Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  With a brief wave, the Count walked away, not entering the room after Mark, not crowding him in any way. Three ways to kill him flashed through Mark’s mind. But that training seemed ages stale. He was too out of shape now anyway. Climbing the stairs had exhausted him. He pulled the door shut and fell onto the carved bed, shivering with reaction.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ostensibly to allow Mark to recover from jump-lag, the Count and Countess set no tasks for him the first two days. Indeed, except for the rather formal mealtimes, Mark did not see Count Vorkosigan at all. He wandered the house and grounds at will, with no apparent guard but the Countess’s discreet observation of him. There were uniformed guards at the gates; he did not yet have the nerve to test and discover if they were charged to keep him in as well as unauthorized persons out.

  He had studied Vorkosigan House, yes, but the immediacy of actually being here took some getting used to. It all seemed subtly askew from his expectations. The place was a warren, but for all the antiques with which Vorkosigan House was cluttered, every original window had been replaced with modern high-grade armor-glass and automatic shutters, even the ones high up on the wall in the basement kitchen. It was like a shell, if a vast one, of protection, palace/fortress/prison. Could he slide into this shell?

  I’ve been a prisoner all my life. I want to be a free man.

  On the third day, his new clothing arrived. The Countess came to help him unpack it all. The morning light and cool air of early autumn streamed into his bedchamber through the window which he had, mulishly, opened wide to the mysterious, dangerous, unknown world.

  He opened one bag on a hanger to reveal a garment in a disturbingly military style, a high-necked tunic and side-piped trousers in Vorkosigan brown and silver, very like the Count’s armsmen’s liveries, but with more glitter on the collar and epaulettes. “What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Ah,” said the Countess. “Gaudy, isn’t it? It’s your uniform as a lord of House Vorkosigan.”

  His, not Miles’s. All the new clothes were computer-cut to generous fit; his heart sank as he calculated how much he’d have to eat to escape this one.

  The Countess’s lips curved up at the dismayed expression on his face. “The only two places you actually have to wear it are if you tend a session of the Council of Counts, or if you go to the Emperor’s birthday ceremonies. Which you might; they’re coming up in a w weeks.” She hesitated, her finger tracing over the Vorkosigan logo embroidered on the tunic’s collar. “Miles’s birthday isn’t very long after that.”

  Well, Miles wasn’t aging at the moment, wherever he was. “Birthdays are sort of a non-concept, for me. What do you call it when you take someone out of a uterine replicator?”

  “When I was taken out of my uterine replicator, my parents called my birthday,” she said dryly.

  She was Betan. Right. “I don’t even know when mine is.”

  “You don’t? It’s in your records.”

  “What records?”

  “Your Bharaputran medical file. Haven’t you ever seen it? I’ll have get you a copy. It’s, um, fascinating reading, in a sort of horrifying way. Your birthday was the seventeenth of last month, in point of fact.”

  “I missed it anyway, then.” He closed the bag and stuffed the uniform far back in his closet. “Not important.”

  “It’s important that someone celebrate our existence,” she objected amiably. “People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.”

  “That’s … true,” he admitted, remembering his own recent imprisonment. “Hm.” The next garment he shook out suited his mood: solid black. Though on closer examination it proved to be almost the same design as the cadet lord’s uniform, the logos and piping muted in black silk instead of glowing in silver thread, almost invisible against the black cloth.

  “That’s for funerals,” commented the Countess. Her voice was suddenly rather flat.

  “Oh.” Taking the hint, he tucked it away behind the Vor cadet’s uniform. He finally chose the least military-flavored outfit available, soft loose trousers, low boots without buckles, steel toe caps, or any other aggressive decorations, and a shirt and vest, in dark colors, blues, greens, red-browns. It felt like a costume, but it was all extremely well-made. Camouflage? Did the clothes represent the man inside, or disguise him? “Is it me?” he asked the Countess, upon emerging from the bathroom for inspection.

  She half-laughed. “A profound question, to ask of one’s clothing. Even I can’t answer that one.”

