Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (20 page)

Chapter Ten

As Cordelia had foreseen, it was quite late by the time six overexcited and overtired children had at last been tied to their beds, or at least kissed goodnight and threatened with dire retribution if they popped up
one more time
. It took teamwork by four adults—Cordelia, Miles, Ekaterin, and the armsman’s daughter they’d brought along to help wrangle the kids in exchange for a generous stipend and the chance for an exciting trip offworld.

“We could have stunned them,” Cordelia wheezed, as the last door closed. “We have stunners…”

Their fond Da, who had actually been less use in the calming-down part than Cordelia had hoped, said, “Tempting, but Ekaterin would object.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Ekaterin faintly.

Indeed, she looked tired. Miles looked…wired, but that was his default mode. Cordelia considered just bagging the smoking remains of the evening and sending them to bed, too.

“Well!” said Miles, with a somewhat rehearsed-sounding cheeriness. “Now the grownups can sit down and talk.”

A mental review of all the times a worrisome Miles had been so remarkably elusive to her in his younger days paraded through Cordelia’s memory; she suppressed it.
Forgive, forget
. Well,
try
, anyway. She led them out to her favorite nook in the back garden, instead, pausing in the kitchen to snag a bottle of wine and three glasses, because the day staff had all gone home. In the soft shadows and low, colored lights they dragged the padded chairs around a small table, and she let Miles open and pour. His glass got a splash; hers, he filled nearly to the top before handing to her. Ekaterin’s glass was delivered half-full, or perhaps half-empty; after a wry hesitation, she topped it up herself.

“I use your garden every day,” Cordelia told Ekaterin. “For entertaining, diplomacy, work, and even, occasionally, sitting down and resting. It’s been a superb space.”

Her smile grew genuine. “Thank you. It will be good to get a chance to review it.”

“Actually, now you’re here, there’s another project I might have you look over. With the Gridgrad base project going live, my next goal is to move the planetary capital, while I still can. Which will, among other things, require a new Viceroy’s Palace. With a new garden, in a rather different climatic zone than this semi-desert.”

“That sounds interesting,” Ekaterin allowed. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying on this trip, though. And I didn’t plan to burden your staff with the children.”

Meaning, Cordelia decoded easily, that Ekaterin herself was understaffed for working. “I’ll see if I can rustle you up some local help, in that case.” Cordelia kicked off her shoes and wriggled her tired toes. “This was a wonderful surprise and I love you all dearly, Miles, but I’m quite tightly scheduled at present. Usually, I have several weeks’ notice to clear my time before a family visit.” She could see that the few breaks she’d earmarked for private time with Oliver were going to be the first to go on the fire, too. Dammit.

Ekaterin glanced at her husband, who was not-sipping wine and flexing his feet. She was far too loyal to say,
I
told
him this was a bad idea
, but Cordelia fancied she could read it in her body language.

Cordelia went on, “While a box of chocolates is a lovely gift, what I really need is a box of
plumbers
. You don’t happen to have a building-materials manufacturer up your sleeve, do you, Miles?”

“Sorry, no,” replied her son. “Ask Mark?”

“Tried that already. He’s not got back to me in any useful way, yet.”

“Ah.” Miles shifted uncomfortably. Probably looking for an opening to choke out his pitch, whatever it was. Ekaterin sat back and sipped, palpably not helping.

Not having been handed an easy hook, Miles refashioned the one in play. “So, ah…have you told Mark about this plan to resign the viceroyalty? And the, um, personal scheme?”

That was in reverse order of his chief concern, Cordelia suspected. “Yes, I sent a tightbeam to him and Kareen at the same time I messaged you and Ekaterin. And Gregor and Alys and Simon, for that matter. Don’t you people talk to each other anymore?”

“Mark’s offworld,” he excused this.

Slight, awkward pause, right. Cordelia prodded gently, “And Gregor and Alys and Simon? You didn’t bring me any personal greetings? I would almost trade the plumbers for those.”
Almost
.

“I talked to Gregor. He said he didn’t know any more than I did, and I should talk to you myself.”

