Ivan's face screwed up in a sympathetic wince.
Galeni blew out his breath. "Haroche couldn't believe it either. He said everyone at ImpSec HQ knew Illyan thought you shit gold bars."
Naismith was the best, oh yes. "After the Dagoola IV operation, he damn well should have thought so." But the Dagoola rescue had been almost four years ago. So what have you shit for me lately? "I take it that's a direct quote from Haroche."
"Mm, he can be blunt. He doesn't exactly suffer fools gladly. I'm told he came up through the ranks. He said you were being groomed as Illyan's successor."
Miles's brows rose in startlement. "Impossible. Being a desk driver requires very different qualities than being a field agent. A diametrically opposed attitude to the rules, for starters. I'm not . . . wasn't nearly ready for Illyan's job."
"So Haroche said. Your next posting was to be his assistant, it seems. Five years on the domestic side, and you'd have been ready to step up when Illyan was ready to retire."
"Rubbish. Not Domestic Affairs. Now, if I had to fly a desk, Galactic Affairs on Komarr would actually make sense. I have some experience there."
"That gap in your experience was exactly what they hoped to target by harnessing you with Haroche. Illyan once told me Haroche was personally responsible while he was a Domestic Affairs agent for derailing no less than four serious plots against the Emperor's life. Not including the Yarrow incident, which won him his chiefship. Maybe Illyan hoped whatever Haroche has would rub off on you."
"I don't need—" Miles began, and shut his mouth.
"What's the Yarrow incident," asked Ivan, "and if it's that important, why haven't I heard of it?"
"A textbook case in counterterrorism," said Galeni. "Illyan has all his new analysts study it."
"The case is famous inside ImpSec," Miles explained. "Being a success, however, it's practically unknown outside ImpSec. It's the nature of the job. Successes are secret and thankless, failures are splashy and gain you only blame." Take my career, for example. . . .
"It was a close call," said Galeni. "A hyperisolationist faction aligned with Count Vortrifrani plotted to suicide-drop an old jump-freighter named the Yarrow square on the Imperial Residence. It would have taken out most of the place even without the explosives they'd packed it with. The explosives were their one mistake, since that was the loose thread that led Haroche's team to them. Vortrifrani distanced himself like crazy, but it broke up his support, and the Imperium has been less, ah, embarrassed by him since."
Ivan blinked. "My mother's flat isn't far from the Residence. . . ."
"Yes, one wonders how many people in Vorbarr Sultana they'd have taken out if they'd missed their drop point."
"Thousands," Miles muttered.
"I'll have to remember to thank Haroche, next time I see him," said Ivan, sounding impressed.
"I was off-world, at the time," Miles sighed. "As usual." He suppressed an irrational twinge of jealousy. "Nobody ever said anything to me about this proposed promotion. When . . . was this vile little surprise supposed to be sprung?"
"Within the year, apparently."
"I thought I'd made the Dendarii too valuable for ImpSec to even dream of doing anything else with me."
"So, you did a little too good a job."
"Chief of ImpSec at age thirty-five. Huh. God be praised, I'm saved from that at least. Well. No joy to Haroche, to be required to paper train some Vor puppy for the express purpose of being promoted over his head. He ought to be quite relieved."
Galeni said apologetically, "I gather he was, actually."
"Ha," said Miles blackly. He added after a moment, "By the way, Duv. I trust it's obvious that what I've told you is private information. The official version, for ImpSec HQ and everywhere else, was that I was medically discharged without prejudice."
"So Illyan said, when Haroche asked. Illyan was tight-lipped as hell. But you could see there had to be more to it."
Ivan excused himself. Miles brooded into his teacup. He thought he could sleep, now. In fact, there was nothing he wanted more. Ivan returned all too soon, and dumped down a valise beside the kitchen table.
"What's that?" Miles asked suspiciously.
"My things," said Ivan. "For a couple of days."
"You're not moving in!"
"What, don't you have enough space? You've got more rooms than a hotel, Miles."
Miles slumped again, recognizing an argument he wasn't going to win. "There's a thought, for my next career. Vorkosigan's Bed and Breakfast."
"Rooms cheap?" Ivan cocked an eyebrow.
"Hell, no. Charge 'em a fortune." He paused. "So when are you planning to move back out?"
"Not until you get some people in here. Till you get your head fixed, you certainly need a driver, at the very least. I saw your lightflyer downstairs in the garage, by the way. In the shop for adjustments, my ass. And somebody to cook meals and stand over you and see you eat them. And somebody to clean up after you."
"I don't make that much mess—"
"And clean up after all the other somebodies," Ivan went on relentlessly. "This place needs a staff, Miles."
"Just like any other museum, eh? I don't know."
"If you're saying you don't know if you want them, guess what. You don't have a choice. If you're saying you don't know how to hire them . . . want my mother to do it for you?"
