at this time of night. You know how we can hear Ser and Sera Palmi carrying on, next door.”
“Houseless grubbers,” muttered Rish. Which was rude, but then, she’d also had her sleep impeded by the amorous neighbors. Anyway, Tej wasn’t sure but that she and Rish qualified as Houseless, too, now. And grubbers as well.
And that was another weird thing. The man wasn’t yelling for help, either. She tried to decide if a capper, even one who’d had the tables so turned upon him, would have the nerve to bluff his way out past an influx of local police. Vorpatril did not seem to be lacking in nerve. Or else, against all the evidence, he didn’t think he had reason to fear them. Mystifying.
“We’d better tie him up before the stun wears off,” said Tej, watching his tremors ease. “Or else stun him again.”
He did not even try to resist this process. Tej, a little concerned for that pale skin, vetoed the harsh plastic rope from the kitchen stores that Rish unearthed, and pulled out her soft scarves, at least for his wrists. She still let Rish tug them plenty tight.
“This is all very well for tonight,” said Vorpatril, observing closely, “especially if you break out t’ feathers-do you have any feathers? because I don’t like that ice cube thing-but I have to tell you, there’s going to be a problem come morning. See, back home, if I didn’t show up for work on time after a night on the town, nobody would panic right off. But this is Komarr. After forty years, assimilation into the Imperium’s going pretty well, they say, but there’s no denying it got off to a bad start. Still folks out there with grudges. Any Barrayaran soldier disappears in the domes, Service Security takes it up seriously, and quick, too. Which, um…I’m thinking might not be too welcome to you, if they track me to your door.”
His comment was uncomfortably shrewd. “Does anyone know where you are?”
Rish answered for him: “Whoever gave him your picture and address does.”
“Oh. Yes.” Tej winced. “Who did give you my picture?”
“Mm, mutual acquaintance? Well, maybe not too mutual-he didn’t seem to know much about you. But he did seem to think you were in some kind of danger.” Vorpatril looked down rather ironically at the bindings now securing him to a kitchen chair, dragged out to the living room for the purpose. “It seems you think so, too.”
Tej stared at him in disbelief. “Are you saying someone sent you to me as a bodyguard? ”
He appeared affronted by her rising tones. “Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that the two of us took you down without even getting winded?” said Rish.
“You did too get winded. Dragging me up here. Anyway, I don’t hit girls. Generally. Well, there was that time with Delia Koudelka when I was twelve, but she hit me first, and it really hurt, too. Her mama and mine were inclined to be merciful, but Uncle Aral wasn’t-gave me a permanent twitch on the subject, let me tell you.”
“Shut. Up,” said Rish, driven to twitch a bit herself. “Nothing about him makes sense!”
“Unless he’s telling the truth,” said Tej slowly.
“Even if he’s telling the truth, he’s blithering,” said Rish. “Our dinner is getting cold. Come on, eat, then we’ll figure out what to do with him.”
With reluctance, Tej allowed herself to be drawn into the kitchen. A glance over her shoulder elicited a look of hope from the man, which faded disconsolately as she didn’t turn back. She heard his trailing mutter: “Hell, maybe I should’ve started with ponies…”
Chapter Two
Ivan sat in the dark and contemplated his progress. It was not heartening.
Not that his reputation for success with women was undeserved, but it was due to brains, not luck, and steady allegiance to a few simple rules. The first rule was to go to places where lots of women already in the mood for company had congregated-parties, dances, bars. Although not weddings, because those tended to put the wrong sorts of thoughts into their heads. Next, try likely prospects till you hit one who smiled back. Next, be amusing, perhaps in a slightly risque but tasteful way, until she laughed. Extra points if the laughter was genuine. Continue ad lib from there. A 10:1 ratio of trials to hits was not a problem as long as the original pool contained ten or more prospects to start with. It was simple statistics, as he’d tried to explain to his cousin Miles on more than one occasion.
He’d entered that shop knowing the odds were not in his favor; a pool with only one fish required a fellow to get it right the first time. Well, he might have got lucky; it wasn’t unprecedented. He wriggled his wrists against his scarf bonds, which were unexpectedly unyielding for such soft, feminine cloth. Some sort of metaphor, there. This is not my fault.
It was By’s fault, he decided. Ivan was a victim of poor intel from his own side, like many a forlorn hope before him. Ivan had encountered overprotective duennas before, but never one who’d shot him from ambush the first time he walked through the door. The unfriendly blue woman…was a puzzle. He disliked puzzles. He’d never been good at them, not even as a child. His impatient playmates had generally plucked them out of his hands and finished them for him.
Rish was incredibly beautiful-sculpted bones, flowing muscles, stained-glass skin shimmering as she moved- but not in the least attractive, at least in the sense of someone he’d want to cuddle up to. Sort of a cross between a pixie and a python. She was shorter and slimmer than Nanja, and very bendy, but, he had noticed when the two women were dragging him up here, much the stronger. He also suspected genetically augmented reflexes, and the devil knew what else. Best appreciated from several meters’ distance, like a work of art, which he suspected she was.
Whose work? That degree of genetic manipulation on humans was wildly illegal on all three planets of the Barrayaran Imperium. Unless one had it done to oneself, offworld, in which case it might still be better to go live somewhere else, after. Nanja was certainly neither Komarran nor Barrayaran, or she’d have had a more visible reaction to that famous name and address where he’d shipped the ghastly vase. Not only Not From Around Here, but also Not Been Here Long.
Her companion’s elegant gengineering was almost Cetagandan in its subtlety-but the Cetagandans didn’t make human novelties as such. Their aesthetic boundaries in that material were very strict, not to mention restricted, reserved for more serious and long-range goals. Now, animals-when Cetagandans were working with animal or plant genomes, or worse, both at once, all bets were off. He shuddered in memory. He would be glad to cross Cetagandans off his list, renegade or otherwise. He would be ecstatic.
Ivan peered around the dim living room. He was not, he assured himself, tied up in a small, dark place. It was a spacious, dark place, and not pitch-dark in any case, given the ambient urban glow from the window. And on the third floor, well aboveground. He sighed, and remembered to keep wriggling his weary feet. The nasty plastic ropes securing his ankles to the chair legs did seem to be slowly stretching. Perhaps he should have tried harder to escape, earlier. But the two women had been taking him right where he’d wanted to go, inside, for just the purpose he’d come, to talk. True, he’d been envisioning friendly chat, not hostile interrogation, but what was that quote Miles was so fond of? Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. Not that they were enemies, necessarily. He hoped. By could have stood to be clearer on that point, in retrospect.
The next most likely suspect on the body modification front was, of course, the planet and system of Jackson’s Whole, an almost equally unsavory hypothesis supported, alas, by any number of small hints the two women had let fall.
Jackson’s Whole did not have a unified planetary government-in fact, it claimed to have no government at all. Instead, it was ruled by a patchwork of Great Houses-116 of ’em the last Ivan had heard, but the number shifted in their internecine competitions-and countless Houses Minor. They tended not to hold large, unified territories on the planet’s surface, but rather, interpenetrated more like competing companies. Granted, the system, or lack of it, did make it less likely for the Jacksonians to pull together for, say, a major military invasion of their neighbors. But a person who had no House allegiance or employment there was a very unprotected person indeed.
Ivan had no trouble imagining all sorts of colorful reasons for the two young women to be on the run from the Whole. Any sensible persons not aligned with the power structure-structures-would be better off emigrating, if they could manage it. The real mystery was why anyone from there would be chasing them. Assassination wasn’t that casual a business expense, not with interstellar distances in play. If the two had made it all the way to Komarr but
