Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (23 page)

Whatever was going on here, Jole decided, he did not wish to go down in scientific history as the man who had interrupted it. He trod softly away.

* * *

Dusk was gathering in Kayburg when Cordelia and Ekaterin arrived back from the trip to Gridgrad. As Rykov pulled up the car, Cordelia spotted Oliver just strolling around to the Palace front. The canopy rose, and he paused to courteously help them out: Cordelia, to steal a handclasp, and Ekaterin, because she was burdened with the remains of the day in the form of her portable workstation, a briefcase, and a stack of long rolled flimsies.

“Am I early?” Oliver asked.

“No, we’re running late,” Cordelia replied. “It was an extremely productive excursion, though.”

Rykov drove the car away as Frieda opened the doors to let them all in.

“Do I still have six children and a husband?” Ekaterin inquired of her, and she smiled back.

“I believe so, milady. They’re all out on the back patio. I wouldn’t let them bring all those dirty rocks inside.”

“It never hurts to do a headcount…” She offloaded her supplies, and they trooped through to the patio, where all the lights were on. “Hm. We seem to have added some.”

Cordelia’s six grandchildren were spread out all over the space, accompanied not only by Freddie, but half-a-dozen other Kayburg young teens, intently looking over piles of broken slate and geodes. Miles was sitting back in a padded chair with a master-of-all-he-surveys air, occasionally directing events with his cane. That he was actually sitting, rather than hunkering down on the floor with them, suggested that her advised plan of
take them all out to the country and run them around till they’re tired
had worked across the board, good.

“Who are the spares?” Ekaterin asked.

“I believe they are friends of Freddie’s,” said Cordelia, recognizing the crew from the brush-fire incident. Yes, there was even Bean Plant No. 3, shining a hand light across a piece of slate and squinting. “I’m not quite sure how they got added, though.”

“Fyodor Haines calls them the human hexaped,” Oliver supplied. “Six heads, twelve legs, and moving as one body, although…that doesn’t exactly work out even if they were two hexapeds. Still an apt metaphor.”

“Perhaps xeno-anatomy is not the general’s strong suit,” said Cordelia, as Miles spotted them, hoisted himself up, and came over, smiling. He was actually using his cane as more than a conductor’s baton, which told its own tale to an experienced maternal eye. She reminded herself that she knew better than to comment on this. He exchanged a satisfying uxorial kiss with Ekaterin, which he managed to make look smooth despite their height differential. Cordelia experienced a moment of envy. She would have
liked
to have kissed Oliver hello…

“Successful day?” Ekaterin asked Miles.

“Brilliant,” he assured her. He added to Cordelia, “That geology teacher you recommended led us to an excellent spot. The whole crew ran up and down the ravine banging rocks together for
hours
. Helen and Alex were a little standoffish at first, but then Selig and Simone, in the course of trying to brain each other, discovered what Miss Hanno assured us was an entirely new fossil species. Very excited, she was. After that, the competition was on. It took some negotiating to get their special rock away from them, but we managed to trade off some sparkly purple geodes, and the crisis was averted. Sharp dealers, for age two. I wonder if they’re going to take after Mark and Kareen?”

“Any damages?” asked Ekaterin.

“Nothing permanent. Scrapes, a few banged fingers and bruises, some blood and sweat, but, as the medkit seemed an object of almost equal interest, surprisingly few tears. Lizzie now not only wants to be a paleontologist, she knows how to spell it.”

“Good!” said Cordelia. “It’s about time we got some scientists in the family.”

“She wanted to be a medtech, yesterday,” Ekaterin pointed out.

“And a jump pilot last week,” said Miles. “Perhaps she’ll be a Barrayaran Renaissance-woman.”

“Sounds more like Betan Astronomical Survey to me,” said Cordelia, a bit smugly.

Ekaterin stared around uneasily at all the piles of detritus with rapt heads bent over them. “Are they going to want to take all those rocks home on the jumpship?”

“Probably,” sighed Miles. “Or maybe they could be persuaded to leave them as a museum exhibit at Grandmama’s house.”

“Oh, thanks,” muttered Cordelia, which made him smirk.

“They’re not wanted for a real museum?” said Ekaterin.

“Miss Hanno took possession of the three new specimens,” Miles assured her. “The rest are apparently common.”

