And, more coldly,
Has he fired and missed once before?
That had not been a normal social interaction, not even by Barrayaran standards of one-upsmanship.
Or maybe he was just drunk
. She suddenly wanted to talk to Illyan. She closed her eyes, trying to clear her fogged head.
"Are you well, love?" Aral's concerned voice murmured in her ear. "Do you need your nausea medication?"
Her eyes flew open. There he was, safe and sound beside her. "Oh, I'm fine." She attached herself to his arm, lightly, not a panicked limpet-like clamp. "Just thinking."
"They're seating us for dinner."
"Good. It will be nice to sit down, my feet are swelling."
He looked as if he wanted to pick her up and carry her, but they paraded in normally, joining the other formal pairs. They sat at a raised table set a little apart from the others, with Gregor, Kareen, Piotr, the Lord Guardian of the Speaker's Circle and his wife, and Prime Minister Vortala. At Gregor's insistance, Droushnakovi was seated with them; the boy seemed painfully glad to see his old bodyguard.
Did I take away your playmate, child?
Cordelia wondered apologetically. It seemed so; Gregor engaged in a negotiation with Kareen for Drou's weekly return "for judo lessons." Drou, used to the Residence atmosphere, was not so overawed as Koudelka, who was stiff with exaggerated care against betrayal by his own clumsiness.
Cordelia found herself seated between Vortala and the Speaker, and carried on conversations with reasonable ease; Vortala was charming, in his blunt way. Cordelia managed nibbles of all the elegantly served food except a slice off the carcass of a roast bovine, carried in whole. Usually she was able to put out of her mind the fact that Barrayaran protein was not grown in vats, but taken from the bodies of real dead animals. She'd known about their primitive culinary practices before she'd chosen to come here, after all, and had tasted animal muscle before on Survey missions, in the interests of science, survival, or potential new product development for the homeworld. The Barrayarans applauded the fruit- and flower-decked beast, seeming to actually find it attractive and not horrific, and the cook, who'd followed it anxiously out, took a bow. The primitive olfactory circuits of her brain had to agree, it smelled great. Vorkosigan had his portion bloody-rare. Cordelia sipped water.
After dessert, and some brief formal toasts offered by Vortala and Vorkosigan, the boy Gregor was at last taken off to bed by his mother. Kareen motioned Cordelia and Droushnakovi to join her. The tension eased in Cordelia's shoulders as they left the big public assembly and climbed to the Emperor's quiet, private quarters.
Gregor was peeled out of his little uniform and dove into pajamas, becoming boy and not icon once again. Drou supervised his teeth-brushing, and was inveigled into "just one round" of some game they'd used to play with a board and pieces, as a bedtime treat. This Kareen indulgently permitted, and after a kiss for and from her son, she and Cordelia withdrew to a softly lit sitting room nearby. A night breeze from the open windows cooled the upper chamber. Both women sat with a sigh, unwinding; Cordelia kicked off her shoes immediately after Kareen did so. Distance-muffled voices and laughter drifted through the windows from the gardens below.
"How long does this party go on?" Cordelia asked.
"Dawn, for those with more endurance than myself. I shall retire at midnight, after which the serious drinkers will take over."
"Some of them looked pretty serious already."
"Unfortunately." Kareen smiled. "You will be able to see the Vor class at both its best and its worst, before the night is over."
"I can imagine. I'm surprised you don't import less lethal mood-altering drugs."
Kareen's smile sharpened. "But drunken brawls are
traditional
." She allowed the cutting edge of her voice to soften. "In fact, such things are coming in, at least in the shuttleport cities. As usual, we seem to be adding to rather than replacing our own customs."
"Perhaps that's the best way." Cordelia frowned. How best to probe delicately . . . ? "Is Count Vidal Vordarian one of those in the habit of getting publicly potted?"
"No." Kareen glanced up, narrowing her eyes. "Why do you ask?"
"I had a peculiar conversation with him. I thought an overdose of ethanol might account for it." She remembered Vordarian's hand resting lightly upon the Princess's knee, just short of an intimate caress. "Do you know him well? How would you estimate him?"
