"Offworlder. You have no concept of the honor of the Vor," the man grated.
"None whatsoever," Mark agreed cheerfully. "I think you're all insane."
"You are no soldier."
"Right again. My, we are quick tonight. I was trained strictly as a lone assassin. Death in the shadows is a sort of speciality of mine." He began counting seconds in his head.
The man, who had started to move forward, sagged back again. "So it seems," he hissed. "You've wasted no time, promoting yourself to a countship. Not very subtle, for a trained assassin."
"I'm not a subtle man." He centered his balance, but did not move. No sudden moves. Keep bluffing.
"I can tell you this, little
clowne.
" He gave it the same insulting slur as before. "If Aral Vorkosigan dies, it won't be
you
who steps into his place."
"Well, that's just exactly right," purred Mark. "So what are you all hot about, Vor bore?"
Shit. This one knows that Miles is dead. How the hell does he know? Is he an ImpSec insider?
But no Horus-eye stared from his collar; he bore a ship insignia of some kind, which Mark could not quite make out. Active-duty type. "What, to you, is one more little spare Vor drone living off a family pension in Vorbarr Sultana? I saw a herd of them up there tonight, swilling away."
"You're very cocky."
"Consider the venue," said Mark in exasperation. "You're not going to carry out any death threats here. It would embarrass ImpSec. And I don't think you want to annoy Simon Illyan, whoever the hell you are." He kept on counting.
"I don't know what hold you think you have on ImpSec," the man began furiously.
But he was interrupted. A smiling servant in the Residence's livery walked down the path carrying a tray of glasses. He was a very physically-fit young man.
"Drinks, gentlemen?" he offered.
The anonymous Vor glowered at him. "No, thank you." He turned on his heel and strode off. Shrubbery whipped in his wake, scattering droplets of dew.
"I'll take one, thanks," said Mark brightly. The servant proffered the tray with a slight bow. For his abused stomach's sake Mark stuck with the same light wine he'd been drinking most of the evening. "Eighty-five seconds. Your timing is lousy. He could have killed me three times over, but you interrupted just as the talk was getting interesting. How do you fellows pick this stuff out, real-time? You can't possibly have enough people upstairs to be following every conversation in the building. Automated key-word searches?"
"Canapé, sir?" Blandly, the servant turned the tray and offered the other side.
"Thank you again. Who was that proud Vor?"
The servant glanced down the now-empty pathway. "Captain Edwin Vorventa. He's on personal leave while his ship is in orbital dock."
"He's not in ImpSec?"
"No, my lord."
"Oh? Well, tell your boss I'd like to talk to him, at his earliest convenience."
"That would be Lord Voraronberg, the castellan's food and beverage manager."
Mark grinned. "Oh, sure. Go away, I'm drunk enough."
"Very good, my lord."
"Not come morning. Ah! One more thing. You wouldn't know where I could find Ivan Vorpatril right now, would you?"
The young man stared absently over the balcony a moment, as though listening, though no earbug showed. "There is a sort of gazebo at the bottom of the next left-hand turn, my lord, near a fountain. You might try there."
"Thank you."
Mark followed his directions, through the cool night mist. In a stray ray of light, fog droplets on his uniform sleeve shone like a cloud across the little silver rivers of the embroidery. He soon heard the plash of the fountain. A petite stone building, no walls, just deeply shadowed arches, overlooked it.
It was so quiet in this pocket of the garden, he could hear the breathing of the person inside. Only one person; good, he wasn't about to diminish his already low popularity still further by interrupting a tryst. But it was strangely hoarse. "Ivan?"
There was a long pause. He was trying to decide whether to call again or tiptoe off when Ivan's voice returned an uninviting growl of, "What?"
"I just . . . wondered what you were doing."
"Nothing."
"Hiding from your mother?"
" . . . Yeah."
"I, ah, won't tell her where you are."
"Good for you," was the sour reply.
"Well . . . see you later." He turned to go.
"Wait."
He waited, puzzled.
"Want a drink?" Ivan offered after a long pause.
"Uh . . . sure."
"So, come get it."
