Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

  “Makes it hard to calculate a price. You thinking percentage or flat fee?”

  “Until the items reach their final destination and are disposed of, they’re solid, not liquid. I think you might prefer flat fee, now, rather than an unknown amount decanted off an unknown amount, much later.”

  “Why not both?” said Imola. “Flat fee up front, to be sure all possible expenses are covered, and the percentage after success. Say, fifteen percent. That’s pretty usual.”

  Dada winced slightly. “Could be. We need to move quickly and quietly.”

  “For a percentage, I can do quickly and quietly. So do we have a deal?”

  After a short hesitation, Dada rose and reached across the desk; a brief handshake. “Deal.”

  Imola leaned back and prepared to make a note. “So what’s the address of this garage of yours?”

  Dada named it. Imola’s hand froze. “Shiv, do you know what’s across the street from that building?”

  “Oh, yes,” sighed Dada. “Hence our discretion.”

  “You may not have spotted the scanners, but I guarantee any vehicle that parks within three blocks of ImpSec headquarters gets scrutinized somehow. And recorded.”

  “Quite thoroughly scanned, entering that garage, yes. But—not leaving it. That one’s cursory, just to be sure outs match ins. We checked.”

  “Ah.” Imola frowned, obviously thinking this through. His anonymous van would be arriving empty and innocent, yes. The driver would know nothing . . . “One of the ways I stay in business around here is that I don’t get involved with local politics. Strictly commercial, I am. Vorbarra District Guard and Imperial Customs are all bad enough. ImpSec—that’s too high up for me. Give you a nosebleed, those boys will.”

  “I have no interest in local politics, myself.”

  “Strictly commercial, is this?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Hm.” Imola stared at the address on his autofiler, evidently memorizing it, then deleted the screen. “You might have said.”

  “You didn’t think I’d pester you with something trivial, did you?”

  “No, I suppose not. You always were a beat ahead of the rest of us, back when.” Imola sighed. “Do give my best to your lady. She’s still with you, I suppose?”

  Dada nodded.

  “And the rest of the clan?”

  “All safe with us, for now.” Dada, Tej noticed, did not go into the distressing details about Ruby and Topaz and Erik.

  “Mustering for a fresh move on Prestene, are you? Or something?”

  “More or less. Or something.” Dada’s lips twitched. “Or we might buy a tropical island.”

  Imola looked nonplussed at this last, but said, “Eh, good luck on that. People just don’t keep up with each other, these scattered times. Does Udine still have her fancy dance troupe? Quite the show, I heard, when you were all on Cordonah Station.”

  “Her Jewels, yes. And they will dance again,” said Dada firmly. “You’ll have to stop by, next you get out that way.”

  After a few more anecdotes about the Good Old Days, which sounded like the Repulsive Old Days to Tej, Dada rose and they extracted themselves, and exited to the street once more. The fog was thinning, or perhaps just condensing into a cold drizzle.

  “Let’s wait in the car,” Dada directed, when they’d made their way back to the pipe-layer’s building. “No point in stepping on Star’s script.”

  She slid into the driver’s side, and Dada into the seat beside her. He turned to face her.

  She eyed him sideways. “You weren’t quite straight with that man. Imola. Do you trust him or not?”

  “The limits of trust depend much on whether you mean to do business more than once. But it’s just good practice never to show all your cards in the first round of a deal. One must maintain reserves. Besides, what he doesn’t need to know he can’t tell, not even under fast-penta. Speaking of sound practice. He knows that game.”

  “I suppose.” Tej sighed.

  “You don’t seem happy, honey.”

  “None of us are just now, I expect.”

  “True. Well, we’ll all be home—soon enough.”

  He’s leaving out a few steps. And the new House Cordonah was going to be unavoidably different from the old, Tej suspected. Home would be changed. Or I will be.

  “You know,” Dada went on, “you were Udine’s special gift to me. All the other kids, I was happy enough to let her play the haut geneticist, but you were merely gene-cleaned. Unmodified her, unmodified me. My almost-natural offspring.”

  “I knew that.” Star had once called her the control child; it hadn’t been a compliment.

