Jole ripped off his shirt, flung it around the twins, clutched them to his torso, and bent over them. “Stay tight!” he yelled into their hair as they tried to bolt, or maybe just to see out. “Keep your faces down!”
And then his world turned into a pelting rain of flaming snot.
Chapter Sixteen
The patter of firedrops trailed off around them, and Jole dared to look up and around. He blinked against the kaleidoscope combination of neon afterimages, and fragments of radial on the ground burning out yellow-orange-red, then dark. A few last splats sounded as those bits that had exploded upward, and therefore had farther to fall, hit late but hard.
The twins squirmed in protest of his grip, but he seized them tighter as his head swiveled around to check the ohdearGOD! fireworks staging area on the far side of the parade ground. The adrenaline surge of purified terror that he had experienced only a few times in his life sluiced through his body, and he froze, unsure whether to run, dragging the kids along, or throw them on the ground with himself on top. After a second, his dazzled eyes made out that the frantic activity over there was not people sprinting away in all directions, just figures grabbing up assorted fire-dousing equipment, raised at the ready against this unexpected assault from the skies. The incendiary shower had fallen just short of them. And therefore mostly around him, but in that instant he was willing to consider it a fair trade.
Then the pain cut in, a spatter of echoing fire all over his back as if he had been bombarded by a squadron of the nastiest wasps ever bioengineered. Cetagandan assault wasps! and the image struck him as so funny that he shook with laughter. Alex and Helen, finally squirreling out of his slackening grip, stared at him in new alarm. He peered back, relaxing as it came clear by their lack of screams that he’d succeeded in sheltering them.
People who hadn’t been blobbed were running up; those who had been were running more around. Nearby cries were undercut by distant applause, and a general sense of movement toward the parade ground as more-remote witnesses imagined that the fireworks were starting early.
Sergeant Katsaros was the first to arrive, holstering the stunner that, Jole had a fractured impression, she had been firing futilely into the air. If she’d had a plasma arc, that ploy might have helped, reducing the burning bits to ash before they’d reached the ground. Right reflexes, wrong weapon, Jole’s spinning mind analyzed. Automatically, his eye checked her for burns, but she seemed to have evaded the worst of it.
“Sir, you’re hurt!” cried Katsaros.
“That’s all right, Lieutenant,” Jole chirped. “The enemy couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist—” and bent over again, laughing helplessly. This reassured neither the sergeant nor the twins, who edged away from him as their grandmother galloped up. So sad when people didn’t get his jokes. Cordelia would get his jokes…He tried to tell it to her again, but he lost the thread, and his sentence ended in word salad. He did manage to add, “For God’s sake watch where you step, in those sandals.”
She gripped his shoulders, avoiding the throbbing wasp stings and turning him to face her—oh, good, no burns in her hair or on her face—“Oliver, are you in shock?”
He squinted, considering this question seriously. His hands were shaking, his belly shuddering as if cold. Triage, an officer had to do proper triage…“I think so…?” Ow. Ow. He quaked again with laughter, trailing into giggles that he choked off because they sounded disconcerting even to him.
“Get him to the med tent,” Cordelia ordered someone urgently.
He had not the faintest desire to protest. He gestured the twins into her charge, redundantly, as they had both glued themselves to her waist, and let the medtechs hustle him off the field.
He considered the score. Sergyar One, Oliver…Everything.
Yes.
So, that’s what an epiphany feels like. I’d no idea they were so painful…
* * *
After one of the most aggravating hours of her life, Cordelia finally made it to the med tent, Miles limping at her elbow. He’d been dispatched by Ekaterin from the grove to follow them up, and had made it to the parade ground in time to witness, but fortunately not to experience, the radial blast. He’d taken the shaken twins in charge as she’d dealt with the immediate on-site aftermath, which had helped; they were now passed back to their mother, temporarily.
