The invaders, Ivan noticed for the first time, did indeed wear thin transparent gloves. Cheap, commercial, millions used to protect hands from dirty jobs all over the planet. Nothing unique, nothing traceable, which pretty much went for all of their equipment. Low rent, or cleverer than they seemed?
“You know, those goons could well have some sort of backup waiting outside,” Ivan opined.
“We have an escape route. Over the roofs,” said Nanja.
“Have you ever practiced it?”
“Yes,” said Rish, scowling at him, which was no clue, as she pretty much scowled at him all the time. “Start packing, Tej.”
Tej? Well, Ivan had known that Nanja was an alias. The blue woman hadn’t made that slip of the tongue in front of him before. Starting to trust him, or just rattled?
“Do you know where you’re going? That is, do you have a place to go?” Ivan asked.
To which Rish replied, “No business of yours,” and Nanja-Tej said, “Why do you ask?”
Ivan promptly addressed himself to the latter. “I was thinking you might like to hole up at my place for a few days. Take stock, make your plans when not in a panic. I can almost guarantee I have no prior connection with you for your enemies to trace. It’s likely as good a safe house as you could get on short notice. And it’s free.”
Nanja hesitated. Nodded. Rish sighed.
“What do we do with these, then?” said Rish, nodding at the lumps. “Safest to kill them . . .”
Ivan was still having trouble figuring out which woman was in charge. But the lumps did indeed pose a puzzle. The most obvious thing was to call ImpSec Komarr and have them send a professional cleaning crew to take the whole mess in hand. Reminded, Ivan retrieved his wallet, stunner, and wristcom. No one objected. The thing was . . .
Very belatedly, it occurred to Ivan to wonder what kind of fix Byerly was in, to send an HQ desk pilot to cover these women instead of, say, a trained ImpSec bodyguard or even squad, with all the high-tech trimmings. By’s idea of a joke was not out of the running as a hypothesis, but . . . just how delicate was By’s investigation? Was he simply out of range of his usual handlers, contacts, and blind drops, or was there some more sinister reason in play? By’s hints had suggested that his current bag of creepy playmates had high connections in the Service—how high? And which branches? Could By be on the track of some corruption within ImpSec Komarr itself?
Dammit, the purpose of a briefing was to tell you everything you needed to know to do your job right. It shouldn’t be a frigging IQ test. Or worse, word puzzle. Ivan hissed in growing frustration. Next time he saw By, he was going to strangle the smarmy Vorrutyer whelp.
The smarmy Vorrutyer whelp who, Ivan had reason to know, did sometimes, if very rarely, report directly to, and receive orders directly from, Emperor Gregor . . .
“Don’t kill them,” said Ivan abruptly. “Pack up as quick as you can, we’ll take your escape route, and then go to my digs. But on the way out I’ll call Solstice Dome Security, report that I witnessed a break-in from down in the street. Leave the door open for them, everything in place. Plenty enough funny business here that I guarantee they’ll take these goons in charge, maybe put them on ice for a good long time. When the local patrollers arrive, any backup out there will scatter, if they haven’t already. Does that work for you?”
Slowly, Rish nodded. Nanja-Tej was already on her way to their bedroom.
Ivan did yield to the temptation—temptation should have the right-of-way at all times, in his view—to peek after her into the room. The flat only had the one sleeping chamber, windowless, curiously enough. Twin beds, both rumpled, hm. What did that mean . . . ?
The two women were ready in less time than Ivan would have believed possible, having fit everything they wanted into a mere three bags. They had to have drilled this. Ivan coiled up the ropes and scarves and stuffed them into various of his jacket pockets, and returned his chair to its demure place under the kitchen table. As a practical matter, he abandoned any of his fingerprints, loose hairs, or shed skin cells to their fates. Maybe they would pose an interesting test of Solstice Security’s crime scene procedures.
* * *
Tej, dry-mouthed with worry, jittered along the edge of her building’s roof as the Barrayaran spoke into his wristcom. He did an extremely convincing drunken drawl.
