Captain Vorpatril's Alliance-eARC

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The Lord Auditor Coz made a strange little wheeing sound. He was biting his own hand, Tej noticed. Ivan Xav pointedly ignored him.

  “Which proved to be very lucky,” Tej forged on, “because when the real kidnappers turned up, we woke up and heard them talking to him and were able to get the drop on them.”

  “That wasn’t luck,” protested Ivan Xav. “I engaged them in delay as loudly as I could, till the reinforcements came up. Rather slowly.”

  “Quick thinking—for a man tied to a chair,” murmured the Coz.

  “Well, it was!” said Ivan Xav.

  “Anyway,” Tej plowed on, “he invited us to hide out in his flat for the next few days, which worked fine, till the Prestene contact thought of putting Komarran Immigration onto us, to smoke us out of hiding so they could target us. So Byerly, who came to warn us, and the Immigration officers, and those Dome cops who were trying to arrest Ivan Xav for kidnapping me, which he didn’t, all arrived at once before anyone had drunk any coffee, and then Admiral Desplains called Ivan Xav, very irate about the Dome cops, I think, and I was so tired and scared, and we—we panicked.” She glanced at Rish. Still no help there.

  “Quit laughing,” said Ivan Xav irritably to the Coz, who actually wasn’t, out loud at least, except for the madly crinkling eyes. “It wasn’t funny at the time.”

  Ivan Xav glanced aside at Tej, and his hand squeezed hers. She squeezed back. No, it hadn’t been. Not that part, not at the time.

  In retrospect, though…“So he threw his wristcom into the refrigerator, grabbed this box of instant groats, and asked me to marry him. To keep the Immigration people from arresting me and the Dome cops from arresting him. And I said yes.”

  “I see,” said The Gregor. “I think…”

  “It worked,” said Ivan Xav, sounding stung.

  “Why did he throw his wristcom into the freezer?” asked the Coz, diverted by this detail.

  “His admiral kept calling back.”

  “Ah. Makes perfect sense.”

  “It does?” said The Gregor. The Coz nodded, and he seemed to accept this.

  “And then Ivan Xav brought us here to Barrayar, where we are supposed to find this man named Count Falco who will give us a divorce, and then…” Tej ran aground, till she bethought herself of the kind and shrewd Lady Alys. “And Lady Alys’s Simon suggested that Rish and I might be smuggled to Escobar on a Barrayaran government courier vessel, if Ivan Xav would ask the right people.” She gathered her courage and looked up from her lap at The Gregor. “Would that be you, sir?”

  “Possibly.” He leaned over and propped his chin in his hand, regarding her quizzically. He had one of those wildly unfair male face-transforming smiles, she noted, even more so than Ivan Xav’s; but then, The Gregor’s smile was transiting from a much sterner-looking start-point. Ivan Xav had to work hard to look stern, and even then it was more likely to come out just peeved. The emperor continued, “Where on Escobar is your brother?”

  This was not the time to try to deal, Tej realized; this whole meeting was a deal. A big one, at that. “Amiri was never happy in the House, never wanted to be involved in the business with my brother Erik and my sisters. He had this passion all his life for biology and medicine, so eventually my parents made a deal for him to go to Escobar to this clinic where they had a special contact, and change his identity and finish his medical education. He’s a graduate researcher there, now, under a new name.” She moistened her lips and added, “It was always the plan that if something terrible happened, I would go to him, because we always got along best, and my sisters would go to Grandmama.”

  The Gregor stretched out his arm and drummed his fingers on the sofa back. “Given that Shiv Arqua’s Jacksonian parents are both listed as long-deceased, this would have to be your Cetagandan haut grandmother, General ghem Estif’s widow, exiled to Earth?”

  “Good God!” said Ivan Xav. His hip being pressed to hers on the short sofa, Tej felt him start. “She’s still alive?”

  The Gregor looked across at him in some bemusement. “Didn’t you read the ImpSec reports?”

  “Didn’t figure they’d disgorge ’em without arm wrestling. Besides, I spend all day every day up to my eyebrows in Ops reports for Desplains.”

  “But there were all those evening—never mind,” said The Gregor. Tej wasn’t sure if he was looking at her or Ivan Xav or both, but a ghost of that smile went past again.

