Barrayar Part 6

She stepped back quietly, separating herself (she tried not to think, from the herd) for a moment of quiet contemplation. What a strange mix Barrayar was, at one moment homey and familiar, in the next terrifying and alien... they put on a good show, though... ah! That's what was missing from the scene, Cordelia realized. On Beta Colony a ceremony of this magnitude would be fully covered by holovid, to be shared real-time planet-wide. Every move would be a carefully ch.o.r.eographed dance around the vid angles and commentators' timing, almost to the point of annihilating the event being recorded. Here, there wasn't a holovid in sight. The only recordings were made by ImpSec, for their own purposes, which did not include ch.o.r.eography. The people in this room danced only for each other, all their glittering show tossed blithely away in time, which carried it off forever; the event would exist tomorrow only in their memories.

"Lady Vorkosigan?"

Cordelia started from her meditations at the urbane voice at her elbow. She turned to find Commodore Count Vordarian. His wearing of red-and-blues, rather than his personal House livery colors, marked him as being on active service, ornamenting Imperial Headquarters no doubt--in what department? Yes, Ops, Aral had said. He had a drink in his hand, and smiled cordially.

"Count Vordarian," she offered in return, smiling, too. They'd seen each other in pa.s.sing often enough, Cordelia decided to take him as introduced. This Regency business wasn't going to go away, however much she might wish it to; it was time and past time for her to start making connections of her own, and quit pestering Aral for guidance at every new step.

"Are you enjoying the party?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes." She tried to think of something more to say. "It's extremely beautiful."

"As are you, Milady." He raised his gla.s.s to her in a gesture of toast, and sipped.

Her heart lurched, but she identified the reason why before her eyes did more than widen slightly. The last Barrayaran officer to toast her had been the late Admiral Vorrutyer, under rather different social circ.u.mstances. Vordarian had accidently mimicked his precise gesture. This was no time for torture-flashbacks. Cordelia blinked. "Lady Vorpatril helped me a lot. She's very generous."

Vordarian nodded delicately toward her torso. "I understand you also are to be congratulated. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Uh? Oh. Yes, a boy, thank you. He's to be named Piotr Miles, I'm told."

"I'm surprised. I should have thought the Lord Regent would have sought a daughter first."

Cordelia c.o.c.ked her head, puzzled by his ironic tone. "We started this before Aral became Regent."

"But you knew he was to receive the appointment, surely."

"I didn't. But I thought all you Barrayaran militarists were mad after sons. Why did you think a daughter?" I want a daughter... .

"I a.s.sumed Lord Vorkosigan would be thinking ahead to his long-term, ah, employment, of course. What better way to maintain the continuity of his power after the Regency is over than to slip neatly into position as the Emperors father-in-law?"

Cordelia boggled. "You think he'd bet the continuity of a planetary government on the chance of a couple of teenagers falling in love, a decade and a half from now?"

"Love?" Now he looked baffled.

"You Barrayarans are--" she bit her tongue on the crazy. Impolite. "Aral is certainly more... practical." Though she could hardly call him unromantic.

"That's extremely interesting," he breathed. His eyes flicked to and away from her abdomen. "Do you fancy he contemplates something more direct?"

Her mind was running tangential to this twisting conversation, somehow. "Beg pardon?"

He smiled and shrugged.

Cordelia frowned. "Do you mean to say, if we were having a girl, that's what everyone would be thinking?"

"Certainly."

She blew out her breath. "G.o.d. That's... I can't imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to get near the Barrayaran Imperium. It just makes you a target for every maniac with a grievance, as far as I can see." An image of Lieutenant Koudelka, b.l.o.o.d.y-faced and deafened, flashed in her mind. "Also hard on the poor fellow who's unlucky enough to be standing next to you."

His attention sharpened. "Ah, yes, that unfortunate incident the other day. Has anything come of the investigation, do you know?"

"Nothing that I've heard. Negri and Illyan are talking Cetagandans, mostly. But the guy who launched the grenade got away clean."

