Mirror Dance b-9

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Bless you, Brother. Miles understood this, at least, what it was like to teeter on the raw edge.

  They both glanced at the Durona girl. She moved uneasily, under the weight of this double expectation. She flipped back her hair, mustered words. “When I first saw you,” she said to Mark, “I didn’t like you much.”

  When you first saw me, I didn’t like me much either. “Yes?” he encouraged.

  “I still think you’re funny-looking. Even funnier-looking than the other one,” she nodded at Miles, who smiled blandly. “But … but …” Words failed her. As cautiously and hesitantly as a wild bird at a feeder, she ventured nearer to him, bent, and kissed him on one puffy cheek. Then like a bird, she fled.

  “Hm,” said Miles, watching her swoop back down the lift-tube. “I was hoping for a little more enthusiastic a demonstration of gratitude.”

  “You’ll learn,” said Mark equably. He touched his cheek, and smiled.

  “If you think that’s ingratitude, try ImpSec,” Miles advised glumly. ” ’You lost how much equipment?’ “

  Mark cocked an eyebrow. “An Illyan-quote?”

  “Oh, you’ve met him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I wish I could have been there.”

  “I wish you could have been there too,” said Mark sincerely. “He was … acerb.”

  “I’ll bet. He does acerb almost better than anyone I know, except for my mother when she’s lost her temper, which thank God is not very often.”

  “You should have seen her annihilate him, then,” said Mark. “Clash of the titans. I think you’d have enjoyed it. I did.”

  “Oh? We have a lot to talk about, it seems—”

  For the first time, Mark realized, they did. His heart lifted. Unfortunately, so did another interruption, via the tube. A man in House Fell livery looked over the chromium railing, saw him, and gave him a semi-salute. “I have a courier delivery for an individual named Mark,” he said.

  “I’m Mark.”

  The courier trod over to him, flashed a confirming scanner over his face, opened a thin case chained to his wrist, and handed him a card in an unmarked envelope. “Baron Fell’s compliments, sir, and he trusts this will help speed you on your way.”

  The credit chit. Ah, ha! And a very broad hint along with it. “My compliments to Baron Fell, and … and … what do we want to say to Baron Fell, Miles?”

  “I’d keep it down to Thank you, I think,” Miles advised. “At least till we’re far, far away.”

  “Tell him thank you,” Mark told the courier, who nodded and marched out again the way he had come in.

  Mark eyed Lilly’s comconsole, in the corner of the room. It seemed a very long way off. He pointed. “Could you, um, bring me the remote-reader off that comconsole over there, Miles?”

  “Sure.” Miles retrieved and handed him the board.

  “I predict,” said Mark, waving the card around, “that I will be seriously short-changed, but not quite enough so that I would risk going back to Fell and arguing about it.” He inserted the card into the read-slot, and smiled. “Spot-on.”

  “What did you get?” asked Miles, craning his neck.

  “Well, that’s a very personal question,” said Mark. Miles uncraned guiltily. “Trade. Were you sleeping with that surgeon?”

  Miles bit his lip, curiosity obviously struggling with his gentlemanly manners. Mark watched with interest to see how it would come out. Personally, he’d bet on curiosity.

  Miles took a rather deep breath. “Yes,” he said at last.

  Thought so. Their good fortune, Mark decided, was divided exactly fifty-fifty; Miles got the good luck, and he got the rest. But not this time. “Two million.”

  Miles whistled. “Two million Imperial marks? Impressive!”

  “No, no. Two million Betan dollars. What, about eight million marks, I guess, isn’t it? Or is it closer to ten. Depends on the current exchange rate, I guess. It’s not nearly ten percent of the value of House Ryoval, anyway. More like two percent,” Mark calculated aloud. And had the rare and utter joy of rendering Miles Vorkosigan speechless.

  “What are you going to do with it all?” Miles whispered, after about a minute.

  “Invest,” said Mark fiercely. “Barrayar has an expanding economy, doesn’t it?” He paused. “First, though, I’m going to kick back one million to ImpSec, for their services the last four months.”

  “Nobody gives money to ImpSec!”

