"I . . . can hardly say."
"A week?"
Vassily, sounding a bit offended, put in, "Certainly more than that!"
"A month?"
Hugo rolled his hands in a frustrated gesture. "I don't know, Kat! Till you forget these odd notions you have about him, I suppose."
"Ah. Till the end of time. Hm. I can't quite decide if that's specific enough, or not. I think not." She took a breath, and said reluctantly, because it was such a long time and yet likely to sound so plausible to them, "To the end of my mourning year?"
Vassily said, "At the very minimum!"
"Very well." Her eyes narrowed, and she smiled, because smiling would do more good than howling. "I shall take you at your name's word, Vassily Vorsoisson."
"I, I, uh . . ." said Vassily, unexpectedly cornered. "Well . . . something should be settled by then. Surely."
I gave up too much, too soon. I should have tried for Winterfair. She added in sudden afterthought, "I reserve the right to tell him—and tell him why—myself, however. In person."
"Is that wise, Kat?" asked Hugo. "Better to call him on the comconsole."
"Anything less would be cowardly."
"Can't you send him a note?"
"Absolutely not. Not with this . . . news." What a vile return that would be, for Miles's own declaration sealed in his heart's blood.
At her defiant stare, Hugo weakened. "One visit, then. A brief one."
Vassily shrugged reluctant acquiescence.
An uncomfortable silence fell, after this. Ekaterin realized she ought to invite the pair of them to lunch, except that she didn't feel like inviting them to continue breathing. Yes, and she should exert herself to charm and soothe Vassily. She rubbed her temples, which were throbbing. When Vassily made a feeble motion toward escape from the Professora's parlor by mumbling about things to do , she did not impede them.
She locked the front door on their retreating forms, and returned to curl up in her uncle's chair, unable to decide whether to go lie down, or pace, or weed. Anyway, the garden was still stripped of weeds from her last upset about Miles. It would be an hour yet before Aunt Vorthys returned from her class, and Ekaterin could pour out her fury and panic into her ear. Or her lap.
To Hugo's credit, she reflected, he hadn't seemed enticed by the promise of a Countess's place for his little sister at any price, nor had he suggested that was the prize that motivated her. Vorvaynes were above that sort of material ambition.
Once, she had bought Nikki a rather expensive robopet, which he'd played with for a few days and then neglected. It had been forgotten on a shelf until, attempting to clean, she'd tried to give it away. Nikki's sudden frantic protests and heartbroken carryings-on had shaken the roof.
The parallel was embarrassing. Was Miles a toy she hadn't wanted till they'd tried to take him from her? Deep down in her chest, someone was screaming and sobbing. You're not in charge here. I'm the adult, dammit. Yet Nikki had kept his robopet . . .
She would deliver the bad news about Vassily's interdict to Miles's face. But not yet, oh, not quite yet. Because unless this smear upon his reputation was suddenly and spectacularly settled , that might be her last look at him for a very long time.
* * *
Kareen watched her father sink into the soft upholstery of the groundcar that Tante Cordelia had sent for them, and hitch around restlessly, placing his swordstick first on his lap and then at his side. Somehow, she didn't think his discomfort was all from his old war wounds.
"We're going to regret this, I know we are," he said querulously to Mama, for about the sixth time, as she settled in beside him. The rear canopy closed over the three of them, blocking the bright afternoon sun, and the groundcar started up smoothly and quietly. "Once that woman gets her hands on us, you know she'll have our heads turned inside out in ten minutes, and we'll be sitting there nodding away like fools, agreeing with every insane thing she says."
Oh, I hope so, I hope so! Kareen clamped her lips shut, and sat very still. She wasn't safe yet. The Commodore could still order Tante Cordelia's driver to turn the car around and take them back home.
"Now, Kou," said Mama, "we can't go on like this. Cordelia's right. It's time things were arranged more sensibly."
"Ah! There's that word—sensible . One of her favorites. I feel like I already have a plasma arc targeter spot right there ." He pointed to the middle of his chest, as though a red dot wavered across his green uniform.
"It's been very uncomfortable," said Mama, "and I for one am getting tired of it. I want to see our old friends, and hear all about Sergyar. We can't stop all our lives over this."
