"Ah. Hm." Ivan glanced at the door, and took a gulp of wine. He cleared his throat. "If it was about the murder rumor, well, if you'd answer your damned messages, you wouldn't get blindsided. I tried."
Miles stared up at him, appalled. "Good God, not you too? Does everybody in bloody Vorbarr Sultana know about this goddamn crap?"
Ivan shrugged. "I don't know about everybody. M'mother hasn't mentioned it yet, but she might think it was too crude to take notice of. Byerly Vorrutyer passed it on to me to pass on to you. At dawn, note. He adores gossip like this. Just too excited to keep it to himself, I guess, unless he's stirring things up for his own amusement. Or else he's playing some kind of sneaky underhanded game. I can't even begin to guess which side he's on."
Miles massaged his forehead with the heels of his hands. "Gah."
"Anyway, the point is, it wasn't me who started this. You grasp?"
"Yeah." Miles sighed. "I suppose. Do me a favor, and quash it when you encounter it, eh?"
"As if anyone would believe me? Everybody knows I've been your donkey since forever. It's not like I was an eyewitness anyway. I don't know any more than anyone else." He asserted after a moment's thought, "Less."
Miles considered the alternatives. Death? Death would be much more peaceful, and he wouldn't have this pounding headache. But there was always the risk some misguided person would revive him again, in worse shape than ever. Besides, he had to live at least long enough to cast his vote against Richars. He studied his cousin thoughtfully. "Ivan . . ."
"It wasn't my fault," Ivan recited promptly, "it's not my job, you can't make me, and if you want any of my time you'll have to wrestle m'mother for it. If you dare." He nodded satisfaction at this clincher.
Miles sat back, and regarded Ivan for a long moment. "You're right," he said at last. "I have abused your loyalty too many times. I'm sorry. Never mind."
Ivan, caught with a mouthful of wine, stared at him in shock, his brows drawing down. He finally managed to swallow. "What do you mean, never mind?"
"I mean, never mind. There's no reason to draw you into this ugly mess, and every reason not to." Miles doubted there'd be much honor for Ivan to win in his vicinity this time, not even the sort that sparked so briefly before being buried forever in ImpSec files. Besides, he couldn't think offhand of anything Ivan could do for him.
"No need? Never mind? What are you up to?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid. You can't help me on this one. Thanks for offering, though," Miles added conscientiously.
"I didn't offer anything," Ivan pointed out. His eyes narrowed. "You're up to something."
"Not up. Just down." Down to nothing but the certainty that the next weeks were going to be unpleasant in ways he'd never experienced before. "Thank you, Ivan. I'm sure you can find your own way out."
"Well . . ." Ivan tilted up his glass, drained it, and set it down on the table. "Yeah, sure. Call me if you . . . need anything."
Ivan trod out, with a disgruntled backward look over his shoulder. Miles heard his indignant mutter, fading down the stairs: "No need. Never mind. Who the hell does he think he is . . . ?"
Miles smiled crookedly, and slumped in his seat. He had a great deal to do. He was just too tired to move.
Ekaterin. . . .
Her name seemed to stream through his fingers, as impossible to hold as smoke whipped away by the wind.
Chapter Thirteen
Ekaterin sat in the midmorning sun at the table in her aunt's back garden, and tried to rank the list of short-term jobs she'd pulled off the comconsole by location and pay. Nothing close by seemed to have anything to do with botany. Her stylus wandered to the margin of the flimsy and doodled yet another idea for a pretty butter bug, then went on to sketch a revision for her aunt's garden involving the use of more raised beds for easy maintenance. The very early stages of congestive heart failure which had been slowing Aunt Vorthys down were due to be cured this fall when she received her scheduled transplant; on the other hand, she would likely return thereafter to her full teaching load. A container-garden of all native Barrayaran species . . . no. Ekaterin returned her attention firmly to the job list.