“. . . Yeah, you should see, I’m down in the street watching this right now. No horseshit, these two guys with, like, a window-washer’s float pallet, goin’ right through this third-story window. I don’t see how they’re washing windows in the dark, d’you know? Oh, my God. I just heard a woman scream . . . !” With a faint smile, Vorpatril shut down his link to the Solstice emergency number.
Solstice Dome never really slept. Enough general illumination from the city lights gave adequate vision for the next task, even if the colors were washed out to a mix of sepia and gray, checkered with darker shadows.
“You first, Tej,” said Rish. “Careful, now. I’ll toss you the bags.”
Tej backed up a few steps for her running start and made the exhilarating broad jump to the next building. Three floors up. She cleared the ledge with ease and turned to catch the bags, one, two, three. Rish followed, loose garments fluttering as she somersaulted in air, landing on balance half a meter beyond Tej, motionless and upright like a gymnast dismounting.
Vorpatril stared gloomily at the gap, backed up quite a way, and made a mighty running jump. Tej caught his shoulders as he stumbled past her on landing.
“Ah,” he wheezed. “Not as bad as it looked. A little gravitational advantage, thank you, Planet Komarr. Almost makes up for your miserly day-length. You wouldn’t want to try that on Barrayar.”
Really? Tej wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare. And there was no time. Rish led off. As they made the second leap, the flashing lights of a dome patrol airsled were visible in the distance, closing rapidly.
Vorpatril balked at the next alley, half a dozen meters across. “We’re not jumping that, are we?”
“No,” said Tej. “There’s an outside stair. From the bottom, it’s only a block to the nearest bubble-car station.”
By the time they’d distributed the bags and walked the block, carefully not hurrying, everyone had caught their breaths again. The few sleepy-looking early, or late, fellow passengers crossing the platform scarcely spared them a glance. Rish twitched her shawl around to hide her head better while Vorpatril selected a four-person car, paying a premium for its exclusive use and express routing. He politely took the rear-facing seat, punched in their destination, and lowered the transparent canopy to its locking position. The car entered its assigned tube and began to hiss along smoothly.
The night was fading into dawn, Tej saw, as the car rose on a long arc between two major dome sections. A shimmering red line edged the horizon beyond the limits of the sprawling arcology. As she watched, the tops of the tallest towers seemed to catch fire, eastern windows burning sudden orange in the reflected glow, while their feet remained in shadow. From a few lower sections, higher domes rose in a strange random spatter-pattern, catching gilded arcs.
Her fingers spread on the inside of the canopy as she stared. She’d never seen practically the whole of Solstice laid out like this, before. Since they’d arrived downside, she had only left their refuge to scurry out for work or food, and Rish hadn’t ventured out at all. Perhaps they should have. Their immobility had given only an illusion of safety, in the end. “What are those domes?”
Vorpatril swallowed a jaw-cracking yawn and followed her glance. “Huh. Interplanetary war as urban renewal, I suppose. Those are sections destroyed during the fighting in the Barrayaran annexation, or later in the Komarr Revolt. Making way for fresh new building, after.” He eyed her with tolerant amusement. “Real Komarrans would have known that, of course. Even if they weren’t from Solstice.”
She clamped her teeth and sat back, flushing. “Is it so obvious?”
“Not at first,” he assured
her. “Until one meets Rish, of course.”
Rish’s gloved hand pulled her shawl down lower over her face.
Several minutes and kilometers brought them to the business and governmental heart of the dome, an area where Tej had never ventured. The platform on which they disembarked was growing busier, and Rish kept her face down. They crossed the street and marched a mere half block till they came to a tall, new building. Vorpatril’s door remote coded them within. The lobby was larger than Tej’s whole flat, lined with marble and real, live potted greenery. The lift tube seemed to rise forever.
They debouched into a hushed, deeply carpeted corridor, walked to the end, and entered, through another coded door, another foyer or hallway and then a living room, with a broad view of the cityscape opening beyond a wide balcony. The décor was serene and technologically austere, except for a few personal possessions dropped at random here and there.
