Miles in Love (118 page)

Swallowing, Miles stepped forward to kick the groats aside and open the circle to let the married couple out. He seized his privilege and position to be the first to grab Gregor's hand in congratulations, and to stand on tiptoe to kiss the bride's flushed cheek. And then, by damn, it was party time, he was done and off the hook, and he could go and hunt for Ekaterin in all this mob. He made his way past people scooping up handfuls of groats and tucking them away for souvenirs, craning his neck for a glimpse of an elegant woman in a gray silk gown.

Kareen gripped Mark's arm and sighed in satisfaction. The maple ambrosia was a
hit
.

It was rather clever, Kareen thought, how Gregor had shared out the astronomical cost of his wedding reception among his Counts. Each District had been invited to contribute an outdoor kiosk, scattered about the Residence grounds, to offer whatever local food and drink (vetted, of course, by Lady Alys and ImpSec) they'd cared to display to the strolling guests. The effect was a little like a District Fair, or rather, a Fair of Districts, but the competition had certainly brought out the best of Barrayar. The Vorkosigan's District kiosk had a prime location, at the northwest corner of the Residence just at the top of a path that went down into the sunken gardens. Count Aral had donated a thousand liters of his District wine, a traditional and very popular choice.

And at a side table next to the wine bar, Lord Mark Vorkosigan and MPVK Enterprises offered to the guests—tah dah!—their first food product. Ma Kosti and Enrique, wearing Staff badges, directed a team of Vorkosigan House servitors scooping out generous portions of maple ambrosia to the high Vor as fast as they could hand them across the table. At the end of the table, framed by flowers, a wire cage exhibited a couple of dozen bright new Glorious Bugs, glowing in blue-red-gold, together with a brief explanation, rewritten by Kareen to remove both Enrique's technicalities and Mark's blatant commercialism, of how they made their ambrosia. All right, so none of the renamed bug butter being distributed had actually been made by the new bugs, but that was a mere packaging detail.

Miles and Ekaterin came strolling through the crowd, along with Ivan. Miles spotted Kareen's eager wave, and angled toward them. Miles was wearing that same blitzed, deliriously pleased look he'd been sporting for two weeks; Ekaterin, at this her first Imperial Residence party, looked a trifle awed. Kareen darted aside and grabbed a cup of ambrosia, and brandished it as the trio came up.

"Ekaterin, they love the Glorious Bugs! At least half a dozen women have tried to steal them to wear as hair ornaments with their flowers—Enrique had to lock down the cage before we lost any more. He said, they are supposed to be a
demonstration
, not
free samples
."

Ekaterin laughed. "I'm glad I was able to cure your customer resistance!"

"Oh, my, yes. And with a debut at the Emperor's wedding, everyone will want it! Here, have you had the maple ambrosia yet? Miles?"

"I've tried it before, thank you," said Miles neutrally.

"Ivan! You've got to taste this!"

Ivan's lips twisted dubiously, but with amiable grace he lifted the spoon to his mouth. His expression changed. "Wow, what did you lace this with? It's got a notable kick to it." He resisted Kareen's attempt to wrest back the cup.

"Maple mead," said Kareen happily. "It was Ma Kosti's inspiration. It really works!"

Ivan swallowed, and paused. "Maple mead? The most disgusting, gut-destroying, guerilla attack-beverage ever brewed by man?"

"It's an acquired taste," murmured Miles.

Ivan took another bite. "Combined with the most revolting food product ever invented . . . How did she make it come out like
this
?" He scraped up the last of the soft golden paste, and eyed the cup as though considering licking it out with his tongue. "Impressively efficient, that. Get fed
and
drunk simultaneously . . . no wonder they're lining up!"

Mark, smiling smugly, broke in. "I just had a nice little private chat with Lord Vorsmythe. Without going into the details, I can say that our startup money shortage looks to be solved one way or another. Ekaterin! I am now in a position to redeem the shares I gave you for the bug design. What would you say to an offer of twice their face value back?"

Ekaterin looked thrilled. "That's wonderful, Mark! And so timely. That's more than I ever expected—"

"What you say," Kareen broke in firmly, "is,
no, thank you.
You hang on to those shares, Ekaterin! What you do if you need cash is set them as collateral against a loan. Then, next year when the stock has split I don't know how many times, sell
some
of the shares, pay back the loan, and keep the rest as a growth investment. By the time Nikki's ready, you might well be able to put him through jump-pilot school with it."

