Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Eight

The military compound’s guest quarters proved to resemble a small, faintly shabby hotel, designed to temporarily house officers, dependents, or civilian contract employees either in transit to elsewhere, or downside on Komarr for duties too brief to billet them in permanent housing. Its security, Tej judged, was only fair, but still vastly better than anything she’d had to rely upon lately, and it didn’t feel like a prison. Ivan Xav escorted Tej and Rish to a clean if narrow chamber with two beds, and, yawning, himself went to ground in a room directly across the hall. As Tej’s very first wedding night ever, this would have left something to be desired, if she hadn’t been so exhausted by the disruptions of the past days as to fall asleep nearly as fast as she could pull up her covers.

When they awoke the next morning Ivan Xav had already gone off to aide-de-camp his admiral some more, though he left a note of reassurance, scrawled on the back of a flimsy and shoved under their door. Captain Morozov turned up to escort them to a long, chatty brunch in a private room off the ImpSec building cafeteria, where he asked yet more uncomfortably shrewd questions, seeming as satisfied with the evasions as the answers, which was a bit disquieting, on reflection. In the afternoon, a uniformed enlisted man arrived with all of their and Ivan Xav’s remaining possessions from his rental flat, and dumped them on Rish’s bed to be sorted out. Minus the groceries, evidently abandoned; Tej would rather have liked to have kept the emptied groats box for a souvenir.

Tej sat herself down at the room’s little comconsole and began to try to study up on Barrayaran history. Which the Barrayarans appeared, from a first glance, to have made far too much of. Rish, trammeled by the confined space as usual—these past months had been especially hard on her—started her dance exercises, or as least as many of the thousand-moves-kata as she could fit into the constricted area. She had wandered into their tiny bathroom to practice the neck, face, ear, eye, and eyebrow movements in front of the mirror—ten reps each—when a hearty knock on the door shot Tej from her chair and almost out of the window. Only one floor up, now, so unlikely to be lethal—had Ivan Xav arranged that?

In any case, it was his voice that called, “Hi, Tej, you in there?” Trying to calm her pounding heart, she went to unlock the door.

He stuck his head in and said, “Saddle up, ladies. Our shuttle awaits.”

“So soon?” said Tej, as Rish came out of the lav.

“Hey, you two may have slept in, but it’s been a long day for me.”

“No, I mean, I thought—I thought this thing with the smugglers might have thrown you off schedule.”

“It’s Service Security’s problem now. That’s what delegation is for. They’re scrambling like mad to cover their lapse—this is the sort of rattlesnake they’re supposed to hand to Desplains, neatly pithed, pinned on a card, and labeled, not the other way around. Very disorienting for ’em. Though all of their further reports will doubtless catch up with us en route. Travel time with the boss is not break time, alas.” He gathered up his delivered gear and went off to pack his duffle.

The ride up to orbit on the military shuttle felt like escape from a deeper pit than just a gravity well. Tej stared out her tiny window. Scabrous patches of green terraforming clung like lichen around the barren, poisonous planet, and the lights of the dome arcologies, strung like bright beads along the faint monorail lines, made promises for the future, but not for the now. For someone who’d spent as much time growing up on space installations as Tej, Solstice Dome ought to have felt spacious, but it hadn’t. If a place wasn’t going to be a proper station, it ought to be a proper planet, but Komarr had seemed to be something caught between.

I don’t know where I’m going. But this wasn’t it. Was she going to have to sort through the entire Nexus by process of elimination to find her final destination? I hope not.

The shuttle docked, and Ivan Xav led them on a very short walk through the military orbital station to another portal. A zero-gee float through a personnel flex tube gave Tej a bare glimpse of a ship about the size of a rich man’s yacht, but not nearly as cheery-looking—an effect of the warty weapons housings studding the armored skin, perhaps. The tube spat them out into a small hatch bay, neat but decidedly utilitarian. Three men awaited them: an armed soldier in ship gear, an unarmed enlisted man in a plain green uniform, and a spare, gray-haired man in a less-plain green uniform like Ivan Xav’s. He did not particularly exude arrogance, but Tej recognized how a person stood or moved when they owned the place, and this man did; it hardly needed Ivan Xav’s salute and, “Admiral Desplains, sir,” to identify him. “May I present to you my wife, Lady Tej Vorpatril, and her personal assistant, Lapis Lazuli, also known as Rish.”

