“At a guess, she probably pulled up stakes and went to hide somewhere else,” said Ivan. “It would seem the sensible thing, if someone was after you.”
“The sensible thing would be to go to Dome Security for help,” said Sulmona, mouth pinching in frustration. “Why didn’t she?”
Ivan scratched his head. “Dunno. She didn’t exactly confide in me, y’know? But if she’s only lately moved here, it would make sense that her mysteries probably have their roots back where she came from. Where was that, again?”
“Olbia Dome,” said Fano, automatically.
“Then shouldn’t you folks be directing your attention to Olbia Dome?” Instead of to, say, my flat, argh?
“That will be our next task,” sighed Fano. He pressed his palms to the table and levered himself upright, and Ivan wondered how much of his night’s sleep he’d missed over this. Not as much as me. Reluctantly, he opened his hand in dismissal of Ivan. “Captain Vorpatril, thank you for your cooperation.” He didn’t add such as it was out loud, but Ivan thought it was implied.
“My personal embarrassment doesn’t seem the most important issue, here. Doesn’t mean I enjoy it. But you’re welcome. I really do hope no harm has come to Sera Brindis.”
Ivan rather pointedly escorted his visitors to the security desk to sign out. The harrowing interview over, he fled the building.
Chapter Four
Captain Vorpatril returned nerve-wrackingly late after dark, when both sun and soletta had set. Tej forgave him almost immediately for the sake of the several large, heavy, handled bags he bore, from which delectable odors issued.
“We have to talk,” he wheezed, but the two famished women overbore him without much resistance on his part.
“We have to eat. Do you realize you left us nothing but those awful ration bars?” Tej demanded. “That was all we had for lunch. Well, and the wine,” she added fairly. “That was pretty good.”
“I had rat bars for breakfast and lunch, and no wine at all,” he one-upped this.
Rish, whose metabolism was permanently set on high, sped to lay out plates and eating tools on the round glass table across from the kitchenette. The bags disgorged three kinds of pasta, grilled vegetables, a sauté of spinach, garlic, and pine nuts, sliced vat beef, roasted vat chicken with rosemary, salads both leafy and fruit, cheeses, cheesecake, three flavors of ice cream and two of sorbets, and more wine. Tej could only think I do like a man who keeps his promises.
“I wasn’t sure if you had any special dietary things, customs, needs,” Vorpatril explained. “So I tried to get a range. All Komarran-style; there’s a good place just up the street.”
“I’ll eat anything that wasn’t ever a live animal,” Rish avowed, setting-to in demonstration.
“I was beginning to think about compromising on that live animal part,” Tej added.
Vorpatril, she was pleased to see, was a man who appreciated his food. Given the rat bars, she’d begun to picture him concealing a level of Barrayaran barbarism that even the holovids hadn’t hinted at. But the selection demonstrated an unexpected level of discernment and balance. The attunement of his senses couldn’t match her or Rish’s innate aptitude and formal training, of course, but it was far from hopeless. And he seemed unwilling to damage the dining ambiance with upsetting discourse, which suited Tej just fine.
He was still working up to whatever he’d wanted to disclose when he went off to the lav and to shed his jacket and shoes, returned via the couch, sat, and more or less fell over. “Just need to close my eyes f’r a minute . . .”
The eyes stayed closed; after a while, the mouth opened. He didn’t snore, exactly; it was more of a soothing purring sound, muffled by the cushion he clutched.
Rish crossed her arms and regarded him. “I’ll concede, these Barrayarans are cute when they’re asleep. They stop talking.” Her head tilted. “He even drools fetchingly.”
“He does not drool!” Tej smiled despite herself.
“Don’t get attached, sweetling,” Rish advised. “This one is dangerous.”
Tej stared down at the sleeping officer. He didn’t look all that dangerous, not with that curl of dark hair straying over his forehead, just begging for a soft hand to put it to rights . . . “Really?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Should we wake him up?” asked Tej doubtfully. “I don’t think he slept at all last night. I thought he would doze in the chair.”
