“It will be a challenge,” the Baronne…didn’t quite grumble. “But when I get my hands on those Prestenes, the retribution will be famous.”
“Yes, make them pay,” Tej agreed cordially, glad to give her mother’s thoughts this more positive direction. By her standards.
“What do you see in that Barrayaran boy, anyway?” the Baronne asked querulously, dodging back despite Tej’s best efforts. “He just doesn’t seem very ambitious.”
“Mm,” said Tej. One woman’s defect is another woman’s delight? “I suppose…it’s all the things he sees in me.” That you don’t.
The Baronne peered at her in doubt. “Which are what, Tej-love? Besides your figure, clearly.” She waved away this as a given, at least with respect—or lack of respect—to Ivan Xav.
Everything, Baronne. On the other hand…was it really necessary to bloody her forehead trying to solve a problem already going away on its own? Within the hour, at that. That seemed a very Ivan Xav approach. So restful. The great charm of her and the Baronne living on two different planets, Tej decided, was that they could both stop trying to fix each other. She grinned crookedly, leaned up, and gave her mother a peck on the cheek, instead. “An appreciation of his figure.”
“Really, Tej!” But the Baronne’s hand stole to the kissed spot nonetheless.
Dada and Byerly arrived back then, the Baron with a heartening bustle, and Ivan Xav strolled in on their heels, ending this little mother-daughter ordeal. Moment. Again. Until the next time. Tej wondered if it would be redundant to think, Don’t ever change, Baronne.
Tej, Rish, Byerly, and Ivan Xav rendezvoused briefly in the living room, as the luggage was staged around them.
“So how did it go with Ser Imola?” Tej asked By.
“Succinctly.” By tilted a hand. “I was sent in part to impede long conversations, but it wasn’t necessary. You could just see the man fold into himself.” He added after a contemplative moment, “And prison-smock orange is so not Imola’s color. It was all quite, quite satisfying.”
“And you?” Ivan Xav asked.
Byerly grimaced, though a speculative glance under his unfairly long lashes at the listening Rish undercut his put-upon air. “Running around like a mad thing, of course. I’m going to have to leave a moving company to clear my apartment and put it all in storage. I packed last night—it was like trying to decide what to grab from a burning building. The story is I’m shipping out just ahead of imminent arrest for collusion with your in-laws for grand-theft-history. I am to be a Barrayaran renegade.” He struck a pose. “Rake’s regress, or something.”
“I’m sure you’ll do well,” Tej tried to console him.
“It’s bloody Jackson’s Whole. Where enemies are killed and eaten.”
“We do not!” said Rish indignantly.
Byerly waved this away. “I speak, of course, metaphorically.” Though he looked as if he weren’t entirely sure.
“Well, if you get in over your head, just try channeling your great-great-grandfather Bloody Pierre,” advised Ivan Xav. He added after a moment, “Or your great-great-grandmother. For you, either one.”
By cast a sneer at him.
Ivan Xav grinned, undaunted. He explained aside to Tej and Rish, “It was said that the only two people Le Sanguinaire feared were his wife, and Dorca Vorbarra. And no one’s too sure about Dorca.”
“Really?” said Tej, the golden glasses they’d all been drinking tunnel water from the other night becoming more interesting in retrospect.
“Vorrutyer family history,” By told her, “is the very essence of unreliable news source. Don’t listen to Vorpatril.” He sighed. “Though it is evident that you will. Congratulations, Ivan, if I failed to say that earlier.”
“Thank you,” Ivan Xav returned, bland.
And then it was time to all pitch in and help carry things down to the garage, where three luxurious governmental groundcars were pulled up waiting. Going out in style? Tej detected Lady Alys’s diplomatic hand at work; the Arquas might as easily have been carted away in one big prison van.
A pair of men in black-and-silver livery arrived in a separate, quite unremarkable groundcar, and transferred to the boot of one of the other vehicles a pair of familiar, heavy boxes, with old Ninth Satrapy seals on the tops. The senior of them approached the Baron and Baronne, and saluted.
“My Imperial master’s compliments, sir, and he commends to you this souvenir of your visit. May it help to speed you on your way.”
