“And after what you just did,” Ivan went on to Tej, disregarding By’s last comment, “you can’t convince me that you’d rather kiss the pavement than kiss me.” My mouth is still tingling. “Not that you’ll have to kiss me, if you don’t want to. Totally up to you, what happens after, I hope that goes without saying.”
More alarming thumps and crashes from the hallway. Rish wet her lips and said, “Do it, Tej. And we’ll find out if it works soon enough. We’re out of time to debate. Or for the tub.” She reset the safety and slipped her stunner back into her pocket in wordless acquiescence.
Ivan held out his hand to Tej. “Tej, will you please try this?”
She rubbed her forehead, and said doubtfully, “I guess so…” As the first acceptance to a marriage proposal that Ivan had ever received in his life, this lacked a certain something, but she took his hand and stepped over the line of groats into the circle.
Ivan pointed. “By, Rish, you stand on either side, facing each other. You’re the witnesses, so watch.”
“I doubt I’ll be able to look away,” murmured Byerly, holstering his stunner as well and stepping up to his assigned spot. “It’ll be just like watching a monorail wreck.” Rish rolled her eyes—in agreement?—and took her place opposite.
“All right, I’ll go first,” said Ivan to his bride-to-be, “and then I’ll coach you through your part. Wording’s about the same. ‘I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, being of sound mind and body—’”
“That’s for wills, Ivan,” muttered By. “I thought you said you knew this stuff?”
Ivan ignored him and plowed on. “Do take thee, uh…what did you say your name was, again?”
By buried his face in his hands.
Tej repeated it. All of it.
“Do take thee, Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua”—and he’d got the pronunciation right the first time, and didn’t even choke on the ghem part, hah!—“to be my spouse and helpmeet, forsaking all others…” The core of the oath was only three sentences. He got them out somehow, and coached Tej through her half. “…do take thee, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, to be my spouse…” Her hands were shaking, held in his. So were his.
“And that’s it!” said Ivan. “We now pronounce each other spouse and spouse, before these witnesses, and I get to kiss you. Again. For the first time. Because before, you kissed me, right?” He locked himself to her lips, rolling his eyes as By stepped forward and swept a break through the groat barrier with his shoe. They swung out of the circle together, Byerly stretched his neck and pecked her on the cheek in passing, and six irate, swearing Komarrans stumbled over each other out of Ivan’s hallway and advanced upon them, stunners at the ready.
Ivan drew a wad of cash from his wallet, thrust it into the startled Rish’s hand, and added, “You’re hired. Officially.”
And, as a uniformed woman reached out to seize Tej, who shrank away, continued in a forceful bellow modeled directly on Count Falco: “Unhand Lady Vorpatril!”
Chapter Seven
Tej had spent days steeling herself for death. This wrenching turn in her affairs left her stomach floating as if she had just jumped over that beckoning balcony, except that this fall didn’t come to an end. She felt weightless, like a drowning woman. The mad captain seemed to have clamped a rescuing arm around her neck and be towing her along, but was it toward some unseen shore, or farther out into deeper waters?
She should have spotted that Ivan Xav was insane before this. Surely there had been clues. But he had, despite it all, seemed so easy-going, so affable, so comfortable—or at least unwilling to be thrust out of his comforts—a welcome rarity, among the people in her life. And then, with no warning, this.
Maddest of all was that his ploy seemed to be working. The Komarran Dome cops neither arrested him, nor seized him to be carried off for some psychiatric observation. Byerly Vorrutyer, introduced as an acquaintance from Vorbarr Sultana and presenting valid identification, blandly testified to the ceremony he had just witnessed, pointing out the circle of groats ground into the carpet as supporting physical evidence. Rish backed him up, if in a slightly choked voice. There followed much frantic consultation of wristcom hololinks on the parts of both the dome cops and the Immigration officers, which apparently returned some very unwelcome answers. Ivan Xav retrieved his now-silent wristcom from the refrigerator and, anxious to get to his military HQ, cut the attendant explanations quite short.
