Lady Alys touched a jeweled pin on her vest, and in a moment a staidly dressed, middle-aged woman servant appeared trundling a sort of drinks trolley. “May we offer you an apéritif? Or there are teas.”
Tej, mind still swimming, rather blindly selected a Barrayaran wine she recognized from Admiral Desplains’s table, and Rish chose some native cordial, apparently for the strange name; the others were handed what were apparently their usual tipples without query by the servant. The glasses were small and finely wrought, inviting appreciation, not inebriation. The servant trundled away as discreetly as she’d entered.
Lady Alys took a sip and turned to Rish—to give Tej time to recover herself? “Someone was kind enough to forward me a short vid of one of your performances with your fellow Jewels. Very impressive. I understand your emigration was forced upon you, but do you have plans or hopes for continuing your art in a new venue?”
Rish grimaced. “No plans, certainly. Performance arts do not mesh well with hiding for one’s life. Success requires—and generates—fame, not obscurity.”
Lady Alys nodded understanding. “Teaching or choreography . . . no, I suppose the same difficulty would arise.”
Illyan rubbed his chin, and offered, “Could you change your appearance? Cosmetic alterations to blend with the target population?”
A blue hand tightened on a black-clad knee. “That would be repugnant to me. And . . . when I started to dance, people would know who I was anyway.”
He gave a conceding nod, falling back into his listening quiet.
Tej decided she’d calmed enough that her voice wouldn’t crack. She set down her glass, gripped Ivan Xav’s hand for courage, and said, “Lady Alys, you should know right away that you needn’t worry about the marriage. Ivan Xav and I will be getting a divorce.”
Ivan Xav freed his arm only to put it around her shoulders, hugging her in tight. He endorsed this: “That’s right, Mamere. Just as soon as I can catch up with Count Falco, that is.”
Lady Alys tilted her head and stared at them. “Has my son proved such an unsatisfactory husband in a mere week? Surely you should give him a longer chance.”
“Oh, no, no!” said Tej, hurrying to correct this strange misconception. “I think Ivan Xav would make a wonderful husband!”
“So I had always hoped,” murmured Lady Alys, “and yet, somehow, it seemed never to be . . .”
Ivan Xav squirmed slightly, inching closer to Tej, or trying to. There weren’t any inches left.
Tej said sturdily, “He has so very many good qualities. He’s brave, he’s kind, he’s smart, he has excellent manners, and he thinks quickly in emergencies.” When pressed hard enough, anyway. “Very good-looking, too, of course.” She probably ought not to add good in bed here; Barrayarans seemed to have funny notions about sex, which she didn’t quite understand yet. “And, um . . .” What was that unusual word Desplains had used? “Chivalrous, too, which is why he rescued us and brought us here, but really, he owes me nothing.”
Lady Alys pressed a finger to her lips. “That is not what those words in the groat circle say, however. Assuming Ivan managed to remember the right ones.”
“I did,” asserted Ivan Xav indignantly. “And anyway, I shouldn’t think you would be in such a tearing hurry to become the Dowager Lady Vorpatril.”
“My dear and only child, how did you come by that misapprehension? I’ve longed for it any time these past ten years. And anyway, if the title comes to seem too dreadfully aging, I now have other resources to correct the problem.” She glanced at Simon Illyan, who raised his brows and smiled back. Very private smiles that made Tej feel an intruder, though she wasn’t sure on what.
“So,” Lady Alys went on, “it is to be a marriage of convenience, then?”
Illyan put in, “Or inconvenience,” and pressed a concealing hand across his jaw. His eyes were alight, betraying his upward lip-twitch nonetheless.
“The inconvenience,” said Lady Alys, “would seem to reside not in the marriage, but in this Jacksonian syndicate that pursues the girls. About which, I confess, I understand very little as yet. But I feel constrained to point out to you, Ivan—just in case you have overlooked it—that there is no point in your catching up with Falco for a divorce until you have figured out what happens to Tej and her companion after the protection of your name and position is removed. You dragged them here to Barrayar, after all.”
