Or worse, suborned to the new regime. When she tried to come up with a list of intimate friends, the sort who might ask, Is he good enough for Our Tej? they all came out family, or at least some of the survivors-Jet, Rish, maybe Amiri. Also all scattered. She hoped Jet was still safe with Amiri.
Galeni’s presence did account for the absence of Byerly, she realized a bit belatedly; it would not do By’s town-clown cover good to be seen dining out with one of the senior officers of ImpSec.
When they arrived, roundaboutly, at the account of how Tej had met and married Ivan Xav, she was afraid it was going to be The Coz and The Gregor all over again, or at least, Galeni wheezed red-faced into his napkin to the point where his wife stopped giggling long enough to look at him in concern.
Galeni straightened up and caught his breath at last. “At least it sounds better than your last kidnapping.”
“I thought so,” Ivan Xav agreed ruefully.
“What?” said Tej.
Galeni hesitated, then said, “One of the more traumatic incidents of my till-then remarkably trauma-free sojourn on Earth. Ivan spent a very unpleasant afternoon kidnapped by, ah, a group of conspirators, who hid him in the pumping chamber of a tidal dam.”
“An afternoon?” muttered Ivan Xav. “Try a subjective year. Pitch-dark, y’know? I couldn’t have read a clock if I’d had one. Also cold, wet, cramped, and underground. Listening the whole time for the damned pump to start, and drown me, when the tide turned.”
Tej, picturing this, felt her throat tighten. “Sounds nasty.”
“Yeah,” said Ivan Xav.
“Among the several pressing reasons I was kissing my career goodbye about then, that came high on the list,” sighed Galeni. “To be handed Lieutenant Lord Vorpatril to look after, and then lose him…not good on my resume, I assure you.”
“But he was rescued,” said Rish. “Obviously. By you, Commodore?”
“Captain, back then. Let’s say I helped. Fortunately for my resume.”
“Is your claustrophobia better now?” Delia asked Ivan Xav, more in a tone of curiosity than concern.
Ivan Xav gritted his teeth. “I do not have claustrophobia. Thank you very much, Delia. There’s nothing irrational about it…About me.”
“But Miles said-”
“I have an allergy to total strangers trying to kill me, is all. One that Miles shares, I might point out.”
Delia’s lips twisted. “I don’t know, Ivan. I think Miles actually gets rather excited by that.”
“You may be right,” agreed Galeni.
“Do you suppose it’s the attention?” said Delia. “He does like to be at the center.”
Ivan Xav choked into his own napkin at this one, and was drawn away from his little moment of irate by uniting with this old friend in trading scurrilous observations about The Coz, none of which, Tej noticed, Galeni tried to gainsay.
At dessert, the commodore pulled a small, flat case from his jacket pocket and pushed it rather shyly toward her and Ivan Xav. It contained a book-disc, she saw. Ivan Xav eyed it warily. “What’s this, Duv?”
“Something of a combination birthday and wedding present. Well, perhaps more for Lady Tej than you. A new history of Barrayar since the Time of Isolation. Just released from the Imperial University Press this week, after some years in the preparation. Professora Vorthys is going to teach her modern history class with it, starting next fall.”
“How long is it?”
“Ninety chapters, roughly.”
“And how many did you write?”
Galeni cleared his throat. “About ten.”
“I didn’t know ImpSec gave homework,” said Tej faintly.
Galeni smiled wryly. “More of a hobby, in my case. But I do like to keep my hand in, when I can. As much as I can. I have several interesting papers written, waiting for their references to age out of their classified status.”
“I should explain,” said Ivan Xav, “when Duv said he quit school to go to the Imperial Military Academy, back when the Service was opened to Komarrans, he was a professor, not a student. History. He’s mostly over it, but sometimes he reverts. Is this thing”-he touched the case with a cautious finger-“written in high academic?”
“I can only speak for my own chapters, but Illyan beat the scholastic prolixity out of me back when I was first writing ImpSec analysis reports for him,” said Galeni. “Taught me the ImpSec ABC’s-accuracy, brevity, and clarity. Although he did say he was glad to get reports where he didn’t have to correct the grammar and spelling.”
Ivan Xav laughed. “I’ll just bet.”
Tej had just enough wits to accept the book-disc with suitable appreciation. This did not seem the time to explain that she wasn’t going to need to study Barrayaran anything, because she was skiving off to Escobar at the first opportunity. Ditto Delia’s offer to hook her up with the array of sisters, when the chances arose. She managed noncommittal thanks.
The Galenis excused themselves soon after dessert-a toddler and an infant evidently waited at home. A vid- cube of the absent offspring was shown about; Tej made suitable complimentary noises. As the couple passed out of the restaurant, Ivan Xav remarked, “No night life for him anymore, poor sod.” But undercut this by adding, “I expect that suits him to the ground.”
Ivan Xav didn’t have brothers, but at least it seemed he had brother-officers, Tej reflected. It was something.
It wasn’t till bedtime, when Ivan Xav was taking his turn in the bathroom and she and Rish were making up the couch, that Tej was able to snatch a private moment to decant the Byerly Report.
“So? Last night. How was it?”
Rish flicked over a sheet and smiled a maddeningly secret smile. “Interesting.”
Tej tossed her head. “That’s what people say about some dodgy dish that doesn’t quite work. Whitefish and raspberries.”
“Oh, this combination worked. Delectably.”
“ So? ”
Rish touched her lips, though whether to check her words or draw them out, Tej could not guess. “Byerly… I’ve never encountered anyone whose mouth and whose hands seemed to be telling two such different stories.”
“Do I have to shake you?”
Rish grinned, and made a rather Byerly-like wrist-flutter. “The mouth ripples on amusingly enough, though most of what comes out is camouflage and the rest is lies-not so much to me, though. But the hands…”
“Mm?”
“The hands are strangely shy, until suddenly they turn eloquent. And then their candor could make you weep. A woman might fall in love with the hands. Though only if the woman were nearly as foolish as my little even- sister-which, luckily, doesn’t seem to be possible.”
Tej threw a pillow at her.
The next day, the last of Ivan Xav’s leave, he spent ferrying them around to see a few locally-famous tourist sites, including a military history museum at Vorhartung Castle, the most looming of the old fortresses above the river that were, indeed, lit up colorfully at night. During this outing, he discovered that Tej and Rish not only didn’t drive ground vehicles, they couldn’t.
“We had sport grav-sleds, at this downside country villa my parents kept, but my older sibs usually hogged them,” Tej explained. “And in congested places, towns and cities like this”-she waved around-“even Dada used an armored groundcar with a dedicated driver and bodyguards. Outside the cities it’s all toll roads built and operated by assorted Houses, so you need a lot of money to get around.”
“Huh,” said Ivan Xav. “I bet I can fix that.”
His fix proved to be a private driver’s education service specializing in off-world tourists, whose personable instructor picked them up at the front of Ivan Xav’s building the next morning, after Ivan Xav went off to Ops for his
