Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Nine

For a capital that had hosted so many wars, both civil and interplanetary, Vorbarr Sultana seemed in remarkably good shape to Tej’s eye. From her readings of Barrayaran history aboard the JP-9, she’d half expected to see gutted buildings with blackened timbers still smoking, bomb craters in the streets, and haunted, emaciated people scurrying like rats among the barricades. Instead, it was fully modernized, if not always fully modern, chock-a-block with galactic-standard transportation and architecture, with citizens—no, subjects, she corrected the term—out everywhere, looking busy and well-fed and alarmingly assertive. Terms like lively or even vibrant rose to Tej’s mind. It was extremely disorienting.

All right, the traffic congestion was appalling. The auto-cab that they’d taken from the military shuttleport took twenty minutes to crawl across what Ivan Xav assured her was a very famous bridge, but it did give her and Rish time to stare up and down the river valley, from the high bluffs crowned with strange archaic castles lit, their guide promised, with pretty colored floodlights at night, to the hillsides crowded with fine houses hogging the views, to the level areas sprouting high-rises, universities, and medical complexes. They pulled up in front of a tall residential building quite close to the center of things, or at least to the military headquarters. The government complexes were closer to the Old Town, nearly lost in the center of the sprawl, but Ivan Xav explained that the historical area was all cleaned up these days, with some quite fine restaurants to be found if one knew how to avoid the backcountry tourists.

The building harboring Ivan Xav’s flat reminded Tej very much of his place in Solstice, but the security was rather better; a human guard manned a reception desk, and Ivan Xav paused to have them scanned and entered as bona fide residents in the electronic database. The vidcams were unobtrusive but maintained a redundant overlap. He then whisked them up a lift tube and down a hallway, pulling out a remote to unlock a sliding, but not airsealed, door. “Home at last,” he announced cheerfully, “and boy, am I glad of it.”

His flat, too, reminded her of the place on Komarr—it lacked the separate entry hall, and the kitchen was bigger, but it boasted a balcony overlooking the street and a bit of the city. Not as high up. The rooms were larger, but they were much more cluttered, seeming closer and warmer somehow despite the stuffy smell of a place not occupied for the better part of a month.

“Ah, good,” Ivan Xav went on, striding to the bedroom and tossing his duffle down on a broad bed. “The cleaning service has been in. We’re all set.”

Having worked for nearly three weeks straight, Ivan Xav was due several days of leave, Admiral Desplains had told Tej upon parting for his own leave and Madame Desplains, who’d been waiting at the shuttleport to pick him up. He trusted Captain Vorpatril would use the time well to organize his affairs, right, Ivan? Ivan Xav had nodded earnestly. Just what that meant, Tej had no idea.

They were here. Now what? In her exhaustion and stress on Komarr, she’d scarcely thought past escape from. Escape to hadn’t even been on her mental horizon.

“Where do I sleep?” Rish inquired, wandering around and looking things over, her expression dubious.

“The sofa folds flat. It’s not too bad.” Ivan Xav stretched mightily and came back into his living room. “There are three people I’d most like to avoid in Vorbarr Sultana—m’mother, Miles, and Gregor, in that order. Well, and Falco, but he’s not so hard to dodge. He may well be up in the District. Though I suppose we’ll have to chase him down in due course. But other than that, what would you two like to do here in the great metropolis?”

Tej looked down at her travel-rumpled garments. Do? That implied Go out, surely. “We only have these Komarran clothes. Are they all right to wear on Barrayar, or should we find something to help us blend in better?”

Rish extended a slim blue hand and snorted. She then raised her arms and did a slow backbend, kicking over to a handstand and then up to her feet again.

“You know what I mean,” said Tej.

“Yeah, sure,” said Ivan Xav. “M’mother gets her clothes custom designed, but my other gir—I’ve been dragged around to enough other places, I’ll bet I could find you something nice. But Komarran styles are trendy, too—Empress Laisa, you know. Maybe you want to look around and see what you like, first, and then go picking.”

A pleasant chime sounded.

