It’s not as if I acquired most of it on purpose, Illyan had protested. But the damned chip didn’t allow me to delete anything, whether I picked it up inadvertently or in a moment of bad mood or bad judgment or bad company, and then I was stuck with it forever. Or in the line of work, oh, God, those were the worst. Do you have any idea how many truly appalling surveillance vids I had to review in forty years . . . ?
There were some things, Ivan reflected, that no man should know about another, not even or perhaps especially his um-stepfather. People had occasionally—in Ivan’s hearing or even buttonholing him directly—speculated about just how long this matter between Illyan and Lady Alys had really been going on, since Illyan’s retirement when it had become . . . overt? Public? Not flaunted, Lady Alys didn’t flaunt, that would be tasteless. More like . . . they wore each other with well-earned pride. But it had occurred to Ivan then that the physical danger Illyan trailed from his work might not have been the only thing he’d been loath to take to bed with his esteemed Vor lady. Ivan had decided he was thankful when Illyan appeared to have forgotten the conversation the next day—hangovers were definitely for the young, the man had moaned—and didn’t remind him of it in any way.
And when Ivan had got over his own hangover, and the generational whiplash, and the unwanted lurid-but-maybe-not-even-lurid-enough imaginings, he’d finally decided that what it had mostly sounded like was lonely, actually.
Being married to a wife beat being married to a job, it seemed increasingly clear to Ivan.
“Captain Illyan is—or was—a clever man, was he not?” said Pidge. “I should have thought that a position as a security chief would have lent itself to considerable personal acquisition, in three decades. If not directly, then through clever use of inside information.”
It was a measure of . . . something . . . that this thought had never crossed Ivan’s mind till now. If nothing else, Illyan had spent vast tracts of time and wells of energy dealing with corrupt people and the effects of their corruptions; really, there could hardly be anything he hadn’t learned about the depravity of the human condition. And yet . . . just because Illyan took confessions didn’t make him a priest.
“No,” said Ivan after a moment, grabbing for his tilting certainty. “ImpSec was his passion; he didn’t need another. If he had a drug, it was adrenaline.”
Byerly’s brows rose. “Really?”
“God, yes. He only looked normal by contrast because he hung around with a pack of the biggest adrenaline-junkies on three worlds. All the great men have to be, to ride the Imperial Horse. I mean, think who Illyan used to run in covert ops. And at whose request.”
“That,” said Byerly, “is a point.”
“But he’s retired from all that now.”
“A modest frugal retirement for a loyal Imperial bureaucrat?” said Pidge. “And yet your mother so wealthy.”
“Doesn’t bother her,” Ivan said stoutly.
“But does it bother him?”
About to deny this with equal vehemence, Ivan realized that among the many things he didn’t know about Simon . . . that was another. “I am sure he has more important things on his mind.”
Pidge smiled at him. “Fascinating.” With a little Shiv-like wave of her fingers, she trailed away toward the party; Byerly, with one of his less-comprehensible grimaces, promptly trailed after.
Ivan gave the blank study door one last look of frustration, and followed.
Ivan still hadn’t had a chance to talk alone with Tej when the party broke up an hour later. Simon and Shiv had at last emerged from Simon’s lair. Byerly was fidgety from having been excluded from a long, all-female confabulation amongst Lady Vorpatril, Lady ghem Estif, and Baronne Cordonah, from which they’d emerged as Alys, Moira, and Udine. Wraps were produced in the hallway, even its generous proportions elbow-jostling for this crowd. Christos reappeared to guide everyone back to their respective groundcars.
Simon and Shiv parted with another of those disquieting handshakes. As the mob thinned, Simon gazed thoughtfully at the broad departing back, but turned with a slight smile to take Tej’s hand.
“Intriguing fellow, your Dada, Tej. The man could sell elephants to circus masters.”
She gave him a puzzled, gratified, and alarmed smile back. “I’d think circus masters would want to buy elephants, sir.”
Illyan’s smile stretched. “Quite so.”