  On the fourth day, Ivan Vorpatril turned up at breakfast. He wore an Imperial lieutenant’s undress greens, neatly setting off his tall, physically-fit frame; with his arrival the Yellow Parlor seemed suddenly crowded. Mark shrank down guiltily as his putative cousin greeted his aunt with a decorous kiss on the cheek and his uncle with a formal nod. Ivan nailed a plate from the sideboard and piled it precariously with eggs, meat, and sugared breads, juggled a mug of coffee, hooked back a chair with his foot, and slid into a place at the table opposite Mark.

  “Hello, Mark,” Ivan acknowledged his existence at last. “You look like hell. When did you get so bloated?” He shoved a forkful of fried meat into his mouth and started chewing.

  “Thank you, Ivan,” Mark took what refuge he could in faint sarcasm. “You haven’t changed, I see.” Implying no improvement, he hoped.

  Ivan’s brown eyes glinted; he started to speak, but was stopped by his aunt’s “Ivan” in a tone of cool reproof.

  Mark didn’t think it was for trying to talk with his mouth full, but Ivan swallowed before replying, not to Mark but to the Countess, “My apologies, Aunt Cordelia. But I still have a problem with closets and other small, unvented dark areas because of him.”

  “Sorry,” muttered Mark, hunching. But something in him resisted being cowed by Ivan, and he added, “I only had Galen kidnap you to fetch Miles.”

  “So that was your idea.”

  “It worked, too. He came right along and stuck his head in the noose for you.”

  Ivan’s jaw tightened. “A habit he has failed to break, I understand,” he returned, in a tone halfway between a purr and a snarl.

  It was Mark’s turn to be silent. Yet in a way, it was almost comforting. Ivan at least treated him as he deserved. A little welcome punishment. He felt himself reviving under the rain of scorn like a parched plant. Ivan’s challenge almost brightened his day. “Why are you here?”

  “It wasn’t my idea, believe me,” said Ivan. “I am to take you Out. For an airing.”

  Mark glanced at the Countess, but she was focused on her husband. “Already?” she asked.

  “It is by request,” said Count Vorkosigan.

  “Ah ha,” she said, as if enlightened. No light dawned for Mark; it wasn’t his request. “Good. Perhaps Ivan can show him a bit of the city on the way.”

  “That’s the idea,” said the Count. “Since Ivan is an officer, it eliminates the need for a bodyguard.”

  Why, so they could talk frankly? A terrible idea. And who would protect him from Ivan?

  “There will be an outer perimeter, I trust,” said the Countess.

  “Oh, yes.”

  The outer perimeter was the guard no one was supposed to see, not even the principals. Mark wondered what prevented the outer perimeter people from just taking the day off, and claiming they’d been there, invisible men. You could get away with the scam for quite a long time, between crises, he suspected.

  Lieutenant Lord Vorpatril had his own ground-car, Mark discovered after breakfast, a sporty model featuring lots of red enamel. Reluctantly, Mark slid in beside Ivan. “So,” he said, in an uncertain voice. “Do you still want to scrag me?”

  Ivan whipped the car through the residence’s gates and out into Vorbarr Sultana city traffic. “Personally, yes. Practically, no. I need
all the bodies I can get to stand between me, and Uncle Aral’s job. I wish Miles had a dozen children. He could have, by now, if only he’d started—in a way, you are a godsend. They’d have me clamped in as heir apparent right now if not for you.” He hesitated, in speech only; the ground-car he accelerated through an intersection, weaving narrowly past four other vehicles bearing down in collision courses. “How dead is Miles really? Uncle Aral was pretty vague, on the vid telling me about it. I wasn’t sure if it was for security, or—I’ve never seen him so stiff.”

  The traffic was worse than London’s and, if possible, even more disorderly, or ordered according to some rule involving survival of the fittest. Mark gripped the edges of his seat and replied, “I don’t know. He took a needle-grenade in the chest. Almost as bad as it could be without actually blowing him in half.”

  Did Ivan’s lips ripple in suppressed horror? If so, the breezy facade re-closed again almost instantly. “It will take a top-notch revival facility to put his torso back together right,” Mark continued. “For the brain … you never know till revival’s over.” And then it’s too late. “But that’s not the problem. Or not the problem yet.”

