and realized she’d become dangerously dehydrated. She tried to encourage Gregor to drink, but he didn’t like the astringent taste of the tea. Bothari looked almost suffused with shame, that he couldn’t produce milk out of the air at his Emperor’s direct request. Cordelia solved the dilemma by sweetening the tea with syrup, rendering it acceptable.
By the time they finished breakfast, washed up the few utensils and dishes, and flung the bit of wash water over the porch rail, the porch had warmed enough in the morning sun to make sitting tolerable.
“Why don’t you take over the bed, Sergeant. I’ll keep watch. Ah … did Kly have any suggestions what we should do, if somebody hostile drops down on us here before he gets back? It kind of looks like we’ve run out of places to run to.”
“Not quite, Milady. There’s a set of caves, up in that patch of woods in back. An old guerilla cache. Kly took me back last night to see the entrance.”
Cordelia sighed. “Right. Get some sleep, Sergeant, we’ll surely need you later.”
She sat in the sun. in one of the wooden chairs, resting her body if not her mind. Her eyes and ears strained for the whine of a distant lightflyer or heavy aircar. She tied Gregor’s feet up with makeshift rag shoes, and he wandered about examining things. She accompanied him on a visit to the shed to see the horses. The Sergeant’s beast was still very lame, and Rose was moving as little as possible, but they had fodder in a rick and water from a little stream that ran across the end of their enclosure. Kly’s other horse, a lean and fit-looking sorrel, seemed to tolerate the equine invasion, only nipping when Rose edged too close to its side of the hayrick.
Cordelia and Gregor sat on the porch steps as the sun passed zenith, comfortably warm now. The only sound in the vast vale besides a breeze in the branches was Bothari’s snores, resonating through the cabin walls. Deciding this was as relaxed as they were likely to get, Cordelia at last dared quiz Gregor on his view—her only eyewitness report—of the coup in the capital. It wasn’t much help; Gregor’s five-year-old eyes saw the what well enough, it was the whys that escaped him. On a higher level, she had the same problem, Cordelia admitted ruefully to herself.
“The soldiers came. The colonel told Mama and me to come with him. One of our liveried men came in. The colonel shot him.”
“Stunner, or nerve disruptor?”
“Nerve disruptor. Blue fire. He fell down. They took us to the Marble Courtyard. They had aircars. Then Captain Negri ran in, with some men. A soldier grabbed me, and Mama grabbed me back, and that’s what happened to my shoe. It came off in her hand. I should have … fastened it tighter, in the morning. Then Captain Negri shot the soldier who was carrying me, and some soldiers shot Captain Negri—”
“Plasma arc? Is that when he got that horrible burn?” Cordelia asked. She tried to keep her tone very calm.
Gregor nodded mutely. “Some soldiers took Mama, those other ones, not Negri’s ones. Captain Negri picked me up and ran. We went through the tunnels, under the Residence, and came out in a garage. We went in the lightflyer. They shot at us. Captain Negri kept telling me to shut up, to be quiet. We flew and flew, and he kept yelling at me to be quiet, but I was. And then we landed by the lake.” Gregor was trembling again.
“Mm.” Kareen spun in vivid detail in Cordelia’s head, despite the simplicity of Gregor’s account. That serene face, wrenched into screaming rage and terror as they tore the son she’d borne the Barrayaran hard way from her grip, leaving … nothing but a shoe, of all their precarious life and illusory possessions. So Vordarian’s troops had Kareen. As hostage? Victim? Alive or dead?
“Do you think Mama’s all right?”
“Sure.” Cordelia shifted uncomfortably. “She’s a very valuable lady. They won’t hurt her.” Till it becomes expedient for them to do so.
“She was crying.”
“Yes.” She could feel that same knot in her own belly. The mental flash she’d shied from all day yesterday burst in her brain. Boots, kicking open a secured laboratory door. Kicking over desks, tables. No faces, just boots. Gun butts sweeping delicate glassware and computerized monitors from benches into a tangled smash on the floor. A uterine replicator rudely jerked open, its sterile seals slashed, its contents dumped pell-mell wetly on the tiles … no need even for the traditional murderous swing by the heels of infant head against the nearest concrete wall, Miles was so little the boots could just step on him and smash him to jam… . She drew in her breath.
