The warrior's apprentice (4 page)

Two down, and a swallow of water. All of them, whispered something from the back of his brain, and you could come to a complete stop... He banged the nearlyfull container back onto the shelf.

His eyes gave back a muted spark from the bathroom mirror. “Grandfather is right. The only way to go down is fighting.”

He returned to bed, to re-live his moment of error on the wall in an endless loop until sleep relieved him of himself.

CHAPTER THREE

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Miles was awakened in a dim grey light by a servant apprehensively touching his shoulder.

“Lord Vorkosigan? Lord Vorkosigan?” the man murmured.

Miles peered through slitted eyes, feeling thick with sleep, as though moving under water. What hour—and why was the idiot miscalling him by his father’s title? New, was he? No...

Cold consciousness washed over him, and his stomach knotted, as the full significance of the man’s words penetrated. He sat up, head swimming, heart sinking. “What?”

“The—y—your father requests you dress and join him downstairs immediately.” The man’s tumbling tongue confirmed his fear.

It was the hour before dawn. Yellow lamps made small warm pools within the library as Miles entered. The windows were blue-grey cold translucent rectangles, balanced on the cusp of night, neither transmitting light from without nor reflecting it from within. His father stood, half-dressed in uniform trousers, shirt, and slippers, talking in a grave undertone with two men. Their personal physician, and an aide in the uniform of the Imperial Residence. His father—Count Vorkosigan? —looked up to meet his eyes.

“Grandfather, sir?” asked Miles softly.

The new Count nodded. “Very quietly, in his sleep, about two hours ago. He felt no pain, I think.” His father’s voice was low and clear, without tremor, but his face seemed more lined than usual, almost furrowed. Set, expressionless; the determined commander. Situation under control. Only his eyes, and only now and then, through a passing trick of angle, held the look of some stricken and bewildered child. The eyes frightened Miles far more than the stern mouth.

Miles’s own vision blurred, and he brushed the foolish water from his eyes with the back of his hand in a brusque, angry swipe. “God damn it,” he choked numbly. He had never felt smaller.

His father focused on him uncertainly. “I—” he began. “He’s been hanging by a thread for months, you know that...”

And I cut that thread yesterday, Miles thought miserably. I’m sorry... But he said only, “Yes, sir.”

The funeral for the old hero was nearly a State occasion. Three days of panoply and pantomime, thought Miles wearily; what’s it all for? Proper clothing was produced, hastily, in somber correct black. Vorkosigan House became a chaotic staging-area for forays into public set-pieces. The lying-in-state at Vorhartung Castle, where the Council of Counts met. The eulogies. The procession, which was nearly a parade, thanks to the loan from Gregor Vorbarra of a military band in dress uniform and a contingent of his purely decorative horse cavalry. The interment.

Miles had thought his grandfather was the last of his generation. Not quite, it seemed, for the damndest set of ancient creaking martinets and their crones, in black like flapping crows, came creeping from whatever woodwork they’d been lurking in. Miles, grimly polite, endured their shocked and pitying stares when introduced as Piotr Vorkosigan’s grandson, and their interminable reminiscences about people he’d never heard of, who’d died before he was born, and of whom—he sincerely hoped—he would never hear again.

Even after the last spadeful of dirt had been packed down, it was not ended. Vorkosigan House was invaded, that afternoon and evening, by hordes of—you couldn’t call them well-wishers, exactly, he reflected—but friends, acquaintances, military men, public men, their wives, the courteous, the curious, and more relatives than he cared to think about.

Count and Countess Vorkosigan were nailed downstairs. Social duty was always yoked, for his father, to political duty, and so was doubly inescapable. But when is cousin Ivan Vorpatril arrived, in tow of his mother Lady Vorpatril, Miles determined to escape to the only bolt-hole left not occupied by enemy forces. Ivan had passed his candidacy exams, Miles had heard; he didn’t think he could tolerate the details. He plucked a couple of gaudy blooms from a funeral floral display in passing, and fled by lift tube to the top floor, and refuge.

