They circulated, exchanging greetings, making courtesies.
Why can't these people wear nametags?
Cordelia thought hopelessly. As usual, everyone but her seemed to know everyone else. She pictured herself opening a conversation,
Hey you, Vor-guy
—. She clutched Aral more firmly, and tried to look mysterious and exotic rather than tongue-tied and mislaid.
They found the little ceremony with the bags of coins going on in another chamber, the counts or their representatives lining up to discharge their obligation with a few formal words each. Emperor Gregor, whom Cordelia suspected was up past his bedtime, sat on a raised bench with his mother, looking small and trapped, manfully trying to suppress his yawns. It occurred to Cordelia to wonder if he even got to keep the bags of coins, or if they were simply re-circulated to present again next year. Hell of a birthday party. There wasn't another child in sight. But they were running the counts through pretty efficiently, maybe the kid could escape soon.
An offerer in red-and-blues knelt before Gregor and Kareen, and presented his bag of maroon and gold silk. Cordelia recognized Count Vidal Vordarian, the dish-faced man whom Aral had politely described as of the "next-most-conservative party," i.e., of roughly the same political views as Count Piotr, in a tone of voice that had made Cordelia wonder if it was a code-phrase for "Isolationist fanatic." He did not look a fanatic. Freed of its distorting anger, his face was much more attractive; he turned it now to Princess Kareen, and said something which made her lift her chin and laugh. His hand rested a moment familiarly upon her robed knee, and her hand briefly covered his, before he clambered back to his feet and bowed, and made way for the next man. Kareen's smile faded as Vordarian turned his back.
Gregor's sad glance crossed Aral, Cordelia, and Droushnakovi; he spoke earnestly up to his mother. Kareen motioned a guard over, and a few minutes later a guard commander approached them, for permission to carry off Drou. She was replaced by an unobtrusive young man who trailed them out of earshot, a mere flicker at the corner of the eye, a neat trick for a fellow that large.
Happily, Cordelia and Aral soon ran across Lord and Lady Vorpatril, someone Cordelia dared talk to without a politico-social pre-briefing. Captain Lord Vorpatril's parade red-and-blues set off his dark-haired good looks to perfection. Lady Vorpatril barely outshone him in a carnelian dress with matching roses woven into her cloud of black hair, stunning against her velvety white skin. They made, Cordelia thought, an archetypal Vor couple, sophisticated and serene, the effect only slightly spoiled by the gradual awareness from his disjointed conversation that Captain Vorpatril was drunk. He was a cheerful drunk, though, his personality merely stretched a bit, not unpleasantly transformed.
Vorkosigan, drawn away by some men who bore down on him with Purpose in their eyes, handed Cordelia off to Lady Vorpatril. The two women cruised the elegant hors d'oeuvre trays being offered around by yet more human servants, and compared obstetrical reports. Lord Vorpatril hastily excused himself to pursue a tray bearing wine. Alys plotted the colors and cut of Cordelia's next gown. "Black and white, for you, for Winterfair," she asserted with authority. Cordelia nodded meekly, wondering if they were actually going to sit down for a meal soon, or if they were expected to keep grazing off the passing trays.
Alys guided her to the ladies' lavatory, an object of hourly interest to their pregnancy-crowded bladders, and introduced her on the return journey to several more women of her rarified social circle. Alys then fell into an animated discussion with a longstanding crony regarding an upcoming party for the woman's daughter, and Cordelia drifted to the edge of the group.
She stepped back quietly, separating herself (she tried not to think,
from the herd
) for a moment of quiet contemplation. What a strange mix Barrayar was, at one moment homey and familiar, in the next terrifying and alien . . . they put on a good show, though . . . ah! That's what was missing from the scene, Cordelia realized. On Beta Colony a ceremony of this magnitude would be fully covered by holovid, to be shared real-time planet-wide. Every move would be a carefully choreographed dance around the vid angles and commentators' timing, almost to the point of annihilating the event being recorded. Here, there wasn't a holovid in sight. The only recordings were made by ImpSec, for their own purposes, which did not include choreography. The people in this room danced only for each other, all their glittering show tossed blithely away in time, which carried it off forever; the event would exist tomorrow only in their memories.
"Lady Vorkosigan?"