"Too bad." He drained his gla.s.s, and exchanged it for a freshly charged one presented immediately by a pa.s.sing Vorbarra-liveried servant. Cordelia eyed the winegla.s.ses wistfully. But she was off metabolic poisons for the duration. Yet another advantage of Betan-style gestation in uterine replicators, none of this blasted enforced clean living. At home she could have poisoned and endangered herself freely, while her child grew, fully monitored round-the-clock by sober techs, safe and protected in the replicator banks. Suppose she had been under that sonic grenade... She longed for a drink.

Well, she did not need the mind-numbing buzz of ethanol; conversation with Barrayarans was mind-numbing enough. Her eyes sought Aral in the crowd--there he was, Kou at his shoulder, talking with Piotr and two other grizzled old men in counts' liveries. As Aral had predicted, his hearing had returned to normal within a couple of days. Yet still his eyes s.h.i.+fted from face to face, drinking in cues of gesture and inflection, his gla.s.s a mere untasted ornament in his hand. On duty, no question. Was he ever off-duty, anymore?

"Was he much disturbed by the attack?" Vordarian inquired, following her gaze to Aral.

"Wouldn't you be?" said Cordelia. "I don't know... he's seen so much violence in his life, almost more than I can imagine. It may be almost like... white noise. Tuned out." I wish I could tune it out.

"You have not known him that long, though. Just since Escobar."

"We met once before the war. Briefly."

"Oh?" His brows rose. "I didn't know that. How little one truly knows of people." He paused, watching Aral, watching her watch Aral. One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bis.e.xual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine.

"Was bis.e.xual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous."

Vordarian choked, sputtering. Cordelia watched him with concern, wondering if she ought to pat him on the back or something, but he regained his breath and balance. "He told you that?" he wheezed in astonishment.

"No, Vorrutyer did. Just before he met his, um, fatal accident." Vordarian was standing frozen; she felt a certain malicious glee at having at last baffled a Barrayaran as much as they sometimes baffled her. Now, if she could just figure out what she'd said that had thrown him... She went on seriously, "The more I look back on Vorrutyer, the more he seems a tragic figure. Still obsessed with a love affair that was over eighteen years ago. Yet I sometimes wonder, if he could have had what he wanted then--kept Aral--if Aral might have kept that s.a.d.i.s.tic streak that ultimately consumed Vorrutyer's sanity under control. It's as if the two of them were on some land of weird see-saw, each one's survival entailing the other's destruction."

"A Betan." His stunned look was gradually fading to one Cordelia mentally dubbed as Awful Realization. "I should have guessed. You are, after all, the people who bioengineered hermaphrodites... ." He paused. "How long did you know Vorrutyer?"

"About twenty minutes. But it was a very intense twenty minutes." She decided to let him wonder what the h.e.l.l that meant.

"Their, ah, affair, as you call it, was a great secret scandal, at the time."

She wrinkled her nose. "Great secret scandal? Isn't that an oxymoron? Like 'military intelligence,' or 'friendly fire.' Also typical Barrayaranisms, now that I think on it."

Vordarian had the strangest look on his face. He looked, she realized, exactly like a man who had thrown a bomb, had it go fizz instead of BOOM! and was now trying to decide whether to stick his hand in and tap the firing mechanism to test it.

Then it was her turn for Awful Realization. This man just tried to blow up my marriage. No--Aral's marriage. She fixed a bright, sunny, innocent smile on her face, her brain kicking-- at last!--into overdrive. Vordarian couldn't be of Vorrutyer's old war party; their leaders had all met with their fatal accidents before Ezar had bowed out, and the rest were scattered and lying low. What did he want? She fiddled with a flower from her hair, and considered simpering. "I didn't imagine I was marrying a forty-four-year-old virgin, Count Vordarian."

"So it seems." He knocked back another gulp of wine. "You galactics are all degenerate... what perversions does he tolerate in return, I wonder?" His eyes glinted in sudden open malice. "Do you know how Lord Vorkosigan's first wife died?"

"Suicide. Plasma arc to the head," she replied promptly.