Aunt Vorthys had been bustling in and out of the house; Ekaterin therefore didn't look up till her aunt said, in a decidedly odd tone, "Ekaterin, you have a visitor."
Ekaterin glanced up, and stifled a flinch of shock. Captain Simon Illyan stood at her aunt's elbow. All right, so, she'd sat next to him through practically a whole dinner, but that had been at Vorkosigan House, where anything seemed possible. Towering legends weren't supposed to rise up and stand casually in one's own garden in the broad morning as though some passing person—probably Miles—had dropped a dragon's tooth in the grass.
Not that Captain Illyan towered, exactly. He was much shorter and slighter than she'd pictured him. He'd seldom appeared in news vids. He wore a modest civilian suit of the sort any Vor with conservative tastes might choose for a morning or business call. He smiled diffidently at her, and waved her back to her seat as she started to scramble up. "No, no, please, Madame Vorsoisson . . ."
"Won't . . . you sit down?" Ekaterin managed, sinking back.
"Thank you." He pulled out a chair and seated himself a little stiffly, as if not altogether comfortable. Maybe he bore old scars like Miles's. "I wondered if I might have a private word with you. Madame Vorthys seems to think it would be all right."
Her aunt's nod confirmed this. "But Ekaterin, dear, I was just about to leave for class. Do you wish me to stay a little?"
"That won't be necessary," Ekaterin said faintly. "What's Nikki up to?"
"Playing on my comconsole, just at present."
"That's fine."
Aunt Vorthys nodded, and went back into the house.
Illyan cleared his throat, and began, "I've no wish to intrude on your privacy or time, Madame Vorsoisson, but I did want to apologize to you for embarrassing you the other night. I feel much at fault, and I'm very much afraid I might have . . . done some damage I didn't intend."
She frowned suspiciously, and her right hand fingered the braid on the left edge of her bolero. "Did Miles send you?"
"Ah . . . no. I'm an ambassador entirely without portfolio. This is on my own recognizance. If I hadn't made that foolish remark . . . I did not altogether understand the delicacy of the situation."
Ekaterin sighed bitter agreement. "I think you and I must have been the only two people in the room so poorly informed."
"I was afraid I'd been told and forgotten, but it appears I just wasn't on the need-to-know list. I'm not quite used to that yet." A tinge of anxiety flickered in his eyes, giving lie to his smile.
"It was not your fault at all, sir. Somebody . . . overshot his own calculations."
"Hm." Illyan's lips twisted in sympathy with her expression. He traced a finger over the tabletop in a crosshatch pattern. "You know—speaking of ambassadors—I began by thinking I ought to come to you and put in a good word for Miles in the romance department. I figured I owed it to him, for having put my foot down in the middle of things that way. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I have truly no idea what kind of a husband he would make. I hardly dare recommend him to you. He was a terrible subordinate."
Her brows flew up in surprise. "I'd thought his ImpSec career was successful."
Illyan shrugged. "His ImpSec missions were consistently successful, frequently beyond my wildest dreams. Or nightmares. . . . He seemed to regard any order worth obeying as worth exceeding. If I could have installed one control device on him, it would have been a rheostat. Power him down a turn or two . . . maybe I could have made him last longer." Illyan gazed thoughtfully out over the garden, but Ekaterin didn't think the garden was what he was seeing, in his mind's eye. "Do you know all those old folk tales where the count tries to get rid of his only daughter's unsuitable suitor by giving him three impossible tasks?"
"Yes . . ."
"Don't ever try that with Miles. Just . . . don't."
"I will say," he went on more confidently, "I've never found him a slow learner. If you were to give him a second chance, well . . . he might surprise you."
"Pleasantly?" she asked dryly.
It was his turn to fail to suppress a smile. "Not necessarily." He looked away from her again, and his smile faded from wry to pensive. "I've had many subordinates over the years who've turned in impeccable careers. Perfection takes no risks with itself, you see. Miles was many things, but never perfect. It was a privilege and a terror to command him, and I'm thankful and amazed we both got out alive. Ultimately . . . his career ran aground in disaster. But before it ended, he changed worlds."
