Irresistible Forces

by Catherine Ansaro et al

  Lord Auditor and Professora Vorthys's home was a tall, old, colorfully tiled structure close to the District University. The street was quiet when Roic pulled the car—borrowed without notification, ultimately, from one of the armsmen off with the count at the Residence—up to the front. From a distance, mainly in the direction of the university, drifted the sharp crackle of fireworks, harmonious singing, and blurred drunken singing. A rich, heady scent of wood smoke and black powder permeated the frosty night air.

  The porch light was on. The Professora, an aging, smiling, neat Vor lady who intimidated Roic only slightly less than did Lady Alys, let them in herself. Her soft round face was tense with worry.

  "Did you tell her I was coming?" m'lord asked in a low tone as he shed his coat. He stared anxiously up the stairs leading from the narrow, wood-paneled hallway.

  "I didn't dare."

  "Helen… what should I do?" M'lord looked suddenly smaller, and scared, and younger and older all at the same time.

  "Just go up, I think. This isn't something that's about talking, or words, or reason. I've run through all those."

  He buttoned then unbuttoned the gray tunic he'd thrown on over an old white shirt, pulled down his sleeves, took a deep breath, mounted the stairs, and turned out of sight. After a minute or two, the Professora stopped picking nervously at her hands, gestured Roic to a straight chair beside a small table piled with books and flimsies, and tiptoed up after him.

  Roic sat in the hall and listened to the old house creak. From the sitting room, visible through one archway, a glow from a fireplace gilded the air. Through the opposite archway, the Professora's study lay, lined with books; the light from the hall picked out an occasional bit of gold lettering on an ancient spine in the gloom. Roic wasn't bookish himself, but he liked the comfortable academic smell of this place. It occurred to him that back when he was a Hassadar guard, he'd never once gone into a house to clean up a bad scene, blood on the walls and evil smells in the air, where there were books like this.

  After a long time, the Professora came back down to the hall.

  Roic ducked his head respectfully. "Is she sick, ma'am?"

  The tired-looking woman pursed her lips and let her breath run out. "She certainly was last night. Terrible headache, so bad she was crying and almost vomiting. But she thought she was much better this morning. Or she said she was. She wanted to be better. Maybe she was trying too hard."

  Roic peered anxiously up the staircase. "Would she see him?"

  The tension in her face eased a little. "Yes."

  "Is it going to be all right?"

  "I think so, now." Her lips sought a smile. "Anyway, Miles says you are to go on home. That he expects to be a while, and that he'll call if he needs anything."

  "Yes, ma'am." He rose, gave her a kind of vague salute copied from m'lord's own style, and let himself out.

  The night duty guard at the gate kiosk reported no entries since Roic had left. The festivities at the Imperial Residence would go on till dawn, although Roic didn't expect Vorkosigan House's attendees to stay that late, not with the grand party planned here for tomorrow afternoon and evening. He put the borrowed car away in the sub-basement garage, relieved that it hadn't acquired any hard-to-explain dings in its passage back through some of the rowdier crowds between here and the university.

  He made his way softly up through the mostly darkened great house. All was quiet now. The kitchen crew had at last retreated till tomorrow's onslaught. The maids and menservants had gone to roost. For all that he complained about missing the daytime excitements, Roic usually enjoyed these quiet night hours when the whole world seemed his personal property. Granted, by three hours before dawn, coffee would be a necessity little less urgent than oxygen. But by two hours before dawn, life would start trickling back, as those with early duties roused themselves and padded down to start work. He checked the security monitors in the basement HQ and started his physical rounds. Floor by floor, window and door, never in quite the same order or at quite the same hour.

  As he crossed the great entry hall, a creak and a clink sounded from the half-lit antechamber to the library. He paused for a moment, frowned, and rose on his toes, moving his feet as gently as possible across the marble pavement, breathing through his open mouth for silence. His shadow wavered, passed along from dim wall sconce to dim wall sconce. He made sure it was not thrown before him as he moved to the archway. Easing up beside the door frame, he stared into the half-gloom.

