They arrived at the Imperial pile, which was architecturally reminiscent of Vorkosigan House multiplied by a factor of eight. They hurried out of the clinging fog into the warm, brilliantly-lit interior. Mark found the Countess formally attached to his left arm, which was both alarming and reassuring. Was he escort, or appendage? In either case, he sucked in his stomach and straightened his spine as much as he could.
Mark was startled when the first person they met in the vestibule was Simon Illyan. The security chief was dressed for the occasion in Imperial parade red-and-blues, which did not exactly render his slight form inconspicuous, though perhaps there were enough other red-and-blues present for him to blend in. Except that Illyan wore real lethal weapons at his hip, a plasma arc and a nerve disrupter in used-looking holsters, and not the blunted dual dress sword sets of the Vor officers. An oversized earbug glittered in his right ear.
“Milady,” Illyan nodded, and drew them aside. “When you saw him this afternoon,” he said in a low voice to the Countess, “how was he?”
No need to specify who he was, in this context. The Countess glanced around, to be sure they were out of earshot of casual passers-by. “Not good, Simon. His color’s bad, he’s very edemic, and he tends to drift in and out of focus, which I find more frightening than all the rest put together. The surgeon wants to spare him the double stress of having a mechanical heart installed while they’re waiting to bring the organic one up to size, but they may not be able to wait. He could end up in surgery for that at any moment.”
“Should I see him, or not, in your estimation?”
“Not. The minute you walk in the door he’ll sit up and try to do business. And the stress of trying will be as nothing compared to the stress of failing. That would agitate the hell out of him.” She paused. “Unless you just popped in for a moment to, say, convey a bit of good news.”
Illyan shook his head in frustration. “Sorry.”
Since the Countess did not speak again immediately into the silence that followed, Mark dared to say, “I thought you were on Komarr, sir.”
“I had to come back for this. The Emperor’s Birthday Dinner is the security nightmare of the year. One bomb could take out practically the whole damned government. As you well know. I was en route when the news of Aral’s … illness, reached me. If it would have made my fast courier go any faster, I would have gotten out and pushed.”
“So … what’s happening on Komarr? Who’s supervising the, uh, search?”
“A trusted subordinate. Now that it appears we may be searching only for a body—” Illyan glanced at the Countess, and cut himself off. She frowned grayly.
They’re dropping the priority of the search. Mark took a disturbed breath. “So how many agents do you have searching Jackson’s Whole?”
“As many as can be spared. This new crisis,” a jerk of Illyan’s head indicated Count Vorkosigan’s dangerous illness, “is straining my resources. Do you have any idea how much unhealthy excitement the Prime Minister’s condition is going to create on Cetaganda alone?”
“How many?” His voice went sharp, and too loud, but the Countess at least made no motion to quiet him. She watched with cool interest.
“Lord Mark, you are not yet in a position to request and require an audit of ImpSec’s most secret dispositions!”
Not yet? Not ever, surely. “Request only, sir. But you can’t pretend that this operation is not my business.”
Illyan gave him an ambiguous, noncommittal nod. He touched his earbug, looked abstracted for a moment, and gave the Countess a parting salute. “You must excuse me, Milady.”
“Have fun.”
“You too.” His grimace echoed the irony of her smile.
Mark found himself escorting the Countess up a wide staircase and into a long reception room lined with mirrors on one side and tall windows on the other. A major domo at the wide-flung doors announced them by title and name in an amplified voice.
Mark’s first impression was of a faceless, ominous blur of colorful forms, like a garden of carnivorous flowers. A rainbow of Vor house uniforms, heavily sprinkled with parade red-and-blues, actually outshone the splendid dresses of the ladies. Most of the people stood in small, changing groups, talking in a babble; a few sat in spindly chairs along the walls, creating their own little courts. Servants moved smoothly among them, offering trays of food and drink. Mostly servants. All those extremely physically-fit young men in the uniform of the Residence’s staff were surely ImpSec agents. The tough-looking older men in the Vorbarra livery who manned the exits were the Emperor’s personal armsmen.