Miles knocked on the carved wood door. “Who’s there?” Elena’s voice floated through faintly. He tried the enamelpatterned knob, found it unlocked, and snaked a hand waving the flowers around the door. Her voice added, “Oh, come in, Miles.”

He bobbed around the door, lean in black, and grinned tentatively. She was sitting in an antique chair by her window. “How did you know it was me?” Miles asked.

“Well, it was either you or—nobody brings me flowers on their knees.” Her eye lingered a moment on the doorknob, unconsciously revealing the height scale used for her deduction.

Miles promptly dropped to his knees and quickmarched across the rug, to present his offering with a flourish. “Voila!” he cried, surprising a laugh from her. His legs protested this abuse by going into painful cramping spasms. “Ah...” He cleared his throat, and added in a much smaller voice, “Do you suppose you could help me up? These damn grav-crutches...”

“Oh, dear.” Elena assisted him on to her narrow bed, made him put his legs out straight, and returned to her chair.

Miles looked around the tiny bedroom. “Is this closet the best we can do for you?”

“I like it. I like the window on the street,” she assured him. “It’s bigger than my father’s room here.” She tested the flowers scent, a musty green odor. Miles immediately regretted not sorting through to find some of the more perfumy kind. She looked up at him in sudden suspicion. “Miles, where did you get these?”

He flushed, faintly guilty. “Borrowed ‘em from Grandfather. Believe me, they’ll never be missed. It’s a jungle down there.”

She shook her head helplessly. “You’re incorrigible.” But she smiled.

“You don’t mind?” he asked anxiously. “I thought you’d get more enjoyment from them than he would, at this point.”

“Just so nobody thinks I filched them myself!”

“Refer them to me,” he offered grandly. He jerked up his chin. She was gazing into the flowers delicate structure more somberly. “Now what are you thinking? Sad thoughts?”

“Honestly, my face might as well be a window.”

“Not at all. Your face is more like—like water. All reflections and shifting lights—I never know what’s lurking in the depths.” He dropped his voice at the end, to indicate the mystery of the depths.

Elena smiled derisively, then sighed seriously. “I was just thinking—I’ve never put flowers on my mother’s grave.”

He brightened at the prospect of a project. “Do you want to? We could slip out the back—load up a cart or two—nobody’d notice...”

“Certainly not!” she said indignantly. “This is quite bad enough of you.” She turned the flowers in the light from the window, silvered from the chill autumn cloudiness. “Anyway, I don’t know where it is.”

“Oh? How strange. As fixated as the Sergeant is on your mother, I’d have thought he’d be just the pilgrimmage type. Maybe he doesn’t like to think about her death, though.”

“You’re right about that. I asked him about it once, to go and see where she’s buried and so on, and it was like talking to a wall. You know how he can be.”

“Yes, very like a wall. Particularly when it falls on someone.” A theorizing gleam lit Miles’s eye. “Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe she was one of those rare women who die in childbirth—she did die about the time you were born, didn’t she?”

“He said it was a flyer accident.”

“Oh.”

“But another time he said she’d drowned.”

“Hm?” The gleam deepened to a persistent smoulder. “If she’d ditched her flyer in a river or something, they could both be true. Or if he ditched it...”

Elena shivered. Miles caught it, and castigated himself inwardly for being an insensitive clod. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to—I’m in a gruesome mood today, I’m afraid,” he apologized. “It’s all this blasted black.” He flapped his elbows in imitation of a carrion bird.

He lapsed into introspective quiet for a time, meditating on the ceremonies of death. Elena fell in with his silence, gazing wistfully down on the darkly glittering throng of Barrayar’s upper class, passing in and out four floors below her window.

“We could find out,” he said suddenly, startling her from her reverie.

“What?”

“Where your mother’s buried. And we wouldn’t even have to ask anyone.”

“How?”

He grinned, swinging to his feet. “I’m not going to say. You’d go all wobbly on me, like that time we went spelunking down at Vorkosigan Surleau and found the old guerilla weapons cache. You’ll never get another chance in your life to drive one of those old tanks, you know.”

She made doubtful noises. Apparently her memory of the incident was vivid and awful, even though she had avoided being caught in the landslide. But she followed.