  “But ghem Estif’s widow—she was on Barrayar back during the Occupation, and nobody still alive remembers that,” said Ivan Xav. “She must be over a hundred and twenty years old, at least! Mummified!”

  “About a hundred and thirty,” said Rish. “If I recall correctly.”

  “Did you ever meet her?” Ivan Xav asked Rish. But his glance went to Tej.

  Tej replied, “After the old general died, she came to live with the Baronne and us for a while. When we kids were all younger. She left almost eight years ago. I haven’t seen her since—but she wasn’t in the least mummified then. She wasn’t young, of course, and her hair had turned this fascinating silver color, meters of it, it seemed like, but she was perfectly limber. And tall. And very dignified. It was like—it wasn’t that she couldn’t move fast, it was simply that she didn’t choose to.”

  A smile of memory flickered across Rish’s lips. “That was her.”

  There was a bustle at the door to the antechamber, and Lady Vorkosigan—Lady Ekaterin?—entered, followed by two maidservants with not so much a trolley as a train of carts loaded high with a bountiful formal tea. Everyone came to attention, even The Gregor. The two black-clad guards were already at attention, but every once in a while their eyes flicked longingly toward all the clinking and gurgling going on around the fireplace. It was not until coffee, two kinds of teas, a dozen sorts of little sandwiches and cakes and tarts, freshly candied fruits, marzipan dainties, and miniature and rather messy cream cakes were served that the conversation resumed, limping around the chewing and swallowing. Rish was nearly mesmerized with sensory bliss.

  “Ma Kosti is always especially inspired by one of your visits, Gregor,” Lady Ekaterin told the emperor, who smiled.

  “Don’t even think about it, Gregor,” said the Coz.

  “I suppose an Imperial military draft would be cheating,” replied The Gregor with a sigh, and homed in on his third cream cakelet.

  Everyone was amused. Except for Tej and Rish, who were bewildered. Tej nudged Ivan Xav, but he was chewing, too, and just shook his head. “’Splain later,” he mumbled. “Miles defends his cook with his life.”

  The Coz washed down his bite with a gulp of tea and told his wife, “Just before you came in, Lady Tej was starting to tell us about her Cetagandan haut grandmother, the late General ghem Estif’s relict. She was apparently on Barrayar toward the end of the Occupation, if you can imagine. She must have been close to old General Piotr’s age.”

  Lady Ekaterin nibbled a frosted cherry, licked her fingers, and nodded. “Oh, Ivan, you’ll have to introduce Tej to René and Tatya Vorbretten when they get back to town.”

  Giving up on Ivan, Tej looked her question at the Coz.

  He waved a cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwich expansively in the air, and said, “Count Vorbretten. Bit of a scandal a few years back, when a gene scan turned up that he was one-eighth Cetagandan ghem. On the male side, unfortunately for Barrayaran inheritance law. Dating back to his great-grandmother and the Occupation, it seemed.”

  Ivan put in, “They were dubbing him René Ghembretten for a while, but the Council of Counts finally voted to let him keep his countship. A near thing, it was. I was glad of it. Exceptionally nice fellow.”

  “Exceptionally diligent District count,” said The Gregor.

  “Now that gene scanning has become widely available,” said Lady Ekaterin to Tej and Rish, “quite a few such hidden links are being turned up. Despite huge pressures at the time from both sides against such crosses. The Occupation lasted for two decades, after all.”<
br />
  “Humans will be humans,” said her husband. “And so make more humans.” They exchanged amused smiles, which fell rather short of private.

  “René’s case is hardly unique, as far as inter-Nexus romances on Barrayar go,” said The Gregor. “Miles’s mother Countess Cordelia is famously from Beta Colony, as was Ivan’s—and Miles’s—great-grandmother who married the celebrated diplomat Prince Xav.”

  Tej turned in surprise to Ivan. “You’re really one-eighth Betan? You never said!” Rish’s gold eyebrows, too, went up.

  Ivan Xav shrugged. “Can’t say as I much think about it. It was a long time ago. Before I was born.” He topped this unassailable observation with a marzipan violet, and chewed defensively.

  “This medical clinic on Escobar that took your brother the Jacksonian refugee under its wing, the one with the special contact with your late parents…” the Coz said slowly, returning to a subject Tej had hoped was lost in the shuffle.

  She stiffened.

  “It wouldn’t by chance be the Durona Group, would it?” he went on.

