Barrayar

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Piotr focused on Aral first. "You. You dared to shame me in public. Entrap me."

  "You shamed yourself, I fear, sir. If you had not gone down that path, you would not have found that trap."

  Piotr's tight jaw worked this one over, the lines in his face grooved deep. Anger; embarrassment struggling with self-righteousness. Embarrassed as only one in the wrong can be. He doubts himself, Cordelia realized. A thread of hope. Let us not lose that thread, it may be our only way out of this labyrinth.

  The self-rightousness took ascendance. "I shouldn't have to be doing this," snarled Piotr. "It's women's work. Guarding our genome."

  "Was women's work, in the Time of Isolation," said Aral in level tones. "When the only answer to mutation was infanticide. Now there are other answers."

  "How strange women must have felt about their pregnancies, never knowing if there was life or death at the end of them," Cordelia mused. One sip from that cup was all she desired for a lifetime, and yet Barrayaran women had drained it to the dregs over and over . . . the wonder was not that their descendants' culture was chaotic, but that it wasn't more completely insane.

  "You fail all of us when you fail to control her," said Piotr. "How do you imagine you can run a planet when you cannot run your own household?"

  One corner of Aral's mouth twisted up slightly. "Indeed, she is difficult to control. She escaped me twice. Her voluntary return still astounds me."

  "Awake to your duties! To me as your Count if not as your father. You are liege-sworn to me. Do you choose to obey this off-worlder woman before me?"

  "Yes." Aral looked him straight in the eye. His voice fell to a whisper. "That is the proper order of things." Piotr flinched. Aral added dryly, "Attempting to switch the issue from infanticide to obedience will not help you, sir. You taught me specious-rhetoric-chopping yourself."

  "In the old days, you could have been beheaded for less insolence."

  "Yes, the present setup is a little peculiar. As a count's heir, my hands are between yours, but as your Regent, your hands are between mine. Oath-stalemate. In the old days we could have broken the deadlock with a nice little war." He grinned back, or at least bared his teeth. Cordelia's mind gyrated, One day only: The Irresistible Force Meets the Immovable Object. Tickets, five marks.

  The door to the hallway swung open, and Lieutenant Koudelka peered nervously within. "Sir? Sorry to interrupt. I'm having trouble with the comconsole. It's down again."

  "What sort of trouble, Lieutenant?" Vorkosigan asked, wrenching his attention around with an effort. "The intermittency?"

  "It's just not working."

  "It was fine a few hours ago. Check the power supply."

  "Did that, sir."

  "Call a tech."

  "I can't, without the comconsole."

  "Ah, yes. Get the guard commander to open it up for you, then, see if the trouble is anything obvious. Then send for a tech on his clear-link."

  "Yes, sir." Koudelka backed out, after a wary glance at the three tense people still frozen in their places waiting for him to withdraw.

  The Count wouldn't quit. "I swear, I will disown it. That thing in the can at ImpMil. Utterly disinherit it."

  "Not an operative threat, sir. You can only directly disown me. By an Imperial order. Which you would have to humbly petition, ah . . . me, for." His edged smile gleamed. "I would, of course, grant it to you."

  The muscles in Piotr's jaw jumped. Not the irresistible force and the immovable object after all, but the irresistible force and some fluid sea; Piotr's blows kept failing to land, splashing past helplessly. Mental judo. He was off-balance, and flailed for his center, striking out wildly now. "Think of Barrayar. Think of the example you're setting."

  "Oh," breathed Aral, "that I have." He paused. "We have never led from the rear, you or I. Where a Vorkosigan goes, maybe others might not find it so impossible to follow. A little personal . . . social engineering."

  "Maybe for galactics. But our society can't afford this luxury. We barely hold our own as it is. We cannot carry the deadweight of millions of dysfunctionals!"

  "Millions?" Aral raised a brow. "Now you extrapolate from one to infinity. A weak argument, sir, unworthy of you."

  "And surely," said Cordelia quietly, "how much is bearable each individual, carrying his or her own burden, must decide."

  Piotr swung on her. "Yes, and who is paying for all this, eh? The Imperium. Vaagen's laboratory is budgeted under military research. All Barrayar is paying for prolonging the life of your monster."

