Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Even-sister and odd-sister?” said Tej. “We call each other that because we are, more-or-less. Half-siblings, at least. The Baronne used a lot of her own genome as a base to create the Jewels. Although not Dada’s, except for the Y chromosome for Onyx. In a way, Ruby was really the first, the Baronne’s prototype, so she claims to count as One, in a class by herself. Erik was the next first, and then Topaz, and Star, then Pearl, and then Pidge, and then Emerald, and then Amiri, and then Rish and then finally me, and right after me, Jet—Onyx, that is. Odds and evens, see? It became a sort of family joke.” She sighed in memory. “Only now we’re all scattered. And Erik . . . I wish we could get some word about Topaz. I won’t say it’s worse, not knowing if she’s alive or not. But it’s . . . not good.”

  Ivan stared open-mouthed at Rish, who stared back in somewhat affronted dignity. “So you’re my sister-in-law?” He sat a moment, not so much in reflection as stunned—like an ox that had just met a mallet. “That sure explains a lot . . .”

  Byerly didn’t help by laughing like a loon.

  * * *

  “You could take some other courses,” said Ivan Xav a week later, when Tej’s ground-vehicle operation training had concluded in triumph, or at least not disaster, and left her with a certification giving her the freedom of the city—if she could, first, borrow a vehicle, and second, wedge through the traffic. Bubble-tube systems were being retrofitted in some areas, but the installation was evidently slow, plagued with problems. It sometimes seemed to Tej as if this entire planet was in process of being retrofitted.

  “There are three major universities and over a dozen colleges and who knows how many tech schools in this town,” Ivan Xav went on. “They have courses for everything. Well, maybe not licensed practicing sexuality whats-its, but given the way the conservative crowd complains, that may be next. You’re smart. You could pick anything you liked.”

  Tej contemplated this offer, both uneasy and enticed. “I always had tutors, before. I never chose my own, like, off a menu.”

  “It might be a way for you to meet more people, too,” Ivan Xav speculated. “I should really introduce you to more than the Koudelka girls, come to think. All the women I know have women friends—to excess, sometimes.” He paused for thought. “There’s Tatya Vorbretten, though she’s up to her ears in infants right now, as bad as Ekaterin and Delia. Tattie Vorsmythe? She was always fun, despite her strange taste in men. Not sure who all Mamere could suggest, of the younger generation. She used to know lots of Vor maidens, daughters of her cronies, y’know, but they mostly seem to have got married and moved along.”

  This mental search for names was interrupted when he went to answer his comconsole. When he came back, he looked stricken.

  “Bad news?” asked Tej, sitting up on the couch and setting aside her reader.

  “No, not . . . not really. It was the Clerk’s office at the Vorpatril District Court. Says they had a case fall off Falco’s docket for the first afternoon of next week, and did I want the slot? I, uh . . . said yes. Because God knows when there’ll be another, y’know?”

  “Oh, excellent,” said Rish, wandering in from the kitchen with a fresh mug of tea in her hand in time to hear this. “One more chore out of the way.”

  “Oh,” Tej echoed hollowly. “Yeah. Good.”

  * * *

  It was like some weird sort of honeymoon in reverse, Ivan thought. Taking a personal day’s leave from Ops left him facing a three-day weekend, not something to waste. So Ivan seized the chance to show Tej more of Barrayar while he could, outside of the hectic confines of the capital. Rish, upon finding that her witness was not required, elected to stay behind under the loose supervision of Byerly, and just how loose that might be, Ivan wasn’t asking, gift horses and all that. It left him with a great chance for a real getaway with Tej, just the two of them at last.

  It was not the season for tourists in the northeastern coastal District traditionally held by the Vorpatril counts. As his lightflyer beat its way up the shoreline against a cold sea wind, Ivan explained to Tej, “People come up here from the south in the summer to escape the heat. Then go back down in the winter to find it again. If there’s time, maybe I could take you down to see the south coast, too.” Time. There wasn’t enough time. Yes, the marriage was supposed to have been temporary. But not bleeding instantaneous.