  “Why not? Look at your mercenary operations, for instance. Isn’t being a mercenary supposed to be profitable? The Dendarii Fleet could be a veritable cash cow for ImpSec, if it were run right.”

  “They take out their profit in political consequences,” said Miles firmly. “Though—if you really do it, I want to be there. To see the look on Illyan’s face.”

  “If you’re good, I’ll let you come along. Oh, I’m really going to do it, all right. There are some debts I cannot ever repay,” he thought of Phillipi, and the others. “But I intend to pay the ones I can, in their honor. Though you can bet I’ll keep the rest. I should be able to double it again in about six years, and be back to where I started. Or better. It’s a lot easier to make two million out of one million than it is to make two out of one, if I understand the game correctly. I’ll study up.”

  Miles stared at him in fascination. “I bet you will.”

  “Do you have any idea how desperate I was, when I started on that raid? How scared? I intend to have a value no one can ignore again, even if it’s only measured in money. Money is a kind of power almost anyone can have. You don’t even need a Vor in front of your name.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe, after a while, I’ll get a place of my own. Like Ivan’s. After all, it would look funny if I was still living in my parents’ house at the age of, say, twenty-eight.”

  And that was probably enough Miles-baiting for one day. Miles would, demonstrably, lay down his life for his brother, but he did have a notable tendency to try to subsume the people around him into extensions of his own personality. I am not your annex. I am your brother. Yes. Mark rather fancied they were both going to be able to keep track of that, now. He slumped wearily, but happily.

  “I do believe,” said Miles, still looking nicely stunned, “you are the first Vorkosigan to make a profit in a business venture for five generations. Welcome to the family.”

  Mark nodded. They were both silent for a time.

  “It’s not the answer,” Mark sighed finally. He nodded around at the Durona Group’s clinic, and by implication to all of Jackson’s Whole. “This piecemeal clone-rescue business. Even if I blew Vasa Luigi entirely away, someone else would just take up where House Bharaputra left off.”

  “Yes,” Miles agreed. “The true answer has to be medical-technical. Somebody has to come up with a better, safer life-extension trick. Which I believe somebody will. A lot of people have to be working on it, in a lot of places. The brain-transplant technique is too risky to compete. It must end, someday soon.”

  “I … don’t have any talents in the medical-technical direction,” said Mark. “In the meantime, the butchery goes on. I have to take another pass at the problem before someday. Somehow.”

  “But not today,” Miles said firmly.

  “No.” Out the window, he saw a personnel shuttle descending into the Duronas’ compound. But it wasn’t the Dendarii one returning, yet. He nodded. “Is that by chance our transport?”

  “I believe so,” said Miles, going to the window and looking down. “Yes.”

  And then there was no more time. While Miles was gone checking on the shuttle, and couldn’t watch, Mark rounded up half a dozen Duronas to help pry his stiff, bent, half-paralyzed body out of Lilly’s chair and lay him on a float-pallet. His crooked hands shook uncontrollably, till Lilly pursed her lips and gave him another hypospray of something wonderful. He was perfectly content to be carried out horizontally. His broken foot was a socially acceptable reason not to be able to walk. He looked nicely invalidish, wit
h his leg propped up conspicuously, the better to persuade the ImpSec fellows to carry him to his bunk, when they arrived topside.

  For the first time in his life, he was going home.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Miles eyed the old mirror in the antechamber to the library of Vorkosigan House, the one that had been brought into the family by General Count Piotr’s mother as part of her dowry, its frame ornately carved by some Vorrutyer family retainer. He was alone in the room, with no one to observe him. He slipped up to the glass, and stared uneasily at his own reflection.

  The scarlet tunic of the Imperial parade red-and-blues did not exactly flatter his too-pale complexion at the best of times. He preferred the more austere elegance of dress greens. The gold-encrusted high collar was not, unfortunately, quite high enough to hide the twin red scars on either side of his neck. The cuts would turn white and recede eventually, but in the meantime they drew the eye. He considered how he was going to explain them. Dueling scars. I lost. Or maybe, Love bites. That was closer. He traced them with a fingertip, turning his head from side to side. Unlike the terrible memory of the needle-grenade, he did not remember acquiring these. That was far more disturbing than the vision of his death, that such important things could happen to him and he didn’t, couldn’t, remember.

