Waiting at the foot of the spiral stairs in the front hall, she smoothed the panel of green silk surreptitiously down over her belly. A little over three months of metabolic overdrive, and all she had to show for it was this grapefruit-sized lump—so much had happened since midsummer, it seemed like her pregnancy ought to be progressing faster to keep up. She purred an encouraging mental mantra bellywards, Grow, grow, grow. … At least she was actually beginning to look pregnant, instead of just feel exhausted. Aral shared her nightly fascination with their progress, gently feeling with spread fingers, so far without success, for the butterfly-wing flutters of movement through her skin.
Aral himself now appeared, with Lieutenant Koudelka. They were both thoroughly scrubbed, shaved, cut, combed, and chromatically blinding in their formal red-and-blue Imperial parade uniforms. Count Piotr joined them wearing the uniform Cordelia had seen him in at the Joint Council sessions, brown and silver, a more glittery version of his armsmen’s livery. All twenty of Piotr’s armsmen had some sort of formal function tonight, and had been driven to meticulous preparation all week by their frenzied commander. Droushnakovi, accompanying Cordelia, wore a simplified garment in Cordelia’s colors, carefully cut to facilitate rapid movement and conceal weaponry and comm links.
After a moment for everyone to admire each other, they herded through the front doors to the waiting groundcars. Aral handed Cordelia into her vehicle personally, then stepped back. “See you there, love.”
“What?” Her head swiveled. “Oh. Then that second car … isn’t just for the size of the group?”
Aral’s mouth tightened fractionally. “No. It seems … prudent, to me, that we should travel in separate vehicles from now on.”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “Quite.”
He nodded, and turned away. Damn this place. Taking yet another bite out of their lives, out of her heart. They had so little time together anymore, losing even a little more hurt.
Count Piotr, apparently, was to be Aral’s stand-in, at least for tonight; he slid in beside her. Droushnakovi sat across from them, and the canopy was sealed. The car turned smoothly into the street. Cordelia craned over her shoulder, trying to see Aral’s car, but it followed too far back for her even to catch a glimpse. She straightened, sighing.
The sun was sinking yellowly in a grey bank of clouds, and lights were beginning to glow in the cool damp autumn evening, giving the city a somber, melancholy atmosphere. Maybe a raucous street party—they drove around several—wasn’t such a bad idea. The celebrators reminded Cordelia of primitive Earth men banging pots and firing guns to drive off the dragon that was eating the eclipsing moon. This strange autumn sadness could consume an unwary soul. Gregor’s birthday was well timed.
Piotr’s knobby hands fiddled with a brown silk bag embroidered with the Vorkosigan crest in silver. Cordelia eyed it with interest. “What’s that?”
Piotr smiled slightly, and handed it to her. “Gold coins.”
More folk-art; the bag and its contents were a tactile treat. She caressed the silk, admired the needlework, and shook a few gleaming sculptured disks out into her hand. “Pretty.” Prior to the end of the Time of Isolation, gold had had great value on Barrayar, Cordelia recalled reading. Gold to her Betan mind called up something like, Sometimes-useful metal to the electronics industry, but ancient peoples had waxed mystical about it. “Does this mean something?”
“Ha! Indeed. It’s the Emperors birthday present.”
Cordelia pictured five-yearpold Gregor playing with a bag of gold. Besides building towers and maybe practicing counting, it was hard to figure what the boy could do with it. She hoped he was past the age of putting everything in his mouth; those disks were just the right size for a child to swallow or choke on. “I’m sure he’ll like it,” she said a little doubtfully.
Piotr chuckled. “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?”
Cordelia sighed. “I almost never do. Cue me.” She settled back, smiling. Piotr had gradually become an enthusiast in explaining Barrayar to her, always seeming pleased to discover some new pocket of her ignorance and fill it with information and opinion. She had the feeling he could be lecturing her for the next twenty years and not run out of baffling topics.