  He took a detour over the rural territory, to give Tej an idea of the extent of it. A few areas of early snow, just inland, proved no novelty to her, as Jackson’s Whole was apparently temperate all the way to the equator, with large and barren polar regions. Happily, the snow covered up the last few biocide blights lingering from the Occupation. But a little way up the coast past the summer resort town of Bonsanklar, Good Saint Claire in one of the old tongues, lay a cozy little inn specializing in the Vor trade, fondly remembered from a few visits in Ivan’s youth. It was still there, perhaps a little shabbier, but just as cozy. He and Tej managed one walk on the pebbled beach before darkness drove them indoors; the next day it rained, but their end room boasted its own fireplace, food service, and no reason to go out. None at all.

  Far too soon the next morning, they were back in his lightflyer, threading their way upriver to the Vorpatril District capital city of New Evias.

  “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to call him,” said Tej, peering anxiously ahead out the front canopy. “Count Vorpatril or Count Falco? And if only his heir is Lord Vorpatril, why are you Lord Vorpatril too, or are you?”

  “All right, I’ll try to explain it. Again,” said Ivan. “There are the counts and their heirs, political heirs. Count Vorwho, Lord Vorwho, Lord Firstname—the firstborn males—like Aral, Miles, and Sasha, all right?”

  “That, I got.”

  “Any other siblings of Lord Firstname, like Sasha’s twin Lady Helen, get to stick on a Lord or Lady in front of their names too, as a courtesy title. Whether they drool or not. But those titles aren’t inherited in the next generation. So we have a case like By, whose grandfather was a count, whose father was a younger son and so Lord Firstname, and then Byerly, who is just Vorrutyer, the Vor part standing in for any other honorific. So you’d never introduce him as Mister or Monsieur Vorrutyer, just as Vorrutyer. Although his wife, if he had one, would be Madame Vorrutyer, and his sister, before she married, was Mademoiselle Vorrutyer.”

  “All right,” said Tej, more doubtfully.

  “Then, just to confuse the tourists, there are a bunch more Lord Vorlastnames running around, like me, who have the title as a permanent inheritance even though we aren’t in line for any Districts. My grandfather, who was just a younger grandson of that generation’s Count Vorpatril and so didn’t even rate a Lord Firstname, was given his when he married Princess Sonia, as some sort of prize, I guess.”

  “Oh,” said Tej, fainter but still valiant. “But . . .”

  “Those are the correct formal titles. Then we come to casual conversation. Falco, or Aral, would be Falco or Aral to their close friends and cronies, wives, and what-not. But I’d never call ’em that; it would be Count Falco or Count Aral, sort of like Uncle Aral. Informal but not so familiar or intimate, y’see? And also useful when there are a bunch of people with the same last name in the conversation, to keep straight which is which. So my mother gets called Lady Alys a lot, because there’s another Lady Vorpatril in town, Falco’s daughter-in-law, as well as his Countess Vorpatril. Er, and you, now.”

  “But . . . I’m not intimate with the same people you’re intimate with—so I can’t just copy you, can I?”

  “Keep it simple,” advised Ivan. “Just call him Count Vorpatril or Sir, unless he tells you otherwise. And still call him Count Vorpatril when we’re actually in his court, because that’s very formal, see?” He added after a moment, “I sure plan to.”

  The outskirts of New Evias hove into view, and Ivan had to give over his lightflyer’s control to the municipal traffic computer. New Evias was maybe one-tenth the size of Vorbarr Sultana, but perhaps f
or that very reason, more uniformly modernized. In any case, the control system brought them down neatly into one of the few empty circles painted atop the parking garage next to the assorted District offices of justice. The targeting was accurate to within, oh, twenty centimeters or so. Or thirty. Ivan rubbed his jaw, made sure Tej hadn’t bitten her tongue or anything in the hard landing, and escorted her out.

  Count Falco Vorpatril sat in judgment, as had several equally stodgy ancestors before him, in one of the few remaining Time-of-Isolation public buildings still left standing in downtown New Evias. The structure’s musty legal smell seemed to be ageless. Tej, who had grown very silent, perked up at the dark woodwork and elaborate stone carving gracing the architecture. “Now, this really looks like Barrayar,” she said. Ivan was gratified.

  In a second-floor corridor, they encountered, prematurely, the count himself, who seemed to be on his way back from lunch.

  “Ivan, my boy!” Falco hailed them.

