Barrayar

  "You can't go halfway and stop," Piotr muttered forebodingly, at this delicacy.

  "One step at a time," Vorkosigan returned grimly, "I can walk around the world. Watch me."

  On the fifth day, Gregor was returned to the capital. Vorkosigan and Cordelia together undertook to tell him of the death of Kareen. He cried in bewilderment. When he quieted, he was taken for a ride in a groundcar with a transparent force-screen, reviewing some troops; in fact, the troops were reviewing him, that he might be seen to be alive, finally dispelling Vordarian's rumors of his death. Cordelia rode with him. His silent shockiness hurt her to the heart, but it was better from her point of view than parading him first and then telling him. If she'd had to endure his repeated queries of when he would see his mother again, all during the ride, she would have broken down herself.

  The funeral for Kareen was public, though much less elaborate than it would have been in less chaotic circumstances. Gregor was required to light an offering pyre for the second time in a year. Vorkosigan asked Cordelia to guide Gregor's hand with the torch. This part of the funeral ceremony seemed almost redundant, after what she'd done to the Residence. Cordelia added a thick lock of her own hair to the pile. Gregor clung close to her.

  "Are they going to kill me, too?" he whispered to her. He didn't sound frightened, just morbidly curious. Father, grandfather, mother, all gone in a year; no wonder he felt targeted, confused though his understanding of death was at his age.

  "No," she said firmly. Her arm tightened around his shoulders. "I won't let them." God help her, this baseless assurance actually seemed to console him.

  I'll look after your boy, Kareen, Cordelia thought as the flames rose up. The oath was more costly than any gift being burned, for it bound her life unbreakably to Barrayar. But the heat on her face eased the pain in her head, a little.

  Cordelia's own soul felt like an exhausted snail, shelled in a glassy numbness. She crept like an automaton through the rest of the ceremony, though there were flashes when her surroundings made no sense at all. The assorted Barrayaran Vor reacted to her with a frozen, deep formality. They doubtless figure me for crazy-dangerous, a madwoman let out of the attic by overindulgent relations. It finally dawned on her that their exaggerated courtesies signified respect.

  It made her furious. All Kareen's courage of endurance had bought her nothing, Lady Vorpatril's brave and bloody birth-giving was taken for granted, but whack off some idiot's head and you were really somebody, by God—!

  It took Aral an hour, when they returned to his quarters, to calm her down, and then she had a crying jag. He stuck it out.

  "Are you going to use this?" she asked him, when sheer weariness returned her to a semblance of coherence. "This, this . . . amazing new status of mine?" How she loathed the word, acid in her mouth.

  "I'll use anything," he vowed quietly, "if it will help me put Gregor on the throne in fifteen years a sane and competent man, heading a stable government. Use you, me, whatever it takes. To pay this much, then fail, would not be tolerable."

  She sighed, and put her hand in his. "In case of accident, donate my remaining body parts, too. It's the Betan way. Waste not."

  His lip curled up helplessly. Face-to-face, they rested their foreheads together for a moment, bracing each other. "Want not."

  Her silent promise to Kareen was made policy when she and Aral, as a couple, were officially appointed Gregor's guardians by the Council of Counts. This was legally distinct somehow from Aral's guardianship of the Imperium as Regent. Prime Minister Vortala took time to lecture her and make it clear her new duties involved no political powers. She did have economic functions, including trusteeship of certain Vorbarra holdings that were separate from Imperial properties, appending strictly to Gregor's title as Count Vorbarra. And by Aral's delegation, she was given oversight of the Emperor's household. And education.

  "But, Aral," said Cordelia, stunned. "Vortala emphasized I was to have no power."

  "Vortala . . . is not all-wise. Let's just say, he has a little trouble recognizing as such some forms of power which are not synonymous with force. Your window of opportunity is narrow, though; at age twelve Gregor will enter a pre-Academy preparatory school."

  "But do they realize . . . ?"

  "I do. And you do. It's enough."

  Chapter Twenty

  One of Cordelia's first orders was to assign Droushnakovi back to Gregor's person, for his emotional continuity. This did not mean giving up the girl's company, a comfort to which Cordelia had grown deeply accustomed, because upon Illyan's renewed insistence Aral finally took up living quarters in the Imperial Residence. It eased Cordelia's heart, when Drou and Kou were wed a month after Winterfair.