  Well, he was known to have medical problems, and the scars were almost neat enough to look medical. Maybe people would let them pass without comment. He stepped back from the mirror to take in the general look. His uniform still had a tendency to hang on him, despite his mother’s valiant attempts to make him eat more these last few weeks since they’d arrived home. She’d finally turned the problem over to Mark, as if yielding to superior expertise. Mark had grinned with amusement, and then he had preceded to harass Miles without mercy. Actually, the attentions were working. Miles did feel better. Stronger.

  The Winterfair Ball was sufficiently social, without formal governmental or military obligation, that he was able to leave the dual dress sword set at home. Ivan would be wearing his, but Ivan had the altitude to carry it off. At Miles’s height, the long sword of the pair looked damned silly, practically dragging on the ground, not to mention the problem of tripping over it or banging his dance partner in the shins.

  Footsteps sounded in the archway; Miles turned quickly, and swung one booted leg up and leaned against a chair-arm, pretending to have been ignoring the narcissistic attractions of his reflection.

  “Ah, there you are.” Mark wandered in to join him, pausing to study himself briefly in the mirror, turning to check the fit of his clothing. His clothing fit very well indeed. Mark had acquired the name of Gregor’s tailor, a closely-guarded ImpSec secret, by the simple expedient of calling Gregor and asking him. The boxy loose cut of the jacket and trousers was aggressively civilian, but somehow very sharp. The colors honored Winterfair, sort of; a green so dark as to be almost black was trimmed with a red so dark as to be almost black. The effect was somewhere between festive and sinister, like a small, cheerful bomb.

  Miles thought of that very odd moment in Rowan’s lightflyer, when he’d been temporarily convinced he was Mark. How terrifying it had been to be Mark, how utterly isolated. The memory of that desolation made him shiver. Is that how he feels all the time?

  Well, no more. Not if I have anything to say about it.

  “Looks good,” Miles offered.

  “Yeah.” Mark grinned. “You’re not so bad yourself. Not as cadaverous, quite.”

  “You’re improving too. Slowly.” Actually, Mark was, Miles thought. The most alarming distortions of whatever horrors Ryoval had inflicted upon Mark, and which he resolutely refused to talk about, had gradually passed off. A solid residue of flesh yet lingered, however. “What weight are you finally going to choose?” Miles asked curiously.

  “You’re looking at it. Or I wouldn’t have invested the fortune in the wardrobe.”

  “Er. Are you comfortable?” Miles inquired uncomfortably.

  Mark’s eyes glinted. “Yes, thank you. The thought that a one-eyed sniper, at a range of two kilometers at midnight in a thunderstorm, could not possibly mistake me for you, is very comfortable indeed.”

  “Oh. Well. Yes, there is that, I suppose.”

  “Keep exercising,” Mark advised him cordially. “It’s good for you.” Mark sat down and put his feet up.

  “Mark?” the Countess’s voice called from the foyer. “Miles?” “In here,” said Miles.

  “Ah,” she said, sweeping into the antechamber. “There you both are.” She smiled at them with a greedy maternal gloat, looking most satisfied. Miles could not help feeling warmed, as if some last lingering ice chip inside from the cryo-freezing finally thawed, steaming gently. The Countess wore a new dress, more ornate than her usual style, in green and silver, with ruffs and tucks and a train, a celebration of fabric. It did not make her stiff, though—it wouldn’t dare. The Countess was never intimidated by her clothing. Quite the reverse. Her eyes outshone the silver embroidery.

  “Father waiting on us?” Miles inquired.

  “He’ll be down momentarily. I’m insisting we leave promptly at midnight. You two can stay longer if you wish, of course. He’ll overdo, I predict, proving to the hyenas he’s too tough for them to jump, even when the hyenas aren’t circling any more. A lifetime of reflex. Try and focus his attention on the District, Miles. It will drive poor Prime Minister Racozy to distraction to feel Aral is looking over his shoulder. We really need to get out of the capital, down to Hassadar, after Winterfair.”

