Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “If I start after breakfast,” he explained, “I can generally achieve total unconsciousness by lunch.”

  Pretty close to lunch now. His speech had misled her at first, being perfectly clear, only slower and more hesitant than usual. “There must be less poisonous general anesthetics.” The straw-pale wine he had poured her was excellent, although dry for her taste. “You do this every day?”

  “God, no.” He shuddered. “Two or three times a week at most. One day drinking, the next day being ill—a hangover is quite as good as being drunk for taking your mind off other things—the next day running errands and such for my father. He’s slowed down a great deal in the last few years.”

  He was gradually pulling himself into better focus, as his initial awkward terror of being repellant to her ebbed. He sat up and rubbed his hand over his face in the familiar gesture, as if to scrub away the numbness, and made a stab at light conversation. “That’s a pretty dress. A great improvement over those orange things.”

  “Thanks,” she said, falling in immediately with his lead. “I’m sorry I can’t say the same for your shirt—does that represent your own taste, by chance?”

  “No, it was a gift.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  “Something of a joke. Some of my officers got together and purchased it on the occasion of my first promotion to admiral, before Komarr. I always think of them, when I wear it.”

  “Well, that’s nice. In that case I guess I can get used to it.”

  “Three of the four are dead, now. Two died at Escobar.”

  “I see.” So much for light chitchat. She swirled her wine around in the bottom of her glass. “You look like hell, you know. Pasty.”

  “Yes, I stopped exercising. Bothari’s quite offended.”

  “I’m glad Bothari didn’t get in too much trouble over Vorrutyer.”

  “It was touch and go, but I got him off. Illyan’s testimony helped.”

  “Yet they discharged him.”

  “Honorably. On a medical.”

  “Did you put your father up to hiring him?”

  “Yes. It seemed like the right thing to do. He’ll never be normal, as we think of it, but at least he has a uniform, and a weapon, and regulations of a sort to follow. It seems to give him an anchor.” He ran a finger slowly around the rim of the brandy tumbler. “He was Vorrutyer’s batman for four years, you see. He was not too well, when he was first assigned to the General Vorkraft. On the verge of a split personality—separating memories, the works. Rather scary. Being a soldier seems to be about the only human role he can meet the demands of. It allows him a kind of self-respect.” He smiled at her. “You, on the other hand, look like heaven. Can you, ah—stay long?”

  There was a hesitant hunger in his face, soundless desire suppressed by uncertainty. We have hesitated so long, she thought, it’s become a habit. Then it dawned on her that he feared she might only be visiting. Hell of a long trip for a chat, my love. You are drunk.

  “As long as you like. I discovered, when I went home—it was changed. Or I was changed. Nothing fit anymore. I offended nearly everybody, and left one step ahead of, um, a whole lot of trouble. I can’t go back. I resigned my commission—mailed it in from Escobar—and everything I own is in the back of that flyer down there.”

  She savored the delight that ignited his eyes during this speech, as it finally penetrated that she was here to stay. It contented her.

  “I would get up,” he said, sliding to the side of his chair, “but for some reason my legs go first and my tongue last. I’d rather fall at your feet in some more controlled fashion. I’ll improve shortly. Meantime, will you come sit here?”

  “Gladly.” She changed chairs. “But won’t I squash you? I’m kind of tall.”

  “Not a bit. I loathe tiny women. Ah, that’s better.”

  “Yes.” She nestled down with him, arms around his chest, resting her head on his shoulder, and hooking one leg over him as well, to emphatically complete his capture. The captive emitted something between a sigh and a laugh. She wished they might sit like that forever.

  “You’ll have to give up this suicide-by-alcohol thing, you know.”

  He cocked his head. “I thought I was being subtle.”

  “Not noticeably.”

  “Well, it suits me. It’s extraordinarily uncomfortable.”

  “Yes, you’ve worried your father. He gave me the funniest look.”

  “Not his glare, I hope. He has a very withering glare. Perfected over a lifetime.”

  “Not at all. He smiled.”

  “Good God.” A grin crinkled the corners of his eyes.