The admiral returned the salute in a more perfunctory manner. His polite smile broadened into something more genuinely welcoming, or maybe that was just genuinely amused, as he looked over his guests. Somebody must have warned him about Rish, for he didn’t gawk. “Lady Vorpatril. Miss, ah, Lazuli. Welcome aboard the JP-9. My ship has no more memorable name, I’m afraid.”

Tej gathered her wits enough to return, “Thank you for inviting us, sir,” and didn’t correct Rish’s address. A Chief of Operations wasn’t exactly a House baron, more like a senior House security officer, but it might be well to treat him just as circumspectly.

“I understand you were of material aid in helping us trap our home-grown smugglers, yesterday,” Desplains went on.

Not at all sure what Ivan Xav had told him, Tej tried smiling mysteriously, and murmured, “They were no friends to me or mine.”

“So Captain Morozov gave me to believe,” said Desplains.

Oh. Of course Morozov had to be reporting to someone. Their chats hadn’t been just for his entertainment, or his back-files, however much he managed to make one feel so. “Has Morozov much special training in interrogation?” Tej asked, belatedly curious.

“Actually, he trains interrogators,” said Desplains. “One of our top men, you know.” He dragged his gaze back up to her face—so, old but not dead, though Tej had trouble estimating Barrayarans’ ages. “I begin to see why Captain Vorpatril’s chivalrous inspiration took the form it did, Lady Vorpatril. I suddenly realize his duties with me have not left you much time together since your wedding yesterday, ah, morning was it?”

“Not any,” she confirmed. She tried a doleful look on him, curious to see what would happen.

It won a quirky smile, anyway. “We shall have to find some way to make it up to you. In the meanwhile, Ivan, show our guests around the ship and give them the safety drill.”

He made a motion to the enlisted man, who collected their bags. Tej and Rish parted reluctantly with theirs, till Ivan Xav whispered, opaquely but reassuringly, “Admiral’s bâtman, it’s all right.” As they left the hatch bay, Desplains and the other bent their heads together in some conference.

The ship was small and the tour brief, as the engineering and Nav-and-Com areas were evidently off-limits. While they were about this, Tej more felt than heard the faint thumps and clanks that told her they had detached from the station and were on their way already. The amenities were few: a kind of dining room-gathering place that Ivan Xav dubbed the wardroom, a small observation lounge, a compact but well-equipped exercise room that Rish eyed with interest. Tej guessed a crew of less than twenty, split among shifts, and a capacity of perhaps a dozen passengers, maybe twice that in an emergency. The jump-pinnace was bigger and slower than a fast courier, but not by much.

Getting lost on board was not going to be a problem, or even an option. Ivan Xav focused on escape routes and emergency pods and equipment how-to’s, and conscientiously made them both go through the entire pressurization-or-other-emergency safety routine, till he seemed satisfied that they understood it.

“Do you do this for passengers a lot?” asked Rish, freeing herself from a breath mask and handing it back.

“We carry high-ranking non-Service supercargo from time to time, depending on the mission. Or the admiral sometimes includes his family on these more routine jaunts, but they had other things going on at home this week.”

“Have you worked for Desplains long?” asked Tej.

“About three years. He brought me along with him when he was promoted from Admiral of the Home Fleet to Chief of Operations, two years back.”

The bâtman-person appeared. “If you will come this way, Captain, Lady Vorpatril, Miss Lazuli.” He led them down to the end of a short corridor; an airseal door labeled Admiral Desplains slid open at his touch on the pad. Inside was a tiny suite—a sitting room and two bedrooms with a connecting bath. One bedroom had four neat bunks. The other boasted a double bed. Their three bags and Ivan Xav’s duffle waited, placed ambiguously on the floor of the sitting room.

“Admiral’s compliments, Lady Vorpatril, ma’am, but he begs you and the captain will accept the use of his quarters for the duration of the journey. He says the space is underutilized, without Madame Desplains or the children along. Which, indeed, it is.” The bâtman pointed out a few basic features and bowed himself out with a murmured, “There is a call button on the wall if you require anything more, but I trust I have provided most of the necessities.”