The intake area to the med tent had been filtered down to only mild chaos by the time they arrived. She demanded Oliver, but received instead his physician, a medical colonel and burn specialist, whom she did not savage because he guided her inside promptly. She had to give the Service credit: however weak they were on, say, gynecology, they were right on top of trauma.
“Fortunately, we were well set up to handle burns this evening,” he told her, far too cheerily. “Having twenty people hit us at once was a bit of a challenge, but let me tell you, we didn’t jump the Admiral to the head of the queue because of his rank. In here.”
It wasn’t exactly a private room, but it was blocked off with a better grade of canvas. An array of specialized medical equipment and a spent IV were shoved to one side, footed by a daunting mound of rolled-up soiled linens spilling over damply from some kind of catch-basin. Oliver, shirtless, lay on his stomach on a treatment table, head pillowed on his crossed arms. He raised his face as they entered, and smiled. “Ah. There you are.”
“Are you in much pain?”
“Not since the drugs cut in.” His smile widened. In context, it was not all that comforting.
Miles stumped around to stare at his back, and whistled.
“What does it look like?” asked Oliver, attempting and failing to crane his neck. “I haven’t seen a mirror.”
“You look like some horribly diseased leopard,” said Miles, ever frank. He added after a contemplative moment, “Or leopard frog.”
“That would be the burn ointment,” said Oliver. “Probably.”
“Well, and the blisters and bleeding ooze. They seem to have done a good job cleaning out all the radial bits. Somehow.”
“Painfully. They were playing around back there with surgical hand tractors, and some kind of cold slop, for a couple of hours.”
Twenty minutes, mouthed the doctor to Cordelia.
“Yeah,” breathed Miles. “I owe you big, Oliver. If not for you, those burns would be all over Alex and Helen.”
Oliver shrugged. “You’d have done the same.”
“No,” said Miles simply, “I couldn’t have. I’m too short. I’d damn well have tried, certainly.”
“I was going to ask you this,” said Cordelia to Oliver, “but you’re pharmaceutically impaired.” She turned to the physician. “They’re holding the fireworks for him. They sent me in to see if he could make it or not.”
Oliver lifted his head again. “While they might make me flinch, just now, I was looking forward to them.”
“If you can sit up for an hour, I think it would be a good idea to reassure your people. There’s, well…not quite a panic out there, but certainly a good deal of anxiety for you.” Which she had entirely shared. And they absolutely did not need rumors of his death, however greatly exaggerated, to start circulating.
Oliver’s brows twitched up. “That’s touching, when you think about it. Though they could just be anxious for the fireworks, you know. Been a lot of anticipation for them.”
A medtech entered carrying more supplies, and the colonel temporized, “Let’s finish getting the dressing on those burns, first.”
The two collaborated on fitting a permeable thinbrane and a protective gauze over his back, with an annex to the back of his neck. Cordelia helped him sit up, sock feet dangling over the side of the table. He squinted a bit woozily.
The physician frowned. “While I would prefer to admit him to the base hospital for overnight observation, we’ve done all we can for him for now. Such severity of burns over”—an assessing glance—“that percentage of your body is not a trivial injury, and if you try to treat it a
s such, I’ll put you on the lesser painkillers without hesitation.”
Oliver grinned. “So sit me up on a bench for an hour—I’m definitely not sitting back in any chair—whisk me off to my nice quiet apartment in the luxury of the vicereinal aircar. I don’t see a problem here.”
“I thought I’d take you back to the Palace,” said Cordelia. “I have a perfectly good on-call physician who’s had nothing more exciting to do for weeks than treat skinned knees, and the infirmary there could handle anything this place could. And I agree, I don’t think you should be alone tonight.”
“I could endorse that,” agreed the physician. He gave her a special approving smile, which she had no trouble interpreting as, By all means, let’s put this patient into the hands of the one person who outranks him.
“I wanted to get back to my apartment to—no.” Oliver turned his head and frowned at Miles. “I need to talk to you, first. Later. Tonight. This might do.”
“Oh?” Miles looked for enlightenment to Cordelia, who shrugged, No clue.