Cordelia started from her meditations at the urbane voice at her elbow. She turned to find Commodore Count Vordarian. His wearing of red-and-blues, rather than his personal House livery colors, marked him as being on active service, ornamenting Imperial Headquarters no doubt—in what department? Yes, Ops, Aral had said. He had a drink in his hand, and smiled cordially.
"Count Vordarian," she offered in return, smiling, too. They'd seen each other in passing often enough, Cordelia decided to take him as introduced. This Regency business wasn't going to go away, however much she might wish it to; it was time and past time for her to start making connections of her own, and quit pestering Aral for guidance at every new step.
"Are you enjoying the party?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes." She tried to think of something more to say. "It's extremely beautiful."
"As are you, Milady." He raised his glass to her in a gesture of toast, and sipped.
Her heart lurched, but she identified the reason why before her eyes did more than widen slightly. The last Barrayaran officer to toast her had been the late Admiral Vorrutyer, under rather different social circumstances. Vordarian had accidently mimicked his precise gesture. This was no time for torture-flashbacks. Cordelia blinked. "Lady Vorpatril helped me a lot. She's very generous."
Vordarian nodded delicately toward her torso. "I understand you also are to be congratulated. Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Uh? Oh. Yes, a boy, thank you. He's to be named Piotr Miles, I'm told."
"I'm surprised. I should have thought the Lord Regent would have sought a daughter first."
Cordelia cocked her head, puzzled by his ironic tone. "We started this before Aral became Regent."
"But you knew he was to receive the appointment, surely."
"I didn't. But I thought all you Barrayaran militarists were mad after sons. Why did you think a daughter?"
I want a daughter
. . . .
"I assumed Lord Vorkosigan would be thinking ahead to his long-term, ah, employment, of course. What better way to maintain the continuity of his power after the Regency is over than to slip neatly into position as the Emperor's father-in-law?"
Cordelia boggled. "You think he'd bet the continuity of a planetary government on the chance of a couple of teenagers falling in love, a decade and a half from now?"
"Love?" Now he looked baffled.
"You Barrayarans are—" she bit her tongue on the
crazy
. Impolite. "Aral is certainly more . . . practical." Though she could hardly call him unromantic.
"That's extremely interesting," he breathed. His eyes flicked to and away from her abdomen. "Do you fancy he contemplates something more direct?"
Her mind was running tangential to this twisting conversation, somehow. "Beg pardon?"
He smiled and shrugged.
Cordelia frowned. "Do you mean to say, if we were having a girl, that's what everyone would be thinking?"
"Certainly."
She blew out her breath. "God. That's . . . I can't imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to get near the Barrayaran Imperium. It just makes you a target for every maniac with a grievance, as far as I can see." An image of Lieutenant Koudelka, bloody-faced and deafened, flashed in her mind. "Also hard on the poor fellow who's unlucky enough to be standing next to you."
His attention sharpened. "Ah, yes, that unfortunate incident the other day. Has anything come of the investigation, do you know?"
"Nothing that I've heard. Negri and Illyan are talking Cetagandans, mostly. But the guy who launched the grenade got away clean."
"Too bad." He drained his glass, and exchanged it for a freshly charged one presented immediately by a passing Vorbarra-liveried servant. Cordelia eyed the wineglasses wistfully. But she was off metabolic poisons for the duration. Yet another advantage of Betan-style gestation in uterine replicators, none of this blasted enforced clean living. At home she could have poisoned and endangered herself freely, while her child grew, fully monitored round-the-clock by sober techs, safe and protected in the replicator banks. Suppose
she
had been under that sonic grenade . . . She longed for a drink.
Well, she did not need the mind-numbing buzz of ethanol; conversation with Barrayarans was mind-numbing enough. Her eyes sought Aral in the crowd—there he was, Kou at his shoulder, talking with Piotr and two other grizzled old men in counts' liveries. As Aral had predicted, his hearing had returned to normal within a couple of days. Yet still his eyes shifted from face to face, drinking in cues of gesture and inflection, his glass a mere untasted ornament in his hand. On duty, no question. Was he ever off-duty, anymore?
"Was he much disturbed by the attack?" Vordarian inquired, following her gaze to Aral.
