Anyway, it was surely allowable to shoot kidnappers regardless of who they were trying to carry off, right?
“I’ll be escorting them both on to Barrayar in little more than a day’s time,” said Ivan. “They should be safe out here at Komarr HQ till then—don’t you think?”
“Commercial or military ship?”
“Admiral Desplains’s jump-pinnace, actually. He was kind enough to assign me some spare berths. Wedding present, he said.”
“That should be exceptionally safe. I imagine it will take their pursuers some time to regroup after the, ah, curve ball you threw this morning. I don’t think that could have been anticipated in anyone’s schemes.”
Including mine.
“Meanwhile,” said Morozov, “I’d think you, as the lady’s new husband, would be as closely placed as humanly possible to find out more, eh?”
Puzzles. I hate puzzles. Ivan liked flow-charts—nice and clear and you could always tell just where you were and what you should do next, everything laid out neatly. No ambiguities. No traps. Why couldn’t life be more like flow charts?
Morozov went on jovially, “After all, a man who can’t persuade his own wife to trust him is a man in trouble in many ways.”
So many ways. Ivan could only nod.
Chapter Eight
The military compound’s guest quarters proved to resemble a small, faintly shabby hotel, designed to temporarily house officers, dependents, or civilian contract employees either in transit to elsewhere, or downside on Komarr for duties too brief to billet them in permanent housing. Its security, Tej judged, was only fair, but still vastly better than anything she’d had to rely upon lately, and it didn’t feel like a prison. Ivan Xav escorted Tej and Rish to a clean if narrow chamber with two beds, and, yawning, himself went to ground in a room directly across the hall. As Tej’s very first wedding night ever, this would have left something to be desired, if she hadn’t been so exhausted by the disruptions of the past days as to fall asleep nearly as fast as she could pull up her covers.
When they awoke the next morning Ivan Xav had already gone off to aide-de-camp his admiral some more, though he left a note of reassurance, scrawled on the back of a flimsy and shoved under their door. Captain Morozov turned up to escort them to a long, chatty brunch in a private room off the ImpSec building cafeteria, where he asked yet more uncomfortably shrewd questions, seeming as satisfied with the evasions as the answers, which was a bit disquieting, on reflection. In the afternoon, a uniformed enlisted man arrived with all of their and Ivan Xav’s remaining possessions from his rental flat, and dumped them on Rish’s bed to be sorted out. Minus the groceries, evidently abandoned; Tej would rather have liked to have kept the emptied groats box for a souvenir.
Tej sat herself down at the room’s little comconsole and began to try to study up on Barrayaran history. Which the Barrayarans appeared, from a first glance, to have made far too much of. Rish, trammeled by the confined space as usual—these past months had been especially hard on her—started her dance exercises, or as least as many of the thousand-moves-kata as she could fit into the constricted area. She had wandered into their tiny bathroom to practice the neck, face, ear, eye, and eyebrow movements in front of the mirror—ten reps each—when a hearty knock on the door shot Tej from her chair and almost out of the window. Only one floor up, now, so unlikely to be lethal—had Ivan Xav arranged that?
In any case, it was his voice that called, “Hi, Tej, you in there?” Trying to calm her pounding heart, she went to unlock the door.
He stuck his head in and said, “Saddle up, ladies. Our shuttle awaits.”
“So soon?” said Tej, as Rish came out of the lav.
“Hey, you two may have slept in, but it’s been a long day for me.”
“No, I mean, I thought—I thought this thing with the smugglers might have thrown you off schedule.”
“It’s Service Security’s problem now. That’s what delegation is for. They’re scrambling like mad to cover their lapse—this is the sort of rattlesnake they’re supposed to hand to Desplains, neatly pithed, pinned on a card, and labeled, not the other way around. Very disorienting for ’em. Though all of their further reports will doubtless catch up with us en route. Travel time with the boss is not break time, alas.” He gathered up his delivered gear and went off to pack his duffle.