  Taura stood with her back to him, sorting through the gifts displayed upon the long table by the far wall. Her head bent over something in her hands. She shook out a cloth and upended a small box. The elegant triple strand of pearls slithered from their velvet backing into the cloth, which she wrapped around them. She clicked the box closed, set it back on the table, and slipped the folded cloth into a side pocket of her russet jacket.

  Shock held Roic paralyzed for a moment longer, M'lord's honored guest, rifling the gifts?

  But I liked her. I really liked her. Only now, in this moment of hideous revelation, did he realize just how much he'd come to… to admire her in their brief time together. Brief, but so damned awkward. She was really beautiful in her own unique way, if only you looked at her right. For a moment it had seemed as though far suns and strange adventures had beckoned to him from her gold eyes; just possibly, more intimate and exotic adventures than a shy backcountry boy from Hassadar had ever dared to imagine. If only he were a braver man. A handsome prince. Not a fool. But Cinderella was a thief, and the fairy tale was gone suddenly sour.

  Sick dismay flooded him as he imagined the altercation, the shame, the wounded friendship and shattered trust that must follow this discovery—he almost turned away. He didn't know the value of the pearls, but even if it were a city's ransom he was certain m'lord would trade them in a heartbeat for the ease of spirit he'd had with his old followers.

  It was no good. They'd be missed first thing tomorrow in any case. He drew a breath and touched the light pad.

  Taura spun like a huge cat at the flare of the overhead lights. After a moment, she let out her breath in a huff, visibly powering down. "Oh. It's you. You startled me."

  Roic moistened his lips. Could he patch up this shattered fantasy? "Put them back, Taura. Please."

  She stood still, looking back at him, tawny eyes wide; a grimace crossed her odd features. She seemed to coil, tension flowing back into her long body.

  "Put them back now," Roic tried again, "and I won't tell." He bore a stunner. Could he draw it in time? He'd seen how fast she moved…

  "I can't."

  He stared at her without comprehension.

  "I don't dare." Her voice grew edgy. "Please, Roic. Let me go now, and I promise I'll bring them back again tomorrow."

  Huh? What? "I… can't. All the gifts have to go through a security check."

  "Did this?" Her hand twitched by her pocket full of spoils.

  "Yes, certainly."

  "What kind? What did you check it for?"

  "Everything is scanned for devices and explosives. All food and drink and their containers are tested for chemicals and biologicals."

  "Only the food and drink?" She straightened, eyes glinting in rapid thought. "Anyway, I wasn't stealing it."

  Maybe it was the covert ops training that enabled her to stand there and utter bald-faced… what? Counter-factual statements? Complicated things? "Well… then what were you doing?"

  Again, a kind of frozen misery stiffened her features. She looked down, away, into the distance. "Borrowing it," she said in a gruff voice. She glanced across at him, as if to check his reaction to this feeble statement.

  But Taura wasn't feeble, not by any definition. He felt out of his depth, flailing for firm footing and not finding it. He dared to move closer, to hold out his hand. "Give them to me."

  "You mustn't touch them!" Her voice went frantic. "No one must touch them."

  Lies and treachery? Trust and truth? What was he se
eing here? Suddenly, he wasn't sure. Back up, guardsman. "Why not?"

  She glowered at him narrow-eyed, as if trying to see through to the back of his head. "Do you care about Miles? Or is he just your employer?"

  Roic blinked in increasing confusion. He considered his armsman's oath, its high honor and weight. "A Vorkosigan armsman isn't just what I am; it's who I am. He's not my employer at all. He's my liege lord."

  She made a frustrated gesture. "If you knew a secret that would hurt him to the heart—would you, could you, keep it from him even if he asked?"

  What secret? This? That his ex-lover was a thief? It didn't seem as though that could be what she was talking about—around. Think, man.

  "I… can't pass a judgment without knowledge." Knowledge. What did she know that he didn't? A million things, he was sure. He'd glimpsed some of them, dizzying vistas. But she didn't know him, now, did she? Not the way she evidently knew, say, m'lord. To her, he was a blank in a brown-and-silver uniform. With his mirror-polished boot stuck in his mouth, eh. He hesitated, then countered, "M'lord can requisition my life with a word. I gave him that right on my name and breath. Can you trust me to hold his best interests to heart?"

