Illyan sat with his teeth clenched for a short time. "You put House Vorkosigan at triple risk, with this," he said at last. "You are endangering your last possible back-up."
"I am aware. And I choose the risk."
"Do you have that right?"
"I have more right than you."
"The government is in the biggest uproar behind closed doors that I've seen in years," said Illyan. "The Centrist Coalition is scrambling to find a man to replace Aral. And so are three other parties."
"Excellent. I hope one of them may succeed before Aral gets back on his feet, or I'll never get him to retire."
"Is that what you see in this?" Illyan demanded. "A chance to end your husband's career? Is this
loyal
, milady?"
"I see a chance to get him out of Vorbarr Sultana alive," she said icily, "an end I have often despaired of, over the years. You pick your loyalties, I'll pick mine."
"Who is capable of succeeding him?" asked Illyan plaintively.
"A number of men. Racozy, Vorhalas, or Sendorf, to name three. If not, there was something terribly wrong with Aral's leadership. One mark of a great man is the legacy of men he leaves behind him, to whom he's passed on his skills. If you think Aral so small as to have stifled all possible others around him, spreading smallness like a plague, then perhaps Barrayar is better off without him."
"You know I don't think that!"
"Good. Then your argument annihilates itself."
"You tie me in knots." Illyan rubbed his neck. "Milady," he said at last, "I didn't want to have to say this to you. But have you considered the possible
dangers
of letting Lord Mark get to Lord Miles before anyone else?"
She leaned back in her chair, smiling, her fingers lightly drumming. "No, Simon. What dangers are you thinking of?"
"The temptation to promote himself," Illyan bit out.
"Murder Miles. Say what you damn mean." Her eyes glinted dangerously. "So you'll just have to make sure your people get to Miles first. Won't you. I've no objection."
"Damn it, Cordelia," he cried, harried, "you realize, that if they get into trouble, the first thing they're going to do is cry to ImpSec for rescue!"
The Countess grinned. "You live to serve, I believe you fellows say in your oath. Don't you?"
"We'll see," snapped Illyan, and cut the comm.
"What's he going to do?" asked Mark anxiously.
"At a guess, go over my head. Since I've already cut him out with Aral, that leaves only one choice. I don't think I'll bother getting up. I expect I'll get another call here shortly."
Distracted, Mark and Bothari-Jesek attempted to carry on with the ship specs. Mark jumped when the comm chimed again.
An anonymous young man appeared, nodded to the Countess, stated, "Lady Vorkosigan. Emperor Gregor," and vanished. Gregor's face appeared in his place, looking bemused.
"Good morning, Lady Cordelia. You really ought not to stir up poor Simon that way, you know."
"He deserved it," she said equably. "I admit, he has far too much on his mind at the moment. Suppressed panic turns him into a prick every time; it's what he does instead of running in circles screaming. A way of coping, I suppose."
"While others of us cope by becoming over-analytical," Gregor murmured. The Countess's lip twitched, and Mark suddenly thought he knew who might shave the barber.
"His security concerns are legitimate," Gregor continued. "Is this Jackson's Whole venture
wise
?"
"A question that can only be answered by empirical testing. So to speak. I grant you, Simon argues sincerely. But—how do you consider
Barrayar's
concerns will best be served, Sire? That's the question you must answer."
"I'm divided in mind."
"Are you divided in heart?" Her question was a challenge. She opened her hands, half-placation, half-pleading. "One way or another, you're going to be dealing with Lord Mark Vorkosigan for a long time to come. This excursion, if it does nothing else, will test the validity of all doubts. If they are not tested, they will always remain with you, an unanswered itch. And that's not fair to Mark."
"How very scientific," he breathed. They regarded each other with equal dryness.
"I thought it might appeal to you."
"Is Lord Mark with you?"
"Yes." The Countess gestured him to her side.
Mark entered the range of the vid pick-up. "Sire."
"So, Lord Mark." Gregor studied him gravely. "It seems your mother wants me to give you enough rope to hang yourself."
Mark swallowed. "Yes, Sire."
"Or save yourself . . ." Gregor nodded. "So be it. Good luck and good hunting."