“T’ hell?” said Ivan Xav. “Nobody knows I’m back yet. Not expecting company…” He wandered to his door and carefully checked his security vid. It was far too early, Tej reminded herself, for her pursuers to have regrouped and caught up with her.

“Ah,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Christos. Maybe…maybe we’re not home just yet. Still caught in traffic, yeah.”

“Come on, Lord Ivan, open up,” came a man’s voice, balanced on some cusp between amused and irritated. “I know you’re in there. Or at least check the messages on your wristcom.”

“M’mother’s driver and errand boy,” Ivan Xav told Tej and Rish over his shoulder. “And bodyguard—the man’s a retired commando sergeant. Like my cousin’s armsmen in all but title and oath. I swear he aspires to the role. Came in about four years ago—he didn’t actually dandle me on his knee as a small boy, he just acts like it.” He added reluctantly after a moment, “Good at his job, though.”

Which one? Tej wondered.

Ivan Xav hit the pad to open the door.

The man looked big, gray-haired, and affable; for a change, his clothing did not resemble a uniform, just a neat shirt with wide sleeves, trousers with baggy cuffs tucked into short boots, and a sleeveless jacket with strange but attractive embroidery. But mostly, he looked big.

He eased around Ivan Xav, spotted Tej and Rish, and said, “Ah,” in a satisfied tone. He came to a species of attention before her. “Good afternoon, Lady Vorpatril, Mademoiselle Lapis Lazuli. I’m Christos, Dowager Lady Vorpatril’s driver. M’lady has charged me to convey you to a private dinner at her flat. And also to convey her earnest invitation for said dinner, should it unaccountably”—he cast a knife-flick of a glance at Ivan Xav—“have become lost somewhere on Lord Ivan’s wristcom.”

“Oh,” said Tej, glaring a plea at Ivan Xav. What was she supposed to do?

“We just got off the shuttle,” Ivan Xav began.

“Yeah, I know.” Christos held up a viewer. “I brought a book for while you clean up. I’m to wait while you get ready. Because she didn’t want me to miss you, if you took yourselves out or whatever.” He smiled thinly, trod into the living room, and helped himself to a chair, settling back for a comfortable read. He added as he keyed it on and found his place, “Dress is casual, she said. Which only means, not formal.”

“Trapped,” Ivan Xav muttered. “Like rats…”

“What now?” Tej whispered to him.

He scratched his head and sighed, as if in defeat. “Well, we’ve all got to eat sometime. And at least the food’ll be first-rate.”

“If we get this over with now,” murmured Rish, “we won’t have to sit around anticipating it, you know. It does seem an inevitable meeting.”

Ivan Xav grimaced, but Tej nodded. Even if Ivan Xav’s mother was a horrible harridan in hysterics, as his actions seemed to imply, the news of the impending divorce ought to calm her down. It seemed unlikely that she would pull out a weapon and shoot her son’s new bride over dinner, and besides, that would be redundant. She had only to stake Tej and Rish out where the enemy syndicate could find them, and the problem would be carried out of her ken without her having to lift, or tighten, a finger. Still…poisons? Rish could detect an astonishing number of these, if presented in food or drink. But—redundancy, again. Tej decided she was letting travel weariness and her nerves turn her thoughts just too strange. It would all be made plain soon enough.

A flurry of turns in the bath and dithering over their tiny selection of garb resulted in Rish in black Komarran trousers and top, with a long-sleeved jacket and her head-shawl, Tej similarly attired in shades of cream, a little shabby but easy on her acute color sensitivity, and Ivan Xav in civilian clothes similar to what he’d been wearing the first time they’d met, but pulled clean from his capacious closet and not crumpled and smelly from his duffle. The driver shepherded them out with bland courtesy.

A large groundcar with a separate driver’s compartment awaited them in the basement garage. As Christos handed them into the spacious back passenger compartment and started to close the silvered canopy, Ivan Xav held up a hand and said, “Uh, Christos—will Simon be there, do you know?”

“Of course, Lord Ivan.” The canopy snapped closed, sealing them in.

