Barrayar b-2

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Kly lowered his voice. “’Twas the other way around, as I have it. They went for the baby, Karla Hysopi raised hell, so they took her too even though she wasn’t on the list.”

  “Do you know where?”

  He shook his head. “Somewhere in Vorbarr Sultana. Belike your husband’s Intelligence will know exactly, by now.”

  “Have you told the Sergeant yet?”

  “His brother armsman told him, last night.”

  “Ah.”

  Gregor looked back over his shoulder at her as they rode away, until they were obscured from sight by the tree-boles.

  For three days Kly’s nephew guided them through the mountains, Bothari on foot leading Cordelia on a bony-hipped little hill horse with a sheepskin pad cinched to its back. On the third afternoon, they came to a cabin which sheltered a skinny youth who led them to a shed that held, wonder of wonders, a rickety lightflyer. He loaded up the backseat with Cordelia and six jugs of maple syrup. Bothari shook hands silently with Kly’s nephew, who mounted the little horse and vanished into the woods.

  Under Bothari’s narrow eye, the skinny youth coaxed his vehicle into the air. Brushing treetops, they followed ravines and ridges up over the snow-frosted spine of the mountains and down the other side, out of Vorkosigan’s District. They came at dusk to a little market town. The youth brought his flyer down in a side street. Cordelia and Bothari helped him carry his gurgling produce to a small grocer’s shop, where he bartered the syrup for coffee, flour, soap, and power cells.

  Upon returning to his lightflyer, they found that a battered groundtruck had pulled up and parked behind it. The youth exchanged no more than a nod with its driver, who hopped out and slid the door to the cargo bay aside for Bothari and Cordelia. The bay was a quarter full of fiber sacks of cabbages. They did not make very good pillows, though Bothari did his best to arrange Cordelia a nest of them as the truck rocked along above the dismally uneven roads. Bothari then sat wedged against the side of the cargo bay and compulsively polished the edge of his knife to molecular sharpness with a makeshift strop, a bit of leather he’d begged from Sonia. Four hours of this and Cordelia was ready to start talking to the cabbages.

  The truck thumped to a halt at last. The door slid aside, and first Bothari then Cordelia emerged to find themselves in the middle of nowhere: a gravel-surfaced road over a culvert, in the dark, in the country, in an unfamiliar district of unknown loyalties.

  “They’ll pick you up at Kilometer Marker Ninety-six,” the truck driver said, pointing to a white smudge in the dimness that appeared to be merely a painted rock.

  “When?” asked Cordelia desperately. For that matter, who were they?

  “Don’t know.” The man returned to his truck and drove off in a spray of gravel from the hoverfan, as if he were already pursued.

  Cordelia perched on the painted boulder and wondered morbidly which side was going to leap out of the night first, and by what test she might tell them apart. Time passed, and she entertained an even more depressed vision of no one picking them up at all.

  But at last a darkened lightflyer floated down out of the night sky, its engines pitched to eerie near-silence. Its landing feet crunched in the gravel. Bothari crouched beside her, his useless knife gripped in his hand. But the man awkwardly levering himself up out of the passenger seat was Lieutenant Koudelka. “Milady?” he called uncertainly to the two human scarecrows. “Sergeant?” A breath of pure delight puffed from Cordelia as she recognized the pilot’s blonde head as Droushnakovi. My home is not a place, it is people, sir… .

  With Bothari’s hand on her elbow, at Koudelka’s anxious gesture Cordelia fell gratefully into the padded backseat of the flyer. Droushnakovi cast a dark look over her shoulder at Bothari, wrinkled her nose, and asked, “Are you all right, Milady?”

  “Better than I expected, really. Go, go.”

  The canopy sealed, and they rose into the air. Vent fans powered up, cycling filtered air. Colored lights from the control interface highlighted Kou’s and Drou’s faces. A technological cocoon. Cordelia glanced at systems readouts over Droushnakovi’s shoulder, and then up through the canopy; yes, dark shapes paced them, guardian military flyers. Bothari saw them, too, his eyes narrowing in approval. Some fraction of tension eased from his body.