It was only his paranoia, Mark decided, that made it seem as if all heads turned toward him and a wave of silence crossed the crowd at their entry; but a few heads did turn, and a few nearby conversations did stop. One was Ivan Vorpatril and his mother, Lady Alys Vorpatril; she waved Countess Vorkosigan over to them at once.
“Cordelia, dear,” Lady Vorpatril gave her a worried smile. “You must bring me up to date. People are asking.”
“Yes, well, you know the drill,” the Countess sighed.
Lady Vorpatril nodded wryly. She turned her head to direct Ivan, evidently continuing the conversation the Vorkosigan entrance had interrupted, “Do make yourself pleasant to the Vorsoisson girl this evening, if the opportunity arises. She’s Violetta Vorsoisson’s younger sister, perhaps you’ll like her better. And Cassia Vorgorov is here. This is her first time at the Emperor’s Birthday. And Irene Vortashpula, do get in at least one dance with her, later. I promised her mother. Really, Ivan, there are so many suitable girls here tonight. If only you would apply yourself a little …” The two older women linked arms to step away, effectively shedding Mark and Ivan from their private conversation. A firm nod from Countess Vorkosigan to Ivan placed him on notice that he was on guard duty again. Recalling the last time, Mark thought he might prefer the more formidable social protection of the Countess.
“What was that all about?” Mark asked Ivan. A servant passed with a tray of drinks; following Ivan’s example, Mark snagged one too. It turned out to be a dry white wine flavored with citrus, reasonably pleasant.
“The biennial cattle drive,” Ivan grimaced. “This and the Winterfair Ball are where all the high Vor heifers are trotted out for inspection.”
This was an aspect of the Emperor’s Birthday ceremonies Galen had never mentioned. Mark took a slightly larger gulp of his drink. He was beginning to damn Galen more for what he’d left out than for what and how he’d forced Mark to learn. “They won’t be looking back at me, will they?”
“Considering some of the toads they do kiss, I don’t see why not,” shrugged Ivan.
Thank you, Ivan. Standing next to Ivan’s tall red-and-blue glitter, he probably did look rather like a squat brown toad. He certainly felt like one. “I’m out of the running,” he said firmly.
“Don’t bet on it. There are only sixty Counts’ heirs, but a lot more daughters to place. Hundreds, seems like. Once it gets out what happened to poor damned Miles, anything could happen.”
“You mean … I wouldn’t have to chase women? If I just stood still, they’d come to me?” Or at any rate, to his name, position, and money. A certain glum cheer came with the thought, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms. Better to be loved for his rank than not to be loved at all; the proud fools who proclaimed otherwise had never come so close to starving to death for a human touch as he had.
“It seemed to work that way for Miles,” said Ivan, an inexplicable tincture of envy in his voice. “I could never get him to take advantage of it. Of course, he couldn’t stand rejection. Try again, was my motto, but he’d just get all shattered and retreat into his shell for days. He wasn’t adventurous. Or maybe he just wasn’t greedy. Tended to stop at the first safe woman he came to. First Elena, and then when that fell through, Quinn. Though I suppose I can see why he might stop at Quinn.” Ivan knocked back the rest of his wine, and exchanged the glass for a full one from a passing tray.
>
Admiral Naismith, Mark reminded himself, was Miles’s alternate personality. Very possibly Ivan did not know everything about his cousin.
“Aw, hell,” Ivan remarked, glancing over his glass rim. “There’s one of the ones on Mamere’s short list, being aimed our way.”
“So are you chasing women, or not?” asked Mark, confused.
“There’s no point in chasing the ones here. It’s all look-don’t-touch. No chance.”
By chance in this context, Mark gathered Ivan meant sex. Like many backward cultures still dependent on biological reproduction instead of the technology of uterine replicators, the Barrayarans divided sex into two categories: licit, inside a formal contract where any resultant progeny must be claimed, and illicit, i.e., all the rest.
Mark brightened still further. Was this event, then, a sexual safety-zone? No tension, no terror?