  Rish gasped, a glazed orange segment dropping from her hand as she stared in horror. “Did ImpSec know all the time?”

  “Apparently not,” said The Gregor, looking up with a scarily keen interest.

  “How did you know?” Tej demanded. It was a secret she’d almost died to protect…

  “Informed guess.”

  “Mark’s Durona Group?” Ivan Xav looked indignantly at Tej. “You could’ve stood to have said this earlier!”

  “What do you know about them?” Rish, still tense with alarm, asked the Coz.

  “Quite a lot, for my sins. They were once a division of House Fell, a group of thirty-six cloned siblings with extraordinary medical talents. Their progenitor-mother, Lily Durona, who is also on the high side of a century old, I believe, had some special relationship with old Baron Fell that I never did quite understand. In any case, my clone-brother Mark helped buy them out some years back and arranged for their removal to Escobar, a planet and polity I understand they find considerably more congenial than their House Fell techno-slavery, however much they were valued back in the Whole. Were your parents allies of old Fell, then, Lady Tej? Or of Lily Durona?”

  Tej looked wildly at Rish, who opened her hands as if to throw the question back. Tej tried, “My parents were always…I believe they and Fell often found each other useful, yes. There was never a formal alliance, or any question of a merger, though.”

  The Coz tapped his fingers on his chair arm, his lips pressing together for a moment. “Hm. My brother Mark is a silent investor in the Durona Group, but by no means a secret one. I believe he and his partner Kareen are on Escobar right now, in fact, busy about their affairs. Mark is quite the entrepreneur of the Vorkosigan family. Has several successful—and a couple of unsuccessful—start-ups down in our District, as well.”

  “Anything worth achieving,” muttered Ivan Xav under his breath. “God, even the clone…”

  “The-Count-our-father approves—the Vorkosigan’s District has lagged economically ever since the Occupation, unfortunately. And several of the later civil wars were disproportionately hard on us, as well.” He tapped some more. “But the thing is, Lady Tej, this connection of mine is also a connection of Ivan’s. If you meant to go to ground secretly with the Durona group…”

  “Are you saying now we daren’t go?” asked Tej anxiously.

  “No. But I am suggesting that your identities and perhaps appearances might need to be rather better laundered than you originally thought.” He glanced at Rish.

  She glowered back. “You seem to know an awful lot about the Whole, for a Barrayaran.”

  The Coz shrugged. “I visited it several times in my career. My earlier career, that is, before I became an Imperial Auditor. In any case, Barrayar tracks the five Great Houses that control the Whole’s jump points rather more closely than we track the general mob of Jacksonians. House Fell most of all, because of proximity. Less of Cordonah Station, as our interests don’t extend much in that direction—we have more economically efficient routes to Earth via Sergyar and Escobar. The fact that the jump point from the Whole into the Cetagandan Empire’s back door is controlled by House Prestene is, ah…a feature of some interest.”

  “What earlier career?” asked Tej.

  He eyed another cucumber sandwich round, popped it whole into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed before replying. “I was an ImpSec courier for a few years, before I was discharged for medical unfitness. I did a great deal of traveling throughout the Nexus.” He looked up and smiled at his wife. “Rather got it out of my system, to tell the truth.”

  Lady Ekaterin’s return smile grew lopsided. “Did you indeed?”

  Tej turned again to The Gregor. “But the ride, sir?”

  The emperor rubbed his jaw. “I’ll drop a word in Allegre’s ear. Ivan and he can discuss the details.” He paused, looking her and Ivan Xav over thoughtfully. “Note, it could be some weeks before a place opens up. We cannot delay scheduled or emergency business for this courtesy.”

  Tej nodded, trying to seem cooperative. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  “Ivan’s perimeter has already been notified of the new threat level,” The Gregor went on.

  “If…if the syndicate’s agents track us here, can your people stop them?” asked Rish.

  The Gregor’s dark eyebrows flicked up. “They’re expected to be able to stop much worse.”

  “If they’re not blindsided,” the Coz put in. “You need to give the poor security fellows as much of a fighting chance to protect you as you can. That means no more withholding information, eh?”