"Er . . . I think I'd rather select my own personnel. She'd make it all too right and proper, to use Sergeant Bothari's old phrase."
"There it is. Do it, or I'll have her do it for you. How's that for a threat?"
"Effective."
"Right, then."
"Don't you think I could get by with just one person? To do everything, drive, cook . . ."
Ivan snorted. "—chase after you and make you take your nasty medicine? For that, you'd need to hire a Baba to find you a wife. Why don't you just start with a driver and cook, and go on from there."
Miles grimaced tiredly.
"Look," said Ivan. "You're a bleeding Vor lord in Vorbarr Sultana. We own this town. So live like one! Have some fun for a change!"
"Have you lost your mind, Ivan?"
"You're not a guest in Vorkosigan House, Miles. You're its only child, or you were till Mark came along, and he has his own private fortune. At least widen your possibilities! You grew so narrow, working for Illyan. It's like you hardly had a life at all, lately."
That's quite right. Naismith had all the life. But Naismith was dead now—killed by that needle grenade on Jackson's Whole after all, though the double-take of realization had required a full year to run its course.
Miles had read of mutants, twins born joined together inseparably in their bodies. Sometimes, horrifically, one died first, leaving the other attached to a corpse for hours or days until they died too. Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith, body-bound twins. I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't want to think at all.
"Let's . . . go to bed, Ivan. It's late, isn't it?"
"Late enough," said Ivan.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Miles slept till midmorning the next day. To his dismay, when he threaded the labyrinth of the house down to the kitchen, he found Ivan sitting drinking coffee, his breakfast dishes piled in the sink.
"Don't you have to go to work?" Miles inquired, pouring the chewy dregs from the coffeemaker into his cup.
"I have a few days personal leave," Ivan informed him.
"How many?"
"As many as I need."
As many as he needed, that is, to satisfy himself that Miles was going to behave properly. Miles thought it through. So . . . if he hired that unwanted staff, Ivan, relieved of the deathwatch, would slope off home to his neat little flat—which, incidentally, had no staff underfoot, only a discreet cleaning service. Then Miles could fire the staff . . . that is, discharge them again, with suitably glowing recommendations and a bonus. Yeah. That would work.
"Have you communicated to your parents about this yet?" Ivan
asked.
"No. Not yet."
"You ought to. Before they get some garbled version through some other source."
"So I ought. It's . . . not easy." He glanced up at Ivan. "I don't suppose you could . . . ?"
"Absolutely not!" cried Ivan in a tone of horror. After a moment of silence, he relented to the measure of a, "Well . . . if you really can't. But I'd rather not."
"I'll . . . think about it."
Miles slopped the last of the greenish coffee into his cup, trudged back upstairs, and dressed in a loose, embroidered backcountry-style shirt and dark trousers, which he found in the back of his closet. He'd last worn them three years ago. At least they weren't tight. While Ivan wasn't around, he pulled all his Barrayaran uniforms and boots out of his closet and bundled them into storage in an unused guest room down the hall, so he wouldn't have to look at them every time he opened his closet door. After a long hesitation, he exiled his Dendarii mercenary uniforms likewise. The few clothes left hanging seemed lonely and forlorn.
He settled himself at his comconsole in his bedroom. A message to his parents, ah God. And he ought to send one to Elli Quinn, too. Would he ever get the chance to make it right again with her? Face-to-face, body to body? It was a horribly complex thing to attempt via a comconsole message: just his thin electronic ghost, mouthing words ill-chosen or misunderstood, weeks out of synchrony. And all his messages to the Dendarii were monitored by ImpSec censors.
I can't face this now. I'll do it later. Soon. I promise.
He turned his thoughts instead to the less daunting problem of Vorkosigan House staffing. So what was the budget for this project? His lieutenant's medical-discharge half-pay would barely cover the salary and board of one full-time servant, even with a free room thrown in, at least of the sorts of superior folk normally employed by the aristocracy in the capital—he would be competing with sixty other District Counts' households in that labor market here, a host of lesser lordlings, and the sort of new industrial wealthy non-Vor who were presently carrying off such a distressing percentage of eligible Vor maidens to preside over their homes in the style to which they aspired.
Miles tapped in a comconsole code. The pleasant, smiling face of the Vorkosigans' business manager, Tsipis, appeared with startling promptness over the vid plate upon Miles's call reaching his office in Hassadar. "Good morning, Lord Vorkosigan! I was not aware you had returned from your off-planet duty. How may I serve you?"
He was not yet aware of Miles's medical discharge, either, apparently. Miles felt too weary to explain even the edited-for-public-consumption version of events, so only said, "Yes. I got in a few weeks ago. It . . . looks like I'm going to be downside longer than I'd anticipated. What funds can I draw upon? Did Father leave you any instructions?"
"All of it," said Tsipis.
"Excuse me? I don't understand."
