Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (25 page)

“What earlier career?” asked Tej.

He eyed another cucumber sandwich round, popped it whole into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed before replying. “I was an ImpSec courier for a few years, before I was discharged for medical unfitness. I did a great deal of traveling throughout the Nexus.” He looked up and smiled at his wife. “Rather got it out of my system, to tell the truth.”

Lady Ekaterin’s return smile grew lopsided. “Did you indeed?”

Tej turned again to The Gregor. “But the ride, sir?”

The emperor rubbed his jaw. “I’ll drop a word in Allegre’s ear. Ivan and he can discuss the details.” He paused, looking her and Ivan Xav over thoughtfully. “Note, it could be some weeks before a place opens up. We cannot delay scheduled or emergency business for this courtesy.”

Tej nodded, trying to seem cooperative. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Ivan’s perimeter has already been notified of the new threat level,” The Gregor went on.

“If…if the syndicate’s agents track us here, can your people stop them?” asked Rish.

The Gregor’s dark eyebrows flicked up. “They’re expected to be able to stop much worse.”

“If they’re not
blindsided
,” the Coz put in. “You need to give the poor security fellows as much of a fighting chance to protect you as you can. That means no more withholding information, eh?”

Tej nodded, her throat tight. Ivan Xav felt her hand tremble in his, and frowned at her in worry. She remembered all too clearly the death of their bodyguard on Fell Station. She’d barely known the man, and yet…Among the many, many reasons she’d never wanted power in the House, to play the game as her parents had, was that she’d never wanted her life to be bought at the price of another’s. Maybe no one was free of that, really. Or else what were police forces and armies all about, on places like Pol or Komarr? Mass protection, jointly purchased by an entire society, instead of piecemeal by those who could afford it—without even the up-front rewards that Jacksonian enforcers and security people routinely demanded, and were given, for assuming such risks.

The guard beside the door to the antechamber spoke for the first time. “It’s seventeen-thirty hours, sire.”

“Already?” The Gregor glanced at his wristcom, then looked apologetically at Tej, Rish, and Ivan. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go. I still need to have a few words with my Auditor, here, before we travel our separate ways.”

Lady Ekaterin stood up smoothly. “Perhaps Tej and Rish would care to see a little more of Vorkosigan House before you take them home, Ivan. And I could show them the Barrayaran garden.”

Ivan Xav’s nod endorsed this, and they made what Tej hoped were correct formal farewells and followed their hostess out.

In the front hall, Rish’s steps slowed as she stared downward. Her hands twitched, as if she wanted to bend and touch the art underfoot. Or dance across it, pinwheeling. “Is this a recent installation?” she asked Lady Ekaterin. “It’s so beautiful. And unexpected. It looks new…?”

Lady Ekaterin smiled, obviously pleased. “When Miles and I were first married, he encouraged me to put some stamp of my own on the house—I mean, besides the Barrayaran garden. It took me a long time to decide what. Then one day my mother-in-law was telling me about some unhappy events that she always associated with the old black-and-white marble tiles that used to be here for, oh, decades, and I thought of this.” She gestured in a sweeping arc, from the lavish floor to the lush walls.

She went on, “I was born and grew up on South Continent, where such fine work in natural colored stones is very much a regional art form—the north favors wood as a medium. There was a famous stone mosaic artist whose work I’d adored for years, but could never afford. Miles flew down, quite suddenly one day, and practically kidnapped the poor woman out of her semi-retirement. I worked closely with her on all the botanical details—it took over a year to design and install, not to mention walking the Vorkosigan’s District to collect as much suitable stone as could be incorporated. It represents a mixed native Barrayaran and Old Earth ecosystem—just like some places around Vorkosigan Surleau, at the foot of the mountains.”

Ivan Xav vented a short chuckle. “When they broke up the old floor, people took the fragments away as historical souvenirs. I saw some of them for sale for an ungodly amount of money, later. If you’d thought to sell ’em yourselves, Ekaterin, you could have funded the whole replacement with the proceeds.”

She laughed, too, but said, “I suspect the fresh start suited everyone better.” She turned to Tej. “Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is very close friends with Ivan’s mother, you know. Cordelia has frequently mentioned to me how much she treasured having a woman friend, when she first came to Barrayar as a bride and a stranger, to show her how to go on here—all those things the men didn’t know. At least there’s no war on, this time. Perhaps when Miles and I get back from Sergyar, we can visit again…?”

