Mirror dance (32 page)

The Countess was silent, then her voice grew firmer. "I'd be more impressed by that complaint if you showed any signs of wanting to get to know him
now
. You've been avoiding him almost as assiduously as he's been ducking you."

"I cannot stop all government business for this personal crisis," said the Count stiffly. "As much as I might like to."

"You did for Miles, as I recall. Think back on all the time you spent with him, here, at Vorkosigan Surleau . . . you stole time like a thief to give to him, snatches here and there, an hour, a morning, a day, whatever you could arrange, all the while carrying the Regency at a dead run through about six major political and military crises. You cannot deny Mark the advantages you gave Miles, and then turn around and decry his failure to outperform Miles."

"Oh, Cordelia," the Count sighed. "I was younger then. I'm not the Da Miles had twenty years ago. That man is gone, burned up."

"I don't ask that you try to be the Da you were then; that would be ludicrous. Mark is no child. I only ask that you try to be the father you are now."

"Dear Captain . . ." His voice trailed off in exhaustion.

After a thoughtful silence, the Countess said pointedly, "You'd have more time and energy if you
retired
. Gave up the Prime Ministership, at long last."

"Now? Cordelia, think! I dare not lose control now. As Prime Minister, Illyan and ImpSec still report to me. If I step down to a mere Countship, I am out of that chain of command. I'll lose the very power to prosecute the search."

"Nonsense. Miles is an ImpSec officer. Son of the Prime Minister or not, they'll hunt for him just the same. Loyalty to their own is one of ImpSec's few charms."

"They'll search to the limits of reason. Only as Prime Minister can I compel them to go beyond reason."

"I think not. I think Simon Illyan would still turn himself inside out for you after you were dead and buried, love."

When the Count spoke again at last his voice was weary. "I was ready to step down three years ago and hand it off to Quintillan."

"Yes. I was all excited."

"If only he hadn't been killed in that stupid flyer accident. Such a pointless tragedy. It wasn't even an assassination!"

The Countess laughed blackly at him. "A
truly
wasted death, by Barrayaran standards. But seriously. It's time to stop."

"Past time," the Count agreed.

"Let
go
."

"As soon as it's safe."

She paused. "You will never be fat enough, love. Let go anyway."

Mark sat bent over, paralyzed, one leg gone pins and needles. He felt plowed and harrowed, more thoroughly worked over than by the three thugs in the alley. The Countess was a scientific fighter, there was no doubt.

The Count half-laughed. But this time he made no reply. To Mark's enormous relief, they both rose and exited the library together. As soon as the door shut he rolled out of the wing-chair onto the floor, moving his aching arms and legs and trying to restore circulation. He was shaking and shivering. His throat was clogged, and he coughed at last, over and over, blessedly, to clear his breathing. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, felt like doing both at once, and settled for wheezing, watching his belly rise and fall. He felt obese. He felt insane. He felt as if his skin had gone transparent, and passers-by could look and point to every private organ.

What he did not feel, he realized as he caught his breath again after the coughing jag, was afraid. Not of the Count and Countess, anyway. Their public faces and their privates ones were . . . unexpectedly congruent. It seemed he could trust them, not so much not to hurt him, but to be what they were, what they appeared. He could not at first put a word to it, this sense of personal unity. Then it came to him.
Oh. So that's what integrity looks like. I didn't know.
 

The Countess kept her promise, or threat, to send Mark touring with Elena. The ensuing few weeks were punctuated by frequent excursions all over Vorbarr Sultana and the neighboring Districts, slanted heavily to the cultural and historical, including a private tour of the Imperial Residence. Gregor was not at home that day, to Mark's relief. They must have hit every museum in town. Elena, presumably acting under orders, also dragged him over what must have been two dozen colleges, academies, and technical schools. Mark was heartened to learn that not every institution on the planet trained military officers; indeed, the largest and busiest school in the capital was the Vorbarra District Agricultural and Engineering Institute.

