Her guess of its value kept ratcheting up in time to his words. "For heaven's sake get it appraised first!"
"Why? To loan to a museum? Don't need to set a price on my grandmother for that. To sell to some collector to hoard like money? Let him hoard money, that's all that sort wants anyway. The only collector who'd be worthy of it would be someone who was personally obsessed with the Princess-and-Countess, one of those men who fall hopelessly in love across time. No. I owe it to its maker to put it to its proper use, the use he intended."
The weary straitened housewife in her—Tien's pinchmark spouse—was horrified. The secret soul of her rang like a bell in resonance to Miles's words. Yes. That was how it should be. This saddle belonged under a fine lady, not under a glass cover. Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something. How had Miles learned that? For this alone I could love you . . .
"Now." He grinned in response to her smile, and drew breath. "God knows I need to start doing something for exercise, or all this culinary diplomacy I do nowadays will defeat Mark's attempt to differentiate himself from me. There are several parks here in town with hacking paths. But it's not much fun to ride by myself. Think you'd be willing to keep me company?" He blinked a trifle ingenuously.
"I would love to," she said honestly, "but I can't." She could see in his eyes a dozen counterarguments springing up, ready to charge into the breach. She held up a hand to stop him bursting into speech. She must bring this little self-indulgent ration of pretend-happiness to a close, before her will broke. Her forced agreement with Vassily only permitted her a taste of Miles, not a meal. Not a banquet . . . Back to harsh reality. "Something new has come up. Yesterday, Vassily Vorsoisson and my brother Hugo came to see me. Set on, apparently, by a nasty letter from Alexi Vormoncrief."
Tersely, she detailed their visit. Miles sat back on his heels, his face setting, listening closely. For once, he didn't interrupt.
"You set them straight?" he said slowly, when she paused for breath.
"I tried. It was infuriating to watch them just . . . dismiss my word, in favor of all those sordid insinuations from that fool Alexi, of all men. Hugo was genuinely worried about me, I suppose, but Vassily is all wound up in this misconstrued family duty and some inflated ideas about the depraved decadence of the capital."
"Ah," said Miles thinly. "A romantic, I see."
"Miles, they were ready to take Nikki away right then! And I have no legal way to fight for custody. Even if I took Vassily to the Vorbretten District magistrate's court, I couldn't prove him grossly unfit—he's not. He's just grossly gullible. But I thought—too late, last night—about Nikki's security classification. Would ImpSec do something to stop Vassily?"
Miles frowned, his brows drawing down. "Possibly . . . not. It's not as if he wanted to take Nikki off-world. ImpSec could have no objection to Nikki going to live on a military base—in fact, they'd probably consider it a better safe-zone than your uncle's or Vorkosigan House either one. More anonymous. I can't think they'd be too keen about a lawsuit drawing more public attention to the Komarran affair, either."
"Would they quash it? In whose favor?"
He hissed thoughtfully through his teeth. "Yours, if I asked them to, but it would be just like them to do so in a way that provides maximum support to the cover story—which is how they've classified this murder-slander in their little one-track minds this week. I hardly dare touch it; I'd only make things worse. I wonder if somebody . . . I wonder if somebody anticipated that?"
"I know Alexi's pulling Vassily's strings. Do you think someone's pulling Alexi's strings, trying to bait you into making some ruinous public move?" That would make her the last link in a chain by which his hidden enemy sought to yank Miles into an untenable position. A chilling realization. But only if she—and Miles—did what that enemy anticipated.
"I . . . hm. Possibly." His frown deepened. "Better by far that your uncle straighten things out, anyway, privately, inside the family. Is he still due back from Komarr before the wedding?"
"Yes, but that's only if his so-called few little technical matters don't get more complicated than he anticipates."
Miles grimaced in sympathetic understanding. "No guarantees then, right." He paused. "Vorbretten's District, eh? If push came to shove, I could quietly call in a favor from René Vorbretten, and have him, ah, arrange things. You could jump over the magistrate's court and take it to him on direct appeal. I wouldn't have to involve ImpSec or appear in the matter at all. That wouldn't work if Sigur holds Countship of the Vorbretten's District by then, though."
"I don't want push to come to shove. I don't want Nikki troubled more at all. It's been ghastly enough for him." She sat tight and trembling, whether with fear or anger or a venomous combination she could hardly say.
Miles scrambled up off his heels, and came round and sat rather tentatively next to her on the walnut chest, and gave her a searching look. "One way or another, we can make it come round right in the end. In two days, both these District inheritance votes come due in the Council of Counts. Once the vote's over, the political motivation to stir up trouble with this accusation against me evaporates, and the whole thing will start to fade." That would have sounded very comfortable, if he hadn't added, "I hope."
"I shouldn't have suggested putting you in quarantine till my mourning year was over. I should have tried Vassily on Winterfair first. I thought of that too late. But I can't risk Nikki, I just can't. Not when we've come so far, survived so much."
