I care. Miles shook his head. What, after all, were Barrayaran internal politics to Elena, who had sworn passionately never to set foot on her hated home world again?
She shrugged and uncoiled to her feet, pocketing the disk.
He did not attempt to capture her hands. He did not make a single move that might embarrass them both. Old friends were harder to come by than new lovers.
Oh, my oldest friend.
Still. Always.
CHAPTER SIX
He ate a sandwich and slurped coffee for dinner in his cabin while he perused Dendarii fleet status reports. Repairs had been completed and approved on the Triumph's surviving combat-drop shuttles. And paid for, alas, the money now passed beyond recall. Refit chores were all caught up throughout the fleet, downside leaves used up, spit spat and polish polished off. Boredom was setting in. Boredom and bankruptcy.
The Cetagandans had it all wrong, Miles decided bitterly. It wasn't war that would destroy the Dendarii, it was peace. If their enemies would just stay their hands and wait patiently, the Dendarii, his creation, would collapse all on its own without any outside assistance.
His cabin buzzer blatted, a welcome interruption to the dark and winding chain of his thoughts. He keyed the comm on his desk. "Yes?"
"It's Elli."
His hand leapt eagerly to tap the lock control. "Enter! You're back before I'd expected. I was afraid you'd be stuck down there like Danio. Or worse, with Danio."
He wheeled his chair around, the room seeming suddenly brighter as the door hissed open, though a lumen-meter might not have registered it. Elli waved him a salute and hitched a hip over the edge of his desk. She smiled, but her eyes looked tired.
"Told you," she said. "In fact there was some talk of making me a permanent guest. I was sweet, I was cooperative, I was nearly prim, trying to convince them I wasn't a homicidal menace to society and they really could let me back out on the streets, but I was making no headway till their computers suddenly hit the jackpot. The lab came back with ID's on those two men I . . . killed, at the shuttleport."
Miles understood the little hesitation before her choice of terms. Someone else might have picked a breezier euphemism—blew away, or offed—distancing himself from the consequences of his action. Not Quinn.
"Interesting, I take it," he said encouragingly. He made his voice calm, drained of any hint of judgment. Would that the ghosts of your enemies only escorted you to hell. But no, they had to hang about your shoulder interminably, waiting until that service was called for. Maybe the notches Danio gouged in the hilts of his weapons weren't such a tasteless idea after all. Surely it was a greater sin to forget a single dead man in your tally. "Tell me about them."
"They turned out to be both known to and desired by the Eurolaw Net. They were—how shall I put this—soldiers of the sub-economy. Professional hit men. Locals."
Miles winced. "Good God, what have I ever done to them?"
"I doubt they were after you of their own accord. They were almost certainly hirelings, contracted by a third party or parties unknown, though I imagine we could both give it a good guess."
"Oh, no. The Cetagandan Embassy is sub-contracting my assassination now? I suppose it makes sense. Galeni said they were understaffed. But do you realize—" he rose and began to pace in his agitation, "this means I could be attacked again from any quarter. Anywhere, any time. By totally un-personally-motivated strangers."
"A security nightmare," she agreed.
"I don't suppose the police were able to trace their employer?"
"No such luck. Not yet, anyway. I did direct their attention to the Cetagandans, as candidates for the motive leg of any method-motive-opportunity triangle they may try to put together."
"Good. Can we make anything of the method and opportunity parts ourselves?" Miles wondered aloud. "The end results of their attempt would seem to indicate they were a trifle underprepared for their task."
"From my point of view their method looked like it came awfully damn close to working," she remarked. "It suggests, though, that opportunity might have been their limiting factor. I mean, Admiral Naismith doesn't just go into hiding when you go downside, tricky as it would be to find one man among nine billion. He literally ceases to exist anywhere, zip! There was evidence these guys had been hanging around the shuttleport for some days waiting for you."
"Ugh." His visit to Earth was quite spoiled. Admiral Naismith was, it appeared, a danger to himself and others. Earth was too congested. What if his assailants next tried to blow up a whole tubeway car or restaurant to reach their target? An escort to hell by the souls of his enemies was one thing, but what if he were standing beside a class of primary-school children next round?