Ivan Xav sat back with a wince, but for a few minutes Tej and Rish were too busy craning their necks and trying to see the city for Tej to pursue this new mystery. Nearing sunset of what seemed to be a late fall or early winter day, traffic was heavy, but the car was bearing generally upriver and uphill.

Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “I should probably explain Simon,” he began, then stalled out, muttering, “No, there’s no explaining Simon…”

“All right, who is Simon?” said Tej. If they were being flung into this headfirst…“Aren’t you the one who was complaining to Byerly Vorrutyer about inadequate briefings?”

“How do I put this?” Ivan Xav rubbed his forehead. “Simon Illyan was Chief of Imperial Security for upwards of thirty years, from the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership till about four or so years back, when he suffered, um, a sort of stroke. Neurological damage to his memory functions. Retired out on a medical, y’know.”

Wait, that Simon Illyan? The same ImpSec boss whom Morozov, without a trace of irony, had dubbed the legendary?

“—and took up with m’mother. Why then, and not any time in the preceding three decades that they worked together, I have no idea, but there you are. So he’s like there, all the time now. With her. Unless she’s at the Residence working. They stick to each other like glue. It’s pretty damned unnerving, I can tell you.”

“Oh,” said Rish, finally unraveling this. “They’re lovers. Why didn’t you say so?”

Ivan Xav tilted his head back and forth and made little flailing motions with his hands. “Haven’t got used to it yet, I guess.”

“After four years?” Tej blinked in new dismay. In other words, the Simon Illyan was almost-sort-of Ivan’s stepfather and he hadn’t mentioned it till now? “Does he really have a cyborg brain?”

“What?”

“That was the rumor in the Whole. Illyan, the Barrayaran Imperial Security chief with the cyborg brain.” The whispers had suggested a sinister super-humanity. Or super-inhumanity.

“I wouldn’t call it that. When he was a young ImpSec lieutenant—twenty-seven, I think he said, good grief, that’s almost eight years younger than I am now…” Ivan Xav trailed off, then took up his thread again. “Anyway, then-Emperor Ezar sent him all the way to Illyrica, a trip that took months, to be fitted with an experimental eidetic-memory chip. Which was kind of a bust—nine out of ten of the subjects came down with some sort of chip-induced schizophrenia, and the project was canned. Illyan was a tenth man. So ever after that he had to cope with two memories, the perfect one off his chip, and his original organic one. Ezar, of course, died, and Illyan had to find his own way—he became one of the Regent’s key men around the time of the Pretendership.”

“So, so he had a stroke, and…” Tej puzzled through all this spate of belated information. “It did something to this chip?”

Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “Actually, it was the other way around. The chip broke down. Had to be surgically removed. But Illyan’s brain had sort of, it’s hard to describe—even harder to live through, I guess—rerouted itself around the chip in the, what, almost thirty-five years that he had it. When it was so abruptly yanked out, it was really hard for him to readjust.

“So the thing about Simon is,” Ivan Xav forged on, “the thing about Simon is, he used to have this terrifying total recall, but now he sometimes doesn’t track. He’s pretty quiet, so you’re not always sure what’s going on in his head, not that you ever were. So, um…make allowances, huh?”

He was—Tej tried to sort it out—he was anxious for his mother’s lover’s dignity, then? And not just for how it reflected on his mother, it seemed. He seemed anxious for Simon Illyan in his own right. That was…unexpected.

And Illyan was now her…stepfather-in-law? Or would he see her that way? It was unclear whether he and Ivan Xav were close. But it seemed that the legend was in some sort of medical eclipse. Well, old people. It was said Barrayarans aged faster than galactics.

It was all very curious. If the looming Christos were to offer them escape from their date with fate right now, she wasn’t sure that she would take him up on it.

They arrived at length at another tallish residential tower, this one high on the river ridge and so commanding an even better view. “Is this where you grew up?” Tej inquired, as they entered yet another underground garage.

“No, m’mother moved here recently. She has the top two floors. She used to live in an older building much closer to the Imperial Residence. That was where I grew up as much as anywhere, I guess.”