“Eh, let sleeping creatures lie.” Rish glanced at her wristcom. “Besides, my favorite ’vid comes on right now . . .”
Rish, immured in their flat for weeks on end, had developed an addiction to an array of Komarran holovid serial dramas, a fondness Tej did not especially share. After a day of grubbing, the short Komarran evening left her little time for relaxation. Rish went off now to the bedroom, which had the best holovid remote link, and closed the door. First turning off the lights to make sure she was not visible from a distance, Tej slipped onto the balcony and stared out for a time at the strange, sealed city. Was her long journey doomed to end here—one way or another? It could be worse. But it was not her choice, just an accumulation of chances.
She returned at length, carefully locking the balcony door and drawing the drapes, then set herself to quietly cleaning up after their meal. There was plenty left over to sustain them through tomorrow, at least. The captain appeared to be planning on keeping her and Rish, not that the decision was his. She returned to the couch and tentatively tried to poke him awake, pulling away the cushion. He clutched it back with surprising strength and determination for an unconscious man, mumbling and turning over to protect it, so Tej gave up and just sat down across from him to contemplate the view. She had to admit, it was a good view, genetically speaking. For a wild-caught.
After another few minutes, Rish came out to join her, smiling in a pleased way. “I was right about Hendro Fon,” she informed Tej. “He was faking the amnesia. And the DNA sample had been substituted. Sera Jenna was a real clone! I’ll bet the trade fleet merger is off now.” She sat beside Tej and nodded at Vorpatril. “Still out, is he?”
“Yes. He must have been exhausted. I wonder what it is they make an aide-de-camp do all day, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” said Rish.
Quiet held sway for a time.
Tej finally murmured, “Rish, what do we do next? We’re good here for tonight, probably tomorrow, but then what? I can’t go back to my job.”
“Small loss. I know you worked hard, sweetling, but your grubber job was far too slow in filling the bag. I said so at the time.”
“You did. I thought Nanja would get something better soon.” And the commonplace shop had seemed to be ideal for lying very low indeed. Tej had learned how to do every task required of her in less than two days. Which was good, because she doubted she’d have been up to mastering anything more challenging, just then. I’m so sick of this struggle. “Nanja Brindis used up my last identity package, and she was barely deep enough to pass even a cursory inspection.” Maybe that was a good thing. Her next identity would surely be less predictable to their pursuers if even she couldn’t predict it.
Nor afford it.
If they could get to Escobar, better identities might be made available to them there, but if they couldn’t get off Komarr without better IDs . . .
“I really realize, now, what it is to be Houseless.”
Rish gripped her hand in brief consolation. “I suppose we could try going to ground in a different dome. Maybe Equinox, or Serifosa. If we can’t afford a jumpship, we could at least afford the monorail. Get out of Solstice, where we know we’ve been smoked.” Her voice was unpressing.
“A smaller dome would make it even harder to hide, though.”
Rish stood, stretched, and wandered over to prod their host. When he did not stir, she leaned over and neatly forked his wallet from his pocket. She brought it back to Tej, and they went through it together, again.
“Not much cash,”
said Rish, “and we can’t use his credit chit. Though I suppose his IDs would fetch a good price, if we could find the right buyer.”
“This”—Tej fingered the thin stack of local currency, then tucked it into the wallet again—“would only sustain us for a few days. We’ve a couple of days for free right here. This much wouldn’t get us ahead. Just put it back.”
Rish shrugged and did so, as deftly as she had extracted it.
Tej leaned her head back, her own eyes closed for a time.
“I saw this vid show,” Rish offered after a while, “all about Sergyar, and the colonization effort. It looked like a nice world, breathable atmosphere and all.”
“Did they show anything about that horrid worm plague?” Tej shuddered.
“Not a word. I think they were trying to persuade people to move there. Gruesome pictures of colonists all bloated up like lumpy sausages wouldn’t much aid that. But I gathered you could go as some sort of indentured laborer, and pay for your passage after.”
It sounded like the first step on the slippery slope into contract slavery, to Tej. What she said aloud was, “But Sergyar has an even smaller population than Komarr. And it’s all stocked with Barrayarans. How would you hide there?”