“I, uh . . . hadn’t got that far yet,” Ivan Xav admitted.
Lady Alys turned to Tej, and asked seriously, “Do you know what you would want?”
It came to Tej then, belatedly, that Lady Alys had just spent much of the prior conversation slowly, gently, and thoroughly roasting her son. And that she wasn’t at all the person Tej had been led to expect. She allowed herself a moment of crossness—she would have words with Ivan Xav about that, later. But right now, she needed to give Lady Alys’s serious question the serious attention it deserved.
“We had a place we were planning to go—not here on Barrayar, not in the Imperium, in fact. But we can only go there if we are absolutely certain that we’ve broken our trail in a way that the Prestene syndicate can’t pick up again. Otherwise, it’s . . . it would be worse than getting caught ourselves.”
“That would actually come to the same thing,” Rish pointed out. “Once they have us, they have . . .” A blue hand made an ambiguous, if fluid, wave.
Tej nodded grimly. “That was why the balcony, in the end.”
“So you protect another,” said Illyan, leaning back and tenting his hands together. “One very dear to you.” He blinked vaguely. “Must be the missing brother, what’s-his-name.”
Tej gasped and turned in alarm to Ivan Xav.
He shrugged, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “I said he’d lost his memory, not his wits.”
“The point was mentioned in Morozov’s report,” said Illyan, sounding apologetic. “I only read it this morning. It hasn’t had time to go fuzzy yet.” He took up and emptied his glass, appearing to study the curious absence of his drink before setting it down again. “From the direction and duration of your travel, I would posit that he’s hiding on Escobar, with remoter possibilities being Beta Colony, Kibou-daini, or Tau Ceti. Not farther.”
Rish had jerked upright in her chair. But there was nowhere to bolt to. Nothing to attack. Or to defend against, either.
“In which case,” Illyan continued, “one obvious solution presents itself. The ladies might be conveyed to Escobar as unlisted supercargo in a routine government fast courier, and discreetly deposited downside by the same means by which we used to insert agents. Or perhaps still do; I don’t suppose the procedures have changed all that much. The break in the trail from here, at least, would be clean, as our couriers go in all possible directions. And no record of your landing on Escobar, either.”
Rish’s mouth had fallen open; she leaned forward like a woman contemplating a bakery case. Tej’s heart was beating faster. She asked, “Could it really be done?”
“Ivan would no doubt have to call in some favors,” said Illyan, a bit blandly.
“Oh, yes, please!” said Rish.
“Er,” said Ivan Xav, glancing at Tej. “Is that what you really want?”
Tej sank back in new hesitation. No gifts came without price tags. “What would you want in return for this deal?” She looked in worry at Illyan, at Lady Alys. At Ivan Xav.
Lady Alys finished her drink. “I should have to think about that.”
Ivan Xav scratched his nose, frowned at Illyan. “Could you assist me, sir?”
Illyan replied airily, “Oh, I think that’s a problem you can solve on your own, Ivan. You know the same go-to men as I do.”
Ivan Xav’s brow wrinkled. He turned to Tej and said, rather plaintively, “But you just got here. Don’t you want to look around a little before running off again—forever?”
“I hardly know,” said Tej, wishing she had a net to catch her spinning wits.
L
ady Alys touched her brooch again. “Indeed. Ivan’s aunt has often remarked on the inadvisability of making decisions on an empty stomach. Shall we dine?”
As she rose, and everyone else followed suit, the smiling woman servant spread wide another pair of marquetry doors at the end of the room, revealing a dining chamber with places for five ready and waiting. Lady Alys ushered them all through.
Ivan Xav had not lied; his mother set a first-rate table. The conversation became general as the discreet server brought course after course, with wines to complement. Rish made no signals regarding subtle poisons in the soup or salad, fish or vat-meat; instead, she bore the blissful smile of a trained aesthete given, for a change, no penance to endure in the name of good manners. It was all as well-choreographed as a dance. If Ivan’s mother fed her lover like this all the time, it was no wonder he never left.