The dome cops were plainly not happy that the discovery of Tej, transmuted from kidnap victim to runaway bride, had spoiled their hoped-for case against the Barrayaran. They retired thwarted and surly, with mutters about subpoenas for material witnesses to be promptly forthcoming, as they were still left with the puzzle of the budget ninjas on their hands. But they couldn’t arrest Tej for being a crime victim. The Immigration people, too, retreated like a force planning a rematch, but the important thing was that it cleared the doorway now, except for a brief argument with the building manager about the damages. Vorpatril, affronted, pointed out he hadn’t created the mess, but impatiently short-circuited the sting by telling the manager to put the repair costs on his rental charges. The two tense Barrayarans then gave Tej and Rish barely time to throw on street clothes and grab their most important possessions—not many left of those by now—before hustling them out the wrecked doorway, down the lift tubes, and through the lobby.
Outside, Vorpatril swung Byerly aside and backed him up into a wall niche behind a tall, potted evergreen. She could hear very little of their rapid, low-voiced exchange over the street noise, but it seemed to involve a lot of jaw-clenching and teeth-baring. Under a flowing headscarf, Rish all but pricked her ears. Tej leaned toward the pair, but only caught Ivan’s Xav’s forceful You owe me, and I’m collecting…and, as he finally eased back and released his unwilling auditor, Go do what you have to do. Byerly was more successful at pitching his voice not to carry, so all Tej had to go on was his body language. She’d never before seen someone swear quite so emphatically in body language. But when they started again toward the bubble-car platform, Byerly hastened off in the opposite direction.
They were about to cross the street when Vorpatril herded her and Rish abruptly into the doorway of a shop not yet open, spinning Tej around to face him—and, she realized, to shield him from view. “What is it?” she whispered, acquiescing to the tactic as soon as she recognized it.
“Service Security,” he muttered into her hair. “A whole patrol. Just came charging out of the bubble-car station—yep, heading for my building, all right. Two enlisteds, a sergeant, and a colonel, hoo boy. Desplains must have dispatched them for me. I wonder if they mean to rescue me, or arrest me?…I think we don’t want to stick around to find out. They can have a nice, long chat with the building manager. He deserves it, and it’ll hold ’em for just long enough, I think. Come on, hurry.”
Vorpatril’s wooden smile and this-is-all-normal posture didn’t slip till he’d bundled them into a bubble car and it was bowling along the route out to the military shuttleport. He slumped in his seat and addressed himself to his wristcom with the caution of a man defusing a bomb. At some return code, he muttered in relief, “Oh, good, he’s got it on voice delay,” and continued more brightly, “Admiral Desplains, Vorpatril here, sir. Sorry about the holdup this morning, but I have the misunderstanding with the Komarrans all straightened out. Nobody’s trying to arrest me anymore”—his lips silently mouthed, I hope—“but I have one more short stop to make at ImpSec Galactic Affairs to settle a few details. I’ll meet you and the Horsemen out at Dock Six. I’ll explain everything else when I get there.” He made to cut the com, but then raised it to his lips and added, “Please don’t leave without me. It’s important.”
He blew out his breath, then entered another code, and made an appointment with someone named Captain Morozov to meet them in a few minutes at some lobby security desk. Tej and Rish looked uneasily at each other.
“That’s your ImpSec person you mentioned who studies Jackson’s
Whole?” asked Rish.
“Morozov, yes. Good scout, bit of a boffin, but he’s really interested, you know. I mean, above and beyond what he has to be for his duties as an analyst, which I suppose is what makes him a top boffin. I thought I’d leave you two with him for the day. You can’t go back to my flat—after all that uproar this morning, it’s gotta be smoked.”
“True,” said Rish, reluctantly.
“But however you feel about ImpSec, I can pretty much guarantee that nobody’s rent-a-goons can get at you inside their HQ.”
“But surely this Captain Morozov will want to know things,” said Tej. “What should we tell him?”
Ivan Xav shrugged. “Everything. He’s even cleared to know about By, though I doubt he does—not his department.”
“Even about the—the wedding thing?”
He sighed. “I’ll tell him about that.”