  “Yeah,” Ivan grimaced. “That was a real screw-up, y’know? How could you lose …” He turned so sharply he trailed an edge, which struck sparks from the pavement, and swore cheerfully at a very large hovertruck which nearly lunged through Mark’s side of the groundcar. Mark crouched down and shut his mouth. Better the conversation should die than him; his life could depend on not distracting the driver. His first impression of the city of Miles’s birth was that half the population was going to be killed in traffic before nightfall. Or maybe just the ones in Ivan’s path. Ivan did a violent U-turn and skidded sideways into a parking space, cutting off two other ground-cars maneuvering toward it, and coming to a halt so abruptly Mark was nearly launched into the front panel.

  “Vorhartung Castle,” Ivan announced with a nod and a wave as the engine’s whine died away. “The Council of Counts is not in session today, so the museum is open to the public. Though we are not the public.”

  “How … cultural,” said Mark warily, peering out through the canopy. Vorhartung Castle really looked like a castle, a rambling, antiquated pile of featureless stone rising out of the trees. It perched on a bluff above the river rapids that divided Vorbarr Sultana. Its grounds were now a park; beds of cultivated flowers grew where men and horses had once dragged seige engines through icy mud in vain assaults. “What is this really?”

  “You are to meet a man. And I am not to pre-discuss it.” Ivan popped the canopy and clambered out. Mark followed.

  Ivan, whether by plan or perversity, really did take him to the museum, which occupied one whole wing of the castle and was devoted to the arms and armor of the Vor from the Time of Isolation. As a soldier in uniform, Ivan was admitted free, though he dutifully paid Mark’s way in with a few coins. For a cover, Mark guessed, for members of the Vor caste were also admitted free, Ivan explained in a whisper. There was no sign to that effect. If you were Vor you were presumed to know.

  Or maybe it was Ivan’s subtle slur on Mark’s Vor-ness, or lack of same. Ivan played the upper-class lout with the same cultivated thoroughness with which he played the Imperial lieutenant, or any other role his world demanded of him. The real Ivan was rather more elusive, Mark gauged; it would not do to underestimate his subtlety, or mistake him for a simpleton.

  So he was to meet a man. What man? If it was another ImpSec debriefing, why couldn’t he have met the man at Vorkosigan House? Was it someone in government, or Prime Minister Count Aral’s Centrist Coalition party? Again, why not come to him? Ivan couldn’t be setting him up for an assassination, the Vorkosigans could have had him killed in secret anytime these past two years. Maybe he was being set up to be accused of some staged crime? Even more arcane plot ideas twisted through his mind, all sharing the same fatal flaw of being totally lacking in motivation or logic.

  He stared at a crammed array of dual sword sets in a chronological row on a wall, displaying the evolution of the Barrayaran smiths’ art over two centuries, then hurried to join Ivan in front of a case of chemical-explosive-propelled projectile weapons: highly decorated large-bore muzzle loaders that had once, the card proclaimed, belonged to Emperor Vlad Vorbarra. The bullets were peculiar in being solid gold, massive spheres the size of Mark’s thumbtip. At short range, it must have been like being hit by a terminal-velocity brick. At long range, they probably missed. So what poor peasant or squire had been stuck with the job of going around retrieving the misses? Or worse, the hits? Several of the bright balls in display were flattened or misshapen, and to Mark’s intense bemusement, one card informed the museum patron that this very distorted blob had killed Lord Vor So-and-so during the battle of Such-and-such … “taken from his brain,” after death, Mark presumed. Hoped. Yech. He was only surprised someone had cleaned the ancient gore from the spent bullet before mounting it, given the blood-thirsty gruesomeness of some of the other displays. The tanned and cured scalp of Mad Emperor Yuri, for instance, on loan from some Vor clan’s private collection.

  “Lord Vorpatril.” It was not a question. The man speaking had appeared so quietly Mark was not even sure from what direction he had come. He was dressed as quietly, middle-aged, intelligent-looking; he might have been a museum administrator. “Come with me, please.”

