Cryoburn

1 Mark.

Mark had once shot a man with a nerve disruptor; seen the surprised eyes go blank as the charge burned out the brain behind them. He didn’t know why watching Miles take in the news of their father’s death made that black memory surface. No buzz or crackle from a weapon here; just three quiet words.

It wasn’t for hours, after the scramble to rearrange travel, that he realized he’d witnessed the truth. As if harnessed in tandem to the Count-his-father, Lord Vorkosigan had died in that moment, too, old life draining away along with the color from his face.

2 Miles.

Count Vorkosigan stared at his face in the mirror. “Fuck.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck…

“Are you all right, m’lord?” called Roic from the fast courier’s cabin.

“Of course I’m not all right, you idiot!” Miles snarled, and then, in a smaller voice, “Sorry. Sorry. I feel like my brain’s been pulled out, and there’s nothing in my skull but loose wires waving from my spinal cord. God. Why are we in a hurry now? Days too late?”

“The Countess, er, the Dowager Coun… your mother is waiting for you on Sergyar.”

“Ah,” said the Count. “Yes.” And, “Sorry.”

“We’ll manage, m’lord.”

3 Cordelia.

It wasn’t Cordelia who’d found him, but it was she who’d decided. A brain aneurysm, a warm afternoon, two hours gone while the servants assumed the white-haired man had fallen asleep in his armchair, as he did after lunch these days.

Miles’s voice was ragged. “Couldn’t you have had him cryoprepped anyway? The technology might progress…”

“To wake without mind or memory, soul in tatters? He told me himself once; no man would want to live on like that.”

Or else wake with the burden of his memories intact, hardly less a horror. Could Miles understand?

Ensign Dubauer, I’m sorry.

4 Ivan.

The state funeral ran for a grueling week. Ivan watched Miles mount the podium to present the eulogy. Gregor’d lent his best speechwriters; Miles had edited. Still, Ivan held his breath when Miles clutched the flimsies in a shaking fist and almost, almost cast them away to deliver his wounded words ex tempore.

Till his eye fell on his children, squirming and confused in the front row between their mother and grandmother. He hesitated, smoothed out the flimsies, began reading. The new Count’s speech was everything it should be; many wept.

Ivan wondered what the old Miles would have said.

5 Gregor.

The interment at Vorkosigan Surleau was private, meaning a hundred or so people milling around. The grave was double but only one side dug; the earth waited like a bridal bed. The pallbearers were six: Ivan, Illyan, and Koudelka, of course; Duv Galeni for Komarr; Admiral Jole for Sergyar. And one other.

Lady Alys, to whom everyone owed their sanity, pointed out that Gregor’s place was with the chief mourners.

“The man has carried me since I was five years old,” answered the Emperor of Barrayar. “It’s my turn.”

Alys gave way as Gregor went to help shoulder the bier.