They entered the darkened downstairs library cautiously. Miles paused to brace the duty guard outside it with an off-color smirk, lowering his voice confidentially. “Suppose you could sort of rattle the door if anyone comes, Corporal? We’d, ah— rather not have any surprise interruptions.”

The duty guard’s return smirk was knowing. “Of course, Lord Mi—Lord Vorkosigan.” He eyed Elena with fresh speculation, one eyebrow quirking.

“Miles,” Elena whispered furiously as the door swung closed, cutting off the steady murmur of voices, clink of glass and silver, soft tread of feet from Piotr Vorkosigan’s wake that penetrated from nearby rooms. “Do you realize what he’s going to think?”

“Evil to him who evil thinks,” he flung gaily over his shoulder. “Just so he doesn’t think of this...” He palmed the lock to the comconsole, with its double-scrambled links to military headquarters and the Imperial Residence, that sat incongruously before the carved marble fireplace. Elena’s mouth fell open in astonishment as its force screen parted. A few passes of his hands brought the holovid plates to life.

“I thought that was top security!” she gasped.

“‘Tis. But Captain Koudelka was giving me a little tutoring on the side, before, when I was—” a bitter smile, a jerk of the wrist, “studying. He used to tap into the battle computers—the real ones, at headquarters— and run simulations for me. I thought he might not have remembered to unkey me...” he was half-absorbed, entering a tattoo of complex directions.

“What are you doing? “ she asked nervously.

“Entering Captain Koudelka’s access code. To get military records.”

“Ye gods, Miles!”

“Don’t worry about it.” He patted her hand. “We’re in here necking, remember? Nobody’s likely to come in here tonight but Captain Koudelka, and he won’t mind that. We can’t miss. Thought I’d start with your father’s Service record. Ah, here...” The holovid plate threw up a flat screen and began displaying written records. “There’s bound to be something about your mother on it, that we can use to unravel,” he paused, sitting back puzzled, “the mystery...” He flipped through several screens.

“What?” Elena agitated.

“Thought I’d peek into near the time you were born—I thought he’d quit the Service just before, right?”

“Right.”

“Did he ever say he was involuntarily medically discharged?”

“No...” She peered over his shoulder. “That’s funny. It doesn’t say why.”

“Tell you what’s funnier. His entire record for most of the preceding year is sealed. Your time. And the code on it—very hot. I can’t crack it without triggering a doublecheck, which would end—yes, that’s Captain Illyan’s personal mark. I definitely don’t want to talk to him.” He quailed at the thought of accidentally summoning the attention of Barrayar’s Chief of Imperial Security.

“Definitely,” croaked Elena, staring at him in fascination.

“Well, let’s do some time-travelling,” Miles pattered on. “Back, back... Your father doesn’t seem to have gotten along too well with this Commodore Vorrutyer fellow.”

Elena perked with interest. “Was that the same as the Admiral Vorrutyer who was killed at Escobar?”

“Um... Yes, Ges Vorrutyer. Hm.” Bothari had been the commodore’s batman, it appeared, for several years. Miles was surprised. He’d had the vague impression that Bothari had served under his father as a ground combat soldier since the beginning of time. Bothari’s service with Vorrutyer ended in a constellation of reprimands, black marks, discipline parades, and sealed medical reports. Miles, conscious of Elena staring over his shoulder, whipped past these quickly. Oddly inconsistent. Some, bizarrely petty, were marked with ferocious punishments. Others, astonishingly serious—had Bothari really held an engineering tech at plasma-arc-point in a lavatory for sixteen hours? and for God’s sake, why? —disappeared into the medical reports and resulted in no discipline at all.

Going farther into the past, the record steadied. A lot of combat in his twenties. Commendations, citations for being wounded, more commendations. Excellent marks in basic training. Recruiting records. “Recruiting was a lot simpler in those days,” Miles said enviously.

“Oh! Are my grandparents on that?” asked Elena eagerly. “He never talks about them, either. I gather his mother died when he was rather young. He’s never even told me her name.”

“Marusia,” Miles sounded out, peering. “Fuzzy photostat.”

“That’s pretty,” said Elena, sounding pleased. “And his father’s?”