Quinn might be almost happy on Komarr. Its domed cities were reminiscent of the space station upon which she had been born. True, most of Lord Vorkosigan's duties would keep him in a tight little circuit around Vorbarr Sultana. The capital drew all ambitious men like a gravity well. But one might maintain a second domicile on one of the stations here, a cozy little deep-space dacha. . . . It is far from the mountains.
He'd seen the Count and Countess off from this station yesterday, on their way back to Sergyar, having hitched a ride with them as far as Komarr in their government courier ship. Five days in the relatively uninterrupted confines of a jump-ship had actually given them time enough to talk, for a change. He had also seized the opportunity to beg an Armsman for himself from his father, the comfortable Pym by choice. The Countess grumbled they should have held out for Ma Kosti in exchange, but gave up her favorite Armsman to him nonetheless; the Count promised to send him a couple more in due time, chosen from those whose wives and families had been the most bitterly unhappy at having been forcibly transplanted from their familiar city to the wilds of Chaos Colony.
The crowd around the exit door from Customs Processing thickened, as inbound passengers began to spill through and hurry to their further destinations, or greet waiting parties with businesslike decorum or familial enthusiasm. Miles rose on his toes, futilely. Nine-tenths of this outrush dissipated before Quinn came striding through the doors, conservatively incognito in Komarran civilian fashion, a white padded silk jacket and trousers. The outfit set off her dark curls and brilliant brown eyes; but then, Quinn made anything she wore look great, including ripped fatigues and mud.
She too craned to look for him, murmured a "Heh," of satisfaction upon spotting him waving a hand behind a few other shoulders, and wove through the crowd. Her stride stretched as she neared; she dropped the gray duffel she swung and they embraced with an impact that nearly knocked Miles off his feet. The scent of her made up for any number of defective space station atmospheric filters. Quinn, my Quinn. After a dozen or so kisses, they parted just far enough to permit speech.
"So why did you ask me to bring all your stuff?" she demanded suspiciously. "I didn't like the sound of that."
"Did you?"
"Yes. It's stuck back in Customs. They choked on the contents, particularly all the weapons. I gave up arguing with them after a while—you're a Barrayaran, you sort them out."
"Ah, Pym." Miles gestured to his Armsman, like Miles dressed in discreet streetwear. "Take Commodore Quinn's receipts, and rescue my property from our bureaucracy, please. Readdress it to Vorkosigan House, and send it by commercial shipper. Then go on back to the hostel."
"Yes, my lord." Pym collected the data codes, and plunged back through the doors into Customs.
"Is that all your personal luggage?" Miles asked Quinn.
"As ever."
"Off to the hostel, then. It's a nice one." The best on the station, in fact, luxury class. "I, ah, got us a suite for tonight."
"You'd better have."
"Have you had dinner?"
"Not yet."
"Good. Neither have I."
A short walk brought them to the nearest bubble-car terminal, and a short ride to the hostel. Its appointments were elegant, its corridors wide and thickly carpeted, and its staff solicitous. The suite was large, for a space station, which meant nicely cozy for Miles's present purposes.
"Your General Allegre is generous," remarked Quinn, unloading her duffel after a quick reconnoiter of the sybaritic bathroom. "I may like working for him after all."
"I think you will, but this is on my bill tonight, not ImpSec's. I wanted someplace quiet where we could talk, before your official meeting with Allegre and the Galactic Affairs chief tomorrow."
"So . . . I don't quite understand this setup. I get one lousy message from you with you looking like a damned zombie, telling me Illyan caught up with you about poor Vorberg, and didn't I tell you so. Then a resounding silence, for weeks, and no answers to my messages to you, you rat. Then I get another one with you all chipper again, saying it's all right now, and I sure don't see the connection. Then I get this order to report to ImpSec on Komarr without delay, no explanations, no hint of what the new assignment is, except with this postscript from you to bring your whole kit with me when I come and put the freight charges on ImpSec's tab. Are you back in ImpSec, or not?"
"Not. I'm here as a consultant, to get you up and running with your new bosses, and vice versa. I, ah . . . have another job, now."
"I really don't understand. I mean, your messages are usually cryptic—"
"It's hard to send proper love letters, when you know everything you say is going to be monitored by ImpSec censors."
"But this time, it was frigging incomprehensible. What is going on with you?" Her voice was edged with the same suppressed fear Miles was feeling, Am I losing you? No, not fear. Knowledge.
"I tried to compose a message a couple of times, but it was . . . too complicated, and all the most important parts were things I didn't want to send tight-beam. The edited version came out sounding like gibberish. I had to see you face-to-face anyway, for, for a lot of reasons. It's a long story, and most of it is classified, a fact that I am going to completely ignore. I can, you know. Do you want to go down to the restaurant to eat, or order room service?"
"Miles," she said in exasperation. "Room service. And explanations."
