "And why couldn't three bodyguards keep you out? Do I have to give orders to shoot to kill?"

  "My strength is great because my cause is just," Vorpatril informed him. "My mother has sent me with a list of chores for you as long as my arm. With footnotes." He drew a roll of folded flimsies from his tunic, and waved them at his cousin; the kitten rolled on its back and batted at them, and he amused himself briefly, batting back. "Tik-tik-tik!"

  "Your determination is relentless because you're more afraid of your mother than you are of my guardsmen."

  "So are you. So are your guardsmen," observed Lord Vorpatril, downing another bite of dessert.

  Vorkosigan swallowed an involuntary laugh, then recovered his severe look again. "Ah . . . Madame Vorsoisson, I can see I'm going to have to deal with this. Perhaps we'd best break off for today." He smiled apologetically at her, and pushed back his chair.

  Lord Vorkosigan doubtless had important security matters to discuss with the young officer. "Of course. Um, it was good to meet you, Lord Vorpatril."

  Impeded by the kitten, the captain didn't rise, but he nodded a most cordial farewell. "Madame Vorsoisson, a pleasure. I hope we'll see each other again soon."

  Vorkosigan's smile went thin; she rose with him, and he shepherded her out into the hall, raising his wristcom to his lips and murmuring, "Pym, please bring the car around front." He gestured onward, and fell into step beside her down the corridor. "Sorry about Ivan."

  She didn't quite see what he felt the need to apologize for, so concealed her bewilderment in a shrug.

  "So do we have a deal?" he went on. "Will you take on my project?"

  "Maybe you'd better see a few possible designs, first."

  "Yes, of course. Tomorrow . . . or you can call me whenever you're ready. You have my number?"

  "Yes, you gave me several of them back on Komarr. I still have them."

  "Ah. Good." They turned down the great stairway, and his face went thoughtful. At the bottom, he looked up at her and added, "And do you still have that little memento?"

  He meant the tiny model Barrayar, pendant on a chain, souvenir of the grim events they couldn't talk about in any public forum. "Oh, yes."

  He paused hopefully, and she was stricken that she couldn't pull the jewelry out of her black blouse and demonstrate it on the spot, but she'd thought it too valuable to wear everyday; it was put away, carefully wrapped, in a drawer in her aunt's house. After a moment, the sound of the groundcar came from the porte coch?re, and he ushered her back out the double doors.

  "Good day, then, Madame Vorsoisson." He shook her hand, firmly and without holding it for too long, and saw her into the groundcar's rear compartment. "I guess I'd better go straighten out Ivan." As the canopy closed and the car pulled away, he turned to stalk back indoors. By the time the car bore her smoothly out the gates, he'd vanished from view.

  * * *

  Ivan set one of the used salad plates down on the floor, and plunked the kitten next to it. He had to admit, a young animal of almost any kind made an excellent prop; he'd noted the way Madame Vorsoisson's cool expression had softened as he'd noodled with the furry little verminoid. Where had Miles found that astonishing widow? He sat back, and watched the kitten's pink tongue flash over the sauce, and reflected glumly on his own last night's outing.

  His date had seemed such a possible young woman: University student, away from home for the first time, bound to be impressed with an Imperial Vor officer. Bold of gaze and not a bit shy; she'd picked him up in her lightflyer. Ivan was expert in the uses of a lightflyer for breaking down psychological barriers and creating the proper mood. A few gentle swoops and you could almost always evoke some of those cute little shrieks where the young lady clung closer, her chest rising and falling as her breath came faster through parted and increasingly-kissable lips. This girl, however . . . he hadn't come so near to losing his last meal in a lightflyer since being trapped by Miles in one of his manic phases for an updraft demonstration over Hassadar. She'd laughed, fiendishly, while Ivan had smiled helplessly through clenched teeth, his knuckles whitening on the seat straps.