When they exited into the busy bubble-car station out by the shuttleport, Rish said, “I have to pee,” grabbed Tej, and towed her into the ladies’ lavatory. Vorpatril made frustrated gestures of protest, but stopped short of following them inside. They left him standing in the corridor alongside a couple of other males with glazed, waiting expressions.
It didn’t matter; there was only the one door, and no windows, Tej automatically noted as they entered. A woman dealing with a wailing infant, and another attempting to shepherd two hyperactive and not-well-trained toddlers through their ablutions, gave plenty of sound cover and guaranteed that no one was paying them the least attention.
Rish retreated to a corner and turned Tej around, strong blue hands gripping her shoulders. “Talk to me, Tej. You look like someone hit you on the head with a mallet, and you’re just waiting to fall down. You’re scaring me, sweetling.”
“Am I?” Tej blinked. “I sure didn’t see that blow coming. I wonder if he really thinks he married me?”
Rish shifted her head and eyed Tej narrowly, as if checking to see that her pupils were still the same size. “Do you think you really married him?”
“I have no idea. I guess the important thing is that everyone else seems to.” Tej took a deep breath. “And till we find out what all else this Lady Vorpatril business is good for, we’d likely better go along with it.”
Rish pursed her lips, nodded, and stood back, releasing her worried grip. “Point taken.” Her mouth tightened. “So what are we going to tell this Morozov fellow? Think, sweetling, think.”
Tej rubbed her forehead. “I’d be perfectly happy to feed everything we know about those House Prestene bastards to Barrayar, if only I could be sure they weren’t about to become new best friends afterward. Though if the Prestene syndicate is really on the other end of this smuggling scheme, I think the Barrayarans aren’t going to be too well-disposed toward House Cordonah’s new management. I know even Dada and the Baronne took care how they crossed these Imperium crazies. It’s rumored that all of House Ryoval was taken down by a single ImpSec agent, after the old baron pissed Barrayar off somehow.”
Rish whistled. “Really?”
“That’s the tale Star told me, anyway. She got it from someone in House Fell. So I think…” Tej wished she could think. Her brain seemed to have turned to mush. “I think we should tell this Morozov almost everything. Bury him in details, so’s he won’t have either the time or the motivation to move on to the fast-penta.”
“Ah.”
“Our story will be that the syndicate is after you as a flashy prize, and me as a baby enemy they want to strangle in the cradle.” Yes, that had seemed to work for the Byerly person. And besides, it was true. “Hold back only anything about where Amiri is. Anything about Amiri, come to think. And don’t volunteer anything about Star and Pidge. Or Grandmama.”
Rish nodded understanding.
They both made quick dashes for the stalls, returning to the station corridor before Vorpatril overcame his social conditioning and came in looking for them, although, by the glare he cast them, it had been a near thing.
“Crowded?” he inquired.
“Lots of little kids,” Tej said truthfully. “I think they must have eaten straight sugar for breakfast.” That was the best deal, yes. Truth.
Just not all of it.
* * *
To Ivan’s relief, Morozov was already waiting at the ImpSec Galactic Affairs reception desk when he guided the two women inside the lobby. Morozov’s eyes widened as Rish turned to face him, but then he managed a boffin-y bow.
“Lapis Lazuli. A visit to ImpSec’s humble quarters by an artist of your caliber is quite an honor.” His lips parted in equal surprise as he took in Tej. “And, if I am not mistaken, one of the Misses Arqua as well! This is excellent, Vorpatril.”
“You’re mistaken,” said Ivan. “Or anyway, behind the times. Captain Morozov, may I present the new Lady Vorpatril.”
Morozov blinked. Three times. And rose to the challenge: “Congratulations to you both. Er…a recent happy event, was this?”
“About”—Ivan glanced at the time on his wristcom, ouch—“an hour ago.” He drew breath. “But it’s all right and tight and legal, we had the groats and the oaths and the witnesses and everything. Which means she is now officially an Imperial Service officer’s dependent. And Rish is her, um, personal assistant. In my employ. Officially.”
“I see. I think…?” Morozov laced his hands together; Ivan wasn’t sure if that lip-biting expression concealed dismay, or unholy glee.