The young woman Ivan had spotted was approaching them. She wore a long, soft pastel-green dress. Dark brown hair was wound up on her head in braids and curls, with some live flowers woven in. “So what’s wrong with that one?” whispered Mark.
“Are you kidding?” murmured Ivan in return. “Cassia Vorgorov? Little shrimp kid with a face like a horse and a figure like a board … ?” He broke off as she came within earshot, and gave her a polite nod. “Hi, Cass.” He kept almost all of the pained boredom out of his voice.
“Hello, Lord Ivan,” she said breathlessly. She gave him a starry-eyed smile. True, her face was a little long, and her figure slight, but Mark decided Ivan was too picky. She had nice skin, and pretty eyes. Well, all of the women here had pretty eyes, it was the make-up. And the heady perfumes. She couldn’t be more than eighteen. Her shy smile almost made him want to cry, so uselessly focused was it on Ivan. Nobody has ever looked at me like that. Ivan, you are a filthy ingrate!
“Are you looking forward to the dance?” she inquired of Ivan, transparently encouraging.
“Not particularly,” shrugged Ivan. “It’s the same every year.”
She wilted. Her first time here, Mark bet. If there had been stairs, Mark would have been tempted to kick Ivan down them. He cleared his throat. Ivan’s eye fell on him, and lit with inspiration.
“Cassie,” Ivan purred, “have you met my new cousin, Lord Mark Vorkosigan, yet?”
She seemed to notice him for the first time. Mark gave her a tentative smile. She stared back dubiously. “No … I’d heard … I guess he doesn’t look exactly like Miles, does he.”
“No.” said Mark. “Fin not Miles. How do you do, Lady Cassia.”
Belatedly recovering her manners, she replied, “How do you do, um, Lord Mark.” A nervous bob of her head made the flowers shiver.
“Why don’t you two get acquainted. Excuse me, I have to see a man—” Ivan waved to a red-and-blue uniformed comrade across the room, and slithered away.
“Are you looking forward to the dance?” Mark tried. He’d been so concentrated on remembering all the formal moves of the taxation ceremony and the dinner, not to mention a Who’s Who approximately three hundred names long all starting with “Vor,” he’d hardly given the ensuing dance a thought.
“Um … sort of.” Her eyes reluctantly abandoned Ivan’s successful retreat, touched Mark, and flicked away.
Do you come here often? he managed not to blurt. What to say? How do you like Barrayar? No, that wouldn’t do. Nice fog we’rehaving outside tonight. Inside, too. Give me a cue, girl! Say something, anything!
“Are you really a clone?” Anything but that. “Yes.”
“Oh. My.”
More silence.
“A lot of people are,” he observed.
“Not here.”
“True.”
“Uh … oh!” Her face melted with relief. “Excuse me, Lord Mark. I see my mother is calling me—” She handed off a spasmodic smile like a ransom, and turned to hurry toward a Vorish dowager on the other side of the room. Mark had not seen her beckon.
Mark sighed. So much for the hopeful theory of the overpowering attraction of rank. Lady Cassia was clearly not anxious to kiss a toad. If I were Ivan I’d do handstands for a girl who looked at me like that.
“You look thoughtful,” observed Countess Vorkosigan at his elbow. He jumped slightly.
“Ah, hello again. Yes. Ivan just introduced me to that girl. Not a girlfriend, I gather.”
“Yes, I was watching the little playlet past Alys Vorpatril’s shoulder. I stood so as to keep her back to it, for charity’s sake.”
“I … don’t understand Ivan. She seemed like a nice enough girl to me.”
Countess Vorkosigan smiled. “They’re all nice girls. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“You don’t see it? Well, maybe when you’ve had more time to observe. Alys Vorpatril is a truly doting mother, but she just can’t overcome the temptation to try to micro-manage Ivan’s future. Ivan is too agreeable, or too lazy, to resist openly. So he does whatever she begs of him—except the one thing she wants above all others, which is to settle into a marriage and give her grandchildren. Personally, I think his strategy is wrong. If he really wants to take the heat off himself, grandchildren would absolutely divert poor Alys’s attention. Meanwhile her heart is in her mouth every time he takes a drive.”