He distracted her temporarily with the hostel's enormous menu, to buy a little more time to compose his thoughts. It didn't help any more than the previous weeks he'd spent composing those same thoughts, in their endless permutations. Miles put in their order and they settled side by side, facing one another, on the suite's smaller couch.
"To explain about my new job, I have to tell you something about how I acquired it, and why Illyan isn't Chief of ImpSec anymore. . . ." He told her the story of the past months, beginning with Illyan's breakdown, doubling back to explain about Laisa and Duv Galeni, growing excited and jumping up to gesture and pace when he described how he'd nailed Haroche at last. His seizure treatment. Gregor's job offer. All the easy stuff, the events, the facts. He did not know how to explain his inner journey; Elli was not, after all, Barrayaran. The food arrived, stopping Elli's immediate reaction. Her face was tense and introspective. Yes. We should all think before we speak tonight, love.
She did not take up her thread until the hostel's human servitor finished arranging the meal on their table, and bustled out again.
It was three bites before she spoke; Miles wondered if she was tasting her soup as little as he was tasting his. When she did, she began obliquely, in a carefully neutral tone. "Imperial Auditor . . . sounds like some kind of an accountant. It's not you, Miles."
"It is now. I took my oath. It's one of those Barrayaran terms that doesn't mean what you think it does. I don't know. . . . Imperial Agent? Special Prosecutor? Special Envoy? Inspector General? It's all of those things, and none of them. It's whatever . . . whatever Gregor needs it to be. It's extraordinarily open-ended. I can't begin to tell you how much it suits me."
"You never once mentioned it before, as your ambition."
"I never imagined the possibility. But it's not the sort of job that should ever be given to a man who is too ambitious for it. Willing, yes, but not ambitious. It . . . calls for dispassion, not passion, even with respect to itself."
She sat frowning over this for a full minute. At last, visibly gathering her courage, she took a more direct cut. "So where does it leave me, leave us? Does it mean you're never coming back to the Dendarii? Miles, I might never see you again." Only the smallest quaver edged her controlled voice.
"That's . . . one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you tonight, personally, before tomorrow's business overwhelms everything else." Now it was his turn to pause for courage, to keep his voice in an even register. "You see, if you were . . . if you stayed here . . . if you were Lady Vorkosigan, you could be with me all the time."
"No . . .
" Her soup would have cooled, forgotten, if not for the stay-warm circuit in the bottom of the bowl. "I'd be with Lord Vorkosigan all the time. Not with you, Miles, not with Admiral Naismith."
"Admiral Naismith was something I made up, Elli," he said gently. "He was my own invention. I'm an egotistical enough artist, I suppose, I'm glad you liked my creation. I made him up out of me, after all. But not all of me."
She shook her head, tried another tack. "You said the last time, you wouldn't ask me that Lady Vorkosigan thing anymore. You said it the last three times you asked me to marry Lord Vorkosigan, in fact."
"One more last chance, Elli. Except this time it really is. I . . . in all honesty, I have to tell you the other half, or rather, the other side, the counteroffer. What's coming up tomorrow, along with the Dendarii's new contract."
"Contract, hell. You're changing the subject, Miles. What about us?"
"I can't get to us, except this way. Full disclosure. Tomorrow, we, that is, Allegre and ImpSec and I, Barrayar if you will, we're offering you the admiralcy. Admiral Quinn of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. You'll go on working for Allegre in exactly the same capacity that I worked for Illyan."
Quinn's eyes widened, lit, fell. "Miles . . . I can't do your job. I'm not nearly ready."
"You have been doing my job. You're half-past ready, Quinn. I say so."
She smiled at the familiar forward-momentum passion in his voice, that had so often driven them all to results beyond reason. "I admit . . . I wanted a share of command. But not so soon, not like this."
"The time is now. Your time. My time. This is it."
She stared intently at him, baffled by his tone of voice. "Miles . . . I don't want to be stuck on just one planet for the rest of my life."
"A planet's a damned big place, Elli, when you get down to the details. And anyway, there are three planets in the Barrayaran Imperium."
"Three times worse, then." She leaned across the table, and grasped his hand in both hers, hard. "Suppose I make you a counterproposal. Screw the Barrayaran Imperium. The Dendarii Fleet does not require its Imperial contracts to survive, though I admit, thanks to you, they have been very fine and favorable. The Fleet existed before Barrayar ever came over our event horizon, it can go on existing after they sink back into their damned gravity well. We spacers, we don't need planets sucking us down. You—come with me, instead. Be Admiral Naismith, shake the dirt off your boots. I'd marry Admiral Naismith in a heartbeat, if that's what you want. We can be such a team, the two of us, we'll make legends. You and me, Miles, out there!" She waved one arm in a random circle, though the other did not release her grip.