Oliver’s shirt proved ruined, so there followed a short delay to seek an alternative—“I’m not going out there in one of those damned things that flaps open in the back!”—which was found in the tunic of a set of surgical scrubs, loose fitting and clean. That its blue brought out the color of his slightly glazed eyes was a personal bonus that Cordelia kept to herself. Miles knelt and helped him with his shoes, which, after one abortive attempt to bend down and do them himself, he bemusedly permitted.
“Five days’ medical leave at the minimum,” said the physician firmly, “and you don’t go near a shuttle until I clear you personally, understood? Sir.” With a stream of further instructions about liquids, electrolytes, and when to call on his direct comcode, all documentation sensibly copied to the Palace medico and Cordelia’s wristcom, the physician released him on parole to the Vicereine.
The cheers and applause as they made their way to their reserved seats in the stands assured Cordelia that she’d judged the mood, and needs, of the crowd correctly. The cheers turned to hoots and whistles as Ekaterin, waiting with the restive children, stood up and gave Oliver a smacking kiss. Not to be outdone, the rest of the Vorkosigan girls insisted on following suit, including Simone—Ah, my granddaughters have good taste—hope it survives puberty—Helen last and a bit self-consciously. Sheepish, Oliver waved thanks and sat.
“You were a hero,” Ekaterin told him. “Certainly to me.”
Oliver studied the parade ground from this vantage. “I looked a damned fool, I imagine.”
“It did make for a memorable birthday,” sighed Cordelia.
Oliver shook with quiet laughter. “Yeah. I’m sure the scars will heal in time.”
Cordelia’s hand stole down between them and gripped his, which gripped back. And then the first whistle, boom, and blaze of the show began, drowning both further speech, and any need for it.
* * *
Miles came to Jole in the dark garden, bearing the bottle of cider he’d requested and a liter of oral electrolytes that he hadn’t. He didn’t refuse either one. Lining them up on the little table, he waved at the wicker chair. “Pull up a seat.” Jole had appropriated the bench, a bit hard on the butt, but—backless.
The garden was all shadowed leaves and mysterious vegetative shapes above the colored lights that outlined the pathways, the air cool and soft after the heat of the day. A faint organic night music from the little creatures that lurked unseen, Sergyar on another scale, overlay a more distant human hum and haze of light from the town beyond. Miles sat, his features faintly limned by the path lights, red and green and blue, and laid aside his cane. His posture was relaxed but his eyes were very attentive. The Emperor’s key investigator, facing off all unbeknownst with one of the most willing informants of his career.
Willing, of course, was not the same thing as easy.
Jole covered his last hesitation with a swallow of cider, dutifully followed up with a swallow of the electrolyte solution, gah!, then hastily chased the latter with another swig of cider. Maybe a shot of gin would improve it, the way Old Earthers had used to lace their quinine medications? Not an experiment for tonight, no. The painkillers were still working, but on some deep level his body knew how much it was injured, and was not really cooperating with command central. Best move this along.
Miles took a swig of his own drink—at this hour something mixed by Frieda, Jole suspected—and chose to help out. Maybe he wanted to go to bed, too. “So, ah…what did you want to talk to me about?”
“Too many things, probably. The past. The present. The future…”
“Sounds comprehensive, yeah.” Miles tilted his head. “Let me guess. You are trying to work up to explaining to me that my mother has offered you an egg or eggs. Which is a deeply weird bribe, but that’s my mother. Am I right?”
“Yeee…no. Yes and no. Not quite. It’s more complex.”
“You know, people keep telling me that, and then not telling me what. Makes me ready to bite.” Since he didn’t even look ready to stand up again, Jole figured the threat for empty.
Where to begin? Somewhere, anywhere, just start and it will all unravel. “You did know your father was bisexual, yes?”
A slight eyebrow lift. “My awareness of that has shifted over the years. I have a pretty good handle on it now. I think.”
“Well”—Jole took a breath—“so am I.”
