Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (16 page)

Chapter Eight

On the grim anniversary that week that Jole had not marked on his calendar, he only saw Cordelia at a joint morning meeting between military and civil engineers to discuss Gridgrad infrastructure, or, more accurately, lack of infrastructure, and whose fault it was going to be. It ran long. In the hallway afterward, she touched his hand in passing, looking away; he caught hers and squeezed, and hers spasmed hard before opening again.

“Will you be all right, tonight?” he murmured.

She nodded shortly. “Dinner at the Betan consulate. I expect to be lobbied, and lobby back unmercifully. Immigration issues. You?”

“A queue of tightbeam reports from Ops HQ to read. Some to answer. Desplains and I are arm-wrestling over jump-point station logistics this week.”

“Good luck pinning him down. I mean to stop in at the rep center on the way home, after, for a quick visit. Just…” Her throat moved.

“…because.”

“Yeah.”

In this place, all he could give her was a nod, so he did. Her lips twitched up in silent understanding. As a smile, it was a travesty; as acknowledgement, sufficient unto the day.

* * *

Jole was able to organize another jaunt to inspect Lake Serena that weekend, though only a day-trip. To his regret, it was too breezy for the crystal canoe, but to his delight, the breeze sped the little sailboat around to the leeward side of the peninsula, where they found a quiet nook to tie up under some trees that bent to trail curtaining branches in the water. It was almost like a bower woven of wood, and decidedly more inviting for an intimate hour than bobbing around rudderless out in the open. The new radial-repellant spray seemed to work well, its brisk masking perfume more redolent of camp life than ballrooms. Alas for his late fantasy, the boat was notably less comfortable than the old bed, but a determined, if sometimes giggling, cooperation overcame all obstacles. Even a barked elbow failed to impede his blissful post-coital snooze, while his pillowing Cordelia seemed content to drift in quiet meditations of her own.

They shoved off again at length with just time for one tack across the wider part of the lake. As they approached the opposite shore, the sound of power-hammering drifted out over the water.

“Looks like Sergeant Penney’s getting a neighbor,” Cordelia observed, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand.

“And a mere five kilometers away,” Jole agreed. “I wonder if he’ll think Lake Serena is becoming too crowded?”

Her lips turned up. “His own fault, then, for renting his place and allowing Kayburg to find out about it.”

* * *

By Vorbarr Sultana standards, Kareenburg boasted little in the way of fine dining, but midweek they managed to engineer a not-too-working dinner at the same terrace restaurant where Cordelia had so upended his life recently with the gametes offer. They nibbled and talked through a fine fair sunset, and watched the town lights come on below in competition with the stars above. The stars were still winning, but probably not for much longer.

At one point, Cordelia bent forward with laughter at some turn of phrase, reaching out to touch his arm, but then her glance shifted beyond Jole’s shoulder toward the nearby table where her ImpSec bodyguard lurked attentively, and she withdrew her hand and straightened with a sigh.

“It’s not that the ImpSec duenna-corps that Chief Allegre sends me aren’t all nice, earnest boys and girls, but sometimes I wish I could drop them all in an oubliette. Why don’t I have an oubliette?” she added, as if suddenly struck by this lack. “I could have designed one into the Viceroy’s Palace when we were building it, easily enough. No foresight.”

He laughed. “It would go with your moniker.”

“I have a moniker?”

“Haven’t you heard it? They call you the Red Queen.”

She blinked and tossed back her last sip of wine. “Wasn’t she the chess piece who went around yelling ‘Off with their heads’? Or is it a bio-evolutionary reference?”

“I believe the bloodthirsty queen was a playing card. The chess queen was known for her sprinting.”

“You do wonder sometimes what they were ingesting, back on Old Earth. But yes, I certainly do have to run as fast as I can to stay in the same place. Though I suppose I could hope it’s for my hair. Is it intended as a compliment, or the reverse?”

“That seems to be malleable according to the tone of voice in which it is delivered.” Though he had come down sharply on one grumbler who had used it pejoratively in his hearing.

“Well…there have been worse political nicknames in Barrayaran history.”