The ride up to orbit on the military shuttle felt like escape from a deeper pit than just a gravity well. Tej stared out her tiny window. Scabrous patches of green terraforming clung like lichen around the barren, poisonous planet, and the lights of the dome arcologies, strung like bright beads along the faint monorail lines, made promises for the future, but not for the now. For someone who’d spent as much time growing up on space installations as Tej, Solstice Dome ought to have felt spacious, but it hadn’t. If a place wasn’t going to be a proper station, it ought to be a proper planet, but Komarr had seemed to be something caught between.
I don’t know where I’m going. But this wasn’t it. Was she going to have to sort through the entire Nexus by process of elimination to find her final destination? I hope not.
The shuttle docked, and Ivan Xav led them on a very short walk through the military orbital station to another portal. A zero-gee float through a personnel flex tube gave Tej a bare glimpse of a ship about the size of a rich man’s yacht, but not nearly as cheery-looking—an effect of the warty weapons housings studding the armored skin, perhaps. The tube spat them out into a small hatch bay, neat but decidedly utilitarian. Three men awaited them: an armed soldier in ship gear, an unarmed enlisted man in a plain green uniform, and a spare, gray-haired man in a less-plain green uniform like Ivan Xav’s. He did not particularly exude arrogance, but Tej recognized how a person stood or moved when they owned the place, and this man did; it hardly needed Ivan Xav’s salute and, “Admiral Desplains, sir,” to identify him. “May I present to you my wife, Lady Tej Vorpatril, and her personal assistant, Lapis Lazuli, also known as Rish.”
The admiral returned the salute in a more perfunctory manner. His polite smile broadened into something more genuinely welcoming, or maybe that was just genuinely amused, as he looked over his guests. Somebody must have warned him about Rish, for he didn’t gawk. “Lady Vorpatril. Miss, ah, Lazuli. Welcome aboard the JP-9. My ship has no more memorable name, I’m afraid.”
Tej gathered her wits enough to return, “Thank you for inviting us, sir,” and didn’t correct Rish’s address. A Chief of Operations wasn’t exactly a House baron, more like a senior House security officer, but it might be well to treat him just as circumspectly.
“I understand you were of material aid in helping us trap our home-grown smugglers, yesterday,” Desplains went on.
Not at all sure what Ivan Xav had told him, Tej tried smiling mysteriously, and murmured, “They were no friends to me or mine.”
“So Captain Morozov gave me to believe,” said Desplains.
Oh. Of course Morozov had to be reporting to someone. Their chats hadn’t been just for his entertainment, or his back-files, however much he managed to make one feel so. “Has Morozov much special training in interrogation?” Tej asked, belatedly curious.
“Actually, he trains interrogators,” said Desplains. “One of our top men, you know.” He dragged his gaze back up to her face—so, old but not dead, though Tej had trouble estimating Barrayarans’ ages. “I begin to see why Captain Vorpatril’s chivalrous inspiration took the form it did, Lady Vorpatril. I suddenly realize his duties with me have not left you much time together since your wedding yesterday, ah, morning was it?”
“Not any,” she confirmed. She tried a doleful look on him, curious to see what would happen.
It won a quirky smile, anyway. “We shall have to find some way to make it up to you. In the meanwhile, Ivan, show our guests around the ship and give them the safety drill.”
He made a motion to the enlisted man, who collected their bags. Tej and Rish parted reluctantly with theirs, till Ivan Xav whispere
d, opaquely but reassuringly, “Admiral’s bâtman, it’s all right.” As they left the hatch bay, Desplains and the other bent their heads together in some conference.
The ship was small and the tour brief, as the engineering and Nav-and-Com areas were evidently off-limits. While they were about this, Tej more felt than heard the faint thumps and clanks that told her they had detached from the station and were on their way already. The amenities were few: a kind of dining room-gathering place that Ivan Xav dubbed the wardroom, a small observation lounge, a compact but well-equipped exercise room that Rish eyed with interest. Tej guessed a crew of less than twenty, split among shifts, and a capacity of perhaps a dozen passengers, maybe twice that in an emergency. The jump-pinnace was bigger and slower than a fast courier, but not by much.