  Discomfited, Cordelia replied, "Perhaps it will prove a better investment than you think."

  Piotr snorted, his head lowered mulishly, hunched between his skinny shoulders. He stared through Cordelia at Aral. "You are determined to lay this thing on me. On my house. I cannot persuade you otherwise, I cannot order you . . . very well. You're so set on change, here's a change for you. I don't want my name on that thing. I can deny you that, if nothing else."

  Aral's lips were pinched, nostrils flaring. But he never moved in his seat. The viewer glowed on, forgotten in his still hands. He held his hands quiet and totally controlled, not permitting them to clench. "Very well, sir."

  "Call him Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, then," said Cordelia, feigning calm over a sick and trembling belly. "My father will not begrudge it."

  "Your father is dead," snapped Piotr.

  Smeared to bright plasma in a shuttle accident more than a decade ago . . . She sometimes fancied, when she closed her eyes, that she could still sense his death imprinted on her retina in magenta and teal. "Not wholly. Not while I live, and remember."

  Piotr looked as if she'd just hit him in his Barrayaran stomach. Barrayaran ceremonies for the dead approached ancestor-worship, as if remembrance could keep the souls alive. Did his own mortality run chill in his veins today? He had gone too far, and knew it, but could not back down. "Nothing, nothing wakes you up! Try this, then." He straddled the floor, boots planted, and glared at Aral. "Get out of my house. Both houses, Vorkosigan House, too. Take your woman and remove yourself. Today!"

  Aral's eyes flicked only once around his childhood home. He set the viewer carefully aside, and stood. "Very well, sir."

  Piotr's anger was anguished. "You'd throw away your home for this?!"

  "My home is not a place. It is a person, sir," Aral said gravely. Then added reluctantly, "People."

  Meaning Piotr, as well as Cordelia. She sat bent over, aching with the tension. Was the old man stone? Even now Aral offered him gestures of courtesy that nearly stopped her heart.

  "You will return your rents and revenues to the District purse," said Piotr desperately.

  "As you wish, sir." Aral headed for the door.

  Piotr's voice went smaller. "Where will you live?"

  "Illyan has been urging me for some time to move to the Imperial Residence, for security reasons. Evon Vorhalas has persuaded me Illyan is right."

  Cordelia had risen when Aral did. She went now to the window and stared out over the moody grey, green, and brown landscape. Whitecaps foamed on the pewter water of the lake. The Barrayaran winter was going to be so cold. . . .

  "So, you set yourself up with Imperial airs after all, eh?" jibed Piotr. "Is that what this is, hubris?"

  Aral grimaced in profound irritation. "On the contrary, sir. If I'm to have no income but my admiral's half-pay, I cannot afford to pass up rent-free quarters."

  A movement in the scudding clouds caught Cordelia's eye. She squinted uneasily. "What's wrong with that lightflyer?" she murmured half to herself.

  The speck grew, jinking oddly. It trailed smoke. It stuttered over the lake, straight at them. "God, I wonder if it's full of bombs?"

  "What?" said Aral and Piotr together, and stepped quickly to the window with her, Aral on her right hand, Piotr on her left.

  "It has ImpSec markings," said Aral.

  Piotr's old eyes narrowed. "Ah?"

  Cordelia mentally planned a sprint down the back hall and ou
t the end door. There was a bit of a ditch on the other side of the drive, if they went flat in it maybe . . . but the lightflyer was slowing at the end of its trajectory. It wobbled toward a landing on the front lawn. Men in Vorkosigan livery and ImpSec green and black cautiously surrounded it. The flyer's damage was clearly visible now, a plasma-slagged hole, black smears of soot, warped control surfaces—it was a miracle it flew at all.

  "Who—?" said Aral.

  Piotr's squint sharpened as a glimpse of the pilot winked through the damaged canopy. "Ye gods, it's Negri!"

  "But who's that with—come on!" Aral flung over his shoulder, running out the door. They charged in his wake, around into the front hall, bursting out the door and churning down the green slope.

  The guards had to pry open the warped canopy. Negri fell into their arms. They laid him on the grass. He had a grotesque burn a meter long on the left side of his body and thigh, his green uniform melted and charred away to reveal bleeding white bubbles, cracked-open flesh. He shivered uncontrollably.