“Mm,” said Jole, not disagreeing. Speaking of security, he was himself the recipient of a painfully polite memo from the local head of ImpSec-Sergyar, Colonel Kosko, pointing out that Jole’s own last physical-security short course was many years overdue for a refresher, and would he please not let the Vicereine’s notorious carelessness on the subject override his own mature judgment. That Kosko had sent a memo, and not just dropped a word in his ear when they’d seen each other in person, betrayed either a shrewd sense of just how unwelcome such comments were in his superior’s hearing, or a nervous desire for documentation. “But you do have to allow that if you were killed on their watch, there’d be nothing for the poor bastards to do, once the forms were filed and the court-martials concluded, but eat their own nerve disruptors.
En masse
.”

She grimaced. “If Aral had been assassinated back in Vorbarr Sultana…” She did not quite complete the thought. She didn’t have to.

“Possibly.” He shrugged. “My feelings would hardly have been
less
complicated.”

She tapped his arm firmly, this time, in a gesture of strong negation. “Sergyar is safer. At least in terms of organized plots.
Dis
organized plots, well…”

“It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here.”

She sighed in agreement. “Even though everything else seems to be.”

“Indeed. Did you get any reply yet from your son Mark about entrepreneurs we could lure to Gridgrad to set up a materials plant? The offer of land?”

“He says he’ll put the word out, but he notes that as the land does not seem to come with streets, buildings, utilities, or a workforce, it’s not quite the bait one would hope.”

After dinner, they rode back to the Viceroy’s Palace in her vicereinal groundcar, driven by the alert bodyguard. They did not shed this appurtenance until they reached the double front doors, where he was smoothly excluded by Armsman Rykov. Cordelia led Jole upstairs to the door of her personal office—her public office was now in the converted barracks across the back garden. It made a short and pretty walk to work.

“I will be in conference with the Admiral, Ryk,” she told her seneschal. “Interruption level, mm, three, I think.”

Must involve emergency medical teams
, Jole recalled, right.

“Yes, milady. Sir.” Rykov maintained his usual expressionlessness, for which Jole was grateful. Cordelia closed the door on it with a bright smile.

As Jole’s imagination was cycling between actual confidential conferencing for which he’d somehow missed the memo, or rude but riveting visions involving the use of her comconsole desk for purposes its makers had never intended, Cordelia led onward to the far door, which proved to open into a full bathroom and from there into a modest bedroom overlooking the back garden.

“Ah,” he said, enlightened. “You moved.” If only across the hallway.

“Yes. The big suite”—the one she’d shared with Aral and, now and then, them with him—“was too big. I took a leaf from the Vorkosigan House generational shuffle and converted it into a guest suite.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been in here.”
Entirely unhaunted
.

“You might have, but I redecorated. Alys and Ekaterin advised.” That explained the serene style, now overlain with a practical clutter that was more Cordelia. Both aspects comforted him, and he moved into her welcoming arms without delay.

* * *

It was after midnight when Rykov let him back out the front doors. His lightflyer was parked across the drive, and so this was why she’d told him to come to the Palace and they’d ride to dinner together—planning ahead. Nicely smooth.

“Cordelia asked me to tell you she didn’t expect any more duties for you tonight, and you could turn in.”

“Very good, sir.” Rykov hesitated. “Do you plan to be having many more conferences with the Vicereine?”

God, I hope so
, Jole managed to keep from blurting. He hadn’t been drunk even earlier, right after dinner, but he felt a little inebriated still. “Cordelia…” He hesitated in turn. “Has indicated that she would actually prefer something more open, but I think discretion”—
is a hard habit to break
—“might be better advised.”
At least for now
.

“I am always,” stated Rykov, with a direct stare at him, “in favor of discretion.”

Allies of a sort, then?
I’ll try not to make your job any harder than it already is
seemed a mildly idiotic thing to say, so Jole returned only an acknowledging nod.

