brow in belated appreciation.
“I’d have thought you would’ve had the sense to duck her,” said Ivan, settling back into his own chair.
“Wasn’t given a chance. I was publicly arrested in the Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport by an ImpSec goon squad as soon as I stepped off the shuttle yesterday, and hauled away in handcuffs.”
“Ivan Xav’s mother did that?” said Tej, sounding impressed. “She just sent Christos and a car for us.”
Byerly appeared to contemplate this. “Much the same thing, I suppose. It was actually my handler’s bright idea for getting me to my debriefing discreetly, now that the Vormercier scandal has hit the news. The public tale for me will be that I had no idea that all this brotherly chicanery was going on; I was just the caterer for the party yacht. Drinks, drugs, girls, you know.”
“Girls?” said Ivan. “I don’t think the term for that is caterer, By.”
By shrugged one shoulder. “They were actually my co-agents. ImpSec has found that it’s often better to recruit from those already in the trade, giving them a step up in the world in return for their loyalty, than to start with a trained agent and persuade them to-well, you see. I called right after I left your wedding, told them to get the hell off Vormercier’s yacht, met them on the orbital transfer station to, supposedly, go shopping-that was our code phrase for pulling the plug. We were all three boarding a commercial flight to Barrayar by the time Desplains and your crew descended on the Kanzian. Desplains’s jump-pinnace passed us by us en route, I suppose-ours wasn’t the fastest ship. Nor the best cabin. We had to share.” A smile flickered over Byerly’s face. “We were commended for our economy, though. ImpSec being in the throes of one of its periodic budget spasms.”
“Hot bunks?” inquired Ivan. “What suffering you ImpSec weasels do endure, to be sure. Just you and two beautiful call girls, stuck together for eight days in a tiny room with nothing to do. It must have been hell.”
“Not quite nothing,” Byerly murmured back, taking another sip of champagne and orange juice. “We had all those reports to write…”
“What’s a call girl?” asked Tej, her brows crimping in puzzlement.
“Uh…” Ivan sought a translation. “Like a Betan licensed practical sexuality therapist, only without the licensed and the therapy parts.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Like a grubber sex worker. That doesn’t sound altogether safe.”
“It isn’t,” said By. “It’s not a trade that attracts the risk-averse, let us say.”
“Like an informer?” inquired Rish, with a small blue smile.
He raised his glass to her, and drained it. “There are parallels. Combine that with informer, and you may perhaps guess why I was anxious to extract them before the hammer came down.”
“Hm,” she said, eyeing him in fresh evaluation.
“So ImpSec released me back into the wild today, supposedly after a grueling night of incarceration and involuntary fast-penta interrogation, which cleared me of complicity in Vormercier’s crimes. But left me looking rather a public fool. All good so far.” He scowled, and added, “I was also commended for my months of meticulous and, if I may say it, wearing work on the Vormercier case, and raised one pay grade.”
“Congratulations!” said Rish. “But…you don’t look happy…?”
By’s lips twisted. “And then I was promptly reprimanded and docked one pay grade for involving you, Ivan.”
“Oh.” Ivan almost added Sorry! till he reflected that, actually, it wasn’t his fault. Had he asked By to hand- deliver him a bride? No. Not to mention the stunned, tied up, and threatened with arrest and/or the admiral’s sarcasm parts.
“They did it that way on purpose, you know.” By brooded. “If they’d presented it the other way around, it wouldn’t have been nearly so stinging. Or just said nothing at all, which would have come to the exact same end. Far more efficiently.”
Ivan assured Rish, who seemed taken aback, “Don’t worry about it. Byerly’s pay grade goes up and down a lot. Think of it as white noise in a general upward trend.”
“This marked a new speed record, though,” By grumbled.
Tej was still looking thoughtful. “How does one become a spy?” she asked Byerly.
His dark brows flicked in amusement. “Thinking of applying? A portion of candidates are filtered in from the Service side of things. Good people in their way, but, let us say, afflicted with a certain uniformity of world-view. Some are purpose-recruited from the civilian side, generally for some special expertise.”
