Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Seventeen

Ivan’s first thought on waking was the same as the last that had plagued him before he’d—finally—got to sleep. Could Simon be herding Shiv into a sting? Such a move was likely as instinctive as breathing to the former ImpSec chief. It was as plausible—a lot more plausible, really—as the idea that Shiv could be suborning Simon.

In that case, would Shiv lumber blindly into the trap, or would he guess this, and set a counter-pitfall for Simon before Simon could do him…?

Neither vision was appealing.

It was maddening to suspect something was in the Arqua works, but have no idea what. Did Simon know, by now? The comforting notion that, in that case, Simon would surely be on top of it ran aground on the reflection that Shiv could well be stringing Simon along with heavily doctored information. In which case, the former ImpSec chief would likely let things run a bit to see what turned up. Giving the former pirate time to get the drop on him in turn…

This cannot end well. Ivan clutched his hair and stumbled to the shower.

Tej and Rish were still asleep when he let himself out of his flat. The routine of the morning rush at Ops was calming, almost. Admiral Desplains inquired after Ivan’s evening, in a perfunctory sort of way, and was evidently much reassured by the news that Lady Alys and Illyan had welcomed the refugee visitors diplomatically and without incident.

“Ah, Illyan, of course,” murmured the admiral, gathering up his coffee mug. “That should cover everything.”

“Mm!” said Ivan brightly, and turned to his comconsole.

He was still sorting snakes when a call came in over his secured channel from ImpSec HQ, the stamp informed him. Ivan mustered a faint, practiced smile of welcome when Captain Raudsepp’s face materialized over the vid plate.

“Good, Captain Vorpatril.” Raudsepp returned the nod. “General Allegre thought you should know, your case seems to be warming up. About a day ago, ImpSec Komarr picked up a team of four individuals at the main orbital transfer station who proved to be freelance bounty hunters out of the Hegen Hub, looking to collect your wife and her companion and deliver them to a contact back in the Hub.”

Ivan lurched in his chair. That was…fast? Slow? Expected, unexpected…unfortunate? “Just Tej and Rish? Not the rest of the clan?”

“Apparently. The reward for the two women’s delivery to the Hub station was substantial. A reward for their delivery all the way to the Whole is even more substantial. The source of what the Jacksonians are pleased to call an arrest order is confirmed to be this Prestene syndicate that took over House Cordonah eight months ago.”

“That’s not a surprise, by now. Were these rental goons arriving or departing when Morozov’s people caught up with them?”

“Boarding ship for Vorbarr Sultana, in point of fact.”

“That’s…a bit late.”

Raudsepp shrugged. “They were quite professional. And, while we now have red flags on anything related to the new Cordonah consortium, their damned bounty system puts a natural break in any connection. Anyone at all—who is in the trade, that is—may pick up an advertisement of the bounty, and the first thing the Jacksonians who posted it, let alone us, may know of them is when they pop up on their doorstep ready to deliver and collect. Personal motives not required.”

“Crap,” said Ivan. “Then they could come out of the walls anywhere.”

Raudsepp nodded glumly. “The charge of conspiracy to kidnap a Barrayaran subject will hold this crew for the moment.” He added in a more reflective tone, “One does wonder what we will do with them if they accumulate. Some special holding pen for galactic human traffickers might have to be devised. Not that we aren’t happy to have them identified and pulled out of circulation, but…well, perhaps it’s premature to look so far ahead.”

Ivan pictured it. What the hell was the Barrayaran government supposed to do with dozens and dozens of bounty hunters? They’d make a slippery bunch to hold on to, too, as well as some of them being seriously crazy. Miles would know what to do with a sack of rabid weasels, but that might be a cure worse than the disease. And anyway, Miles wasn’t here. It was perhaps unworthy to think, Thank God.

“I suppose,” said Ivan slowly, “They’ll keep coming as long as this Prestene consortium is still out there offering the booty. And for a while after, as people fail to get the updates. Speaking of updates, is there any sign that the Arquas’ enemies have found out that the rest of them are now all here?”

“Not yet,” said Raudsepp. “But I shouldn’t think that it will improve the situation once they do. This could get expensive for my department.”