  She laughed, and craned her neck for a look at his face. That was better… .

  “I’ll shave, too,” he promised in a burst of enthusiasm.

  “Don’t go overboard on my account. I came to retire, too. A separate peace, as they say.”

  “Peace, indeed.” He nuzzled her hair, breathing its scent. His muscles unwound beneath her like an overtaut bow unstrung.

  *

  A few weeks after their marriage they took their first trip together, Cordelia accompanying Vorkosigan on his periodic pilgrimmage to the Imperial Military Hospital in Vorbarr Sultana. They traveled in a groundcar borrowed from the Count, Bothari taking what was evidently his usual role as combination driver and bodyguard. To Cordelia, who was just beginning to know him well enough to see through his taciturn facade, he seemed on edge. He glanced uncertainly over her head, seated between him and Vorkosigan.

  “Did you tell her, sir?”

  “Yes, everything. It’s all right, Sergeant.”

  Cordelia added encouragingly, “I think you’re doing the right thing, Sergeant. I’m, um, very pleased.”

  He relaxed a little, and almost smiled. “Thank you, milady.”

  She studied his profile covertly, her mind ranging over the array of difficulties he would be taking back to the hired village woman at Vorkosigan Surleau this day, gravely doubtful of his ability to handle them. She risked probing a little.

  “Have you thought about—what you’re going to tell her about her mother, as she grows older? She’s bound to want to know eventually.”

  He nodded, was silent, then spoke. “Going to tell her she’s dead. Tell her we were married. It’s not a good thing to be a bastard here.” His hand tightened on the controls. “So she won’t be. No one must call her that.”

  “I see.” Good luck, she thought. She turned to a lighter question. “Do you know what you’re going to name her?”

  “Elena.”

  “That’s pretty. Elena Bothari.”

  “It was her mother’s name.”

  Cordelia was surprised into an unguarded remark. “I thought you couldn’t remember Escobar!”

  A little time went by, and he said, “You can beat the memory drugs, some, if you know how.”

  Vorkosigan raised his eyebrows. Evidently this was new to him, too. “How do you do that, Sergeant?” he asked, carefully neutral.

  “Someone I knew once told me … You write down what you want to remember, and think about it. Then hide it—the way we used to hide your secret files from Radnov, sir—they never figured it out either. Then first thing when you get back, before your stomach even settles, take it out and look at it. If you can remember one thing on the list, you can usually get the rest, before they come back again. Then do the same thing again. And again. It helps if you have an, an object, too.”

  “Did you have, ah, an object?” asked Vorkosigan, clearly fascinated.

  “Piece of hair.” He fell silent again for a long time, then volunteered, “She had long, black hair. It smelled nice.”

  Cordelia, boggled and bemused by the implications of his story, settled back and found something to look at out the canopy. Vorkosigan looked faintly illuminated, like a man who’d found a key piece in a difficult puzzle. She watched the varied scenery, enjoying the clear sunlight, summer air so cool one needed no protective devices, and the litt
le glimpses of green and water in the hollows of the hills. She also noticed something else. Vorkosigan saw the direction of her glance.

  “Ah, you spotted them, did you?”

  Bothari smiled slightly.

  “The flyer that doesn’t outpace us?” said Cordelia. “Do you know who it is?”

  “Imperial Security.”

  “Do they always follow you to the capital?”

  “They always follow me all the time. It hasn’t been easy to convince people I was serious about retiring. Before you came I used to amuse myself flushing them out. Do things like go drunk driving in my flyer in those canyons to the south on the moonlit nights. It’s new. Very fast. That used to drive them to distraction.”

  “Heavens, that sounds positively lethal. Did you really do that?”

  He looked mildly ashamed of himself. “I’m afraid so. I didn’t think you’d be coming here, then. It was a thrill. I hadn’t gone adrenaline-tripping on purpose since I was a teenager. The Service rather supplied that need.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t have a wreck.”