She didn't think Illyan meant that for a figure of speech. He glanced back at her, and made a little palm-open motion with his hands in his lap, as if apologizing for having once held worlds there.
"Do you take him for a great man?" Ekaterin asked Illyan seriously. And does it take one to know one? "Like his father and grandfather?"
"I think he is a great man . . . in an entirely different way than his father and grandfather. Though I've often been afraid he'd break his heart trying to be them."
Illyan's words reminded her strangely of her Uncle Vorthys's evaluation of Miles, back when they'd first met on Komarr. So if a genius thought Miles was a genius, and a great man thought he was a great man . . . maybe she ought to get him vetted by a really good husband.
Voices carried faintly from the house through the open windows into the back garden, too muffled to make out the words. One was a low-pitched male rumble. The other was Nikki's. It didn't sound like the comconsole or the vid. Was Uncle Vorthys home already? Ekaterin had thought he would be out till dinnertime.
"I will say," Illyan went on, waving a thoughtful finger in the air, "he did always have the most remarkable knack for picking personnel. Either picking or making; I was never quite sure which. If he said someone was the person for the job, they proved to be so. One way or another. If he thinks you'd be a fine Lady Vorkosigan, he's undoubtedly right. Although," his tone grew slightly morose, "if you do throw in your lot with him, I can personally guarantee you'll never be in control of what happens next again. Not that one ever is, really."
Ekaterin nodded wry agreement. "When I was twenty, I chose my life. It wasn't this one."
Illyan laughed painfully. "Oh, twenty. God. Yes. When I took oath at twenty to Emperor Ezar, I had my military career all sketched out. Ship duty, eh, and ship captain by thirty, and admiral by fifty, and retirement at sixty, a twice-twenty-years man. I did allow for being killed, of course. All very neat. My life began to diverge from the plan the following day, when I was assigned to ImpSec instead. And diverged again, when I found myself promoted to chief of ImpSec in the middle of a war I'd never foreseen, serving a boy emperor who hadn't even existed a decade earlier. My life has been one long chain of surprises. A year ago, I could not have even imagined myself today. Or dreamed myself happy. Of course, Lady Alys . . ." His face softened at the mention of her name, and he paused, an odd smile playing on his lips. "Lately, I have come to believe that the principal difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there."
Could one judge a man by his company? Could she judge Miles that way? Ivan was charming and funny, Lady Alys fine and formidable, Illyan, despite his sinister history, strangely kind. Miles's clone brother Mark, for all his bitter bite, seemed a brother in truth. Kareen Koudelka was pure delight. The Vorbrettens, the rest of the Koudelka clan, Duv Galeni, Tsipis, Ma Kosti, Pym, even Enrique . . . Miles seemed to collect friends of wit and distinction and extraordinary ability around himself as casually and unselfconsciously as a comet trailed its banner of light.
Looking back, she realized how very few friends Tien had ever made. He'd despised his coworkers, scorned his scattered relations. She'd told herself that he hadn't the knack for socializing, or was just too busy. Once past his school days, Tien had never made a new good friend. She'd come to share his isolation; alone together was a perfect summation of their marriage.
"I think you are very right, sir."
From the house, Nikki's voice rose suddenly in volume and pitch, yanking her maternal ear: "No! No!" Was he defying his uncle over something? Ekaterin raised her head, listening, and frowned uneasily.
"Um . . . excuse me." She flashed a brief smile at Illyan. "I think I'd better go check something out. I'll be right back . . ."
Illyan nodded understanding, and politely pretended to fix his attention on the surrounding garden.
Ekaterin entered the kitchen, her eyes slow to adjust from the glare outside, and quietly rounded the corner through the dining room to the parlor. She stopped in the archway in surprise. The voice she'd heard was not her uncle's; it was Alexi Vormoncrief's.
