Mirror dance (35 page)

"You look well," she said approvingly.

"So do you," he replied, and then, because it seemed too familiar, added, "ma'am."

Her brow quirked at the addition, but she made no comment. He paced to a nearby chair but, too keyed-up to sit, only leaned on its back. He suppressed a tendency for his right boot to tap on the marble floor. "So how do you think they're going to take this tonight? Your Vor friends."

"Well, you will certainly rivet their attention," she sighed. "You can count on it." She lifted a small brown silk bag with the Vorkosigan logo embroidered in silver on it, and handed it across to Mark. It clinked interestingly from the heavy gold coins it held. "When you present this to Gregor in the taxation ceremony tonight as proxy for Aral, it will serve formal notice to all that we claim you as a legitimate son—and that you accept that claim. Step One. Many others to follow."

And at the end of that path—the countship? Mark frowned deeply.

"Whatever your own feelings—whatever the final outcome of the present crisis—don't let them see you shake," the Countess advised. "It's all in the mind, this Vor system. Conviction is contagious. So is doubt."

"You consider the Vor system an illusion?" Mark asked.

"I used to. Now I would call it a creation, which, like any living thing, must be continually re-created. I've seen the Barrayaran system be awkward, beautiful, corrupt, stupid, honorable, frustrating, insane and breathtaking. Its gets most of the work of government done most of the time, which is about average for any system."

"So . . . do you approve of it, or not?" he asked, puzzled.

"I'm not sure my approval matters. The Imperium is like a very large and disjointed symphony, composed by a committee. Over a three-hundred year period. Played by a gang of amateur volunteers. It has enormous inertia, and is fundamentally fragile. It is neither unchanging nor unchangeable. It can crush you like a blind elephant."

"What a heartening thought."

She smiled. "We aren't plunging you into total strangeness, tonight. Ivan and your Aunt Alys will be there, and young Lord and Lady Vortala. And the others you've met here in the past few weeks."

Fruit of the excruciating private dinner parties. From before the Count's collapse, there had been a select parade of visitors to Vorkosigan House to meet him. Countess Cordelia had determinedly continued the process despite the week-old medical crisis, in preparation for this night.

"I expect everyone will be trolling for inside information on Aral's condition," she added.

"What should I tell 'em?"

"Flat truth is always easiest to keep track of. Aral is at ImpMil awaiting a heart to be grown for transplant, and being a very bad patient. His physician is threatening alternately to tie him to his bed or resign if he doesn't behave. You don't need to go into all the medical details."

Details that would reveal just how badly damaged the Prime Minister was. Quite. ". . . What if they ask me about Miles?"

"Sooner or later," she took a breath, "if ImpSec doesn't find the body, sooner or later there must be a formal declaration of death. While Aral lives, I would rather it be later. No one outside of the highest echelons of ImpSec, Emperor Gregor, and a few government officials know Miles is anything but an ImpSec courier officer of modest rank. It is a perfectly true statement that he is away on duty. Most who inquire after him will be willing to accept that ImpSec hasn't confided to you where they sent him or for how long."

"Galen once said," Mark began, and stopped.

The Countess gave him a level look. "Is Galen much on your mind, tonight?"

"Somewhat," Mark admitted. "He trained me for this, too. We did all the major ceremonies of the Imperium, because he didn't know in advance just what time of year he'd drop me in. The Emperor's Birthday, the Midsummer Review, Winterfair—all of 'em. I can't do this and not think of him, and how much he hated the Imperium."

"He had his reasons."

"He said . . . Admiral Vorkosigan was a murderer."

The Countess sighed, and sat back. "Yes?"

"Was he?"

"You've had a chance to observe him for yourself. What do you think?"

"Lady . . .
I'm
a murderer. And I can't tell."

Her eyes narrowed. "Justly put. Well. His military career was long and complex—and bloody—and a matter of public record. But I imagine Galen's main focus was the Solstice Massacre, in which his sister Rebecca died."

Mark nodded mutely.

"The Barrayaran expedition's Political Officer, not Aral, ordered that atrocious event. Aral executed him for it with his own hands, when he found out. Without the formality of a court martial, unfortunately. So he evades one charge, but not the other. So yes. He is a murderer."