"You don't
have
to do it that way—" Mark began.

"That's what I'm doing with mine. It's going to pay my way back to Beta Colony!" She wasn't going to have to beg so much as a tenth-mark from her parents, news they'd found a little more surprising than was quite flattering. They'd then tried to press the offer of a living allowance on her, just to regain their balance, Kareen thought, or possibly the upper hand. She'd taken enormous pleasure in sweetly refusing. "I told Ma Kosti not to sell, either."

Ekaterin's eyes crinkled. "I see, Kareen. In that case . . . thank you, Lord Mark. I will think about your offer for a little while."

Foiled, Mark grumbled under his breath, but, with his brother's sardonic eye upon him, didn't continue his attempted hustle.

Kareen flitted back happily to the serving table, where Ma Kosti was just hoisting up another five-liter tub of maple ambrosia and breaking the seal.

"How are we doing?" Kareen asked.

"They're going to clean us out in another hour, at this rate," the cook reported. She was wearing a lace apron over her very best dress. A large and exquisite fresh orchid necklace, which she'd said Miles had given her, fought for space on her breast with her Staff badge. There was more than one way to get in to the Emperor's wedding, by golly . . . .

"The maple mead bug butter was a great idea of yours for soothing down Miles about this," Kareen told her. "He's one of the few people I know who actually
drinks
the stuff."

"Oh, that wasn't
my
idea, Kareen lovie," Ma Kosti told her. "It was Lord Vorkosigan's. He owns the meadery, you know . . . . He's got an eye to channeling more money to all those poor people back in the Dendarii Mountains, I think."

Kareen's grin broadened. "I
see
." She stole a glance at Miles, standing benignly with his lady on his arm and feigning indifference to his clone-brother's project.

In the gathering dusk, little colored lights began to gleam all through the Residence's garden and grounds, fair and festive. In their cage, the Glorious Bugs began to flip their wing carapaces and twinkle back as if in answer.

Mark watched Kareen, all blonde and ivory and raspberry gauzy and entirely edible, returning from their bug butter table, and sighed in pleasure. His hands, stuffed in his pockets, encountered the gritty grains she had insisted he store there for her when the wedding circle had broken up. He shook them from his fingers, and held out his hand to her, asking, "What are we supposed to do with all these groats, Kareen? Plant them or something?"

"Oh, no," she said, as he pulled her in close. "They're just for remembrance. Most people will put them up in little sachets, and try to press them on their grandchildren someday.
I was at the Old Emperor's wedding, I was
."

"It's miracle grain, you know," Miles put in. "It multiplies. By tomorrow—or later tonight—people will be selling little bags of supposedly-wedding groats to the gullible all over Vorbarr Sultana. Tons and tons."

"Really." Mark considered this. "You know, you could actually do that legitimately, with a little ingenuity. Take your handful of wedding groats, mix 'em with a bushel of filler-groats, repackage 'em . . . the customer would still get
genuine
Imperial wedding groats, in a sense, but they'd go a lot farther . . ."

"Kareen," said Miles, "do me a favor. Check his pockets before he gets out of here tonight, and confiscate any groats you find."

"I wasn't saying
I
was going to!" said Mark indignantly. Miles grinned at him, and he realized he'd just been Scored On. He smiled back sheepishly, too elated by it all tonight to sustain any emotion downwards of
mellow.

Kareen glanced up, and Mark followed her gaze to see the Commodore in his parade red-and-blues, and Madame Koudelka in something green and flowing like the Queen of Summer, making their way toward them. The Commodore swung his swordstick jauntily enough, but he had a curiously introspective look on his face. Kareen broke away to cadge more ambrosia samples to press on them.

"How are you two holding up?" Miles greeted the couple.

The Commodore replied abstractedly, "I'm a little, um. A little . . . um . . ."

Miles cocked an eyebrow. "A little um?"

"Olivia," said Madame Koudelka, "has just announced her engagement."

"I thought this was awfully contagious," said Miles, grinning slyly up at Ekaterin.

Ekaterin returned him a melting smile, then said to the Koudelkas, "Congratulations. Who's the lucky fellow?"