Kareen said judiciously, "He's rich . . . proud . . . He was loyal to Ezar during Serg's late machinations against his father. Loyal to the Imperium, to the Vor class. There are four major manufacturing cities in Vordarian's District, plus military bases, supply depots, the biggest military shuttleport. . . . Vidal's is certainly the most economically important area on Barrayar today. The war barely touched the Vordarians' District; it's one of the few the Cetagandans pulled out of by treaty. We sited our first space bases there because we took over facilities the Cetagandans had built and abandoned, and a good deal of economic development followed from that."
"That's . . . interesting," said Cordelia, "but I was wondering about the man personally. His, ah, likes and dislikes, for example. Do you like him?"
"At one time," said Kareen slowly, "I wondered if Vidal might be powerful enough to protect me from Serg. After Ezar died. As Ezar grew more ill, I was thinking, I had better look to my own defense. Nothing appeared to be happening, and no one told me anything."
"If Serg had become emperor, how could a mere count have protected you?" asked Cordelia.
"He would have had to become . . . more. Vidal had ambition, if it were properly encouraged—and patriotism, God knows if Serg had lived he might have destroyed Barrayar—Vidal might have saved us all. But Ezar promised I'd have nothing to fear, and Ezar delivered. Serg died before Ezar and . . . and I have been trying to let things cool, with Vidal, since."
Cordelia abstractedly rubbed her lower lip. "Oh. But do you, personally—I mean, do you like him? Would becoming Countess Vordarian be a nice retirement from the dowager-princess business, someday?"
"Oh! Not now. The Emperor's stepfather would be too powerful a man, to set up opposite the Regent. A dangerous polarity, if they were not allied or exactly balanced. Or were not combined in one person."
"Like being the Emperor's father-in-law?"
"Yes, exactly."
"I'm having trouble understanding this . . . venereal transmission of power. Do you have some claim to the Imperium in your own right, or not?"
"That would be for the military to decide," she shrugged. Her voice lowered. "It is like a disease, isn't it? I'm too close, I'm touched, infected. . . . Gregor is my hope of survival. And my prison."
"Don't you want a life of your own?"
"No. I just want to live."
Cordelia sat back, disturbed.
Did Serg teach you not to give offense?
"Does Vordarian see it that way? I mean, power isn't the only thing you have to offer. I think you underestimate your personal attractiveness."
"On Barrayar . . . power is the only thing." Her expression grew distant. "I admit . . . I did once ask Captain Negri to get me a report on Vidal. He uses his courtesans normally."
This wistful approval was not exactly Cordelia's idea of a declaration of boundless love. Yet that hadn't been just desire for power she'd seen in Vordarian's eyes at the ceremony, she would swear. Had Aral's appointment as Regent accidently messed up the man's courtship? Might that very well account for the sex-tinged animosity in his speech to her . . . ?
Droushnakovi returned on tiptoe. "He fell asleep," she whispered fondly. Kareen nodded, and tilted her head back in an unguarded moment of rest, until a Vorbarra-liveried messenger arrived and addressed her: "Will you open the dancing with my lord Regent, Milady? They're waiting."
Request, or order? It sounded more sinister-mandatory than fun, in the servant's flat voice.
"Last duty for the night," Kareen assured Cordelia, as they both shoved their shoes back on. Cordelia's footgear seemed to have shrunk two sizes since the start of the evening. She hobbled after Kareen, Drou trailing.
A large downstairs room was floored in multi-toned wood marquetry in patterns of flowers, vines, and animals. The polished surface would have been put on a museum wall on Beta Colony; these incredible people danced across it. A live orchestra—selected by cutthroat competition from the Imperial Service Band, Cordelia was informed—provided music, in the Barrayaran style. Even the waltzes sounded faintly like marches. Aral and the princess were presented to each other, and he led her off for a couple of good-natured turns around the room, a formal dance that involved each mirroring the other's steps and slides, hands raised but never quite touching. Cordelia was fascinated. She'd never guessed that Aral could dance. This seemed to complete the social requirements, and other couples filtered out onto the floor. Aral returned to her side, looking stimulated. "Dance, Milady?"
After that dinner, more like a nap. How did he keep up that alarming hyperactivity? Secret terror, probably. She shook her head, smiling. "I don't know how."
