“You’re off your meds!”
How such could travel over a purely audio link Cordelia was not sure, but a canine grin hung in the air before them.
“Come on, Kou,” Cordelia coaxed. “Back me. Come for luck. Come for life. Come for the adrenaline rush.”
Droushnakovi leaned over, a sharp smile on her lips, to breathe in Koudelka’s other ear, “Look at it this way, Kou. Who else is ever going to give you a chance at field combat?”
His eyes shifted, right and left, between his two captors. The pitch of the groundcar’s power—whine rose, as they arrowed into the growing twilight.
Chapter Sixteen
Illegal vegetables. Cordelia sat in bemused contemplation between sacks of cauliflower and boxes of cultivated brillberries as the creaking hovertruck coughed along. Southern vegetables, that flowed toward Vorbarr Sultana on a covert route just like hers. She was half-certain that under that pile were a few sacks of the same green cabbages she’d traveled with two or three weeks ago, migrating according to the strange economic pressures of the war.
The Districts controlled by Vordarian were now under strict interdiction by the Districts loyal to Vorkosigan. Though starvation was still a long way off, food prices in the capital of Vorbarr Sultana had skyrocketed, in the face of hoarding and the coming winter. So poor men were inspired to take chances. And a poor man already taking a chance was not averse to adding a few unlisted passengers to his load, for a bribe.
It was Koudelka who’d generated the scheme, abandoning his urgent disapproval, drawn in to their strategizing almost despite himself. It was Koudelka who’d found the produce wholesale warehouses in the town in Vorinnis’s District, and cruised the loading docks for independents striking out with their loads. Though it was Bothari who’d ruled the size of the bribe, pitifully small to Cordelia’s mind, but just right for the parts they now played of desperate countryfolk.
“My father was a grocer,” Koudelka had explained stiffly, when selling his scheme to them. “I know what I’m doing.”
Cordelia had puzzled for a moment what his wary glance at Droushnakovi meant, till she recalled Drou’s father was a soldier. Kou had talked of his sister and widowed mother, but it was not till that moment that Cordelia realized Kou had edited his father from his reminiscences out of social embarrassment, not any lack of love between them. Koudelka had vetoed the choice of a meat truck for transport: “It’s more likely to be stopped by Vordarian’s guards,” he’d explained, “so they can shake down the driver for steaks.” Cordelia wasn’t sure if he was speaking from military or food service experience, or both. In any case, she was grateful not to ride with grisly refrigerated carcasses.
They dressed for their parts as best they could, pooling the satchel and the clothes they stood in. Bothari and Koudelka played two recently discharged vets, looking to better their sorry lot, and Cordelia and Drou two countrywomen co-scheming with them. The women were decked in a realistically odd combination of worn mountain dress and upper-class castoffs apparently acquired from some secondhand shop. They managed the right touch of mis-fittedness, of women not wearing originals, by trading garments.
Cordelia’s eyes closed in exhaustion, though sleep was far from her. Time ticked in her brain. It had taken them two days to get this far. So close to their goal, so far from success … Her eyes snapped open again when the truck halted and thumped to the ground.
Bothari eased through the opening to the driver’s compartment. “We get out here,” he called lowly. They all filed through, dropping to the city curb. Their breath smoked in the chill. It was pre-dawn dark, with fewer lights about than Cordelia thought there ought to be. Bothari waved the transport on.
“Didn’t think we should ride all the way in to the Central Market,” Bothari grunted. “Driver says Vorbohn’s municipal guards are thick there this time of day, when the new stocks come in.”
“Are they anticipating food riots?” Cordelia asked.
“No doubt, plus they like to get theirs first,” said Koudelka. “Vordarian’s going to have to put the army in soon, before the black market sucks all the food out of the rationing system.” Kou, in the moments he forgot to pretend himself an artificial Vor, displayed an amazing and detailed grasp of black-market economics. Or, how had a grocer bought his son the education to gain entry to the fiercely competitive Imperial Military Academy? Cordelia grinned under her breath, and looked up and down the street. It was an old section of town, pre-dating lift tubes, no buildings more than six flights high. Shabby, with plumbing and electricity and light-pipes cut into the architecture, added as afterthoughts.
Bothari led off, seeming to know where he was going. The maintenance did not improve, in their direction of transit. Streets and alleys narrowed, channeling a moist aroma of decay, with an occasional whiff of urine. Lights grew fewer. Drou’s shoulders hunched. Koudelka gripped his stick.
Bothari paused before a narrow, ill-lit doorway bearing a hand-lettered sign, Rooms. “This’ll do.” The door, an ancient non-automatic that swung on hinges, was locked. He rattled it, then knocked. After a long time, a little door within the door opened, and suspicious eyes stared out.
“Whatcha want?”
“Room.”
“At this hour? Not damned likely.”
Bothari pulled Drou forward. The stripe of light from the opening played over her face.
“Huh,” grunted the door—muffled voice. “Well …” Some clinking of chains, the grind of metal, and the door swung open.
They all huddled in to a narrow hallway featuring stairs, a desk, and an archway leading back to a darkened chamber. Their host grew even grumpier when he learned they desired only one room among the four of them. Yet he did not question it; apparently their real desperation lent their pose of poverty a genuine edge. With the two women and especially Koudelka in the party, no one seemed to leap to identify them as secret agents.
They settled into a cramped, cheap upstairs room, giving Kou and Drou first shot at the beds. As dawn seeped through the window, Cordelia followed Bothari back downstairs to forage.
“I should have realized we’d need to bring rations, to a city under siege,” Cordelia muttered.
“It’s not that bad yet,” said Bothari. “Ah—best you don’t talk, Milady. Your accent.”
“Right. In that case, strike up a conversation with this fellow, if you can. I want to hear the local view of things.”
They found the innkeeper, or whatever he was, in the little room beyond the archway, which, judging from a counter and a couple of battered tables with chairs, doubled as a bar and a dining room. The man reluctantly sold them some seal-packed food and bottled drinks at inflated prices, while complaining about the rationing and angling for information about them.
“I been planning this trip for months,” said Bothari, leaning on the bar, “and the damned war’s bitched it.”
The innkeep made an encouraging noise, one entrepreneur to another. “Oh? What’s your strat?”
Bothari licked his lips, eyes narrowing in thought. “You saw that blonde?”
“Yo?”
“Virgin.”
“No way. Too old.”
“Oh, yeah. She can pass for class, that one. We were gonna sell it to some Vor lord at Winterfair. Get us a grubstake. But they’ve all skipped town. Could try for a rich merchant, I guess. But she won’t like it. I promised her a real lord.”
Cordelia hid her mouth behind her hand, and tried not to emit any attention-drawing noises. It was an excellent thing Drou was not there to learn Bothari’s idea of a cover story. Good God. Did Barrayaran men actually pay for the privilege of committing that bit of sexual torture upon uninitiated women?
The ’keep glanced at Cordelia. “You leave her alone with your partner without her duenna, you could lose what you came to sell.”