Mark ducked inside and waited for his eyes to adjust. The usual stone bench, and Ivan a seated shadow. Ivan proffered the gleaming bottle, and Mark topped up his glass, only to find too late that Ivan wasn't drinking wine, but rather some sort of brandy. The accidental cocktail tasted vile. He sat down by the steps with his back to a stone post and set his glass aside. Ivan had dispensed with the formality of a glass.
"Are you going to be able to make it back to your groundcar?" asked Mark doubtfully.
"Don't plan to. The Residence's staff will cart me out in the morning, when they pick up the rest of the trash."
"Oh." His night vision continued to improve. He could pick out the glittery bits on Ivan's uniform, and the polished glow of his boots. The reflections of his eyes. The gleam of wet tracks down his cheeks. "Ivan, are you—" Mark bit his tongue on
crying,
and changed it in mid-sentence to, "all right?"
"I," Ivan stated firmly, "have decided to get very drunk."
"I can see that. Why?"
"Never have, at the Emperor's Birthday. It's a traditional challenge, like getting laid here."
"Do people do that?"
"Sometimes. On a dare."
"How entertaining for ImpSec."
Ivan snorted a laugh. "Yeah, there is that."
"So who dared you?"
"Nobody."
Mark felt he was running out of probing questions faster than Ivan was running out of monosyllabic replies.
But, "Miles and I," Ivan said in the dark, "used to work this party together, most every year. I was surprised . . . how much I missed the little bugger's slanderous political commentary, this time around. Used to make me laugh." Ivan laughed. It was a hollow and un-funny noise. He stopped abruptly.
"They told you about finding the empty cryo-chamber, didn't they," said Mark.
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Couple of days ago. I've been thinking about it, since. Not good."
"No." Mark hesitated. Ivan was shivering, in the dark. "Do you . . . want to go home and go to bed?"
I sure do.
"Never make it up the hill, now," shrugged Ivan.
"I'll give you a hand. Or a shoulder."
" . . . All right."
It took some doing, but he hoisted Ivan to his unsteady feet, and they navigated back up the steep garden. Mark didn't know what charitable ImpSec guardian angel passed the word, but they were met at the top not by Ivan's mother, but by his aunt.
"He's, ah . . ." Mark was not sure what to say. Ivan peered around blearily.
"So I see," said the Countess.
"Can we spare an armsman, to drive him home?" Ivan sagged, and Mark's knees buckled. "Better make it two armsmen."
"Yes." The Countess touched a decorative comm pin on her bodice. "Pym . . . ?"
Ivan was thus taken off his hands, and Mark breathed a sigh of relief. His relief grew to outright gratitude when the Countess commented that it was time for them to quit, too. In a few minutes Pym brought the Count's groundcar around to the entrance, and the night's ordeal was over.
The Countess didn't talk much, for a change, in the groundcar going back to Vorkosigan House. She leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes in exhaustion. She didn't even ask him anything.
In the black-and-white paved foyer the Countess handed off her cloak to a maid, and headed left, toward the library.
"You'll excuse me, Mark. I'm going to call ImpMil."
She looked so tired. "Surely they'd have called you, ma'am, if there was any change in the Count's condition."
"I'm going to call ImpMil," she said flatly. Her eyes were puffy slits. "Go to bed, Mark."
He didn't argue with her. He trudged wearily up the stairs to his bedroom corridor.
He paused outside the door to his room. It was very late at night. The hallway was deserted. The silence of the great house pressed on his ears. On an impulse, he turned back and stepped down the hall to Miles's room. There he paused again. In all his weeks on Barrayar, he had not ventured in here. He had not been invited. He tried the antique knob. The door was not locked.
Hesitantly, he entered, and keyed up the lights with a word. It was a spacious bedchamber, given the limits of the house's old architecture. An adjoining antechamber once meant for personal servants had long ago been converted to a private bathroom. At first glance the room seemed almost stripped, bare and neat and clean. All the clutter of childhood must have been boxed and put away in an attic, in some spasm of maturity. He suspected Vorkosigan House's attics were astonishing.
Yet a trace of the owner's personality remained. He walked slowly around the room, hands in his pockets like a patron at a museum.