"That's . . . um . . . the part it's going to take some getting used to," the Commodore sighed.

Madame Koudelka said, "Count Dono Vorrutyer."

Kareen arrived back with an armload of ambrosia cups in time to hear this; she bounced and squealed delight. Mark glanced aside at Ivan, who merely shook his head and reached for another ambrosia. Of all the party, his was the one voice that didn't break into some murmur of surprise. He looked glum, yes. Surprised, no.

Miles, after a brief digestive pause, said, "I always did think one of your girls would catch a Count."

"Yes," said the Commodore, "but . . ."

"I'm quite certain Dono will know how to make her happy," Ekaterin offered.

"Um."

"She wants a big wedding," said Madame Koudelka.

"So does Delia," said the Commodore. "I left them arm wrestling over who gets the earlier date. And the first shot at my poor budget." He stared around at the Residence grounds, and all the increasingly happy revelers. As it was still early in the evening, they were almost all still vertical. "This is giving them both grandiose ideas."

In a rapt voice, Miles said, "Ooh. I
must
talk to Duv."

Commodore Koudelka edged closer to Mark, and lowered his voice. "Mark, I, ah . . . feel I owe you an apology. Didn't mean to be so stiff-necked about it all."

"That's all right, sir," said Mark, surprised and touched.

The Commodore added, "So, you're going back to Beta in the fall—good. No need to be in a rush to settle things at your age, after all."

"That's what we thought, sir." Mark hesitated. "I know I'm not very good at family yet. But I mean to learn how."

The Commodore gave him a little nod, and a crooked smile. "You're doing fine, son. Just keep on."

Kareen's hand squeezed his. Mark cleared his suddenly inexplicably tight throat, and considered the novel thought that not only could you have a family, you might even have more than one. A wealth of relations . . . "Thank you, sir. I'll try."

Olivia and Dono themselves rounded the corner of the Residence then, arm in arm, Olivia in her favorite primrose yellow, Dono soberly splendid in his Vorrutyer House blue and gray. The dark-haired Dono was actually a little shorter than his intended bride, Mark noticed for the first time. All the Koudelka girls ran to tall. But the force of Dono's personality was such that one hardly noticed the height differential.

They arrived at the group, explaining that they'd been told by five separate people to go try the maple ambrosia before it was gone. They lingered, while Kareen collected another armload of samples, to accept congratulations from all assembled. Even Ivan rose to this social duty.

When Kareen returned, Olivia told her, "I was just talking to Tatya Vorbretten. She was so happy—she and René have started their little boy! The blastocyst just got transferred to the uterine replicator this morning. All healthy so far."

Kareen, her mother, Olivia, and Dono all put their heads together, and that end of the conversation became appallingly obstetrical for a short time. Ivan backed away.

"It's getting worse and worse," he confided to Mark in a hollow voice. "I used to only lose old girlfriends to matrimony one at a time. Now they're going in
pairs
."

Mark shrugged. "Can't help you, old fellow. But if you want my advice—"

"
You're
giving
me
advice on how to run my love life?" Ivan interjected indignantly.

"You get what you give. Even I figured that one out, eventually." Mark grinned up at him.

Ivan growled, and made to slope off, but then paused to stare, startled, as Count Dono hailed his cousin Byerly Vorrutyer, just passing by on the walk leading to the Residence. "What's
he
doing here?" Ivan muttered.

Dono and Olivia excused themselves and left, presumably to share their announcement with this new quarry. Ivan, after a short silence, handed his empty cup to Kareen and trailed after them.

The Commodore, scraping the last of his ambrosia out of his cup with the little spoon provided, stared glumly after Olivia clinging joyfully to her new fiancé. "Countess Olivia Vorrutyer," he muttered under his breath, obviously trying to get both his mouth and his mind around the novel concept. "My son-in-law, the Count . . . dammit, the fellow's almost old enough to be Olivia's father himself."

"Mother, surely," murmured Mark.

The Commodore gave him an acerbic look. "You understand," he added after a moment, "just on principles of propinquity, I always figured my girls would go for the bright young officers. I expected I'd end up owning the general staff, in my old age. Though there is Duv, I suppose, for consolation. Not young either, but bright enough to be downright scary. Well, maybe
Martya
will find us a future general."