Chapter Nineteen
Ezar’s cache included a crate of currency, Barrayaran marks of various denominations. It also included a choice of IDs tailored to Drou, not all of which were obsolete. Cordelia put the two together, and sent Drou out to purchase a used groundcar. Cordelia waited by the cache while Bothari slowly uncurled from his tight fetal ball of pain, recovering enough to walk.
Getting back out of Vorbarr Sultana had always been the weak part of her plan, Cordelia felt, perhaps because she’d never really believed they’d get this far. Travel was tightly restricted, as Vordarian sought to keep the city from collapsing under him should its frightened populace attempt to stream away. The monorail required passes and cross-checks. Lightflyers were absolutely forbidden, targets of opportunity for trigger-happy guards. Groundcars had to cross multiple roadblocks. Foot travel was too slow for her burdened and exhausted party. There were no good choices.
After an eternity, pale Drou returned, to lead them back through the tunnels and out to an obscure side street. The city was dusted with sooty snow. From the direction of the Residence, a kilometer off, a darker cloud boiled up to mix with the winter-grey sky; the fierce fire was still not under control, apparently. How long would Vordarian’s decapitated command structure keep functioning? Had word of his death leaked out yet?
As instructed, Drou had found a very plain and unobtrusive old groundcar, though there had been enough funds to buy the most luxurious new vehicle the city still held. Cordelia wanted to save that reserve for the checkpoints.
But the checkpoints were not as bad as Cordelia had feared. Indeed, the first was empty, its guards pulled back, perhaps, to fight the fire or seal the perimeter of the Residence. The second was crowded with vehicles and impatient drivers. The inspectors were perfunctory and nervous, distracted and half—paralyzed by who-knew-what rumors coming from downtown. A fat wad of currency, handed out under Drou’s perfect false ID, disappeared into a guard’s pocket. He waved Drou through, driving her “sick uncle” home. Borthari looked sick enough, for sure, huddled under a blanket that also hid the replicator. At the last checkpoint Drou “repeated” a likely version of a rumor of Vordarian’s death, and the worried guard deserted on the spot, shedding his uniform in favor of a civilian overcoat and vanishing down a side street.
They zigzagged over bad side roads all afternoon to reach Vorinnis’s neutral District, where the aged groundcar died of a fractured power-train. They abandoned it and took to the monorail system then, Cordelia driving her exhausted little party on, racing the clock in her head. At midnight, they reported in at the first military installation over the next loyalist border, a supply depot. It took Drou several minutes of argument with the night duty officer to persuade him to 1) identify them, 2) let them in, and 3) let them use the military comm net to call Tanery Base to demand transport. At that point the D.O. abruptly became a lot more efficient. A high-speed air shuttle with a hot pilot was scrambled to pick them up.
Approaching Tanery Base at dawn from the air, Cordelia felt the most unpleasant flash of deja vu. It was so like her first arrival from the mountains, she had the sense of being caught in a time loop. Perhaps she’d died and gone to hell, and her eternal torment would be to repeat the last three weeks’ events over and over, endlessly. She shivered.
Droushnakovi watched her with concern. The exhausted Bothari dozed, in the air shuttle’s passenger cabin. Illyan’s two ImpSec men, identical twins for all Cordelia could tell to Vordarian’s ones they’d murdered back at the Residence, maintained a nervous silence. Cordelia held the uterine replicator possessively on her lap. The plastic bag sat between her feet. She was irrationally unable to let either item out of her sight, though it was clear Drou would much rather the bag had ridden in the luggage compartment.
The air shuttle touched neatly down on its landing pad, and its engines whined to silence.
“I want Captain Vaagen, and I want him now,” Cordelia repeated for the fifth time as Illyan’s men led them underground into the Security debriefing area.
“Yes, Milady. He’s on his way,” the ImpSec man assured her again. She glowered suspiciously at him.