  Without question or comment, Ivan fell in behind the man, gesturing Mark ahead of him. Thus sandwiched, Mark trod in his wake, torn between curiosity and nerves.

  They went through a door marked “No Admittance,” which the man unlocked with a mechanical key and then locked again behind them, went up two staircases, and down an echoing wood-floored corridor to a room occupying the top floor of a round tower at the building’s corner. Once a guard post, it was now furnished as an office, with ordinary windows cut into the stone walls in place of arrow slits. A man waited within, perched on a stool, gazing pensively down at the grounds falling away to the river, and the sprinkling of brightly-dressed people strolling or climbing the paths.

  He was a thin, dark-haired fellow in his thirties, pale skin set off by loose dark clothing entirely lacking in pseudo-military detailing. He looked up with a quick smile at their guide. “Thank you, Kevi.” Both greeting and dismissal seemed combined, for the guide nodded and exited.

  It wasn’t until Ivan nodded and said, “Sire,” that recognition clicked.

  Emperor Gregor Vorbarra. Shit. The door behind Mark was blocked by Ivan. Mark controlled his surge of panic. Gregor was only a man, alone, apparently unarmed. All the rest was … propaganda. Hype. Illusion. His heart beat faster anyway.

  “Hullo, Ivan,” said the Emperor. “Thank you for coming. Why don’t you go study the exhibits for a while.”

  “Seen ’em before,” said Ivan laconically.

  “Nevertheless.” Gregor jerked his head doorward.

  “Not to put too fine a point on it,” said Ivan, “but this is not Miles, not even on a good day. And despite appearances, he was trained as an assassin, once. Isn’t this a touch premature?”

  “Well,” said Gregor softly, “we’ll find out, won’t we? Do you want to assassinate me, Mark?”

  “No,” Mark croaked.

  “There you have it. Take a hike, Ivan. I’ll send Kevi for you in a bit.”

  Ivan grimaced in frustration, and Mark sensed, not a little frustrated curiosity. He departed with an ironic salaam that seemed to say, On your head be it.

  “So, Lord Mark,” said Gregor. “What do you think of Vorbarr Sultana so far?”

  “It went by pretty fast,” Mark said cautiously.

  “Dear God, don’t tell me you let Ivan drive.”

  “I didn’t know I had a choice.”

  The Emperor laughed. “Sit down.” He waved Mark into the station chair behind the comconsole desk; the little room was otherwise sparsely furnished, though the antique military prints and maps cluttering the walls might be spill-over from the
nearby museum.

  The Emperor’s smile faded back into his initial pensive look as he studied Mark. It reminded Mark a little of the way Count Vorkosigan looked at him, that Who are you? look, only without the Count’s ravenous intensity. A bearable wonder.

  “Is this your office?” asked Mark, cautiously settling himself in the Imperial swivel-chair. The room seemed small and austere for the purpose.

  “One of them. This whole complex is crammed with various offices, in some of the oddest niches. Count Vorvolk has one in the old dungeons. No head room. I use this as a private retreat when attending the Council of Counts meetings, or when I have other business here.”

  “Why do I qualify as business? Besides not being pleasure. Is this personal or official?”

  “I can’t spit without being official. On Barrayar, the two are not very separable. Miles … was …” Gregor’s tongue tripped over that past tense too, “in no particular order, a peer of my caste; an officer in my service; the son of an extremely, if not supremely, important official; and a personal friend of lifelong standing. And the heir to the Countship of a District. And the Counts are the mechanism whereby one man,” he touched his chest, “multiplies to sixty, and then to a multitude. The Counts are the first officers of the Imperium; I am its captain. You do understand, that I am not the Imperium? An empire is mere geography. The Imperium is a society. The multitude, the whole body—ultimately, down to every subject— that is the Imperium. Of which I am only a piece. An interchangeable part, at that— did you notice my great-uncle’s scalp, downstairs?”

  “Um … yes. It was, uh, prominently displayed.”

  “This is the home of the Council of Counts. The fulcrum of the lever may fancy itself supreme, but it is nothing without the lever. Mad Yuri forgot that. I don’t. The Count of the Vorkosigan’s District is another such living piece. Also interchangeable.” He paused.