Ivan grimaced. “I suppose you fellows can think of it as a live training exercise.”

Raudsepp appeared unamused. “Do you have any idea yet how long your, ah, relatives-in-law are planning to stay?”

“Their initial emergency visa runs thirteen more days. I don’t know if they’ll succeed in getting an extension.”

“Hm.” Raudsepp frowned. “Were you able to discover if they have any further plans? Otherwise, I don’t see any impediment for them to take their family members and decamp promptly. Which would remove them from my work queue, at least.”

“One of them is married to a Barrayaran subject. That’s an impediment.”

Raudsepp waved this away. “I was told this marriage of yours was a temporary ploy. Not one that anyone takes seriously.”

I do. Did he? Did Tej…?

Raudsepp mused on, “One would think a notorious Vor womanizer would have a less drastic seduction technique.” Losing your touch? hung implied in Raudsepp’s eyebrow twitch.

Ivan wondered irately what pruney prole ImpSec analyst had him down in reports as a notorious Vor womanizer.

“In any case, did you learn any more about their intentions last night?” Raudsepp sat up, preparing to record Ivan’s snitch-report.

General Allegre had said—implied—that Galactic Affairs-Raudsepp had not formerly been in the need-to-know pool about Domestic-Affairs Byerly, in the interest of preserving By’s valuable cover. By’s valuable cover, in Ivan’s view, was beginning to resemble a lace fig leaf. He’d wanted to ask, But what if they try to shoot each other? Well, Byerly wouldn’t shoot the uniformed Raudsepp, probably. Accidentally.

So had that apprising taken place yet, and this a mere triangulation? Bloody ImpSec. Ivan fell back on: “Simon Illyan was there. The Spook’s Spook. Can’t you ask him?”

Raudsepp was taken aback. “Oh, of course.” A daunted look came over his face. “I should not like to bother him in his retirement. His medical retirement. But certainly, no one’s observations could be keener.” Doubt colored his voice. “Once…”

So, that’s what dithering looks like on Raudsepp. Under other circumstances, Ivan would have found it mildly entertaining.

“If Chief Illyan had spotted anything critical, he would certainly have reported it. Though maybe not on my level…”

Simon might have, at that. But to whom? So why aren’t I in that need-to-know loop? I bloody need to know! “Ask around,” Ivan suggested, shrugging. “Ah, excuse me. Admiral Desplains is paging me. Gotta go.”

Raudsepp, reluctantly, parted with him for now. That line about Desplains would have been a good lie for cutting himself loose, Ivan thought, if only it had been a lie. Wasted for now, but perhaps he could file it for future reference. He turned to hastily muster the requested files. Another, God spare Ops, interdepartmental meeting in forty minutes. Wormhole jump station Logistics versus Budget & Accounting with spreadsheets at twenty paces at dawn, aiming to kill unless someone—and Ivan knew just what someone would be expected to pitch in—could persuade them to delope. He rose to report to the inner office.

Tej and Rish arrived, yawning, at the Arqua hotel suite to find everyone else up betimes. Even, it appeared, Byerly, just exiting in tow of Jet, who had drafted him for a local guide. By spared Rish a grimace of a smile; she spared him a grimace of one back. Tej thought, Why don’t you two just kiss each other and get it over with? They so obviously wished to. But they exchanged greetings and farewells in nearly the same breaths, and parted at the lift tubes both looking back over their shoulders in dissatisfied ways.

Inside the suite—should she start thinking of it as House Cordonah HQ in Exile?—everyone seemed to be pursuing a different project at a different comconsole terminal, Star and Pearl at one, Pidge and Em at another, Dada at yet a third. Grandmama sat in the center and regarded it all benignly.

The Baronne greeted her directly with “Tej! Do I understand correctly that you can drive in Vorbarr Sultana?”

“Yes…?”

“Excellent. We will have work for you shortly. Don’t run off. Rish, Star needs you.”

Rish, with another grimace, went off to join the little subcommittee at Star’s terminal in the next room.

“But I don’t have a vehicle.” Ivan had taken his sporty groundcar to work, and besides, it would only hold one other Arqua at a time. Although that might not be a disadvantage.

