Memory (18 page)

This house at least had a caretaker couple in residence to keep it alive and maintain the extensive grounds; it would not have the dark and tomblike atmosphere of the mansion in the capital.

"No . . . leave those for now. I want to visit the stables first."

Miles led off down the path to the collection of outbuildings and Earth-green pastures in the first little valley back from the lake. The teenaged girl from the village who looked after the handful of remaining horses came out to greet them, and Martin, who had obviously been dutifully prepared to endure several days of unalleviated rural boredom in his eccentric lord's company, brightened right up. Miles left them to get acquainted, and went to the pasture gate.

His horse, who had picked up the rather unfortunate name of Fat Ninny from Miles's grandfather in the first few weeks of his life as a foal, came to greet Miles at his call, nickering, and Miles faithfully rewarded him with peppermints from his pocket. He petted the big roan's wide velvety nose. The beast, rising . . . twenty-three years old now?—had more gray among his red hairs, and wheezed from his canter across the pasture. So . . . dare he ride, with this seizure-thing? Probably not the sort of days-long camping trips up into the hills he most enjoyed. If he trained Martin to be his spotter, he could perhaps risk a few turns around the pastures. He wasn't likely to break any of his synthetic bones, falling off, and he trusted Ninny not to step on him.

Swimming, the other main pleasure of life at Vorkosigan Surleau, was right out. Sailing was dubious; he'd have to wear a life jacket constantly and take Martin. Could Martin even swim, let alone play life-guard to a seizuring man overboard while simultaneously not letting the boat get away from him? It seemed rather a lot to ask. Well . . . the lake's waters were chilling with the onset of autumn anyway.

It was not by accident that Miles's thirtieth birthday came up the week following, while he lingered in quiet ennui by the lakeside. It was the best place to ignore the event, unlike the capital where he was likely to be plagued with acquaintances and relatives, or at least Ivan, ragging him on the topic, or worse, inflicting a party on him. Though Ivan would doubtless be restrained by the knowledge that his turn would be next, in a couple of months. Anyway, Miles would really only be one day older, just like any other day. Right?

The day in question dawned foggy and damp from the previous day's melancholy rains that had so suited Miles's mood, but it was apparent from the high pale blue directly overhead that the weather would develop into something warm and hazy and perfect. It was also apparent that he was not going to be permitted to ignore it all, when the first call of congratulations came over the house's comconsole from a primly amused Lady Alys. Could Ivan be far behind? If he didn't find some way to hide, he risked being tied up all day on the blasted thing.

He snagged a prebreakfast roll from the kitchen on the way through, and walked out along the hillside path to the garden-and-graveyard. Formerly the last resting place of the barracks's guardsmen, it had been taken over by the Vorkosigans as their family plot after the destruction of Vorkosigan Vashnoi. Miles sat companionably for a while beside Sergeant Bothari's grave, nibbling the roll and watching the rising sun burn redly through the morning mists above Vorkosigan Surleau.

Then he strolled over to old General Piotr's plot, and stared down at it for long minutes. Time was he had stamped and shouted to that mockingly silent stone, whispered and pleaded. But the old man and he seemed to have nothing further to say to each other. Why not?

I'm talking to the wrong damned grave, is the problem,
Miles decided abruptly. Ruthlessly, he turned and strode back to the house to wake up Martin, who would sleep till noon if allowed. He knew someplace he could go where the comconsole could not pursue him. And he desperately needed to talk to a certain small lady there.

"So where are we headed, m'lord?" Martin inquired, settling into the lightflyer's pilot's seat, and flexing his fingers.

"We're going to a little mountain community called Silvy Vale." Miles leaned over and entered instructions into the vid map/navigator program, which projected a color-enhanced 3-D grid for them. "There's a particular spot I want you to land, in this little valley here, just above this narrow fork. It's a cemetery, actually. There should be just enough space between the trees to put the lightflyer down. Or there was, the last time I was up there. It's a pretty place, beside the brook. The sun comes down through the trees . . . maybe I should have packed a picnic. It's about a four day-walk from here, or two and a half days on horseback. Or something under an hour by lightflyer."

Martin nodded, and powered up; they rose above the ridge, and turned southeast. "I bet I could get you there faster," Martin offered.