Ivan Xav stared around, seeming vaguely stunned. “Huh! Guess I’m forgiven, then…” He pulled himself together, peeked into both bedrooms in turn, wheeled to the women, and said, “Er…take your pick?”

Tej and Rish looked at each other. Rish said, “Excuse us a moment,” grabbed Tej by the arm, and dragged her into the bunk room, letting the airseal door slide closed behind them.

“Quit smirking,” said Rish.

Tej chirped, “Oh, but how nice. Ivan Xav’s boss has given us the honeymoon suite. It would seem a shame to waste such a grateful gesture, don’t you think?”

Rish ran a hand over her platinum pelt in a harried swipe, blue ears twitching. “All right, I can see how it might be a good deal if he pair-bonds to you. Maybe not so good if you pair-bond to him. Don’t lose your head, sweetling.”

Tej tossed her curls. “It’s only a practice marriage. So I ought to get in some practice, don’t you think?”

“And quit prancing, too. It’s not like he’s an allowed suitor. That call button won’t bring in a brace of the Baron’s bodyguards to eject him from your bedroom if he displeases you. There’s only me. And while there are places where I’d back myself to take him on, this isn’t one of them. This ship is Barrayaran, bow to bulkhead. With no place to run.”

“He’s allowed if I allow him.” Tej’s voice went bleak. “Who else is left to make that call, Rish?”

Rish took a breath, but let it out slowly, unused.

“I know this isn’t a deal from strength, but here we are,” said Tej. “For the next six days. And afterward, too, for some unknown amount of time. There’s no harm in setting up a basic biological reward-loop as a minor safety net. You know I won’t mistake it for anything more.” Tej hesitated. “Although how you can look at what Dada and the Baronne had, and dismiss it as minor, I don’t know.”

“Exception that proves the rule, sweetling.” Rish paced the floor, two steps each way. “Oh, hell, go on and have your treat. Maybe it’ll be the fastest cure for this madness.”

Tej’s smile tucked up, irresistibly. “Not for him—I’ll wager my training on that. Anyway, his admiral practically handed him to me gift-wrapped. And you know how I like opening presents.”

This pulled a reluctant chuckle from Rish. She thumped a fist gently into Tej’s shoulder. “In that case, break a leg. Preferably one of his, not one of yours.”

“Nothing so violent.”

They went back out to the sitting room, where Ivan Xav was standing with the glazed look of those men who’d waited outside the women’s lav, except that the fingers of his right hand were drumming rapidly on his trouser seam. He jerked to attention with a weird, twisted smile. “So what’s the verdict?”

“Rish will take the bunk room,” said Tej, “and you and I will take the other room.”

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “That…sounds great, but you know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Of course, if you do want to, that’s…that’s just great!”

Rish rolled her eyes, picked up her bag, and withdrew to the bunk room, calling, “Good night, good night, to all a good night. I claim first dibs on the bath, though.”

Barely seeming to hear this, Ivan Xav blinked at Tej, and said, “And the other good thing is that on board here, we’re back on Fleet time, which is Vorbarr Sultana time. Twenty-six-point-seven hour sidereal day, you know, with the night proportional. Makes for a much more leisurely evening.”

Unexpectedly, he stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Tej’s waist, and swung her around like a dancer and down onto the room’s little sofa, bolted to the floor in case of artificial gravity mishaps. “How do you do, Lady Vorpatril? I’m so pleased to meet you.”

Yes, I can tell already, Tej did not say out loud. “Hi there, Lord Vorpatril.” What was he a lord of, anyway? She would have to find out. Later. “Say my whole name. Bet you can’t.”

His chin jerked up at the challenge. “Lady Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua Vorpatril.”

Tej, impressed, raised her brows. “You’re a fast study, Ivan Xav.”

“When I have to be.” One finger went out to tease a curl from her forehead, then hesitated. “Er…how old would you happen to be, Tej? I mean, you look maybe twenty-something standard, but Jacksonians, all that body modification…Cetagandans, all that genetic manipulation…could be anything from ten to sixty, I suppose.”

“As it happens, I am just turned twenty-five.”

“Oh. Whew.”