“Have you lived here long, sir?” Tej asked Illyan, when a lull in the talk presented an opportunity.
“Say rather, I visit here frequently. I keep my old apartment as my official address, and stay there often enough to make it plausible. And for my mail—letter bombs and such—although I am officially retired, ImpSec still provides a courtesy squad to open it.” He smiled quite as if this were not a disconcerting remark. He added a little regretfully, “Just because I have forgotten so many old enemies does not mean they have forgotten me. We set it about that I am more addled than I am, to appease them. Please feel free to add to that public impression, should the subject come up.”
“I don’t find you addled at all, sir,” said Tej, quite sincerely.
“Ah, but you should have met me before the—no, perhaps you should not have. It’s far better this way, I assure you.”
Both Ivan and his mother shared an unreadable look at this, but it was gone from their faces before Illyan glanced up again from his plate. For all his silences, the man was about as self-effacing as a neutron star; light itself seemed to bend around him.
After dinner, Lady Alys kindly showed Tej and Rish around her more-than-flat, or at least the top floor. Ivan Xav slouched after, his hands in his pockets. The floor below was given over to personal apartments allotted to her servants, of whom she kept four: a cook, a scullion-and-housemaid, who was also the server they’d seen, a dresser-cum-personal secretary, and the driver, Christos. Two rooms she passed over in the tour; Ivan explained in a behind-the-hand whisper that they were Illyan’s bedroom and study. They stepped out briefly to a chilly roof garden, designed, Lady Alys told them proudly, by Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan, who appeared to be famous for such things. It was past the season for lingering there, though a few late-blooming fall plants still gave up delicate scents, but Tej could see how one might want to, on warmer days or nights. The view was even better than the one from the living room below.
“I do appreciate your welcome,” said Tej to Lady Alys, as they paused at the parapet to take in one last look at the light-draped river valley. “I feel so much better about it all now. I wasn’t sure what to expect or what to do about—well, anything. I’d never planned to visit Barrayar.”
Lady Alys smiled into the dark. “I considered leaving the time and place of your presentation up to Ivan, as a sort of test. Then I considered all the many ways that scenario could go so wrong, and changed my mind.”
“Hey,” said Ivan Xav, but not very loudly.
“There were two principal possibilities on the table.” Lady Alys turned to face Tej. Laying out her cards at last? “First, was that you were an adventuress who had somehow succeeded in entrapping Ivan, and he should be rescued from you as expeditiously as possible. Maybe. After I’d found out how you did it, for future reference. Or possibly he should be allowed to extricate himself from the consequences of his own folly, for a life lesson. I was having trouble deciding which—”
Another inarticulate noise of protest from her son.
Ignoring it, she went on, “But in any case, both Morozov’s and Simon’s evaluations put that as a low probability. The second main hypothesis was that you were exactly as you appeared to be, the unwitting victim of one of Ivan’s less-well-thought-out inspirations, and needed to be rescued from him. My ImpSec consultants were both united in setting that as a high probability.” She added after a contemplative moment, “ImpSec men never fail to hedge their bets, I’m afraid. It’s most annoying, when one must make decisions based on their reports.”
“If anyone needs any rescuing around here, Mamere, I’m perfectly capable of doing it,” said Ivan Xav, sounding annoyed.
“So I hope, love. So I hope.”
When, at length, they took their departure in the mirrored hallway, where Christos again waited to convey them to the groundcar, Ivan Xav bent and gave his Mamere a rather formal peck on the cheek, which seemed to make her smile despite herself. He really was much taller than her, Tej realized.
Lady Alys turned to Tej with a thoughtful look. “As he may or may not have told you, Ivan’s birthday is coming up next week. We always begin it with a little private ceremony, very early in the morning. I hope that he will decide to invite you.”
The startled and bemused glances Lady Alys won from both the men for this were the most mystifying yet.
“Uh . . . sure,” said Ivan, sounding oddly unsure. “G’night, Mamere. Simon, sir.”