"All of the accounts and funds were made joint with you, just before the Count and Countess departed for Sergyar. Just in case. You are your father's executor, you know."
"Yes, but . . ." He hadn't thought Sergyar was that wild a frontier. "Um . . . what can I do?"
"It's much easier to say what you can't do. You can't sell the entailed properties, namely the residence at Hassadar and Vorkosigan House. You can buy whatever you wish, of course, or sell anything your grandfather left you solely in your own name."
"So . . . can I afford to hire a full-time driver?"
"Oh, my, yes, you could afford to staff Vorkosigan House in full. The funds are there, piling up."
"Aren't they needed for the Viceroy's Palace on Sergyar?"
"Countess Vorkosigan has tapped a certain amount of her private moneys, apparently for some redecorating project, but your father is only maintaining his twenty Armsmen at present. Everything else on Sergyar comes out of the Imperial budget."
"Oh."
Tsipis brightened. "Are you thinking of reopening Vorkosigan House, my lord? That would be splendid. It was such a fine sight, last year at Winterfair, when I dined there."
"Not . . . at present."
Tsipis drooped. "Ah," he murmured, in a tone of disappointment. Then a look of belated enlightenment came over his face. "My lord . . . do you need money?"
"Er . . . yes. That was what I had in mind. To, like, pay a driver, maybe a cook, pay bills, buy things . . . a suitable living allowance, you know." His ImpSec pay, accumulating in his lengthy absences on duty, had always been more than enough. He wondered how much to ask Tsipis for.
"But of course. How would you like it? A weekly deposit into your Service account, perhaps?"
"No . . . I'd like a new account. Separate. Just . . . to me as Lord Vorkosigan."
"Excellent thinking. Your father is always very careful to keep his personal and Imperial funds identifiably separated. It's a good habit to start. Not that the most foolhardy Imperial Auditor would ever have dared to take him on, of course. Nor have looked anything but a fool afterwards, when the numbers were laid out." Tsipis tapped on his comconsole, and glanced aside at some data readout. "Suppose I transfer the entire accumulated unused Household fund over into your new account, for seed money. And then just send the usual weekly allotment to follow."
"Fine."
"Now, if you need any more, do call me right away."
"Sure."
"I'll send you your new account chit by courier within the hour."
"Thank you." Miles reached to cut the com, then added as an afterthought, "How much is it?"
"Five thousand marks."
"Oh, good."
"And eighty thousand marks to start," Tsipis added.
Miles did a quick mental reversal, and calculation. "This place was sucking down five thousand marks a week?"
"Oh, much more than that, with the Armsmen, and the Countess's personal account. And this does not include major repairs, which are budgeted separately."
"I . . . see."
"Now, should you take an interest, I should be happy to go over all your financial affairs with you in much more detail," Tsipis added eagerly. "There's so much that could be done with a somewhat more aggressive, entrepreneurial, and, dare I say, less conservative and more attentive approach."
"If . . . I ever have the time. Thank you, Tsipis." Miles cut the com much less casually.
Good God. He could buy . . . damn near anything he wanted. He tried to think of something he wanted.
The Dendarii.
Yeah. We know. But their price, for him, wasn't measured in money. What else?
Once, in his increasingly distant youth, he'd lusted briefly after a lightflyer, faster and redder than Ivan's. A particularly fine model, albeit several years old now, sat in the garage downstairs, only lightly used. Of course, he couldn't fly it at all now.
It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.
What had that been? Well, an admiral, of course, a real one, a Barrayaran one, by age 35, one year younger than when his father had become the youngest in post-Isolation history at age 36. Despite Miles's height, and in the teeth of his handicaps. But even had he been born normal of body, his era had brought him no convenient major wars to speed promotion. ImpSec covert ops had been the best he could do, not just the one branch of the Service that would take him, but the only one that could put him in the forefront of the only significant action presently available. How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged.
He turned to his list of five retired Vorkosigan Armsmen living in the Vorbarr Sultana area. Though elderly, an Armsman, with his wife perhaps to cook, would be the ideal solution to his problem. He wouldn't have to teach them anything about Vorkosigan House's routine, and they'd have no objection to a short-term gig. He began coding his calls. Maybe I'll get lucky on the first try.
One was too doddering to drive anymore himself. The other four's wives all said no, or rather, No!
It wasn't
as if he were in the heat of battle; he could not justify invoking certain archaic loyalty oaths. With a snort, he gave it up, and went to collect last night's scraps from the kitchen in his ongoing campaign to convince Zap the Cat to not snatch food with razor claws, run under a chair, and growl through her gorge, but rather, eat daintily, and sit on one's lap and purr gratefully afterwards, like a proper Vor cat. In all, there was a lot about Zap that reminded Miles of his clone-brother Mark, and he'd done all right with Mark in the end. It wouldn't hurt to let the gate guard know about Tsipis's courier, too.