"Galen said it was to cover up the evidence. There'd been a verbal order, and only the Political Officer knew it."

"So how could Galen know it? Aral says otherwise. I believe Aral."

"Galen said he was a torturer."

"No," said the Countess flatly. "
That
was Ges Vorrutyer, and Prince Serg. Their faction is now extinct." She smiled a thin, sharp smile.

"A madman."

"No one on Barrayar is sane, by Betan standards." She gave him an amused look. "Not even you and me."

Especially not me.
He took a small breath. "A sodomite." She tilted her head. "Does that matter, to you?"

"It was . . . prominent, in Galen's conditioning of me."

"I know."

"You do? Dammit . . ." Was he glass, to these people? A feelie-drama for their amusement? Except the Countess didn't seem amused. "An ImpSec report, no doubt," he said bitterly.

"They fast-penta'd one of Galen's surviving subordinates. A man named Lars, if that means anything to you."

"It does." He gritted his teeth. Not a chance at human dignity, not one shred left to him.

"Aside from Galen, does Aral's private orientation matter? To you?"

"I don't know. Truth matters."

"So it does. Well, in truth . . . I judge him to be bisexual, but subconsciously more attracted to men than to women. Or rather—to soldiers. Not to men generally, I don't think. I am, by Barrayaran standards, a rather extreme, er, tomboy, and thus became the solution to his dilemmas. The first time he met me I was in uniform, in the middle of a nasty armed encounter. He thought it was love at first sight. I've never bothered explaining to him that it was his compulsions leaping up." Her lips twitched.

"Why not? Or were your compulsions leaping up too?"

"No, it took me, oh, four or five more days to come completely unglued. Well, three days, anyway." Her eyes were alight with memory. "I wish you could have seen him then, in his forties. At the top of his form."

Mark had overheard himself verbally dissected by the Countess too, in this very library. There was something weirdly consoling in the knowledge that her scalpel was not reserved for him alone.
It's not just me. She does this to everybody. Argh.
 

"You're . . . very blunt, ma'am. What did Miles think of this?"

She frowned thoughtfully. "He's never asked me anything. It's possible that unhappy period in Aral's youth has come to Miles's ears only as the garbled slander of Aral's political enemies, and been discounted."

"Why tell me?"

"You asked. You are an adult. And . . . you have a greater need to know. Because of Galen. If things are ever to be square between you and Aral, your view of him should be neither falsely exalted nor falsely low. Aral is a great man. I, a Betan, say this; but I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is . . . the higher achievement." She gave him a crooked smile. "It should give you hope, eh?"

"Huh. Block me from escape, you mean. Are you saying that no matter how screwed up I was, you'd still expect me to work wonders?"
Appalling.
 

She considered this. "Yes," she said serenely. "In fact, since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same."

It wasn't just his
father
who had made Miles crazy, Mark decided. "I've never heard you analyze yourself, ma'am," he said sourly. Yes, who shaved the barber?

"Me?" she smiled bleakly. "I'm a fool, boy."

She evaded the question. Or did she? "A fool for love?" he said lightly, in an effort to escape the sudden awkwardness his question had created.

"And other things." Her eyes were wintry.

A wet, foggy dusk was gathering to cloak the city as the Countess and Mark were conveyed to the Imperial Residence. The splendidly liveried and painfully neat Pym drove the groundcar. Another half-dozen of the Count's armsmen accompanied them in another vehicle, more as honor guards than bodyguards, Mark sensed; they seemed to be looking forward to the party. At some comment of his to the Countess she remarked, "Yes, this is more of a night off for them than usual. ImpSec will have the Residence sewn up. There is a whole parallel sub-society of servants at these things—and it's not been totally unknown for an armsman of address to catch the eye of some junior Vor bud, and marry upward, if his military background is good enough."

They arrived at the Imperial pile, which was architecturally reminiscent of Vorkosigan House multipled by a factor of eight. They hurried out of the clinging fog into the warm, brilliantly-lit interior. Mark found the Countess formally attached to his left arm, which was both alarming and reassuring. Was he escort, or appendage? In either case, he sucked in his stomach and straightened his spine as much as he could.