"Oh, by the way, I did see Private Danio when I was downside," Elli added, examining a chipped fingernail. "His case is coming up for judicial review in a couple of days, and he asked me to ask you to come."
Miles snarled under his breath. "Oh, sure. A potentially unlimited number of total strangers are trying to off me, and he wants me to schedule a public appearance. For target practice, no doubt."
Elli grinned and nibbled her fingernail off evenly. "He wants a character witness by someone who knows him."
"Character witness! I wish I knew where he hid his scalp collection; I'd bring it just to show the judge. Sociopath therapy was invented for people like him. No, no. The last person he wants for a character witness is someone who knows him." Miles sighed, subsiding. "Send Captain Thorne. Betan, got a lot of cosmopolitan savoir faire, should be able to lie well on the witness stand."
"Good choice," Elli applauded. "It's about time you started delegating some of your work load."
"I delegate all the time," he objected. "I am extremely glad, for instance, that I delegated my personal security to you."
She flipped up a hand, grimacing, as if to bat away the implied compliment before it could land. Did his words bite? "I was slow."
"You were fast enough." Miles wheeled and came to face her, or at any rate her throat. She had folded back her jacket for comfort, and the arc of her black tee-shirt intersected her collarbone in a kind of abstract, aesthetic sculpture. The scent of her—no perfume, just woman—rose warm from her skin.
"I think you were right," she said. "Officers shouldn't go shopping in the company store—"
Dammit, thought Miles, I only said that back then because I was in love with Baz Jesek's wife and didn't want to say so—better to never say so—
"—it really does distract from duty. I watched you, walking toward us across the shuttleport, and for a couple of minutes, critical minutes, security was the last thing on my mind."
"What was the first thing on your mind?" Miles asked hopefully, before his better sense could stop him. Wake up man; you could fumble your whole future in the next thirty seconds.
Her smile was rather pained. "I was wondering what you'd done with that stupid cat blanket, actually," she said lightly.
"I left it at the embassy. I was going to bring it," and what wouldn't he give to whip it out now, and invite her to sit with him on the edge of his bed? "but I had some other things on my mind. I haven't told you yet about the latest wrinkle in our tangled finances. I suspect—" dammit, business again, intruding into this personal moment, this would-be personal moment. "I'll tell you about that later. Right now I want to talk about us. I have to talk about us."
She moved back from him slightly; Miles amended his words hastily, "and about duty." She stopped retreating. His right hand touched her uniform collar, turned it over, slid over the smooth cool surface of her rank insignia. Nervous as lint-picking. He drew his hand back, clenched it over his breast to control it.
"I . . . have a lot of duties, you see. Sort of a double dose. There's Admiral Naismith's duties, and there's Lieutenant Vorkosigan's duties. And then there's Lord Vorkosigan's duties. A triple dose."
Her eyebrows were arched, her lips pursed, her eyes blandly inquiring; supernal patience, yes, she'd wai
t for him to make an ass of himself at his own pace. His pace was becoming headlong.
"You're familiar with Admiral Naismith's duties. But they're the least of my troubles, really. Admiral Naismith is subordinate to Lieutenant Vorkosigan, who exists only to serve Barrayaran Imperial Security, to which he has been posted by the wisdom and mercy of his Emperor. Well, his Emperor's advisors, anyway. In short, Dad. You know that story."
She nodded.
"That business about not getting personally involved with anyone on his staff may be true enough for Admiral Naismith . . ."
"I'd wondered, later, whether that . . . incident in the lift tube might have been some kind of test," she said reflectively.
This took a moment to sink in. "Eugh! No!" Miles yelped. "What a repulsively lowdown, mean and scurvy trick that would have been—no. No test. Quite real."
"Ah," she said, but failed to reassure him of her conviction with, say, a heartfelt hug. A heartfelt hug would be very reassuring just now. But she just stood there, regarding him, in a stance uncomfortably like parade rest.
"But you have to remember, Admiral Naismith isn't a real man. He's a construct. I invented him. With some important parts missing, in retrospect."