  Stare met stare, and no one blinked.

  "Trust for trust," Roic breathed at last. "Trade, Taura."

  Slowly, not dropping her intent, searching gaze from his face, she drew the cloth from her pocket. She shook it gently, spilling the pearls back into their velvet box. She held the box out. "What do you see?"

  Roic frowned. "Pearls. Pretty. White and shiny."

  She shook her head. "I have a host of genetic modifications. Hideous bioengineered mutant or no—"

  He flinched, his mouth opening and shutting.

  "—among other things I can see slightly farther into the ultraviolet, and quite a bit farther into the infrared, than a normal person. I see dirty pearls. Strangely dirty pearls. And that's not what I usually see when I look at pearls. And then Miles's bride touched them, and an hour later was so sick she could hardly stand up."

  An unpleasant tremor coursed down Roic's body. And why the devil hadn't he noticed that progression of events? "Yes. That's so. They'll have to be checked."

  "Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just being horrible and paranoid and—and jealous. If they were proved clean, that would be the end of it. But, Roic—Quinn. You don't have any idea how much he loved Quinn. And vice versa. I've been going half-mad all evening, ever since it all clicked in, wondering if Quinn really sent these. It would about slay him, if it were so."

  "Wasn't him these are meant to slay." It seemed his liege lord's love life was as deceptively complicated as his intelligence, both camouflaged by his crippled body. Or by the assumptions people made about his crippled body. Roic considered the ambiguous message Arde Mayhew had evidently seen in the live fur blanket. Had this Quinn woman, the other ex-lover—and how many more of them were going to turn up at this wedding, anyway? And in what frame of mind? How many were there, altogether? And what't' hell did the little guy do to have acquired what was beginning to seem far more than his fair share, when Roic didn't even have—He cut off the gyrating digression. "Or—is this necklace lethal, or not? Could it be some nasty practical joke, to just make the bride sick on her wedding night?"

  "Ekaterin barely touched them. I don't know what this horrible goo may be, but I wouldn't lay those pearls against my skin for Betan dollars." Her face twisted up. "I want it to not be true. Or I want it to not be Quinn!"

  Her dismay, Roic was increasingly convinced, was unfeigned, a cry from her heart. "Taura, think. You know this Quinn woman. I don't. But you said she was smart. D'you think she'd be plain stupid enough to sign her own name to murder?"

  Taura looked taken aback, but then shook her head in renewed doubt. "Maybe. If it were done for rage or revenge, maybe."

  "What if her name was stolen by another? If she didn't send these, she deserves to be cleared. And if she did… she doesn't deserve anything."

  What was Taura going to do? He hadn't the least doubt she could kill him with one clawed hand before he could fumble his stunner out. The box was still tightly clutched in her great hand. Her body radiated tension the way a bonfire radiated heat.

  "It seems almost unimaginable," she said. "Almost. But people mad in love do the wildest things. Sometimes things they regret forever afterward. But then it's too late. That's why I wanted to sneak the pearls away and check them in secret. I was praying I'd be proved wrong." Tears stood in her eyes now.

  Roic swallowed and stood straighter. "Look, I can call ImpSec. They can have those—whatever they are—on the best forensics lab bench on the planet inside half an hour. They can check the wrappings, check the origin—everything. If another person stole your friend Quinn's name to cloak their crime…" He shuddered as his imagination sketched that crime in elaborating and grotesque detail: m'lady dying at m'lord's feet in the snow while her vows were still frost in the air; m'lord's shock, disbelief, howling anguish—"Then they should be hunted down without mercy. ImpSec can do that, too."

  She still stood poised in doubt, on the balls of her feet. "They would hunt her down with the same… un-mercy. What if they got it wrong, made a mistake?"

  "ImpSec is competent."

  "Roic, I'm an ImpSec employee. I can absolutely guarantee you, they are not infallible."