“Then you can also take charge of obtaining rentals as needed. Good, I had been wondering what to do with you.”

As if Tej were a spare puzzle piece that didn’t fit in anywhere, perhaps accidentally included from another set. And here came another. Amiri wandered in with a coffee cup in his hand, looking vaguely at a loss, but he brightened when he saw Tej.

“Is there more of that?” asked Tej, nodding at the coffee.

“Yes, right this way…” He guided her to the credenza.

“What’s Jet up to? I saw him going out with By.” She poured, added cream, and drank. Mere hotel coffee, but the cream had that extraordinary mouth-filling taste that told of a real organic origin, not from a biovat like Station dairy products. Having now seen pictures of the organic origin, Tej wasn’t sure she wanted to think too closely about it, but she had to admit that the result was amazing.

“Decoy. Sort of. Whichever of us Vorrutyer is with, or who is with Vorrutyer, is supposed to switch to decoy mode. With eleven of us, Dada figures we can keep him occupied. What was Rish thinking, to pick him up?”

Tej, remembering the exchange of scents at that first historic meeting in Ivan’s Komarr flat, wasn’t sure that thinking had had as much to do with it as either Byerly or Rish would likely claim. “He found us first, really. But it was a different situation then. We were both looking for cover.”

“Not the way I should have preferred my sisters to obtain it, but done’s done I guess. Gods, Tej!” He shook his head, his crisp hair moving with it. “I’m so relieved the Baronne and Dada have found you two. Maybe, if they can bring off this damned treasure hunt, they’ll let me go back to the clinic on Escobar.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Of course it is. I was just getting my teeth into my first big post-doc project. It broke my heart to be dragged away. I’d thought I was done with House Cordonah and all its works, I thought I’d made my escape. All right, I can understand that Dada and the Baronne have just had this big scare, and why they want to keep us all collected under their eyes for a time, but I do not want to be drafted as a replacement heir for Eric. Not only would either Star or Pidge be better, they’d want it.”

Tej wrinkled her nose, and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure of the dynamics of that. Star and Pidge both accepted Eric as heir. Do you think either of them would accept the other?”

Amiri looked as if he took the point. “Well…in either case, it wouldn’t be my problem.” He drank again.

“How long have the rest of you known about the treasure hunt?” Tej asked.

“Just since last night. After we got back from Lady Vorpatril’s. Dada and Grandmama and the Baronne called a family meeting and told us the new scheme. They’d really kept it tight before then—I suppose because they weren’t sure yet that the bio-bunker-thing would still be here. I thought we were just coming here to get you two, and I’d wondered why we all had to be dragged five wormhole jumps when we could have just sent one rep. And much more discreetly.”

Tej wondered what she and Rish would have done if just one Arqua had turned up, demanding they depart at once. Might have depended on which one…

“Why did they haul you along?” Tej asked.

“That was the big mystery to me, too, till last night. They seem to have some idea of fencing any interesting old Cetagandan bio-stuff out through Lily Durona. I wonder if they’d told her about it all? That would explain why she was so ready to let me go, at least. Makes me feel a bit better.” Amiri paused, then countered, “How long have you known?”

“Only since yesterday afternoon, when Rish was briefing the rest of you on local terrain. But did they tell you what the Barrayarans have planted on top of Grandmama’s old place?”

“Yeah, that sounded a bit…challenging. But Dada seemed to think he had it all under control.” An uncertain tone entered Amiri’s voice. Dada and the Baronne had presumably thought they’d had Cordonah Station under control, once, too.

Amiri turned to Tej with more urgency. “But you have to help make sure this comes off, Tej, you have to. My whole life is riding on it.”

What about my whole life? Tej stemmed the rebellious thought. Of course Amiri’s life was more important. Amiri did things. Tej, as her family never seemed to tire of pointing out, didn’t. She sighed. “I’ll try, Amiri.”

“Don’t just try, do,” he urged. “It’s really important to me. To everybody, really, but especially to me.”

“Yes, yes…” said Tej, distracted. I was prepared to jump off a damned balcony for you. Shouldn’t that be enough? She was beginning to rethink that balcony business. True, it had been as much to escape the exhaustion and the being-afraid-all-the-time as it had been for imagined family heroism. None of which had been a problem since…since Ivan Xav, really. He was not the balcony type.