"Sh, now. I think your instincts are right. My grandfather had an old cavalry saying: `You should get over heavy ground as lightly as you can.' We'll just lie low for a little while here so as not to rile poor Vassily. And when your uncle gets back, he'll straighten the fellow out." He glanced up at her, sideways. "Or, of course, you could simply not see me for a year, eh?"
"I should dislike that exceedingly," she admitted.
"Ah." One corner of his mouth curled up. After a little pause, he said, "Well, we can't have that, then."
"But Miles, I gave my word. I didn't want to, but I did."
"Stampeded into it. A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack."
Somehow, not her doing, his thigh lay by hers, not quite touching but warm and solid even through two layers of cloth, gray and black. She couldn't exactly lay her head on his shoulder for comfort, but she might sneak her arm around his waist, and lean her cheek on the top of his head. It would be a pleasant sensation, easing to the heart. I shouldn't do that.
Yes, I should. Now and always . . . No.
Miles sighed. "Bitten by my reputation. Here I thought the only opinions that mattered were yours, Nikki's, and Gregor's. I forgot Vassily's."
"So did I."
"My da gave me this definition: he told me reputation was what other people knew about you, but honor was what you knew about yourself."
"Was that what Gregor meant, when he told you to talk to him? Your da sounds wise. I'd like to meet him."
"He wants to meet you, too. Of course, he immediately followed this up by asking me how I stood with myself. He has this . . . this eye."
"I think . . . I know what he means." She might curl her fingers around his hand, lying loosely on his thigh so close to hers. Surely it would lie warm and reassuring in her palm . . . You've betrayed yourself before, in starvation for touch. Don't. "The day Tien died, I went from being the kind of person who made, and kept, a life-oath, to one who broke it in two and walked away. My oath had mattered the world to me, or at least . . . I'd traded the world for it. I still don't know if I was forsworn for nothing or not. I don't suppose Tien would have gone charging out in that stupid way that night if I hadn't shocked him by telling him I was leaving." She fell silent for a little. The room was very still. The
thick old stone walls kept out the city noises. "I am not who I was. I can't go back. I don't quite like who I have become. Yet I still . . . stand. But I hardly know how to go on from here. No one ever gave me a map for this road."
"Ah," said Miles. "Ah. That one." His voice was not in the least puzzled; he spoke in a tone of firm recognition.
"Towards the end, my oath was the only piece of me left that hadn't been ground down. When I tried to talk about this to Aunt Vorthys, she tried to reassure me that it was all right because everyone else thought Tien was an ass. You see . . . it has nothing to do with Tien, saint or monster. It was me, and my word."
He shrugged. "What's hard to see about that? It's blazingly obvious to me."
She turned her head, and looked down at his face, which looked up at her in patient curiosity. Yes, he perfectly understood—yet did not seek to comfort her by dismissing her distress, or trying to convince her it didn't matter. The sensation was like opening the door to what she'd thought was a closet, and stepping through into another country, rolling out before her widening eyes. Oh.
"In my experience," he said, "the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn. It's a survivor's problem, this one."
"Yes," she agreed quietly. He knows. He knows it all, right down to that bitter muck of regret at the bottom of the soul's well. How does he know?
"Death before dishonor. Well, at least no one can complain I got them out of order . . . You know . . ." He started to look away, but then looked back, to hold her eye directly. His face was a little pale. "I wasn't exactly medically discharged from ImpSec. Illyan fired me. For falsifying a report about my seizures."
"Oh," she said. "I didn't know that."
"I know you didn't. I don't exactly go round advertising the fact, for pretty obvious reasons. I was trying so hard to hang on to my career—Admiral Naismith was everything to me, life and honor and most of my identity by then—I broke it instead. Not that I didn't set myself up for it. Admiral Naismith began as a lie, one I redeemed by making him come true later. And it worked really well, for a while; the little Admiral brought me everything I ever thought I wanted. After a while I began to think all sins could be redeemed like that. Lie now, fix it later. Same as I tried to do with you. Even love is not as strong as habit, eh?"
Now she did dare to tighten her arm around him. No reason for them both to starve. . . . For a moment, he went as breathless as a man laying food before a wild animal, trying to coax it to his hand. Abashed, she drew back.
She inhaled, and ventured, "Habits. Yes. I feel as if I'm half-crippled with old reflexes." Old scars of mind. "Tien . . . seems never more than a thought away from me. Will his death ever fade, do you suppose?"
Now he didn't look at her. Didn't dare? "I can't answer for you. My own ghosts just seem to ride along, mostly unconsulted, always there. Their density gradually thins, or I grow used to them." He stared around the attic, blew out his breath, and added elliptically, "Did I ever tell you how I came to kill my grandfather? The great general who survived it all, Cetagandans, Mad Yuri, everything this century could throw at him?"