  “I did, once,” he admitted. “Just a minor crackup. That reminds me, I must check on the repairs. They seem to be taking forever at it. The alcohol made me limp as a rag, I suppose, and I never quite had the nerve to do without the shoulder harness. No harm done, except to the flyer and Captain Negri’s agent’s nerves.”

  “Twice,” commented Bothari unexpectedly.

  “I beg your pardon, Sergeant?”

  “You wrecked it twice.” The sergeant’s lips twitched. “You don’t remember the second time. Your father said he wasn’t surprised. We helped, um, pour you out of the safety cage. You were unconscious for a day.”

  Vorkosigan looked startled. “Are you pulling my leg, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir. You can go look at the pieces of the flyer. They’re scattered for a kilometer and a half down Dendarii Gorge.”

  Vorkosigan cleared his throat, and shrunk down in his seat. “I see.” He was quiet, then added, “How—unpleasant, to have a blank like that in one’s memory.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bothari blandly.

  Cordelia glanced up at the following flyer through a gap in the hills. “Have they been watching us all this time? Me, too?”

  Vorkosigan smiled at the look on her face. “From the moment you set foot in the Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport, I should imagine. I happen to be politically hot, after Escobar. The press, which is Ezar Vorbarra’s third hand here, has me set up as a kind of hero-in-retreat, snatching victory spontaneously from the jaws of defeat and so on—absolute tripe. Makes my stomach hurt, even without the brandy. I should have been able to do a better job, knowing what I knew in advance. Sacrificed too many cruisers, covering the troopships—it had to be traded off that way, sheer arithmetic demanded it, though… .”

  She could mark by his face as his thoughts wandered into a well-trodden labyrinth of military might-have-beens. Damn Escobar, she thought, and damn your emperor, damn Serg Vorbarra and Ges Vorrutyer, damn all the chances of time and place that combined to squeeze a boy’s dream of heroism into a man’s nightmare of murder, crime, and deceit. Her presence was a great palliative for him, but it was not enough; still something remained unwell in him, out of tune.

  As they approached Vorbarr Sultana from the south, the hill country flattened out into a fertile plain, and the population grew more concentrated. The city straddled a broad silver river, with the oldest government buildings, ancient converted fortresses most of them, hugging the bluffs and high points commanding the river’s edge. The modern city spilled back from them to the north and south.

  The newer government offices, efficient blocky monoliths, were concentrated between. They passed through this complex, making for one of the city’s famous bridges to cross the river to the north.

  “My God, what happened there?” asked Cordelia, as they passed one whole block of burnt-out buildings, blackened and skeletal.

  Vorkosigan smiled sourly. “That was the Ministry of Political Education, before the riots two months ago.”

  “I heard a little about those, at Escobar, on my way here. I had no idea they were so extensive.”

  “They weren’t, really. Quite carefully orchestrated. Personally, I thought it was a damned dangerous way to get the job done. Although I suppose it was a step up in subtlety from Yuri Vorbarra’s Defenestration of the Privy Council. A generation of progress, of sorts … I didn’t think Ezar was going to get that genie back in the bottle, but he seems to have managed it. As soon as Grishnov was killed all the troops they’d called for, which for some reason all seemed to have been diverted to guard the Imperial Residence”—he snorted—“turned up and cleared the streets, and the riot just melted away, except for a few fanatics, and some wounded spirits who’d lost kin at Escobar. That got ugly, but it was suppressed in the news.”

  They crossed the river and came at length to the large and famous hospital, almost a city within a city, spread out in its walled park. They found Ensign Koudelka alone in his room, lying glumly on his bed in the green uniform pajamas. Cordelia thought at first that he waved to them, but abandoned the idea as his left arm continued to move up and down from the elbow in slow rhythm.

  He did sit up and smile as his ex-commander entered, and exchange nods with Bothari. The smile broadened to a grin as he saw her in Vorkosigan’s wake. His face was much older than it used to be.

  “Captain Naismith, ma’am! Lady Vorkosigan, I should say. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “I thought the same. Glad to be mistaken.” She smiled back.

  “And congratulations, sir. Thanks for sending the note. I sort of missed you the past few weeks, but—I can see you had better things to do.” His grin made this comment stingless.