Reasonably enough, the few mementos that had been retained tended heavily to reminders of successes. Miles's diploma from the Imperial Service Academy, and his officer's commission, were normal enough, though Mark wondered why a battered old Service issue weather manual was also framed and placed exactly between them. A box of old gymkhana awards going back to youth looked as if they might be heading for an attic very soon. Half a wall was devoted to a massive book-disk and vid collection, thousands of titles. How many had Miles actually read? Curious, he took the hand-viewer off its hook on the wall nearby and tried three disks at random. All had at least a few notes or glosses entered in the margin-boxes, tracks of Miles's thought. Mark gave up the survey, and passed on.
One object he knew personally; a cloissoné-hilted dagger, which Miles had inherited from old General Piotr. He dared to take it down and test its heft and edge. So when in the past two years had Miles stopped carting it around, and sensibly begun leaving it safely at home? He replaced it carefully on the shelf in its sheath.
One wall-hanging was ironic, personal, and obvious: an old metal leg-brace, crossed, military-museum fashion, with a Vor sword. Half joke, half defiance. Both obsolete. A cheap photonic reproduction of a page from an ancient book was matted and mounted in a wildly expensive silver frame. The text was all out of context, but appeared to be some sort of pre-jump religious gibberish, all about pilgrims, and a hill, and a city in the clouds. Mark wasn't sure what that was all about; nobody had ever accused Miles of being the religious type. Yet it was clearly important to him.
Some of these things aren't prizes, Mark realized. They are lessons.
A holovid portfolio box rested on the bedside table. Mark sat down and activated it. He expected Elli Quinn's face, but the first videoportrait to come up was of a tall, glowering, extraordinarily ugly man in Vorkosigan armsmen's livery. Sergeant Bothari, Elena's father. He keyed through the contents. Quinn was next, then Bothari-Jesek. His parents, of course. Miles's horse, Ivan, Gregor: after that, a parade of faces and forms. He keyed through faster and faster, not recognizing even a third of the people. After the fiftieth face, he stopped clicking.
He rubbed his face wearily.
He's not a man, he's a mob.
Right. He sat bent and aching, face in his hands, elbows on his knees.
No. I am not Miles.
Miles's comconsole was the secured type, in no way junior to the one in the Count's library. Mark walked over and examined it only by eye; his hands he shoved back deep into his trouser pockets. His fingertips encountered Kareen Koudelka's crumpled flowerlets.
He drew them out and spread them on his palm. In a spasm of frustration, he smashed the blooms with his other hand, and threw them to the floor. Less than a minute later he was on his hands and knees frantically scraping the scattered bits up off the carpet again.
I think I must be insane.
He sat on his knees on the floor and began to cry.
Unlike poor Ivan, no one interrupted his misery, for which he was profoundly grateful. He sent a mental apology after his Vorpatril cousin,
Sorry, sorry . . .
though odds were even whether Ivan would remember anything about his intrusion come the morning. He gulped for control of his breath, his head aching fiercely.
Ten minutes delay downside at Bharaputra's had been all the difference. If they'd been ten minutes faster, the Dendarii would have made it back to their drop shuttle before the Bharaputrans had a chance to blow it up, and all would have unfolded into another future. Thousands of ten-minute intervals had passed in his life, unmarked and without effect. But
that
ten minutes had been all it took to transform him from would-be hero to permanent scum. And he could never recover the moment.
Was that, then, the commander's gift: to recognize those critical minutes, out of the mass of like moments, even in the chaos of their midst? To risk all to grab the golden ones? Miles had possessed that gift of timing to an extraordinary degree. Men and women followed him, laid all their trust at his feet, just for that.
Except once, Miles's timing had failed. . . .
No. He'd been screaming his lungs out for them to keep moving.
Miles's
timing had been shrewd. His feet had been fatally slowed by others' delays.
Mark climbed up off the floor, washed his face in the bathroom, and returned and sat in the comconsole's station chair. The first layer of secured functions was entered by a palm-lock. The machine did not quite like his palm-print; bone growth and subcutaneous fat deposits were beginning to distort the pattern out of the range of recognition. But not wholly, not yet; on the fourth try it took a reading that pleased it, and opened files to him. The next layer of functions required codes and accesses he did not know, but the top layer had all he needed for now: a private, if not secured, comm channel to ImpSec.