wine each. It was surprisingly good wine, though Tej suspected the beer would have complemented the entree more stoutly. And after that, she fell into an exhausted doze on the sofa. Even after her months downside, Komarr’s short day length remained physiologically awkward. She hadn’t slept soundly since they’d arrived.
Nor since before…
Ivan was only a few minutes late, which he was honestly able to blame on the morning bubble-car clump-up on the tube from Dome Center out to the military shuttleport-happily, the slowdown had been in a high section with a nice view, not in the disturbing underground stretch. Barrayar’s Komarr command HQ was somewhat awkwardly split between the downside installation next to the ’port and the orbital and jump-point stations, but no pop-ups to orbit were scheduled today for the visiting admiral and his loyal assistant.
Desplains, a spare and quietly competent officer in his late fifties, took in Ivan’s neat but squinty appearance with an ironic eye. “Heavy drinking last night, Vorpatril?”
“No, sir, not a drop. I was kidnapped by two beautiful women and held prisoner in their flat all night. They didn’t let me get a wink of sleep.”
Desplains snorted amusement and shook his head. “Save your sex fantasies for your friends, Ivan. Time to saddle up.”
Ivan gathered the notes and agendas and followed him out.
The three-hour-long morning meeting with the downside local staff was more torture than last night’s ordeal had been, in all, and Ivan only kept awake by surreptitiously pinching his earlobe with his fingernail. The afternoon’s schedule promised to be more entertaining, a private planning session with Desplains’s own inspection team, a cadre of keen and occasionally evil officers known to the inspected as the Vor Horsemen of the Apocalypse, though only two of the group had surnames burdened with that prefix.
This left Ivan his lunch hour to pursue his own affairs. He grabbed a rat bar again, poured a cup of tarry coffee, popped two painkillers in an attempt to clear the sleep-deprivation cotton batting from his head, unwillingly contemplated his secured comconsole, and instead of starting a tedious and possibly frustrating search, called the building next door. Admiral Desplains’s name cleared his route at once.
ImpSec Galactic Affairs shared its downside offices with ImpSec Komarr, although how much the two sets of spook-handlers talked to each other was anyone’s guess. Once past the lobby security, the hushed, windowless corridors reminded Ivan all too much of ImpSec’s parent headquarters back in Vorbarr Sultana: utilitarian, secretive, and faintly depressing. They must’ve imported the same interior designer, just before he hanged himself.
The top Galactic Affairs analyst for Jackson’s Whole here was one Captain Morozov; Ivan had been interviewed by him twice before, over his cousin Mark’s affairs. The personal touch always sped things up, in Ivan’s experience. Morozov also met, adequately, Ivan’s current who-do-you-trust calibrations. Ivan found him presiding over a similar cubicle and comconsole as a few years back, even more packed with books, cartons of flimsies, and odder memorabilia. Morozov was a pale scholar-soldier with a square, bony face, and an unusually cheerful outlook on life and his work-ImpSec regulars could be morbid.
Morozov greeted Ivan with either a wave or an ImpSec-style salute, it was hard to tell which, and drew up the spare swivel chair with an extended foot. “Captain Vorpatril. We meet again. What can Galactic Affairs do for Admiral Desplains today?”
Ivan settled himself, finding a place for his feet amongst the cartons. “I”-he conscientiously did not say we — “have a query on an unusual person with a suspected Jacksonian connection.” Carefully, if vividly, Ivan described Rish, withholding her name for now-it could be just another alias, after all. There seemed no point in describing Tej. There might be whole planets full of cinnamon-skinned beauties out there somewhere, for all Ivan knew. Rish, he suspected, was unique. Keep it simple.
Morozov listened intently, his eyebrows climbing, fingertips pressed together in a gesture copied, Ivan was fairly sure, from his infamous former boss. As Ivan wound up he vented a Huh! Before Ivan could inquire just what kind of Huh! it was, Morozov spun to his comconsole and zipped through its file listings too fast for Ivan to follow. He sat back with a triumphant little Tah-dah! gesture as a still vid formed over the plate.