“Three! In one afternoon?”

“It’s Sergyar,” Cordelia told her. “Where you literally can’t turn over a rock without discovering something new. Have I mentioned that I love this place?” Except for its politics, but those were a human import.

Adult conversation was then interrupted by a general rush to show the two arriving women all the best new prizes, and collect praise for their discoverers’ cleverness. At length, with some regret, Cordelia broke up the party in favor of dinner—the Kayburg locals sent home, the resident Vorkosigans dispatched upstairs to wash. She told Frieda to supply Oliver with a real drink of his choice and, leaving the tidying of her grandchildren to the parent who had allowed them to get untidy, galloped back downstairs in record time.
This
round, she managed to grab a hello kiss.

“And how was your trip, Your Excellentness?” Oliver asked her.

“Also brilliant, I must say. And exhausting. I worked Ekaterin ruthlessly, but she seemed to enjoy a whole day with wall-to-wall grownups to talk to, so I hope she isn’t feeling too exploited. Although she was.”

“And, ah…did you get any of that personal girl-gab you were hoping for?”

She made a face. “I
meant
to. There just wasn’t time.” She added after a moment, “I’m thinking I might get a chance to bring up the subject later tonight. Of us, I mean. Do you mind?”

His fortifying intake of breath did not sound like enthusiastic endorsement. “Miles is your chain-of-command. To state the thuddingly obvious, you know him better than I ever will. Your judgment call on this one.”

“Ha. He can be remarkably opaque at times, even to me.”

“And Ekaterin?”

“Ekaterin…has more distance.” And, Cordelia reflected, also the experience of having been a Barrayaran widow, though spared the public speeches. “I don’t see a problem there.”

“So even you don’t know which way your son will jump?”

“I’m not giving him a Betan vote, love.” She added, as he failed to look anything but wary, “Any imagined disloyalty to Aral could be thwarted by telling him the whole story, you realize.”

Which only made him look even more closed. “I’m…not ready for that. I don’t…I have never wanted to get between you and your family. Between Aral and you, and your family.”

“Which consisted, in the early days, of Miles alone.” Well, and Ivan, more distantly. And Gregor. All right, Oliver had a point, there. Poor outsider stepchild that he obviously thought he was, in that context.

His brows went up. “Are you listening to yourself? Miles, the Army of One?”

She had to laugh. “All right, all right. Well, I’ll wing it, then.”

“Just don’t put me to the blush.”

She brushed her fingertips across his face. “Hey, I like your blushes.”

“I know.” He caught and kissed the fingertips in passing. “And I would cheerfully hold my breath till I turned scarlet to make you smile. Or snicker, as the case may be. But still.”

It was his privacy, too, that he was placing in her hands. She nodded understanding. “May I just point out, the trip to the
Prince Serg
is going to be an overnight excursion. The viceregal jump-pinnace is more spacious than a fast courier, but it would be handy if we could bunk together, don’t you think?”

This won a smile at last. “Very efficient, yes.”

They
still
jerked a little apart, by whatever accursed ridiculous reflex, as Miles wandered in. “Ah,” he said, looking curiously at Oliver. “You’re still here. Anything going on?”

“I invited Oliver to join us for dinner.”

“You sure? I don’t think you’ll be able to get much business in.”

“I plan to
forbid
business at the table tonight,” said Cordelia, widening her eyes for emphasis.

Miles laughed and opened his hand in concession. “Understood.”

In the event, between exchanging tales of Chaos Colony and of the latest activities back in the Vorkosigans’ home district, the dinner conversation was quite lively. Cordelia wasn’t sure if Oliver was being unusually quiet, or if he just couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He did spend time coaxing actual speech from some of the younger members of the party, with the same even-handed ease he might have applied to a diplomatic soiree. And listening with the same multi-leveled attention, Cordelia thought.

Another excursion upstairs oversaw the younger children put to bed and the older ones occupied, and Cordelia, trailed in a bit by Miles and Ekaterin, was at last able to rejoin Oliver back downstairs in one of the cozier public rooms for grownup after-dinner drinks. She plunked herself down next to him on the couch where he’d been waiting, thinking,
You could put your arm around me now, Oliver
, but he didn’t take the telepathic hint. Miles and Ekaterin sat together on the couch across the low table; Frieda served them, and then, at Cordelia’s nod and wave, discreetly retreated.