  “I always wanted to see you do well.”

  To prove what for you, Dada?

  “I meant to hold out for something really special, when it came to your marital contract. Still could, you know.”

  “Mm,” said Tej.

  “But . . . there’s another possible deal in the air, now. How well do you like that Barrayaran boy?”

  “Ivan Xav? I like him fine.” And one of the things she most liked about him, she realized, was that he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with any Arqua deals, ever. He was surrounded by his own Barrayaran style of crazy, true, but surprisingly little seemed to have rubbed off on him.

  “Should a deal emerge that did involve him, would you be willing to be party to it?”

  “What kind of a deal?” she asked automatically, then said, “Wait. Do you mean a marriage contract? We’re kind of a done deal that way, I thought.” Count Falco said so. And they’d made it themselves, with their own breath and voices—funny Barrayaran phrase, that. Their own breath and no one else’s. “The only way that deal could change is to be undone.”

  “Which could happen in so many ways. I can’t help but notice that you’ve not been pursuing any of them.”

  “We’ve been busy. And then you all arrived, and we’ve been busier.”

  “Does your Ivan Xav know that you think it’s a done deal? Or your stepfather-in-law?”

  “I . . .” don’t know, Tej realized. Did she even know herself, for real, for sure?

  “Because if they don’t, I can certainly see no reason for you to tell them. That could be slick. Trade them something they already have, for . . . heh. Considerations, yes.”

  Tej tried to keep her face from scrunching up in dismay. “Has this got anything to do with that private talk you had with Simon?”

  He looked cagey. “Might.”

  Her heart chilled. Ivan Xav had seemed very sure that his um-stepfather couldn’t be suborned by threats or bribed by wealth. But what about love?

  In more than one form. It was plain that the strange, reserved man wanted some better relations with his stepson than he had yet been able to construct, if only to please his high Vor lady. And more: Simon liked Ivan Xav in his own right—in his own quietly awkward way—though Ivan Xav didn’t seem to see it. The late great Captain Illyan had been superb with security, it was said; maybe not so deft with family. He’d evidently never had one before, in all his long adult life, or was that only . . . his long adult career? But surely the man couldn’t be compromising his peculiar Barrayaran honor just to secure his stepson’s marriage. Simon was a mystery; how could you tell what he was thinking?

  Although it was bad enough that Dada wanted to use her as a counter in his deals. Dada at least was Dada, Baron Cordonah for real. Simon had no right . . .

  “Have you already made some kind of a deal with Simon about me?” she demanded in alarm.

  “Mm, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a deal. More of a bet.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “Oh, it didn’t involve you. Yet. Though it was clear that you and Ivan Xav weighed in his calculations.”

  “What did it involve?”

  “Step One of our program here—the site mapping. Simon bet we couldn’t do it in any way. Undetected by ImpSec, that is, on ImpSec’s doorstep. I bet we could.” He ad
ded after a moment’s reflection, “As long as one doesn’t count Simon himself as ImpSec, of course. We won.”

  “What did we win?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Round Two. Which Simon thinks Star is pursuing as we speak. The Mycoborer, fortunately, still remains outside the realm of his otherwise far-reaching imagination.”

  “Oh. So—every round you win buys us another round?”

  “Yes. But we only need two. Simon’s thinking three or four.”

  Weasels, that was the term Ivan Xav kept using. But which old weasel was the, the weaseliest?

  Maybe Simon simply wanted Lady Alys all to himself. Was Ivan Xav’s protracted bachelorhood holding up Simon’s own marriage, the way it had evidently been holding up Lady Alys’s longed-for release from the burning ritual? Maybe he thought he was trading not Tej, but Ivan Xav—to be carried off by Clan Arqua to the Whole as a prize, or what? Would the The Gregor allow that—or applaud it? The Emperor had his own sons now—maybe Ivan Xav was reclassified as redundant, an heir in excess of need. An embarrassing leftover, and everyone relieved to have him be shunted out of the way.

  Tej didn’t know whether to be distressed or really, really annoyed. With the whole lot of them, Arquan and Barrayaran both.