"Wouldn't you be?" said Cordelia. "I don't know . . . he's seen so much violence in his life, almost more than I can imagine. It may be almost like . . . white noise. Tuned out."
I wish I could tune it out
.
"You have not known him that long, though. Just since Escobar."
"We met once before the war. Briefly."
"Oh?" His brows rose. "I didn't know that. How little one truly knows of people." He paused, watching Aral, watching her watch Aral. One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine.
"Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous."
Vordarian choked, sputtering. Cordelia watched him with concern, wondering if she ought to pat him on the back or something, but he regained his breath and balance. "He
told
you that?" he wheezed in astonishment.
"No, Vorrutyer did. Just before he met his, um, fatal accident." Vordarian was standing frozen; she felt a certain malicious glee at having at last baffled a Barrayaran as much as they sometimes baffled her. Now, if she could just figure out what she'd said that had thrown him . . . She went on seriously, "The more I look back on Vorrutyer, the more he seems a tragic figure. Still obsessed with a love affair that was over eighteen years ago. Yet I sometimes wonder, if he could have had what he wanted then—kept Aral—if Aral might have kept that sadistic streak that ultimately consumed Vorrutyer's sanity under control. It's as if the two of them were on some kind of weird see-saw, each one's survival entailing the other's destruction."
"A Betan." His stunned look was gradually fading to one Cordelia mentally dubbed as Awful Realization. "I should have guessed. You are, after all, the people who bioengineered hermaphrodites. . . ." He paused. "How long did you know Vorrutyer?"
"About twenty minutes. But it was a very
intense
twenty minutes." She decided to let him wonder what the hell
that
meant.
"Their, ah, affair, as you call it, was a great secret scandal, at the time."
She wrinkled her nose. "Great secret scandal? Isn't that an oxymoron? Like 'military intelligence,' or 'friendly fire.' Also typical Barrayaranisms, now that I think on it."
Vordarian had the strangest look on his face. He looked, she realized, exactly like a man who had thrown a bomb, had it go
fizz
instead of
BOOM!
and was now trying to decide whether to stick his hand in and tap the firing mechanism to test it.
Then it was her turn for Awful Realization.
This man just tried to blow up my marriage
. No—
Aral's
marriage. She fixed a bright, sunny, innocent smile on her face, her brain kicking—at last!—into overdrive. Vordarian couldn't be of Vorrutyer's old war party; their leaders had all met with their fatal accidents before Ezar had bowed out, and the rest were scattered and lying low. What did he want? She fiddled with a flower from her hair, and considered simpering. "I didn't imagine I was marrying a forty-four-year-old virgin, Count Vordarian."
"So it seems." He knocked back another gulp of wine. "You galactics are all degenerate . . . what perversions does he tolerate in return, I wonder?" His eyes glinted in sudden open malice. "Do you know how Lord Vorkosigan's first wife died?"
"Suicide. Plasma arc to the head," she replied promptly.
"It was rumored he'd murdered her. For adultery. Betan, beware." His smile had turned wholly acid.
"Yes, I knew that, too. In this case, an untrue rumor." All pretense of cordiality had evaporated from their exchange. Cordelia had a bad sense of all control escaping with it. She leaned forward, and lowered her voice. "Do you know why Vorrutyer died?"
He couldn't help it; he tilted toward her, drawn in. "No . . ."
"He tried to hurt Aral through me. I found that . . . annoying. I wish you would cease trying to annoy me, Count Vordarian, I'm afraid you might succeed." Her voice fell further, almost to a whisper. "You should fear it, too."
His initial patronizing tone had certainly given way to wariness. He made a smooth, openhanded gesture that seemed to symbolize a bow of farewell, and backed away. "Milady." The glance over his shoulder as he moved off was thoroughly spooked.
She frowned after him.
Whew
. What an
odd
exchange. What had the man expected, dropping that obsolete datum on her as if it were some shocking surprise? Did Vordarian actually imagine she would go off and tax her husband with his poor taste in companions two decades ago? Would a naive young Barrayaran bride have gone into hysterics? Not Lady Vorpatril, whose social enthusiasms concealed an acid judgment; not Princess Kareen, whose naivete had surely been burned out long ago by that expert sadist Serg.
He fired, but he missed
.