Elena remained a formal and impersonal factotum in Mark's presence. Whatever her own feelings upon seeing her old home for the first time in a decade, they seldom escaped the ivory mask, except for an occasional exclamation of surprise at some unexpected change: new buildings sprouted, old blocks leveled, streets re-routed. Mark suspected that the frenetic pace of the tours was just so she wouldn't have to actually talk to him; she filled the silences instead with lectures. Mark began to wish he'd buttered up Ivan more. Maybe his cousin could have sneaked him out to go pub-crawling, just for a change.

Change came one evening when the Count returned abruptly to Vorkosigan House and announced that they were all going to Vorkosigan Surleau. Within an hour Mark found himself and his things packed into a lightflyer, along with Elena, Count Vorkosigan, and Armsman Pym, arrowing south in the dark to the Vorkosigans' summer residence. The Countess did not accompany them. The conversation en route ranged from stilted to non-existent, except for an occasional laconic code between the Count and Pym, all half-sentences. The Dendarii mountain range loomed up at last, a dark blot against cloud shadows and stars. They circled a dimly glimmering lake to land halfway up a hill in front of a rambling stone house, lit up and made welcoming by yet more human servants. The Prime Minister's ImpSec guards were discreet shapes exiting a second lightflyer in their wake.

Since it was nearing midnight, the Count limited himself to giving Mark a brief orienting tour of the interior of the house, and depositing him in a second-floor guest bedroom with a view downslope to the lake. Mark, alone at last, leaned on the windowsill and stared into the darkness. Lights shimmered across the black silken waters, from the village at the end of the lake and from a few isolated estates on the farther shore.
Why have you brought me here?
he thought to the Count. Vorkosigan Surleau was the most private of the Vorkosigans' several residences, the guarded emotional heart of the Count's scattered personal realm. Had he passed some test, to be let in here? Or was Vorkosigan Surleau itself to be a test? He went to bed and fell asleep still wondering.

He woke blinking with morning sun slanting through the window he'd failed to re-shutter the night before. Some servant last night had arranged a selection of his more casual clothing in the room's closet. He found a bathroom down the hall, washed, dressed, and went in cautious search of humanity. A housekeeper in the kitchen directed him outside to find the Count without, alas, offering to feed him breakfast.

He walked along a path paved with stone chips toward a grove of carefully-planted Earth-import trees, their distinctive green leaves mottled and gilded by the beginnings of autumn color change. Big trees, very old. The Count and Elena were near the grove in a walled garden that served now as the Vorkosigan family cemetery. The stone residence had originally been a guard barracks serving the now-ruined castle at the lake's foot; its cemetery had once received the guardsmen's last stand-downs.

Mark's brows rose. The Count was a violent splash of color in his most formal military uniform, Imperial parade red-and-blues. Elena was equally, if more quietly, decorous in Dendarii dress-grey velvet set off with silver buttons and white piping. She squatted beside a shallow bronze brazier on a tripod. Little pale orange flames flickered in it, and smoke rose to wisp away in the gold-misted morning air. They were burning a death-offering, Mark realized, and paused uncertainly by the wrought-iron gate in the low stone wall. Whose? Nobody had invited him.

Elena rose; she and the Count spoke quietly together while the offering, whatever it was, burned to ash. After a moment Elena folded a cloth into a pad, picked the brazier off its tripod, and tapped out the gray and white flakes over the grave. She wiped out the bronze basin and returned it and its folding tripod to an embroidered brown and silver bag. The Count gazed over the lake, noticed Mark standing by the gate, and gave him an acknowledging nod; it did not exactly invite him in, but neither did it rebuff him.

With another word to the Count, Elena exited the walled garden. The Count saluted her. She favored Mark with a courteous nod in passing. Her face was solemn, but, Mark fancied, less tense and mask-like than he had seen since their coming to Barrayar. Now the Count definitely waved Mark inside. Feeling awkward, but curious, Mark let himself in through the gate and crunched over the gravel walks to his side.

"What's . . . up?" Mark finally managed to ask. It came out sounding too flippant, but the Count did not seem to take it in bad part.

Count Vorkosigan nodded to the grave at their feet:
Sergeant Constantine Bothari
, and the dates.
Fidelis.
"I found that Elena had never burned a death-offering for her father. He was my armsman for eighteen years, and had served under me in the space forces before that."

"Miles's bodyguard. I knew that. But he was killed before Galen started training me. Galen didn't spend much time on him."

