The Warrior's Apprentice b-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Baz looked relieved. "Oh—you'll be coming back, then. I thought—never mind. When will you return, my lord?"

  "I'll catch up with you sometime," Miles said vaguely. Sometime, never … "That's the other thing. I want you to clear out of Tau Verde local space. Pick any direction away from Barrayar, and go. Find employment when you get there, but go soon. The Dendarii Mercenaries have had enough of this Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee war. It's bad for morale when it gets too hard to remember which side you're working for this week. Your next contract should have clearly defined objectives that will weld this motley bunch into a single force, under your command. No more committee warfare. Its weaknesses have been amply demonstrated, I trust—"

  Miles went on with instructions and advice until he began to sound like a pint-sized Polonius in his own ears. There was no way he could anticipate every contingency. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference.

  His heart cringed from his next interview even more than from the last, but he forced his feet to carry him to it anyway. He found the comm link technician at work at the electron microscope bench of the Triumph's engineering repairs section. Elena Visconti frowned at his gesture of invitation, but turned the work over to her assistant and came slowly to Miles's side.

  "Sir?"

  "Trainee Visconti. Ma'am. Can we take a walk?"

  "What for?"

  "Just to talk."

  "If it's what I think, you may as well save your breath. I can't go to her."

  "I'm not any more comfortable talking about it than you are, but it's an obligation I cannot honorably evade."

  "I've spent eighteen years trying to put what happened at Escobar behind me. Must I be dragged through it again?"

  "This is the last time, I promise. I'm leaving tomorrow. The Dendarii fleet will follow soon after. All you short-contract people will be dropped off at Dalton Station, where you can take ship for Tau Ceti or wherever you want. I suppose you'll be going home?"

  She fell in reluctantly beside him, and they paced down the corridor. "Yes, my employers will doubtless be astonished at how much back pay they owe me."

  "I owe you something myself. Baz says you were outstanding on the mission."

  She shrugged. "Straightforward stuff."

  "He didn't mean just your technical efforts. Anyway, I didn't want to leave Elena—my Elena—up in the air like this, you see," he began. "She ought to at least have something, to replace what was taken from her. Some little crumb of comfort."

  "The only thing she lost was some illusion. And believe me, Admiral Naismith, or whatever you are, the only thing I could give her would be another illusion. Maybe if she didn't look so much like him … Anyway, I don't want her following me around, or showing up at my door."

  "Whatever Sergeant Bothari was guilty of, she is surely innocent."

  Elena Visconti rubbed her forehead wearily with the back of her hand. "I'm not saying you're not right. I'm just saying I can't. For me, she radiates nightmares."

  Miles chewed his lip gently. They turned out of the Triumph into a flex tube and walked across the quiet docking bay. Only a few techs were busy at some small tasks.

  "An illusion …" he mused. "You could live a long time on an illusion," he offered. "Maybe even a lifetime, if you're lucky. Would it be so difficult, to do a few days—even a few minutes—of acting? I'm going to have to dip some Dendarii funds anyway to pay for a dead ship, and buy a lady a new face. I could make it worth your time."

  He regretted his words immediately at the loathing that flashed across her face, but the look she finally gave him was ironically thoughtful.

  "You really care about that girl, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought she was making time with your chief engineer."

  "Suits me."

  "Pardon my slowness, but that does not compute."

  "Association with me could be lethal, where I'm going next. I'd rather she were travelling in the opposite direction."

  The next docking bay was busy and noisy with a Felician freighter being loaded with ingots of refined rare metals, vital to the Felician war industries. They avoided it, and searched out another quiet corridor. Miles found himself fingering the bright scarf in his pocket.

  "He dreamed of you for eighteen years too, you know," he said suddenly. It wasn't what he meant to say. "He had this fantasy. You were his wife, in all honor. He held it so hard, I think it was real to him, at least part of the time. That's how he made it so real for Elena. You can touch hallucinations. Hallucinations can even touch you."