"No . . ."

"Are we going the long way around again?"

Miles hesitated. Now that he was in the air, his urgency was slackening, to be replaced by seeping dread.
And you thought apologizing to the Emperor was hard.
"Yeah. I've been meaning to show you a few facts of life about mountain downdrafts and lightflyers. Head south and west here, toward those peaks."

"Very good, sir," said Martin, practicing his best Vor lord's servant's style, though spoiling the effect immediately thereafter by adding, "A hell of a lot better than another riding lesson." Martin and Ninny had not gotten along as well as Miles had expected them to. Martin clearly preferred lightflyers.

There followed an hour of interesting moments in and around Dendarii Gorge. Even city-boy Martin was impressed by the grandeur of place, Miles was pleased to note. They took it a lot slower than he and Ivan ever had; the lessons made their breakfasts merely a mild regret, and not an immediate emergency. But eventually, Miles ran out of delays to offer, and they turned due east again.

"So what's to do in this Silvy Vale place?" asked Martin. "Friends? Scenery?"

"Not . . . exactly. When I was about your brother's age—I'd just graduated from the Imperial Service Academy, in fact—the Count-my-Father stuck me, that is, assigned me to be his Voice in a case that was brought before the Count's Court. He sent me up to Silvy Vale to investigate and judge a murder. An infanticide for mutation, very much in the old traditional style."

Martin made a face. "Hillmen," he said in revulsion.

"Mm. It turned out to be more complex than I'd thought, even after I managed to tag the right suspect. The little girl—it was a little girl four days old who was killed, for being born with the cat's mouth—her name was Raina Csurik. She'd be getting close to ten years old by now, if she'd lived. I want to talk to her."

Martin's brows rose. "Do you, uh . . . talk to dead people a lot, m'lord?"

"Sometimes."

Martin's mouth crooked in an uncertain, we-hope-this-is-a-joke smile. "Do they ever talk back?"

"Sometimes . . . what, don't you ever talk to dead people?"

"I don't know any. Except you, m'lord," Martin modified this slightly.

"I was only a would-be corpse." Give yourself time, Martin. Your acquaintance will surely expand in time. Miles knew lots of dead people.

But even on that long list, Raina held a special place. After he'd peeled away all the Imperial pomp and nonsense, exhausted all the vying for promotion, waded through all the idiot regulations and dark nasty corners of military life . . . when it wasn't a goddamn game anymore, when things went real, and really scary, with lives and souls too going down the flash-disposer for it . . . Raina was the one symbol of his service that still made sense. He had a horrible feeling he'd somehow lost touch with Raina too, lately, in all this mess.

Had he got so wound up with playing Naismith, and with winning that game, that he'd forgotten what he was playing for? Raina was one prisoner Naismith would never rescue, down underground these ten years.

There was a probably apocryphal tale told of Miles's ancestor Count Selig Vorkosigan, collecting—or more likely, attempting to collect—taxes from his District's people, no more thrilled by the prospect then than they were now. One impoverished widow, left with her feckless late husband's debts, offered up the only thing she had, her son's drum-playing, son included. Selig, it was said, accepted the drumming but gave back the boy. Self-serving Vorish propaganda, no doubt. Naismith had been Miles's own best sacrifice, his all in all, what he came up with when he turned himself inside-out with the trying. Barrayar's galactic interests seemed very far away in this mountain morning light, but serving those interests had been his part. Naismith was the drum-song he'd played, but Vorkosigan was the one who'd played it.

So he knew exactly how he'd lost Naismith, misstep by misstep. He could touch and name every link in that disastrous chain of events. Where the hell had he lost Vorkosigan?

When they landed, he would tell Martin to take a walk, or go fly the lightflyer around some more. This was one conversation with the dead he didn't want a witness to. He'd failed Gregor, yet faced him, failed his family, and would have to face them soon. But facing Raina . . . that was going to hurt like needle grenade fire.

Oh, Raina. Small lady. Please. What do I do now?
He hunched away from Martin, very silent, his forehead leaning against the canopy, eyes closed, head aching.

Martin's voice broke into his increasingly agonized reverie. "M'lord? What should I do? I can't land in the valley where you said, it's all water."