“Nice digs,” murmured Rish as they rose in a transparent lift tube through level after level of elegantly appointed foyers. “Are higher floors more expensive?”

“Dunno. She owns the building, so it’s not like she pays the rent.” He added after a moment, “She still owns t’old one, too.” And, after another, “And mine. Has a business manager to look after ’em all.”

Tej was beginning to wonder if Lady Alys Vorpatril qualified as a House Minor in her own right. And then they were crossing out of the tube into another foyer, and escorted by Christos through a pair of sleek doors clad in fine wood marquetry to a hushed hallway graced with mirrors and fresh flowers. And then into a broad living room backed by wide glass walls taking in a sweeping panorama of the capital, with the sun going down and the dusk rising to turn the city lights to jewels on velvet for as far as the eye could see, under a cloud-banded sky.

In two comfortable-looking armchairs angled close together at the room’s far corner sat a man and a woman; both rose and advanced as Christos announced, “Milady, sir; Lord Ivan Vorpatril, Lady Tej Vorpatril, Mademoiselle Lapis Lazuli,” and bowed himself out, delivering his captives and escaping in the same smooth movement.

Tej scrambled to recognize the couple from assorted vid scans she’d recently seen, although, as always, a person in person was subtly different from their graphic representations—in scent, in sound, in sheer palpability. And these people were palpable.

Lady Alys was a woman past youth and into an indeterminate age one might dub dignified, but certainly not old; she moved with ease, and the streak of silver in her bound-back hair seemed to rest there as mere tasteful decoration. Dark brown eyes like Ivan Xav’s, large in her pale, oval face; fine skin well-cared-for. A long-sleeved, dark red dress with a hem at her mid-calf was topped by a darker loose sleeveless vest of equal length, the colors appropriate to her skin tones, her surroundings, and the season.

Simon Illyan was dressed not unlike the driver, except in shades of sober cream and charcoal. He was barely taller than Lady Alys, who was surely of no more than average height for a Barrayaran woman. Thinning brown hair was succumbing to a tide of gray rising around the sides. Scans she’d seen of him from earlier in his career, always in the background of some Imperial event—and if she’d known, she’d have paid him more attention—had seemed to convey a sharp tension in his posture and grim expression. He smiled at her now with an amiable vagueness that went well with the slight pudge around his middle, but sat oddly with his reputation.

Lady Alys cast a look at her son that seemed to say, I’ll deal with you later, and turned to take the startled Tej’s hands in cool, slim fingers.

“Lady Tej,” she said, looking her guest in the eye as if…searching? “Welcome to my home. Congratulations on your marriage. And, I am so very sorry for your late losses.”

The last words floored Tej. No one had offered her condolences for the slaughter of her family, not one person in all the long months of their erratic flight from the Whole to here. Granted, the only people who’d known who she was were the ones trying to add her to the tally. But still, but still, but still. She gulped, breathless and trembling. Managed a constricted, “Thank you,” blinking back the blur in her eyes. Ivan Xav looked at her in concern.

With a peculiar little nod, Lady Alys squeezed her hands and released them. Ivan Xav moved in to slip an arm around her shoulders and give her an uncertain hug.

“And you too, Lapis Lazuli,” Lady Alys continued, turning to Rish, but offering more of a handshake. “Or do you prefer Rish?”

“I prefer Rish,” said Rish. “Lapis Lazuli has always been more of a stage name.”

“May I make you both known to my long-time friend, Simon Illyan.”

Illyan, too, shook their hands in turn, his clasp firm and dry. He lingered to look Tej up and down; his smile broadened slightly. But he made no remark.

“Please, won’t you come sit down.” Lady Alys made a graceful wave toward the seats in a close conversational grouping at the room’s far end. Ivan Xav grabbed Tej’s hand and kept her by him, aiming them onto the two-person sofa; Lady Alys and Illyan took their former chairs, and Rish perched on a rather antique-looking carved chair with new silk upholstery. The whole room, Tej noted, was put together with a quiet, firm taste, a mixture of the old and new that complemented rather than clashed, and, oh blessings, with an impeccable eye for color. Well, Rish stood out a little.