She declined to be baited into whatever shocked response he thought this dramatic statement deserved, but merely raised her brows.
"I disappointed him to death, eh, the day I blew my Academy entrance exams, and lost my first chance at a military career. He died that night."
"Of course," she said dryly, "you were the cause. It couldn't possibly have had anything to do with his being nearly a hundred years old."
"Yeah, sure, I know." Miles shrugged, and gave her a sharp look up from under his dark brows. "The same way you know Tien's death was an accident."
"Miles," she said, after a long, thoughtful pause, "are you trying to one-up my dead?"
Taken aback, his lips began to form an indignant denial, which weakened to an, "Oh." He gently thumped his forehead on her shoulder as if beating his head against a wall. When he spoke again, his ragging tone did not quite muffle real anguish. "How can you stand me? I can't even stand me!"
I think that was the true confession. We are surely come to the end of one another. "Sh. Sh."
Now he did take her hand, his fingers tightening around it as warmly as any embrace. She did not jerk back in startlement, though an odd shiver ran through her. Isn't starving yourself a betrayal too, self against self?
"To use Kareen's Betan psychology terminology," she said a little breathlessly, "I have this Thing about oaths. When you became an Imperial Auditor, you took oath again. Even though you were forsworn once. How could you bear to?"
"Oh," he said, looking around a little vaguely. "What, when they issued you your honor, didn't they give you the model with the reset button? Mine's right here." He pointed to the general vicinity of his navel.
She couldn't help it; her black laughter pealed out, echoing off the beams. Something inside her, wrapped tight to the breaking-point, loosened at that laugh. When he made her laugh like that, it was like light and air let in upon wounds too dark and painful to touch, and so a chance at healing. "Is that what that's for? I never knew."
He smiled, recapturing her hand. "A very wise woman once told me—you just go on. I've never encountered any good advice that didn't boil down to that, in the end. Not even my father's."
I want to be with you always, so you can make me laugh myself well. He stared down at her palm in his as though he wanted to kiss it. He was close enough that she could feel their every breath, matching rhythms. The silence lengthened. She had come to give him up, not get into a necking session . . . if this went on, she'd end up kissing him. The scent of him filled her nose, her mouth, seemed rushed by her blood to every cell of her body. Intimacy of the flesh seemed easy, after the far more terrifying intimacy of the mind.
Finally, with enormous effort, she sat up straight. With perhaps equal effort, he released her hand. Her heart was thumping as though she'd been running. Trying for an ordinary voice, she said, "Then your considered opinion is, we should wait for my uncle to take on Vassily. Do you really think this nonsense is meant as a trap?"
"It has that smell. I can't quite tell yet how many levels down the stench is coming from. It might only be Alexi trying to cut me out."
"But then one considers who Alexi's friends are. I see." She attempted a brisk tone. "So, are you going to nail Richars and the Vormoncrief party, in the Council day after tomorrow?"
"Ah," he said. "There's something I need to tell you about that." He looked away, tapped his lips, looked back. He was still smiling, but his eyes had gone serious, almost bleak. "I believe I've made a strategic error. You, ah, know Richars Vorrutyer seized on this slander as a lever to try and force a vote from me?"
She said hesitantly, "I'd gathered something of a sort was going on, behind the scenes. I didn't realize it was quite so overt."
"Crude. Actually." He grimaced. "Since blackmail wasn't a behavior I wished to reward, my answer was to put all my clout, such as it is, behind Dono."
"Good!"
He smiled briefly, but shook his head. "Richars and I now stand at an impasse. If he wins the Countship, my open opposition almost forces him to go on to make his threat good. At that point, he'll have the right and the power. He won't move immediately—I expect it will take him some weeks to collect allies and marshal resources. And if he has any tactical wits, he'll wait till after Gregor's wedding. But you see what comes next."
Her stomach tightened. She could see all too well, but . . . "Can he get rid of you by charging you with Tien's murder? I thought any such charge would be quashed."
"Well, if wiser heads can't talk Richars out of it . . . the practicalities become peculiar. In fact, the more I think about it, the messier it looks." He spread his fingers on his gray-trousered knee, and counted down the list. "Assassination is out." By his grimace, that was meant as a joke. Almost. "Gregor wouldn't
authorize it for anything less than overt treason, and Richars is embarrassingly loyal to the Imperium. For all I know, he really does believe I murdered Tien, which makes him an honest man, of sorts. Taking Richars quietly aside and telling him the truth about Komarr is right out. I'd expect a lot of maneuvering around the lack of evidence, and a verdict of Not Proven. Well, ImpSec might manufacture some evidence, but I'm getting pretty queasy wondering what kind. Neither my reputation nor yours will be their top priority. And you're bound to be sucked into it at some point, and I . . . won't be in control of all that happens."
She found her teeth were pressed together. She ran her tongue over her lips, to loosen the taut muscles of her jaw. "Endurance used to be my specialty. In the old days."