Getting lost on board was not going to be a problem, or even an option. Ivan Xav focused on escape routes and emergency pods and equipment how-to’s, and conscientiously made them both go through the entire pressurization-or-other-emergency safety routine, till he seemed satisfied that they understood it.
“Do you do this for passengers a lot?” asked Rish, freeing herself from a breath mask and handing it back.
“We carry high-ranking non-Service supercargo from time to time, depending on the mission. Or the admiral sometimes includes his family on these more routine jaunts, but they had other things going on at home this week.”
“Have you worked for Desplains long?” asked Tej.
“About three years. He brought me along with him when he was promoted from Admiral of the Home Fleet to Chief of Operations, two years back.”
The bâtman-person appeared. “If you will come this way, Captain, Lady Vorpatril, Miss Lazuli.” He led them down to the end of a short corridor; an airseal door labeled Admiral Desplains slid open at his touch on the pad. Inside was a tiny suite—a sitting room and two bedrooms with a connecting bath. One bedroom had four neat bunks. The other boasted a double bed. Their three bags and Ivan Xav’s duffle waited, placed ambiguously on the floor of the sitting room.
“Admiral’s compliments, Lady Vorpatril, ma’am, but he begs you and the captain will accept the use of his quarters for the duration of the journey. He says the space is underutilized, without Madame Desplains or the children along. Which, indeed, it is.” The bâtman pointed out a few basic features and bowed himself out with a murmured, “There is a call button on the wall if you require anything more, but I trust I have provided most of the necessities.”
Ivan Xav stared around, seeming vaguely stunned. “Huh! Guess I’m forgiven, then…” He pulled himself together, peeked into both bedrooms in turn, wheeled to the women, and said, “Er…take your pick?”
Tej and Rish looked at each other. Rish said, “Excuse us a moment,” grabbed Tej by the arm, and dragged her into the bunk room, letting the airseal door slide closed behind them.
“Quit smirking,” said Rish.
Tej chirped, “Oh, but how nice. Ivan Xav’s boss has given us the honeymoon suite. It would seem a shame to waste such a grateful gesture, don’t you think?”
Rish ran a hand over her platinum pelt in a harried swipe, blue ears twitching. “All right, I can see how it might be a good deal if he pair-bonds to you. Maybe not so good if you pair-bond to him. Don’t lose your head, sweetling.”
Tej tossed her curls. “It’s only a practice marriage. So I ought to get in some practice, don’t you think?”
“And quit prancing, too. It’s not like he’s an allowed suitor. That call button won’t bring in a brace of the Baron’s bodyguards to eject him from your bedroom if he displeases you. There’s only me. And while there are places where I’d back myself to take him on, this isn’t one of them. This ship is Barrayaran, bow to bulkhead. With no place to run.”
“He’s allowed if I allow him.” Tej’s voice went bleak. “Who else is left to make that call, Rish?”
Rish took a breath, but let it out slowly, unused.
“I know this isn’t a deal from strength, but here we are,” said Tej. “For the next six days. And afterward, too, for some unknown amount of time. There’s no harm in setting up a basic biological reward-loop as a minor safety net. You know I won’t mistake it for anything more.” Tej hesitated. “Although how you can look at what Dada and the Baronne had, and dismiss it as minor, I don’t know.”
“Exception that proves the rule, sweetling.” Rish paced the floor, two steps each way. “Oh, hell, go on and have your treat. Maybe it’ll be the fastest cure for this madness.”
Tej’s smile tucked up, irresistibly. “Not for him—I’ll wager my training on that. Anyway, his admiral practically handed him to me gift-wrapped. And you know how I like opening presents.”
This pulled a reluctant chuckle from Rish. She thumped a fist gently into Tej’s shoulder. “In that case, break a leg. Preferably one of his, not one of yours.”
“Nothing so violent.”
They went back out to the sitting room, where Ivan Xav was standing with the glazed look of those men who’d waited outside the women’s lav, except that the fingers of his right hand were drumming rapidly on his trouser seam. He jerked to attention with a weird, twisted smile. “So what’s the verdict?”