“So which way did you get recruited?” asked Rish.
He waved his glass in a what-would-you gesture. “I came in by the third route, recruited piecemeal by a working Domestic Affairs agent. I had arrived in the capital at the age of not quite twenty, bent on going to hell as expeditiously as possible in my own callow fashion-meaning, as like to the other callow, ah, what Ivan and his ilk call town clowns, as I could manage. It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company-I more hunted them down-but among all the bad apples in my chosen barrel was one who was…not. He used me for a few favors, found me satisfactory, assigned me more small tasks, then larger ones, tested me…” Byerly grimaced at who-knew-what memory-Ivan suspected he wasn’t going to tell that one. “And then one day made me an offer which, by that time, did not astonish me-though it illuminated many things in retrospect. I was cycled through a few ImpSec short courses, and the rest was apprenticeship. And, ah…more spontaneous learning experiences.” He poured himself more champagne and orange juice. He doubtless needed the vitamins.
“Which brings me to the moment,” By went on. “We need to-”
“Wait, you skipped over my mother,” said Ivan.
“Would that I could have. She appeared to be remarkably well informed. I tried to explain that my testimony was redundant, but she insisted on the extra angle of view. What I was about to say is, that before any of you here go out into circulation in Vorbarr Sultana-I mean, beyond the extremely select company you’ve already kept-we need to get our stories straight about what really happened on Komarr.”
“Ah,” said Ivan, unsurprised. “Not a social visit, then.”
“Hardly.” Byerly glanced under his lashes at Rish. “Well, mostly not, but I’ll get to that later. Having, miraculously, not yet blown my cover and lost my livelihood, I would like to keep it that way.”
Ivan conceded the validity of this concern with a nod.
“The short version will be that Ivan met you, Tej, on Komarr when he went to mail his package. You indulged in a whirlwind affair, and, when you were suddenly threatened with deportation by Komarran immigration, he married you in a fit of gallantry.”
Tej wrinkled her nose. “Why?”
“What, you were beautiful, you were in danger, and I hadn’t got laid yet,” said Ivan. “Seems simple enough.”
Byerly tilted his head. “You know, you were doing well there, Ivan, till that last-never mind. Verisimilitude is everything. Speaking of which, I was told Tej and Rish may as well go on being themselves for as long as they are on Barrayar. Making a virtue of necessity, as erasing them from earlier in the record would be nearly impossible, with all the trail you’ve left-like an Emperor’s Birthday parade, compete with marching bands and an elephant. Highborn but destitute refugees fleeing from a disastrous palace coup-Barrayarans will understand that part, have no fear, even if they remain suspicious of your Jacksonian aspects.” His eye fell on Ivan, and he added meditatively, “You spotted me on Komarr by chance, and nabbed me for a known witness when you suddenly needed one. I wonder if you should have been drunk at the time?”
“At dawn?” said Ivan indignantly. “No!” He added in false cordiality, “You’re welcome to have been, if you like.”
“What, and besmirch my impeccability as a witness? Surely not.”
“In other words,” said Tej slowly, “pretty much the same tale as we’ve been telling everyone. Except for Admiral Desplains, Lady Vorpatril, Simon Illyan, Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, Emperor Gregor…” She trailed off, plainly finding it an uncomfortably long list for a closely-held secret.
“It’s all right,” Ivan assured her. “That bunch holds more secrets among ’em than I can rightly imagine.”
“Moving on to my concerns,” Byerly continued. “In the interests of spreading the correct cover story as soon as possible to as many observers as possible, Rish, I wonder if you would care to attend a select little soiree with me this evening. Dinner beforehand, perhaps?”
“Go out?” Rish’s eyes grew wide with both longing and alarm. “On a date? With you? On Barrayar?”
Byerly tilted his free hand judiciously back and forth. “Not exactly a date. I need to get out and about to complain, gossip, backstab, and of course curse Theo Vormercier and ImpSec-jointly, severally, and loudly. A tough