  Then, in the restaurant she'd picked, they'd met up oh-so-casually with that surly pup of a graduate student, and the playlet began to fall into place. She'd been using him, dammit, to test the pup's devotion to her cause; and the cur had rolled over and snarled right on cue. How do you do, sir. Oh, isn't this your uncle you said was in the Service? I beg your pardon. . . . The smooth way he'd managed to turn the overly respectful offer of a chair into a subtle insult had been worthy of, of Ivan's shortest relative, practically. Ivan had escaped early, silently wishing them joy of each other. Let the punishment fit the crime. He didn't know what was happening with young Barrayaran girls these days. They were turning almost . . . almost galactic , as if they'd been taking lessons from Miles's formidable friend Quinn. His mother's acerbic recommendation that he stick to women of his own age and class seemed almost to begin to make sense.

  Light footsteps echoed from the hall, and his cousin appeared in the doorway. Ivan considered, and dismissed, an impulse to favor Miles with a vivid account of last night's debacle. Whatever emotion was tightening Miles's lips and pulling his head down into that bulldog-with-a-hair-up-its-butt look, it was very far from promising sympathy.

  "Rotten timing, Ivan," Miles bit out.

  "What, did I spoil your t?te-?-t?te? Landscape designer , eh? I could develop a sudden interest in a landscape like that, too. What a profile."

  "Exquisite," Miles breathed, temporarily distracted by some inner vision.

  "And her face isn't bad, either," Ivan added, watching him.

  Miles almost took the bait right then, but he muffled his initial response in a grimace. "Don't get greedy. Weren't you telling me you have that sweetheart deal with Madame Vor-what's-her-name?" He pulled back his chair and slumped into it, crossing his arms and his ankles and watching Ivan through narrowed eyes.

  "Ah. Yes. Well. That seems to have fallen through."

  "You amaze me. Was the compliant husband not so compliant after all?"

  "It was all so unreasonable. I mean, they're cooking up their kid in a uterine replicator. It's not like someone even can graft a little bastard onto the family tree these days. In any case, he's nailed down a post in the colonial administration, and is whisking her off to Sergyar. He scarcely even let us make a civil good-bye." It had been an unpleasant scene with oblique death threats, actually. It might have been mitigated by the slightest sign of regret, or even concern for Ivan's health and safety, on her part, but instead she'd spent the moment hanging on her husband's arm and looking impressed by his territorial trumpeting. As for the pubescent prole terrorist with the lightflyer whom he'd next tried to persuade to mend his broken heart . . . he suppressed a shudder.

  Ivan shrugged off his retrospective moment of depression, and went on, "But a widow, a real live young widow! Do you know how hard they are to find these days? I know fellows in HQ who'd give their right hands for a friendly widow, except they have to save them for those long, lonely nights. However did you luck onto this honey-pot?"

  His cousin didn't deign to answer. After a moment, he gestured to the flimsy, rolled up beside Ivan's empty plate. "So what's all this?"

  "Ah." Ivan flattened it out, and handed it across the table. "It's the agenda for your upcoming meeting with the Emperor, the Empress-to-be, and my mother. She's pinning Gregor to the wall on all the final details about the wedding. Since you are to be Gregor's Second, your presence is requested and required."

  "Oh." Miles glanced down the contents. A puzzled line appeared between his brows, and he looked up again at Ivan. "Not that this isn't important, but shouldn't you be on duty at Ops right now?"

  "Ha," said Ivan glumly. "Do you know what those bastards have done to me?"

  Miles shook his head, brows rising inquisitively.

  "I have been f
ormally seconded to my mother—my mother —as aide-de-camp till the wedding's over. I joined the Service to get away from my mother, blast it. And now she's suddenly my chain of command!"

  His cousin's brief grin was entirely without sympathy. "Until Laisa is safely hitched to Gregor, and can take over her duties as his political hostess, your mother may be the most important person in Vorbarr Sultana. Don't underestimate her. I've seen planetary invasion plans less complex than what's being booted about for this Imperial Wedding. It's going to take all Aunt Alys's generalship to bring it off."

  Ivan shook his head. "I knew I should have put in for off-planet duty while I still could. Komarr, Sergyar, some dismal embassy, anywhere but Vorbarr Sultana."

  Miles's face sobered. "I don't know, Ivan. Short of a surprise attack, this is the most politically important event of—I was about to say, of the year, but I really think, of our lifetimes. The more little heirs Gregor and Laisa can put between you and me and the Imperium, the safer we'll be. Us and our families."

  "We don't have families yet," Ivan pointed out. So, is that what's on his mind with the pretty widow? Oh ho!

