Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (48 page)

“An exaggeration. Again. Though not by much, this time.” Dad smiled without showing his teeth, and turned to Tej, but then turned back. “And what name are you going by, these days?”

“Vigo Imola.”

“Vigo, meet my daughter, Baronette Tejaswini Arqua.”

Tej shook hands, wondering. Formerly, on these business stops with her sisters or mother, she had been named
our driver
, or not introduced at all, or left with the car. “People usually call me Tej.” Or
Lady Vorpatril
, but none of her family had used her new name yet. She stifled an unruly urge to trot it out here; Dada was plainly going into dealing-mode.

“Delightful! I would guess she gets her looks from her mother?” Imola’s gaze swept her up and down; he scored a point, or two, by not lingering on her chest. “Mostly.”

“Fortunately,” said Dada, with his low laugh. Their host pulled up a pair of serviceable chairs, and gestured them both to sit.

“Where do you two know each other from?” asked Tej. Sometimes she got an answer, after all.

“In a former life, Vigo was my planetary liaison officer when I was a captain in the Selby Fleet,” said Dada. “Just before I met your mother.”

“And weren’t those the days,” said Imola, planting himself comfortably behind his desk once more. “Was old Selby insane, to take that defense contract with Komarr?”

“We were young. And probably thought we were immortal,” said Dada.

“Yeah, I got over
that
about then,” said Imola. Imola’s underlying accent was Komarran, Tej judged, overlain by a long residence on Barrayar; in this urban environment, very blended. “Who would’ve thought that a backward planet like this could field such an aggressive fleet?”

“Not your Komarran comrades, it seems.”

“Huh.” Imola shook his head at some old military memory. “So what the devil are you doing on Barrayar? I thought House Cordonah had suffered an extremely hostile takeover. Prestene, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, the bastards.” At the name, Dada bit his thumb and made a spitting gesture. “It’s a long story, very roundabout. I’ll tell you the whole tale at some more leisured moment. So, you ended up in the transshipping business.”

“As you see.” Imola waved around at his unpretentious company offices.

“Ah…
all
of it?”

Ser Imola smiled, reached under his desk, and turned something off. Or on. “Sometimes. If the price is right. And the risks are low. The second being more important than the first, these days.” He heaved a sigh. “I’m not as ambitious as when we were younger. Nor as energetic. Nor as crazy.”

“Your end should be low risk. The price…we’ll need to discuss.”

“So what do you have for me?” Imola inquired. “Weight and volume? Perishability? Live or inert? Live costs more.”

“Inert, as it happens. Weight and volume to be determined, though it won’t be high bulk. But you ship live cargo? How does that jibe with
low risk
?”

Imola smiled in satisfaction. “We solve the perishability problem by shipping all such consignments cryo-frozen. The new generation of portable cryochambers being much more reliable, with longer service cycles. Shipping deceased expats or ill-fated tourists who want to be treated or buried back home is a legitimate part of the business, see. I have a contact on the medical side who sends clients my way, or sometimes helps prep them, and if we occasionally slip in a few extras on the manifest, the documentation is all in order.”

Dada’s brows twitched up. “The cargo takes a risk.”

“For voluntary cargo, well, they’re willing. For involuntary cargo, their shippers are usually even more willing. Our losses in transit are actually lower. And it’s vastly cheaper, since they don’t have to send handlers along to thwart escapes
en route
. The method does depend on having adequate cryorevival facilities on the far end, but that’s not my problem.” Imola waved a didactic finger. “The trick, as always, is not to get greedy—not try to ship too often, or too many at once. There are only so many tragic accidents to go around. We reference real ones, whenever we can.”

Dada nodded approval. “Very clever. I see you’re not too old to innovate.”

“It was my son-in-law’s idea, to give credit where it’s due. My daughter married this Barrayaran boy, some years after the annexation. I wasn’t thrilled at first, but he’s come along. Junior partner. He’s the
Kovaks
. Our medical contact is his brother.”

“Glad to hear you’re keeping it in the family. That’s…almost always safer.” Another brief grimace of a smile.