Mark was startled when the first person they met in the vestibule was Simon Illyan. The security chief was dressed for the occasion in Imperial parade red-and-blues, which did not exactly render his slight form inconspicuous, though perhaps there were enough other red-and-blues present for him to blend in. Except that Illyan wore real lethal weapons at his hip, a plasma arc and a nerve disruptor in used-looking holsters, and not the blunted dual dress sword sets of the Vor officers. An oversized earbug glittered in his right ear.

"Milady," Illyan nodded, and drew them aside. "When you saw him this afternoon," he said in a low voice to the Countess, "how was he?"

No need to specify who
he
was, in this context. The Countess glanced around, to be sure they were out of earshot of casual passers-by. "Not good, Simon. His color's bad, he's very edemic, and he tends to drift in and out of focus, which I find more frightening than all the rest put together. The surgeon wants to spare him the double stress of having a mechanical heart installed while they're waiting to bring the organic one up to size, but they may not be able to wait. He could end up in surgery for that at any moment."

"Should I see him, or not, in your estimation?"

"Not. The minute you walk in the door he'll sit up and try to do business. And the stress of trying will be as nothing compared to the stress of failing. That would agitate the hell out of him." She paused. "Unless you just popped in for a moment to, say, convey a bit of good news."

Illyan shook his head in frustration. "Sorry."

Since the Countess did not speak again immediately into the silence that followed, Mark dared to say, "I thought you were on Komarr, sir."

"I had to come back for this. The Emperor's Birthday Dinner is the security nightmare of the year. One bomb could take out practically the whole damned government. As you well know. I was en route when the news of Aral's . . . illness, reached me. If it would have made my fast courier go any faster, I would have gotten out and pushed."

"So . . . what's happening on Komarr? Who's supervising the, uh, search?"

"A trusted subordinate. Now that it appears we may be searching only for a body—" Illyan glanced at the Countess, and cut himself off. She frowned grayly.

They're dropping the priority of the search.
Mark took a disturbed breath. "So how many agents do you have searching Jackson's Whole?"

"As many as can be spared. This new crisis," a jerk of Illyan's head indicated Count Vorkosigan's dangerous illness, "is straining my resources. Do you have any idea how much unhealthy excitement the Prime Minister's condition is going to create on Cetaganda alone?"

"How many?"
His voice went sharp, and too loud, but the Countess at least made no motion to quiet him. She watched with cool interest.

"Lord Mark, you are not yet in a position to request and require an audit of ImpSec's most secret dispositions!"

Not yet? Not ever, surely. "Request only, sir. But you can't pretend that this operation is not my business."

Illyan gave him an ambiguous, noncommittal nod. He touched his earbug, looked abstracted for a moment, and gave the Countess a parting salute. "You must excuse me, Milady."

"Have fun."

"You too." His grimace echoed the irony of her smile.

Mark found himself escorting the Countess up a wide staircase and into a long reception room lined with mirrors on one side and tall windows on the other. A major domo at the wide-flung doors announced them by title and name in an amplified voice.

Mark's first impression was of a faceless, ominous blur of colorful forms, like a garden of carnivorous flowers. A rainbow of Vor house uniforms, heavily sprinkled with parade red-and-blues, actually outshone the splendid dresses of the ladies. Most of the people stood in small, changing groups, talking in a babble; a few sat in spindly chairs along the walls, creating their own little courts. Servants moved smoothly among them, offering trays of food and drink. Mostly servants. All those extremely physically-fit young men in the uniform of the Residence's staff were surely ImpSec agents. The tough-looking older men in the Vorbarra livery who manned the exits were the Emperor's personal armsmen.

It was only his paranoia, Mark decided, that made it seem as if all heads turned toward him and a wave of silence crossed the crowd at their entry; but a few heads did turn, and a few nearby conversations did stop. One was Ivan Vorpatril and his mother, Lady Alys Vorpatril; she waved Countess Vorkosigan over to them at once.