  The Escobaran woman, pale, paused to lean against the wall and swallow. Miles pulled the scarf from his pocket and crumpled it anxiously in his hands; he had an absurd impulse to offer it to her, heaven knew what for—a basin?

  "I'm sorry," Elena said at last. "But the very thought that he was pawing over me in his twisted imagination all these years makes me ill."

  "He was never an easy person …" Miles began inanely, then cut himself off. He paced, frustrated, two steps, turn, two steps. He then took a gulp of air, and flung himself to one knee before the Escobaran woman.

  "Ma'am. Konstantine Bothari sends me to beg your forgiveness for the wrongs he did you. Keep your revenge, if you will—it is your just right—but be satisfied," he implored her. "At least give me a death-offering to burn for him, some token. I give him aid in this as his go-between by my right as his leige lord, his friend, and, as he was a father's hand, held over me in protection all my life, as his son."

  Elena Visconti was backed up against the wall as though cornered. Miles, still on one knee, shuffled back a step and shrank into himself, as if to crush all hint of pride and coercion to the deck.

  "Damned if I'm not starting to think you're as weird—you're no Betan," she muttered. "Oh, do get up. What if somebody comes down this corridor?"

  "Not until you give me a death-offering," he said firmly.

  "What do you want from me? What's a death-offering?"

  "Something of yourself, that you burn, for the peace of the soul of the dead. Sometimes you burn it for friends or relatives, sometimes for the souls of slain enemies, so they don't come back to haunt you. A lock of hair would do." He ran his hand over a short gap in his own crown. "That wedge represents twenty-two dead Pelians last month."

  "Some local superstition, is it?"

  He shrugged helplessly. "Superstition, custom—I've always thought of myself as an agnostic. It's only lately that I've come to—to need for men to have souls. Please. I won't bother you any more."

  She blew out her breath in troubled exasperation. "Well—well … Give me that knife in your belt, then. But get up."

  He rose, and handed her his grandfather's dagger. She sawed off a short curl. "Is that enough?"

  "Yes, that's fine." He took it in his palm, cool and silken like water, and closed his fingers over it. "Thank you."

  She shook her head. "Crazy …" Wistfulness stole over her face. "It allays ghosts, does it?"

  "It is said," replied Miles gently. "I'll make it a proper offering. My word on it." He inhaled shakily. "And as I have given you my word, I'll bother you no more. Excuse me, ma'am. We both have other duties."

  "Sir."

  They passed through the flex tube to the Triumph, turned each away. But the Escobaran woman looked back over her shoulder.

  "You are mistaken, little man," she called softly. "I believe you're going to bother me for a long time yet."

  Next he searched out Arde Mayhew.

  "I'm afraid I never was able to do you the good I intended," Miles apologized. "I have managed to find a Felician shipmaster who will buy the RG132 for an inner-system freighter. He's offering about a dime on the dollar, but it's cash up front. I thought we could split it."

  "At least it's an honorable retirement," sighed Mayhew. "Better than having Calhoun tear it to pieces."

  "I'm leaving for home tomo
rrow, via Beta Colony. I could drop you off, if you want."

  Mayhew shrugged. "There's nothing on Beta for me." He looked up more sharply. "What happened to all this leigeman stuff? I thought I was working for you."

  "I—don't really think you'd fit in on Barrayar," said Miles carefully. The pilot officer must not follow him home. Betan or no, the deadly bog of Barrayaran politics could suck him down without a bubble, in the vortex of his leige lord's fall. "But you could certainly have a place with the Dendarii Mercenaries. What rank would you like?"

  "I'm no soldier."

  "You could re-train, something on the tech side. And they'll certainly need back-up pilots, for sub-light, and the shuttles."

  Mayhew's forehead wrinkled. "I don't know. Driving a shuttle and so on was always the scut work, something you did so you could jump. I don't know that I want to be so close to ships. It would be like standing outside the bakery hungry, with no credit card to go in and buy." He looked greyly depressed.

  "There's one more possibility."

  Mayhew's brows lifted in polite inquiry.

