Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (26 page)

“Which brings me to the moment,” By went on. “We need to—”

“Wait, you skipped over my mother,” said Ivan.

“Would that I could have. She appeared to be remarkably well informed. I tried to explain that my testimony was redundant, but she insisted on the extra angle of view. What I was
about
to say is, that before any of you here go out into circulation in Vorbarr Sultana—I mean, beyond the extremely select company you’ve already kept—we need to get our stories straight about what really happened on Komarr.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, unsurprised. “Not a social visit, then.”

“Hardly.” Byerly glanced under his lashes at Rish. “Well, mostly not, but I’ll get to that later. Having, miraculously, not yet blown my cover and lost my livelihood, I would like to keep it that way.”

Ivan conceded the validity of this concern with a nod.

“The short version will be that Ivan met you, Tej, on Komarr when he went to mail his package. You indulged in a whirlwind affair, and, when you were suddenly threatened with deportation by Komarran immigration, he married you in a fit of gallantry.”

Tej wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“What, you were beautiful, you were in danger, and I hadn’t got laid yet,” said Ivan. “Seems simple enough.”

Byerly tilted his head. “You know, you were doing well there, Ivan, till that last—never mind. Verisimilitude is everything. Speaking of which, I was told Tej and Rish may as well go on being themselves for as long as they are on Barrayar. Making a virtue of necessity, as erasing them from earlier in the record would be nearly impossible, with all the trail you’ve left—like an Emperor’s Birthday parade, compete with marching bands and an elephant. Highborn but destitute refugees fleeing from a disastrous palace coup—Barrayarans will understand that part, have no fear, even if they remain suspicious of your Jacksonian aspects.” His eye fell on Ivan, and he added meditatively, “You spotted me on Komarr by chance, and nabbed me for a known witness when you suddenly needed one. I wonder if you should have been drunk at the time?”

“At dawn?” said Ivan indignantly. “No!” He added in false cordiality, “You’re welcome to have been, if you like.”

“What, and besmirch my impeccability as a witness? Surely not.”

“In other words,” said Tej slowly, “pretty much the same tale as we’ve been telling everyone. Except for Admiral Desplains, Lady Vorpatril, Simon Illyan, Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, Emperor Gregor…” She trailed off, plainly finding it an uncomfortably long list for a closely-held secret.

“It’s all right,” Ivan assured her. “That bunch holds more secrets among ’em than I can rightly imagine.”

“Moving on to my concerns,” Byerly continued. “In the interests of spreading the correct cover story as soon as possible to as many observers as possible, Rish, I wonder if you would care to attend a select little soirée with me this evening. Dinner beforehand, perhaps?”

“Go out?” Rish’s eyes grew wide with both longing and alarm. “On a date? With you? On
Barrayar
?”

Byerly tilted his free hand judiciously back and forth. “Not exactly a date. I need to get out and about to complain, gossip, backstab, and of course curse Theo Vormercier and ImpSec—jointly, severally, and loudly. A tough job, but somebody’s got to, and all that.”

“What about my”—Rish waved a hand down the slim length of her body—“non-standard appearance?”

“Some extra distraction for people’s eyes and minds while I set about my tedious task of disseminating disinformation seems…useful. Famous foreign artist, enjoying refugee status in the train of a mysterious romance, or possibly scandal, involving the scion of one of the stodgiest of high Vor families—I guarantee they’ll muscle past their prejudices for a taste of
that
. And in the company of the Vorrutyer clan’s most debonair non-heir, at that. Our audience will be positively agog.” He smiled. Ivan bared his teeth. Byerly ignored him, and went on, “Simultaneously, it will begin the process of habituating them to you. Also, it will give you a chance to see a bit of Barrayar
not
in Ivan’s stodgy company.”

“I am not stodgy! And your company is notoriously, notoriously unfit for…well, unfit, anyway!”

Rish raised her golden brows, and murmured, “Hm!” She regarded Byerly for a long moment through, narrowed, considering eyes. And flared nostrils? “It sounds a small enough task to start on. I think…yes.”

“I believe you will find the evening not without elements of interest,” By purred in triumph. “And I shall be fascinated by your observations.”

“What should I wear?”

“Ah, cerulean on the surface, woman to the bone. Casual-chic and striking would do the job nicely. A touch of the exotic a plus.”

