Chapter Eight
Vorkosigan attended Carl Vorhalas’s public execution three weeks later.
“Are you required to go?” Cordelia asked him that morning, as he dressed, cold and withdrawn. “I don’t have to go, do I?”
“God, no, of course not. I don’t have to go, officially, except … I have to go. You can see why, surely.”
“Not … really, except as a form of self-punishment. I’m not sure that’s a luxury you can afford, in your line of work.”
“I must go. A dog returns to its vomit, doesn’t it? His parents will be there, do you know? And his brother.”
“What a barbaric custom.”
“Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that’s like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over years. … I don’t know.”
“How will they … do it?”
“Beheading. It’s supposed to be almost painless.”
“How do they know?”
His laugh was totally without humor. “A very cogent question.”
He did not embrace her when he left. He returned a bare two hours later, silent, to shake his head at a tentative offer of lunch, cancel an afternoon appointment, and withdraw to Count Piotr’s library and sit, not-reading a book-viewer. Cordelia joined him there after a while, resting on the couch, and waited patiently for him to come back to her from whatever distant country of the mind he dwelt in.
“The boy was going to be brave,” he said after an hour’s silence. “You could see that he had every gesture planned out in advance. But nobody else followed the script. His mother broke him down… . And to top it the damned executioner missed his stroke. Had to take three cuts, to get the head off.”
“Sounds like Sergeant Bothari did better with a pocketknife.” Vorrutyer had been haunting her more than usual that morning, scarletly.
“It lacked nothing for perfect hideousness. His mother cursed me, too. Until Evon and Count Vorhalas took her away.” The dead-expressioned voice escaped him then. “Oh, Cordelia! It can’t have been the right decision! And yet … and yet … no other one was possible. Was it?”
He came to her then, and held her in silence. He seemed very close to weeping, and it almost frightened her more that he did not. The tension eventually drained out of him.
“I suppose I’d better pull myself together and go change. Vortala has a meeting scheduled with the Minister of Agriculture that’s too important to miss, and after that there’s the general staff… .”By the time he left his usual self-possession had returned.
That night he lay long awake beside her. His eyes were closed, but she could tell from his breathing it was pretense. She could not dredge up one word of comfort that did not seem inane to her, so kept silence with him through the watches of the night. Rain began outside, a steady drizzle. He spoke once.
“I’ve watched men die before. Ordered executions, ordered men into battle, chosen this one over that one, committed three sheer murders and but for the grace of God and Sergeant Bothari would have committed a fourth … I don’t know why this one should hit like a wall. It’s stopped me, Cordelia. And I dare not stop, or we’ll all fall together. Got to keep it in the air somehow.”
She awoke in the dark to a tinkling crash and a soft report, and drew in her breath with a start. Acridity seared her lungs, mouth, nostrils, eyes. A gut-wrenching undertaste pumped her stomach into her throat. Beside her, Vorkosigan snapped from sleep with an oath.
“Soltoxin gas grenade! Don’t breathe, Cordelia!” Emphasizing his shout, he shoved a pillow over her face, his hot strong arms encircling her and dragging her from the bed. She found her feet and lost her stomach at the same moment, stumbling into the hall, and he slammed the bedroom door shut behind them.
Running footsteps shook the floor. Vorkosigan cried, “Get back! Soltoxin gas! Clear the floor! Call Illyan!” before he too doubled over, coughing and retching. Other hands bundled them both toward the stairs. She could scarcely see through her madly watering eyes.
Between spasms Vorkosigan gasped, “They’ll have the antidote … Imperial Residence … closer than ImpMil … get Illyan at once. He’ll know. Into the shower—where’s Milady’s woman? Get a maid. …”
Within moments she was dumped into a downstairs shower, Vorkosigan with her. He was shaking and barely able to stand, but still trying to help her. “Start washing it off your skin, and keep washing. Don’t stop. Keep the water cool.”
“You, too, then. What was that crap?” She coughed again, in the spray of the water, and they exchanged help with the soap.
“Wash out your mouth, too… . Soltoxin. It’s been fifteen, sixteen years since I last smelled that stink, but you never forget it. It’s a poison gas. Military. Should be strictly controlled. How the hell anyone got hold of some … Damn Security! They’ll be flapping around like headless chickens tomorrow … too late.” His face was greenish-white beneath the night’s beard stubble.
“I don’t feel too bad now,” said Cordelia. “Nausea’s passing off. I take it we missed the full dose?”
“No. It just acts slowly. Doesn’t take much at all to do you. It mostly affects soft tissue—lungs will be jelly in an hour, if the antidote doesn’t get here soon.”
The growing fear that pounded in her gut, heart, and mind half-clotted her words. “Does it cross the placental barrier?”
He was silent for too long before he said, “I’m not sure. Have to ask the doctor. I’ve only seen the effects on young men.” Another spasm of deep coughing seized him, that went on and on.
One of Count Piotr’s serving women arrived, disheveled and frightened, to help Cordelia and the terrified young guard who had been assisting them. Another guard came in to report, raising his voice over the running water. “We reached the Residence, sir. They have some people on the way.”
Cordelia’s own throat, bronchia, and lungs were beginning to secrete foul—tasting phlegm, and she coughed and spat. “Anyone see Drou?”
“I think she took out after the assassins, Milady.”
“Not her job. When an alarm goes up, she’s supposed to run to Cordelia,” growled Vorkosigan. The talking triggered more coughing.
“She was downstairs, sir, at the time the attack took place, with Lieutenant Koudelka. They both went out the back door.”
“Dammit,” Vorkosigan muttered, “not his job either.” His effort was punished by another coughing jag. “They catch anybody?”
“I think so, sir. There was some kind of uproar at the back of the garden, by the wall.”
They stood under the water for a few more minutes, until the guard reported back. “The doctor from the Residence is here, sir.”
The maid wrapped Cordelia in a robe, and Vorkosigan put on a towel, growling to the guard, “Go find me some clothes, boy.” His voice rattled like gravel.
A middle-aged man, his hair standing up stiffly, wearing trousers, pajama tops, and bedroom slippers, was offloading equipment in the guest bedroom when they came out. He took a pressurized canister from his bag and fitted a breathing mask to it, glancing at Cordelia’s rounding abdomen and then at Vorkosigan.
“My lord. Are you certain of the identification of the poison?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It was soltoxin.”
The doctor bowed his head. “I am sorry, Milady.”
“Is it going to hurt my …” She choked on the mucus.
“Just shut up and give it to her,” snarled Vorkosigan.
The doctor fitted the mask over her nose and mouth. “Breathe deeply. Inhale … exhale. Keep exhaling. Now draw in. Hold it… .”
The antidote gas had a greenish taste, cooler, but nearly as nauseating as the original poison. Her stomach heaved, but had nothing left in it to reject. She watched Vorkosigan over the mask, watching her, and tried to smile reassuringly. It must be reaction catching up with him; he seemed greyer, more distressed, with each breath she took. She was certain he had taken in a larger dose than she, and pushed the mask away to say, “Isn’t it about your