  He was still white-haired, stout, jovial—like a sly Father Frost with a hidden agenda. Falco was nothing if not a political survivor, Conservative by inclination, Centrist by calculation. He wore the formal Vorpatril House uniform of dark blue and gold, which adapted itself to his contours much as he adapted himself to the political landscape. A clerk bearing an electronic case filer stamped with the Vorpatril crest dogged his steps, obsequiously. Falco eyed Tej in open appreciation as they stopped and he strolled up.

  “Sir.” Ivan came to attention. “May I introduce my wife, Lady Tej?”

  “Indeed, you may.” Count Falco shook Tej’s hand, aborting a vague attempt on her part at a curtsey. “I’ve heard about you, young lady.”

  “How do you do, Count Vorpatril, sir,” said Tej. Loading it all in, just in case, Ivan guessed.

  “Talk with Mamere, did you, sir?” Ivan hazarded.

  “Quite an entertaining talk, yes.”

  “Oh, good, that’ll save a shipload of time.” Ivan squeezed Tej’s hand. “See, didn’t I say it’ll be fine?” Tej smiled gratefully and squeezed back, huddling closer. Ivan slipped a supporting arm around her waist.

  Falco smiled benignly. “Countess Vorpatril was very curious about your nuptials, Ivan,” he went on, tapping Ivan familiarly on the chest with one broad finger. “She’d like to hear about them from you, by preference. We will both be down to the capital later in the week, note, where you may find her at Vorpatril House at the usual hours. You are behindhand on your courtesy visit, head of the clan and all that.”

  “It’s only a temporary marriage, sir, as I hope Mamere explained? To rescue Tej from some, um, legal complications on Komarr. Which worked fine, all right and tight—got her all fixed up, free of them. Now we just have to get her free of me, and she’ll be, um . . . free.”

  The clerk touched his wristcom, indicating time issues, and Count Falco gave him an acknowledging wave. “Yes, yes, I know. Well, good luck to you both . . .”

  Falco toddled off down the corridor to the back door of his chambers. Ivan led Tej in the opposite direction, where they found the waiting area. Another clerk took their names, and left them to wait.

  Tej circled the room, eyeing the woodwork and the items decorating the walls, mostly historical artifacts and prints, then stood studying the big wall viewer displaying successive scans of New Evias and rural District scenes since the Time of Isolation.

  Ivan, too, rose after a while, because sitting was becoming unbearable, and studied the woodwork, or pretended to. “I’m glad they didn’t just knock this old place down like most of the rest of it. Makes it feel like our past isn’t just something to be thrown on a scrap heap, now we’re all turning galactic, y’know?”

  This brought a smile to Tej’s lips, one of the few in the past hours. “Is that what you Barrayarans think you’re doing?”

  But before Ivan could figure out a reply, the clerk returned to say, “Captain and Lady Vorpatril? Your case is up next.”

  The clerk led them down the hall to Falco’s hearings chamber. They stood aside to let a group, no, two groups of people exit, one set looking elated, the other downcast and grumpy. The wood-paneled room was surprisingly small, and, to Ivan’s relief, uncrowded: just Falco and his clerk sitting at a desk on a raised dais; a couple of desks toward the front, where a woman lawyer was gathering up what appeared to be stacks of yellowing physical documents dating back to the Time of Isolation, along with her electronic casebook; some empty backless benches bolted to the floor; and, by the door, an elderly sergeant-at-arms in a Vorpatril District uniform. The sergeant received Ivan and Tej from the clerk, who departed again, presumably to deal with whoever next needed to wait, and directed them to the empty tables.

  “Um, should be one of you at each of these,” he said doubtfully, “and your respective counsels.”

  “I’ll be out of here in just a moment,” said the lawyer, stacking faster.

  “We’re skipping the counsel,” said Ivan. “Don’t need it.”

  “And we’d rather sit together,” said Tej. Ivan nodded, and they both slipped behind the empty desk. Ivan let his hand dangle down between their uncomfortable wooden chairs, and Tej slid hers into it. Her fingers felt cold and bloodless, not at all like her usual self.

  Count Falco lifted his head from some low-voiced consultation with his recording clerk, then made a sign to the sergeant-at-arms, who turned to the room and announced formally: “Next case, Captain Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril versus Lady . . .” The sergeant paused and looked down at a slip in his hand, his lips moving. They rounded in doubt; he finally settled on, “His wife, Lady Vorpatril.”