“An officer’s dependent who some very unpleasant people have been trying to kidnap and maybe murder,” Ivan forged on.
That got the analyst’s full attention. “Ah. I see. We can’t have that, can we?”
“Right. So I’m leaving them with you for the day till I can get back downside and deal with, uh, everything. They probably ought to stay in the building. I thought you all could talk.”
“It would be my very great pleasure,” said Morozov, brightening right up. Tej and Rish did not look nearly as thrilled as he did.
“And no damned fast-penta,” Ivan continued. “I think you’d have to ask my husbandly permission anyway, but just in case there’s a question, you don’t have it. My permission, that is.”
Morozov’s brows twitched. “Noted. Er…if I may ask a personal question…does your mother know about this marriage yet?”
“Nobody knows about this marriage yet, but that’ll change soon enough. One thing at a time. I’m due to accompany Desplains upside in, oh God, twenty minutes ago. I hope they’re holding the shuttle.”
Morozov waved an ImpSec salute at him. “Then I shall consider myself detailed to guard the new Lady Vorpatril from all harm until your return, shall I?”
“Please.” Ivan turned away, turned back. “And feed them. They’ll like that. Nobody’s had breakfast yet.” He started off and stopped again. “But not rat bars.”
“I’ll send my clerk to bring up something from the cafeteria. Ladies, will you come with me? I can offer you coffee or tea in my office.” Morozov gestured the uneasy women away down the corridor, and continued in the tone of a town Vor dame, or possibly Byerly Vorrutyer, at the most gossipy: “And I’m dying to hear all about your wedding, Lady Vorpatril! I’m sure this will come as a delightful surprise to all of Captain Vorpatril’s friends…”
Ivan pushed through the doors and ran. He made sure to make it that special bland run that said, I’m late and in a hurry, and not the wild bolt that said, This building I am fleeing is about to explode, because he didn’t want to spread panic. He had enough panic tamped into his head right now to blow up a battalion. This’ll work this’ll work, this had better work…
He found, thanks be, the admiral’s shuttle still waiting in Dock Six. Desplains and all four of the Horsemen were aboard, fuming with impatience. The shuttle was already moving as Ivan flung himself into the seat where the scowling Desplains pointed and snapped his belts closed.
“We’re off to inspect the flagship New Athens, right?” Ivan wheezed.
“So glad you remembered,” said Desplains, drawing a long breath for what promised to be a classic bolt of scouring sarcasm, but Ivan shook his head.
“Change it to the Kanzian.”
Desplains stopped dead in mid-rant-launch. “What?”
“The Kanzian. Tell the shuttle pilot to dock at the Kanzian.”
Desplains sat back, eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“Because hidden somewhere aboard it—or possibly clamped outside of it—are several cargo pods full of equipment, weapons, and supplies stolen from the Sergyar Fleet Orbital Depot. Which their conveyors are no doubt trying frantically to camouflage right now, in anticipation of our scheduled inspection tomorrow.” Ivan nodded to the inspection team chief, leaning over the aisle to hear this. “Forget the rest, that’s what the Horsemen should look for.”
“How do you know this, Vorpatril?” asked Desplains.
“I had a tip-off from an ImpSec agent.”
“ImpSec didn’t tell me.”
“This was one of their left-hand men, the sort the right hands don’t talk to. Frigging weasels. But he’s known to me. The reasons I’ve been late for work the past few days weren’t just personal ones, sir.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“Very.” IhopeIhopeIhope…
“ImpSec.” Desplains sat back, his scowl transmuting to his thinking-frown, scarcely less alarming. “I suppose you would know.”
“I do in this case, sir.” Adding I’d stake my career on it seemed redundant, since he just had. “But you can’t even hint where you got the tip, sir. There are ImpSec agents still on the ground in the matter who are at high risk till they get clear.”
“Hmm…”
There ensued rumbling and grumbling, but the Horsemen were good; they had the new inspection plan roughed out before the shuttle slid into its docking clamps at the Komarr Fleet orbital station. Next to the Kanzian.
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