  Dada, watching whatever parade of emotions was passing across her face, said a bit plaintively, “I’d do my best for you, honey, but you have to give your old Dada a clue.”

  “If I get one,” she sighed, “I’ll share.”

  His belly jumped in a muffled, pained laugh that didn’t make it out his mouth. Women, eh, didn’t quite appear as a caption over his head, but it might as well have. She wanted to return, Men, ugh!

  And if it would help Clan Arqua to sell what was already given away, didn’t she have an obligation to allow that much? . . . Especially as it might get her off the hook for further demands. It wouldn’t make any practical difference to her and Ivan Xav—would it? Damn it, now I’m all confused. Again. It was hardly a help that Ivan Xav didn’t make her crazy when everyone else around them was doing so good a job.

  Star emerged from the door of the engineering firm, looking self-satisfied. She and Dada slid into the back for a short report on her fake tunneling bid. Tej started the groundcar again and pulled into the street.

  “Oh, about Ivan Xav,” Tej called over her shoulder. “He was going to ask Admiral Desplains for some personal leave. He hopes to get tomorrow free. To join us.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Star. “Rotten timing. Why couldn’t he have waited till next week? What will we do with him?”

  “The same drill as with his friend Byerly,” Dada assured her, unmoved. “Not a problem.”

  Speak for yourself, Dada.

  * * *

  Tej did her best to slip away without him, the morning of Ivan’s first day off, but he cornered her in the kitchen.

  “Driving again?” he asked amiably, sucking coffee. “What say I go with you?”

  “It’ll be boring,” she told him, drinking her own coffee faster. “Who would have thought I’d ever be saying that about Vorbarr Sultana traffic? Live and learn.”

  “I’m never bored with you.”

  She flashed him a nervous smile. “And there wouldn’t be room.”

  “I don’t mind squeezing up.”

  He wondered how many rounds she’d go on this hedging, and had a brief insight into Simon’s fascination with the clan, but she gave over the argument and let him follow her down the street to the Arqua hotel. There, he discovered, she’d cannily sited reinforcements, and he somehow, without intending it, found himself assigned to drive another set of Arquas around on an assortment of errands that extended into a lingering lunch. They were joined in this meal by Byerly, trailing Emerald and looking thwarted. As diversions went, Ivan supposed it displayed a certain efficiency.

  The polite runaround continued all day in this vein. It was only by chance, miscalculation, and a couple of social lies that Ivan managed to cross paths with his wife in his flat once more, at nearly bedtime. She was dressing—not for bed, which more usually involved undressing—in some casual, sturdy clothes that looked more suitable for a walk in the woods than a night on the town.

  “Oh,” she said, looking around in surprise as he came in.

  “Hi, beautiful.” He kissed her hello; even her return kiss felt evasive. “What’s up?”

  “Just a few more chores for my family. Don’t wait up for me.”

  “At this hour? You should be in bed. With me.” He nuzzled her neck; she slipped out of his grasp, which he just managed not to let become a clutch.

  “We might not have much longer together on Barrayar. Pidge is having trouble getting the visa extension.”

  Good. Wait, not good. “That doesn’t include you, you know. Lady Vorpatril.”

  “Uh . . .” Her evasiveness was shading into panic, in her eyes. It wasn’t all that amusing.

  “Tej,” he sighed. “We need to talk.”

  “Next week. Next week would be good for me. I have to go now, or I’ll be late.”

  “Not next week. Right now.” He captured her hand—it jerked in his grip, but didn’t jerk away—and led her to sit on the edge of the bed with him.

  She offered him only a tight-lipped smile; she, clearly, wasn’t going to start. Up to him, eh.

  “Tej. I know a lot more about what’s going on with you and your folks than you think.”

  “Oh?” she tried. Leading, not conceding.

  “In fact, I bet I know something you don’t.”

  “How can you know that you know something I don’t when you don’t know what I know in the first place? I don’t see how you can. I mean, logically. Or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  Simon had recently tricked him into going first with much the same turn of phrase, Ivan was wearily reminded. Or at least the gist of it. “Tej. I know that your family is after a certain Cetagandan bunker dating back to the Occupation, or at least, after something in it. And it’s sitting under that park in front of ImpSec. You mapped it during that dance last weekend.”