  The short figure strapped into the passenger seat was Emperor Gregor. The five-year-old boy was weeping in terror, not loudly, just muffled, gulping, suppressed whimpers. Such self-control in one so young seemed sinister to Cordelia. He should be screaming. She felt like screaming. He wore ordinary play-clothes, a soft shirt and pants in dark blue. He was missing one shoe. An ImpSec guard unhooked his seat belt and dragged him out of the flyer. He cringed from the man and stared at Negri in utter horror and confusion. Did you think adults were indestructible, child? Cordelia grieved.

  Kou and Drou materialized from their separate holes in the house, to goggle along with the rest of the guards. Gregor spotted Droushnakovi, and flew to her like an arrow, to wind his hands tightly in her skirt. "Droushie, help!" His crying dared to become audible, then. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted him up.

  Aral knelt by the injured ImpSec chief. "Negri, what happened?"

  Negri reached up and grabbed his jacket with his working right hand. "He's trying for a coup—in the capital. His troops took ImpSec, took the comm center—why didn't you respond? HQ surrounded, infiltrated—bad fighting now at the Imperial Residence. We were on to him—about to arrest—he panicked. Struck too soon. I think he has Kareen—"

  Piotr demanded, "Who has, Negri, who?"

  "Vordarian."

  Aral nodded grimly. "Yes . . ."

  "You—take the boy," gasped Negri. "He's almost on top of us . . ." His shivers oscillated into convulsions, his eyes rolling back whitely. His breath stuttered in resonant chokes. His brown eyes refocused in sudden intensity. "Tell Ezar—" The convulsions took him again, racking his thick body. Then they stopped. All stop. He was no longer breathing.

  Chapter Eleven

  "Sir," said Koudelka urgently to Vorkosigan, "the secured comconsole was sabotaged." The ImpSec guard commander at his elbow nodded confirmation. "I was just coming to tell you. . . ." Koudelka glanced fearfully at Negri's body, laid out on the grass. Two ImpSec men now knelt beside it frantically applying first aid: heart massage, oxygen, and hypospray injections. But the body remained flaccid under their pummeling, the face waxy and inert. Cordelia had seen death before, and recognized the symptoms. No good, fellows, you won't call this one back. Not this time. He's gone to deliver that last message to Ezar in person. Negri's last report . . .

  "What time-frame on the sabotage?" demanded Vorkosigan. "Delayed or immediate?"

  "It looked like immediate," reported the guard commander. "No sign of a timer or device. Somebody just broke open the back and smashed it up inside."

  Everyone's eyes went to the ImpSec man who had been assigned the guard post outside the comconsole room. He stood, dressed like most of the others in black fatigues, disarmed between two of his fellows. They had followed their commander out when the uproar began on the front lawn. The prisoner's face was about the same lead-grey color as Negri's, but animated by flickering fear.

  "And?" Vorkosigan said to the guard commander.

  "He denies doing it," shrugged the commander. "Naturally."

  Vorkosigan looked at the arrestee. "Who went in after me?"

  The guard stared around wildly. He pointed abruptly at Droushnakovi, still holding the whimpering Gregor. "Her."

  "I never!" said Drou indignantly. Her clutch tightened.

  Vorkosigan's teeth closed. "Well, I don't need fast-penta to know that one of you is lying. No time now. Commander, arrest them both. We'll sort it out later." Vorkosigan's eyes anxiously scanned the northern horizon. "You," he pointed to another ImpSec man, "assemble every piece of transport you can find. We evacuate immediately. You," this to one of Piotr's armsmen, "go warn them in the village. Kou, grab the files, take a plasma arc and finish melting down that comconsole, and get back to me."

  Koudelka, with one anguished look back over his shoulder at Droushanakovi, stumped off toward the house. Drou stood stiffly, stunned and angry and frightened, the cold wind fluttering her skirts. Her brows drew down at Vorkosigan. She scarcely noticed Koudelka's departure.

  "You going to Hassadar first?" said Piotr to his son in a strange mild tone.

  "Right."

  Hassadar, the Vorkosigan's District capital: Imperial troops were quartered there. A loyal garrison?

  "Not planning to hold it, I trust," said Piotr.

  "Of course not. Hassadar," Vorkosigan's wolf-grin winked on and off, "shall be my first gift to Commodore Vordarian."