"Thank you, Sire."
Gregor smiled and cut the comm.
They did not hear from Illyan again.
In the afternoon, the Countess took Mark with her to the Imperial Military Hospital on her daily visit to her husband. Mark had made that journey in her company twice before, since the Count's collapse. He didn't much care for it. For one thing, the place smelled entirely too much like the clinics that had helped make a torment of his Jacksonian youth; he found himself remembering details of early surgeries and treatments that he thought he'd altogether forgotten. For another, the Count himself still terrified Mark. Even laid low, his personality was as powerful as his life was precarious, and Mark wasn't sure which teetering aspect scared him more.
His feet slowed to a halt in the hospital corridor outside the Prime Minister's guarded room, and he stood in indecisive misery. The Countess glanced back, and stopped. "Yes?"
"I . . . really don't want to go in there."
She frowned thoughtfully. "I won't force you. But I'll predict you a prediction."
"Say on, oh seeress."
"You will never regret having done so. But you may deeply regret not having done so."
Mark digested that. "All right," he said faintly, and followed her.
They tiptoed in quietly on the deep carpeting. The drapes were open on a wide view of the Vorbarr Sultana city-scape, sweeping down to the ancient buildings and the river that bisected the capital's heart. It was a cloudy, chilly, rainy afternoon, and gray and white mists swirled around the tops of the highest modern towers. The Count's face was turned to the silver light. He looked abstracted, bored, and ill, his face puffy and greenish, only partly a reflection of the light and the green uniform pajamas that reminded all forcibly of his patient-status. He was peppered with monitor pads, and had an oxygen tube to his nostrils.
"Ah." His head turned at their entry, and he smiled. He keyed up a light at his bedside, which cast a warmer pool of illumination that nonetheless failed to improve his color. "Dear Captain. Mark." The Countess bent to his bedside, and they exchanged a longer-than-formal kiss. The Countess swung herself up on the end of his bed and perched there cross-legged, arranging her long skirt. Casually, she began to rub his bare feet, and he sighed contentedly.
Mark advanced to about a meter distance. "Good afternoon, sir. How are you feeling?"
"Hell of a deal, when you can't kiss your own wife without running out of breath," he complained. He lay back, panting heavily.
"They let me into the lab to see your new heart," the Countess commented. "It's chicken-heart sized already, and beating away cheerfully in its little vat."
The Count laughed weakly. "How grotesque."
"
I
thought it was cute."
"
You
would."
"If you really want grotesque, consider what you want to do with the old one, after," the Countess advised with a wicked grin. "The opportunities for tasteless jokes are almost irresistible."
"The mind reels," murmured the Count. He glanced up at Mark, still smiling.
Mark took a breath. "Lady Cordelia has explained to you what I intend to do, hasn't she, sir?"
"Mm." The Count's smile faded. "Yes. Watch out for your back. Nasty place, Jackson's Whole."
"Yes, I . . . know."
"So you do." He turned his head to stare out the gray window. "I wish I could send Bothari with you."
The Countess looked startled. Mark could read her thought right off her face,
Has he forgotten Bothari is dead?
But she was afraid to ask. She pasted a brighter smile on her mouth instead.
"I'm taking Bothari-Jesek, sir."
"History repeats itself." He struggled to sit up on one elbow, and added sternly, "It had better not, boy, y'hear?" He relaxed back into his pillows before the Countess could respond and make him. Her face lost its tension; he was clearly a little fogged, but he wasn't so far out of it as to have forgotten his armsman's violent death. "Elena's smarter than her father was, I'll give her that," he sighed. The Countess finished with his feet.
He lay back, brows drawn down, apparently struggling to think of more useful advice. "I once thought—I only found this out when I grew old, understand—that there is no more terrible fate than to become the mentor. To be able to tell how, yet not to do. To send your protégé out, all bright and beautiful, to stand your fire . . . I think I've found a worse fate. To send your student out knowing damn well you haven't had a chance to teach
enough
. . . . Be smart, boy. Duck fast. Don't sell yourself to your enemy in advance, in your mind. You can only be defeated
here.