“It’s a very mixed population, I heard. The current Vicereine is making an effort to draw immigrants from all over. Even Beta Colony. It won’t be like Barrayar, or even Komarr, if that keeps on.”
They were both silent for a while, contemplating this option. It depended on their being able to make it to orbital embarkation alive and uncollected, which didn’t seem a good bet right now.
“There’s Captain Mystery, here.” Rish nodded to the sleeping figure across from them. “Captain Vormystery, I suppose he would correct that.”
“Ivan Xav, the one and only. I think he likes me.”
“Oh, I can smell that.” Rish smirked. “He also has a slight breast fetish.”
“Don’t they all.” Tej sighed. The corners of her mouth drew up. “Though not, in his case, for slight breasts.”
“If he were a random Komarran stranger off the street, I’d advise—though only as a second-to-last resort—that you attach yourself to him and ride as far as you could. But he’s not Komarran, he’s definitely not random, and that’s far too strange.”
“Mm.”
Another long silence.
Rish finally said, in a very low voice: “I would die before I allowed myself to be taken back and used against the Baron and Baronne.”
In an equally quiet tone, Tej returned, “There’s no Baron and Baronne left to be used against. We’d just be used.” She blinked eyes gone abruptly blurry. No. I won’t cry any more. If weeping were going to help, it would have done so by now.
Both stared straight ahead. Rish’s voice went darker, bleaker. “Once they grab us, the chances for the last escape will grow very constrained. Too soon could become too late too fast to target.”
No need to say out loud what the last escape was; they’d discussed it twice before, though they’d twice evaded it, once by bare minutes. “How, here?”
“Too dangerous for either of us to go out looking for a painless termination drug, though I did notice a sign for a veterinary hospital on the way, could be raided, but . . . I read about this method, once, that they used on Old Earth. Lie back in a hot bath and just open your veins. It only hurts for a moment, a little sting, less than a hypospray jab, they say. There’s that great big tub in the bathroom. We could just ease back and . . . go to sleep, sweetling. Just go to sleep.”
“It would be a bit tough on Ivan Xav when he came home, though, wouldn’t it? Not to mention tricky for him to explain to the dome cops.”
“Not our problem by then.”
Barely turning her head, Tej glanced aside at her companion. “You’re tired, too. Aren’t you.”
“Very,” Rish sighed.
“You should have taken a nap this afternoon, as well.” Tej scrunched her eyes in thought. “I don’t know. I think I’d rather seize some last chance for . . . something. Go to the highest tower in Solstice, maybe, and step off the roof. The fall would be great, while it lasted. We could dance all the way down. Your last dance.”
“Bitch of an arrêt at the end, though,” said Rish.
“And no encore. The Baronne always loved your encores . . .”
“I vote for the tub.”
“The balcony out there might do, if we were cornered.”
“No, too public. They might scrape us up and put us back together. And then where would we be?”
“That’s . . . really hard to guess.”
“Ah.”
More silence. The sleeping captain snorted and rolled over again.
“You’d have a better chance of hiding out minus me,” began Rish.
Tej sniffed. This, too, was an old argument. “My loyalties may not be bred in my bones, odd-sister, but I’ll back nurture against nature any day you care to name.”
“Nature,” breathed Rish, starting to smile.
“Nurture,” said Tej.
“Nature.”
“Nurture.”
“Tub.”
“Tower.” Tej paused. “You know, we need a third vote, here. We always end up in a tie. It’s a gridlock.”
“Deadlock.”
“Whatever.” Tej tilted her head in consideration. “Actually, the best method would be something that made it look like our pursuers had murdered us. The local authorities would think they were killers, and their bosses would think they botched the snatch. Get them coming and going.”
“That’s pretty,” Rish conceded. “But it would only cook the meat. The best revenge would fry the brains.”
“Oh, yes,” Tej sighed. Oh, yes. But she didn’t see how to reach all the way home to effect such a deed from the Unbeing, given that she couldn’t even do so while still breathing.