Lady Alys touched a jeweled pin on her vest, and in a moment a staidly dressed, middle-aged woman servant appeared trundling a sort of drinks trolley. “May we offer you an apéritif? Or there are teas.”

Tej, mind still swimming, rather blindly selected a Barrayaran wine she recognized from Admiral Desplains’s table, and Rish chose some native cordial, apparently for the strange name; the others were handed what were apparently their usual tipples without query by the servant. The glasses were small and finely-wrought, inviting appreciation, not inebriation. The servant trundled away as discreetly as she’d entered.

Lady Alys took a sip and turned to Rish—to give Tej time to recover herself? “Someone was kind enough to forward me a short vid of one of your performances with your fellow Jewels. Very impressive. I understand your emigration was forced upon you, but do you have plans or hopes for continuing your art in a new venue?”

Rish grimaced. “No plans, certainly. Performance arts do not mesh well with hiding for one’s life. Success requires—and generates—fame, not obscurity.”

Lady Alys nodded understanding. “Teaching or choreography…no, I suppose the same difficulty would arise.”

Illyan rubbed his chin, and offered, “Could you change your appearance? Cosmetic alterations to blend with the target population?”

A blue hand tightened on a black-clad knee. “That would be repugnant to me. And…when I started to dance, people would know who I was anyway.”

He gave a conceding nod, falling back into his listening quiet.

Tej decided she’d calmed enough that her voice wouldn’t crack. She set down her glass, gripped Ivan Xav’s hand for courage, and said, “Lady Alys, you should know right away that you needn’t worry about the marriage. Ivan Xav and I will be getting a divorce.”

Ivan Xav freed his arm only to put it around her shoulders, hugging her in tight. He endorsed this: “That’s right, Mamere. Just as soon as I can catch up with Count Falco, that is.”

Lady Alys tilted her head and stared at them. “Has my son proved such an unsatisfactory husband in a mere week? Surely you should give him a longer chance.”

“Oh, no, no!” said Tej, hurrying to correct this strange misconception. “I think Ivan Xav would make a wonderful husband!”

“So I had always hoped,” murmured Lady Alys, “and yet, somehow, it seemed never to be…”

Ivan Xav squirmed slightly, inching closer to Tej, or trying to. There weren’t any inches left.

Tej said sturdily, “He has so very many good qualities. He’s brave, he’s kind, he’s smart, he has excellent manners, and he thinks quickly in emergencies.” When pressed hard enough, anyway. “Very good-looking, too, of course.” She probably ought not to add good in bed here; Barrayarans seemed to have funny notions about sex, which she didn’t quite understand yet. “And, um…” What was that unusual word Desplains had used? “Chivalrous, too, which is why he rescued us and brought us here, but really, he owes me nothing.”

Lady Alys pressed a finger to her lips. “That is not what those words in the groat circle say, however. Assuming Ivan managed to remember the right ones.”

“I did,” asserted Ivan Xav indignantly. “And anyway, I shouldn’t think you would be in such a tearing hurry to become the Dowager Lady Vorpatril.”

“My dear and only child, how did you come by that misapprehension? I’ve longed for it any time these past ten years. And anyway, if the title comes to seem too dreadfully aging, I now have other resources to correct the problem.” She glanced at Simon Illyan, who raised his brows and smiled back. Very private smiles that made Tej feel an intruder, though she wasn’t sure on what.

“So,” Lady Alys went on, “it is to be a marriage of convenience, then?”

Illyan put in, “Or inconvenience,” and pressed a concealing hand across his jaw. His eyes were alight, betraying his upward lip-twitch nonetheless.

“The inconvenience,” said Lady Alys, “would seem to reside not in the marriage, but in this Jacksonian syndicate which pursues the girls. About which, I confess, I understand very little as yet. But I feel constrained to point out to you, Ivan—just in case you have overlooked it—that there is no point in your catching up with Falco for a divorce until you have figured out what happens to Tej and her companion after the protection of your name and position is removed. You dragged them here to Barrayar, after all.”

“I, uh…hadn’t got that far yet,” Ivan Xav admitted.