“The Emperor’s birthday is the traditional end of the fiscal year, for each count’s district in relation to the Imperial government. In other words, it’s tax day, except—the Vor are not taxed. That would imply too subordinate a relationship to the Imperium. Instead, we give the Emperor a present.”
“Ah …” said Cordelia. “You don’t run this place for a year on sixty little bags of gold, sir.”
“Of course not. The real funds went from Hassadar to Vorbarr Sultana by comm link transfer earlier today. The gold is merely symbolic.”
Cordelia frowned. “Wait. Haven’t you done this once this year?”
“In the spring for Ezar, yes. So we’ve just changed the date of our fiscal year.”
“Isn’t that disruptive to your banking system?”
He shrugged. “We manage.” He grinned suddenly. “Where do you think the term ’Count’ came from, anyway?”
“Earth, I thought. A pre-atomic-late Roman, actually-term for a nobleman who ran a county. Or maybe the district was named after the rank.”
“On Barrayar, it is in fact a contraction of the term ’accountant.’ The first counts were Varadar Tau’s—an amazing bandit, you should read up on him sometime—Varadar Tau’s tax collectors.”
“All this time I thought it was a military rank! Aping medieval history.”
“Oh, the military part came immediately thereafter, the first time the old goons tried to shake down somebody who didn’t want to contribute. The rank acquired more glamour later.”
“I never knew.” She regarded him with sudden suspicion. “You’re not pulling my leg, sir, are you?”
He spread his hands in denial.
Check your assumptions, Cordelia thought to herself in amusement. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.
They arrived at the Imperial Residence’s great gate. The ambiance was much changed tonight from some of Cordelia’s earlier, more morbid visits to the dying Ezar and to the funeral ceremonies. Colored lights picked out architectural details on the stone pile. The gardens glowed, fountains glittered. Beautifully dressed people warmed the landscape, spilling out from the formal rooms of the north wing onto the terraces. The guard checks, however, were no less meticulous, and the guards’ numbers were vastly multiplied. Cordelia had the feeling this was going to be a much less rowdy party than some they’d passed in the city streets.
Aral’s car pulled up behind theirs as they disembarked at a western portico, and Cordelia reattached herself gratefully to his arm. He smiled proudly at her, and in a relatively unobserved moment sneaked a kiss onto the back of her neck while stealing a whiff of the flowers perfuming her hair. She squeezed his hand secretly in return. They passed through the doors, and a corridor. A majordomo in Vorbarra House livery loudly announced them, and then they were pinned by the gaze of what to Cordelia for a moment seemed several thousand pairs of critical Barrayaran Vor-class eyes. Actually there were only a couple hundred people in the room. Better than, say, looking down the throat of a fully charged nerve disruptor any day. Really.
They circulated, exchanging greetings, making courtesies. Why can’t these people wear nametags? Cordelia thought hopelessly. As usual, everyone but her seemed to know everyone else. She pictured herself opening a conversation, Hey you, Vor-guy—. She clutched Aral more firmly, and tried to look mysterious and exotic rather than tongue-tied and mislaid.
They found the little ceremony with the bags of coins going on in another chamber, the counts or their representatives lining up to discharge their obligation with a few formal words each. Emperor Gregor, whom Cordelia suspected was up past his bedtime, sat on a raised bench with his mother, looking small and trapped, manfully trying to suppress his yawns. It occurred to Cordelia to wonder if he even got to keep the bags of coins, or if they were simply re-circulated to present again next year. Hell of a birthday party. There wasn’t another child in sight. But they were running the counts through pretty efficiently, maybe the kid could escape soon.
An offerer in red-and-blues knelt before Gregor and Kareen, and presented his bag of maroon and gold silk. Cordelia recognized Count Vidal Vordarian, the dish-faced man whom Aral had politely described as of the “next- most-conservative party,” i.e., of roughly the same political views as Count Piotr, in a tone of voice that had made Cordelia wonder if it was a code-phrase for “Isolationist fanatic.” He did not look a fanatic. Freed of its distorting anger, his face was much more attractive; he turned it now to Princess Kareen, and said something which made her