I like that in a man. She was just beginning to realize how much.

The Baronne was calling her away to consult on local transportation logistics with Dada. She sighed and trudged off to do her Arqua duty.

Ivan woke, not as late as he’d have liked, on his first day off after the Invasion of the Arquas to an unexpectedly empty bed. A gulping moment of panic was quelled, as he sat up, by the sound of voices from the next room and someone rattling around in the bathroom.

Ivan had needed to work yesterday; Tej had spent all the long day and into the evening driving assorted Arquas around town on mysterious errands which she’d barely talked about. From years of practice with his cousin, Ivan could recognize evasion both when he heard it, and when he didn’t hear it. He wasn’t reassured by either mode. He’d held her attention briefly with Raudsepp’s account of the intercepted bounty hunters, which she’d assured him she would pass on to her folks, but with unfeigned tiredness she had slipped—away, perhaps?—into sleep shortly thereafter.

Yawning, he dragged on trousers and went in search of caffeine. Tej was in the comconsole niche, talking to someone—a Barrayaran, a commercial clerk of some sort, apparently. She switched to Barrayaran Russian in mid-sentence; the man brightened and became more voluble. And cooperative? In any case, her business was concluded by the time Ivan came back with a steaming mug in his hand.

Ivan nodded at the comconsole. “How did you know that fellow’s mother tongue? He had a pretty urban accent.”

Tej gestured to the now-blank vid-plate. “I can hear it in their voices. Can’t you?”

“Accents, sure. But he sounded pure Vorbarr Sultana to me.”

“Not really. I haven’t got all the District dialect variations sorted out yet, though. Sixty-times-four plus South Continent. I have to pick up more local geography.”

“Do you expect to? Sort them all out?”

She shrugged. “If I’m here long enough, they’ll sort themselves.”

“Tej…” He wanted to follow up that ambiguous-sounding if I’m here long enough, but stuck to his first thought. “How many languages do you speak?”

“I dunno.” Her nose wrinkled. “Since I came here—nine?”

“That’s a lot.”

“Not really. Good translator earbugs will handle hundreds. Why bother making work out of it, when the ones you need likely won’t be the ones you learned anyway? I never even heard of Barrayaran Russian before I came here. Or your local Greek dialect, which is pretty corrupt—well, altered—see, I didn’t say mutated. I mean, learning them yourself isn’t a practical hobby. The earbugs do it better.” A crooked smile. “Kind of fun, though. I like fun.”

“Fun,” said Ivan, bemusedly reflecting on all the lack of fun he’d had in his school language drills.

Rish emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed. “Tej, did you get the ground-van and the big speakers? Are we ready to go now?”

“Yes and yes.” Tej popped up and offered Ivan a placatory kiss on the cheek. “Gotta run.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Jewels wanted a place for some dance practice, since this is the first they’ve been together for ages, and Simon found us this nice park. There wasn’t any place big enough in the hotel. I’m doing tech on the music.”

“Outdoors? In this weather?” Ivan wandered to a window and peered blearily out. All right, the angled winter sun was shining brightly, and it was windless and well above freezing, but still.

“It’s really pretty nice out today. Supposed to change tomorrow, though, so I really have to go now…”

She and Rish blew out.

Ivan munched groats, a little later, with his uneasiness growing. He shaved, dressed, and, with extreme reluctance, called his mother.

“Mamere,” he said, when her impeccably groomed features appeared over the vid plate, wearing an expression of surprised inquiry. “Do you know anything about some dance practice place Simon recommended to the Jewels? A park or commons, outdoors.” Vorbarra Sultana had dozens of such nooks.

“Oh, yes, he mentioned that. He’s gone off to watch. I thought it was good for him to get out. I’d have loved to go with him, but I’m running a diplomatic luncheon at the Residence today for Laisa, as she had to go down to that Vorbarra District economics conference in Nizhne-Whitekirk.”

“Where? The dance practice, I mean.”