“Ah, no, look at the time!” Vorpatril yelped as they entered. “First dibs on the bathroom, sorry.” He broke into a jog, leaving a trail of clothing in his wake: jacket, shirt, shoes kicked aside. He was unbuckling his trousers as he called over his shoulder, “Make yourselves comfy, I’ll be out in a tick. God, I’d better be . . .” The bedroom door slid closed behind him.
She and Rish were left staring at each other. This sudden stop seemed even more disorienting than their prior panicked rush.
Tej circled the living area, inspecting a swank kitchenette that seemed all black marble and stainless steel. Despite its culinary promise, the refrigerator contained only four bottles of beer, three bottles of wine (one opened) and a half-dozen packets which the undecorative wrappings betrayed as military ration bars. An open box of something labeled instant groats graced the cupboards in lonely isolation. She was still reading the instructions on the back when the bedroom door slid open and Vorpatril thumped out again: fully dressed, moist from his shower, freshly depilated, hair neatly combed. He paused to hop around and shove his feet into his discarded shoes.
Both she and—hee, I saw that!—Rish blinked. The forest-green Barrayaran officer’s uniform was quite flattering, wasn’t it? Somehow, his shoulders seemed broader, his legs longer, his face . . . harder to read.
“Gotta run, or I’ll be late for work, under pain of sarcasm,” Vorpatril informed her, reaching past her to grab a ration bar and hold the package between his teeth as he finished fastening his tunic. He shoved the bar temporarily into a trouser pocket and seized her hands. “Help yourselves to whatever you can find. I’ll bring back more tonight, I promise. Don’t go out. Don’t make any outgoing calls, or answer any incoming ones. Lock the doors, don’t let anyone in. If a slithering rat named Byerly Vorrutyer shows up, tell him to come back later, I want to talk to him.” He stared at her in urgent entreaty. “You aren’t a prisoner. But be here when I come back—please?”
Tej gulped.
His grip tightened; laughter flashed in his eyes. He pressed his lips formally to the backs of her hands, one after the other, in some Barrayaran ethnic gesture of unguessable significance, grinned, and ran. The outer door sighed closed on sudden silence, as if all the air had blown out of the room with him.
After a frozen moment, she gathered her nerve, went to the balcony door, and eased it aside. Judging from the angle of the light, she would get an excellent view of Komarr’s huge and famous soletta array, key to the ongoing terraforming, as it followed the sun across the sky, later. She’d never been able to see it from her own flat.
She’d been cowering in the shadows for a long, sick time, it seemed in retrospect. Every plan she’d ever been given had come apart in chaos, her old life left in a blood-soaked shambles far behind her. Unrecoverable. Lost.
No going back.
Maybe it was time to take a deep breath and make some new plans. All her own.
She ventured to the railing and peeked down, a dizzying twenty flights. Far below her, a hurrying figure in a green uniform exited the building, wheeled, and strode off.
Chapter Three
Tej and Rish spent their first few minutes alone scouting the exits. The luxurious flat had only the one door, but the corridor had lift tubes at either end, and emergency stairs as well. There was also the balcony, Tej supposed, but to be survivable, escape by that route would require either antigrav or rappelling gear, which they did not currently possess. They next explored the interior space for any hidden surveillance equipment or other surprises; there either was none, or it was very subtle. The lock on the outer door was much better than average, and Rish set it with satisfaction; but of course no ordinary door would stop a truly determined and well-equipped invader.
Rish did find a compact launderizer concealed in the kitchenette, and applied herself to laundering all the dirty clothes they’d hastily packed, perhaps in the hope that their next escape, whatever it turned out to be, could be more orderly. Tej discovered the captain’s sybaritic bathroom, and decided to treat her chill weariness with a long soak.
The scent of him still lingered in the moist air, strangely pleasant and complex, as if his immune system was calling out to hers: let’s get together and make wonderful new antibodies. She smiled at the silly image, lay back in the spacious tub of hot water, and frankly enjoyed his dash of inadvertently displaced flirtation in the old evolutionary dance, all the better because he couldn’t know how he was observed. It was, she realized after a bit, the first spontaneously sensual moment she’d had since the disastrous fall of her House, all those harried months back. The realization, and the memories it trailed, were enough to destroy the moment again, but it had been nice while it lasted.