  Piotr nodded, as if satisfied. Cordelia's head spun. Despite Negri's surprise, neither Piotr nor Aral seemed at all panicked. No wasted motion; no wasted words.

  "You," said Aral to Piotr in an undertone, "take the boy." Piotr nodded. "Meet us—no. Don't tell even me where. You contact us."

  "Right."

  "Take Cordelia."

  Piotr's mouth opened; it closed saying only, "Ah."

  "And Sergeant Bothari. For Cordelia. Drou being—temporarily—off duty."

  "I must have Esterhazy, then," said Piotr.

  "I'll want the rest of your men," said Aral.

  "Right." Piotr took his Armsman Esterhazy aside, and spoke to him in low tones; Esterhazy departed upslope at a dead run. Men were scattering in every direction, as their orders proliferated down their command chain. Piotr called another liveried retainer to him, and told him to take his groundcar and start driving west.

  "How far, m'lord?"

  "As far as your ingenuity can take you. Then escape if you can, and rejoin m'lord Regent, eh?"

  The man nodded, and galloped off like Esterhazy.

  "Sergeant, you will obey Lady Vorkosigan's voice as my own," Aral told Bothari.

  "Always, my lord."

  "I want that lightflyer." Piotr nodded to Negri's damaged vehicle, which, while no longer smoking, did not look very airworthy to Cordelia. Not nearly ready for wild flight, jinking or diving to evade determined enemies . . . It's in about as good a shape for this as I am, she feared. "And Negri," Piotr continued.

  "He would appreciate that," said Aral.

  "I am certain of it." Piotr nodded shortly, and turned to the first-aid squad. "Leave off, boys, it's no damn good by now." He directed them instead to load the body into the lightflyer.

  Aral turned to Cordelia last, at last, for the first time. "Dear Captain . . ." The same sere expression had been fixed on his face since Negri had fallen out of the lightflyer.

  "Aral, was this a surprise to anyone but me?"

  "I didn't want to worry you with it, when you were so sick." His lips thinned. "We'd found Vordarian was conspiring, at HQ and elsewhere. Illyan's investigation was inspired. Top security people must have that sort of intuition, I suppose. But to convict a man of Vordarian's magnitude and connections of treason, we needed the hardest of evidence. The Council of Counts as a body is highly intolerant of central Imperial interference with their members. We couldn't take a mere vaporplot before them.

  "But Negri called me last night with the word he had his evidence in hand, enough
to move on at last. He needed an Imperial order from me to arrest a ruling District Count. I was supposed to go up to Vorbarr Sultana tonight and oversee the operation. Clearly, Vordarian was warned. His original move wasn't planned for another month, preferably right after my successful assassination."

  "But—"

  "Go, now." He pushed her toward the lightflyer. "Vordarian's troops will be here in minutes. You must get away. No matter what else he holds, he can't make himself secure while Gregor stays free."

  "Aral—" Her voice came out a stupid squeak; she swallowed what felt like freeze-dried chunks of spit. She wanted to gabble a thousand questions, ten thousand protests. "Take care."

  "You, too." A last light flared in his eyes, but his face was already distant, lost to the driving internal rhythm of tactical calculation. No time.

  Aral went to take Gregor from Drou's arms, whispering something to her; reluctantly, she released the boy to him. They piled into the lightflyer, Bothari at the controls, Cordelia jammed into the back beside Negri's corpse, Gregor dumped into her lap. The boy made no noise at all, but only shivered. His eyes were wide and shocky, turned up to hers. Her arms encircled him automatically. He did not cling back, but wrapped his arms around his own torso. Negri, lolling, feared nothing now, and she almost envied him.

  "Did you see what happened to your mother, Gregor?" Cordelia murmured to him.

  "The soldiers took her." His voice was thin and flat.

  The overloaded lightflyer hiccoughed into the air, and Bothari aimed it generally upslope, wavering only meters from the ground. It whined and moaned and rattled. Cordelia did, too, internally. She twisted around to stare back through the distorted canopy for a look—a last look?—at Aral, who had turned away and was double-timing toward the driveway where his soldiers were assembling a motly collection of vehicles, personal and governmental. Why aren't we taking one of those?