" He touched his hands to his temples.
"I don't even know who the enemy is, yet," said Mark ruefully.
"They'll find you, I suppose," sighed the Count. "People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to
them
you go bat-blind and deaf. Eh?"
"I guess so. Sir," said Mark, baffled.
"Huh." The Count had run himself completely out of breath. "You'll see," he wheezed. The Countess eyed him, swung herself off the bed, and stood up.
"Well," said Mark, and nodded briefly, "goodbye." His word hung in the air, insufficient.
Cardiac conditions are not contagious, dammit. What are you scared of?
He swallowed, and cautiously went nearer the Count. He had never touched the man except the once when trying to help load him onto the float bike. Afraid, emboldened, he held out his hand.
The Count grasped it, a brief, strong grip. His hand was big and square and blunt-fingered, a hand fit for shovels and picks, swords and guns. Mark's own hand seemed small and child-like, plump and pale by contrast. They had nothing in common but the grip.
"Confusion to the enemy, boy," whispered the Count.
"Turn-about is fair play, sir."
His father snorted a laugh.
Mark made one final vid-call that evening, his last night on Barrayar. He sneaked off to use the console in Miles's room, not in secret, exactly, but in private. He stared at the blank machine for ten minutes before spasmodically punching in the code he had obtained.
A middle-aged blonde woman's image appeared over the vid plate when the chime stopped. The remains of a striking beauty made her face strong and confident. Her eyes were blue and humorous. "Commodore Koudelka's residence," she answered formally.
It's her mother.
Mark choked down panic to quaver, "May I speak with Kareen Koudelka, please—ma'am?"
A blonde brow twitched. "I believe I know which one you are, but—who may I say is calling?"
"Lord Mark Vorkosigan," he got out.
"Just a moment, my lord." She left the range of the vid pick-up; he could hear her voice fading in the distance, calling "Kareen!"
There was a muffled bumping in the background, garbled voices, a shriek, and Kareen's laughing voice crying, "No, Delia, it's for me! Mother, make her go away! Mine, all mine! Out!" The sound of a door thumping closed on, presumably, flesh, a yelp, then a firmer and more final slam.
Panting and tousled, Kareen Koudelka arrived in range, and gave him a starry-eyed "Hi!"
If not
just
like the look Lady Cassia had given Ivan, it was a robust and blue near-cousin. Mark felt faint. "Hello," he said breathlessly. "I called to say goodbye." No, dammit, that was much too short—
"What?"
"Um, excuse me, that's not quite what I meant. But I'm going to be traveling off-planet soon, and I didn't want to leave without speaking to you again."
"Oh." Her smile drooped. "When will you come back?"
"I'm not sure. But when I do, I'd like to see you again."
"Well . . . sure."
Sure
, she said. What a lot of joyful assumptions were embedded in that
sure.
Her eyes narrowed. "Is there something wrong, Lord Mark?"
"No," he said hastily. "Um . . . was that your sister I heard in the background just now?"
"Yes. I had to lock her out, or she'd stand out of range and make faces at me while we talked." Her earnest air of injury was immediately spoiled when she added, "That's what I do to her, when fellows call."
He was a
fellow.
How . . . how
normal.
He led her on with one question after another, to talk about her sisters, her parents, and her life. Private schools and cherished children . . . The Commodore's family was well-to-do, but with some sort of Barrayaran-style work ethic driving a passion for education and accomplishment, an ideal of service running like an undercurrent, towing them all into their future. He went awash in her words, dreamily sharing. She was so peaceable and real. No shadow of torment, nothing spoiled or deformed. He felt as if he was feeding, not his belly but his head. His brain felt warm and distended and happy, a sensation near-erotic but less threatening. Alas, after a time she became conscious of the disproportion in the conversation.
"Good heavens, I'm babbling. I'm sorry."
"No! I like listening to you talk."
"That's a first. In this family, I'm lucky to get a word in edgewise. I didn't talk till I was three. They had me tested. It turned out it was just because my sisters were answering everything for me!"
Mark laughed.
"Now they say I'm making up for lost time."
"I know about lost time," Mark said ruefully.