She stirred the water with her toes. Since they’d gone to ground on Komarr, fear and grief had slowly been replaced with the less stomach-churning memory of them, till last night had kicked it all up again. It was not in the least logical that she should feel—relatively—safe in this new refuge. Who was this Ivan Vorpatril, and how had he discovered her, and why? She floated, her hair waving around her head like a sea-net, and breathed his fading scent again, as if it could supply some hint.
The water didn’t cool—the tub had a heater—but at length her hands and feet grew rather wrinkly, and she surged up out of the cradling bath and dried off. Dressed again, she found that Rish had discovered that the flat’s comconsole was not code-locked, and was searching for any Solstice Dome Security reports on their intruders.
“Find anything?”
Rish shrugged her slim shoulders. “Not much. Just a time stamp, and our address. ‘In response to a witness report of a possible break-in, officers arrived and apprehended two men in possession of burglary equipment. Suspects are being held pending investigation.’ It doesn’t sound like anyone’s stepped up to outbid the arrest order yet.”
“I don’t think they do it that way here,” said Tej, doubtfully.
Rish scanned down the file. “‘Officers called to domestic altercation . . . vandalism reported at bubble-car platform . . . attempted credit chit fraud by a group of minors . . . ’ Oh, here’s one. ‘Beating interrupted of man spotted by bar patrons stealing public emergency breath masks. Suspect arrested, patrons thanked.’ I suppose I can see why no one would have to pay for that arrest order . . . The Solstice patrollers were busy enough last night, but really, the crime here seems very dull.”
“I think it’s restful. Anyway, bath’s yours, if you want it. It’s really nice, compared to that dreadful sonic shower we’ve been living with lately. I can recommend it.”
“I believe I will,” Rish allowed. She stood and stretched, looking around. “Posh place. You have to wonder how he can afford it on a Barrayaran military officer’s salary. I never had the impression those fellows were overpaid. And their command doesn’t let them hustle on the side.” She sniffed at this waste of human resources.
“I don’t think it’s his real home, that’s back on Barrayar. He’s just here for some work thing.” Recently arrived, judging from the contents of his kitchenette, or maybe
he didn’t cook? Tej nodded at the comconsole. “I wonder how much we could find out just by looking him up?”
Rish’s golden eyebrows rose. “Surely this benighted Imperium doesn’t allow its military secrets out on the commercial planetary net of its conquest.”
Throughout the Jackson’s Whole system, information was tightly controlled, for the money, power, and security it could bestow, and for that narrow edge that could mean the difference between a deal succeeding or failing. At the other extreme, Tej’s favorite tutors from her youth, a trio of Betans her parents had imported at great trouble and expense, had described a planetary information network on their homeworld that seemed open to the point of madness—suicide, perhaps. Yet somehow Beta Colony remained, famously, one of the most scientifically advanced and innovative planets in the Nexus, which was why the tutors had been imported. Of all the instructors she’d been plagued with, the Betans were the only ones whose departure she’d mourned when, homesick, they had declined to renew their contracts for another year. Most other planetary or system polities fell somewhere between the two extremes of attempted information control.
“I think we may be thinking too hard,” said Tej. “We don’t need to start with his secrets, just with what everybody else knows.” Everybody but us.
Rish pursed her lips, nodded, and stepped aside. “Have at it. Shout out if you find anything useful.”
Tej took her seat. Stuck hiding in their flat, Rish had been allowed far more time to learn the arcana of making this net disgorge data than Tej, but how common could that odd name be? She leaned over and entered it.
A Komarran database was the first to pop up above the vid plate, bearing the promising title of The Vor of Barrayar. All in alphabetical order, starting with V and ending with V. Oh. There were, it seemed, hundreds and hundreds of Vorpatrils scattered across the three planets of the Barrayaran Empire. She tried reordering the names by significance.