  Tej nodded, her throat tight. Ivan Xav felt her hand tremble in his, and frowned at her in worry. She remembered all too clearly the death of their bodyguard on Fell Station. She’d barely known the man, and yet…Among the many, many reasons she’d never wanted power in the House, to play the game as her parents had, was that she’d never wanted her life to be bought at the price of another’s. Maybe no one was free of that, really. Or else what were police forces and armies all about, on places like Pol or Komarr? Mass protection, jointly purchased by an entire society, instead of piecemeal by those who could afford it—without even the up-front rewards that Jacksonian enforcers and security people routinely demanded, and were given, for assuming such risks.

  The guard beside the door to the antechamber spoke for the first time. “It’s seventeen-thirty hours, sire.”

  “Already?” The Gregor glanced at his wristcom, then looked apologetically at Tej, Rish, and Ivan. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. I still need to have a few words with my Auditor, here, before we travel our separate ways.”

  Lady Ekaterin stood up smoothly. “Perhaps Tej and Rish would care to see a little more of Vorkosigan House before you take them home, Ivan. And I could show them the Barrayaran garden.”

  Ivan Xav’s nod endorsed this, and they made what Tej hoped were correct formal farewells and followed their hostess out.

  In the front hall, Rish’s steps slowed as she stared downward. Her hands twitched, as if she wanted to bend and touch the art underfoot. Or dance across it, pinwheeling. “Is this a recent installation?” she asked Lady Ekaterin. “It’s so beautiful. And unexpected. It looks new…?”

  Lady Ekaterin smiled, obviously pleased. “When Miles and I were first married, he encouraged me to put some stamp of my own on the house—I mean, besides the Barrayaran garden. It took me a long time to decide what. Then one day my mother-in-law was telling me about some unhappy events that she always associated with the old black-and-white marble tiles that used to be here for, oh, decades, and I thought of this.” She gestured in a sweeping arc, from the lavish floor to the lush walls.

  She went on, “I was born and grew up on South Continent, where such fine work in natural colored stones is very much a regional art form—the north favors wood as a medium. There was a famous stone mosaic artist whose work I’d a
dored for years, but could never afford. Miles flew down, quite suddenly one day, and practically kidnapped the poor woman out of her semi-retirement. I worked closely with her on all the botanical details—it took over a year to design and install, not to mention walking the Vorkosigan’s District to collect as much suitable stone as could be incorporated. It represents a mixed native Barrayaran and Old Earth ecosystem—just like some places around Vorkosigan Surleau, at the foot of the mountains.”

  Ivan Xav vented a short chuckle. “When they broke up the old floor, people took the fragments away as historical souvenirs. I saw some of them for sale for an ungodly amount of money, later. If you’d thought to sell ’em yourselves, Ekaterin, you could have funded the whole replacement with the proceeds.”

  She laughed, too, but said, “I suspect the fresh start suited everyone better.” She turned to Tej. “Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is very close friends with Ivan’s mother, you know. Cordelia has frequently mentioned to me how much she treasured having a woman friend, when she first came to Barrayar as a bride and a stranger, to show her how to go on here—all those things the men didn’t know. At least there’s no war on, this time. Perhaps when Miles and I get back from Sergyar, we can visit again…?”

  A heartbreakingly kind offer, Tej thought. She smiled, but shook her head. “We don’t expect to be here that long.”

  “Ah,” said Lady Ekaterin, with a curious glance at Ivan Xav. “That’s a pity. Well, let’s just take a stroll through the dining room wing, and then we can go out the back and around to my garden…”

  When Tej had first set foot on Barrayar, she’d felt she couldn’t get away again soon enough. Now, after less than two days, even the nebulous plans for their departure in unknown weeks seemed to loom up before she was ready for them. It was as if the whole blasted planet was bent on seducing her…Odd thought. She shook it from her head, gripped Ivan Xav’s anxiously proffered arm, and followed her hostess.

  Chapter Eleven

  A bit of rest being overdue for everyone, Ivan and his guests spent the day following the alarming interview with Gregor in the confines of Ivan’s flat. The women seemed content to limit their explorations of Barrayar to the safety of the comconsole, with meals delivered from some of the large array of providers of provender to bachelors on Ivan’s auto-call list. It wasn’t till conversation over a late brunch the next noon that Ivan discovered that his ladies’ objections to venturing out lay not in mistrust of his security, but in distaste for his groundcar. He then had the happy thought of renting a larger vehicle for the week, an inspiration greeted with applause. They were just discussing his offered menu of places to go and things to see in and around Vorbarr Sultana when they were interrupted by his door chime.