“Rish will take the bunk room,” said Tej, “and you and I will take the other room.”
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “That…sounds great, but you know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Of course, if you do want to, that’s…that’s just great!”
Rish rolled her eyes, picked up her bag, and withdrew to the bunk room, calling, “Good night, good night, to all a good night. I claim first dibs on the bath, though.”
Barely seeming to hear this, Ivan Xav blinked at Tej, and said, “And the other good thing is that on board here, we’re back on Fleet time, which is Vorbarr Sultana time. Twenty-six-point-seven hour sidereal day, you know, with the night proportional. Makes for a much more leisurely evening.”
Unexpectedly, he stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Tej’s waist, and swung her around like a dancer and down onto the room’s little sofa, bolted to the floor in case of artificial gravity mishaps. “How do you do, Lady Vorpatril? I’m so pleased to meet you.”
Yes, I can tell already, Tej did not say out loud. “Hi there, Lord Vorpatril.” What was he a lord of, anyway? She would have to find out. Later. “Say my whole name. Bet you can’t.”
His chin jerked up at the challenge. “Lady Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua Vorpatril.”
Tej, impressed, raised her brows. “You’re a fast study, Ivan Xav.”
“When I have to be.” One finger went out to tease a curl from her forehead, then hesitated. “Er…how old would you happen to be, Tej? I mean, you look maybe twenty-something standard, but Jacksonians, all that body modification…Cetagandans, all that genetic manipulation…could be anything from ten to sixty, I suppose.”
“As it happens, I am just turned twenty-five.”
“Oh. Whew.”
“What would you have done if I’d said ten?” she asked curiously.
“Cried. And turned you back over to your babysitter.”
“Or sixty?”
“Now, that I could have dealt with. Older women—it’s a fantasy, y’know. Or can be.”
“Have you ever fulfilled that fantasy?”
“I…don’t think this is the time to go into my past, y’know? Tonight should be all about you.” His voice was growing smoother, more confident. But then he hesitated again. “Ah…Great House baron’s treasured daughter and all, I expect you led a very sheltered life, huh? Very protected. Lots of armed guards and all that.”
“Yes, till the House fell.”
He tilted his head back and forth, as if thinking. Or puzzling. “Uh…I need to ask this, don’t mean to embarrass you or anything, and any answer is fine, as long as it’s true. Because I kind of need to know. Are you still a virgin?”
“Good heavens, no. Not since age fifteen.”
“Oh,
was it fifteen for you, too? I mean, oh good. That’s not a problem for me, I don’t have any of that Time-of-Isolation baggage about marrying a virgin, that would be hypocritical, after all. Especially for a temporary-though-legal marriage. Easier the other way around anyway, really.” He paused again. “Contraceptive implant?”
“Also since age fifteen,” she assured him.
“Ah.” He smiled beatifically, and closed in for a kiss.
It was a good kiss, quite as good as her dream or better. She snaked her fingers up between them to deal with his first button. The flattering uniform seemed to have rather a lot of them. For the first time, his hand strayed below her shoulders, in a tentative, reverent touch; good, he wasn’t going to be grabby.
“So what happened when you were fifteen?” she asked, during their next break for air. “Was it a positive experience?”
This surprised a laugh from him, and a look of fond reminiscence. “I was a desperately randy adolescent—almost any experience would have seemed positive, but yes, I guess it was. She was one of the girl grooms at my great-uncle’s stables down at the long lake, a summer fling at a summer place, pretty damned idyllic, really. I thought I seduced her, but in retrospect, I realize she seduced me. Older woman, y’know—she was nineteen. Dear God, but I was a clumsy young lout. But fortunately, or maybe it was mercifully, she didn’t trample on my young ego. Though she would probably have had to gallop one of the dressage horses across it to make a dent, I was so chuffed with myself.”
Tej laughed at his laughter, pleased for his covertly tender former self.
A finger ran lightly over her cheekbone, tracing its curves. He started to speak, shook his head, but then, as if he could not help himself, asked, “And you? I hope you weren’t afflicted with a clumsy and self-absorbed young lout.”
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