* * *
Tej had successfully avoided Ivan Xav all evening, while the party swirled around her spinning head. A bass beat of Cetagandan gold, Cetagandan gold, Cetagandan gold! had thumped in her brain, with an occasional descant of Buried treasure! and discord wail of But ImpSec . . . ! Dada, despite the lack of stepfather-in-law intel for which he had shot her that pointed look—and it wasn’t her fault that no one had let her explain earlier—seemed to have made a swift recovery and hit it off just fine with Simon. That had to be good. Didn’t it?
Normally, she looked forward to pillow talk with Ivan Xav, and what followed, for sheer aesthetic reasons if nothing else. It had become a very comfortable time of the day, something to anticipate with pleasure. Not this day. As they dodged around each other and Rish in and out of the bathroom, the conversation was utilitarian. Tej made it under the covers first. She didn’t have to pretend to be exhausted—if she just rolled over and closed her eyes . . .
“Tej . . .” The other side of the bed creaked and dipped as Ivan Xav sat down, but then he sighed, got up again, padded to the bedroom door, opened it, and called through, “Hey, Rish!”
“What?” Rish’s tired, irritated voice called back.
“Have you outed Byerly yet? About what he does for a living, I mean?”
“Of course not! That was the deal. Tacitly. I assumed.”
Ivan Xav’s tense shoulders relaxed. “Ah.”
“—just to my family, of course.”
The shoulders went from relaxed to slumped. “Of course,” Ivan Xav mumbled. He raised his voice again: “That would be, like, nine more people, yeah?”
“Great, the natural-boy can count.”
Ivan Xav growled, and let the door slide shut.
He returned to the bed and sat up against the headboard, looking down in the soft lamplight at Tej, who, under the press of the stare between her shoulder blades, rolled over onto her back.
“Tej,” he began again, hesitantly, “could your Dada possibly imagine that he could suborn Simon?”
How to deal with this . . . “Suborn, what a word, suborn. You’d only need to suborn someone for something, like, treasonous, or evil. Something political or military, bad for Barrayar.” Financial wasn’t political or military, right? “Of course Dada wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Couldn’t, I’d say. You do realize—Shiv must realize—Simon’s had thirty, forty years for his probity and loyalty to be tested by, by more pressure than anything your Dada could possibly bring to bear—maybe more than you or I can even imagine.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So . . .”
“Look, Dada’s not stupid.”
“Neither is Simon.” Ivan Xav’s face managed peeved, not his best expression. “They’re up to something, aren’t they. You—the Arquas.”
“They came to Barrayar to get Rish and me.”
“Yes, and that’s something else we need to talk about—I mean, that’s the conversation I’ve been rehearsing all bloody day, before all this came—Tej, what do you know?”
She scowled up at him, looming on her left. Ivan Xav wasn’t stupid, either, of course. “Then are you in or out?” And was it even worth probing? He was Barrayaran to the bone, seven-eighths, anyway. He’d be bound to want to grab everything for his empire, his own gang—that was what the uniform he wore every day meant.
“Of what? I can’t say till I know what I’m in or out of. Though it’s got to be trouble, or you’d just be telling me. There’s some kind of Jacksonian deal going on under the table. Yeah?”
“I can’t
tell you unless you’re in. Or you decide you’re out, and then I really can’t tell you.”
“Married people,” said Ivan Xav austerely after a moment, “shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”
Tej rolled up on her elbow, annoyed. For once, this move failed to distract him. “What, you keep secrets from me all the time. All that classified stuff at your work.”
“That’s different. That’s . . . it’s assumed, no, it’s not just assumed, they make it quite explicit that fellows don’t babble about Ops business at home. Or anywhere else. It’s not like I keep those secrets from you preferentially.”
“It would probably be really boring anyway.”
“Most of it,” admitted Ivan Xav, almost diverted.
“Except maybe that stuff you mumble about in your sleep.”
Ivan Xav stiffened, and not in the good way. He was, in fact, quite limp in that region at the moment. “I talk in my sleep? About classified . . . ?”
“It’s kind of hard to tell.” Tej composed her mouth into Ivan Xav’s accent and cadences, and recited, “‘Don’t eat that avocado, Admiral, it’s gone blue. The blue ones have shifty eyes.’”