  Cordelia offered herself as a go-between for the two families. For some reason, Kou and Drou both turned the offer down, hastily, though with profuse thanks. Given the bewildering pitfalls of Barrayaran social custom, Cordelia was just as happy to leave it to the experienced elderly lady the couple did contract.

  Cordelia saw Alys Vorpatril often, exchanging domestic visits. Baby Lord Ivan was, if not exactly a comfort to Alys, certainly a distraction in her slow recovery from her physical ordeal. He grew rapidly despite a tendency to fussiness, an iatrogenic trait, Cordelia realized after a while, triggered by Alys's fussing over him. Ivan should have three or four sibs to divide her attention among, Cordelia decided, watching Alys burp him on her shoulder while planning aloud his educational attack, come age eighteen, upon the formidable Imperial Military Academy entrance examinations.

  Alys Vorpatril was drawn off her embittered mourning for Padma and her planning of Ivan's life down to the last detail, when she was given a look at a picture of the wedding dress Drou was drooling over.

  "No, no, no!" she cried, recoiling. "All that lace—you would look as furry as a big white bear. Silk, dear, long falls of silk is what you need—" and she was off. Motherless, sisterless Drou could scarcely have found a more knowledgeable bridal consultant. Lady Vorpatril ended by making the dress one of her several presents, to be sure of its aesthetic perfection, along with a "little holiday cottage" which turned out to be a substantial house on the eastern seashore. Come summer, Drou's beach dream would come true. Cordelia grinned, and purchased the girl a nightgown and robe with enough tiers of lace layered on them to satiate the most frill-starved soul.

  Aral lent the hall: the Imperial Residence's Red Room and adjacent ballroom, the one with the beautiful marquetry floor, which to Cordelia's immense relief had escaped the fire. In theory, this magnificent gesture was required to ease Illyan's Security headaches, as Cordelia and Aral were to stand among the principal witnesses. Personally, Cordelia thought converting ImpSec into wedding caterers a promising turn of events.

  Aral looked over the guest list and smiled. "Do you realize," he said to Cordelia, "every class is represented? A year ago this event, here, would not have been possible. The grocer's son and the non-com's daughter. They bought it with blood, but maybe next year it can be bought with peaceful achievement. Medicine, education, engineering, entrepreneurship—shall we have a party for librarians?"

  "Won't those terrible Vorish crones all Piotr's friends are married to complain about social over-progressiveness?"

  "With Alys Vorpatril behind this? They wouldn't dare."

  The affair grew from there. By a week in advance Kou and Drou were considering eloping out of sheer panic, having lost all control of everything whatsoever to their eager helpers. But the Imperial Residence's staff brought it all together with practiced ease. The senior housewoman flew about, chortling, "And here I was afraid we weren't going to have anything to do, once the admiral moved in, but those dreadful boring General Staff dinners."

  The day and hour came at last. A large circle made of colored groats was laid out on the floor of the Red Room, encompassed by a star with a variable number of points, one for each parent or principal witness to stand at: in this case, four. In Barrayaran custom a couple married themselves, sp
eaking their vows within the circle, requiring neither priest nor magistrate. Practically, a coach, called appropriately enough the Coach, stood outside the circle and read the script for the fainthearted or faint-headed to repeat. This dispensed with the need for higher neural functions such as learning and memory on the part of the stressed couple. Lost motor coordination was supplied by a friend each, who steered them to the circle. It was all very practical, Cordelia decided, as well as splendid.

  With a grin and a flourish Aral placed her at her assigned star point, as if setting out a bouquet, and took his own place. Lady Vorpatril had insisted on a new gown for Cordelia, a sweeping length of blue and white with red floral accents, color-coordinated with Aral's ultra-formal parade red-and-blues. Drou's proud and nervous father also wore his red-and-blues and held down his point. Strange to think of the military, which Cordelia normally associated with totalitarian impulses, as the spearhead of egalitarianism on Barrayar. The Cetagandans' gift, Aral called it; their invasion had first forced the promotion of talent regardless of origin, and the waves of that change were still traveling through Barrayaran society.