Good boy, Gregor.
Cordelia smiled. She wondered when the adult Gregor had been apprised of the complexities in his greatest supporter’s private life. Not during the earlier Vorbarr Sultana days, she would swear. Not later than that period in-between, when Aral had sent Oliver off to build his career, and it was all assumed to have been an anomalous fling—
seven years was not just a fling, boys
—regretfully, gently, and carefully concluded. So who had conducted that briefing, if not her? Simon? Aral? Some tag team? Aral must have endorsed it, certainly. Simon would have been relieved. Gregor, well, who knew what Gregor thought of it all. But the reunion on Sergyar hadn’t thrown him.

Miles continued, “I was wondering what brought on this extraordinary decision. About the daughters. I mean, now.”

“I thought I explained all that in my tightbeam message.”

“Yes, but…”

Miles, at a loss for words? Cordelia leaned her head back against the cushion and observed, “You know, we’ll likely all get to bed earlier if you try for a little Betan frankness, here.”

“Good idea,” murmured Ekaterin. Yes, if Miles had been venting any Betan frankness heretofore, it had probably been to her. Beleaguered woman. Wasn’t this spring in Vorbarr Sultana, the busiest season for Ekaterin’s garden design business? She could only have been dragged away by a force of nature. Which, Cordelia conceded, Miles on a tear could be.

Miles straightened his shoulders and steeled himself to bluntness. Thankfully. “But you already
have
six grandchildren. Isn’t that, like, enough?” And in a somewhat smaller voice—getting down to it, she recognized the style, “Don’t you like my work?” And blinked, as if surprised by the words that had fallen out of his own mouth.

Such a raw truth should be handled with care. Cordelia hoped she was up to it. “I adore your work. Consider it my inspiration, if you like.”

“It seems like…double dipping, somehow.”

She grinned over her wineglass. “That, too.”
But I can. And I’m going to
. “Look on the bright side. I’m not nearly as greedy as your Count Vormuir.”

Vormuir had tried to help his underpopulated district by a scheme involving a bank of uterine replicators, some dubiously acquired eggs, and a single sperm donor—himself—till he’d been shut down by Imperial order. Not quite directly; he’d merely been ordered to supply his progeny with proper Vor dowries. One-hundred-eighteen of them. Ekaterin, who had originated that solution for the investigating Lord Auditor, made a face, laughing under her breath. Cordelia wondered how the count was doing these days. The first girls must be teenagers by now…

“Then why not when Da was still alive?” Miles’s voice, in the shadows, was smaller still.

That was harder. “We talked about it, a few times. He seemed to think he was too old to start such a long-term project.”
Maybe he’d been shrewd
. “If he’d lived to make it home, I might have persuaded him to it as, I don’t know, a retirement hobby.” Or not. Cordelia had been eleven years younger than Aral even without the Betan lifespan. Or maybe he had just been reluctant to give more hostages to fortune. From life came death, inevitably, and then grief. Possibly not something she ought to say to Miles, who had died once already. He might take it personally. He might be right to.

“Are you coming home, then? To retire?”

Hadn’t she mentioned that part of her plans? She really needed to review those tightbeam messages. She was losing track of what she’d said to whom. “No, I’m staying on Sergyar. I like everything about it except the name.” She wondered if she could fix that, as even the edited version of the late Crown Prince Serg was slowly fading from Barrayaran memory. And good riddance. “Barrayar was home while Aral was there. Now…” She didn’t want to say
I’m freer
, although it was true.

Miles’s voice grew nearly microscopic. “He still is, sort of.”

There was a place reserved for her beside that grave above the long lake at Vorkosigan Surleau. Was she planning to abandon that bed as well? The chill thought came to her that given his health issues, she might well outlive Miles. Thus no later change in her destination could dismay him, and there was no point in troubling him with such now. She settled on, “Of all of Barrayar, which he loved with all the passion, dispassion and anguish of his heart, Aral loved the lake place best. It’s so right that he be there.” And, experimentally, “But I prefer to build a more living monument to his memory.”

“Mm.” Miles seemed to take this in as a reconciling thought, suitably Barrayaran-romantic. Making this All About Aral would probably work on him rather well. She hid a grimace in a sip of wine.

“You really think you’ll be all right out here? So far away?”