A much longer silence. Miles’s voice came again, carefully ironic: “So, how long has my mother had this questionable fetish for bisexual Barrayaran admirals? I don’t think even the Betans have earrings for that one.”
Jole barked a laugh. “I expect not. Well, the bisexual part, no problem for them. The Barrayaran-admirals part might land her in involuntary therapy.”
“That…may actually be less a joke than you think. If some of what she’s told me about how she broke from Beta after the Escobar war is true.”
Jole had heard a little—he’d have to follow up and extract the full tale from Cordelia, at some easier time. “To answer your question, I imagine it dates from when she first met your father.”
“Is she trying to collect the whole set, or what?”
“I don’t know if there are any more. She’s surely collected me.” More cider. More electrolyte. More cider. More oxygen.
“Aral collected me first.”
More stillness. Miles’s under-reaction was a bit worrying. Hard to read. Perhaps it was one of his old professional skills? But then he came out with, “How long ago?”
“What would you guess?” Because it never hurt to cross-check, or maybe it was just morbid curiosity.
Miles angled his chin up. “During the prime ministership, had to be. That was…risky. Did Illyan—no, of course Illyan knew. Who else? Besides not-me.”
“Quite a few people, really. It was all more discreet than secret. But you weren’t there much, during that period.”
“You were very self-effacing when I was.” Miles frowned. “Which I totally failed to notice. Huh. Logical, I guess.”
“Give yourself credit, half the time you were home you were on some very serious medical leaves. That does tend to concentrate the attention upon the self.”
Miles lifted his glass in toast to him. Ambiguously. “So when did my mother first collect you?”
“How much detail do you want?”
“Not…much. Just enough to understand.”
“Shortly after I followed Aral to Sergyar. It started as a birthday present for him, that first year.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s probably enough.” He drained his glass. “The Betans do have earrings for that one, you know.”
“Your mother pointed this out to us. Many times.”
“I’ll bet. Twenty years. Hell. That’s not a dalliance, that’s a damned marriage. You do realize that, Oliver?”
“By the end, I think we all did. Till death do us…” He broke off. Cleared his suddenly tight throat with another swig. His bottle was
running low.
“And you went through that whole state funeral circus without ever letting on. Ran command on the cortege convoy…ye gods.” It was Miles’s turn to stop short. “At his funeral, I barely noticed you. I’m…sorry.”
“We were all walking around in shock. If there was ever a better occasion for charity, I can’t think of it. For oneself as well.”
Miles nodded jerkily. “So, I gather this thing has continued to date? Triped become biped?”
“No, in fact. There was a three-year hiatus. As we…lost our ways for a time. We’ve renewed on entirely new terms.”
“I see. I guess.” His brow wrinkled. “Although I don’t see why you should have stopped.”
“Grief does odd things to a person. And both our jobs were demanding. And…maybe we both needed time to become our new selves, before we could start over. It’s hard to explain. It makes sense to us, anyway.”
“If you say so.”
“So. Back to the eggs.”
“Oh. There really are eggs?”
“Not quite is a literal answer, though if you want technical details you’ll have to apply to Dr. Tan at Kayross. After her six girls were”—engendered? conceived?—“created, a scant handful of what Cordelia dubs eggshells were left over. Enucleated ova. Which she offered to me along with gametes from Aral to make crosses. She suggested I stick to sons, for legal reasons.”
Miles took a rather longer breath, this time. “All right. That I would not have guessed, I’ll grant you.” And, a little through his teeth, “My mother…”
After a moment he went on, “So is that what this is all about? You’re trying to decide whether to take her up on this?”
“No, that’s a done deal. Three male embryos are in the Kayross freezers with my name on them. Been there for a few months. My sons. Your half-brothers.”
Miles made an inarticulate noise, then swiped his hands through his hair in a gesture reminiscent of Cordelia at her more harassed. Sitting up straighter, he looked Jole in the eye. “So are you asking me for a vote? A veto?”
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Page 32