  Sergeant Droushnakovi was a shorter, slighter man than Cordelia had expected. Either Drou's mother's genes, better nutrition, or both had boosted all his children up taller than himself. All three brothers, from the captain to the corporal, had been broken loose from their military assignments to attend, and stood now in the big outer circle of other witnesses along with Kou's excited younger sister. Kou's mother stood on the star's last point, crying and smiling, in a blue dress so color-perfect Cordelia decided Alys Vorpatril must have somehow gotten to her, too.

  Koudelka marched in first, propped by his stick with its new cover and Sergeant Bothari. Sergeant Bothari wore the most glittery version of Piotr's brown and silver livery, and whispered helpful, horribly suggestive advice like "If you feel really nauseous, Lieutenant, put your head down." The very thought turned Kou's face greener, an extraordinary color-contrast with his red-and-blues that Lady Vorpatril would no doubt have disapproved.

  Heads turned. Oh, my. Alys Vorpatril had been absolutely right about Drou's gown. She swept in, as stunningly graceful as a sailing ship, a tall clean perfection of form and function, ivory silk, gold hair, blue eyes, white, blue, and red flowers, so that when she stepped up beside Kou one suddenly realized how tall he must be. Alys Vorpatril, in silver-grey, released Drou at the circle's edge with a gesture like some hunting goddess releasing a white falcon, to soar and settle on Kou's outstretched arm.

  Kou and Drou made it through their oaths without stammering or passing out, and managed to conceal their mutual embarrassment at the public declaration of their despised first names, Clement and Ludmilla.

  ("My brothers used to call me Lud," Drou had confided to Cordelia during the practice yesterday. "Rhymes with mud. Also thud, blood, crud, dud, and cud."

  "You'll always be Drou to me," Kou had promised.)

  As senior witness Aral then broke the circle of groats with a sweep of one booted foot and let them out, and the music, dancing, eating and drinking began.

  The buffet was incredible, the music live, and the drinking . . . traditional. After the first formal glass of the good wine Piotr'd sent on, Cordelia drifted up to Kou and murmured a few words about Betan research on the detrimental effects of ethanol on sexual function, after which he switched to water.

  "Cruel woman," Aral whispered in her ear, laughing.

  "Not to Drou, I'm not," she murmured back.

  She was formally introduced to the brothers, now brothers-in-law, who regarded her with that awed respect that made her teeth grind. Though her jaw eased a bit when a rhyming brother was waved to silence by Dad to make room for some comment by the bride on the topic of hand-weapons. "Quiet, Jos," Sergeant Droushnakovi told his son. "You've never handled a nerve disruptor in combat." Drou blinked, then smiled, a gleam in her eye.

  Cordelia seized a moment with Bothari, whom she saw all too seldom now that Aral had split his household from Piotr's.

  "How is Elena doing, now she's back home? Has Mistress Hysopi recovered from it all yet?"

  "They're well, Milady," Bothari ducked his head, and almost-smiled. "I visited about five days ago, when Count Piotr went down to check on his horses. Elena, um, creeps. Put her down and look away a minute, you look back and she's moved. . . ." He frowned. "I hope Carla Hysopi stays alert."

  "She saw Elena safely through Vordarian's war, I suspect she'll handle crawling with equal ease. Courageous woman. She should be in line for some of those medals they're handing out."

  Bothari's brow wrinkled. "Don't know they'd mean much to her."

  "Mm. She does understand she can call on me for anything she needs, I trust. Any time."

  "Yes, Milady. But we're doing all right for the moment." A flash of pride, there, in that statement of sufficiency. "It's very quiet down at Vorkosigan Surleau, in the winter. Clean. A right and proper place for a baby." Not like the place I grew up in, Cordelia could almost hear him add. "I mean her to have everything right and proper. Even her da."

  "How are you doing, yourself?"

  "The new med is better. Anyway, my head doesn't feel like it's stuffed with fog anymore. And I sleep at night. Besides that I can't tell what it's doing."

  Its job, apparently; he seemed relaxed and calm, almost free of that sinister edginess. Though he was still the first person in the room to look over to the buffet and ask, "Is he supposed to be up?"