Yeah, just mine. Kareen's teeth clenched a little harder.
"Well, I do not want that fat little weird clone—" he hesitated, judging by the ripple of his lips editing his word choice at least twice "—making up to my daughter. Explain to me why he needs two years of Betan therapy if he isn't half mad, eh? Eh?"
Don't say it, girl, don't say it. She gnawed on her knuckles instead. Fortunately, the drive was very short.
Armsman Pym met them at the door to Vorkosigan House. He favored her father with one of those formal nods that evoked a salute. "Good afternoon Commodore, Madame Koudelka. Welcome, Miss Kareen. Milady will receive you in the library. This way, please . . ." Kareen could almost swear, as he turned to escort them, that his eyelid shivered at her in a wink, but he was playing the Bland Servitor to the hilt today, and he gave her no more clues.
Pym ushered them through the double doors, and announced them with formality. He withdrew discreetly but with a—knowing Pym—deliberate air of abandoning them to a deserved fate.
In the library, part of the furniture had been rearranged. Tante Cordelia waited in a large wing chair perhaps accidentally reminiscent of a throne. At her right and left hands, two smaller armchairs faced one another. Mark sat in one of them, wearing his best black suit, shaved and slick as he'd been for Miles's ill-fated party. He popped to his feet and stood at a sort of awkward attention as the Koudelkas entered, clearly unable to decide whether it would be worse to nod cordially or do nothing. He compromised by standing there looking stuffed.
Across from Tante Cordelia, an entirely new piece of furniture had been placed. Well, new was a misnomer; it was an elderly, shabby couch which had lived for at least the past fifteen years up in one of Vorkosigan House's attics. Kareen remembered it dimly from the old hide-and-seek days. Last she'd seen it, it had been piled high with dusty boxes.
"Ah, and there you all are," said Tante Cordelia cheerfully. She waved at the second armchair. "Kareen, why don't you sit right here." Kareen scooted in as directed, clutching the arms. Mark seated himself again on the edge of his own chair, and watched her anxiously. Tante Cordelia's index finger rose like a target seeker, and pointed first to Kareen's parents, then to the old sofa. "Kou and Drou, you sit down—there ."
Both of them stared with inexplicable dismay at the harmless piece of old furniture.
"Oh," breathed the Commodore. "Oh, Cordelia, this is fighting dirty . . ." He started to swing around and head for the exit, but was brought up short by his wife's hand closing like a vise on his arm.
The Countess's gaze sharpened. In a voice Kareen had rarely heard her use before, she repeated, "Sit. Down ." It wasn't even her Countess Vorkosigan voice; it was something older, firmer, even more appallingly confident. It was her old Ship Captain's voice, Kareen realized; and her parents had both lived under military authority for decades.
Her parents sank as though folded.
"There." The Countess sat back with a satisfied smile on her lips.
A long silence followed. Kareen could hear the old-fashioned mechanical clock ticking on the wall in the antechamber next door. Mark gave her a beseeching stare, Do you know what the hell is going on here? She returned it in kind, No, don't you?
Her father rearranged the position of his swordstick three times, dropped it on the carpet, and finally scooted it back toward himself
with the heel of his boot and left it there. She could see the muscle jump in his jaw as he gritted his teeth. Her mother crossed and uncrossed her legs, frowned, stared down the room out the glass doors, and then back at her hands twisting in her lap. They looked like nothing so much as two guilty teenagers caught . . . hm. Like two guilty teenagers caught screwing on the living room couch, actually. Clues seemed to float soundlessly down like feathers, in Kareen's mind, falling all around. You don't suppose . . .
"But Cordelia," Mama burst out suddenly, for all the world as though continuing aloud a conversation just now going on telepathically, "we want our children to do better than we did. To not make the same mistakes!"
Ooh. Ooh. Oooh! Check, and did she ever want the story behind this one . . . ! Her father had underestimated the Countess, Kareen realized. That hadn't taken any more than three minutes.
"Well, Drou," said Tante Cordelia reasonably, "it seems to me that you have your wish. Kareen has most certainly done better. Her choices and actions have been considered and rational in every way. And as far as I can tell, she hasn't made any mistakes at all."