  She froze for a moment, and then came up with: “Well . . . so? Simon was watching us.”

  “Simon’s onto you.”

  “He has an, an understanding with Dada, yes. You might have figured that out.”

  “I did, yes. But Simon knows one thing that you—you Arquas—don’t.”

  He waited, to by-God make her say something. Anything. Her face screwed up in the effort to contain her words, not to mention her curiosity, but lost the fight: “What?”

  Ivan felt like a lout. No, this wasn’t going to be fun at all. “The bunker was found and emptied decades ago, when ImpSec HQ was first built. The bunker’s still there, yes, but there’s nothing inside. Simon’s setting you all up for a fall.” The weaselly bastard.

  “No,” she snapped. And, a tiny doubt creeping into her voice, “Can’t be. Grandmama would have known, and the Baronne.”

  “Is so. Empty.” A trap without bait.

  “Isn’t.” Tej could look remarkably mulish, when she set her mind to it.

  “Is.”

  “Isn’t.” Her jaw unset just enough for her to say, “And I can prove it to you.”

  “How?”

  “I won’t tell you.” She was getting better with shifty; maybe it was all the recent practice. “But I’ll make you a deal for it. A . . . a bet. If that’s more Barrayaran.”

  “What kind of a deal? Or bet.”

  “If the lab—the bunker is empty, I’ll do what you want.”

  Might that include stay on Barrayar? Could he twist this into a ploy to make her stay? He just kept that thought from falling straight out of his mouth; he didn’t know if she’d think it was a jewel or a toad. “And if it’s not?”

  “If it’s full, then you’ll do what I want.” She frowned in reflection. “That seems balanced, doesn’t it?”

  “Which would be . . . what?” Ivan was learning caution around Jacksonians bearing deals.


  “Uh . . .” She’d been caught short, but was thinking fast. “To start with . . . help carry stuff. You’re big and strong. And, and go on keeping your mouth shut. About everything you see or hear. And no cheating by giving people hints. And after that . . . there might be more.”

  “This deal seems to be getting a bit open-ended.”

  “So what do you care? If you really think the bunker is empty.”

  So . . . should he bet on Simon? Ivan had a lot of trouble fitting Simon Illyan and wrong into the same sentence, although Aunt Cordelia claimed it was historically possible. And she should know. Not often wasn’t, after all, the same thing as never.

  And he’d just be following Simon’s own example, with that bet. He wondered how well that might work as a defense, later. Not sanguine, was that the phrase? Which had something to do with blood. No, this was not a helpful line of thought.

  “All right,” Ivan heard his mouth saying. Because Tej wasn’t the only person in this room being driven to insanity by curiosity, it seemed. “It’s a deal.”

  He’d rather have sealed it with a kiss, but she offered him a firm Arqua handshake instead.

  “Oh,” she said, turning back at the bedroom door. “And bring a pair of slippers.”

  * * *

  Tej made Ivan Xav park his two-seater a good five blocks from ImpSec Headquarters, just to be sure, which then entailed a long trudge through a cold drizzle. He had grown more and more silent, on the short drive over, as she’d explained about the Mycoborer. But his tone grew irate when she led him to the lower level of the garage—quiet, deserted, and shadowy at this late hour. “Why couldn’t we have parked here?”

  “Shh,” she hissed back, equally irate. A bulky ground van was sitting directly across from the utility room; evidently Ser Imola had done his part. She tapped gently on the door.

  It swung open; Star’s hand shot out to yank her inside. A couple of bright cold lights cast conflicting green shadows. “Tej, you’re late.” Star looked up in consternation at Ivan Xav, shouldering in after her. Her hand went to the stunner holster riding her hip. “Why’d you bring him? Are you crazy?”

  “He’s going to help. He . . . volunteered.” Sort of.

  Ivan Xav stared around the little chamber in deep suspicion, and Tej wondered belatedly if she should have demanded that Vor-name’s-word thing on their deal, or bet, as well. The access well to the Mycoborer tunnel was uncovered; a pulley was set up on a frame above the hole, with ropes descending into the dark.