  "The Dendarii Mercenaries are going to be outward bound, looking for work on the fringes of the wormhole nexus. The RG ships were never all accounted for—it's possible one or two might still be junked out there somewhere. The Felician shipmaster would be willing to lease the RG132, although for a lot less money. If you could find and salvage a pair of RG Necklin rods—'

  Mayhew's back straightened from a slump that had looked to be permanent.

  "I don't have time to go hunting all over the galaxy for spare parts," Miles went on. "But if you'd agree to be my agent, I'll authorize Baz to release Dendarii funds to buy them, if you find any, and a ship to bring them back here. A quest, as it were. Just like Vorthalia the Bold and the search for Emperor Xian Vorbarra's lost scepter." Of course, in the legend Vorthalia never actually found the scepter …

  "Yeah?" Mayhew's face was brightening with hope. "It's a long shot—but I guess it is just barely possible…"

  "That's the spirit! Forward momentum."

  Mayhew snorted. "Your forward momentum is going to lead all your followers over a cliff someday." He paused, beginning to grin. "On the way down, you'll convince 'em all they can fly." He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. "Lead on, my lord. I'm flapping as hard as I can."

  The docking bay, its every second light bar extinguished, provided an illusion of night in the unmarked changeless time of space. Those lights that remained on threw a dull illumination like shimmering puddles of mercury, that gave vision without color. The sounds of the loading, small thumps and clanks, carried in the silence, and voices muted themselves.

  The Felician fast courier pilot grimaced as Bothari's coffin was carried past him and vanished into the flex tube. "When we've stripped baggage down to practically a change of underwear each, it seems deuced gaudy to bring that."

  "Every parade needs a float," remarked Miles absently, indifferent to the pilot's opinion. The pilot, like his ship, was merely a courtesy loan from General Halify. The general had been reluctant to authorize the expenditure, but Miles had hinted that if his emergency run to Beta Colony failed to bring him to a certain mysterious appointment on time, the Dendarii Mercenaries just might be forced to look for their next contract from the highest bidder here in Tau Verde local space. Halify had reflected only briefly before making all haste to speed him on his way.

  Miles shifted from foot to foot, anxious to be gone before the bright activities marking day-cycle began. Ivan Vorpatril appeared, carefully clutching a valise whose mass was most certainly not wasted on clothes. Stripes on the docking bay deck, placed to aid organization in loading and unloading complex cargoes, made pale parallels. Ivan blinked, and walked down one line toward them with dignified precision only slightly spoiled by a list that precessed like an equinox. He hove to by Miles.

  "What a wedding party," he sighed happily. "For an impromptu out in the middle of nowhere, your Dendarii came up with quite a spread. Captain Auson is a splendid fellow."

  Miles smiled bleakly. "I thought you two would get along well."

  "You kind of disappeared about halfway through. We had to start the drinking without you."

  "I wanted to join you," said Miles truthfully, "but I had a lot of last-minute things to work out with Commodore Tung."

  "Too bad." Ivan smothered a belch, gazed across the docking bay, and muttered, "Now, I can see your wanting to bring a woman along, two weeks in a box and all that, but did you have to pick one that gives me nightmares?"

  Miles followed his gaze. Elli Quinn, escorted by Tung's surgeon, was making her slow blind way toward them. Her crisp grey-and-whites outlined the body of an athletic young woman, but above the collar she was a bad dream of an alien race. The hairless uniformity of the bland pink bulb of a head was broken by the black hole of a mouth, two dark slits above it for a nose, and a dot on either side marking the entrances to the ear canals.

  Only the right one still vented sound into her darkness. Ivan stirred uneasily, and looked away.

  Tung's surgeon took Miles aside for last minute instructions for her care during the journey, and some acerbic advice on Miles's treatment of his own still-healing stomach. Miles patted his hip flask, now filled with medication, and faithfully swore to drink 30 cc's every two hours. He placed the injured mercenary's hand on his arm, and stood on tiptoe to her ear. "We're all set, then. Next stop Beta Colony."

  Her other hand patted the air, then found his face for a brief touch. Her damaged tongue tried to form words in her stiff mouth; on the second try Miles correctly interpreted them as "Thank you, Admiral Naismith." Had he been any tireder, he might have wept.