  Gregor, in pajamas, was creeping along the edge of the culinary array, trying to look invisible and nail down a few goodies before he was spotted and taken away again. Cordelia got to him first, before he was either stepped on by an unwary guest, or recaptured by Security forces in the persons of the breathless maidservant and terrified bodyguard who were supposed to be filling in for Drou. They were followed up by a paper-white Simon Illyan. Fortunately for Illyan's heart, Gregor had apparently only been formally missing for about sixty seconds. Gregor shrank into her skirts as the hyperventilating adults loomed over him.

  Drou, who had noticed Illyan touch his comm, turn pale, and start to move, checked in by sheer force of habit. "What's the matter?"

  "How'd he get away?" snarled Illyan to Gregor's keepers, who stammered out something inaudible about thought he was asleep and never took my eyes off.

  "He's not away," Cordelia put in tartly. "This is his home. He ought to be at least able to walk about inside, or why do you keep all those bloody useless guards on the walls out there?"

  "Droushie, can't I come to your party?" Gregor asked plaintively, casting around desperately for an authority to outrank Illyan.

  Drou looked at Illyan, who looked disapproving. Cordelia broke the deadlock without hesitation. "Yes, you can."

  So, under Cordelia's supervision, the Emperor danced with the bride, ate three cream cakes, and was carried away to bed satisfied. Fifteen minutes was all he'd wanted, poor kid.

  The party rolled on, elated. "Dance, Milady?" Aral inquired hopefully at her elbow.

  Dare she try it? They were playing the restrained rhythms of the mirror-dance—surely she couldn't go too wrong. She nodded, and Aral drained his glass and led her onto the polished marquetry. Step, slide, gesture: concentrating, she made an interesting and unexpected discovery. Either partner could lead, and if the dancers were alert and sharp, the watchers couldn't tell the difference. She tried some dips and slides of her own, and Aral followed smoothly. Back and forth the lead passed like a ball between them, the game growing ever more absorbing, until they ran out of music and breath.

  * * *

  The last snows of winter were melting from the streets of Vorbarr Sultana when Captain Vaagen called from ImpMil for Cordelia.

  "It's time, Milady. I've done all I can do in vitro. The placenta is ten months old and clearly senescing. The machine can't be boosted any more to compensate."

  "When, then?"

  "Tomorrow would be good."

  She barely slept that ni
ght. They all trooped down to the Imperial Military Hospital the next morning, Aral, Cordelia, Count Piotr flanked by Bothari. Cordelia was not at all sure she wanted Piotr present, but until the old man did them all the convenience of dropping dead, she was stuck with him. Maybe one more appeal to reason, one more presentation of the facts, one more try, would do the trick. Their unresolved antagonism grieved Aral; at least let the onus for fueling it fall on Piotr, not herself. Do your worst, old man. You have no future except through me. My son will light your offering pyre. She was glad to see Bothari again, though.

  Vaagen's new laboratory was an entire floor in the most up-to-date building in the complex. Cordelia'd had him moved from his old lab on account of ghosts, having come in for one of her frequent visits soon after their return to Vorbarr Sultana to find him in a state of near-paralysis, unable to work. Every time he entered the room, he'd said, Dr. Henri's violent and senseless death replayed in his memory. He could not step on the floor near the place where Henri's body had fallen, but had to walk wide around; little noises made him jump and twitch. "I am a man of reason," he'd said hoarsely. "This superstitious nonsense means nothing to me." So Cordelia had helped him burn a private offering to Henri in a brazier on the lab floor, and disguised the move as a promotion.

  The new lab was bright and spacious and free of revenant spirits. Cordelia found a mob of men waiting when Vaagen ushered her in: researchers assigned to Vaagen to explore replicator technology, interested civilian obstetricians including Dr. Ritter, Miles's own pediatrician-to-be, and his consulting surgeon. The changing of the guard. Mere parents needed determination to elbow their way in.

  Vaagen bustled about, happily important. He still wore his eyepatch, but promised Cordelia he would take the time for the last round of surgery to restore his vision very soon now. A tech trundled out the uterine replicator and Vaagen paused, as if trying to figure out how to put the proper drama and ceremony into what Cordelia knew for a very simple event. He settled on turning it into a technical lecture for his colleagues, detailing the composition of the hormone solutions as he injected them into the appropriate feed-lines, interpreting readouts, describing the placental separation going on within the replicator, the similarities and differences between replicator and body births. There were several differences Vaagen didn't mention. Alys Vorpatril should see this, Cordelia thought.