  He ran his gaze down the crowded table. "Look. There's that other wedding gift." He pointed to the folds of shimmering black blanket, still piled in the box. The room was so quiet he could hear the live fur's gentle rumble from here. "Why would she send two? The blanket even came with a dirty limerick, handwritten on a card." Not presently on display, true. "Madame Vorsoisson laughed out loud when m'lord read it to her."

  A reluctant smile twitched Taura's mouth for a moment. "Oh, that's Quinn, all right."

  "If that's truly Quinn, then this"—he pointed at the pearls—"can't be. Eh? Trust me. Trust your own judgment."

  Slowly, with the deepest distress in her strange gold eyes, Taura wrapped the box in the cloth and handed it to him.

  Then Roic found himself facing the task, all by himself, of stirring up ImpSec Supreme headquarters in the middle of the night. He almost wanted to wait for Pym's return, But he was a Vorkosigan armsman: senior man present, even if merely because sole man present. It was his duty, it was his right, and time was of the essence, if only to relieve Taura's troubled mind at the earliest possible instant. She hovered, bleak and worried, as he gulped for nerve and fired up the secured comconsole in the nearby library.

  A serious-looking ImpSec captain reported to the front hall in less than thirty minutes. He recorded everything, including Roic's verbal report, Taura's description of what the pearls had looked like to her, both their accounts of Madame Vorsoisson's witnessed symptoms, and a copy of Pym's original security check records. Roic tried to be straightforward, as he'd often wished witnesses would have been to him back in Hassadar, although in this version the fraught confrontation in the antechamber became merely Sergeant Taura voiced a suspicion to me. Well, it was true.

  For Taura's sake, Roic made sure to mention the possibility that the pearls had not been sent by Quinn at all and pointed out the other gift certainly known to be from her. The captain frowned and bundled up the live fur as well, and looked as though he wanted to bundle up Taura along with it. He carried off the pearls, the still-purring blanket, and all related packaging in a series of sealed and labeled plastic bags. All this chill efficiency took a bare half hour more.

  "Do you want to go to bed?" Roic asked Taura when the doors closed behind the ImpSec captain. She looks so tired. "I have to stay up anyway. I can give you a call to your room when there's any news. If there's any news."

  She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep. Maybe they'll have something soon."

  "There's no telling, but I hope so."

  They settled down to wait together on a sturdy-looking sofa in the antechamber opposite the one displaying the gift
s. The noises of the night—odd squeaks of the house settling against the winter cold, the faint whir or hum of distant automated machinery—were very noticeable in the stillness. Taura stretched what Roic suspected were knotted shoulders, and he was briefly inspired to offer a back rub, but he wasn't sure how she'd take it. The impulse dissolved in cowardice.

  "Quiet around here at night," she said after a moment.

  She was speaking to him again. Please, don't stop. "Yeah. I sort of like it, though."

  "Oh, you, too? The night watch is a philosophical kind of time. Its own world. Nothing moving out there but maybe people being born or people dying, necessity, and us."

  "Eh, and the bad night people we're put on watch against."

  She glanced through the archway into the great hall and beyond. "Apparently so. What an evil trick…" She trailed off in a grimace.

  "This Quinn, you've known her a long time?"

  "She was in the Dendarii mercenaries at the time I joined the fleet—'original equipment,' as she says. A good leader, a friend by many shared disasters. And victories, sometimes. Ten years adds up to some weight, even if you're not watching. Especially if you're not watching, I suppose."

  He followed the thought spoken by her glance, as well as her words. "Eh, yeah. God spare me from ever facing such a puzzle. It would be as bad as having your count revolt against the emperor, I suppose. Or like finding m'lord in on some insane plot to murder Empress Laisa. Shouldn't wonder that you've been running around in circles in your head all night."

  "Tighter and tighter, yes. I couldn't enjoy the emperor's party from the moment I thought of it, and I know Miles so wanted me to. And I couldn't tell him why—I'm afraid he thought I was feeling out of place. Well, I was, but it wasn't a problem, exactly. I'm usually out of place." She blinked tawny eyes gone dark and wide in the half-light. "What would you do? If you discovered or suspected such a horror?"

  His lips twisted. "That's a tough one. A higher honor must underlie ours, the count says. We can't ever obey unthinkingly."