"It was rumored he'd murdered her. For adultery. Betan, beware." His smile had turned wholly acid.

"Yes, I knew that, too. In this case, an untrue rumor." All pretense of cordiality had evaporated from their exchange. Cordelia had a bad sense of all control escaping with it. She leaned forward, and lowered her voice. "Do you know why Vorrutyer died?"

He couldn't help it; he tilted toward her, drawn in. "No..."

"He tried to hurt Aral through me. I found that... annoying. I wish you would cease trying to annoy me, Count Vordarian, I'm afraid you might succeed." Her voice fell further, almost to a whisper. "You should fear it, too."

His initial patronizing tone had certainly given way to wariness. He made a smooth, openhanded gesture that seemed to symbolize a bow of farewell, and backed away. "Milady." The glance over his shoulder as he moved off was thoroughly spooked.

She frowned after him. Whew. What an odd exchange. What had the man expected, dropping that obsolete datum on her as if it were some shocking surprise? Did Vordarian actually imagine she would go off and tax her husband with his poor taste in companions two decades ago? Would a naive young Barrayaran bride have gone into hysterics? Not Lady Vorpatril, whose social enthusiasms concealed an acid judgment; not Princess Kareen, whose naivete had surely been burned out long ago by that expert s.a.d.i.s.t Serg. He fired, but he missed.

And, more coldly, Has he fired and missed once before? That had not been a normal social interaction, not even by Barrayaran standards of one-upsmans.h.i.+p. Or maybe he was just drunk. She suddenly wanted to talk to Illyan. She closed her eyes, trying to clear her fogged head.

"Are you well, love?" Aral's concerned voice murmured in her ear. "Do you need your nausea medication?"

Her eyes flew open. There he was, safe and sound beside her. "Oh, I'm fine." She attached herself to his arm, lightly, not a panicked limpet-like clamp. "Just thinking."

"They're seating us for dinner."

"Good. It will be nice to sit down, my feet are swelling."

He looked as if he wanted to pick her up and carry her, but they paraded in normally, joining the other formal pairs. They sat at a raised table set a little apart from the others, with Gregor, Kareen, Piotr, the Lord Guardian of the Speaker's Circle and his wife, and Prime Minister Vortala. At Gregor's insistence, Droushnakovi was seated with them; the boy seemed painfully glad to see his old bodyguard. Did I take away your playmate, child? Cordelia wondered apologetically. It seemed so; Gregor engaged in a negotiation with Kareen for Drou's weekly return "for judo lessons." Drou, used to the Residence atmosphere, was not so overawed as Koudelka, who was stiff with exaggerated care against betrayal by his own clumsiness.

Cordelia found herself seated between Vortala and the Speaker, and carried on conversations with reasonable ease; Vortala was charming, in his blunt way. Cordelia managed nibbles of all the elegantly served food except a slice off the carca.s.s of a roast bovine, carried in whole. Usually she was able to put out of her mind the fact that Barrayaran protein was not grown in vats, but taken from the bodies of real dead animals. She'd known about their primitive culinary practices before she'd chosen to come here, after all, and had tasted animal muscle before on Survey missions, in the interests of science, survival, or potential new product development for the homeworld. The Barrayarans applauded the fruit- and-flower-decked beast, seeming to actually find it attractive and not horrific, and the cook, who'd followed it anxiously out, took a bow. The primitive olfactory circuits of her brain had to agree, it smelled great. Vorkosigan had his portion b.l.o.o.d.y-rare. Cordelia sipped water.

After dessert, and some brief formal toasts offered by Vortala and Vorkosigan, the boy Gregor was at last taken off to bed by his mother. Kareen motioned Cordelia and Droushnakovi to join her. The tension eased in Cordelia's shoulders as they left the big public a.s.sembly and climbed to the Emperor's quiet, private quarters.