“He suggested the little park across the street from ImpSec headquarters. Hardly anyone ever uses it, you know. Except those poor fellows with that seasonal affective problem, who come out to eat their lunches sometimes. Simon did make full-spectrum lighting an allowable requisition, years back.”

“Um, yeah. Thanks.” About to sign off, he hesitated. “Mamere—has Simon told you anything about what Shiv had to say to him? Or vice versa?”

Her smile never shifted. So why did he get the impression of her putting on her most diplomatic poker-face? “He said they had a very enjoyable exchange. I was pleased. I quite liked Udine and Moira, you know. Such adventurous lives! Earth! I’ve never been further than Komarr.” She sighed.

“You should get Simon to take you,” Ivan suggested. “Or take him. Lever him out of his comfy rut. Four, pushing five years since his retirement, all the really hot stuff in his head—whatever’s left of it—has to have cooled off some by now. Doesn’t he think it’s safe to travel out of the Empire yet?”

Her brows rose in a thoughtful way. “He’s never suggested travel farther than the south coast. He was really…extremely exhausted, immediately after all that—” a flick of her hand summed the nightmare weeks of Simon’s chip breakdown. And nightmare decades of its full function, before that, Ivan supposed. “More so than I think he let on.”

“He always was pretty closed,” said Ivan, in what had to be the understatement of the century. “It’s not like you could tell the difference from the outside.”

“No, I suppose you couldn’t.”

Ivan heard the faint emphasis on that you. Which presumably did not include her. Her thirty years of working with Simon hadn’t exactly been like one of those long marriages where people started finishing each other’s sentences, but it did perhaps partake of some of the elements. Ivan tried to remember what had been the longest time he’d ever stuck with one girlfriend. Or vice versa. Surely at least one of them had been more than a year? Almost a year? More than a half-year…?

“Delightful for you to call, but I must go,” his mother said firmly. “Tomorrow, we really must come up with something else to do with your visitors. Properly, it would be their turn to invite us to dinner, but they may not like to do so in that hotel.”

“Um, right,” said Ivan, and let her cut the com.

It being the last weekend before the start of Winterfair proper, parking around ImpSec HQ was not as impossible as usual. Ivan only had to walk about a block before the bare little park, and the great gloomy building across from it, came into view.

The security headquarters had an imposing façade, utterly windowless, with the wide stairs leading up to the front doors deliberately designed to be higher than most people could comfortably step. The great bronze doors were, as far as Ivan knew, rarely opened—everyone with business here went around to the human-scale entrances on the sides or the back. The stone face of the building was severely plain, except for a stylized bas-relief frieze of pained-looking creatures that Miles had once dubbed pressed gargoyles which entirely circled the edifice.

At the time of the reign of Mad Yuri, the gargoyles had possessed some political/artistic/propagandistic metaphorical meaning, which had once been explained to Ivan, but that he had promptly forgotten. Ivan thought the poor things just looked constipated. The people of Vorbarr Sultana, over time, had named them all, and endowed them with varied personalities; there were running jokes about the conversations they had up there, frozen in their frieze, and some of them regularly appeared as editorial cartoon characters. And a short-lived children’s animated show, Ivan dimly remembered from his youth.

The whole was surrounded in turn by a cobblestone courtyard and high stone walls topped with iron spikes not unlike the ones around Vorkosigan House, though already archaically outdated for actual defense even at the time they’d been built. All the real defenses were electronic and invisible. The wall was pierced fore and aft by two gates, the gate guards armed with energy weapons. Muskets would have seemed more in-period.

The park was indeed sunny, if only because ImpSec had never permitted trees, kiosks, bathrooms, or bushes installed to impede the line of sight, or fire. Grass, a little brown after the first frosts but neatly groomed, held up well due to the small number of pedestrians who ventured to cut across it.

Five brightly-dressed people were milling about on the turf—Rish, Jet, Em, Pearl, and Star—while Tej knelt at the side messing with a portable comconsole and some wireless speakers. Under Star’s direction, Tej stood up and shifted one of the speakers a few meters. Tej saw Ivan and waved, but didn’t come over to greet him. Star, with Jet consulting, also shifted around a couple of brightly-colored sticks topped with sparkly pom-poms; counting off strides, taking a line of sight, and sticking them back in the ground.

