A conference of players on the other side of the garden sent Koudelka limping over as an emissary.
“Sir? We were wondering if you would go a demonstration round. With Sergeant Bothari. None of the fellows here have ever seen that.”
Vorkosigan waved down the idea, not very convincingly. “I’m not in shape for it, Lieutenant. Besides, how did they ever find out about that? Been telling tales?”
Koudelka grinned. “A few. I think it would enlighten them. About what kind of game this can really be.”
“A bad example, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve never seen this,” murmured Cordelia. “Is it really that good a show?”
“I don’t know. Have I offended you lately? Would watching Bothari pound me be a catharsis?”
“I think it would be for you,” said Cordelia, falling in with his obvious desire to be persuaded. “I think you’ve missed that sort of thing, in this headquarters life you’ve been leading lately.”
“Yes… .” He rose, to a bit of clapping, and removed uniform jacket, shoes, rings, and the contents of his pockets, and stepped to the ring to do some stretching and warm—up exercises.
“You’d better referee, Kou,” he called back. “Just to prevent undue alarm.”
“Yes, sir.” Koudelka turned to Cordelia before limping back to the arena. “Um. Just remember, Milady. They never killed each other in four years of this.”
“Why do I find that more ominous than reassuring? Still, Bothari’s done six rounds this morning. Maybe he’s getting tired.”
The two men faced off in the arena and bowed formally. Koudelka backed hastily out of the way. The raucous good humor died away among the watchers, as the icy cold and concentrated stillness of the two players drew all eyes. They began to circle, lightly, then met in a blur. Cordelia did not quite see what happened, but when they parted Vorkosigan was spitting blood from a lacerated mouth, and Bothari was hunched over his belly.
In the next contact Bothari landed a kick to Vorkosigan’s back that echoed off the garden walls and propelled him completely out of the arena, to land rolling and running back in spite of disrupted breathing. The men in whose protection the Regent’s life was supposed to lie began to look worriedly at one another. At the next grappling Vorkosigan underwent a vicious fall, with Bothari landing atop him instantly for a follow-up choke. Cordelia thought she could see his ribs bend from the knees on his chest. A couple of the guards started forward, but Koudelka waved them back, and Vorkosigan, face dark and suffused, tapped out.
“First point to Sergeant Bothari,” called Koudelka. “Best two out of three, sir?”
Sergeant Bothari stood, smiling a little, and Vorkosigan sat on the mat a minute, regaining his wind. “One more, anyway. Got to get my revenge. Out of shape.”
“Told you so,” murmured Bothari. They circled again. They met, parted, met again, and suddenly Bothari was doing a spectacular cartwheel, while Vorkosigan rolled beneath to grab an arm-bar that nearly dislocated his shoulder in his twisting fall. Bothari struggled briefly against the lock, then tapped out. This time it was Bothari who sat on the mat a minute before getting up.
“That’s amazing,” Droushnakovi commented, eyes avid. “Especially considering how much smaller he is.”
“Small but vicious,” agreed Cordelia, fascinated. “Keep that in mind.”
The third round was brief. A blur of grappling and blows and messy joint fall resolved suddenly in an armlock, with Bothari in charge. Vorkosigan unwisely attempted a break, and Bothari, quite expressionlessly, dislocated his elbow with an audible pop. Vorkosigan yelled and tapped out. Once again Koudelka suppressed a rush of uninvited aid. “Put it back, Sergeant,” Vorkosigan groaned from his seat on the ground, and Bothari braced one foot on his former captain and gave the arm an accurately aligned yank.
“Must remember,” gasped Vorkosigan, “not to do that.”
“At least he didn’t break it this time,” said Koudelka encouragingly, and helped him up, with Bothari’s assistance. Vorkosigan limped back to the lawn chair, and seated himself, very cautiously, at Cordelia’s feet. Bothari, too, was moving a lot more slowly and stiffly.
“And that,” said Vorkosigan, still catching his breath, “is how … we used to play the game … aboard the old
“All that effort,” remarked Cordelia. “And how often did you ever get into a real hand-to-hand combat situation?”
“Very, very seldom. But when we did, we won.”
The party broke up, with a murmuring undercurrent of comment from the other players. Cordelia accompanied Aral off to help with first-aid to his elbow and mouth, a hot soak and rubdown, and a change of clothes.
During the rubdown she brought up the personnel problem that had been growing in her notice.
“Do you suppose you could say something to Kou about the way he treats Drou? It’s not like his usual self at all. She about does flips trying to be nice to him. And he doesn’t even treat her with the courtesy he’d give one of his men. She’s practically a fellow officer. And, unless I’m totally wide of the mark, madly in love with him. Why doesn’t he see it?”
“What makes you think he doesn’t?” asked Aral slowly.
“His behavior, of course. A shame. They’d make quite a pair. Don’t you think she’s attractive?”
“Marvelously. But then, I like tall amazons,” he grinned over his shoulder at her, “as everyone knows. It’s not every man’s taste. But if that’s a matchmaking gleam I detect in your eye—do you suppose it could be maternal hormones, by the way?”
“Shall I dislocate your other elbow?”
“Ugh. No thanks. I’d forgotten how painful a workout with Bothari could be. Ah, that’s better. Down a bit …”
“You’re going to have some astonishing bruises there tomorrow.”
“Don’t I know it. But before you get carried away over Drou’s love life … have you thought carefully about Koudelka’s injuries?”
“Oh.” Cordelia was struck silent. “I’d assumed … that his sexual functions were as well repaired as the rest of him.”
“Or as poorly. It’s a very delicate bit of surgery.”
Cordelia pursed her lips. “Do you know this for a fact?”
“No, I don’t. I do know that in all our conversations the subject was never once brought up. Ever.”
“Hm. Wish I knew how to interpret that. It sounds a little ominous. Do you think you could ask … ?”
“Good God, Cordelia, of course not! What a question to ask the man. Particularly if the answer is no. I’ve got to work with him, remember.”
“Well, I’ve got to work with Drou. She’s no use to me if she pines away and dies of a broken heart. He has reduced her to tears, more than once. She goes off where she thinks nobody’s looking.”
“Really? That’s hard to imagine.”
“You can hardly expect me to tell her he’s not worth it, all things considered. But does he really dislike her? Or is it just self-defense?”
“Good question … For what it’s worth, my driver made a joke about her the other day—not even a very offensive one—and Kou got rather frosty with him. I don’t think he dislikes her. But I do think he envies her.”
Cordelia left the subject on that ambiguous note. She longed to help the pair, but had no answer to offer for their dilemma. Her own mind had no trouble generating creative solutions to the practical problems of physical intimacy posed by the lieutenant’s injuries, but shrank from the violation of their shy reserve that offering them would entail. She suspected wryly that she would merely shock them. Sex therapy appeared to be unheard of, here.
True Betan, she had always considered a double standard of sexual behavior to be a logical impossibility. Dabbling now on the fringes of Barrayaran high society in Vorkosigan’s wake, she began to finally see how it could be done. It all seemed to come down to impeding the free flow of information to certain persons, preselected by an unspoken code somehow known to and agreed upon by all present but her. One could not mention sex to or in front of unmarried women or children. Young men, it appeared, were exempt from all rules when talking to each other, but not if a woman of any age or degree were present. The rules also changed bewilderingly with variations of the social status of those present. And married women, in groups free of male eavesdroppers, sometimes underwent