Gregor was peeled out of his little uniform and dove into pajamas, becoming boy and not icon once again. Drou supervised his teeth-brus.h.i.+ng, and was inveigled into "just one round" of some game they'd used to play with a board and pieces, as a bedtime treat. This Kareen indulgently permitted, and after a kiss for and from her son, she and Cordelia withdrew to a softly lit sitting room nearby. A night breeze from the open windows cooled the upper chamber. Both women sat with a sigh, unwinding; Cordelia kicked off her shoes immediately after Kareen did so. Distance-m.u.f.fled voices and laughter drifted through the windows from the gardens below.

"How long does this party go on?" Cordelia asked.

"Dawn, for those with more endurance than myself. I shall retire at midnight, after which the serious drinkers will take over."

"Some of them looked pretty serious already."

"Unfortunately." Kareen smiled. "You will be able to see the Vor cla.s.s at both its best and its worst, before the night is over."

"I can imagine. I'm surprised you don't import less lethal mood-altering drugs."

Kareen's smile sharpened. "But drunken brawls are traditional." She allowed the cutting edge of her voice to soften. "In fact, such things are coming in, at least in the shuttleport cities. As usual, we seem to be adding to rather than replacing our own customs."

"Perhaps that's the best way." Cordelia frowned. How best to probe delicately... ? "Is Count Vidal Vordarian one of those in the habit of getting publicly potted?"

"No." Kareen glanced up, narrowing her eyes. "Why do you ask?"

"I had a peculiar conversation with him. I thought an overdose of ethanol might account for it." She remembered Vordarian's hand resting lightly upon the Princess's knee, just short of an intimate caress. "Do you know him well? How would you estimate him?"

Kareen said judiciously, "He's rich... proud... He was loyal to Ezar during Serg's late machinations against his father. Loyal to the Imperium, to the Vor cla.s.s. There are four major manufacturing cities in Vordarian's District, plus military bases, supply depots, the biggest military shuttleport... . Vidal's is certainly the most economically important area on Barrayar today. The war barely touched the Vordarians' District; it's one of the few the Cetagandans pulled out of by treaty. We sited our first s.p.a.ce bases there because we took over facilities the Cetagandans had built and abandoned, and a good deal of economic development followed from that."

"That's... interesting," said Cordelia, "but I was wondering about the man personally. His, ah, likes and dislikes, for example. Do you like him?"

"At one time," said Kareen slowly, "I wondered if Vidal might be powerful enough to protect me from Serg. After Ezar died. As Ezar grew more ill, I was thinking, I had better look to my own defense. Nothing appeared to be happening, and no one told me anything."

"If Serg had become emperor, how could a mere count have protected you?" asked Cordelia.

"He would have had to become... more. Vidal had ambition, if it were properly encouraged--and patriotism, G.o.d knows if Serg had lived he might have destroyed Barrayar-- Vidal might have saved us all. But Ezar promised I'd have nothing to fear, and Ezar delivered. Serg died before Ezar and... and I have been trying to let things cool, with Vidal, since."

Cordelia abstractedly rubbed her lower lip. "Oh. But do you, personally--I mean, do you like him? Would becoming Countess Vordarian be a nice retirement from the dowager- princess business, someday?"

"Oh! Not now. The Emperor's stepfather would be too powerful a man, to set up opposite the Regent. A dangerous polarity, if they were not allied or exactly balanced. Or were not combined in one person."

"Like being the Emperor's father-in-law?"

"Yes, exactly."

"I'm having trouble understanding this... venereal transmission of power. Do you have some claim to the Imperium in your own right, or not?"

"That would be for the military to decide," she shrugged. Her voice lowered. "It is like a disease, isn't it? I'm too close, I'm touched, infected... . Gregor is my hope of survival. And my prison."

"Don't you want a life of your own?"

"No. I just want to live."

Cordelia sat back, disturbed. Did Serg teach you not to give offense? "Does Vordarian see it that way? I mean, power isn't the only thing you have to offer. I think you underestimate your personal attractiveness."

"On Barrayar... power is the only thing." Her expression grew distant. "I admit... I did once ask Captain Negri to get me a report on Vidal. He uses his courtesans normally."