Simon, wrapped in an aged military greatcoat, was sitting on a bench at the grass’s verge benignly overlooking the show. Hatless—Mamere would have had words—with his thinning, graying hair making him look very much like some retired old man watching youngsters at play. Which Ivan supposed he was. Sort of. In some pig’s eye somewhere.

A uniformed ImpSec officer without a coat—a major, Ivan saw as he approached—was standing talking to Simon, looking back and forth from his former chief to the dance practice which was just getting rolling again. Bright music blared. Jewels were suddenly in motion, swaying, stomping, gesturing, rising and dipping. Jet, in a bravura moment, suddenly began a series of back-flips that ran in a straight diagonal all across the park, and ended with him balanced first on one hand, and then on one foot.

“That’s impressive,” the major said to Simon, as Ivan came up. The fellow’s eyes shifted from Jet to check out Ivan, in civvies because this was his day off dammit; his face cleared. “Captain Vorpatril, is it? Ops?”

Ivan granted him a nod, in lieu of a salute. “Yes, sir.”

“So you would know what all this is in aid of…?”

“A rather high-energy galactic dance troupe who have been cooped up on jumpships for too long, celebrating their reunion, is the tale I was told,” said Ivan easily. Did Simon smile, there, into his lack of a beard?

“I had never seriously watched dance,” Simon remarked to the major, “before my retirement. Lady Vorpatril has her own box at the Vorbarr Sultana Hall, you know. She has been kind enough to invite me to escort her there, many times since. It’s been a real artistic education. Of a style I’d never had time for, earlier in my life. Old dogs, new tricks, who knows where it could all end?”

“Hm. Well. If they’re with you, sir…” The major, with a restraint that practically seemed to break something—perhaps his heart—visibly kept himself from saluting his former chief, managing a mere curt farewell nod before turning away to dodge traffic across the street and slip back through the front gate.

Ivan slung himself down on the bench beside Simon, who had twisted a bit to watch the fellow retreat.

“That’s the fifth man who has come out so far to check this out,” Simon observed, turning back. “The ranks keep getting higher.”

“Have they,” said Ivan, neutrally.

Star, all slicked-back hair, green eyes, and long leggings, bopped out and moved the sparkly pom-poms again. The music started up once more, a slower beat this time. Jewels glittered, in an eye-grabbing and athletic whirl. Jet repeated the astonishing back-flip routine, on the park’s other diagonal.

“I had always considered,” Simon mused after a bit, “that for a building housing a cadre of men whose insignia”—he touched his civilian shirt collar, where no Eye-of-Horus pins now hung—“proclaimed to the Imperium, sees all, knows all, to have no damned windows allowing them to see out, to be some sort of cosmic irony.”

Ivan leaned forward slightly to glance around Simon at the looming façade. “I expect they were more worried at the time about windows being blown in.” The techno-eyes were mostly non-obvious, but for some antennae and reception dishes peeking over the crenellated roof edge. “They have electronic surveillance, surely.”

“Of a redundant redundancy. It was like working in a granite spaceship. Hermetically sealed.”

“So, um…” Ivan considered how to phrase this. “How far up does the rank have to go before someone in your parade of concerned officers comes out and says, What the hell, Simon?”

“I wait with some fascination to find out.”

Star shifted markers. The four Jewels began to dance another pattern.

“Granted,” said Simon meditatively, “the half-dozen men that I’m sure would begin their inquiries in just those words either have the day off or are out of town. Which seems like cheating, but then, it was often much about cheating. On all sides.”

Ivan considered this. “What the hell, Simon?”

Simon flashed a thin slice of grin. “Make that seven. Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“Neither can they.” He glanced across the street. “No windows, y’see. I’m sure we still have some analysts in there somewhere who specialize in the arts, but they’re probably kept in a box in the basement, poor lads. Keep watching, then.”

The Jewels set up once more, for a longer pattern this time. Frowning, Ivan got up, pulled one of the pom-pom sticks out of the ground, and examined it. It wasn’t very heavy. The surface featured swirling candy-colored stripes. It had a metal ferrule; Ivan tilted it up to peer in the end, which was not solid, but which was dark. Star, frowning more fiercely, came up and twisted it back out of his hand, shook it vigorously, and reset it. “Don’t screw up our stage marks,” she chided him. “Someone might have an accident.” It was hard to tell, but Ivan suspected the stripes were not the same as before. He trod back to rejoin Simon.