A heartbreakingly kind offer, Tej thought. She smiled, but shook her head. “We don’t expect to be here that long.”

“Ah,” said Lady Ekaterin, with a curious glance at Ivan Xav. “That’s a pity. Well, let’s just take a stroll through the dining room wing, and then we can go out the back and around to my garden…”

When Tej had first set foot on Barrayar, she’d felt she couldn’t get away again soon enough. Now, after less than two days, even the nebulous plans for their departure in unknown weeks seemed to loom up before she was ready for them. It was as if the whole blasted planet was bent on seducing her…Odd thought. She shook it from her head, gripped Ivan Xav’s anxiously proffered arm, and followed her hostess.

Chapter Eleven

A bit of rest being overdue for everyone, Ivan and his guests spent the day following the alarming interview with Gregor in the confines of Ivan’s flat. The women seemed content to limit their explorations of Barrayar to the safety of the comconsole, with meals delivered from some of the large array of providers of provender to bachelors on Ivan’s auto-call list. It wasn’t till conversation over a late brunch the next noon that Ivan discovered that his ladies’ objections to venturing out lay not in mistrust of his security, but in distaste for his groundcar. He then had the happy thought of renting a larger vehicle for the week, an inspiration greeted with applause. They were just discussing his offered menu of places to go and things to see in and around Vorbarr Sultana when they were interrupted by his door chime.

Tej and Rish both jerked in fresh alarm.

“No, no, it’s all right,” Ivan told them, swallowing his last bite of vat-ham and rising to answer it. “It has to be someone on my cleared list, or the front desk would’ve called for permission to let ’em come up.”

Not that
cleared
necessarily equated to
welcome
, Ivan reflected, when he checked the security vid to find Byerly Vorrutyer waiting in the corridor, looking around and tapping his fingers tensely on his trouser seam. Maybe it was time to review that list, and take certain names off it…Reluctantly—wasn’t this how he’d fallen into all of this trouble in the first place?—Ivan opened the door and let By in, rather like a delivery boy bringing not delicious meals, but bags of snakes.
No tip for you, By.

By was perfectly neat, tidy, and well groomed, but he had a harried look in his eye. “Hello, Ivan,” he said, padding past his host. “Is everyone all still here? Ah, yes, good. Hello, Rish, Tej.” He waved to the women lingering around Ivan’s little dining table, who sat up with interest and waved back, and helped himself to a seat, settling in with a sigh.

“If you’re looking to hide out from my mother,” said Ivan, “this likely isn’t the best place.”

“Too late for that,” said By. “For the love of mercy, give me a drink.”

“Isn’t this, like, the equivalent of dawn for you? Drinking before breakfast is a sign of serious degeneration, you know.”

“You have no idea what serious degeneration is, Ivan. I just had a very long interview with your mother. Worse than my ImpSec debriefing by far, and
that
took a full day.”

Ivan balanced mercy against a tempting heartlessness. Mercy won by a hair, so he brought Byerly a clean glass to share out their champagne and orange juice, heavy on the champs. Byerly evidently wasn’t in a fussy mood, for he didn’t even look at the label till after he’d poured and taken his first sip, not quite a gulp, and raised a brow in belated appreciation.

“I’d have thought you would’ve had the sense to duck her,” said Ivan, settling back into his own chair.

“Wasn’t given a chance. I was publicly arrested in the Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport by an ImpSec goon squad as soon as I stepped off the shuttle yesterday, and hauled away in handcuffs.”

“Ivan Xav’s mother did that?” said Tej, sounding impressed. “She just sent Christos and a car for us.”

Byerly appeared to contemplate this. “Much the same thing, I suppose. It was actually my handler’s bright idea for getting me to my debriefing discreetly, now that the Vormercier scandal has hit the news. The public tale for me will be that I had no idea that all this brotherly chicanery was going on; I was just the caterer for the party yacht. Drinks, drugs, girls, you know.”

“Girls?” said Ivan. “I don’t think the term for that is
caterer
, By.”

