Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (13 page)

“Right-oh.”

“Meeting with Commodore Blanc and staff in thirty minutes,” Ivan reminded him. “I have the agenda ready.”

“Very well. Snakes aweigh.”

Ivan hit the send pad. “On your desk now.”

Desplains raised his coffee cup in salute and passed into his inner office.

He would never, Ivan reflected, ever want to be promoted to admiral, to be greeted the first thing every working day by a desk populated entirely by live, hissing snakes. Perhaps he could resign his commission if such a threat ever became imminent. Assuming he made it to that stately age without being court-martialed, a consummation depending closely in turn on his doubtful ability to avoid relatives associated with ImpSec bearing…gift pythons. Gift pythons with snazzy reticulated blue-and-gold skins this time, it seemed.

He bent to his comconsole and returned a crisp note to ImpSec Komarr:
From the Office of Admiral Desplains: Urgent memo received
and the date stamp.
Hold pending review.

Chapter Six

“Tej, get away from that edge,” said Rish, irritably. “You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m only watching for Ivan Xav.” Tej gripped the balcony railing and craned her neck, studying the scurrying evening throng in the street far below. She’d had several false alarms already, of foreshortened dark-haired men in green uniforms exiting the bubble-car station and turning in her direction, but none of them had been the captain. Too old, too young, too stout, too slight, none with that particular rolling rhythm to his stride. None bearing bags. “Besides, he’s bringing dinner. I hope.”

Rish crossed her arms tighter. “If only the Baron and Baronne had known, they could have had all your parade of suitors offer you provisions, instead of those high House connections.”

Tej’s shoulders hunched. “I didn’t want high House connections. That was Star’s and Pidge’s passion, and Erik’s. And the Baronne’s. I thought there were enough Arquas trying to build economic empires. Family dinners got to be like board meetings, once they were all into it.” Tej had long since given up trying to get in a word at meals without a crowbar, certainly not about her own piddling interests, which, since they did not include schemes for House aggrandizement, interested no one else there.

Pidge, officially named Mercedes Sofia Esperanza Juana Paloma, was Tej’s other older even-sister, born in the era before the Baronne had finally made her spouse ease back on his inspirations, or maybe she’d hidden the book by the time the last few Arqua offspring were decanted from their uterine replicators, who knew. The Baronne always called her Mercedes; Dada, from the time she’d started precociously talking—and never again shut up, as far as Tej could tell—had dubbed her
Little Wisdom
as a play on
Sofia
, but as soon as her other siblings discovered that another meaning of
Paloma
was
pigeon
, her family nickname had stuck. Well, except when Erik transmuted it to
Pudge
, to get a rise out of her, which it reliably did.

Did you get out safely, Pidge? Have you made it to your assigned refuge yet? Or did your flight go as sour for you as mine did for me?
Her elder sisters had supplied Tej with what she suspected was no more than the normal amount of adolescent hell, but she worried for them now with all that was left of her shredded heart. Erik…knowing that Erik had not got out, but not knowing how, had supplied the stuff of nightmares, both asleep and awake. Had he died fighting? Been captured and coldly executed? Tortured first?
However it happened, he’s beyond all grief and pain and struggle and regret now
. After all these months, Tej was beginning to be reconciled to that cold consolation, if only for want of any other. Amiri…her middle brother Amiri was still safe as far as Tej knew.
And your hard-bought new life will not be betrayed through me, that’s an iron-clad contract
. Even if she made the deal only with her own overwrought imagination.

She rose on her toes and leaned out, causing Rish, who stood well back with her shoulders snug to the wall, to make a strained noise in her throat. “Oh, there he is! And he’s got lots of big bags!” Tej watched that long stride close Ivan Xav’s distance to the building’s entry till he turned in out of sight, then gave up her spy-vantage. When they went inside, Rish locked the glass door firmly behind them.

Vorpatril bustled in with the dinner and what proved to be sacks of groceries, and cheerfully emptied them out onto the counter while Rish rescued the restaurant containers and set the table.

“It’s Barrayaran Greekie, tonight,” he told the women. “Wasn’t easy to find. Got a tip about this place from one of the fellows out at HQ. A Barrayaran Greekie sergeant whose family’d been in the restaurant business back in his home District married a Komarran woman and retired here, set up shop. It comes highly recommended—we’ll see.”

