now. “All right. Let’s go inside.”
His brows shot up, but then his smile widened. “Sounds great. Sure!”
He rose and politely waited while she fished her remote out of her pocket and coded open the front entrance. As the seal-door hissed aside, he followed her into the small lift-tube foyer. A female figure sat on the bench opposite the tubes, hands hidden in her vest as if chilly, voluminous patterned shawl hiding her bent head.
A slender gloved hand flashed out, aiming a very businesslike stunner.
“Look out!” Vorpatril cried, and, to Tej’s bewilderment, lurched to try to shove her behind him. Uselessly, as it only cleared the target for Rish. The stun beam kneecapped him neatly, and he fell, Tej supposed, the way a tree was said to, not that she’d ever witnessed a tree do such a thing. Most of the trees she’d seen before she’d fetched up on Komarr had lived in tubs, and did not engage in such vigorous behavior. In any case, he crashed to the tiles with a vague thrashing of upper branches and a loud plonk as his head hit. “Owww…” he moaned piteously.
The quiet buzz of the stunner had not carried far; no one popped out of their first floor flat door to investigate either that or the thump, alarming as the latter had seemed to Tej.
“Search him,” Rish instructed tersely. “I’ll cover you.” She stood just out of reach of his long but no doubt tingling arms, aiming the stunner at his head. He eyed it woozily.
Tej knelt and began going through his pockets. His athletic appearance was not a facade; his body felt quite fit, beneath her probing fingers.
“Oh,” he mumbled after a moment. “You two are t’gether. Thass all right, then…”
The first thing Tej’s patting hand found was a small flimsy, tucked into his breast pocket. Featuring a still scan of her. A chill washed through her.
She seized his well-shaved jaw, stared into his eyes, demanded tightly: “Are you a hired killer?”
Still weirdly dilated from the stun nimbus, his eyes were not tracking quite in unison. He appeared to have to think this question over. “Well…in a sense…”
Abandoning interrogation in favor of physical evidence, Tej extracted the wallet he’d flashed earlier, a door remote much like her own, and a slender stunner hidden in an inner pocket. No more lethal weaponry surfaced.
“Let me see that,” said Rish, and Tej obediently handed up the stunner. “Who is this meat really?”
“Hey, I c’n answer that,” their victim mumbled, but fell prudently silent again as she jerked her aim back at him.
The top item in the wallet was the credit chit. Beneath it was a disquietingly official-looking security card with a heavy coding strip identifying the man further as one Captain Ivan X. Vorpatril, Barrayaran Imperial Service, Operations, Vorbarr Sultana. Another mentioned such titles as Aide-de-Camp to Admiral Desplains, Chief of Operations, with a complicated building address featuring lots of alphanumeric strings. There was also a strange little stack of tiny rectangles of heavy paper, reading only Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril, nothing else. The fine, black, raised lettering bumped under her curious fingertips. She passed them all up for Rish’s inspection.
On sudden impulse, she drew off one of his polished shoes, which made him twitch in a scrambled reflex, and looked inside. Military issue shoes, aha, that explained their unusual style. 12 Ds, though she couldn’t think of a reason for that to be important, except that they fit the rest of his proportions.
“Barrayaran military stunner, personally coded grip,” Rish reported. She frowned at the handful of IDs. “These all look quite authentic.”
“Assure you, they are,” their prisoner put in earnestly from the floor. “Damn. By never mentioned any lethal blue-faced ladies, t’ ratfink. Izzat…makeup?”
Tej murmured in uncertainty, “I suppose the best cappers would look authentic. Nice to know they’re taking me seriously enough not to send cut-rate rental meat.”
“Capper,” wheezed Vorpatril-was that his real name? “Thass Jacksonian slang, innit? For a contract killer. You expectin’ one? That ’splains a lot…”
“Rish,” Tej said, a sinking feeling beginning in her stomach, “do you think he could really be a Barrayaran officer? Oh, no, what do we do with him if he is?”