Her father shook a finger at Mark, and sputtered, "That . . . that is a mistake."
Mark hunched, and wrapped his arms protectively around his belly. The Countess frowned faintly; the Commodore's jaw tightened.
The Countess said coolly, "We'll discuss Mark presently. Right now, allow me to draw your attention to how intelligent and informed your daughter is. Granted, she had not your disadvantage of trying to construct her life in the emotional isolation and chaos of a civil war. You both bought her a better, brighter chance than that, and I doubt you're sorry for it."
The Commodore shrugged grudging agreement. Mama sighed in something like negative nostalgia, not longing for the remembered past but relief at having escaped it.
"Just to pick one example not at random," the Countess went on, "Kareen, didn't you obtain your contraceptive implant before you began physical experimentation?"
Tante Cordelia was so bloody Betan . . . she just belted out things like that in casual conversation. Kareen and her chin rose to the challenge. "Of course," she said steadily. "And I had my hymen cut and did the programmed learning course the clinic gave on related anatomy and physiology issues, and Gran-tante Naismith bought me my first pair of earrings, and we went out for dessert."
Da rubbed his reddening face. Mama looked . . . envious.
"And I daresay," Tante Cordelia went on, "you wouldn't describe your first steps into claiming your adult sexuality as a mad secret scramble in the dark, full of confusion, fear and pain, either?"
Mama's negative-nostalgia look deepened. So did Mark's.
"Of course not!" Kareen drew the line at discussing those details with Mama and Da, although she was dying for a comfortable gossip with Tante Cordelia about it all. She'd been too shy to start with an actual man , so she'd hired a hermaphrodite Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapist whom Mark's counselor had recommended. The L.P.S.T. had explained to her kindly that hermaphrodites were extremely popular with young persons taking the introductory practical course for just that reason. It had all worked out really really well. Mark, anxiously hovering by his comconsole for her post-coital report, had been so pleased for her. Of course, his introduction to his own sexuality had included such ghastly trauma and tortures, it was only natural he be worried sick. She smiled reassuringly at him now. "If that's Barrayar, I'll take Beta!"
Tante Cordelia said thoughtfully, "It's not entirely that simple. Both societies seek to solve the same fundamental problem—to assure that all children arriving will be cared for. Betans make the choice to do it directly, technologically, by mandating a biochemical padlock on everyone's gonads. Sexual behavior seems open at the price of absolute social control on its reproductive consequences. Has it never crossed your mind to wonder how that is enforced? It should. Now, Beta can control one's ovaries; Barrayar, especially during the Time of Isolation, was forced to try to control the entire woman attached to them. Throw in Barrayar's need to increase its population to survive, at least as pressing as Beta's to limit its to the same end, and your peculiar gender-biased inheritance laws, and, well, here we all are."
"Scrambling in the dark," growled Kareen. "No thank you."
"We should never have sent her there. Withhim ," Da grumbled.
Tante Cordelia observed, "Kareen was committed to her student year on Beta before she ever met Mark. Who knows? If Mark hadn't been there to, ah, insulate her, she might have met a nice Betan and stayed with him."
"Or it," Kareen murmured. "Or her."
Da's lips tightened.
"These trips can be more one-way than you expect. I haven't seen my own mother face-to-face more than three times in the last thirty years. At least if she sticks with Mark, you may be certain Kareen will return to Barrayar frequently."
Mama appeared very struck by this. She eyed Mark in new speculation. He essayed a hopeful, helpful smile.
Da said, "I want Kareen to be safe. Well. Happy. Financially secure. Is that so wrong?"
Tante Cordelia's lips twisted up with sympathy. "Safe? Well? That's what I wanted for my boys, too. Didn't always get it, but here we are anyway. As for happiness . . . I don't think you can give that to anyone, if they don't have it in them. However, it's certainly possible to give un –happiness—as you are finding."
Da's frown deepened in a somewhat surly manner, quelling Kareen's impulse to loudly cheer on this line of reasoning. Better let the Baba handle this . . .