Lady Alys turned to Tej, and asked seriously, “Do you know what you would want?”

It came to Tej then, belatedly, that Lady Alys had just spent much of the prior conversation slowly, gently, and thoroughly roasting her son. And that she wasn’t at all the person Tej had been led to expect. She allowed herself a moment of crossness—she would have words with Ivan Xav about that, later. But right now, she needed to give Lady Alys’s serious question the serious attention it deserved.

“We had a place we were planning to go—not here on Barrayar, not in the Imperium, in fact. But we can only go there if we are absolutely certain that we’ve broken our trail in a way that the Prestene syndicate can’t pick up again. Otherwise, it’s…it would be worse than getting caught ourselves.”

“That would actually come to the same thing,” Rish pointed out. “Once they have us, they have…” A blue hand made an ambiguous, if fluid, wave.

Tej nodded grimly. “That was why the balcony, in the end.”

“So you protect another,” said Illyan, leaning back and tenting his hands together. “One very dear to you.” He blinked vaguely. “Must be the missing brother, what’s-his-name.”

Tej gasped and turned in alarm to Ivan Xav.

He shrugged, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “I said he’d lost his memory, not his wits.”

“The point was mentioned in Morozov’s report,” said Illyan, sounding apologetic. “I only read it this morning. It hasn’t had time to go fuzzy yet.” He took up and emptied his glass, appearing to study the curious absence of his drink before setting it down again. “From the direction and duration of your travel, I would posit that he’s hiding on Escobar, with remoter possibilities being Beta Colony, Kibou-daini, or Tau Ceti. Not farther.”

Rish had jerked upright in her chair. But there was nowhere to bolt to. Nothing to attack. Or to defend against, either.

“In which case,” Illyan continued, “one obvious solution presents itself. The ladies might be conveyed to Escobar as unlisted supercargo in a routine government fast courier, and discreetly deposited downside by the same means by which we used to insert agents. Or perhaps still do; I don’t suppose the procedures have changed all that much. The break in the trail from here, at least, would be clean, as our couriers go in all possible directions. And no record of your landing on Escobar, either.”

Rish’s mouth had fallen open; she leaned forward like a woman contemplating a bakery case. Tej’s heart was beating faster. She asked, “Could it really be done?”

“Ivan would no doubt have to call in some favors,” said Illyan, a bit blandly.

“Oh, yes, please!” said Rish.

“Er,” said Ivan Xav, glancing at Tej. “Is that what you really want?”

Tej sank back in new hesitation. No gifts came without price tags. “What would you want in return for this deal?” She looked in worry at Illyan, at Lady Alys. At Ivan Xav.

Lady Alys finished her drink. “I should have to think about that.”

Ivan Xav scratched his nose, frowned at Illyan. “Could you assist me, sir?”

Illyan replied airily, “Oh, I think that’s a problem you can solve on your own, Ivan. You know the same go-to men as I do.”

Ivan Xav’s brow wrinkled. He turned to Tej and said, rather plaintively, “But you just got here. Don’t you want to look around a little before running off again—forever?”

“I hardly know,” said Tej, wishing she had a net to catch her spinning wits.

Lady Alys touched her brooch again. “Indeed. Ivan’s aunt has often remarked on the inadvisability of making decisions on an empty stomach. Shall we dine?”

As she rose, and everyone else followed suit, the smiling woman servant spread wide another pair of marquetry doors at the end of the room, revealing a dining chamber with places for five ready and waiting. Lady Alys ushered them all through.

Ivan Xav had not lied; his mother set a first-rate table. The conversation became general as the discreet server brought course after course, with wines to complement. Rish made no signals regarding subtle poisons in the soup or salad, fish or vat-meat; instead, she bore the blissful smile of a trained aesthete given, for a change, no penance to endure in the name of good manners. It was all as well-choreographed as a dance. If Ivan’s mother fed her lover like this all the time, it was no wonder he never left.

“Have you lived here long, sir?” Tej asked Illyan, when a lull in the talk presented an opportunity.