Ivan leaned forward, staring. “Good grief! There’s a whole set!” With a conscious effort, he closed his mouth.
The vid showed a group portrait, posed and formal. Rish, it was clearly Rish, knelt on one knee, second from the left. She was wearing very little; a gold thong and a winding pattern of gold foil that appeared to be glued on, barely covering other strategic points and twining up to her neck as if to present her face as an exotic blossom. Surrounding her were four other women and a man. They had slightly varying heights and builds, but all looked equally lithe and shimmering. One woman was white and silver, one yellow and metallic gold, one green and gold, one red and garnet, and the man was jet black and silver. Six faces differently but equally exquisite, smiling faintly, serene.
“Who are they?”
Morozov smiled like a particularly satisfied stage magician. Ivan had to admit, that was one hell of a rabbit.
“Their names are Pearl, Ruby, Emerald, Topaz, Onyx, and the blue one is Lapis Lazuli. Baronne Cordonah’s famous living Jewels. That scan was taken several years ago.”
“Jacksonian genetic constructs?”
“Of course.”
“What, um, do they do? Besides stand around and look stunning.”
“Well, the Baronne was known to use them as decor from time to time-from all reports, she was a woman who knew how to make an entrance. Also as a dance troupe, for very favored visitors. Servants, and I suspect much more. They are certainly jeeveses.”
“Uh…what?”
“A jeeves is a Jacksonian slang term for an obligate-loyal servant or slave. Made variously, either by psychological conditioning or genetic bias or both, and unswervingly devoted to their object of attachment. They’re said to pine if they are separated from their master or mistress, and sometimes even die if he or she dies.”
They actually sounded a bit like his cousin Miles’s loyal armsmen, but that select cadre of stern men wasn’t nearly so photogenic. Ivan kept this reflection to himself. “Baronne Cordonah? Any relation to Cordonah Station?” One of five vital jump point stations guarding the wormholes into and out of Jacksonian local space. Fell Station, which served the jump point out to the Hegen Hub, was usually of the most interest to Barrayar, but the others were important, too.
“Until recently, Shiv and Udine ghem Estif Arqua, Baron and Baronne Cordonah, were the joint masters of House Cordonah and all its works.”
“Until how-wait, what? Ghem Estif?” A pure Cetagandan name. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Oh, now that’s a tale and a half.” A glint of enthusiasm lit Morozov’s eye. “How far back should I start?”
“How far back does it go?”
“Quite a way-you’d be amazed.”
“All right, begin there. But keep in mind that I get mixed up easily.” Ivan cast an eye on the time, but quelled an urge to tell Morozov to fast-forward it. An ImpSec analyst in a forthcoming mood was a wonder not to be wasted.
“The name of General ghem Estif may be dimly familiar to you from your history lessons…?” Morozov paused in hope. More dim than familiar, but Ivan nodded to encourage him. “One of the lesser Cetagandan generals who oversaw the last days of the Occupation, and its assorted debacles,” Morozov generously glossed. “At about that time in his career, he actually was awarded a haut wife.”
The highest honor, and burden, a Cetagandan ghem lord could acquire; such a spouse was a genetic gift bestowed by the upper tier of Cetagandan aristocracy, the haut, a super-race-in-progress, or so they imagined themselves. Having met a few daunting haut ladies, Ivan could imagine that the reward had been a very mixed blessing for the old general.
“When most of his brother ghem officers returned to Eta Ceta to lay their somewhat terminal apologies before their emperor, ghem Estif and his wife understandably lingered on Komarr. It must have been a strange life and wrenching life for them, expatriate Cetagandans in the domes. But ghem Estif had his connections, and eventually his daughter Udine, who was actually born here in Solstice, married an extremely wealthy Komarran