Dada’s brows shot up. Tej tried to calculate the value, in either Barrayaran marks or Betan dollars, of forty-four kilos of old Cetagandan gold coins, but ran afoul of her lack of experience with the antiquities market.
“Precisely two boxes out of forty,” murmured Dada. “Five percent. How scrupulous of him.” He raised his voice to the Vorbarra armsman. “Tell your Imperial master that Baron and Baronne Cordonah are as pleased to accept his memento as he is to bestow it.”
A little edged, don’t you think, Dada? But the armsman took it in expressionlessly, and marched off with his fellow to, Tej was fairly sure, deliver the words verbatim. The bulk of the payout would arrive later, by some boring tightbeam transfer. With a meticulous deduction for this payment-in-kind but, she was sure, otherwise in full.
Lady Alys and Simon arrived from upstairs, lending a touch of formality to the final farewell. Dada came over to Ivan Xav and Tej, standing together.
“They tell me,” he said, “that in some Barrayaran weddings, the father is expected to give away the bride. That struck me as valuing her much too low.”
“Just a figure of speech, sir,” Ivan Xav assured him, looking amused. “In actual high Vor marriages, the behind-the-scenes dealings over the details of the marriage contract can go on for months.”
“Well, that’s a little better,” the Baron allowed. “Your Gregor has to have obtained his skills from somewhere.”
Ivan Xav added, as if by way of consolation, “And, after all, you’re getting Byerly in trade.”
The Baron smiled thinly. “Yes, I know…” He turned to his daughter. “Your mother tells me, Tej, that she did convey our invitation for you to ride along to Pol Station, yes?”
“Yes, Dada,” said Tej. “But I’m staying right here.” She gripped Ivan Xav’s arm firmly; he covered her hand with his own.
“You know me—there’s no such thing as a last chance this side of death,” said Dada. “If ever you want to come home…”
“Thank you, Dada,” said Tej, wondering how many karma points she was totting up for not pointing out that actually, he hadn’t secured a home for her to come to, yet. It had better be a lot. On impulse, she pulled him aside, placed her hands on his shoulders, and looked him in the eye. It was a shock to her to discover they were the same height.
“Look at it this way, Dada. You’re coming away from Barrayar with everyone’s freedom, a ride, and a war chest. Not to mention the covert alliance with The Gregor. I can’t imagine any House heir alive who could match that bride-price, right now. It’s princely, more literally than anyone here quite lets on.” Barrayarans! “And do you think that you’d have had any of it if I hadn’t married Ivan Xav?”
“Mm…”
“You’ve got a great deal here. Don’t screw it up!”
“But I didn’t deal, not for him,” he returned, in some very Dada-ish frustration. “And I always meant to, for you!”
“I understand.” The corners of her mouth tugged up. “But Ivan Xav is a gift.”
She leaned, not up, but over, and kissed him on the cheek. It worked to divert him, too, from his argument—he patted her in distraction. She led him back, and linked arms with her Barrayaran husband once more.
“So…take good care of her, then, Captain Vorpatril.” Formally, Dada shook Ivan Xav’s free hand. His eyes narrowed right down, suddenly cold and hard; his grip did not loosen. “And you’d better believe that I can find some way to touch you, if you don’t.”
“No doubt a
t all, sir!” Ivan Xav assured him. He flinched under the pressure of that stare, and paw, but, she was proud to see, didn’t step back.
“That’s not necessary, Dada,” said Tej through her teeth.
“Yes, yes, Tej, love…”
And it was all swallowed up in last embraces, waves, cries, the clicking of silvered canopies, the hiss of groundcar engines, and…silence. More golden than Cetagandan coins.
Rubbing his hand on his trouser seam, Ivan Xav said plaintively. “Is asking Who can I kill for you? usually how people say I love you in Jacksonian?”
“No, just Dada,” Tej sighed. “Though the Baronne is more dangerous—she might not ask.”
“Ee,” said Ivan Xav.
“I’ve been reading your histories,” said Tej, giving him a hug. “Don’t try to tell me some of your ancestors didn’t think the same way. Starting with your Aunt Cordelia’s famous Winterfair gift to your Uncle Aral, and she wasn’t even Barrayaran! Severed heads, really?”