“What would you have done if I’d said ten?” she asked curiously.

“Cried. And turned you back over to your babysitter.”

“Or sixty?”

“Now, that I could have dealt with. Older women—it’s a fantasy, y’know. Or can be.”

“Have you ever fulfilled that fantasy?”

“I…don’t think this is the time to go into my past, y’know? Tonight should be all about you.” His voice was growing smoother, more confident. But then he hesitated again. “Ah…Great House baron’s treasured daughter and all, I expect you led a very sheltered life, huh? Very protected. Lots of armed guards and all that.”

“Yes, till the House fell.”

He tilted his head back and forth, as if thinking. Or puzzling. “Uh…I need to ask this, don’t mean to embarrass you or anything, and any answer is fine, as long as it’s true. Because I kind of need to know. Are you still a virgin?”

“Good heavens, no. Not since age fifteen.”

“Oh, was it fifteen for you, too? I mean, oh good. That’s not a problem for me, I don’t have any of that Time-of-Isolation baggage about marrying a virgin, that would be hypocritical, after all. Especially for a temporary-though-legal marriage. Easier the other way around anyway, really.” He paused again. “Contraceptive implant?”

“Also since age fifteen,” she assured him.

“Ah.” He smiled beatifically, and closed in for a kiss.

It was a good kiss, quite as good as her dream or better. She snaked her fingers up between them to deal with his first button. The flattering uniform seemed to have rather a lot of them. For the first time, his hand strayed below her shoulders, in a tentative, reverent touch; good, he wasn’t going to be grabby.

“So what happened when you were fifteen?” she asked, during their next break for air. “Was it a positive experience?”

This surprised a laugh from him, and a look of fond reminiscence. “I was a desperately randy adolescent—almost any experience would have seemed positive, but yes, I guess it was. She was one of the girl grooms at my great-uncle’s stables down at the long lake, a summer fling at a summer place, pretty damned idyllic, really. I thought I seduced her, but in retrospect, I realize she seduced me. Older woman, y’know—she was nineteen. Dear God, but I was a clumsy young lout. But fortunately, or maybe it was mercifully, she didn’t trample on my young ego. Though she would probably have had to gallop one of the dressage horses across it to make a dent, I was so chuffed with myself.”

Tej laughed at his laughter, pleased for his covertly tender former self.

A finger ran lightly over her cheekbone, tracing its curves. He started to speak, shook his head, but then, as if he could not help himself, asked, “And you? I hope you weren’t afflicted with a clumsy and self-absorbed young lout.”

“By no means. The Baronne wanted to make sure we knew what we were about—me and my siblings and the Jewels. So she imported an eminent team of licensed practical sexuality therapists from the Betan Orb for us, for erotic arts training. A man, a woman, and a hermaphrodite. They stayed two years—I was so sorry when they went back home. It was the only thing I was ever better at than my sisters.”

The hand stopped. He made a weird little noise down in his throat that she was completely unable to interpret. “I’ve never been to the Orb,” he said at last, in a faraway voice. “My cousin Miles has been there, though he won’t talk about it. Mark and Kareen have been there. Hell, even Commodore Kou and Madame Drou have been there…”

“Well, I’ve never been there, either,” she said. “Except by proxy, I suppose. But I did like the arts. They meshed well with my perception drills. It was like dance, in a way. For a little while, you live in your body, in the now, not all up in your head, all torn between the past and the future and missing the moment.”

That gentle hint brought him back to the now; the hand began to move again.

“I had two allowed suitors after that,” she went on. “But they didn’t work out. There’s another fortunately-in-retrospect for you.”

“Allowed suitors? I don’t know what—is that a Jacksonian term?”

“You don’t have allowed suitors on Barrayar?” she asked. He shook his head. She couldn’t say she was surprised, merely surprised at his ignorance. “It’s for when one is considering some sort of House alliance by marriage. Try before you buy, and I’m glad I did. The first was plainly far more interested in House politics than in me. When I told him that in that case maybe he should go to bed with my father, instead, he wasn’t too pleased. And nor was I. The other…I don’t know. There was nothing wrong with him, I just didn’t like the way he smelled.”