“Barrayaran Greekie?” asked Rish, brows rising in puzzlement.

“The smallest of our main languages,” he told her. “The Firsters actually arrived in four disparate settlement groups—Russian, British, French and Greek, as their home regions on Old Earth were back then. Over the centuries of the Time of Isolation, everyone pretty much blended together genetically—founder effect, you know—but they kept up those languages, which still gave folks plenty to fight about. I think there were some more minor tongues as well, to start, but those got rubbed out in what you galactics call the Lost Centuries. Except we weren’t lost, we were all right there. It was just the Nexus that got misplaced.”

Tej considered this novel view as he continued unpacking sacks, including, she was glad to see, fresh fruit and teas and coffees and vat-dairy cream and milk. How many days was he planning for?

He added, “Fortunately, we kept a lot of the food styles. Modified.”

“But not mutated,” murmured Tej.

“
Indeed
not.” But his lips twitched, so her tiny joke hadn’t really offended him, good. He drew out another large carton and folded the bag. “More instant groats. They’re a traditional Barrayaran breakfast food, among other things.”

“I saw that little box in your cupboard. I wasn’t sure what a person was supposed to do with them.”

“Oh, is that why you weren’t eating them? Here, let me show you…” He drew boiling water from the heater tap and mixed up a small bowl of the stuff, and passed it around the table to sample as they sat to the new largess. Tej thought the little brown grains tasted like toasted cardboard, but perhaps they were some childhood comfort food of his, and she oughtn’t to criticize them.

Rish made a face, though. “A bit bland, don’t you think?”

“You usually add butter, maple syrup, cheese, all sorts of things. There’s also a cold salad with mint and chopped tomatoes and what-not. And they use them at weddings.”

The Greekie food, as he dished it out, looked more promising; her first bites delivered some quite wonderful aromas, flavors and textures. “How do they prepare your groats for weddings?”

“They don’t serve them. The grains get dyed different colors, and sprinkled on the ground for the wedding circle and what-not. Some sort of old fertility or abundance symbol, I suppose.”

It also seemed the food least likely to be regretted in that sacrifice, a suspicion Tej kept to herself.

Ivan Xav seemed much more relaxed tonight, and she couldn’t figure out quite why, except for the lack of his strange friend Byerly to stir him up. She would have thought that the revelation of her true identity would have alarmed him more, but maybe he disliked mysteries more than bad news?

“This is all right,” he said, leaning back replete when they’d demolished the Greekie dinner. “When I rented this place to sample the Solstice nightlife, I’d forgotten just how short the nights were. There’s time to either party
or
recover before work, but not both. So staying in actually suits, though not on your ownsome. That would be dull.”

He rose to go rummage at the comconsole. “My cousin told me about this dance thing you and Rish might like to see, if I can find an example…”

“Do you have a lot of cousins?” Tej asked, leaning over his shoulder. “Or just a lot of one cousin?”

He laughed at that last. “Both, actually. On my father’s side, there’s only my cousin Miles—not exactly a cousin, our grandmothers were sisters. That part of the family got pretty thinned out during Mad Yuri’s War, which came down soon after the end of the Occupation. I’ve half-a-dozen first cousins on my mother’s side, but they don’t live near the capital and I don’t see much of ’em. Ah, here we go!”

His search had turned up a recorded performance of the Minchenko Memorial Ballet Company, from a place called the Union of Free Habitats, or Quaddiespace. Tej had never heard of it, but as the vid started up Rish drifted in and said, “Oh! The gengineered four-armed people. Baron Fell had a quaddie musician, once. I saw a vid of one of her gigs. Played a hammer dulcimer with all four hands at once. But she jumped her contract and left, and no one’s heard of her since. I didn’t know they could
dance
…” Her face screwed up. “
How
do they dance, with no feet?”

“Free fall,” said Ivan Xav. “They live in it, work in it, dance in it…my cousin and his wife saw a live performance when they were out that way on, er, business last year—told me all about it, later. Very impressive, they said.”