Rish glanced uneasily at the outside door. “We can’t stay here. Someone else could come in or out at any moment. Better get him upstairs.”
Their prisoner did not cry out or try to struggle as they womanhandled his limp, heavy body into the lift tube, up three flights, and down the corridor to the corner flat. As they dragged him inside, he remarked to the air, “Hey, made it inside her door on t’ first date! Are things lookin’ up for Ma Vorpatril’s boy, or what?”
“This is not a date, you idiot,” Tej snapped at him.
To her annoyance, his smile inexplicably broadened.
Unnerved by the warm glance, she dumped him down hard in the middle of the living room floor.
“But it could be,” he went on. “…To a fellow of certain special tastes, that is. Bit of a waste that I’m not one of ’em, but hey, I can be flexible. Was never quite sure about m’cousin Miles, though. Amazons all the way for him. Compensating, I always thought…”
“Do you ever give up?” Tej demanded.
“Not until you laugh,” he answered gravely. “First rule of picking up girls, y’know; she laughs, you live.” He added after a moment, “Sorry I triggered your, um, triggers back there. I’m not attacking you.”
“Dead right you’re not,” said Rish, scowling. She tossed shawl, vest, and gloves onto the couch, and dug out her stunner again.
Vorpatril’s mouth gaped as he stared up at her.
A black tank top and loose trousers did not hide lapis lazuli-blue skin shot with metallic gold veins, platinum blond pelt of hair, pointed blue ears framing the fine skull and jaw-to Tej, who had known her companion and odd- sister for her whole life, she was just Rish, but there were good reasons she’d kept to the flat, out of sight, ever since they’d come to Komarr.
“Thass no makeup! Izzat…body mod, or genetic construct?” their prisoner asked, still wide-eyed.
Tej stiffened. Barrayarans were reputed to be unpleasantly prejudiced against genetic variance, whether accidental or designed. Perhaps dangerously so.
“’Cause if you did it to yourself, thass one thing, but if somebody did it to you, thass…thass just wrong.”
“I am grateful for my existence and pleased with my appearance,” Rish told him, her sharp tone underscored by a jab of her stunner. “ Your ignorant opinion is entirely irrelevant.”
“Very boorish, too,” Tej put in, offended on Rish’s behalf. Was she not one of the Baronne’s own Jewels?
He managed a little apologetic flip of his hands-stun wearing off already? “No, no, ’s gorgeous, ma’am, really. Took me by surprise, is all.”
He seemed sincere. He hadn’t been expecting Rish. Wouldn’t a capper or even hired meat have been better briefed? That, and his bizarre attempt to protect her in the foyer, and all the rest, were adding to her queasy fear that she’d just made a serious mistake, one with consequences as lethal, if more roundabout, as if he’d been a real capper.
Tej knelt to strip off his wristcom, which was clunky and unfashionable.
“Right, but please don’t fool with that,” he sighed. He sounded more resigned than resistant. “Tends to melt down if other people try to access it. And they make issuing a replacement the most unbelievable pain in the ass. On purpose, I think.”
Rish examined it. “Also military.” She set it gingerly aside on the nearby lamp table beside the rest of his possessions.
How many details had to point in the same direction before one decided they pointed true? Depends on how costly it is to be mistaken, maybe? “Do we have any fast-penta left?” Tej asked Rish.
The blue woman shook her head, her gold ear-bangles flashing. “Not since that stop on Pol Station.”
“I could go out and try to get some…” Here, the truth drug was illegal in private hands, being reserved to the authorities. Tej was fairly sure that worked about as well as it did anywhere.
“Not by yourself, at this hour,” said Rish, in her and no backtalk voice. Her gaze down at the man grew more thoughtful. “There’s always good old-fashioned torture…”
“Hey!” Vorpatril objected, still working his jaw against the stun numbness. “There’s always good old- fashioned asking politely, didja ever think of that?”
“It would be bound,” said Tej to Rish, primly overriding his interjection, “to make too much noise. Especially