"Oh, rubbish, Miles." She touched his cheek lightly. "What is this, ectoplasm?"
"Let's get back, all the way back, to Lord Vorkosigan," Miles forged on desperately. He cleared his throat and with an effort dropped his voice back into his Barrayaran accent. "You've barely met Lord Vorkosigan."
She grinned at his change of voice. "I've heard you do his accent. It's charming if, um, rather incongruous."
"I don't do his accent, he does mine. That is—I think—" He stopped, tangled. "Barrayar is bred in my bones."
Her eyebrows lifted, their ironic tilt blunted by her clear good will. "Literally, as I understand it. I shouldn't think you'd thank them, for poisoning you before you'd even managed to get born."
"They weren't after me, they were after my father. My mother—" Considering just where he was attempting to steer this conversation, it might be better to avoid expanding upon the misfired assassination attempts of the last twenty-five years. "Anyway, that kind of thing hardly ever happens any more."
"What was that out there on the shuttleport today, street ballet?"
"It wasn't a Barrayaran assassination."
"You don't know that," she remarked cheerfully.
Miles opened his mouth and hung, stunned by a new and even more horrible paranoia. Captain Galeni was a subtle man, if Miles had read him aright. Captain Galeni could be far ahead down any linked chain of logic of interest to him. Suppose he was indeed guilty of embezzlement. And suppose he had anticipated Miles's suspicions. And suppose he'd spotted a way to keep money and career both, by eliminating his accuser. Galeni, after all, had known just when Miles was to be at the shuttleport. Any local dealer in death that the Cetagandan embassy could hire, the Barrayaran embassy could hire just as readily, just as covertly. "We'll talk about that—later— too," he choked.
"Why not now?"
"BECAUSE I'M—" he stopped, took a deep breath, "trying to say something else," he continued in a small, tightly contained voice.
There was a pause. "Say on," Elli encouraged.
"Um, duties. Well, just as Lieutenant Vorkosigan contains all of Admiral Naismith's duties, plus others of his own, so Lord Vorkosigan contains all of Lieutenant Vorkosigan, plus duties of his own. Political duties separate from and overarching a lieutenant's military duties. And, um . . . family duties." His palm was damp; he rubbed it unobtrusively on the seam of his trousers. This was even harder than he'd thought it would be. But no harder, surely, than someone who'd had her face blown away once having to face plasma fire again.
"You make yourself sound like a Venn diagram. 'The set of all sets which are members of themselves' or something."
"I feel like it," he admitted. "But I've got to keep track somehow."
"What contains Lord Vorkosigan?" she asked curiously. "When you look in the mirror when you step out of the shower, what looks back? Do you say to yourself, Hi, Lord Vorkosigan?"
I avoid looking in mirrors. . . . "Miles, I guess. Just Miles."
"And what contains Miles?"
His right index finger traced over the back of his immobilized left hand. "This skin."
"And that's the last, outer perimeter?"
"I guess."
"Gods," she muttered. "I've fallen in love with a man who thinks he's an onion."
Miles snickered; he couldn't help it. But—fallen in love? His heart lifted in vast encouragement.
"Better than my ancestress who was supposed to have thought herself—" No, better not bring that one up either.
But Elli's curiosity was insatiable; it was why he'd first assigned her to Dendarii Intelligence, after all, where she'd been so spectacularly successful. "What?"
Miles cleared his throat. "The fifth Countess Vorkosigan was said to suffer from the periodic delusion that she was made of glass."
"What finally happened to her?" asked Elli in a tone of fascination.
"One of her irritated relations eventually dropped and broke her."
"The delusion was that intense?"
"It was off a twenty-meter-tall turret. I don't know," he said impatiently. "I'm not responsible for my weird ancestors. Quite the reverse. Exactly the inverse." He swallowed. "You see, one of Lord Vorkosigan's non-military duties is to eventually, sometime, somewhere, come up with a Lady Vorkosigan. The eleventh Countess-Vorkosigan-to-be. It's rather expected from a man from a strictly patrilinear culture, y'see. You do know," his throat seemed to be stuffed with cotton, his accent wavered back and forth, "that these, uh, physical problems of mine," his hand swept vaguely down the length, or lack of it, of his body, "were teratogenic. Not genetic. My children should be normal. A fact which may have saved my life, in view of Barrayar's traditional ruthless attitude toward mutations. I don't think my grandfather was ever totally convinced of it. I've always wished he could have lived to see my children, just to prove it. . . ."