"I tried, Elli. I tried for weeks. You don't know how hard I tried to go. I was never a mercenary, not ever. Not for one single minute."
A flash of anger sparked briefly in her brown eyes. "Do you figure that makes you morally superior to the rest of us?"
"No," he sighed. "But it makes me Miles Vorkosigan. Not Miles Naismith."
She shook her head. Ah, denial. He recognized the hollow reverberation of it. "There always was a part of you I could never touch." Her voice was edged with pain.
"I know. I worked for years to extinguish Lord Vorkosigan. I couldn't do it, not even for you. You can't select from me, Elli, take the parts you favor and leave the rest on the table." He gestured in frustration to their drying dinner. "I don't come a la carte. I'm all or nothing."
"You could be anything you chose, Miles, anywhere! Why insist on this place?"
He smiled, grimly. "No. I have discovered I am constrained on other levels." This time, his hands enclosed hers. "But maybe you can choose. Come to Barrayar, Elli, and be . . . and be desperately unhappy with me?"
Her breath puffed on a laugh. "What is this, more full disclosure?"
"There is no other way, for the long haul. And I'm talking about a very long haul."
"Miles, I can't. I mean, your home is very pretty, for a planet, but it's dreadful down there."
"You could make it less dreadful."
"I can't . . . I can't be what you want, can't be your Lady Vorkosigan."
He looked away, looked back, opened his hands to her. "I can give you everything I have. I can't give you less."
"But you want everything I am in return. Admiral Quinn annihilated, Lady Vorkosigan . . . rising from the ashes. I'm not good at resurrection, Miles. That's your department." She shook her head, helplessly. "Come away with me."
"Stay here with me."
Love does not conquer all. Watching the struggle in her face, he began to feel horribly like Admiral Haroche. Perhaps Haroche had not enjoyed his moment of moral torture either. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire . . . He gripped her hand harder, willing then not love but truth, and with all his heart. "Then choose Elli. Whoever Elli is."
"Elli is . . . Admiral Quinn."
"I rather thought she was."
"Then why do you do this to me?"
"Because you have to decide now, Elli, once and for all."
"You're forcing this choice, not me!"
"Yes. That's just exactly right. I can go on with you. I can go on without you, if I have to. But I can't freeze, Elli, not even for you. Perfect preservation isn't life, it's death. I know."
She nodded, slowly. "I understand that part, anyway." She began spooning her soup, watching him watching her watching him. . . .
They made love one last time, for old times' sake, for good-bye, and, Miles realized halfway through, each in a desperate last-ditch effort to please and pleasure the other so much, they would change their mind. We'd have to change more than our minds. We'd have to change our whole selves.
With a sigh, he sat up in the suite's vast bed, disentangling their limbs. "This isn't working, Elli."
" 'L make it work," she mumbled. He captured her hand, and kissed the inside of her wrist. She took a deep breath, and sat up beside him. They were both silent for a long time.
"You were destined to be a soldier," she said at last. "Not some kind of, of, superior bureaucrat."
He gave up trying to explain the ancient and noble post of Imperial Auditor to a non-Barrayaran. "To be a great soldier, you need a great war. There doesn't happen to be one on, just now, not around here. The Cetagandans are quiescent for the first time in a decade. Pol is not aggressive, and anyway, we're in good odor in the whole Hegen Hub these days. Jackson's Whole is nasty enough, but they're too disunited to be a military threat at this distance. The worst menace in the neighborhood is us, and Sergyar is absorbing our energies. I'm not sure I could lend myself to an aggressive war anyway."
"Your father did. With remarkable success."
"Mixed success. You should study our history more closely, love. But I am not my father. I don't have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones."
"You're turning into such a political animal, these days."
"It goes with my territory. And . . . they may also serve who only stand and wait, but life is short enough already. If the Imperium ever wants me in a military capacity again, they can forward a bloody comconsole message."
Her brows rose; she sat back, and plumped pillows around them. He drew her head down, to rest on his scored chest, and stroked her hair, curling it around his fingers; her free hand idled up and down his body. He could feel the letting-go in them, with the easing of the tension and the terror, with the slowing of every pulse of their blood. Not pain, or not so much pain, but only a just sadness, a due measure of melancholy, quiet and right.
"Now . . ." he said at last, "that's not to say there won't be need for the odd rescue mission or whatever, from time to time. Mind you, as Admiral Quinn, the place for your sweet ass is in a nice soft tactics room chair. Don't you be going out with the squads all the time. It's not appropriate for a senior staff officer, and it's way too dangerous."
Her fingernails traced the spider-nest lines of his most spectacular scars, making the hairs stand up on his arms. "You are a howling hypocrite, my love."
>
He elected prudently not to quibble over that one. He cleared his throat. "That . . . brings up another thing I wanted to ask you. A favor. About Sergeant Taura."
She stiffened slightly. "What?"