job, but somebody’s got to, and all that.”
“What about my”-Rish waved a hand down the slim length of her body-“non-standard appearance?”
“Some extra distraction for people’s eyes and minds while I set about my tedious task of disseminating disinformation seems…useful. Famous foreign artist, enjoying refugee status in the train of a mysterious romance, or possibly scandal, involving the scion of one of the stodgiest of high Vor families-I guarantee they’ll muscle past their prejudices for a taste of that. And in the company of the Vorrutyer clan’s most debonair non-heir, at that. Our audience will be positively agog.” He smiled. Ivan bared his teeth. Byerly ignored him, and went on, “Simultaneously, it will begin the process of habituating them to you. Also, it will give you a chance to see a bit of Barrayar not in Ivan’s stodgy company.”
“I am not stodgy! And your company is notoriously, notoriously unfit for…well, unfit, anyway!”
Rish raised her golden brows, and murmured, “Hm!” She regarded Byerly for a long moment through, narrowed, considering eyes. And flared nostrils? “It sounds a small enough task to start on. I think…yes.”
“I believe you will find the evening not without elements of interest,” By purred in triumph. “And I shall be fascinated by your observations.”
“What should I wear?”
“Ah, cerulean on the surface, woman to the bone. Casual-chic and striking would do the job nicely. A touch of the exotic a plus.”
Ivan thought the exotic was more of a default, but Rish merely said, “I can do that.”
Ivan struggled with a formless frustration. Rish was not his spouse, nor did he stand in any way in loco parentis to her. But who would be blamed, if something went wrong? Yeah. On the other hand, this would give him and Tej the flat to themselves for the whole evening. They could order in, and, and…Ivan finally managed, “Well… well, if you’re taking my employee out into deep waters, make damn sure you give her a better briefing than you gave me!”
Byerly set down his emptied glass and raised a brow. “Ivan, do I tell you how to run Ops?”
As Ivan sputtered, By grinned, arranged the hour for his return to collect Rish, stood up, and sauntered out, all in fine By style again. About a liter of Ivan’s most expensive champagne had relaxed him, presumably.
Ivan returned from escorting Byerly to the door and making sure it was locked after him to find Tej and Rish dividing the last of the fresh orange juice and frowning curiously.
“So…is By bi?” Tej asked. “Bisexual, that is.”
“I have no idea what By’s real preferences are,” Ivan stated firmly. “Nor do I wish to know.”
“What, couldn’t you smell him, that first night he came in on Komarr?” said Rish. Addressing Tej, Ivan hoped. “He’d had a busy two days or so. Any lingering scents from prior to that were too attenuated to discern.”
“He was pretty confusing,” said Tej. “In all ways, including that one.”
“To be sure, though I’d call it more compounded than confusing. But whether his contacts were sequential or together, for business or pleasure, enjoyed or endured, even I couldn’t guess.”
“I don’t want to know this,” Ivan repeated, although in a smaller voice. He bethought him of a new caution. “You do realize, Byerly has almost certainly been ordered by his handlers to keep a close eye on you? Surveillance is what he does. What could be a more efficient way of keeping you under his thumb than to ask you out himself?”
Rish smirked and rose. “There’s nothing that says a man can’t enjoy his work.” She added over her shoulder, as she drifted out like some exotic blue blossom floating down a stream, “Come on, Tej. Help me sort through this crazy Barrayaran wardrobe.”
Tej paused to whisper in reassurance to Ivan, “She adores being seen, you know. She’s bound to have a good time.” She bounced after Rish with a sort of happy-teakettle chortle.
A more horrid notion occurred to Ivan then. What if Byerly wanted Rish not for a smokescreen, but as bait? What could be a more efficient method of drawing their syndicate pursuers out to where ImpSec could see and nail them than that?
Well, Ivan reflected morosely, one way or another, at least ImpSec is on the job.