  “Good to see you two—” some subtle cue of their body language, some hidden reserve, kept Cordelia from adding together again. “I gather you got that accusation about the comconsole sabotage straightened out in good order?”

  “As soon as we got the chance to stop and fast-penta that guard corporal, Milady,” Droushnakovi answered. “He didn’t have the nerve to suicide before questioning.”

  “He was the saboteur?”

  “Yes,” answered Koudelka. “He’d intended to escape to Vordarian’s troops when they arrived to capture us. Vordarian apparently suborned him months ago.”

  “That accounts for our security problems. Or does it?”

  “He passed information about our route, the day of the sonic grenade attempt.” Koudelka rubbed at his sinuses in memory.

  “So it was Vordarian behind that!”

  “Confirmed. But the guard doesn’t seem to have known anything about the soltoxin. We turned him inside out. He wasn’t a high-level conspirator, just a tool.”

  Nasty flow of thought, but, “Has Illyan reported in yet?”

  “Not yet. Admiral Vorkosigan hopes he may be hiding in the capital, if he wasn’t killed in the first fighting.”

  “Hm. Well, you’ll be glad to know Gregor’s all right—”

  Koudelka held up an interrupting hand. “Excuse me, Milady. The Admiral ordered—you and the Sergeant are not to debrief anything about Gregor to anyone except Count Piotr or himself.”

  “All right. Damn fast-penta. How is Aral?”

  “He’s well, Milady. He ordered me to bring you up to date on the strategic situation—”

  Screw the strategic situation, what about my baby? Alas, the two seemed inextricably intertwined.

  “—and answer any questions you had.”

  Very well. “What about our baby? Pi—Miles?”

  “We’ve heard nothing bad, Milady.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’ve heard nothing,” Droushnakovi put in glumly.

  Koudelka shot her an irate look, which she shrugged off with a twitch of one shoulder.

  “No news may be good news,” Koudelka went on. “While it’s true Vordarian holds the capital—”

  “And therefore ImpMil, yes,” said Cordelia.

  “And he’s publicizing names of hostages related to anyone in our command structure, there’s been no mention of, of your child, in the lists. The Admiral thinks Vordarian simply doesn’t realize that what went into the replicator was viable. Doesn’t know what he’s got.”

  “Yet,” bit off Cordelia.

  “Yet,” Koudelka conceded reluctantly.

  “All right. Go on.”

  “The overall situation isn’t as bad as we feared at first.

  Vordarian holds Vorbarr Sultana, his own District and its military bases, and he’s put troops in Vorkosigan’s District, but he only has about five district counts who are his committed allies. About thirty of the other counts were caught in the capital, and we can’t tell their real allegiance while Vordarian holds guns to their heads. Most of the twenty-three remaining Districts have reiterated their oaths to my Lord Regent. Though a couple are waffling, who have relatives in the capital or who are in dicey strategic positions as potential battlefields.”

  “And the space forces?”

  “I was just coming to them, yes, Milady. Over half of their supplies come up from the shuttleports in Vordarian’s District. For the moment, they’re still holding out for a clear result rather than moving in to create one. But they’ve refused to openly endorse Vordarian. It’s a balance, and whoever can tip it their way first will start a landslide. Admiral Vorkosigan seems awfully confident.” Cordelia was not
sure from the lieutenant’s tone if he altogether shared that confidence. “But then, he has to. For morale. He says Vordarian lost the war the hour Negri got away with Gregor, and the rest is just maneuvering to limit the losses. But Vordarian holds Princess Kareen.”

  “Doubtless one of the losses Aral is anxious to limit. Is she all right? Vordarian’s goons haven’t abused her?”

  “Not as far as we know. She seems to be under house arrest in her own rooms in the Imperial Residence. Several of the more important hostages have been secluded there.”

  “I see.” She glanced sideways in the dim cabin at Bothari, who did not change expression. She waited for him to ask after Elena, but he said nothing. Droushnakovi stared bleakly into the night, at the mention of Kareen.

  Had Kou and Drou made up? They seemed cool, civil, all duty and on duty. But whatever surface apologies had passed, Cordelia sensed no healing in them. The secret adoration and will-to-trust was all gone from the blue eyes that now and then flicked from the control interface to the man in the passenger seat. Drou’s glances were merely wary.