"Ah." They strolled, instead. "I could show you how," he offered as they exited the room onto a bank of terraces that wound off into the gardens, pleasantly cool and dark but for a few colored lights to prevent stumbles on the pathways.
"Mm," she said doubtfully. "If you can find a private spot." If they could find a private spot, she could think of better things to do than dance, though.
"Well, here we—shh." His scimitar grin winked in the dark, and his grip tightened warningly on her hand. They both stood still, at the entrance to a little open space screened from eyes above by yews and some pink feathery non-Earth plant. The music floated clearly down.
"Try, Kou," urged Droushnakovi's voice. Drou and Kou stood facing each other on the far side of the terrace-nook. Doubtfully, Koudelka set his stick down on the stone balustrade, and held up his hands to hers. They began to step, slide, and dip, Drou counting earnestly, "
One
-two-three, one-two-three . . ."
Koudelka tripped, and she caught him; his grip found her waist. "It's no damned good, Drou." He shook his head in frustration.
"Sh . . ." Her hand touched his lips. "Try again. I'm for it. You said you had to practice that hand-coordination thing, how long, before you got it? More than once, I bet."
"The old man wouldn't let me give up."
"Well, maybe I won't let you give up either."
"I'm tired," complained Koudelka.
So, switch to kissing,
Cordelia urged silently, muffling a laugh.
That you can do sitting down
. Droushnakovi was determined, however, and they began again. "
One
-two-three, one-two-three . . ." Once again the effort ended in what seemed to Cordelia a very good start on a clinch, if only one party or the other would gather the wit and nerve to follow through.
Aral shook his head, and they backed silently away around the shrubbery. Apparently a little inspired, his lips found hers to muffle his own chuckle. Alas, their delicacy was futile; an anonymous Vor lord wandered blindly past them, stumbled across the terrace nook, freezing Kou and Drou in mid-step, and hung over the stone balustrade to be very traditionally sick into the defenseless bushes below. Sudden swearing, in new voices, one male, one female, rose up from the dark and shaded target zone. Koudelka retrieved his stick, and the two would-be dancers hastily retreated. The Vor lord was sick again, and his male victim started climbing up after him, slipping on the beslimed stonework and promising violent retribution. Vorkosigan guided Cordelia prudently away.
Later, while waiting by one of the Residence's entrances for the groundcars to be brought round, Cordelia found herself standing next to the lieutenant. Koudelka gazed pensively back over his shoulder at the Residence, from which music and party-noises wafted almost unabated.
"Good party, Kou?" she inquired genially.
"What? Oh, yes, astonishing. When I joined the Service, I never dreamed I'd end up here." He blinked. "Time was, I never thought I'd end up anywhere." And then he added, giving Cordelia a slight case of mental whiplash, "I sure wish women came with operating manuals."
Cordelia laughed aloud. "I could say the same for men."
"But you and Admiral Vorkosigan—you're different."
"Not . . . really. We've learned from experience, maybe. A lot of people fail to."
"Do you think I have a chance at a normal life?" He gazed, not at her, but into the dark.
"You make your own chances, Kou. And your own dances."
"You sound just like the Admiral."
Cordelia cornered Illyan the next morning, when he stopped in to Vorkosigan House for the daily report from his guard commander.
"Tell me, Simon. Is Vidal Vordarian on your short list, or your long list?"
"Everybody's on my long list," Illyan sighed.
"I want you to move him to your short list."
His head cocked. "Why?"
She hesitated. She wasn't about to reply,
Intuition,
though that was exactly what those subliminal cues added up to. "He seems to me to have an assassin's mind. The sort that fires from cover into the back of his enemy."
Illyan smiled quizzically. "Beg pardon, Milady, but that doesn't sound like the Vordarian I know. I've always found him more the openly bullheaded type."
How badly must he hurt, how ardently desire, for a bullheaded man to turn subtle? She was unsure. Perhaps, not knowing how deeply Aral's happiness with her ran, Vordarian did not recognize how vicious his attack upon it was? And did personal and political animosity necessarily run together?
No
. The man's hatred had been profound, his blow precisely, if mistakenly, aimed.
"Move him to your short list," she said.
Illyan opened his hand; not mere placation, by his expression some chain of thought was engaged. "Very well, Milady."