“Did he…not bathe?” Ivan Xav’s arm made an abortive jerk, as if he thought, but then thought better, of trying to sniff his own armpit.

“No, he was perfectly hygienic. Just not, I don’t know…compatible. The Baronne suggested later that maybe our immune systems were too similar, but that didn’t seem quite right to me. I thought he was just boring.”

“Oh,” said Ivan Xav.

She took the opportunity of his distraction to unwrap his shirt a few more buttons. Ah, nice chest hair. Not too much, not too little, a fine masculine dusting. The dark color made a pleasing aesthetic contrast with his pale skin, and she made sure to savor it. One should notice one’s partner’s gifts, and let them know one was pleased, or so her erotic arts training had emphasized. She curled a bit of hair over her finger, in signal of appreciation, and danced her fingertips down his torso.

The bunk room door slid open partway, and he flinched at the slight noise. Rish’s voice floated out. “Shower’s yours. I’m going to sleep now, so close both doors between when you’re done, eh?” The door slid shut, firmly.

“Rish has very sensitive hearing,” said Tej, “but she sleeps like a brick.”

“Ah,” said Ivan Xav, faintly. “Well. It’s been a long day, perhaps I’d better hit the lav—uh, unless you’d like first crack?”

“Or we could share the shower…” Her fingers twirled some more.

He shook his head in regret. “Not this one. It’s only a sonic, and two people wouldn’t fit.” He brightened. “But when we get back to my place in Vorbarr Sultana, I know that, um…another time?”

They should have taken advantage of the amenities back in his Solstice flat, but how were they to have known? Timing. The best chances of life all ran afoul of timing.

He kissed her again, then peeled himself away, lips last.

When they rendezvoused again in the bed, most of the unwrapping was already done, to Tej’s mild regret, but perhaps there would be other occasions. She slid between the sheets he had warmed. Clean sheets, she noticed in appreciation, a thoughtful touch from the busy bâtman, at a guess. Ivan Xav rolled over, and up on one elbow, his hand hovering uncertainly over her, as if he didn’t know where to begin.

She smiled up at him. “Are you shy, Ivan Xav?”

“No!” he denied indignantly. “It’s just…I’ve never made love to a wife, before. I mean, to my wife. A wife of my own. Not having had one. I don’t know how a few words in a groat circle can make what should be familiar feel very strange all of a sudden. Power of suggestion or something.”

She rolled up on her own elbow, to free a hand to reach his face, trace the bones beneath the skin. Good bones. Her body shifted with the motion, and then he wasn’t looking deep into her eyes anymore, but he was looking, pupils wide and black. Noticing gifts with due reverence needn’t always take the form of speech, she was reminded.

“I always kept it light, y’know?” he gasped.

“I can do light,” she said, leaning in. “My name means light.”

He leaned to meet her. “So…so illuminate me,” he breathed, and then there was much less talking.

The admiral’s bâtman brought breakfast on a trolley—not intending it to be indolently consumed in bed, Ivan suspected, but rather to make sure Ivan was out of his in a timely fashion. The military servant knocked politely on both bedroom doors and set up the meal in the sitting room, effacing himself promptly as soon, Ivan also suspected, as he’d ascertained who had slept with whom last night, the better to report that intelligence back to their mutual boss. Desplains had very obviously left it up to Ivan and his guests to sort themselves out, but he had to be curious as to the results.

Ivan felt…chipper, he decided, was a good word. Remarkably chipper. He put himself together in immaculate military order, waved to Rish, who was blearily sucking tea, kissed his wife goodbye—make that, his beautiful bed-rumpled exquisitely edible wife, who, to cap his enchantment, did not appear to be chatty in the mornings—and chippered off to work, approximately twelve steps down the corridor to Desplains’s on-board office, adjoining the ship’s compact tactics room.

Desplains was there before him, not unexpectedly—the admiral found the constraints of jump travel minus combat boring, and, unless Madame Desplains was along, worked longer shifts to fill the time. Since this often resulted in his generating yet more things for his subordinates to do, it was one of Ivan’s duties not mentioned in the manual to make sure he didn’t extend those hours indefinitely. But this shift, Ivan felt ready to wrestle a thousand snakes. He greeted the admiral with a snappy salute and a “Good morning, sir!” and fell to.