Oliver continued to be rather reserved, even by Oliver-standards. It couldn’t be something brewing at work that was on his mind; he was supposed to have taken the day off. Cordelia would be peeved if she found out that had not been the case. She tried, “And so what did you do all day, Oliver?”

This, happily, triggered an amusing anecdote from him about a trip out to the Uni, where things sounded to be proceeding as usual for the Uni. Ekaterin seemed very interested, though Miles might have preferred to swap tales about Sergyar Fleet. But it was Miles, spinning his emptied glass in his fingertips, who asked, “Why the interest in Lake Serena?”

“I took your mother out to sail.”

“Ah. Da used to like that.”

“Yes, he taught me how, back when.”

“Me, too. Though I confess I preferred grandfather’s horses, when I was younger.”

Cordelia perked up in the hope that this might lead into some more personal revelations, but instead Oliver went off into an enthusiastic description of the Serena lake life as observed through the crystal canoe. The flash of self-forgetfulness brought his considerable charm to the fore, and Ekaterin smiled.

“But you can’t be planning development out that way,” said Miles. “Mother is trying to get people to move
away
from the local tectonics.”

Cordelia abandoned patience as unrewarding. “Actually, Oliver and I are dating.”

Miles stared. The silence stretched just a little too long, though Ekaterin raised her eyebrows, looked back and forth between Cordelia and Jole, and ventured, “Congratulations!” Miles closed his mouth.

In another moment, he opened it again. “Er…what exactly do you mean by dating? In this context.”

“Screwing, dear,” Cordelia replied, in her flattest Betan tones.

“…Ah.” He added after a moment, “Thank you for the clarification.”
I think
, said his expression, though not his mouth.

Ekaterin, glancing aside at her spouse, suppressed what sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Oliver was still lying low, metaphorically, but a slight smile twitched his lips. And no blush. To Cordelia’s delight, he
finally
leaned back and stretched an arm around her shoulders along the top of the sofa, in a claiming gesture. His chin came up, and he regarded Miles blandly.

“Is this…publicly known? Around here?” Miles asked cautiously.

“I haven’t sent out a press release, no. I did tell Gregor, when I messaged him about Aurelia. And Alys and Simon, of course.”

“They
all three
knew? And didn’t tell me? When did
I
become a security risk?” Miles sounded indignant. He added after a moment, “Though that explains why Gregor kept saying that if I wanted to know any more, I needed to ask you. I thought he was hinting that he wanted me to investigate…something.”

Perhaps he was.
Cordelia didn’t say
that
out loud.

Miles’s brows drew down. More. “Aren’t you worried about political fallout? Locally? Or even further afield.” He hesitated. “I could see some enemy getting up charges of conflict of interest, if the two top people in Sergyar space were known to, er, be in bed with one another.”

“The…” With a glance at Oliver, who had gone inexpressive again, Cordelia regretfully edited out the word she wanted,
three
. “The two top people in Sergyar space were in bed together for a decade. I’d think people would be used to it. I wasn’t just Vicereine because I was your father’s wife; it was always a co-appointment.”

Miles made an impatient
Yes, I know
, hand wave.

“That sort of complaint is usually made when one partner is seen to be illegitimately parasitizing the other’s power base. It would take some very convoluted thinking to see Oliver and me as anything other than a working team.”

“That wouldn’t stop them, if they were determined to be hostile.”

“Neither, in my experience, would anything else I did or didn’t do.”

Oliver put in, unexpectedly, “One of your father’s aphorisms was
Don’t let your enemy choose your ground.
He didn’t mean it only militarily.”

“Still less a hypothetical enemy,” said Cordelia dryly. “On hypothetical ground. Anyway, what could they do? Pressure for my resignation?” She considered this not-unlikely scenario. “That actually could infuriate me, come to think. Getting stuck in this job for extra time just to prove to some wastes-of-oxygen that they weren’t running the show. Gah.”

Miles played with his empty glass. Still trying to think up a logical reason that he could slide in under his floating unease and justify his emotions? Cordelia wasn’t sure whether to let him or not. He
was
an experienced tactical pathfinder. A good thing—as long as he was on your side.