A Civil Campaign

course, because something of this peculiar nature must be cross-checked—I brought it to Hugo, for his advice, hoping that he could allay my fears. The corroborations your sister-in-law Rosalie supplied served to increase them instead.'

Corroborations of what? She could probably make a few shrewd guesses, but she declined to lead the witnesses. 'I don't understand.'

'I was told,' Vassily stopped to lick his lips nervously, 'it's become common knowledge among his high Vor set that Lord Auditor Vorkosigan was responsible for sabotaging Tien's breath mask, the night he died on Komarr.'

She could demolish this quickly enough. 'You are told lies. That story was made up by a nasty little cabal of Lord Vorkosigan's political enemies, who wished to embarrass him during some District inheritance in-fighting presently going on here in the Council of Counts. Tien sabotaged himself; he was always careless about cleaning and checking his equipment. It's just whispering. No such actual charge has been made.'

'Well, how could it be?' said Vassily reasonably. But her confidence that she'd brought him swiftly to his senses died as he went on, 'As it was explained to me, any charge would have to be laid in the Council, before and by his peers. His father may be retired to Sergyar, but you may be sure his Centrist coalition remains powerful enough to suppress any such move.'

'I would hope so.' It might be suppressed, oh yes, but not for the reason Vassily thought. Lips thinning, she stared coldly at him.

Hugo put in anxiously, 'But you see, Ekaterin, the same person informed Vassily that Lord Vorkosigan attempted to force you to accept a proposal of marriage from him.'

She sighed in exasperation. 'Force? No, certainly not.'

'Ah.' Hugo brightened.

'He did ask me to marry him. Very . . . awkwardly.'

'My God, that was really true ?' Hugo looked momentarily stunned. He sounded a deal more appalled at this than at the murder charge—doubly unflattering, Ekaterin decided. 'You refused, of course!'

She touched the left side of her bolero, tracing the now not-so-stiff shape of the paper she kept folded there. Miles's letter was not the sort of thing she cared to leave lying around for anyone to pick up and read, and besides . . . she wanted to reread it herself now and then. From time to time. Six or twelve times a day . . . 'Not exactly.'

Hugo's brow wrinkled. 'What do you mean bynot exactly ? I thought that was a yes-or-no sort of question.'

'It's . . . difficult to explain.' She hesitated. Detailing in front of Tien's closest cousin how a decade of Tien's private chaos had worn out her soul was just not on her list, she decided. 'And rather personal.'

Vassily offered helpfully, 'The letter said that you seemed confused and distraught.'

Ekaterin's eyes narrowed. 'Just what busybody did you have this— communication —from, anyway?'

Vassily replied, 'A friend of yours—he claimed—who is gravely concerned for your safety.'

A friend? The Professora was her friend. Kareen, Mark . . . Miles, but he would hardly traduce himself, now . . . Enrique? Tsipis ? 'I cannot imagine any friend of mine doing or saying any such thing.'

Hugo's frown of worry deepened. 'The letter also said Lord Vorkosigan has been putting all sorts of pressure on you. That he has some strange hold on your mind.'

No. Only on my heart, I think . Her mind was perfectly clear. It was the rest of her that seemed to be in rebellion. 'He's a very attractive man,' she admitted.

Hugo exchanged a baffled look with Vassily. Both men had met Miles at Tien's funeral; of course, Miles had been very closed and formal there, and still grayly fatigued from his case. They'd had no opportunity to see what he was like when he opened up—the elusive smile, the bright, particular eyes, the wit and the words and the passion . . . the confounded look on his face when confronted by Vorkosigan liveried butter bugs . . . she smiled helplessly in memory.

'Kat,' said Hugo in a disconcerted tone, 'the man's a mutie. He barely comes up to your shoulder. He's distinctly hunched—I don't know why that wasn't surgically corrected. He's just odd .'

'Oh, he's had dozens of surgeries. His original damage was far, far more severe. You can still see these faint old scars running all over his body from the corrections.'

Hugo stared at her. 'All over his body?'

'Um. I assume so. As much of it as I've seen, anyway.' She stopped her tongue barely short of adding, The top half . A perfectly unnecessary vision of Miles entirely naked, gift-wrapped in sheets and blankets in bed, and her with him, slowly exploring his intricacies all the way down, distracted her imagination momentarily. She blinked it away, hoping her eyes weren't crossing. 'You have to concede, he has a good face. His eyes are . . . very alive.'

'His head's too big.'

'No, his body's just a little undersized for it.' How had she ended up arguing Miles's anatomy with Hugo, anyway? He wasn't some spavined horse she was considering purchasing against veterinary advice, drat it. 'Anyway, this is none of it our business.'

'It is if he—if you—' Hugo sucked his lip. 'Kat . . . if you're under some kind of threat, or blackmail or some strange thing, you don't stand alone. I know we can get help. You may have abandoned your family, but we haven't abandoned you.'

More's the pity . 'Thank you for that estimate of my character,' she said tartly. 'And do you imagine our Uncle Lord Auditor Vorthys is incapable of protecting me, if it should come to that? And Aunt Vorthys, too?'

Vassily said uneasily, 'I'm sure your uncle and aunt are very kind— after all, they took you and Nikki in—but I'm given to understand they are both rather unworldly intellectuals. Possibly they do not understand the dangers. My informant says they haven't been guarding you at all. They've permitted you to go where you will, when you will, in a completely unregulated fashion, and come in contact with all sorts of dubious persons.'

Their unworldly aunt was one of Barrayar's foremost experts on every gory detail of the political history of the Time of Isolation, spoke and read four languages flawlessly, could sift through documentation with an eye worthy of an ImpSec analyst—a line of work several of her former graduate students were now in—and had thirty years of experience dealing with young people and their self-inflicted troubles. And as for Uncle Vorthys—'Engineering failure analysis does not strike me as an especially unworldly discipline. Not when it includes expertise on sabotage.' She inhaled, preparing to enlarge on this.

Vassily's lips tightened. 'The capital has a reputation as an unsavory milieu. Too many wealthy, powerful men—and their women—with too few restraints on their appetites and vices. That's a dangerous world for a young boy to be exposed to, especially through his mother's . . . love affairs.' Ekaterin was still mentally sputtering over this one when Vassily's voice dropped to a tone of hushed horror, and he added, 'I've even heard—they say—that there's a high Vor lord here in Vorbarr Sultana who used to be a woman , who had her brain transplanted to a man'sbody .'

Ekaterin blinked. 'Oh. Yes, that would be Lord Dono Vorrutyer. I've