By shrugged one shoulder. “They were actually my co-agents. ImpSec has found that it’s often better to recruit from those already in the trade, giving them a step up in the world in return for their loyalty, than to start with a trained agent and persuade them to—well, you see. I called right after I left your wedding, told them to get the hell off Vormercier’s yacht, met them on the orbital transfer station to, supposedly, go shopping—that was our code phrase for pulling the plug. We were all three boarding a commercial flight to Barrayar by the time Desplains and your crew descended on the
Kanzian.
Desplains’s jump-pinnace passed us by us
en route
, I suppose—ours wasn’t the fastest ship. Nor the best cabin. We had to share.” A smile flickered over Byerly’s face. “We were commended for our economy, though. ImpSec being in the throes of one of its periodic budget spasms.”

“Hot bunks?” inquired Ivan. “What suffering you ImpSec weasels do endure, to be sure. Just you and two beautiful call girls, stuck together for eight days in a tiny room with nothing to do. It must have been hell.”

“Not
quite
nothing,” Byerly murmured back, taking another sip of champagne and orange juice. “We had all those reports to write…”

“What’s a call girl?” asked Tej, her brows crimping in puzzlement.

“Uh…” Ivan sought a translation. “Like a Betan licensed practical sexuality therapist, only without the licensed and the therapy parts.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Like a grubber sex worker. That doesn’t sound altogether safe.”

“It isn’t,” said By. “It’s not a trade that attracts the risk-averse, let us say.”

“Like an informer?” inquired Rish, with a small blue smile.

He raised his glass to her, and drained it. “There are parallels. Combine that
with
informer, and you may perhaps guess why I was anxious to extract them before the hammer came down.”

“Hm,” she said, eyeing him in fresh evaluation.

“So ImpSec released me back into the wild today, supposedly after a grueling night of incarceration and involuntary fast-penta interrogation, which cleared me of complicity in Vormercier’s crimes. But left me looking rather a public fool. All good so far.” He scowled, and added, “I was also commended for my months of meticulous and, if I may say it, wearing work on the Vormercier case, and raised one pay grade.”

“Congratulations!” said Rish. “But…you don’t look happy…?”

By’s lips twisted. “And then I was promptly reprimanded and docked one pay grade for involving you, Ivan.”

“Oh.” Ivan almost added
Sorry!
till he reflected that, actually, it
wasn’t
his fault. Had he asked By to hand-deliver him a bride? No. Not to mention the
stunned
,
tied up
, and
threatened with arrest and/or the admiral’s sarcasm
parts.

“They did it that way on purpose, you know.” By brooded. “If they’d presented it the other way around, it wouldn’t have been nearly so stinging. Or just said nothing at all, which would have come to the exact same end. Far more efficiently.”

Ivan assured Rish, who seemed taken aback, “Don’t worry about it. Byerly’s pay grade goes up and down a lot. Think of it as white noise in a general upward trend.”

“This marked a new speed record, though,” By grumbled.

Tej was still looking thoughtful. “How
does
one become a spy?” she asked Byerly.

His dark brows flicked in amusement. “Thinking of applying? A portion of candidates are filtered in from the Service side of things. Good people in their way, but, let us say, afflicted with a certain uniformity of world-view. Some are purpose-recruited from the civilian side, generally for some special expertise.”

“So which way did you get recruited?” asked Rish.

He waved his glass in a what-would-you gesture. “I came in by the third route, recruited piecemeal by a working Domestic Affairs agent. I had arrived in the capital at the age of not quite twenty, bent on going to hell as expeditiously as possible in my own callow fashion—meaning, as like to the other callow, ah, what Ivan and his ilk call
town clowns
, as I could manage. It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company—I more hunted them down—but among all the bad apples in my chosen barrel was one who was…not. He used me for a few favors, found me satisfactory, assigned me more small tasks, then larger ones, tested me…” Byerly grimaced at who-knew-what memory—Ivan suspected he wasn’t going to tell that one. “And then one day made me an offer which, by that time, did not astonish me—though it illuminated many things in retrospect. I was cycled through a few ImpSec short courses, and the rest was apprenticeship. And, ah…more spontaneous learning experiences.” He poured himself more champagne and orange juice. He doubtless needed the vitamins.