"Miles," Elli interrupted him gently.
"Yes?" he said breathlessly.
"You're babbling. Why are you babbling? I could listen by the hour, but it's worrisome when you get stuck on fast-forward."
"I'm nervous," he confessed. He smiled blindingly at her.
"Delayed reaction, from this afternoon?" She slipped closer to him, comfortingly. "I can understand that."
He eased his right arm around her waist. "No. Yes, well, maybe a little. Would you like to be Countess Vorkosigan?"
She grinned. "Made of glass? Not my style, thanks. Really, though, the title sounds more like something that would go with black leather and chromium studs."
The mental image of Elli so attired was so arresting, it took him a full half minute of silence to trace back to the wrong turn. "Let me rephrase that," he said at last. "Will you marry me?"
The silence this time was much longer.
"I thought you were working up to asking me to go to bed with you," she said finally, "and I was laughing. At your nerves." She wasn't laughing now.
"No," said Miles. "That would have been easy."
"You don't want much, do you? Just to completely rearrange the rest of my life."
"It's good that you understand that part. It's not just a marriage. There's a whole job description that goes with it."
"On Barrayar. Downside."
"Yes. Well, there might be some travel."
She was quiet for too long, then said, "I was born in space. Grew up on a deep-space transfer station. Worked most of my adult life aboard ships. The time I've spent with my feet on real dirt can be measured in months."
"It would be a change," Miles admitted uneasily.
"And what would happen to the future Admiral Quinn, free mercenary?"
"Presumably—hopefully—she would find the work of Lady Vorkosigan equally interesting."
"Let me guess. The work of Lady Vorkosigan wo
uld not include ship command."
"The security risks of allowing such a career would appall even me. My mother gave up a ship command—Betan Astronomical Survey—to go to Barrayar."
"Are you telling me you're looking for a girl just like Mom?"
"She has to be smart—she has to be fast—she has to be a determined survivor," Miles explained unhappily. "Anything less would be a slaughter of the innocent. Maybe for her, maybe for our children with her. Bodyguards, as you know, can only do so much."
Her breath blew out in a long, silent whistle, watching him watching her. The slippage between the distress in her eyes and the smile on her lips tore at him. Didn't want to hurt you— the best I can offer shouldn't be pain to you—is it too much, too little . . . too awful?
"Oh, love," she breathed sadly, "you aren't thinking."
"I think the world of you."
"And so you want to maroon me for the rest of my life on a, sorry, backwater dirtball that's just barely climbed out of feudalism, that treats women like chattel—or cattle—that would deny me the use of every military skill I've learned in the past twelve years from shuttle docking to interrogation chemistry . . . I'm sorry. I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not a saint, and I'm not crazy."
"You don't have to say no right away," said Miles in a small voice.
"Oh, yes I do," she said. "Before looking at you makes me any weaker in the knees. Or in the head."
And what am I to say to that? If you really loved me, you'd be delighted to immolate your entire personal history on my behalf? Oh, sure. She's not into immolation. This makes her strong, her strength makes me want her, and so we come full circle. "It's Barrayar that's the problem, then."
"Of course. What female human in her right mind would voluntarily move to that planet? With the exception of your mother, apparently."
"She is exceptional. But . . . when she and Barrayar collide, it's Barrayar that changes. I've seen it. You could be a force of change like that."
Elli was shaking her head. "I know my limits."
"No one knows their limits till they've gone beyond them."
She eyed him. "You would naturally think so. What's with you and Barrayar, anyway? You let them push you around like . . . I've never understood why you've never just grabbed the Dendarii and taken off. You could make it go, better than Admiral Oser ever did, better than Tung even. You could end up emperor of your own rock by the time you were done."
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