“Heh, daughters getting married—that’s a crap shoot to make the old days look sensible. You don’t know
what
they’ll drag in. My other one married this Komarran fellow, who is completely useless but at least lives five jumps away. You folks’ve got the right idea out in the Whole, Shiv—pre-vetted contracts, money and considerations up front.”

“Oh, well…” Dada did not follow this up, to Tej’s relief. “Can you get local ground transport—a mid-sized cargo van, say?”

“I have vans. And loading crews.”

“That aren’t traceable back to you?”

“That could be done, too.” Imola’s eyes narrowed with interest.

“We would do our own loading. Could you get it by this weekend?”

“Probably.”

“And very private storage?”

“Could be made available.”

“Deal would be, park your van overnight in a certain underground garage in the Old Town. Send someone in on foot to drive it away in the morning. We might need a second night, in which case best have a different van. One of us will meet you separately to oversee the unloading—some of the cargo may be delicate.”

Tej tried to picture the implied scene. A bucket brigade of Arquas spaced along the Mycoborer tunnel, silently hand-carting contraband all night? They might just about do it. Heavy loads that could not be broken down might have to be regretfully abandoned—happily, this did not include gold coins. Nothing inside the old lab could be very large, though, or its original owners could not have squeezed it down through the elevator shaft, the one Grandmama had said she’d once been responsible for blowing up, as last haut woman out.

“Once our target location is cleared and the goods safely stored,” Dada went on, “the transshipping arrangements could be completed at leisure, more carefully. Possibly in small batches.”

“Where to?”

“Not known precisely yet. Out of the Barrayaran Empire; some towards the Hegen Hub, some to Escobar.”

“Makes it hard to calculate a price. You thinking percentage or flat fee?”

“Until the items reach their final destination and are disposed of, they’re solid, not liquid. I think you might prefer flat fee, now, rather than an unknown amount decanted off an unknown amount, much later.”

“Why not both?” said Imola. “Flat fee up front, to be sure all possible expenses are covered, and the percentage after success. Say, fifteen percent. That’s pretty usual.”

Dada winced slightly. “Could be. We need to move quickly and quietly.”

“For a percentage, I can do quickly and quietly. So do we have a deal?”

After a short hesitation, Dada rose and reached across the desk; a brief handshake. “Deal.”

Imola leaned back and prepared to make a note. “So what’s the address of this garage of yours?”

Dada named it. Imola’s hand froze. “Shiv, do you know what’s across the
street
from that building?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Dada. “Hence our discretion.”

“You may not have spotted the scanners, but I guarantee any vehicle that parks within three blocks of ImpSec headquarters gets scrutinized somehow. And recorded.”

“Quite thoroughly scanned, entering that garage, yes. But—not leaving it. That one’s cursory, just to be sure outs match ins. We checked.”

“Ah.” Imola frowned, obviously thinking this through. His anonymous van would be arriving empty and innocent, yes. The driver would know nothing…“One of the ways I stay in business around here is that I don’t get involved with local politics. Strictly commercial, I am. Vorbarra District Guard and Imperial Customs are all bad enough. ImpSec—that’s too high up for me. Give you a nosebleed, those boys will.”

“I have no interest in local politics, myself.”

“Strictly commercial, is this?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Hm.” Imola stared at the address on his autofiler, evidently memorizing it, then deleted the screen. “You might have said.”

“You didn’t think I’d pester you with something trivial, did you?”

“No, I suppose not. You always were a beat ahead of the rest of us, back when.” Imola sighed. “Do give my best to your lady. She’s still with you, I suppose?”

Dada nodded.

“And the rest of the clan?”

“All safe with us, for now.” Dada, Tej noticed, did not go into the distressing details about Ruby and Topaz and Eric.

“Mustering for a fresh move on Prestene, are you? Or something?”

“More or less. Or something.” Dada’s lips twitched. “Or we might buy a tropical island.”

Imola looked nonplussed at this last, but said, “Eh, good luck on that. People just don’t keep up with each other, these scattered times. Does Udine still have her fancy dance troupe? Quite the show, I heard, when you were all on Cordonah Station.”

“Her Jewels, yes. And they will dance again,” said Dada firmly. “You’ll have to stop by, next you get out that way.”