“Say rather, I visit here frequently. I keep my old apartment as my official address, and stay there often enough to make it plausible. And for my mail—letter bombs and such—although I am officially retired, ImpSec still provides a courtesy squad to open it.” He smiled quite as if this were not a disconcerting remark. He added a little regretfully, “Just because I have forgotten so many old enemies does not mean they have forgotten me. We set it about that I am more addled than I am, to appease them. Please feel free to add to that public impression, should the subject come up.”

“I don’t find you addled at all, sir,” said Tej, quite sincerely.

“Ah, but you should have met me before the—no, perhaps you should not have. It’s far better this way, I assure you.”

Both Ivan and his mother shared an unreadable look at this, but it was gone from their faces before Illyan glanced up again from his plate. For all his silences, the man was about as self-effacing as a neutron star; light itself seemed to bend around him.

After dinner, Lady Alys kindly showed Tej and Rish around her more-than-flat, or at least the top floor. Ivan Xav slouched after, his hands in his pockets. The floor below was given over to personal apartments allotted to her servants, of whom she kept four: a cook, a scullion-and-housemaid, who was also the server they’d seen, a dresser-cum-personal secretary, and the driver, Christos. Two rooms she passed over in the tour; Ivan explained in a behind-the-hand whisper that they were Illyan’s bedroom and study. They stepped out briefly to a chilly roof garden, designed, Lady Alys told them proudly, by Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan, who appeared to be famous for such things. It was past the season for lingering there, though a few late-blooming fall plants still gave up delicate scents, but Tej could see how one might want to, on warmer days or nights. The view was even better than the one from the living room below.

“I do appreciate your welcome,” said Tej to Lady Alys, as they paused at the parapet to take in one last look at the light-draped river valley. “I feel so much better about it all now. I wasn’t sure what to expect or what to do about—well, anything. I’d never planned to visit Barrayar.”

Lady Alys smiled into the dark. “I considered leaving the time and place of your presentation up to Ivan, as a sort of test. Then I considered all the many ways that scenario could go so wrong, and changed my mind.”

“Hey,” said Ivan Xav, but not very loudly.

“There were two principal possibilities on the table.” Lady Alys turned to face Tej. Laying out her cards at last? “First, was that you were an adventuress who had somehow succeeded in entrapping Ivan, and he should be rescued from you as expeditiously as possible. Maybe. After I’d found out how you did it, for future reference. Or possibly he should be allowed to extricate himself from the consequences of his own folly, for a life lesson. I was having trouble deciding which—”

Another inarticulate noise of protest from her son.

Ignoring it, she went on, “But in any case, both Morozov’s and Simon’s evaluations put that as a low probability. The second main hypothesis was that you were exactly as you appeared to be, the unwitting victim of one of Ivan’s less-well-thought-out inspirations, and needed to be rescued from him. My ImpSec consultants were both united in setting that as a high probability.” She added after a contemplative moment, “ImpSec men never fail to hedge their bets, I’m afraid. It’s most annoying, when one must make decisions based on their reports.”

“If anyone needs any rescuing around here, Mamere, I’m perfectly capable of doing it,” said Ivan Xav, sounding annoyed.

“So I hope, love. So I hope.”

When, at length, they took their departure in the mirrored hallway, where Christos again waited to convey them to the groundcar, Ivan Xav bent and gave his Mamere a rather formal peck on the cheek, which seemed to make her smile despite herself. He really was much taller than her, Tej realized.

Lady Alys turned to Tej with a thoughtful look. “As he may or may not have told you, Ivan’s birthday is coming up next week. We always begin it with a little private ceremony, very early in the morning. I hope that he will decide to invite you.”

The startled and bemused glances Lady Alys won from both the men for this were the most mystifying yet.

“Uh…sure,” said Ivan, sounding oddly unsure. “G’night, Mamere. Simon, sir.”

He nodded to Illyan, and ushered Tej and Rish out to the foyer. The natural wood inlay on the wide doors that closed behind them made not an abstract jumble, but a mosaic picture, Tej realized in a last look back. It portrayed a dense woodland, with horses and riders half-hidden, crossing through the trees. Her eye had not parsed it at all, her first time through.