“Don’t remember that dream,” Ivan Xav muttered, looking vaguely horrified. “Fortunately . . .”
“I actually guessed it was a dream. Unless Barrayar’s running some sort of military bioengineering experiments, I suppose.”
“Not as far as I know. Not like that, anyway. The avocado didn’t . . . meow, did it?”
Tej stared. “I don’t know. You only said it looked shifty.”
Ivan Xav appeared inexplicably relieved. But then, alas, went on: “If it’s something benign, there’s no reason to keep it a secret.”
“Sure there is.”
“Like what?”
“Like, oh, to keep other people from stealing . . . whatever.”
“It’s a thing, then.”
It was a bit hopeless to tell herself Wake up! when her head was so filled with fatigue-fog. Tej tried anyway. “Not necessarily. People steal ideas.”
“So it’s a thing, and . . . and Shiv and your family think it’s something that can somehow help their cause, I suppose. That would make sense. Well, really, By is right; it’s the only thing that would make sense. Something that would help them, something they need to take back their House. So, more power to them—but not here. What can they be up to here?”
“I am not playing fast-penta interrogation with you at this time of night. Or at any other time.”
“That’s . . . actually a party game. Fast-penta or Dare. People take turns asking questions, and you have to either tell the truth, or take the dare. Not with real fast-penta, of course. Unless it’s a pretty dodgy party. By would know . . .”
“Barrayarans are strange.”
“Yes,” Ivan Xav agreed with a pensive sigh, then seemed to belatedly decide this might be considered a slur on his homeworld and revised it hastily, “No! Not as strange as Jacksonians, anyway. Or Cetagandans.” He added something under his breath that might have been, Frigging mutant space aliens, but swallowed it before Tej could be sure. She did not ask him to repeat it more loudly.
“It’s not just the House,” Tej tried, after a minute of silence stretched unpleasantly. “Prestene has Erik and Topaz. Held hostage or . . . or worse.”
“So . . .” Ivan Xav’s voice went uncomfortably uncertain. “Erik may well not be revivable. And Topaz is . . . just a Jewel, right? No genetic relation to Shiv. You said.”
Tej frowned. “Dada never made any distinction amongst us kids. Or else when he was yelling at us, he wouldn’t have kept mixing up our names.” Those cadences came easily to her mouth and memory; her voice deepened automatically. “‘You, Rish, Pidge, Jet, Em—no—Tej, you’re the one—you, stop that!’” Her lips turned up despite herself. “I suppose you could think of him as a stepfather to the Jewels, but since he didn’t bother to sort us, we never bothered to sort him. Of course, he was a busy man. It might have just been equal inattention, but the point is . . .” She’d lost track of the point.
“And your mother? With all the names?”
“The Baronne,” sighed Tej, “never mixed up anything.” She paused. “Simon seems a funny sort of stepfather to you.”
Ivan flapped his hands. “If I’d been five. Or fifteen. When he took up with Mamere. Things might have been different. I’d wanted a father, then. At thirty, we could only be adult acquaintances, and him Mamere’s . . . husband. Sort of. Um-husband. Partner. Whatever.” He hesitated for a longer time. “Leaving aside the thirty years he’d watched out for me before that. But then, Simon Illyan watched out for everybody. Not . . . not making a distinction amongst us. But Simon—” Ivan Xav stuttered, and went on, “Do you realize that—no, I can’t say that. Or that, I suppose. Or . . . or that . . .”
Tej, irate and exhausted and not just by the day, snapped, “Well, then, stop talking and go to sleep.”
Ivan Xav humphed, sounding like . . . a lot like Count Falco, really.
They rolled over with their backs to each other.
Chapter Seventeen
Ivan’s first thought on waking was the same as the last that had plagued him before he’d—finally—got to sleep. Could Simon be herding Shiv into a sting? Such a move was likely as instinctive as breathing to the former ImpSec chief. It was as plausible—a lot more plausible, really—as the idea that Shiv could be suborning Simon.
In that case, would Shiv lumber blindly into the trap, or would he guess this, and set a counter-pitfall for Simon before Simon could do him . . . ?
