A Civil Campaign

watching them hypnotically shift as the morning stretched.

An inescapable military tone was lent to the proceedings by the presence of three men in uniform: Colonel Lord Vortala the Younger, head of the ImpSec task force assigned to provide security for the Emperor's wedding; Captain Ivan Vorpatril, dutifully keeping notes for Lady Alys Vorpatril, just as he would have done as aide to his commander at any military HQ conference; and Commodore Duv Galeni, chief of Komarran Affairs for ImpSec, preparing for the day when the whole show would be replayed on Komarr. Miles wondered if Galeni, forty and saturnine, was picking up ideas for his own wedding with Delia Koudelka, or whether he had enough sense of self-preservation to hide out and leave it all to the highly competent, not to mention assertive, Koudelka women. All five of them. Miles would offer Vorkosigan House to Duv as a sanctuary, except the girls would certainly track him there.

Gregor and Laisa seemed to be holding up well so far. Emperor Gregor in his mid-thirties was tall and thin, dark and dry. Dr. Laisa Toscane was short, with ash-blond curls and blue-green eyes that narrowed often in amusement, and a figure that made Miles, for one, just want to sort of fall over on top of her and burrow in for the winter. No treason implied; he did not begrudge Gregor his good fortune. In fact, Miles regarded the months of public ceremony which were keeping Gregor from that consummation as a cruelty little short of sadistic. Assuming, of course, that they were keeping . . .

The voices droned on; Miles's thoughts drifted further. Dreamily, he wondered where he and Ekaterin might hold their future wedding. In the ballroom of Vorkosigan House, in the eye of the Empire? The place might not hold a big enough mob. He wanted witnesses, for this. Or did he, as heir to his father's Countship, have a political obligation to stage it at the Vorkosigan's District capital of Hassadar? The modern Count's Residence at Hassadar had always seemed more like a hotel than a home, attached as it was to all those District bureaucratic offices lining the city's main square. The most romantic site would be the house at Vorkosigan Surleau, in the gardens overlooking the Long Lake. An outdoor wedding, yes, he bet Ekaterin would like that. In a sense, it would give Sergeant Bothari a chance to attend, and General Piotr too. Did you ever believe such a day would come for me, Grandfather? The attraction of that venue would depend on the time of year, of course—high summer would be glorious, but it wouldn't seem so romantic in a mid-winter sleet storm. He wasn't at all sure he could bring Ekaterin up to the matrimonial fence before fall, and delaying the ceremony till next spring would be as agonizing as what was being done to Gregor. . . .

Laisa, across the conference table from Miles, flipped over the next page of her stack of flimsies, read down it for a few seconds, and said, 'You people can't be serious !' Gregor, seated beside her, looked alarmed, and leaned to peer over her shoulder.

Oh, we must have got to page twelve already. Quickly, Miles found his place again on the agenda, and sat up and tried to look attentive.

Lady Alys gave him a dry glance, before turning her attention to Laisa. This half-year-long nuptial ordeal, from the betrothal ceremonies this past Winterfair to the wedding upcoming at Midsummer, was the cap and crown of Lady Alys's career as Gregor's official hostess. She'd made it clear that Things Would Be Done Properly.

The problem came in defining the term Properly . The most recent wedding of a ruling emperor had been the scrambling mid-war union of Gregor's grandfather Emperor Ezar to the sister of the soon-to-be-late Mad Emperor Yuri, which for a number of sound historical and aesthetic reasons Alys was loath to take as a model. Most other emperors had been safely married for years before they landed on the throne. Prior to Ezar one had to go back almost two hundred years, to the marriage of Vlad Vorbarra le Savante and Lady Vorlightly, in the most gaudily archaic period of the Time of Isolation.

'They didn't really make the poor bride strip to the buff in front of all their wedding guests, did they?' Laisa asked, pointing out the offending passage of historical quotation to Gregor.

'Oh, Vlad had to strip too,' Gregor assured her earnestly. 'The in-laws would have insisted. It was in the nature of a warranty inspection. Just in case any mutations turned up in future offspring, each side wanted to be able to assert it wasn't their kin's fault.'

'The custom has largely died out in recent years,' Lady Alys remarked, 'except in some of the backcountry districts in certain language groups.'

'She means the Greekie hicks,' Ivan helpfully interpreted this for offworld-born Laisa. His mother frowned at this bluntness.

Miles cleared his throat. 'The Emperor's wedding may be counted on to reinvigorate any old customs it takes up and displays. Personally, I'd prefer that this not be one of them.'

'Spoilsport,' said Ivan. 'I think it would reintroduce a lot of excitement to wedding parties. It could be a better draw than the competitive toasting.'

'Followed later in the evening by the competitive vomiting,' Miles murmured. 'Not to mention the thrilling, if erratic, Vor crawling races. I think you won one of those once, didn't you, Ivan?'

'I'm surprised you remember. Aren't you usually the first to pass out?'

'Gentlemen,' said Lady Alys coldly. 'We have a great deal of material yet to get through in this meeting. And neither of you is leaving till we are finished.' She let that hang quellingly in the air for a moment, for emphasis, then went on. 'I wouldn't expect to exactly reproduce that old custom, Laisa, but I put it on the list because it does represent something of cultural importance to the more conservative Barrayarans. I was hoping we might come up with an updated version which would serve the same psychological purpose.'

Duv Galeni's dark brows lowered in a thoughtful frown. 'Publish their gene scans?' he suggested.

Gregor grimaced, but then took his fianc?e's hand and gripped it, and smiled at her. 'I'm sure Laisa's would be just fine.'

'Well, of course it is,' she began. 'My parents had it checked before I ever went into the uterine replicator—'

Gregor kissed her palm. 'Yes, and I'll bet you were a darling blastocyst.'

She grinned giddily at him. Alys smiled faintly, in brief indulgence. Ivan looked mildly nauseated. Colonel Vortala, ImpSec trained and with years of experience on the Vorbarr Sultana scene, managed to look pleasantly blank. Galeni, nearly as good, appeared only a little stiff.

Miles took this strategic moment to lean across and ask Galeni in an undertone, 'Kareen's home, has Delia told you?'

Galeni brightened. 'Yes. I expect I'll see her tonight.'

'I want to do something for a welcome-home. I was thinking of inviting the whole Koudelka clan for dinner soon. Interested?'

'Sure—'

Gregor tore his besotted gaze from Laisa's, leaned back, and said mildly, 'Thank you, Duv. And what other ideas does anyone have?'

Gregor was clearly not interested in making his gene-scan public knowledge. Miles thought through several regional variants of the old custom. 'You could make it a sort of a levee. Each set of parental in-laws, or whoever you think ought to have the right and the voice, plus a physician of their choice gets to visit the opposite member of the couple on the morning of the wedding, for a brief physical. Each delegation publicly announces itself satisfied at some appropriate point of the ceremony. Private inspection, public assurance. Modesty, honor, and paranoia all get served.'

'And you could be given your tranquilizers at the same time,' Ivan pointed out, with gruesome cheer. 'Bet you'll both need 'em by then.'

'Thank you, Ivan,' murmured Gregor. 'So thoughtful.' Laisa could only