The Countess continued, "As for that last . . . hm. Has anyone discussed Mark's financial status with you? Kareen, or Mark . . . or Aral?"
Da shook his head. "I thought he was broke. I assumed the family made him an allowance, like any other Vor scion. And that he ran through it—like any other Vor scion."
"I'm not broke ," Mark objected strenuously. "It's a temporary cash-flow problem. When I budgeted for this period, I wasn't expecting to be starting up a new business in the middle of it."
"In other words, you're broke," said Da.
"Actually," Tante Cordelia said, "Mark is completely self-supporting. He made his first million on Jackson's Whole."
Da opened his mouth, but then shut it again. He gave his hostess a disbelieving stare. Kareen hoped it would not occur to him to inquire closely into Mark's method for winning this fortune.
"Mark has invested it in an interesting variety of more and less speculative enterprises," Tante Cordelia went on kindly. "The family backs him—I've just bought some shares in his butter bug scheme myself—and we'll always be here for emergencies, but Mark doesn't need an allowance."
Mark looked both grateful and awed to be so maternally defended, as if . . . well . . . just so. As if no one had ever done so before.
"If he's so rich, why is he paying my daughter in IOUs?" demanded Da. "Why can't he just draw something out?"
"Before the end of the period?" said Mark, in a voice of real abhorrence. "And lose all that interest ?"
"And they're not IOUs," said Kareen. "They're shares!"
"Mark doesn't need money," said Tante Cordelia. "He needs what he knows money can't buy. Happiness, for example."
Mark, puzzled but pliable, offered, "So . . . do they want me to pay for Kareen? Like a dowry? How much? I will —"
"No, you twit!" cried Kareen in horror. "This isn't Jackson's Whole—you can't buy and sell people . Anyway, dowries were what the girl's family gave the fellow, not the other way around."
"That seems very wrong," said Mark, lowering his brows and pinching his chin. "Backwards. Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"I don't care if the boy has a million marks," Da began, sturdily and, Kareen suspected, not quite truthfully.
"Betan dollars," Tante Cordelia corrected absently. "Jacksonians do insist on hard currencies."
"The galactic exchange rates on the Barrayaran Imperial mark have been improving steadily since the War of the Hegen Hub," Mark started to explain. He'
d written a paper on the subject last term; Kareen had helped proofread it. He could probably talk for a couple of hours about it. Fortunately, Tante Cordelia's raised finger staunched this threatened flow of nervous erudition.
Da and Mama appeared lost in a brief calculation of their own.
"All right," Da began again, a little less sturdily. "I don't care if the boy has four million marks. I care about Kareen."
Tante Cordelia tented her fingers thoughtfully. "So what is it that you want from Mark, Kou? Do you wish him to offer to marry Kareen?"
"Er," said Da, caught out. What he wanted , near as Kareen could tell, was for Mark to be carried off by predators, possibly even along with his four million marks in nonliquid investments, but he could hardly say so to Mark's mother.
"Yes, of course I'll offer, if she wants," Mark said. "I just didn't think she wanted to, yet. Did you?"
"No," said Kareen firmly. "Not . . . not yet, anyway. It's like I've just started to find myself, to figure out who I really am, to grow. I don't want to stop ."
Tante Cordelia's brows rose. "Is that how you see marriage? As the end and abolition of yourself?"
Kareen realized belatedly that her remark might be construed as a slur on certain parties here present. "It is for some people. Why else do all the stories end when the Count's daughter gets married? Hasn't that ever struck you as a bit sinister? I mean, have you ever read a folk tale where the Princess's mother gets to do anything but die young? I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning, or an instruction."
Tante Cordelia pressed her finger to her lips to hide a smile, but Mama looked rather worried.
"You grow in different ways, afterward," Mama said tentatively. "Not like a fairy tale. Happily ever after doesn't cover it."
Da's brows drew down; he said, in an odd, suddenly uncertain voice, "I thought we were doing all right . . ."
Mama patted his hand reassuringly. "Of course, love."
Mark said valiantly, "If Kareen wants me to marry her, I will. If she doesn't, I won't. If she wants me to go away, I'll go—" This last was accompanied by a covertly terrified glance her way.
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