“Only the one,” he protested. “And I,” he added, drawing himself up with dignity, “am a much more modern Barrayaran.”
Tej pressed a smile out straight. “I’m sure you are, Lord Vorpatril.”
* * *
Their meeting the next morning with The Gregor was very short.
“Ylla?” said Ivan Xav in a confounded voice. “Where the hell is Ylla?”
Epilogue
Senior military attaché at the Barrayaran consulate on the planet Ylla might have been a more exciting assignment had there been any junior military attachés. Or, indeed, any other employees aside from one dispirited, homesick, and slightly alcoholic consul eking out the dregs of his diplomatic career. Ivan and Tej had arrived at what passed for the planetary industrial capital—the city was about half the size of New Evias—in what was midwinter for its hemisphere: rainy, cold, smoggy, and dull. Since Tej was still in a quivering heap from far too many wormhole jumps in too-close succession, she had greeted it, and their dingy provided apartment, with no more protest than a moan.
Well, that wouldn’t do. Hitting the consulate with what he would have considered average effort for a slow day at Imperial Headquarters, Ivan began ruthlessly applying Ops-style efficiencies to his duties, and when he ran out of those, to the consul’s. It didn’t take long to figure out that ninety-five percent of the consulate’s business came in over the perfectly adequate planetary comconsole net, and that the consulate, therefore, could be sited anywhere with a shuttleport. Shopping for a more salubrious climate didn’t take much longer. He had the whole place—lock, stock, comconsoles and consul—moved to a large, delightful island near the equator by the end of his third week, with money left over in the new budget to hire a clerk. Tej responded to the tropical light like a flower. By the end of his first month, Ivan had his duties pared down to a neat three mornings a week with the occasional odd hour, or pop-up trip to the orbital stations, and after that, it was all clear sailing.
Not that people did much sailing on Ylla’s extensive oceans, nor swimming either—Yllan seawater tended to give humans strange rashes, and while humans were highly toxic morsels in the diet of the native sea monsters, the monsters were extremely stupid and kept not figuring this out. But the view, out over the swimming pool from their house’s verandah, was luminous and beautiful—he waved at Tej, over there in the big hammock—and the sea wasn’t bad to look at, either. A person of simple tastes could live really well, really cheaply on Ylla, with the application of a little application. And with a more generous budget, even better.
“Mail call!” he told Tej. She looked up with a wide smile and set aside her earbug. Tightbeam messages from home were erratic at best, what with all the jumps through which they had to be carried; they could arrive out of order, spread out, or all in a wodge. Today’s delivery had been a wodge. He handed her a data disc to plug into her own reader, set on the table along with a promising pitcher and a couple of glasses, one half-full, the other upside down and waiting just for him. “Is that iced tea, or fruity girly drinks?”
“Fruity girly drinks. Want some?”
“Actually, yes.” He kicked off his sandals, climbed into the other end of the hammock, arranged the big cushions behind his back, took up his own reader, and laced his bare legs with hers. She was acquiring an almost Shiv-colored tan, which looked worlds better on her than on her Dada, making her sherry-colored eyes shine out like the gold coins on her favorite ankle bracelet—which, along with a skimpy swimsuit, she was currently wearing. The Ninth-Satrapy-coin anklet, and a few more stunning baubles, had been a birthday present sent by her fond Dada a few months back. Ivan had plans for that suit, later in the afternoon; the chiming anklet could stay.
“Busy morning?” she inquired, as the hammock settled.
“Eh, not really. I spent most of it editing my first annual performance review.”
Her brows rose in surprise. “I shouldn’t think you’d need to—the consul loves your work.”
“Oh, sure. I was just toning down the ecstasy a bit, before letting it loose in the tightbeam to home. Wouldn’t want to give people ideas. Like, for transfers. To anywhere but back home, that is.”
“When do you suppose they’ll let us come back to Barrayar?”
“Gregor guessed two years, a year ago; haven’t heard anything to change that, yet.” What Gregor had actually said was, Dammit, Ivan, you do realize it’s likely going to take two bloody years for this mess to blow over! At least! What were you thinking? Which Ivan had thought a trifle unfair, but that hadn’t seemed the moment to say so. And then Ivan, too, had gotten to discover how much packing for galactic exile on 26.7 hours’ notice was like grabbing your life from a burning building.