He nodded to Illyan, and ushered Tej and Rish out to the foyer. The natural wood inlay on the wide doors that closed behind them made not an abstract jumble, but a mosaic picture, Tej realized in a last look back. It portrayed a dense woodland, with horses and riders half-hidden, crossing through the trees. Her eye had not parsed it at all, her first time through.
* * *
In the back of the groundcar, Ivan ran his fingers through his scalp in a harried swipe and moaned, “She makes me crazy.” Still, Tej and Rish seemed to have survived the daunting visit, as had he. That it was better to have behind them . . . he was not yet sure.
“You mean Lady Vorpatril?” said Tej. She gave Ivan a peeved poke in the arm. “She was not at all like what you led me to believe. From the way you talked, I thought there would be screaming and weeping and carrying on, at the very least. But she’s very practical.” She added after a moment, “And kind. I didn’t expect kind.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ivan. “After thirty years of high Vor diplomacy and a few wars, of course she has the chops. This is a woman who knows how to get her way.”
Tej cast him a funny look. “Not always, it seems like.”
Rish turned her head from a long, thoughtful stare out the canopy to observe, “She reminds me of the Baronne.”
“A little, yes,” said Tej, with an introspective frown. “Not as tightly focused.”
“She’s mellowed a lot since Simon arrived in her life,” Ivan admitted. “And vice versa, though his was rather imposed upon him by his, um, brain injury.” Ivan was put uncomfortably in mind of Tej’s alarming response to his mother’s first greeting. Tej seemed such a sunny personality, much of the time—these flashes of dark were like a crack in the sky, shocking and wrong. Reminding him that the daylight was the illusion, the scattering of light by the atmosphere, and the endless night was the permanent default behind it all. And God that was a weird and morbid thought, but his mother did make him crazy. “Did you, um, love your mother? The Baronne?”
Tej hesitated, her brows lowering. When she spoke, it was slowly, as if she had to grope for truth in a thicket of thorny memories. “I admired her very much. We didn’t always get along. Actually, we clashed a lot. She said I wasn’t working up to my full potential. Not like my sisters.”
“Ah,” said Ivan, wisely. “That does sound all too familiar.”
Tej looked across at him in surprise. “But you were an only child!”
“Not . . . exactly. I always had my cousin Miles. And Gregor for an elder brother, but of course it was understood he was in a class by himself.” He added after a reflective moment, “All by himself, poor sod.”
“So your cousin Miles
was like a brother to you?” asked Rish. Glints from her gold earrings flickered in the shadowy compartment as her head tilted.
“Miles . . . is really hard to explain. He was—is—smart.”
“You’re smart,” said Tej, in a tone of indignant protest.
Ivan’s heart nearly melted, but he sighed. “Yeah, but Miles was . . . the thing is, he was afflicted with a severe birth injury. He grew up pretty much crippled, so he poured all his frustrated energy into his intellect. Since the Vorkosigan family motto might as well be, Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving, the effect was pretty frightening. And it worked for him, so he did it some more.”
“Very like the Baronne,” murmured Rish.
Tej said slowly, “Yes . . . my mother loved being the Baronne, you see. Building the House was her passion. And in her way, I suppose, she loved us, and naturally wanted us to have this great thing she’d found, too. Except . . . I wasn’t her. It was like . . . if she could just fix me into being her, then she could shower me with the gifts she so valued.”
Ivan winced. “Ah.” It was kind of appalling, how little trouble he had following that whole line of reasoning. On both sides. Not sure what to say, he slipped an arm around Tej and hugged her in. Warm and soft, why didn’t anyone value warm and soft . . . ?
“So will we get to meet your cousin?” asked Rish. Or, possibly, prodded?
“Not sure. He’s an Imperial Auditor now—that’s sort of a high-level government troubleshooter—so he goes out of town at erratic intervals to find trouble to shoot. I should warn you, if we do go to Vorkosigan House, it’s knee-deep in infants these days. Twins, speaking of overachieving. They offer to let you hold one as if it was some kind of treat.” Ivan shuddered. “And they leak, and make the most horrible noises.”
“I never had much to do with infants,” said Tej. “Comes of being nearly the youngest, I guess.”