Ivan thought the exotic was more of a
default
, but Rish merely said, “I can do that.”

Ivan struggled with a formless frustration. Rish was not his spouse, nor did he stand in any way
in loco parentis
to her. But who would be blamed, if something went wrong? Yeah. On the other hand, this would give him and Tej the flat to themselves for the whole evening. They could order in, and, and…Ivan finally managed, “Well…well, if you’re taking
my employee
out into deep waters, make damn sure you give her a better briefing than you gave me!”

Byerly set down his emptied glass and raised a brow. “Ivan, do I tell you how to run Ops?”

As Ivan sputtered, By grinned, arranged the hour for his return to collect Rish, stood up, and sauntered out, all in fine By style again. About a liter of Ivan’s most expensive champagne had relaxed him, presumably.

Ivan returned from escorting Byerly to the door and making sure it was locked after him to find Tej and Rish dividing the last of the fresh orange juice and frowning curiously.

“So…is By bi?” Tej asked. “Bisexual, that is.”

“I have no idea what By’s real preferences are,” Ivan stated firmly. “Nor do I wish to know.”

“What, couldn’t you smell him, that first night he came in on Komarr?” said Rish. Addressing Tej, Ivan hoped. “He’d had a busy two days or so. Any lingering scents from prior to that were too attenuated to discern.”

“He was pretty confusing,” said Tej. “In all ways, including that one.”

“To be sure, though I’d call it more compounded than confusing. But whether his contacts were sequential or together, for business or pleasure, enjoyed or endured, even I couldn’t guess.”

“I
don’t
want to
know
this,” Ivan repeated, although in a smaller voice. He bethought him of a new caution. “You do realize, Byerly has almost certainly been ordered by his handlers to keep a close eye on you? Surveillance is what he
does
. What could be a more efficient way of keeping you under his thumb than to ask you out himself?”

Rish smirked and rose. “There’s nothing that says a man can’t enjoy his work.” She added over her shoulder, as she drifted out like some exotic blue blossom floating down a stream, “Come on, Tej. Help me sort through this crazy Barrayaran wardrobe.”

Tej paused to whisper in reassurance to Ivan, “She adores being seen, you know. She’s bound to have a good time.” She bounced after Rish with a sort of happy-teakettle chortle.

A more horrid notion occurred to Ivan then. What if Byerly wanted Rish not for a smokescreen, but as bait? What could be a more efficient method of drawing their syndicate pursuers out to where ImpSec could see and nail them than that?

Well
, Ivan reflected morosely,
one way or another, at least ImpSec is on the job
.

*
 
*
 
*

Rish returned to the flat very late that night; to Tej’s secret bemusement, Ivan Xav stayed up to let her in—but not Byerly, who had escorted her to the door, whom he sent to the right-about with complaints about keeping people awake past their bedtimes. By’s ribald return remarks merely made him grumpier. The next night, Rish had Ivan Xav issue her a door remote. Byerly took her out again, although not to a party, but to a dance performance put on by some touring folk group from the western part of the continent, his former and apparently forsaken home. On the third night, Rish called on Byerly’s wristcom to tell Tej not to wait up; she’d probably be back around noon the next day. Ivan Xav grumbled disjointedly.

The next morning, however, was his birthday, an event Tej had been anticipating with growing curiosity. They arose in the dark before dawn and dressed rather formally, he donning his green captain’s uniform for the first time on his week’s leave. They ate no breakfast, merely drank tea, and then he bundled her into his sporty groundcar and they threaded the dark, quiet streets, although to no great distance away. His driving was, thankfully, subdued, though whether because of the bleary hour of the day or the solemn task they were to undertake, she wasn’t sure.

He hadn’t been very forthcoming about the ceremony, some traditional Barrayaran memorial for his dead father that apparently involved burning a small sacrifice of hair—after it had been clipped from one’s head, Tej was relieved to learn. They pulled up in a street lined by older, grubbier, lower buildings, where a municipal guard vehicle was parked, its lights blinking. Two guardsmen were setting up a pair of lighted traffic deflectors on either side of a bronze plaque set in the pavement. The guard sergeant hurried over and started to wave Ivan out of the parking spot into which they eased, but then reversed his gesture into a beckoning upon recognizing the car and its driver.