Rish returned to the flat very late that night; to Tej’s secret bemusement, Ivan Xav stayed up to let her in- but not Byerly, who had escorted her to the door, whom he sent to the right-about with complaints about keeping people awake past their bedtimes. By’s ribald return remarks merely made him grumpier. The next night, Rish had Ivan Xav issue her a door remote. Byerly took her out again, although not to a party, but to a dance performance put on by some touring folk group from the western part of the continent, his former and apparently forsaken home. On the third night, Rish called on Byerly’s wristcom to tell Tej not to wait up; she’d probably be back around noon the next day. Ivan Xav grumbled disjointedly.
The next morning, however, was his birthday, an event Tej had been anticipating with growing curiosity. They arose in the dark before dawn and dressed rather formally, he donning his green captain’s uniform for the first time on his week’s leave. They ate no breakfast, merely drank tea, and then he bundled her into his sporty groundcar and they threaded the dark, quiet streets, although to no great distance away. His driving was, thankfully, subdued, though whether because of the bleary hour of the day or the solemn task they were to undertake, she wasn’t sure.
He hadn’t been very forthcoming about the ceremony, some traditional Barrayaran memorial for his dead father that apparently involved burning a small sacrifice of hair-after it had been clipped from one’s head, Tej was relieved to learn. They pulled up in a street lined by older, grubbier, lower buildings, where a municipal guard vehicle was parked, its lights blinking. Two guardsmen were setting up a pair of lighted traffic deflectors on either side of a bronze plaque set in the pavement. The guard sergeant hurried over and started to wave Ivan out of the parking spot into which they eased, but then reversed his gesture into a beckoning upon recognizing the car and its driver.
“Captain Vorpatril, sir.” The man saluted as Ivan Xav helped Tej out. “We’re just about ready for you, here.”
Ivan nodded. “Thank you, sergeant, as always.”
Tej stood on the sidewalk in the damp autumn chill and stared around. “This is where your father died, then?”
Ivan Xav pointed to the plaque, glinting among the amber-and-shadow patterns woven by the street lights. “Right over there, according to Mamere. Shot down by the Pretender’s security forces, while they were trying to make their escape.”
“Wait, she was there? I mean, here? At the time?”
“Oh, yes.” He yawned and stared sleepily down the street, then perked up slightly as a long, sleek, familiar groundcar turned onto the block. The municipal guardsman waved it into its reserved parking space with studied officiousness, and saluted its occupants as they disembarked. Lady Vorpatril was accompanied, or escorted, by Simon Illyan, with the driver Christos bringing up the rear and holding a large cloth bag that clanked.
The guardsmen took up parade-rest poses at a respectful distance away, and Christos knelt in the street to withdraw a bronze tripod and bowl from the bag, setting them up next to the plaque. He nodded to his mistress and went to join the guardsmen; they greeted each other and conversed in low tones, then one of the guardsmen went out into the street to direct the growing trickle of traffic safely around the site.
“Good morning, Ivan,” Lady Alys greeted her son. “Happy birthday, dear.” She hugged him, and he returned her what seemed to be the regulation peck on the cheek. He nodded thanks to Illyan’s echoed, “Happy birthday, Ivan. Thirty-fifth, isn’t it?
“Yes, sir.”
“Halfway through your Old Earth three-score-and-ten, eh? Incredible that we’ve all survived so long.” He shook his head, as if in wonder. Ivan grimaced.
The War of Vordarian’s Pretendership had been more in the nature of an abortive palace coup, as Tej understood it from her recent reading. Shortly after the ascension of the five-year-old Emperor Gregor under the regency of Aral Vorkosigan, the rival Count Vidal Vordarian and his party had made a grab for power. In the first strike, they’d secured the capital city, the military and ImpSec headquarters, and the young emperor’s mother, but the boy himself had slipped through their fingers, to be hidden in the countryside by Vorkosigan’s gathering forces. It had proved an ultimately fatal fumble.
There had followed a months-long standoff, minor skirmishes while each side frantically maneuvered for allies