This wistful approval was not exactly Cordelia's idea of a declaration of boundless love. Yet that hadn't been just desire for power she'd seen in Vordarian's eyes at the ceremony, she would swear. Had Aral's appointment as Regent accidentally messed up the man's courts.h.i.+p? Might that very well account for the s.e.x-tinged animosity in his speech to her... ?

Droushnakovi returned on tiptoe. "He fell asleep," she whispered fondly. Kareen nodded, and tilted her head back in an unguarded moment of rest, until a Vorbarra-liveried messenger arrived and addressed her: "Will you open the dancing with my lord Regent, Milady? They're waiting."

Request, or order? It sounded more sinister-mandatory than fun, in the servant's flat voice.

"Last duty for the night," Kareen a.s.sured Cordelia, as they both shoved their shoes back on. Cordelia's footgear seemed to have shrunk two sizes since the start of the evening. She hobbled after Kareen, Drou trailing.

A large downstairs room was floored in multi-toned wood marquetry in patterns of flowers, vines, and animals. The polished surface would have been put on a museum wall on Beta Colony; these incredible people danced across it. A live orchestra--selected by cutthroat compet.i.tion from the Imperial Service Band, Cordelia was informed--provided music, in the Barrayaran style. Even the waltzes sounded faintly like marches. Aral and the princess were presented to each other, and he led her off for a couple of good-natured turns around the room, a formal dance that involved each mirroring the other's steps and slides, hands raised but never quite touching. Cordelia was fascinated. She'd never guessed that Aral could dance. This seemed to complete the social requirements, and other couples filtered out onto the floor. Aral returned to her side, looking stimulated. "Dance, Milady?"

After that dinner, more like a nap. How did he keep up that alarming hyperactivity? Secret terror, probably. She shook her head, smiling. "I don't know how."

"Ah." They strolled, instead. "I could show you how," he offered as they exited the room onto a bank of terraces that wound off into the gardens, pleasantly cool and dark but for a few colored lights to prevent stumbles on the pathways.

"Mm," she said doubtfully. "If you can find a private spot." If they could find a private spot, she could think of better things to do than dance, though.

"Well, here we--shh." His scimitar grin winked in the dark, and his grip tightened warningly on her hand. They both stood still, at the entrance to a little open s.p.a.ce screened from eyes above by yews and some pink feathery non-Earth plant. The music floated clearly down.

"Try, Kou," urged Droushnakovi's voice. Drou and Kou stood facing each other on the far side of the terrace-nook. Doubtfully, Koudelka set his stick down on the stone bal.u.s.trade, and held up his hands to hers. They began to step, slide, and dip, Drou counting earnestly, "One-two- three, one-two-three..."

Koudelka tripped, and she caught him; his grip found her waist. "It's no d.a.m.ned good, Drou." He shook his head in frustration.

"Sh..." Her hand touched his lips. "Try again. I'm for it. You said you had to practice that hand-coordination thing, how long, before you got it? More than once, I bet."

"The old man wouldn't let me give up."

"Well, maybe I won't let you give up either."

"I'm tired," complained Koudelka.

So, switch to kissing, Cordelia urged silently, m.u.f.fling a laugh. That you can do sitting down. Droushnakovi was determined, however, and they began again. "One-two-three, one- two-three..." Once again the effort ended in what seemed to Cordelia a very good start on a clinch, if only one party or the other would gather the wit and nerve to follow through.

Aral shook his head, and they backed silently away around the shrubbery. Apparently a little inspired, his lips found hers to m.u.f.fle his own chuckle. Alas, their delicacy was futile; an anonymous Vor lord wandered blindly past them, stumbled across the terrace nook, freezing Kou and Drou in mid-step, and hung over the stone bal.u.s.trade to be very traditionally sick into the defenseless bushes below. Sudden swearing, in new voices, one male, one female, rose up from the dark and shaded target zone. Koudelka retrieved his stick, and the two would-be dancers hastily retreated. The Vor lord was sick again, and his male victim started climbing up after him, slipping on the beslimed stonework and promising violent retribution. Vorkosigan guided Cordelia prudently away.