“Captain Vorpatril, sir.” The man saluted as Ivan Xav helped Tej out. “We’re just about ready for you, here.”

Ivan nodded. “Thank you, sergeant, as always.”

Tej stood on the sidewalk in the damp autumn chill and stared around. “This is where your father died, then?”

Ivan Xav pointed to the plaque, glinting among the amber-and-shadow patterns woven by the street lights. “Right over there, according to Mamere. Shot down by the Pretender’s security forces, while they were trying to make their escape.”

“Wait, she was
there
? I mean, here? At the time?”

“Oh, yes.” He yawned and stared sleepily down the street, then perked up slightly as a long, sleek, familiar groundcar turned onto the block. The municipal guardsman waved it into its reserved parking space with studied officiousness, and saluted its occupants as they disembarked. Lady Vorpatril was accompanied, or escorted, by Simon Illyan, with the driver Christos bringing up the rear and holding a large cloth bag that clanked.

The guardsmen took up parade-rest poses at a respectful distance away, and Christos knelt in the street to withdraw a bronze tripod and bowl from the bag, setting them up next to the plaque. He nodded to his mistress and went to join the guardsmen; they greeted each other and conversed in low tones, then one of the guardsmen went out into the street to direct the growing trickle of traffic safely around the site.

“Good morning, Ivan,” Lady Alys greeted her son. “Happy birthday, dear.” She hugged him, and he returned her what seemed to be the regulation peck on the cheek. He nodded thanks to Illyan’s echoed, “Happy birthday, Ivan. Thirty-fifth, isn’t it?

“Yes, sir.”

“Halfway through your Old Earth three-score-and-ten, eh? Incredible that we’ve all survived so long.” He shook his head, as if in wonder. Ivan grimaced.

The War of Vordarian’s Pretendership had been more in the nature of an abortive palace coup, as Tej understood it from her recent reading. Shortly after the ascension of the five-year-old Emperor Gregor under the regency of Aral Vorkosigan, the rival Count Vidal Vordarian and his party had made a grab for power. In the first strike, they’d secured the capital city, the military and ImpSec headquarters, and the young emperor’s mother, but the boy himself had slipped through their fingers, to be hidden in the countryside by Vorkosigan’s gathering forces. It had proved an ultimately fatal fumble.

There had followed a months-long standoff, minor skirmishes while each side frantically maneuvered for allies among the other counts, the military, and the people. Captain Lord Padma Vorpatril and his wife, Lady Alys, relatives and known allies of Regent Vorkosigan, had been cut off in the capital during the coup and gone into hiding. Padma’s death rated barely a footnote, less even than the skirmishes. Had it been a chill and foggy night like this?

How much more, not less, surreal the tale all seemed, now that Tej had been in the same room—and shared cream cakes—with the grown-up, forty-year-old Gregor. Not to mention…

The present Lady Alys, composed and commanding, turned to take Tej by the hands. “Good morning, Tej. I’m pleased you came.”

Tej considered the significant difference between
husband shot
and
husband shot in front of your eyes
. She ducked her head, suddenly shy before this woman in a whole new way. “Thank you,” she managed, unsure what else to say.

“This is the first such memorial service you will have seen, I understand?”

“Yes. I’d never even heard of them before.”

“It’s nothing at all difficult. Especially not after thirty-five repetitions. Sometimes people perform it on the anniversary of their loved one’s death, sometimes on their birthday, sometimes other occasions. As need arises. Keeping the memory alive, or getting in the last word, depending.” A dry smile turned her lips. The amber light leached the color from her face, and turned Ivan Xav’s uniform drab olive.

Lady Alys and Ivan Xav knelt by the brazier. With a brisk efficiency, Lady Alys pulled a plastic sack of scented bark and wood shavings from the cloth bag and upended it into the metal bowl. She pulled a smaller packet from her purse and shook out a mat of black and silver hair clippings atop. Ivan rummaged in his trouser pocket and unearthed a similar packet, adding a fuzzy black blot to the pile. Parsimoniously saved from their most recent haircuts, maybe? They both stood up.

Lady Alys nodded to the plaque. “This is where my husband was shot down by Vordarian’s security forces. Nerve disruptors—poor Padma never had a chance. I’ll never forget the smell…burning hair, among other things. This ceremony always brings that back.” She grimaced. “Ivan was born not an hour later.”