  The lawyer, about to make her exit, instead turned around and slid onto one of the back benches, her chin lifting in arrested curiosity. Ivan decided to ignore her.

  The recording clerk leaned over, grasped an ancient cavalry spear bearing a blue-and-gold pennant that leaned drunkenly against the table edge, tapped its butt loudly in its wooden rest, and intoned, “Your Count is listening. Complainants please step forward.”

  Tej looked at Ivan in panic; Count Falco leaned forward and encouraged them to their feet with a little crooking of his hands. A charitable pointing of one thick finger indicated where they should stand. Ivan and Tej stood and shuffled to a spot beneath his countly eye, holding hands very tightly.

  The clerk observed into his recorder, “Petition for the dissolution of a marriage number six-five-five-seven-eight, oaths originally taken”—he gave the date of that mad scramble in Ivan’s rental flat—“Solstice Dome, Komarr.”

  Ivan wasn’t sure whether to think, Wait, was it only a month ago? or Is it a whole month already? It had not been like any other month of his acquaintance, anyway.

  “So . . .” Falco laced his hands together and stared down at Ivan and Tej for a long, thoughtful moment. Ivan, rendered uneasy by the sheer geezerish Falco-ness of his expression, edged closer to Tej.

  Falco leaned back in his chair. “So, Captain Vorpatril, Lady Vorpatril. On what grounds do you petition this court for release from your spoken oaths?”

  Ivan blinked. “Grounds, sir?” he hazarded.

  “What is, or are, the substances of your complaint or complaints against each other?”

  “It was understood from the beginning to be a temporary deal.”

  “Yet you took permanent oath all the same.”

  “Er, yes, sir?”

  “Do you happen to be able to remember what you said?”

  “Yes?”

  “Repeat it for the court, please?”

  Ivan did so, stumbling less than he had the first time, and leaving out the of sound mind and body part because he was afraid the lady lawyer would laugh.

  Falco turned to Tej. “Is that as you also remember it, Lady Vorpatril?”

  “Yes, sir, Count Vorpatril.” She glanced at Ivan, and ventured, “So what are the usual grounds for divorce on Barrayar, Count Vorpatril, sir?”

  Falco folded his arms on his desk, smiling toothily. “Well, let’s ju
st run down the list, shall we? Did either of you, at the time of your marriage, bear a concealed mutation?”

  Tej’s eyebrows rose, for a moment almost haughty. Or haut-like. “I was gene-cleaned at conception, certified free of over five thousand potential defects.”

  “Mm, no doubt. And the Cetagandan element has undergone recent revision of precedent here, so that won’t count either. Besides, I believe Ivan knew of your ancestry?”

  “Yes, sir, Count Vorpatril, sir.”

  “Ivan?” Falco prodded.

  “Huh?” Ivan started. “Oh, you know I’m fine, sir!”

  “So we all have long hoped,” Falco murmured. “Well, that disposes of that issue. Next, adultery. Do either of you accuse the other of adultery?”

  “There’s hardly been time, sir!” said Ivan indignantly.

  “You would be amazed at the tales I have heard upon this dais. Lady Tej?”

  “No, Count Vorpatril, sir.”

  Falco paused. “Ah . . . or admit to it?”

  They both shook their heads. Tej looked peeved. “Really!” she whispered to Ivan.

  “Well, let’s see, what next. Desertion, obviously not. Nonsupport?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” said Tej.

  “Does your spouse supply you with adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care?”

  “Oh—yes, sir! Abundantly. Vorbarr Sultana cuisine is just amazing! I’ve gained a kilo since we got here. Lady Vorpatril’s dresser helped me find the right clothes, Ivan’s flat is very nice, and medical issues, um, haven’t come up.”

  “We’d cover it,” Ivan assured her. “Whatever it was. God forbid, of course.”

  “And I see you, too, are looking quite healthy, Captain Vorpatril . . . hm, hm. What else do we have here.” Falco . . . made play, Ivan was sure, of consulting some notes. Does he do this performance for every divorce petition, or are we special?

  “Abuse—physical, mental, emotional?”