  "All right," Miles began, "let's get out of here before the bon voyage committee wakes up and delays us another two hours—" but he was too late. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a willowy form sprinting across the docking bay. Baz followed at a saner pace.

  Elena arrived out of breath. "Miles!" she accused. "You were going to leave without saying goodbye!"

  He sighed, and twitched a smile at her. "Foiled again." Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled from the exertion. Altogether desirable … he had hardened his heart for this parting. Why did it hurt worse?

  Baz arrived. Miles bowed to each. "Commander Jesek. Commodore Jesek. You know, Baz, perhaps I should have appointed you an Admiral. Those names could get confusing over a bad comm link—"

  Baz shook his head, smiling. "You have piled enough honors on me, my lord. Honors, and honor, and much more—" his eyes sought Elena. "I once thought it would take a miracle to make a nobody into a somebody once again." His smile broadened. "I was right. And I thank you."

  "And I thank you," said Elena quietly, "for a gift I never expected to possess."

  Miles obediently cocked his head in an angle of inquiry. Did she mean Baz? Her rank? Escape from Barrayar?

  "Myself," she explained.

  It seemed to him there was a fallacy in her reasoning somewhere, but there was no time to unravel it. Dendarii were invading the docking bay through several entrances, in twos and threes and then in a steady stream. The lights came up to full day-cycle power. His plans for slipping away quietly were disintegrating rapidly.

  "Well," he said desperately, "goodbye, then." He shook Baz's hand hastily. Elena, her eyes swimming, grabbed him in a hug just short of bone-crushing. His toes sought the floor indignantly. Altogether too late …

  By the time she put him down, the crowd was gathering, hands reaching to shake his hand, to touch him, or just reaching, as if to warm themselves. Bothari would have had a spasm; Miles rendered the Sergeant's spirit an apologetic salute, in his mind.

  The docking bay was now a seething sea of people. It rang to babble, and cheers, and cheerful hoots, and foot stamping. These soon picked up rhythm; a chant. "Naismith! Naismith! Naismith …"

  Miles raised his hands in helpless acquiescence, cursing under his breath. There was always some idiot in a
crowd to start these things. Elena and Baz between them hoisted him to their shoulders, and he was cornered. Now he would have to come up with a bloody farewell speech. He lowered his hands; rather to his surprise, they quieted. He flung his hands back up; they roared. He lowered them slowly, like an orchestra director. The silence became absolute. It was terrifying.

  "As you can see, I am high because you all have raised me up," he began, pitching his voice to carry to the last and least. A gratified chuckle ran through them. "You have raised me up on your courage, tenacity, obedience, and other soldierly virtues," that was it, stroke them, they were eating it up—although surely he owed as much to their confusion, bad-tempered rivalry, greed, ambition, indolence, and gullibility—pass on, pass on—"I can do no less than to raise you up in return. I hereby revoke your provisional status, and declare you a permanent arm of the Dendarii Mercenaries."

  The cheering, whistling, and foot stomping shook the docking bay. Many were Oser's latecomers, curious, along for the ride, but practically all of Auson's original crew were there. He picked out Auson himself, beaming, and Thorne, tears streaming down cheeks.

  He raised his arms for silence again, and got it. "I am recalled on urgent affairs for an indefinite period. I request and require that you obey Commodore Jesek as you would me." He glanced down to meet Baz's upturned gaze. "He will not desert you."

  He could feel the engineer's shoulder tremble beneath him. Absurd of Baz to look so exalted—Jesek, of them all, knew Miles was a fake … "I thank you all, and bid you farewell."

  His feet hit the deck with a thump as he slid down. "And may God have mercy upon me, amen," he muttered under his breath. He backed toward the flex tube, and escape, smiling and waving.

  Jesek, blocking the press, spoke to his ear. "My lord. For my curiosity—before you go, may I be permitted to know what house I serve?"

  "What, you haven't figured that out yet?" Miles looked to Elena in astonishment.