The music this time seemed to mix a cheerful march with a winding wail, like women lamenting the departure of their city’s valiant militia. Jet produced another bravura set of flips. Again.

So…what was so different about Jet? He certainly wasn’t any more athletic than Rish or the others. Why weren’t they doing flips?

He said aloud, before he could stop himself, “Jet’s the heaviest.”

Simon glanced aside at him, that disturbing faint smile again turning his lips.

More music started up. Rish had portioned out the ankle bells Ivan had seen on her and Tej the other day among the three female Jewels. They began another dance, or dance section—they seemed to be practicing movements rather than whole compositions. This time the mood was merry, the timing—the frequency?—different yet again.

Jet began his run-up, and bounced over the ground in a quick succession of thumps.

Ivan blinked. And blurted, “Sonic mapping.”

Simon’s smile deepened. “You’re wasted in Ops, you know. I have increasingly thought so. If not, I admit”—some grimace of memory Ivan certainly wasn’t going to inquire after—“earlier in your career.”

“I don’t think so. More to the point, Admiral Desplains doesn’t think so. I’m happy in Ops.”

“Well, there’s that. And your mother is happy to have you there”—another lip-pursing—“relatively safe.”

“Nobody’s tried to blow up Ops for ages. They always went for you fellows, first.”

“One of ImpSec’s many unsung public services: human shields for Ops. But did Ops ever say thank you?”

Ivan had no idea. Most Ops commentary on ImpSec reports that he’d heard was prefaced by swearing, but maybe that was just habit. “Has anyone tried to bomb Ops lately? Or ever? Since our new building went up after the last one was leveled in the Pretendership, that is.”

Simon huddled down in his coat. “I wouldn’t recall the details now. Nor the main points, in some cases.”

I can’t remember was Simon’s all-purpose response to any question he didn’t want to answer, Ivan had suspected for some time. It almost always daunted the hell out of the inquirer, who sheared off.

Except that Ivan was getting used to Illyan, in some strange domestic way. All those little tricks of expression, inflection, reminder, that he used to defend his dignity. It had been a horrifically beleaguered dignity, during the chip breakdown, in some ways Ivan had witnessed and didn’t wish to dwell on. Still—the Spook’s Spook had also been the Weasel’s Weasel. For all that Simon had forgotten, Ivan didn’t think he’d forgotten all of that.

Ivan scrambled back up the conversational diversion to the last knot. “Mapping. Underground mapping. What the hell, Simon? I would think you fellows would have had every cubic centimeter of underground Vorbarr Sultana mapped to the limit. Especially right around this place.” Underground, ugh.

“Indeed, one would think that. I certainly did.” Simon scratched his neck. “Although most people don’t realize how incredibly complicated and ill-documented it can get, under the Old Town. Old sewers. Abandoned utility tunnels. Freight access. Built-over foundations. A couple of outdated, bankrupted attempts at public transport, before the bubble-tube system was planned or even thought of. Streambeds, drainage. Assorted Vor mansions’ personal bolt-holes and escape hatches—and the same for some less savory prole venues. And a rat warren of other covert passages dating back mostly to the Occupation, but some to other wars. Several centuries of forgotten secrets, down there, dying with their possessors.”

Ivan glanced again at the six skewed floors and several subbasements of paranoia piled across the street. “Why aren’t they picking anything up? Of this, over there?”

“What would you guess?”

“I dunno…” He considered the odd stage-mark stick that he’d held in his hand. “Passive analog data collectors, I suppose, with nothing electronic about them?”

“I understand the color-gradient has a biological base that sensitively responds to vibrations, yes. Dancing microbes of some sort.”

Ivan wiped his hand on his trousers, nervously. “Oh. You’re in on this, then.” Whatever this is.

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

“What would you say, exactly?”

“At this juncture, not much.”

“Simon.” It took a bit of effort to make the name come out low and commanding, and not a reproachful wail.