Cautiously, the ImpSec men relieved them of their personal arsenal. Cordelia didn’t blame them; she wouldn’t have trusted her wild-looking crew with charged weapons either. Thanks to Ezar’s cache the women were not ill dressed, though there had been nothing in Bothari’s size, so he’d retained his smoked and stinking black fatigues. Fortunately the. dried blood spatters didn’t show much. But all their faces were hollow-eyed, grooved and shadowed. Cordelia shivered, and Bothari’s hands and eyelids twitched, and Droushnakovi had a distressing tendency to start crying, silently, at random moments, stopping as suddenly as she started.
At long last—only minutes, Cordelia told herself firmly—Captain Vaagen appeared, a tech at his side. He wore undress greens, and his steps were quick, up to Vaagen—speed again. The only residue of his injuries seemed to be a black patch over his eye; on him, it looked good, giving him a fine piratical air. Cordelia trusted the patch was only a temporary part of ongoing treatment.
“Milady!” He managed a smile, the first to shift those facial muscles in a while, Cordelia sensed. His one eye gleamed triumph. “You got it!”
“I hope so, Captain.” She held up the replicator, which she had refused to let the ImpSec men touch. “I hope we’re in time. There aren’t any red lights yet, but there was a warning beeper. I shut it off, it was driving me crazy.”
He looked the device over, checking key readouts. “Good. Good. Nutrient reservoir is very low, but not quite depleted yet. Filters still functioning, uric acid level high but not over tolerance—I think it’s all right, Milady. Alive, that is. What this interruption has done to my calcification treatments will take more time to determine. We’ll be in the infirmary. I should be able to begin servicing it within the hour.”
“Do you have everything you need there? Supplies?”
His white teeth flashed. “Lord Vorkosigan had me begin setting up a lab the day after you left. Just in case, he said.”
And, I love you. “Thank you. Go, go.” She surrendered the replicator into Vaagen’s hands, and he hurried out with it.
She sat back down like a marionette with the strings cut. Now she could allow herself to feel the full weight of her exhaustion. But she could not stop quite yet. She had one very important debriefing yet to accomplish. And not to these hovering ImpSec twits, who pestered her—she closed her eyes and pointedly ignored them, letting Drou stammer out answers to their foolish questions.
Desire warred with dread. She wanted Aral. She had defied Aral, most openly. Had it touched his honor, scorched his—admittedly, unusually flexible—Barrayaran male ego beyond tolerance? Would she be frozen out of his trust forever? No, that suspicion was surely unjust. But his public credibility among his peers, part of the delicate psychology of power—had she damaged it? Would some damnable unforseen political consequence rebound out of all this, back on their heads? Did she care? Yes, she decided sadly. It was hell to be so tired, and still care.
“Kou!”
Drou’s cry snapped Cordelias eyes open. Koudelka was limping into the main portal Security debriefing office. Good Lord, the man was back in uniform, shaved and sharp. Only the grey rings under his eyes were non- regulation.
Kou and Drou’s reunion, Cordelia was delighted to note, was not in the least military. The staff soldier was instantly plastered all over with tall and grubby blonde, exchanging muffled unregulation greetings like darling, love, thank God, safe, sweet… . The ImpSec men turned away uncomfortably from the blast of naked emotion radiating from their faces. Cordelia basked in it. A far more sensible way to greet a friend than all that moronic saluting.
They parted only to see each other better, still holding hands. “You made it,” chortled Droushnakovi. “How long have you—is Lady Vorpatril—?”
“We only made it in about two hours ahead of you,” Kou said breathlessly, reoxygenating after a heroic kiss. “Lady Vorpatril and the young lord are bedded down in the infirmary. The doctor says she’s suffering mainly from stress and exhaustion. She was incredible. We had a couple of bad moments, getting past Vordarian’s Security, but she never cracked. And you—you did it! I passed Vaagen in the corridor, with the replicator—you rescued m’lord’s son!”
Droushnakovi’s shoulders sagged. “But we lost Princess Kareen.”
“Oh.” He touched her lips. “Don’t tell me—Lord Vorkosigan instructed me to bring you all to him the instant you arrived. Debrief to him before anyone. I’ll take you to him now.” He waved away the ImpSec men like flies, something Cordelia had been longing to do.