Losing one parent could make a child—of any age—more anxious about the remaining one, true. She’d learned that when she was a lot younger than Miles. Aral had, too, having witnessed his mother’s political murder when he was eleven, though survivor Piotr had certainly been in a parental class by himself. So she perfectly understood why her son might suddenly want to put her in a safe box. The safe part she was fine with. The box, less so. “Have you somehow lost track of where I’ve been for the last thirteen years?”

That got through, a little. “Sorry,” he said gruffly, and drank more wine.

“So,” she said, changing, or at least spinning, the subject with ruthless cheer, “If I can pry open my schedule tomorrow, shall we take the kids to visit their new Aunt Aurelia down at the rep center? It’s actually just a short walk from here. I’ll bet I can get them a good behind-the-scenes tour. It could be very educational.”

Pitching Kayross as a sort of science museum worked better on Ekaterin than Miles, who was wearing a nonplussed expression. Ekaterin immediately responded, “Yes, really, you never know what experiences will spark a child’s interests. I’d love it.”

After which Miles, of course, could not refuse.

The wine bottle was empty. Deciding this was the best note she was going to find to stop and get three physically and emotionally exhausted people to bed, Cordelia stood up and firmly led the way.

And she still hadn’t got to Oliver, dammit. Well, one wormhole jump at a time.

* * *

As Jole escorted Freddie Haines purposefully down the street between the Viceroy’s Palace, where they had failed to find Cordelia and company, and Kayross, where he hoped to run his quarry to earth, she made one last attempt at escape.

“Really, sir, just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I know anything about babies. I was the
youngest
.”

“Freddie,” he said affably, “do you remember how much trouble you got into with the Kayburg guard for filching your da’s sidearm?”

She looked confused. “No…?”

“Precisely.”

Her face twisted up as she took the point.

“Think of this as the community service that you didn’t win from the night court. And I’m sure the Countess will recompense you generously for your services, unlike the night court. So, if you think it through—a good habit to get into, I might note—you see you are coming out ahead.” He added as he opened the clinic door for her, “It might even prove to be fun. The Vicereine’s grandchildren are a lively bunch.”

This was demonstrated as they found their way back to where the Vorkosigan family was being given a suitably modified VIP tour. Even just four of the six offspring managed to give an impression of an explosion of short humanity in the formerly quiet clinic. Their reactions to this excursion were interestingly varied. Helen seemed to be practicing a somewhat precocious studied teen indifference. Alex looked wary. Lizzie was plainly fascinated by the banks of replicators, pelting a tech with questions that sounded, from the snatches Jole caught, startlingly beyond her years. Taurie was busy being five, and had turned the drab tiles into an impromptu hopscotch grid in a complex pattern visible only to her.

Ekaterin’s eyes lit with joy when Jole presented her with his prize, and she shook Freddie’s hand in a very friendly way when he introduced them. Freddie managed one last gasp of resistance, despite looking considerably more daunted by a countess than by a mere admiral.

“I really don’t know much about babies, ma’am…”

“Oh, the two youngest will be looked after by their regular nanny. Alex and Helen”—Jole could sense her edit on the fly as the two drifted over to inspect the newcomer—“are too old for a babysitter as such. They’re really more in need of a native guide.”

Oh, good job, Ekaterin.

Freddie’s spine straightened considerably at this news. Ekaterin made the further introductions all round.

Jole put in, straight-faced, “Now, there will be no going out into the backcountry to blow up vampire balloons unless the Vicereine escorts you.”

Freddie winced. The twins both perked up, apparently not having realized that this healthy outdoor activity was among their options. After a thoughtful pause, Jole added, “Be sure she brings her laser pointer.”

This won him three extremely blank stares. Jole grinned and moved off in search of the Count. He found Miles standing with his mother by the bank that held, among other pre-persons, his sister Aurelia.

Miles gave up the viewer to Cordelia, and remarked, “Human beings really aren’t very prepossessing at this stage of the game.”

She peered into the display. “What, I recall you were enchanted with your own blobs.”

“Novelty?” he suggested. “It wears off.”

She smiled in profile. “
You
looked like a drowned kitten at five months along.”

Miles blinked. “You saw me?”

“Just a glimpse, between the time you were lifted out of the incision and the time I passed out from the hemorrhage.”