  “Thank you, Ensign. Ah—what happened to your arm?”

  Koudelka grimaced. “I had a fall this morning. Something’s shorted out. Doc should be coming around to fix it in a few minutes. It could have been worse.”

  The skin on his arms, Cordelia noted, was covered with a network of fine red scars, marking the lines of the prosthetic nerve implants.

  “You’re walking, then. That’s good to hear,” Vorkosigan encouraged.

  “Yeah, sort of.” He brightened. “And at least they’ve got my guts under control now. I don’t care that I can’t feel anything from that department, now that I’ve finally got rid of that damned colostomy.”

  “Are you in very much pain?” asked Cordelia diffidently.

  “Not much,” Koudelka tossed off. She felt he was lying. “—but the worst part, besides being so clumsy and out-of-balance, are the sensations. Not pain, but weird things. False intelligence reports. Like tasting colors with your left foot, or feeling things that aren’t there, like bugs crawling all over you, or not feeling things that are there, like heat …” His gaze fell on his bandaged right ankle.

  A doctor entered, and conversation stopped while Koudelka removed his shirt. The doctor attached a ‘scope to his shoulder, and went fishing for the short circuit with a delicate surgical hand tractor. Koudelka paled and stared fixedly at his knees, but at last the arm stopped its slow oscillation and lay limply at his side.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave it out of commission for the rest of the day,” apologized the doctor. “We’ll get it tomorrow when you go in for the work on that adductor group on your right leg.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Koudelka waved him away with his working right hand, and he gathered his tools and moved on.

  “I know it must seem to you to be taking forever,” said Vorkosigan, looking at Koudelka’s frustrated face, “but it seems to me every time I come in here you’ve made more progress. You are going to get out of here,” he said confidently.

  “Yeah, the surgeon says they’re going to kick me out in about two months.” He smiled. “But they say I’ll never be fit for combat again.” The smile slid away, and his face crumpled. “Oh, sir! They’re going to discha
rge me! All this endless hacking around for nothing!” He turned his face away from them, rigid and embarrassed, until his features were under control again.

  Vorkosigan too looked away, not inflicting his sympathy, until the ensign looked back again with his smile carefully reattached. “I can see why,” Koudelka said brightly, nodding to the silent Bothari propping up the wall and apparently content just to listen. “A few good body blows like the ones you used to give me in the practice ring, and I’d be flopping around like a fish. Not a good example to set my men. I guess I’ll just have to find—some kind of desk work.” He glanced at Cordelia. “Whatever happened to your ensign, the one that got hit in the head?”

  “The last time I saw him, after Escobar—I visited him just two days before I left home, I guess. He’s the same. He did get out of the hospital. His mother quit her job, and stays home to take care of him, now.”

  Koudelka’s eyes fell, and Cordelia was wrenched by the shame in his face. “And I bitch my head off about a few twitches. Sorry.”

  She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

  Later, alone with Vorkosigan in the corridor a moment, Cordelia leaned her head against his shoulder, and was taken in his arms. “I can see why you started drinking after breakfast, on the days after this. I could use a stiff one myself, just now.”

  “I’ll take you to lunch after the next stop, and we can all have one,” he promised.

  *

  The research wing was their next destination. The military doctor in charge greeted Vorkosigan cordially, and only looked a little blank when Cordelia was introduced, without explanation, as Lady Vorkosigan.

  “I hadn’t realized you were married, sir.”

  “Recently.”

  “Oh? Congratulations. I’m glad you decided to come see one of these, sir, before they’re all done. It’s really almost the most interesting part. Would milady wish to wait here while we take care of this little business?” He looked embarrassed.

  “Lady Vorkosigan has been fully briefed.”

  “Besides,” added Cordelia brightly, “I have a personal interest.”

  The doctor looked puzzled, but led on to the monitoring room. Cordelia stared doubtfully at the half-dozen remaining canisters lined up in a row. The technician on duty joined them trundling some equipment obviously borrowed from some other hospital’s obstetrics department.