"What?" Miles sat up, and opened his eyes, and stared out in astonishment.

"There seems to be a lake there," said Martin.

Indeed. Across the narrow shoulder where the two descending streams had met now sat a small hydroelectric dam. Behind it, filling the steep valleys, a winding sheet of water reflected the hazy morning blue. Miles rechecked the vid map, just to be sure, and then the date on the map. "This map's only two years old. But this sure as hell isn't on it. But . . . this is the place, all right."

"Do you still want to land?"

"Yes, um . . . try to set down on the shore there on the east side, as close to the mark as you can."

It wasn't an easy task, but Martin at last found a spot and eased the lightflyer down among the trees. He popped the canopy, and Miles climbed out, and stood on the steep bank, and peered down at the clear brown water. He could only see a few meters into it. A scattering of white tree stumps stuck up out of it like bones. Martin, curious, followed him, and stood by his side, as if to help him look.

"So . . . is the cemetery still under there, or have the folk of Silvy Vale moved their graves? And if so, where have they moved them to?" Miles muttered.

Martin shrugged. The blank and placid mirror of the water gave no answer either.

After Martin jockeyed the lightflyer up out of the trees, Miles located the clearing he sought about a kilometer away. He had Martin put them down in the yard in front of a cabin built of weathered silvery wood. The cabin, with its familiar full-length porch giving a fine view over the valley and the new lake, appeared unchanged, though there were a couple of new outbuildings downslope.

A man came out onto the porch to see what was landing in his yard. It was not the balding, one-armed Speaker Karal. This was a total stranger, a tall fellow with a neatly trimmed black beard. But he leaned, interested, on the porch railing of bark-peeled sapling as if he owned the place. Miles climbed out of the lightflyer, and stood by it for an uncertain moment, staring up at the man, rehearsing explanations for himself and secretly glad of Martin's bulk. Perhaps he should have brought a trained bodyguard.

But the stranger's face lit with recognition and excitement. "Lord Vorkosigan!" he cried. He ran down off the porch two steps at a time, and strode toward Miles, his hands out in greeting, smiling broadly. "Great to see you again!" His smile faded. "Nothing wrong, I hope?"

Well, this one remembered
Miles
, all right, from that judgment of nearly a decade ago. "No, this is purely a social visit," Miles offered, as the man came up and shook his hand—both his hands—with enthusiastic cordiality. "Nothing official."

The man stepped back, looking down at his face, and his smile turned into a sly grin. "Don't you know who I am?"

"Um . . ."

"I'm Zed Karal."

"Zed?" Zed Karal, Speaker Karal's middle son, had been twelve years old. . . . Miles did a little quick math. Twenty-two, or thereabouts. Yeah. "The last time I saw you, you were shorter than me."

"Well, my ma was a good cook."

"Indeed. I remember." Miles hesitated. "Was? Are your parents, um . . ."

"Oh, they're fine. Just not here. My older brother married this lowlander girl from Seligrad, and went there to work and live. Ma and Da go down to live with them for the winter, 'cause the winters are getting hard for them up here. Ma helps with their kids."

"Is . . . Karal not the Speaker of Silvy Vale anymore, then?"

"No, we have a new Speaker, as of about two years ago. A young hotshot full of Progressive ideas he picked up living in Hassadar, just your type. I think you'll remember him all right. Name's Lem Csurik." Zed's smile broadened.

"Oh!" said Miles. For the first time today a smile tugged at his own lips. "Really. I'd . . . like to see him."

"I'll take you to him right now, if you'll give me a lift. He's probably working on the clinic today. You won't know where that is, it's bright-new. Just a second." Zed dashed back into his cabin to put something in order, a hint of that former twelve-year-old in his run. Miles felt like banging his head on the lightflyer's canopy, to try to force his spinning brain back into gear.

Zed returned, to hop into the lightflyer's backseat, and give Martin a string of directions interspersed with running commentary as they rose into the air and passed over the next ridge. He brought them down about two kilometers away in front of the rising frame of a six-room building, the biggest structure Miles had ever seen in Silvy Vale. Power lines were already strung to it, feeding a rack of pack-rechargers for power tools. Half a dozen men paused in their labors to watch them land.