Desplains merely raised a brow; they slid at once into the practiced routine, Ivan triaging the messages coming in semi-continuously over secured tightbeam, shooting notes back and forth, the occasional spoken query or order, returning memos, messages, and orders in a steady stream back to Komarr Operations or ahead to Ops HQ in Vorbarr Sultana, still five flight-days away. As Ivan had anticipated, the uncovering of the theft and smuggling ring had generated a load of new traffic, though not yet the interesting explosions that would no doubt ensue when word had finally made it all the way to Commodore Jole’s Sergyar Command and back.

“Ivan?” said Desplains, about an hour into this.

“Sir?”

“Stop whistling. You sound like an air leak.”

“Sorry, sir. Didn’t realize I was doing that.”

“So I eventually concluded.”

When the first wormhole jump came up, Ivan took a break to warn the ladies, which was when he discovered that both were susceptible to jump-sickness, Rish far more than Tej. He then pulled off the world’s easiest heroics by popping to the infirmary and collecting jump medication—the admiral’s ship carried the good stuff—and hand-delivering it, though Tej had to forcibly excavate the whimpering Rish from her bedding to administer her dose. “Five jumps in five days, why did I agree to this?” she moaned. But within twenty minutes she was sitting up blinking in agreeable surprise, reconciled once more with her inner ears, her stomach, her vision, and, apparently, her hearing—unpleasant auditory hallucinations from jump sickness were a new one to Ivan. All he ever experienced was a brief twinge of nausea and having everything appear to turn green, requiring him to remember to use caution in interpreting indicator lights for about a minute.

He returned to work, intensely aware that mere meters away, a pocket paradise awaited.

At the end of the shift, Desplains cordially invited Ivan and his female entourage to join him for dinner, which was laid on privately, just the four of them, in the little observation lounge. While ship food was not elaborate—Desplains was an indifferent gourmet—Ivan detected the hand of his loyal crew in fresh produce picked up before they’d left Komarr, and Ivan himself had long ago made sure that the admiral’s all-Barrayaran wines were something to be proud of. And the bâtman’s service was impeccable.

Observation lounge proved an apt description, as Ivan quickly became aware that Desplains was using the opportunity to study Ivan’s new bride and her companion. Well, evaluating personnel was one of the man’s jobs, after all. Tej did quite well, Ivan thought. It occurred to him that a Jacksonian Great House might be not-dissimilar to a District count’s household, with its demands for the regular entertainment of assorted business associates and odder guests, and a lot of potentially hazardous politics going on under the table. She certainly had the how-to-make-small-talk and which-fork-to-use down smoothly.

Desplains drew her out on her recent flight, avoiding the most distressing parts because this was, after all, dinner. A few of her stories were unconsciously hair-raising, but mostly they were neutral-to-opaque. Morozov might have done some groundwork, there, unconsciously supplying her with clues of what to say to Barrayarans, and she hadn’t missed the turns. Rish, more wary, spoke less.

In any case, Desplains seemed to have enjoyed the diversion and the company, for the invitation was repeated on succeeding evenings, with various of the ship’s crew gradually added in as shifts permitted—the captain, the off-duty pilots, the chief engineer, and Desplains’s physician, because the admiral traveled with his own as per Service regs. But by whatever mercy, Desplains did not let the meals stretch too far into the night, for which Ivan was intensely grateful.

During the dayshift hours when Ivan was closeted with Desplains, Tej seemed to be reasonably content reading and watching vids, or primping, or playing games with Rish. The crew of JP-9 were among the more sophisticated fellows the Service could supply, and any comments they had to make on Rish’s boggling physical appearance they at least kept out of her keen hearing. Rish made heavy use of the exercise room, first alarming and then impressing some of the crewmen who shared it. She somehow discovered three more addicts of Komarran holovid dramas, and ganged up with them during their off-duty time to obtain fresh episodes snuck in during slack periods in the tightbeaming.

At one of Admiral Desplains’s suggestions, Tej also discovered the on-board language tutoring programs, and dipped into the Barrayaran dialects of Russian, French and Greek, none of which she claimed to have been taught before. Or plunged into, Ivan thought, when he ducked his head in to check her progress. So far from a trudge, she seemed to find the task tolerably amusing.