Nikki was sitting scrunched up in Uncle Vorthys's big chair in the corner. Vormoncrief loomed over him, his face tense, his hands anxiously crooked.
"Back to these bandages you saw on Lord Vorkosigan's wrists the day after your father was killed," Vormoncrief was saying, in an urgent voice. "What kind were they? How big?"
"I dunno." Nikki gave a trapped shrug. "They were just bandages."
"What kind of wounds did they conceal, though?"
"Dunno."
"Well, sharp slashes? Burns, blisters, like from a plasma arc? Can you remember seeing them later?"
Nikki shrugged again, his face stiff. "I dunno. They were raggedy, all the way around, I guess. He still has the red marks." His voice was constricted, on the verge of tears.
An arrested look crossed Vormoncrief's face. "Hadn't noticed that. He's very careful to wear long sleeves, isn't he? In high summer, huh. But did he have any other marks, on his face perhaps? Bruises, scratches, maybe a black eye?"
"Dunno . . ."
"Are you sure?"
"Lieutenant Vormoncrief!" Ekaterin interrupted this sharply. Vormoncrief jerked upright, and lurched around. Nikki looked up, his lips parting in relief. "What are you doing?"
"Ah! Ekaterin, Madame Vorsoisson. I came to see you." He waved vaguely around the book-lined parlor.
"Then why didn't you come out to where I was?"
"I seized the chance to talk to Nikki, and I'm very glad I did."
"Mama," Nikki gulped from his chair-barricade, "he says Lord Vorkosigan killed Da!"
"What?" Ekaterin stared at Vormoncrief, for a moment almost too stunned to breathe.
Vormoncrief gestured helplessly, and gave her an earnest look. "The secret is out. The truth is known."
"What truth? By whom?"
"It's being whispered all over town, not that anyone dares—or cares—to do anything about it. Gossips and cowards, the lot of them. But the picture's getting plainer. Two men went out into the Komarran wilderness. One returned, and with some pretty strange injuries, apparently. Accident with a breath mask, indeed. But I realized at once that you couldn't have suspected foul play, till Vorkosigan dropped his guard and proposed to you at his dinner. No wonder you ran out crying."
Ekaterin opened her mouth. Nightmare memories flashed. Your accusation is physically impossible, Alexi; I know. I found them, out in that wilderness, alive and dead both. A cascade of security considerations poured through her head. It was a direct chain of very few links from the details of Tien's death to the persons and objects that no one dared mention. "It was not like that at all." That sounded weaker than she'd intended. . . .
"I'll wager Vorkosigan was never questioned under fast-penta. Am I right?"
"He's ex-ImpSec. I doubt he could be."
"How convenient." Vormoncrief grimaced ironically.
"I was questioned under fast-penta."
"They cleared you of complicity, yes! I was sure of it!"
"What . . . complicity?" The words caught in her throat. The embarrassing details of the relentless interrogation under the truth drug she'd endured on Komarr after
Tien's death boiled up in her memory. Vormoncrief was late with his lurid accusation. ImpSec had thought of that scenario before Tien's body was cold. "Yes, I was asked all the questions you'd expect a conscientious investigator to ask a close relative in a mysterious death." And more. "So?"
"Mysterious death, yes, you suspected something even then, I knew it!" With a wave of his hand, he overrode her hasty attempt to interject an accidental in place of that ill-chosen mysterious. "Believe me, I understand your hideous dilemma perfectly. You don't dare accuse the all-powerful Vorkosigan, the mutie lord." Vormoncrief scowled at the name. "God knows what retaliation he could inflict on you. But Ekaterin, I have powerful relatives too! I came to offer you—and Nikki—my protection. Take my hand—trust me—" he opened his arms, reaching for her "—and together, I swear we can bring this little monster to justice!"
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