Dance the quaddies did, it seemed, in zero-gee: hand to hand to hand to hand, singly, in pairs, but most amazingly, in groups, glittering colored costumes flashing through air. The Jewels gave the illusion of flying, at times—these dancers
really
flew, wheeling like flocks of bright birds. Both Rish and Tej watched in rapt fascination, Rish putting in mutters of excited critique now and then, and bouncing on the edge of her chair at especially complex maneuvers, her arms waving in unconscious mimicry.

Tej shared the sofa with Ivan Xav. His arm, laid out along the back, crept nearer, easing down over her shoulders till she was quite snugged in by it. After a few moments of silent consideration, she declined to shrug it off. It threw her back into a memory of watching shows with Dada, in her childhood—how patient he must have been with her choices, in retrospect—snuggled into his warm side, a stouter one than Ivan Xav’s, but smelling equally, if rather differently, masculine. She wasn’t sure if the recollection helped or hurt, but there it was. For a little hour, some simulacrum of peace.

It ended soon enough, when Ivan Xav turned off the holovid at the close of the performance and Rish said, “So how long were you planning to stay on Komarr, Captain Vorpatril?”

“Mm? Oh.” He sat up, and Tej edged regretfully away. “This whole duty—the annual inspections and conferences—usually runs about ten days or so. I’ve been here, um, let me see…” His lips moved as he counted on his fingers. “Seven nights, so far, including this one. So not much longer. I trust that By will be done with his business sooner, though. Seemed like his pace was picking up.”

“So this safe house”—a graceful blue hand spiraled—“will go away when you do.”

“Uh…” he said. “I’m afraid so. Though I could book it an extra week for you, but…I figured to wait and see what By comes up with.”

Rish glanced significantly at Tej.

Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “Would you two consider making a deal with ImpSec? I mean, more than just with Byerly. I bet you know lots of things they’d like to share, for suitable considerations.”

Tej grimaced. “If there was one lesson both my parents took care to pound into me, it’s that it’s impossible to deal safely if the power differential between the two sides is too great. The high side just skins, and the low side gets stripped. Your ImpSec has no
need
to be nice to us.”

“Well, they’ve no need to be gratuitously nasty, either,” said Ivan Xav uneasily. “That I can see.”

“What if they decide they
need
to establish a fresh working relationship with the new House Cordonah, and that Rish and I would make dandy bargaining chips? I have nothing to stop them with—
nothing
.” She choked down her rising tone, refusing to turn her head toward the balcony. That
nothing
would stop them, too literally true.

“Look, I know they’re all weasels over there at ImpSec, but they’re pretty honorable weasels.”

“I thought they were a security organization,” said Rish. “Their honor has to consist of putting Barrayar’s interests first.”

Ivan shrugged somewhat helplessly, but did not deny this.

“We’ll think about it,” said Tej. “Meanwhile…do you want first claim on the bath, Captain? You have to get up before us.”

He glanced at the time and made a face. “I guess I’d better.” He looked as if he’d like to stay and argue more, but swallowed whatever he’d been going to say, and went off.

When the bedroom door had closed after him, Rish said, “Was that a
Maybe yes
we’ll think about it, or was that a
No, but we won’t confirm it till we make it safely to the exit
we’ll think about it?”

“Have you spotted a safe exit? I haven’t.”

Rish set her fine jaw. “Tomorrow. I think we should run tomorrow, as soon as he goes off to that HQ of his. The cash in his wallet would get us to another dome, at least.”

It would have to be one of the domes with its own commercial shuttleport. That cut it down to a couple of dozen choices planet-wide, all larger arcologies, which was a good feature, but none were close. Tej’s heart sank at the thought of another scurrying, fearful journey among strangers, from nowhere to nowhere, in the vague hope that their lost House’s enemies would look for them…nowhere.

“And are you sure we’re not being watched out for?” said Tej. “Are you sure
he
isn’t watched, for that matter?”

Rish shook her head. “I think we ran out of good choices a while back. We’re now down to the least-bad.”

Tej rubbed her aching forehead. “I’ll think about it.”

Rish flounced in her seat, a maneuver only she could imbue with such stylish censure. “And you have to stop cuddling that Barrayaran. It’s not as if you can keep him, or take him along with us, or whatever.”