  "Would we have dared? I sure thought about the issue, every time I got close enough to a woman to . . . never mind. But this wedding needs to run on rails, Ivan."

  "I'm not arguing with that," said Ivan sincerely. He reached down to dissuade the kitten, who had licked the plate clean, from trying to sharpen its claws on his polished boots. A few moments spent petting it in his lap bought it off from that enthusiasm, and it settled down, purring, to the serious business of digesting and growing more hairs to shed on Imperial uniforms. "So what's your widow's first name, say again?" Miles hadn't actually imparted that bit of information, yet.

  "Ekaterin," Miles sighed. His mouth seemed to caress all four syllables before reluctantly parting with them.

  Oh, yeah. Ivan thought back over every bit of chaff his cousin had ever inflicted upon him for his numerous love affairs. Did you think I was a stone, for you to sharpen your wits upon? Opportunities to even the score seemed to hover on the horizon like rain clouds after a long drought. "Grief-stricken, is she, you say? Seems to me she could use someone with a sense of humor, to cheer her up. Not you, you're clearly in one of your funks. Maybe I ought to volunteer to show her the town."

  Miles had poured himself more tea and been just about to put his feet up on a neighboring chair; at this, they came back down with a thump. "Don't even think about it. This one is mine ."

  "Really? You secretly betrothed already? Quick work, coz."

  "No," he admitted grudgingly.

  "You have some sort of an understanding?"

  "Not yet."

  "So she is not, in point of fact, anyone's but her own. At present."

  Uncharacteristically, Miles took a slow sip of tea before responding. "I mean to change that. When the time is right, which it surely is not yet."

  "Hey, all's fair in love and war. Why can't I try?"

  Miles snapped back, "If you step in this, it will be war."

  "Don't let your exalted new status go to your head, coz. Even an Imperial Auditor can't order a woman to sleep with him."

  "Marry him," Miles corrected frostily.

  Ivan tilted his head, his grin spreading. "My God, you are gone completely over the edge. Who'd have guessed it?"

  Miles bared his teeth. "Unlike you, I have never pretended to not be interested in that fate. I have no brave bachelor speeches to eat. Nor a juvenile reputation as a local stud to maintain. Or live down, as the case may be."

  "My, we are snarky today."

  Miles took a deep breath; before he could speak, Ivan put in, "Y'know, that head-down hostile scrunch makes you look more hunch-backed. You ought to watch that."

  After a long, chill silence, Miles said softly, "Are you challenging my ingenuity . . . Ivan?"

  "Ah . . ." It didn't take long to grope for the right answer. "No."

  "Good," Miles breathed, settling back. "Good . . ." Another long and increasingly disturbing silence followed this, during which his cousin studied Ivan through narrowed eyes. At last, he seemed to come to some internal decision. "Ivan, I'm asking for your word as Vorpatril—just between you and me—that you will leave Ekaterin alone."

  Ivan's brows flew up. "That's a little pushy, isn't it? I mean, doesn't she get a vote?"

  Miles's nostrils flared. "You have no real interest in her."

  "How do you know? How do I know? I barely had a chance to say hello before you hustled her out."

  "I know you. For you, she's interchangeable with the next ten women you chance to meet. Well, she's not interchangeable for me. I propose a treaty. You can have all the rest of the women in the universe. I just want this one. I think that's fair."

  It was one of those Miles-arguments again, which always seemed to result oh-so-logically in Miles getting whatever Miles wanted. Ivan recognized the pattern; it hadn't changed since they were five years old. Only the content had evolved. "The problem is, the rest of the women in the universe are not yours to dispense, either," Ivan pointed out triumphantly. After a couple of decades practice, he was getting quicker at this. "You're trying to trade something you don't have for—something you don't have."

  Thwarted, Miles settled back in his chair and glowered at him.

  "Seriously," said Ivan, "isn't your passion a trifle sudden, for a man who just parted company with the estimable Quinn at Winterfair? Where have you been hiding this Kat, till now?"

  "Ekaterin. I met her on Komarr," Miles replied shortly.