  Lights glowed ahead on the ground, the spatter of a middle-sized city, and beyond it, the jumbled geometries of a sprawling military shuttleport. Drou went through code-check after code-check, as they approached. They spiraled down to a pad that lit for them, peopled with armed guards. Their guard-flyers passed on overhead to their own landing zones.

  The guards surrounded them as they exited the flyer, and escorted them as fast as Koudelka’s pace would permit to a lift tube. They went down, took a slide-walk, and went down again through blast doors. Tanery Base clearly featured a hardened underground command post. Welcome to the bunker. And yet a throat-catching whiff of familiarity shook Cordelia for a terrifying moment of confusion and loss. Beta Colony did a lot better on the interior decorating than these barren corridors, but she might have descended to the utility level of some buried Betan city, safe and cool… I want to go home.

  There were three green-uniformed officers, talking in a corridor. One was Aral. He saw her. “Thank you, dismissed, gentlemen,” he said in the middle of someone’s sentence, then more consciously, “We’ll continue this shortly.” But they lingered to goggle.

  He looked no worse than tired. Her heart ached to look at him, and yet … Following you has brought me here. Not to the Barrayar of my hopes, but to the Barrayar of my fears.

  With a voiceless “Ha!” he embraced her, hard to him. She hugged him back. This is a good thing. Go away, World. But when she looked up the World was still waiting, in the form of seven watchers all with agendas.

  He held her away, and scanned her anxiously up and down. “You look terrible, dear Captain.”

  At least he was polite enough not to say, You smell terrible. “Nothing a bath won’t cure.”

  “That is not what I meant. Sickbay for you, before anything.” He turned to find Sergeant Bothari first in line.

  “Sir, I must report in to my lord Count,” Bothari said.

  “Father’s not here. He’s on a diplomatic mission from me to some of his old cronies. Here, you, Kou—take Bothari and set him up with quarters, food chits, passes, and clothes. I’ll want your personal report immediately. I’ve seen to Cordelia, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Koudelka led Bothari away.

  “Bothari was amazing,” Cordelia confided to Aral. “No—that’s unjust. Bothari was Bothari, and I shouldn’t have been amazed at all. We wouldn’t have made it without him.”

  Aral nodded, smiling a little. “I thought he would do for you.”

  “He did indeed.”

  Droushnakovi, taking up her old position at Cordelias elbow the moment Bothari vacated it, shook her head in doubt, and followed along as Aral steered Cordelia down the corridor. The rest of the parade followed less certainly.

  “Hear any more about Illyan?” Cordelia asked.

  “Not yet. Did Kou brief you?”

  “A sketch, enough for now. I don’t suppose any more word’s come in on Padma and Alys Vorpatril, then, either?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “But neither are they on the list of Vordarian’s confirmed captures. I think they’re hiding in the city. Vordarian’s side is leaking information like a sieve, we’d know if any arrest that important had happened. I can only wonder if our own arrangements are so porous. That’s the trouble with these damned civil affrays, everybody has a brother—”

  A voice from down the corridor hailed loudly, “Sir! Oh, sir!” Only Cordelia felt Aral flinch, his arm jerking under her hand.

  An HQ staffer led a tall man in black fatigues with colonel’s tabs on the collar toward them. “There you are, sir. Colonel Gerould is here from Marigrad.”

  “Oh. Good. I have to see this man now. …” Aral looked around hurriedly, and his eye fell on Droushnakovi. “Drou, please escort Cordelia to the infirmary for me. Get her checked, get her—get her everything.”

  The colonel was no HQ desk pilot. He looked, in fact, as if he’d just flown in from some front line, wherever the “front” was in this war for loyalties. His fatigues were dirty and wrinkled and looked slept—in, their smoke-stink eclipsing Cordelia’s mountain-reek. His face was lined with fatigue. But he looked only grim, not beaten. “The fighting in Marigrad has gone house-to-house, Admiral,” he reported without preamble.

  Vorkosigan grimaced. “Then I want to hopscotch it. Come with me to the tactics room—what is that on your arm, Colonel?”

