A Civil Campaign

can't afford to lose this one, I can't, I can't. Forward momentum, forward momentum and bluff, those had won battles for him before.

'Yes, ah, heh, quite, well, so, that reminds me, Madame Vorsoisson, I'd been meaning to ask you—will you marry me?'

Dead silence reigned all along the table.

Ekaterin made no response at all, at first. For a moment, it seemed as though she had not even heard his words, and Miles almost yielded to a suicidal impulse to repeat himself more loudly. Aunt Alys buried her face in her hands. Miles could feel his breathless grin grow sickly, and slide down his face. No, no. What I should have said—what I meant to say was . . . please pass the bug butter? Too late . . .

She visibly unlocked her throat, and spoke. Her words fell from her lips like ice chips, singly and shattering. 'How strange. And here I thought you were interested in gardens. Or so you told me.'

You lied to me hung in the air between them, unspoken, thunderously loud.

So yell. Scream. Throw something. Stomp on me all up and down, it'll be all right, it'll hurt good—I can deal with that—

Ekaterin took a breath, and Miles's soul rocketed in hope, but it was only to push back her chair, set her napkin down by her half-eaten dessert, turn, and walk away up the table. She paused by the Professora only long enough to bend down and murmur, 'Aunt Vorthys, I'll see you at home.'

'But dear, will you be all right . . . ?' The Professora found herself addressing empty air, as Ekaterin strode on. Her steps quickened as she neared the door, till she was almost running. The Professora glanced back and made a helpless, how-could-you-do-this, or maybe that was, how-could- you-do-this-you-idiot, gesture at Miles.

The rest of your life is walking out the door. Do something. Miles's chair fell backwards with a bang as he scrambled out of it. 'Ekaterin, wait, we have to talk—'

He didn't run till he passed the doorway, pausing only long enough to slam it, and a couple of intervening ones, shut between the dinner party and themselves. He caught up with her in the entry hall, as she tried the door and fell back; it was, of course, security-locked.

'Ekaterin, wait, listen to me, I can explain,' he panted.

She turned to give him a disbelieving stare, as though he were a Vorkosigan-liveried butter bug she'd just found floating in her soup.

'I have to talk to you. You have to talk to me,' he demanded desperately.

'Indeed,' she said after a moment, white about the lips. 'There is something I need to say. Lord Vorkosigan, I resign my commission as your landscape designer. As of this moment, you no longer employ me. I will send the designs and planting schedules on to you tomorrow, to pass on to my successor.'

'What good will those do me?!'

'If a garden was what you really wanted from me, then they are all you'll need. Right?'

He tested the possible answers on his tongue. Yes was right out. So was no . Wait a minute—

'Couldn't I have wanted both?' he suggested hopefully. He continued more strongly, 'I wasn't lying to you. I just wasn't saying everything that was on my mind, because, dammit, you weren't ready to hear it, because you aren't half-healed yet from being worked over for ten years by that ass Tien, and I could see it, and you could see it, and even your Aunt Vorthys could see it, and that's the truth.'

By the jerk of her head, that one had hit home, but she only said, in a dead-level voice, 'Please open your door now, Lord Vorkosigan.'

'Wait, listen—'

'You have manipulated me enough,' she said. 'You've played on my . . . my vanity —'

'Not vanity,' he protested. 'Skill, pride, drive—anyone could see you just needed scope, opportunity—'

'You are used to getting your own way, aren't you, Lord Vorkosigan. Any way you can.' Now her voice was horribly dispassionate. 'Trapping me in front of everyone like that.'

'That was an accident. Illyan didn't get the word, see, and—'

'Unlike everyone else? You're worse than Vormoncrief! I might just as well have accepted his offer!'

'Huh? What did Alexi—I mean, no, but, but—whatever you want, I want to give it to you, Ekaterin. Whatever you need. Whatever it is.'

'You can't give me my own soul.' She stared, not at him, but inward, on what vista he could not imagine. 'The garden could have been my gift. You took that away too.'

Her last words arrested his gibbering. What? Wait, now they were getting down to something, elusive, but utterly vital—

A large groundcar was pulling up outside, under the porte coch?re. No more visitors were due; how had they got past the ImpSec gate guard without notification of Pym? Dammit, no interruptions, not now , when she was just beginning to open up, or at least open fire—

On the heels of this thought, Pym hurtled through the side doors into the foyer. 'Sorry, m'lord—sorry to intrude, but—'

'Pym .' Ekaterin's voice was nearly a shout, cracking, defying the tears lacing it. 'Open the damned door and let me out .'

'Yes milady!' Pym snapped to attention, and his hand spasmed to the security pad.

The doors swung wide. Ekaterin stormed blindly through, head- down, into the chest of a startled, stocky, white-haired man wearing a colorful shirt and a pair of disreputable, worn black trousers. Ekaterin bounced off him, and had her hands caught up by the, to her, inexplicable stranger. A tall, tired-looking woman in rumpled travel-skirts, with long roan-red hair tied back at the nape of her neck, stepped up beside them, saying, 'What in the world . . . ?'

'Excuse me, miss, are you all right?' the white-haired man rumbled in a raspy baritone. He stared piercingly at Miles, lurching out of the light of the foyer in Ekaterin's wake.

'No,' she choked. 'I need—I want an auto-cab, please.'

'Ekaterin, no, wait,' Miles gasped.

'I want an auto-cab right now .'

'The gate guard will be happy to call one for you,' the red-haired woman said soothingly. Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan, Vicereine of Sergyar—Mother — stared even more ominously at her wheezing son. 'And see you safely into it. Miles, why are you harrying this young lady?' And more doubtfully, 'Are we interrupting business, or pleasure?'

From thirty years of familiarity, Miles had no trouble unraveling this cryptic shorthand to be a serious query of, Have we walked in on, perhaps, an official Auditorial interrogation gone wrong, or is this one of your personal screw-ups again? God knew what Ekaterin made of it. One bright note: if Ekaterin never spoke to him again, he'd never be put to explain the Countess's