  "During your case? This is recent, then. Hey, you haven't told me all about your first case, Lord Auditor coz. I must say, all that uproar about their solar mirror sure seems to have petered out into nothing." He waited expectantly, but Miles did not pick up on this invitation. He must not be in one of his voluble moods. Either you can't turn him on, or you can't turn him off. Well, if there was a choice, taciturn was probably safer for the innocent bystanders than spring-wound. Ivan added after a moment, "So does she have a sister?"

  "No."

  "They never do." Ivan heaved a sigh. "Who is she, really? Where does she live?"

  "She is Lord Auditor Vorthys's niece, and her husband suffered a ghastly death barely two months ago. I doubt she's in the mood for your humor."

  She wasn't the only one so disinclined, it appeared. Damn, but Miles seemed stuck in prick-mode today. "Eh, he got mixed up in one of your affairs, did he? That'll teach him." Ivan leaned back, and grinned sourly. "That's one way to solve the widow shortage, I suppose. Make your own."

  All the latent amusement which had parried Ivan's sallies till now was abruptly wiped from his cousin's face. His back straightened as much as it could, and he leaned forward, his hands gripping his chair arms. His voice dropped to an arctic pitch. "I will thank you, Lord Vorpatril, to take care not to repeat that slander. Ever."

  Ivan's stomach lurched in surprise. He had seen Miles come the Lord Auditor a couple of times now, but never before at him. The freezing gray eyes suddenly had all the expression of a pair of gun barrels. Ivan opened his mouth, then closed it, more carefully. What the hell was going on here? And how did someone so short manage to project that much menace? Years of practice, Ivan supposed. And conditioning. "It was a joke , Miles."

  "I don't find it very damned amusing." Miles rubbed his wrists, and frowned into the middle distance. A muscle jumped in his jaw; he jerked up his chin. After a moment, he added more bleakly, "I won't be telling you about the Komarran case, Ivan. It's slit-your-throat-before-reading stuff, and no horseshit. I will tell you this, and I expect it to go no further. Etienne Vorsoisson's death was a mess and a murder, and I surely failed to prevent it. But I did not cause it."

  "For God's sake Miles, I didn't really think you—"

  "However," his cousin raised his voice to override this, "all the evidence which proves this is now as classified as it's possible to be. It follows, that should such an accusation be made against me, I can't publ
icly access the facts or testimony to disprove it. Think about the consequences of that for one minute, if you please. Especially if . . . if my suit prospers."

  Ivan sucked on his tongue for a moment, quelled. Then he brightened. "But . . . Gregor has access. Who could argue with him? Gregor could pronounce you clear."

  "My foster-brother the Emperor, who appointed me Auditor as a favor to my father? Or so everyone says?"

  Ivan shifted uncomfortably. So, Miles had heard that one, had he? "The people who count know better. Where do you pick this stuff up, Miles?"

  A dry shrug, and a little hand-gesture, was the only reply he got. Miles was growing unnervingly political, these days. Ivan had slightly less interest in becoming involved with Imperial politics than in holding a plasma arc to his head and pulling the trigger. It wasn't that he ran away screaming whenever the loaded topics arose; that would draw too much attention. Saunter off slowly, that was the ticket. Miles . . . Miles the maniacal maybe had the nerve for a political career. The dwarf always did have that little suicidal streak. Better you than me, boy.

  Miles, who had fallen into a study of his half-boots, looked up again. "I know I have no right to demand a damned thing from you, Ivan. I still owe you for . . . for the events of last fall. And the dozen other times you saved my neck, or tried to. All I can do is ask. Please. I don't get many chances, and this one matters the world to me." A crooked smile.

  Damn that smile . Was it Ivan's fault, that he had been born undamaged while his cousin had been born crippled? No, blast it. It was bloody bungled politics that had wrecked him, and you'd think it would be a lesson to him, but no. Demonstrably, even sniper fire couldn't stop the hyperactive little git. In between inspiring you to strangle him with your bare hands, he could make you proud enough to cry. At least, Ivan had taken care no one could see his face, when he'd watched from the Council floor as Miles had taken his Auditor's oath with that terrifying intensity, before all the assembled panoply of Barrayar last Winterfair. So small, so wrecked, so obnoxious. So incandescent. Give the people a light, and they'll follow it anywhere. Did Miles know how dangerous he was?