  A wide piece of white cloth and a narrower strip of brown circled the officer’s black upper left sleeve. “ID, sir. We couldn’t tell who we were shooting at, up close. Vordarian’s people are wearing red and yellow, ’s as close as they could come to maroon and gold, I guess. That’s supposed to be brown and silver for Vorkosigan, of course.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” Vorkosigan looked extremely stern. “Take it off. Burn it. And pass the word down the line. You already have a uniform, Colonel, issued to you by the Emperor. That’s who you’re fighting for. Let the traitors alter their uniforms.”

  The colonel looked shocked at Vorkosigan’s vehemence, but, after a beat, enlightened; he stripped the cloth hastily from his arm and stuffed it in his pocket. “Right, sir.”

  Aral let go of Cordelia’s hand with a palpable effort. “I’ll meet you in our quarters, love. Later.”

  Later in the week, at this rate. Cordelia shook her head helplessly, took in one last view of his stocky form as if her intensity could somehow digitize and store him for retrieval, and followed Droushnakovi into Tanery Base’s underground warren. At least with Drou, Cordelia was able to overrule Vorkosigan’s itinerary and insist on a bath first. Almost as good, she found half a dozen new outfits in her correct size, betraying Drou’s palace—trained good taste, waiting for her in a closet in Aral’s quarters.

  The base doctor had no charts; Cordelia’s medical records were of course all behind enemy lines in Vorbarr Sultana at present. He shook his head and keyed up a new form on his report panel. “I’m sorry, Lady Vorkosigan. We’ll simply have to begin at the beginning. Please bear with me. Do I understand correctly you’ve had some sort of female trouble?”

  No, most of my troubles have been with males. Cordelia bit her tongue. “I had a placental transfer, let me see, three plus,” she had to count it up on her fingers, “about five weeks ago.”

  “Excuse me, a what?”

  “I gave birth by surgical section. It did not go well.”

  “I see. Five weeks post-partum.” He made a note. “And what is your present complaint?”

  I don’t like Barrayar, I want to go home, my father-in-law wants to murder my baby, half my friends are running for their lives, and I can’t get ten minutes alone with my husband, whom you people are consuming before my eyes, my feet hurt, my head hurts, my soul hurts … it was all too complicated. The poor man just wanted something to put in his blank, not an essay. “Fatigue,” Cordelia managed at last.

  “Ah.” He brightened, and entered this
factoid on his report panel. “Post-partum fatigue. This is normal.” He looked up and regarded her earnestly. “Have you considered starting an exercise program, Lady Vorkosigan?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Who are Vordarian’s men?” Cordelia asked Aral in frustration. “I’ve been running from them for weeks, but it’s like I’ve only glimpsed them in a rearview mirror. Know your enemy and all that. Where does he get this endless supply of goons?”

  “Oh, not endless.” Aral smiled slightly, and took another bite of stew. They were—miracle!—alone at last, in his simple underground senior officer’s apartment. Their supper had been brought in on a tray by a batman, and spread on a low table between them. Aral had then, to Cordelia’s relief, ejected this hovering minion with a “Thank you, Corporal, that will be all.”

  Aral swallowed his bite and continued, “Who are they? For the most part, anyone who was caught with an officer up along his chain of command who elected Vordarian’s side, and who hasn’t worked up the nerve, or in some cases the wit, to either frag the officer or desert his unit and report in elsewhere. And obedience and unit cohesion is deeply inculcated in these men. ’When the going gets rough, stick to your unit’ is literally drilled into them. So the unfortunate fact that their officer is leading them into treason makes clinging to their squad-brothers even more natural. Besides,” he grinned bleakly, “it’s only treason if Vordarian loses.”

  “And is Vordarian losing?”

  “As long as I live, and keep Gregor alive, Vordarian cannot win.” He nodded in conviction. “Vordarian is imputing crimes to me as fast as he can invent them. Most serious is the rumor he’s floating that I’ve made away with Gregor and seek the Imperium for myself. I judge this a ploy to smoke out Gregor’s hiding place. He knows that Gregor’s I not with me. Or he’d be tempted to lob a nuclear in here.” Cordelia’s lips curled in aversion. “So does he want to capture Gregor, or kill him?”