Neither vision was appealing.
It was maddening to suspect something was in the Arqua works, but have no idea what. Did Simon know, by now? The comforting notion that, in that case, Simon would surely be on top of it ran aground on the reflection that Shiv could well be stringing Simon along with heavily doctored information. In which case, the former ImpSec chief would likely let things run a bit to see what turned up. Giving the former pirate time to get the drop on him in turn . . .
This cannot end well. Ivan clutched his hair and stumbled to the shower.
Tej and Rish were still asleep when he let himself out of his flat. The routine of the morning rush at Ops was calming, almost. Admiral Desplains inquired after Ivan’s evening, in a perfunctory sort of way, and was evidently much reassured by the news that Lady Alys and Illyan had welcomed the refugee visitors diplomatically and without incident.
“Ah, Illyan, of course,” murmured the admiral, gathering up his coffee mug. “That should cover everything.”
“Mm!” said Ivan brightly, and turned to his comconsole.
He was still sorting snakes when a call came in over his secured channel from ImpSec HQ, the stamp informed him. Ivan mustered a faint, practiced smile of welcome when Captain Raudsepp’s face materialized over the vid plate.
“Good, Captain Vorpatril.” Raudsepp returned the nod. “General Allegre thought you should know, your case seems to be warming up. About a day ago, ImpSec Komarr picked up a team of four individuals at the main orbital transfer station who proved to be freelance bounty hunters out of the Hegen Hub, looking to collect your wife and her companion and deliver them to a contact back in the Hub.”
Ivan lurched in his chair. That was . . . fast? Slow? Expected, unexpected . . . unfortunate? “Just Tej and Rish? Not the rest of the clan?”
“Apparently. The reward for the two women’s delivery to the Hub station was substantial. A reward for their delivery all the way to the Whole is even more substantial. The source of what the Jacksonians are pleased to call an arrest order is confirmed to be this Prestene syndicate that took over House Cordonah eight months ago.”
“That’s not a surprise, by now. Were these rental goons arriving or departing when Morozov’s people caught up with them?”
“Boarding ship for Vorbarr Sultana, in point of fact.”
“That’s . . . a bit late.”
Raudsepp shrugged. “They w
ere quite professional. And while we now have red flags on anything related to the new Cordonah consortium, their damned bounty system puts a natural break in any connection. Anyone at all—who is in the trade, that is—may pick up an advertisement of the bounty, and the first thing the Jacksonians who posted it, let alone us, may know of them is when they pop up on their doorstep ready to deliver and collect. Personal motives not required.”
“Crap,” said Ivan. “Then they could come out of the walls anywhere.”
Raudsepp nodded glumly. “The charge of conspiracy to kidnap a Barrayaran subject will hold this crew for the moment.” He added in a more reflective tone, “One does wonder what we will do with them if they accumulate. Some special holding pen for galactic human traffickers might have to be devised. Not that we aren’t happy to have them identified and pulled out of circulation, but . . . well, perhaps it’s premature to look so far ahead.”
Ivan pictured it. What the hell was the Barrayaran government supposed to do with dozens and dozens of bounty hunters? They’d make a slippery bunch to hold on to, too, as well as some of them being seriously crazy. Miles would know what to do with a sack of rabid weasels, but that might be a cure worse than the disease. And anyway, Miles wasn’t here. It was perhaps unworthy to think thank God.
“I suppose,” said Ivan slowly, “they’ll keep coming as long as this Prestene consortium is still out there offering the booty. And for a while after, as people fail to get the updates. Speaking of updates, is there any sign that the Arquas’ enemies have found out that the rest of them are now all here?”
“Not yet,” said Raudsepp. “But I shouldn’t think that it will improve the situation once they do. This could get expensive for my department.”
Ivan grimaced. “I suppose you fellows can think of it as a live training exercise.”
Raudsepp appeared unamused. “Do you have any idea yet how long your, ah, relatives-in-law are planning to stay?”
“Their initial emergency visa runs thirteen more days. I don’t know if they’ll succeed in getting an extension.”