Vorpatril rolled back and made a strange wheezing noise, like a distant balloon deflating, then went quiescent again.
“Eyeable show, that, I grant you,” said Rish, nodding to him, “but there’s not much of a plot.”
“Think of it as experimental dance. Very abstract.”
More quiet.
Rish yawned. “I vote we take over the bed. Leave him out here.”
“You know, I think you might get a unanimous—” Tej froze as the door buzzer sounded, loud in the stillness. Rish jerked as if electrocuted and leaped to her feet, golden eyes wide.
Tej lurched across to the other sofa and shook its occupant by the shoulder, saying in an urgent undervoice, “Captain Vorpatril! Wake up! There’s someone at your door!”
He mumbled and hunched in on himself, like an animal trying to hide in a hole too small for it. The buzzer blatted again.
Tej shook him again. “Ivan Xav!”
Rish stepped across, grabbed his sock feet, and ruthlessly yanked them to the floor. The rest of him followed with a thud. “Hey, ah, wazzit?” he mumbled indignantly, rolling over and sitting up at last, then clapping a hand over his eyes. “Ah, too bright!”
The door buzzer sounded and did not stop, now, as if someone held it down with a thumb and leaned in.
“Who the hell’d be out there at this time of night?” Vorpatril blinked in a blurry attempt to focus on his wristcom. “What is this time of night?”
“You’ve been asleep almost three hours,” said Rish.
“Not ’nough.” He tried to lie back down on the floor. “God, what’s that noise in my head? Swear I didn’t drink that much . . .”
“Answer your door,” Tej hissed, hauling on his arm. To the buzzing was now added a thumping, as if someone was hitting the door with a bunched hand. Surely kidnappers wouldn’t be this noisy . . . ?
He lumbered up at last, visibly pulling himself into focus. “Right. Right. ’L go find out.” He waved them off as he started for the short hallway leading to the door onto the corridor. “You two go hide.”
Tej stared wildly around. The place had on
ly the living room, kitchenette, bedroom, and bath, spacious as they were, plus two closets and the balcony; any search for cowering women would be short and foregone. Should she allow herself to be cut off from access to that balcony? Rish darted into the open bedroom doorway and frantically motioned her to follow; instead, Tej nipped to the other corner and peeked around into the entry hall.
The door slid aside. From a shadowy shape occluded by Vorpatril’s broad shoulders came a terse voice, male, Barrayaran accent: “Ivan, you idiot! What the hell happened with you last night?”
“You—!”
To Tej’s considerable surprise, the captain reached out, grabbed his visitor by the jacket, and swung him inside and up against the hall wall. The outer door hissed closed. She caught a bare glimpse of the man before shrinking back out of sight: neither old nor young, shorter than Ivan Xav, not in any recognizable uniform.
“Ivan, Ivan!” the voice protested, shifting its register from irate to placating. “Easy on the jacket! The last time anyone greeted me with that much passion, I at least won a big, sloppy kiss out of it.” A slight pause. “Granted, that was my cousin Dono’s dog. Thing’s the size of a pony, and no manners—it will jump all over—”
“Byerly, you, you—ImpWeasel! What the hell did you set me up for?”
“Just what I wanted to ask you, Ivan, my love. What went wrong? I thought you would bring the woman back here!”
“Not on a first date, you twit! You always end up at her place, first time. Or some neutral third location, but only if you’re both insanely hot.”
What . . . ?
“I stand enlightened,” said the other voice, dryly. “Or would, if you would let me down. Thank you. That’s better.” Tej fancied she could almost hear him shooting his cuffs and adjusting his garb.
Ivan Xav’s voice, surly: “You may as well come on in.”
“That was what I’d had in mind, yes. I’d have thought the five minutes I spent leaning on your door buzzer would have been a clue, but oh well.”
Tej retreated on hasty tiptoes across the living room and around the bedroom doorframe. Rish stood plastered against the wall on the far side, listening intently. She raised a warning finger to her lips. Tej nodded and breathed through her open mouth.
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