After a few more anecdotes about the Good Old Days, which sounded like the Repulsive Old Days to Tej, Dada rose and they extracted themselves, and exited to the street once more. The fog was thinning, or perhaps just condensing into a cold drizzle.

“Let’s wait in the car,” Dada directed, when they’d made their way back to the pipe-layer’s building. “No point in stepping on Star’s script.”

She slid into the driver’s side, and Dada into the seat beside her. He turned to face her.

She eyed him sideways. “You weren’t quite straight with that man. Imola. Do you trust him or not?”

“The limits of trust depend much on whether you mean to do business more than once. But it’s just good practice never to show all your cards in the first round of a deal. One must maintain reserves. Besides, what he doesn’t need to know he can’t tell, not even under fast-penta. Speaking of sound practice. He knows that game.”

“I suppose.” Tej sighed.

“You don’t seem happy, honey.”

“None of us are just now, I expect.”

“True. Well, we’ll all be home—soon enough.”

He’s leaving out a few steps.
And the new House Cordonah was going to be unavoidably different from the old, Tej suspected. Home would be changed.
Or I will be.

“You know,” Dada went on, “you were Udine’s special gift to me. All the other kids, I was happy enough to let her play the haut geneticist, but you were merely gene-cleaned. Unmodified her, unmodified me. My almost-natural offspring.”

“I knew that.” Star had once called her
the control child
; it hadn’t been a compliment.

“I always wanted to see you do well.”

To prove what for you, Dada?

“I meant to hold out for something really special, when it came to your marital contract. Still could, you know.”

“Mm,” said Tej.

“But…there’s another possible deal in the air, now. How well do you like that Barrayaran boy?”

“Ivan Xav? I like him fine.” And one of the things she most liked about him, she realized, was that he’d had nothing whatsoever to do with any Arqua deals, ever. He was surrounded by his own Barrayaran style of crazy, true, but surprisingly little seemed to have rubbed off on him.

“Should a deal emerge that did involve him, would you be willing to be party to it?”

“What kind of a deal?” she asked automatically, then said, “Wait. Do you mean a marriage contract? We’re kind of a done deal that way, I thought.”
Count Falco said so.
And they’d made it themselves, with their own breath and voices—funny Barrayaran phrase, that. Their own breath and no one else’s. “The only way that deal could change is to be
un
done.”

“Which could happen in so many ways. I can’t help but notice that you’ve not been pursuing any of them.”

“We’ve been
busy
. And then you all arrived, and we’ve been busier.”

“Does your Ivan Xav know that you think it’s a done deal? Or your stepfather-in-law?”

“I…”
don’t know
, Tej realized. Did she even know herself, for real, for sure?

“Because if they don’t, I can certainly see no reason for you to tell them.
That
could be slick. Trade them something they already have, for…heh.
Considerations
, yes.”

Tej tried to keep her face from scrunching up in dismay. “Has this got anything to do with that private talk you had with Simon?”

He looked cagey. “Might.”

Her heart chilled. Ivan Xav had seemed very sure that his um-stepfather couldn’t be suborned by threats or bribed by wealth. But what about love?

In more than one form. It was plain that the strange, reserved man wanted some better relations with his stepson than he had yet been able to construct, if only to please his high Vor lady. And more: Simon liked Ivan Xav in his own right—in his own quietly awkward way—though Ivan Xav didn’t seem to see it. The late great Captain Illyan had been superb with security, it was said; maybe not so deft with family. He’d evidently never had one before, in all his long adult life, or was that only…his long adult career? But surely the man couldn’t be compromising his peculiar Barrayaran honor just to secure his stepson’s marriage. Simon was a mystery; how could you tell what he was thinking?

Although it was bad enough that Dada wanted to use her as a counter in his deals. Dada at least was
Dada
, Baron Cordonah for real.
Simon
had no right…

“Have you already made some kind of a deal with Simon about me?” she demanded in alarm.

“Mm, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a deal. More of a bet.”

“That’s
worse
.”

“Oh, it didn’t involve you. Yet. Though it was clear that you and Ivan Xav weighed in his calculations.”

“What did it involve?”