“I can see that,” allowed Mark.
“I could slap him sometimes for his little game, except I’m not sure he’s conscious of it, and anyway it’s three-quarters Alys’s fault.”
Mark watched Lady Vorpatril catch up with Ivan, down the room. Checking his evening’s progress down the short list already, Mark feared. “You seem able to maintain a reasonably hands-off maternal attitude yourself,” he observed idly.
“That … may have been a mistake,” she murmured.
He glanced up and quailed inwardly at the deathly desolation he surprised, momentarily, in the Countess’s eyes. My mouth. Shit. The look twitched away so instantly, he didn’t even dare apologize.
“Not altogether hands-off,” she said lightly, attaching herself to his elbow again. “Come on, and I’ll show you how they cross-net, Barrayaran style.”
She steered him down the long room. “There are, as you have just seen, two agendas being pursued here tonight,” the Countess lectured amiably. “The political one of the old men—an annual renewal of the forms of the Vor—and the genetic agenda of the old women. The men imagine theirs is the only one, but that’s just an ego-serving self-delusion. The whole Vor system is founded on the women’s game, underneath. The old men in government councils spend their lives arguing against or scheming to fund this or that bit of off-planet military hardware. Meanwhile, the uterine replicator is creeping in past their guard, and they aren’t even conscious that the debate that will fundamentally alter Barrayar’s future is being carried on right now among their wives and daughters. To use it, or not to use it? Too late to keep it out, it’s already here. The middle classes are picking it up in droves. Every mother who loves her daughter is pressing for it, to spare her the physical dangers of biological childbearing. They’re fighting not the old men, who haven’t got a clue, but an old guard of their sisters who say to their daughters, in effect, We had to suffer, so must you! Look around tonight, Mark. You’re witnessing the last generation of men and women on Barrayar who will dance this dance in the old way. The Vor system is about to change on its blindest side, the side that looks to—or fails to look to—its foundation. Another half generation from now, it’s not going to know what hit it.”
Mark almost swore her calm, academic voice concealed a savagely vengeful satisfaction. But her expression was as detached as ever.
A young man in a captain’s uniform approached them, and split a nod of greeting between the Countess and Mark. “The Major of Protocol requests your presence, my lord,” he murmured. The statement too seemed to hang indeterminately in the air between them. “This way, please.”
They followed him out of the long reception room and up an ornatel
y carved white marble staircase, down a corridor, and into an antechamber where half a dozen Counts or their official representatives were marshalled. Beyond a wide archway in the main chamber, Gregor was surrounded by a small constellation of men, mostly in red-and-blues, but three in dark Minister’s robes.
The Emperor was seated on a plain folding stool, even less than a chair. “I was expecting a throne, somehow,” Mark whispered to the Countess.
“It’s a symbol,” she whispered back. “And like most symbols, inherited. It’s a standard-issue military officer’s camp stool.”
“Huh.” Then he had to part from her, as the Major of Protocol herded him into his appointed place in line. The Vorkosigan’s place. This is it. He had a moment of utter panic, thinking he’d somehow mislaid or dropped the bag of gold along the way, but it was still looped safely to his tunic. He undid the silken cords with sweaty fingers. This is a stupid little ceremony. Why should I be nervous now?
Turn, walk forward—his concentration was nearly shattered by an anonymous whisper from somewhere in the antechamber behind him, “My God, the Vorkosigans are really going to do it … !”—step up, salute, kneel on his left knee; he proffered the bag right-handed, palm correctly up, and stuttered out the formal words, feeling as if plasma arc beams were boring into his back from the gazes of the waiting witnesses behind him. Only then did he look up to meet the Emperor’s eyes.
Gregor smiled, took the bag, and spoke the equally formal words of acceptance. He handed the bag aside to the Minister of Finance in his black velvet robe, but then waved the man away.
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