"He should have. Sergeant Bothari was very important to Miles. And to us all. Bothari was . . . a difficult man. I don't think Elena ever was quite reconciled to that. She's needed to come to some acceptance of him, to be easy with herself."

"Difficult? Criminal, I'd heard."

"That is very . . ." The Count hesitated.
Unjust
, Mark expected him to add, or
untrue
, but the word he finally chose was ". . . incomplete."

They walked around among the graves, the Count giving Mark a tour. Relatives and retainers . . . who was Major Amor Klyeuvi? It reminded Mark of all those museums. The Vorkosigan family history since the Time of Isolation encapsulated the history of Barrayar. The Count pointed out his father, mother, brother, sister, and his Vorkosigan grandparents. Presumably anyone dying prior to their dates had been buried at the old District capital of Vorkosigan Vashnoi, and been melted down along with the city by the Cetagandan invaders.

"I mean to be buried here," commented the Count, looking over the peaceful lake and the hills beyond. The morning mist was clearing off the surface, sun-sparkle starting to glitter through. "Avoid that crowd at the Imperial Cemetery in Vorbarr Sultana. They wanted to bury my poor father there. I actually had to argue with them over that, despite the declaration of his will." He nodded to the stone,
General Count Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan
, and the dates. The Count had won the argument, apparently. The Counts.

"Some of the happiest periods of my life were spent here, when I was small. And later, my wedding and honeymoon." A twisted smile flitted across his features. "Miles was conceived here. Therefore, in a sense, so were you. Look around. This is where you came from. After breakfast, and I change clothes, I'll show you more."

"Ah. So, uh, no one's eaten yet."

"You fast, before burning a death-offering. They often tend to be dawn events for just that reason, I suspect." The Count half-smiled.

The Count could have had no other use for the glorious parade uniform here, nor Elena her Dendarii greys. They'd packed them along for that dedicated purpose. Mark glanced at the dark distorted reflection of himself in the Count's mirror-polished boots. The convex surface widened him to grotesque proportions. His future self? "Is that what we all came down here for, then? So that Elena could do this ceremony?"

"Among other things."

Ominous. Mark followed the Count back to the big stone house, feeling obscurely unsettled.

Breakfast was served by the housekeeper on a sunny patio off the end of the house, made private by landscaping and flowering bushes except for a view cut through to the lake. The Count re-appeared wearing old black fatigue trousers and a back-country style tunic, loose-cut and belted. Elena did not join them. "She wanted to take a long walk," explained the Count briefly. "So shall we." Prudently, Mark returned a third sweet roll to its covered basket.

He was glad for his restraint very shortly, as the Count led him directly up the hill. They crested it and paused to recover. The view of the long lake, winding between the hills, was very fine and worth the breath. On the other side a little valley flattened out, cradling old stone stables and pastures cultivated to Earth-green grasses. Some unemployed-looking horses idled around the pasture. The Count led Mark down to the fence, and leaned on it, looking pensive.

"That big roan over there is Miles's horse. He's been rather neglected, of late years. Miles didn't always get time to ride even when he was home. He used to come running, when Miles called. It was the damndest thing, to see that big lazy horse get up and come running." The Count paused. "You might try it."

"What? Call the horse?"

"I'd be curious to see. If the horse can tell the difference. Your voices are . . . very like, to my ear."

"I was drilled on that."

"His name is, uh, Ninny." At Mark's look he added, "A sort of pet or stable name."

Its name is Fat Ninny. You edited it. Ha.
"So what do I do? Stand here and yell 'Here, Ninny, Ninny'?" He felt a fool already.

"Three times."

"What?"

"Miles always repeated the name three times."

The horse was standing across the pasture, its ears up, looking at them. Mark took a deep breath, and in his best Barrayaran accent called, "Here, Ninny, Ninny, Ninny. Here, Ninny, Ninny, Ninny!"

The horse snorted, and trotted over to the fence. It didn't exactly run, though it did kick up its heels once, bouncing, en route. It arrived with a huff that sprayed horse moisture across both Mark and the Count. It leaned against the fence, which groaned and bent. Up close, it was bloody huge. It stuck its big head over the fence. Mark ducked back hastily.