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unfortunate tendency to make him blunt, and that egg-sucker Count Vordrozda
just arrived, in company with Admiral Hessman. He'll have trouble ahead if
those two are getting in bed together."
"I shouldn't think the far right could muster that much support, with all the
old soldiers solidly behind Father."
"Oh, Vordrozda's not a rightist at heart. He's just personally ambitious, and
he'll ride any pony that's going his way. He's been oozing around Gregor for
months..." Anger sparked in her grey eyes. "Flattery and innuendo, oblique
criticisms and these nasty little barbs stuck in all the boy's self
doubts-I've watched him at work. I don't like him," she said positively.
Miles grinned. "I never would have guessed. But surely you don't have to worry
about Gregor." His mother's habit of referring to the Emperor as if he were
her rather backward adopted child always tickled him. In a sense it was true,
as the former Regent had been Gregor's personal as well as political guardian
during his minority.
She grimaced. "Vordrozda's not the only one who wouldn't hesitate to corrupt
the boy in any area he could sink his claws into-
moral, political, what you will-if he thought it would advance himself one
centimeter, and damn the long range good of Barrayar-
or of Gregor, for that matter." Miles recognized this instantly as a quote
from his mother's sole political oracle, his father. "I don't know why these
people can't write a constitution. Oral law-what a way to try and run an
interstellar power." This was homegrown opinion, pure Betan.
"Father's been in power so long," said Miles equably. "I think it would take a
gravity torpedo blast to shift him out of office."
"That's been tried," remarked Countess Vorkosigan, growing abstracted. "I wish
he'd get serious about retiring. We've been lucky so far," her eye fell on him
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wistfully, "-mostly."
She's tired too, Miles thought.
"The politicking never stops," she added, staring at the floor. "Not even for
his father's funeral." She brightened wickedly.
"Nor do his relations. If you see him before I do, tell him Lady Vorpatril's
looking for him. That'll make his day-no, better not.
We'd never be able to find him, then."
Miles raised his brows. "What does Aunt Vorpatril want him to do for her now?"
"Well, ever since Lord Vorpatril died she's been expecting him to stand in
loco parentis to that idiot Ivan, which is fine, up to a point. But she nailed
me a while ago, when she couldn't find Aral-seems she wants Aral to stand the
boy up in a corner somewhere and brace him for-er-swiving the servant girls,
which ought to embarrass them both thoroughly. I've never understood why these
people won't clip their kids' tubes and turn them loose at age twelve to work
out their own damnation, like sensible folk. You may as well try to stop a
sandstorm with a windsock..." She went off toward the library, muttering her
favorite swear-
word under her breath, "Barrayarans!"
Wet darkness had fallen outside, turning the windows into dim mirrors of the
subdued and mannered revelry within
Vorkosigan House. Miles stared into his own reflection in passing; dark hair,
grey eyes, pale shadowed face, features too sharp and strongly marked to
satisfy aesthetics. And an idiot, to boot.
The hour reminded him of dinner, probably cancelled due to the press of
events. He determined to forage among the canapes, and collect enough to
sustain a strategic retreat back to his bedroom for the rest of the evening.
He peered around a hall arch, to be sure none of the dreaded geriatric set
were nearby. The room appeared to contain only middle-aged people he didn't
know. He nipped over to a table, and began stuffing food into a fine fabric
napkin.
"Stay away from those purple things," a familiar, affable voice warned in a
whisper. "I think they're some kind of seaweed. Is your mother on a nutrition
kick again?"
Miles looked up into the open, annoyingly handsome face of his second cousin,
Ivan Vorpatril. Ivan too held a napkin, filled close to capacity. His eyes
looked slightly hunted. A peculiar bulge interrupted the smooth lines of his
brand-new cadet's uniform jacket.
Miles nodded toward the bulge, and whispered in astonishment, "Are they
letting you carry a weapon already?"
"Hell, no." Ivan flicked the jacket open after a conspiratorial glance around,
probably for Lady Vorpatril. "It's a bottle of your father's wine. Got it from
one of the servants before he'd poured it into those itty-bitty glasses.
Say-any chance of you being my native guide to some out-of-the-way corner of
this mausoleum? The duty guards don't let you wander around by yourself,
upstairs. The wine is good, the food is good, except for those purple things,
but my God, the company at this party! ...
Miles nodded agreement in principle, even though he was inclined to include
Ivan himself in the category of "my God the company." "All right. You pick up
another bottle of wine," that should be enough to anesthetize him to
tolerance, "and I'll let you hide out in my bedroom. That's where I was going
anyway. Meet you by the lift tube."
Miles stretched out his legs on his bed with a sigh as Ivan pooled their
picnic and opened the first bottle of wine. Ivan emptied a generous third of
the bottle into each of the two bathroom tumblers, and handed one to his
crippled cousin.
"I saw old Bothari carrying you off the other day." Ivan nodded toward the
injured legs, and took a refreshing gulp.
Grandfather, Miles thought, would have had a fit to see that particular
vintage treated so cavalierly. He took a more respectful sip himself, by way
of libation to the old man's ghost, even though Grandfather's tart assertion
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that Miles couldn't tell a good vintage from last Tuesday's washwater was not
far off the mark. "Too bad," Ivan went on cheerfully. "You're really the lucky
one, though."
"Oh?" muttered Miles, closing his teeth on a canape.
"Hell yes. Training starts tomorrow, y'know-"
"So I've heard."
"-I've got to report to my dormitory by midnight at the latest. Thought I was
going to spend my last night as a free man partying, but instead I got stuck
here. Mother, y'know. But tomorrow we take our preliminary oaths to the
Emperor, and by God!
if I'll let her treat me like a boy after that!" He paused to consume a small
stuffed sandwich. "Think of me, out running around in the rain at dawn
tomorrow, while you're tucked away all cozy in here..."
"Oh, I will." Miles took another sip, and another.
"Only two breaks in three years," Ivan rambled on between bites. "I might as
well be a condemned prisoner. No wonder they call it service. Servitude is
more like it." Another gulp, to wash down a meat-stuffed pastry. "But your
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