  Miles, who had a very clear idea just how much recovery chest surgery took, said, “I think you’ll be able to persuade him.”

  “Please throw your vote in. I know he can’t fool you, and he knows it too. Ah—just what can I expect tonight, medically speaking?”

  “He’ll dance twice, once to prove he can do it, and the second time to prove the first wasn’t a fluke. After that you’ll have no trouble at all persuading him to sit down,” Miles predicted with confidence. “Go ahead and play mother hen, and he can pretend he’s stopping to please you, and not because he’s about to fall over. Hassadar strikes me as a very good plan.”

  “Yes. Barrayar does not quite know what to do with retired strong men. Traditionally, they are decently deceased, and not hanging around to pass comments on their successors. Aral may be something of a first. Though Gregor has had the most horrifying idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s muttering about the Vice-royalty of Sergyar, as a post for Aral, when he is fully recovered. The present viceroy has been begging to come home, it seems. Whining, actually. A more thankless task than colonial governor I cannot imagine. An honest man gets ground to powder, trying to play interface between two sets of conflicting needs, the home government above and the colonists below. Anything you can do to disabuse Gregor of this notion, I would greatly appreciate.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Miles’s brows rose thoughtfully. “I mean—what a retirement project. A whole planet to play with. Sergyar. And didn’t you discover it yourself, back when you were a Betan Astronomical Survey captain?”

  “Indeed. If the Barrayaran military expedition hadn’t been ahead of us, Sergyar would be a Betan daughter-colony right now. And much better managed, believe me. It really needs someone to take it in hand. The ecological issues alone are crying for an injection of intelligence—I mean, take that worm plague. A little Betan-style prudence could have … well. They figured it out eventually, I guess.”

  Miles and Mark looked at each other. It wasn’t telepathy. But the thought that perhaps Aral Vorkosigan wasn’t the only over-energetic aging expert Gregor might be glad to export from his capital was surely being shared between them, right this second.

  Mark’s brows drew down. “How soon might this be, ma’am?”

  “Oh, not for at least a year.”

  “Ah.” Mark brightened.

  Armsman Pym stuck his head around the archway. “Ready, milady,” he reported.

>   They all herded into the black-and-white paved hall, to find the Count standing at the foot of the curved stairs. He watched them with delight as they trooped into his view. The Count had lost weight in his medical ordeal too, but it only made him look more fit, in his red-and-blues. He managed uniform and sword-set with unconscious ease. In three hours, he’d be drooping, Miles gauged, but by then he’d have made a lasting first impression on his many observers, on this his first formal outing with his new heart. His color was excellent, his gaze as knife-sharp as ever. But there was no dark at all in his hair anymore. Aside from that, you really might think he could live forever.

  Except Miles didn’t think that anymore. It had scared the hell out of him, retroactively, this whole cardiac episode. Not that his father must die someday, perhaps before him—that was the proper order of things, and Miles could not wish it upon the Count for it to be the other way around—but that Miles might not be here when it happened. When he was needed. Might be off indulging himself with the Dendarii Mercenaries, say, and not get the word for weeks. Too late.

  Being both in uniform, the Lieutenant saluted his father the Admiral now with the usual tinge of irony with which they commonly exchanged such military courtesies. Miles would rather have embraced him, but it would look odd.

  To hell with what it looked like. He walked over and hugged his father.

  “Hey, boy, hey,” said the Count, surprised and pleased. “It’s not that bad, really.” He embraced Miles in return. The Count stood back and looked them all over, his elegant wife, his—two, now—sons. Smiling as smugly as any rich man could, he opened his arms as if to embrace them all, briefly and almost shyly. “Are the Vorkosigans ready to storm the Winterfair Ball, then? Dear Captain, I predict they will surrender to you in droves. How’s your foot, Mark?”

  Mark stuck out his right shoe, and wriggled it. “Fit to be trod upon by any Vor maiden up a hundred kilos, sir. Steel toe caps, underneath,” he added to Miles, aside. “I’m taking no chances.”

  The Countess attached herself to her husband’s arm. “Lead on, love. Vorkosigans Victorious.”