Letting himself into his own base apartment later, he looked around with new eyes. The prior Admiral of Sergyar Fleet had brought a family along and stayed in larger digs, a house off-base. Even after his latest promotion, Jole had contented himself with the same rather Spartan apartment in the senior bachelor officers’ building he’d occupied ever since he’d first been assigned to local space. All right, it was on a third-floor corner, and better supplied with windows; otherwise, the living room, single bedroom, bath and kitchenette were standardized and compact. A place to sleep, wash, keep his clothes, and grab breakfast. A base cleaning service and laundry allowed him to dispense with the batman that would otherwise be due his rank. He entertained at the officers’ mess, or assorted Kareenburg venues, or occasionally for formal functions jointly with the Vicereine at the Palace. A quarter of his time was spent on upside rotation anyway.

He tried to imagine bringing Cordelia here for a conference—Aral had visited now and again, as their opportunities arose—but, really. Besides, he lacked a Rykov to guard their privacy. And if Cordelia brought her armsman along, where would they stow him? Aral had excluded his own occasional outriders at the door with ruthless and utterly unselfconscious courtesy, sending them off to patrol on their own for imaginary hazards, or read in the downstairs lobby, or whatever they chose until he called them back. It wasn’t Vor arrogance, exactly, but whatever it was, prole Jole had never quite caught the knack. And…however misguidedly, Jole suspected his being alone with the Vicereine in his quarters would be seen differently than his being alone with the Viceroy.

After failing to imagine Cordelia here, he was suddenly struck by how much more out-of-place an infant would be. Let alone three of them. Family quarters. He would have to move to the base family quarters, he supposed. How would he—they—Jole and Sons fit in over there? There must be a few single parents in the crowd—how did they manage? Well, there was Fyodor Haines and his fractious Freddie, but Freddie was fifteen, outwardly mobile. The general—not yet a general then, of course, just a mid-grade officer—had not after all attempted to raise his infants himself, from scratch.

Was Cordelia’s model any help to Jole? Their two situations did not feel precisely parallel. He wasn’t sure what personal funds she held. The jointure of a count’s widow was not rigidly set, but constrained by law and custom to a range, never below a certain minimum nor above a certain maximum. Aral would certainly not have chosen the most straitened option for her. He might even have suspected Cordelia’s choice of more children, in the event of his premature death, and provided for it consciously.

There could have been no such thought for Jole, no place in Vor tradition or custom for this technological option, though one might perhaps stretch various provisions Vor lords sometimes made for their acknowledged bastards. But Jole’s sons would be legal and legitimate, properly fathered even in Barrayaran law, laboriously updated as it was. His lips twisted in dry amusement at that thought.

A Barrayaran admiral’s pay, though not generous by civilian or even galactic military standards, was expected to support a family, and normally did. Even an admiral’s retirement half-pay was less frugal than that of the prole household Jole had grown up in. His simple tastes had left him with more savings than he’d ever had the time to spend. It was merely a matter for careful management. Making do.
You get what you pay for
. He could choose to pay for this.

It wasn’t a father’s support this vision was missing, but a mother’s labor.

Jole’s childhood home had certainly not included servants. Yet even Cordelia, undeniably female, who’d grown up just as middling-prole and servant-less on Beta Colony, wasn’t planning to go it alone.
Seventy-six
might have something to do with that, true. Or just good sense.

On the other hand, Cordelia shared that noted Vorkosigan genius for personnel. If finding household help was a new challenge for Jole, Cordelia, forty years a high-Vor lady, even if simulated, certainly knew how by now. The obvious solution was to get her to find someone for him—hah.
Problem solved
. One did not reach Jole’s rank without learning how to delegate. He grinned, but his smile faded.

The nature of his work was a subtler problem. By oath, he owed the Emperor his time, his energy, his best efforts, and, if necessary, his life, all on an instant’s notice. How did that square with his taking on a twenty-year project of such profound responsibility? On the other hand, any parent, at any time, could be as unexpectedly run over by a groundcar. Maybe this wasn’t such a civilian versus military dilemma after all. Maybe it was a fundamental human risk. Which didn’t make it less intractable.

It came to Jole, staring around as he began to undress, that this space, however convenient it had been for his recent past, was much too small to hold his future. If he chose the great gamble.