It was effort wasted; Simon just twitched the damned deadly eyebrows at him, as if he’d heard the wail in his possibly-telepathic mind anyway and don’t even think about that, boy. “There is nothing illegal or even immoral about looking, Ivan. I’m sure I’ve even seen those old gentlemen with the metal detectors right here in this park, searching for ancient coins and the like. Retirement hobby or destitution, I was never quite sure.”

“Your guards ran them off, surely.”

“Not always. They might, after all, have found something interesting.”

“And have the Arquas found something interesting?

“We don’t, of course, know yet. Till Shiv and Udine analyze their measurements.”

“And what will you do then?”

“Flow-charts, Ivan. I’m sure I’ve heard you go on at length over some meal or another with your lady mother about the warm, fuzzy feelings you get from flow-charts. This is only the first bifurcation in the decision-tree, not the last.”

Whatever Ivan was feeling right now, warm and fuzzy wasn’t in it.

The sun was climbing toward noon, though not overhead, as high as it got this time of year. From the ImpSec gates there issued a gaggle of pallid men, officers and enlisted both, clutching lunch sacks and drinks of various sorts. They split up and spread out to take over the benches in a practiced-seeming way, with some of the enlisted ending up sharing their lunch picnics on rolled-out ground sheets. They all gazed in suspicion at the Jewels; some gazed in suspicion at the two civilian-clothed men on the last bench, especially the group displaced from their usual perch, till apprised by some of their older colleagues. Then they just stared.

Tej grinned across at Simon and at Ivan, almost the first his wife had acknowledged his existence since he’d sat down, and went into a brief huddle with the Jewels. Star opted out, looking mildly bored; she had collected all the stage markers back into a bundle, and seemed to be loading things up.

The group of Jewels split up again and took positions in a circle, or square, or imaginary four-pointed star. Tej bent and started the music once more, louder than heretofore; a very traditional Barrayaran mazurka, if with a livelier, updated beat and flourishes. The Jewels began to move, grandly leaping and kicking, in a version that recalled traditional Barrayaran men’s dances without in any way being one. It was by far the most athletic performance yet. Even Jet, usually the thrower, took his turn being thrown into the air—if by two of his sister-Jewels in cooperation—and somersaulting to daring landings. All the men around the perimeter of the park stopped eating to goggle. Tej watched as if hypnotized with pleasure.

When the dance finished in a whirl and a shout, all the Jewels were breathing heavily, sweating despite the chill. Quite spontaneously, the ImpSec men scattered around their impromptu stage broke into applause; the Jewels grinned and bowed back, in one cardinal direction after another, concluding with an especially low sweep toward Simon and Ivan.

Simon rose, with one of those my-back-hurts sounds made by the aging, whether sincerely or for audience effect. There had been a deal of audience effect running in several directions here this morning, Ivan was pretty sure. The Jewels and Tej finished packing up their scant props, or gear, hauling it to the ground-van parked on the far side of the grassy space.

“You talk to Guy Allegre about all this yet?” Ivan nodded toward the late outdoor stage. “Or was he one of your six men?”

“Not yet.”

“Or him to you?”

“I set it as a high probability that we’ll be talking to each other sometime.”

“Ah…Gregor?”

Simon’s eyebrows mocked him. “And what is Gregor’s favorite motto?”

“Let’s see what happens,” Ivan recited glumly. “I always thought that was an appallingly irresponsible thing for an emperor to say.”

“There you go.”

Tej came over, to inquire rather breathlessly of Simon, but not Ivan, “Did you like the show, sir?”

“Yes. I did. Street theater of the highest order.”

“Complete with audience participation?” Ivan muttered. Wait, right—Simon hadn’t answered his last question. Or his first, for that matter.

“You should take your wife to lunch, Ivan,” Simon suggested genially. He asked Tej to convey his thanks to the Jewels for the show, excused himself, and walked off down the boulevard, just as though he had been some ordinary passer-by who’d stopped to watch the rehearsing dancers.

But Tej, still elusive, claimed chauffeuring duties, and fled in the opposite direction.

Ivan, feeling at default if not fault, sat back on the bench and stared at the blank landscape, trying to imagine how far was down.