In the back of the groundcar, Ivan ran his fingers through his scalp in a harried swipe and moaned, “She makes me crazy.” Still, Tej and Rish seemed to have survived the daunting visit, as had he. That it was better to have behind them…he was not yet sure.

“You mean Lady Vorpatril?” said Tej. She gave Ivan a peeved poke in the arm. “She was not at all like what you led me to believe. From the way you talked, I thought there would be screaming and weeping and carrying on, at the very least. But she’s very practical.” She added after a moment, “And kind. I didn’t expect kind.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ivan. “After thirty years of high Vor diplomacy and a few wars, of course she has the chops. This is a woman who knows how to get her way.”

Tej cast him a funny look. “Not always, it seems like.”

Rish turned her head from a long, thoughtful stare out the canopy to observe, “She reminds me of the Baronne.”

“A little, yes,” said Tej, with an introspective frown. “Not as tightly focused.”

“She’s mellowed a lot since Simon arrived in her life,” Ivan admitted. “And vice versa, though his was rather imposed upon him by his, um, brain injury.” Ivan was put uncomfortably in mind of Tej’s alarming response to his mother’s first greeting. Tej seemed such a sunny personality, much of the time—these flashes of dark were like a crack in the sky, shocking and wrong. Reminding him that the daylight was the illusion, the scattering of light by the atmosphere, and the endless night was the permanent default behind it all. And God that was a weird and morbid thought, but his mother did make him crazy. “Did you, um, love your mother? The Baronne?”

Tej hesitated, her brows lowering. When she spoke, it was slowly, as if she had to grope for truth in a thicket of thorny memories. “I admired her very much. We didn’t always get along. Actually, we clashed a lot. She said I wasn’t working up to my full potential. Not like my sisters.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, wisely. “That does sound all too familiar.”

Tej looked across at him in surprise. “But you were an only child!”

“Not…exactly. I always had my cousin Miles. And Gregor for an elder brother, but of course it was understood he was in a class by himself.” He added after a reflective moment, “All by himself, poor sod.”

“So your cousin Miles was like a brother to you?” asked Rish. Glints from her gold earrings flickered in the shadowy compartment as her head tilted.

“Miles…is really hard to explain. He was—is—smart.”

“You’re smart,” said Tej, in a tone of indignant protest.

Ivan’s heart nearly melted, but he sighed. “Yeah, but Miles was…the thing is, he was afflicted with a severe birth injury. He grew up pretty much crippled, so he poured all his frustrated energy into his intellect. Since the Vorkosigan family motto might as well be, Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving, the effect was pretty frightening. And it worked for him, so he did it some more.”

“Very like the Baronne,” murmured Rish.

Tej said slowly, “Yes…my mother loved being the Baronne, you see. Building the House was her passion. And in her way, I suppose, she loved us, and naturally wanted us to have this great thing she’d found, too. Except…I wasn’t her. It was like…if she could just fix me into being her, then she could shower me with the gifts she so valued.”

Ivan winced. “Ah.” It was kind of appalling, how little trouble he had following that whole line of reasoning. On both sides. Not sure what to say, he slipped an arm around Tej and hugged her in. Warm and soft, why didn’t anyone value warm and soft…?

“So will we get to meet your cousin?” asked Rish. Or, possibly, prodded?

“Not sure. He’s an Imperial Auditor now—that’s sort of a high-level government trouble-shooter—so he goes out of town at erratic intervals to find trouble to shoot. I should warn you, if we do go to Vorkosigan House, it’s knee-deep in infants these days. Twins, speaking of overachieving. They offer to let you hold one as if it was some kind of treat.” Ivan shuddered. “And they leak, and make the most horrible noises.”

“I never had much to do with infants,” said Tej. “Comes of being the youngest, I guess.”

“Yeah—only child, here,” said Ivan.

“Whereas I,” said Rish coolly, “was the babysitter.” She leaned back and stretched her legs, propping her feet on the seat opposite, beyond Tej. “I expect we’ll cope.”