A little silence fell, as they both began reading.
“So what did you get?” Tej inquired, when his first Huh! invited interruption.
“Birthday greeting from Admiral Desplains.” Ivan’s thirty-sixth birthday had passed very pleasantly, two weeks ago. They’d stayed home. “He tells me that my replacement is a very efficient young man, but lacks my political nous. And is less entertaining, thank-you-I-think, Admiral.” Ivan read on. “I gather that he misses me. But that he doesn’t encourage me to think of coming back to Ops, because by that time I should be moving up and on, if I’m interpreting this correctly.”
“You probably are,” said Tej, with touching faith in his ability to decipher elliptical hints from senior officers. Likely justified, in this case.
“You had something from the Whole…?”
“Letter from Rish.” She tapped her reader. “So frustrating. She hates writing, so she never puts in enough detail, but she’s too cheap to send a recording.” Written messages were, indeed, the least expensive tightbeam communication to send by the long and winding wormhole routes, which was why almost everything that made it as far as Ylla was in this form. “Repairs on Cordonah Station are almost complete, she says. The reunited Jewels have danced their first public performance again, now that Topaz’s replacement legs have taken. I hope the Baronne tracked down whatever nasty Prestene head-meat came up with that idea.” She scowled. “In person.”
Ivan had never met Topaz, but he hoped so, too. Far more cruel than shaved hair, that amputation had sounded; it had allegedly been ordered in revenge for Topaz helping the Baron and Baronne to escape their Prestene captivity, all those months ago. A loyalty now redeemed; good. The revenge cycle…he declined to touch.
“And your brother Eric? Did they finally decide if he was cryo-revivable?”
“Mm, yes, but…huh.” Her brows rose. “They’re still keeping him on ice for a while. You know that Prestene capturing the station was in-part an inside job? Appears Eric was the in-part part. Tired of waiting for his inheritance? And so he received the reward from Prestene that anyone with a clue might have guessed was coming…unless he saw which way things were going and turned to fight them at the end. Give him credit, Rish says, he does seem to have been thinking of forcible retireme
nt for Dada, not patricide, but apparently someone figured out how to cut those costs. Dada and the Baronne must have known this, but back on Barrayar they didn’t give me the least hint…Oh, my, that boy is so grounded! I expect my parents’ll keep him as a threat in reserve for a while, in case Star and Pidge aren’t able to work out their little differences as to who should be heiress. That’s one way to keep them yoked together…”
Ivan tried not to picture Eric Arqua’s cryochamber being used as a coffee table, but who knew? “So…will they ever revive him?”
“In a few years, I expect. When Star and Pidge are firmly in place. And then he’ll get to be their little brother.” Ivan wasn’t sure he wanted to know what family memories fueled her evil chuckle. “In other words, House Cordonah’s internal politics are nearly back to normal. So glad I’m here and not there…” Her ankle-coins chimed, as her foot rubbed Ivan’s calf.
“I am, too,” he declared, without reservation. “Does she write anything about Byerly?”
She scrolled on a short way. “No, not really. But if anything dire had happened to him she would have said—I think—so I suppose all is well.”
“I have one from him. What’s the date on yours…?” A quick cross-check assured Ivan that By’s letter had followed almost a week after Rish’s, so that was all right. So far. “At least I can’t accuse Byerly of writing, or talking, too little. Though finding the message in the missive is a bit like looking for the meat in those meatballs they sell off the carts in the Great Square…Holy crap.” Ivan’s lurch nearly tipped the hammock.
Tej’s bright eyes widened in inquiry.
“You know that brooch-thing that your Grandmama picked up off the floor in the bunker…?’
“Yes?”
“By finally found out what the hell it was.”
“I was thinking haut-lady bio-weapons, myself, but I didn’t like to say anything at the time. I didn’t think we needed more complications to getting everyone on their way home without being jailed, and if she wanted to use them on Prestene, that was between her and the Baron and Baronne. Nothing to do with Barrayar, right?”
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