“Oh, languages aren’t work,” she explained cheerily. “They’re a game. Now, economics, that’s boring.” She made a face at some pedagogical memory Ivan couldn’t guess at.

For almost the first time, Ivan saw a glimpse in her of her haut genetic heritage, not only in the scary speed of her acquisition, but the purity of her accent, as she wandered around the ship to find bemused bilingual crewmen to practice upon. Her Komarran accent had certainly fooled him, and presumably the Komarrans as well. No question, she had a keen ear, and he wondered if she possessed perfect pitch, too, like a certain part-ghem Barrayaran he knew.

The off-shifts arranged themselves, though Ivan was beginning to think that even 26.7 hours was too short for a day, or rather, for a night.

The first snake in Ivan’s garden raised its head briefly on the fourth day out. He’d forwarded a memo to Desplains’s comconsole from General Allegre, Chief of ImpSec, marked Personal, Eyes Only. A few minutes later, Desplains looked up and remarked mildly, “Ivan—you have messaged home with an account of your adventures, have you not?”

“No reason to, sir. I mean, you know all about it. And my mother stopped asking about my girlfriends after I turned thirty.”

“Vorpatril, I decline to get between you and your mother on any of your personal matters.”

“As well you shouldn’t have to, sir.”

And that was, Ivan hoped, the end of that, but a number of hours later—they were, after all, getting closer to Barrayar—he fielded another Eyes Only message, from an all-too-familiar address. Though the temptation to make it vanish between his comconsole and Desplains’s was very strong, Ivan nobly resisted it, a spasm of virtue that he suspected no one was going to appreciate.

About fifteen minutes later, Desplains remarked, “May I ask why, if Lady Alys Vorpatril wishes to know what is going on in her only son’s life, she applies to me and not to you?”

Ivan blinked. “Experience?”

The silence from across the room took on a curious frigid quality, and Ivan looked up. “Oh. That was one of those, what d’you call it, rhetorical questions, was it, sir?”

“Yes.”

Ivan cleared his throat. “You don’t suppose ImpSec’s been feeding her their reports, do you? That’s bound to be confusing. I mean, look at the stuff they send us.”

That last line almost worked. But, alas, not quite. Desplains’s lips tightened. “As she works directly, every day, with General Allegre and his key staff on matters of the emperor’s personal security, and lives with the man who ran ImpSec out of his head for decades before that, and you are her closest living relative, I would think you were in a better position to guess the answer to that question than I am, Captain.”

“I’ll, ah”—Ivan swallowed—“I’ll just fire her off a little reassuring note right now, shall I, sir?”

“You do that.”

Ivan hated that dead-level tone. Ugly unnerving thing, it was. Reminded him of his Uncle Aral in a mood.

But a written note, that was the ticket. A vid recording was nothing but an invitation to blather, with no living person in real-time opposite you to give a visual or verbal cue how you were getting on, or when to stop.

Ivan bent to his comconsole, setting the header and the security codes. Medium security would likely do. Enough to shield the message from the eyes of people who didn’t need to know, not enough to make it sound like some sort of emergency.

Dear Mother.

He sat a moment, while lights blinked at him.

I don’t know what ImpSec’s been telling you, but actually, everything’s all right. I seem to have accidentally gotten married, but it’s only temporary. Don’t change the headings on your cards. I will explain it all to you when we get there.

Love, Ivan.

He contemplated that for a moment, then went back and cut the middle lines as redundant. If he was going to explain it all when he got there, surely he needn’t explain anything now.

I don’t know what ImpSec’s been telling you, but actually, everything’s all right. I will explain it all to you when we get there.

That looked much better. Now a little short, though. A slow smile turned his lips. He bent and added: P.S.—Byerly Vorrutyer has the whole story, if you can catch up with him.

Actually, he didn’t expect By to be back in Vorbarr Sultana till some days after he and Tej and Rish arrived, at the earliest. But what was that tale from Old Earth, about throwing one’s fellow traveler out of the troika to distract the pursuing wolves? Yeah, like that, only more virtual, since Mamere wouldn’t be able to lay her hands on By either. But it sounded good.

He sent the message on its way, racing ahead of them at the speed of light.