Miles is all right. Anonymous, just like us. We are very small, and very quiet, and safe. Shut up, keep quiet, kid. She hugged Gregor tightly. “My little boy is in the capital, too, same as your Mama. And you’re with me. We’ll look out for each other. You bet.”
After supper, and still no sign of Kly, Cordelia said, “Show me that cave, Sergeant.”
Kly kept a box of cold lights atop his mantel. Bothari cracked one, and led Cordelia and Gregor up into the woods on a faint stony path. He made a menacing will-o’-the-wisp, with the bright green-tinged light shining from the tube between his fingers.
The area near the cave mouth showed signs of having once been cleared, though recent overgrowth was closing back in. The entrance was by no means hidden, a yawning black hole twice the height of Bothari and wide enough to edge a lightflyer through. Immediately within, the roof rose and walls flared to create a dusty cavern. Whole patrols could camp therein, and had, in the distant past, judging from the antique litter. Bunk niches were carved in the rock, and names and initials and dates and crude comments covered the walls.
A cold fire-pit in the center was matched by a blackened vent-hole above, which had once provided exit for the smoke. A ghostly crowd of hillmen, guerilla soldiers, seemed to hover in Cordelia’s mind’s eye, eating, joking, spitting gum-leaf, cleaning their weapons and planning their next foray. Ranger spies came and went, ghosts among the ghosts, to place their precious blood-won information before their young general, who spread his maps out on that flat rock over there… . She shook the vision from her head, and took the light and explored the niches. At least five traversable exits led off from the cavern, three of which showed signs of having been heavily traveled.
“Did Kly say where these went, or where they came out, Sergeant?”
“Not exactly, Milady. He did say the passages went back for kilometers, into the hills. He was late, and in a hurry to get on.”
“Is it a vertical or horizontal system, did he say?”
“Beg pardon, Milady?”
“All on one strata, or with unexpected big drops? Are there lots of blind alleys? Which path were we supposed to take? Are there underground streams?”
“I think he expected to be leading us, if we went in. He started to explain, then said it was too complicated.”
She frowned, contemplating the possibilities. She’d done a bit of cave work in her Survey training, enough to grasp what the term respect for the hazards meant. Vents, drops, cracks, labyrinthine cross—passages … plus, here, the unexpected rise and fall of water, not a matter of much concern on Beta Colony. It had rained last night. Sensors were not much help in finding a lost cave explorer. And whose sensors? If the system was as extensive as Kly suggested, it could absorb hundreds of searchers … Her frown changed to a slow smile. “Sergeant, let’s camp here tonight.”
Gregor liked the cave, especially when Cordelia described the history of the place. He rattled around the cavern whispering military dialogue to himself like “Zap, zap, zap!”, climbed in and out of all the niches, and tried to sound out the rude words carved in the walls. Bothari lit a small fire in the pit and spread a bedroll for Gregor and Cordelia, taking the night watch for himself. Cordelia set a second bedroll, wrapped around trail snacks and supplies, in a grabbable bundle near the entrance. She arranged the black fatigue jacket with the name VORKOSIGAN, A., artistically in a niche, as if used to sit upon and keep someone’s haunches from the cold stone and then temporarily forgotten when the sitter rose. Last of all Bothari brought up their lame and useless horses, re-saddled and bridled, and tethered them just outside.
Cordelia emerged from the widest passage, where she’d dropped an almost-spent cold light a quarter kilometer along, over a rope-strung ten-meter cliff. The rope was natural fiber, and very old and brittle. She’d elected not to test it.
“I don’t quite get it, Milady,” said Bothari. “With the horses abandoned out there, if anyone comes looking they’ll find us at once, and know exactly where we’ve gone.”
“Find this, yes,” said Cordelia. “Know where we’ve gone, no. Because without Kly, there is no way I’m
