corpses and a burning groundcar for Vordarian’s security. They’re going to be searching this area in earnest. But for just a little while longer, they will still be hunting for a very pregnant woman. It gives us a time window. We have to split up.”
He filled a hesitant moment with a bite of sandwich. “Will you go with her, then, Milady?”
She shook her head. “I must go with the Residence team. If only because I’m the only one who can say, This is impossible now, it’s time to quit. Drou is absolutely required, and I need Bothari.” And, in some strange way, Bothari needs me. “That leaves you.”
His lips compressed bitterly. “At least I won’t slow you down.”
“You’re not a default choice,” she said sharply. “Your ingenuity got us in to Vorbarr Sultana. I think it can get Lady Vorpatril out. You’re her best shot.”
“But it feels like you’re running into danger, and I’m running away.”
“A dangerous illusion. Kou, think. If Vordarian’s goons catch her again, they’ll show her no mercy. Nor you, nor especially the baby. There is no ’safer.’ Only mortal necessity, and logic, and the absolute need to keep your head.”
He sighed. “I’ll try, Milady.”
“ ’Try’ is not good enough. Padma Vorpatril ’tried.’ You bloody succeed, Kou.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, Milady.”
Bothari left to scrounge clothing for Kou’s new persona of poor-young-husband-and-father. “Customers are always leaving things,” he remarked. Cordelia wondered what he could collect here in the way of street clothes for Lady Vorpatril. Kou took food in to Lady Vorpatril and Drou. He returned with a very bleak expression on his face, and settled again beside Cordelia.
After a time he said, “I guess I understand now why Drou was so worried about being pregnant.”
“Do you?” said Cordelia.
“Lady Vorpatril’s troubles make mine look … pretty small. God, that looked painful.”
“Mm. But the pain only lasts a day.” She rubbed her scar. “Or a few weeks. I don’t think that’s it.”
“What is, then?”
“It’s … a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that, when I was carrying Miles. ’By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. I didn’t understand certain Oriental mystic symbols like the Death-mother, Kali, till I realized it wasn’t mystic at all, just plain fact. A Barrayaran-style sexual ’accident’ can start a chain of causality that doesn’t stop till the end of time. Our children change us … whether they live or not. Even though your child turned out to be chimerical this time, Drou was touched by that change. Weren’t you?”
He shook his head in bafflement. “I wasn’t thinking about all that. I just wanted to be normal. Like other men.”
“I think your instincts are all right. They’re just not enough. I don’t suppose you could get your instincts and your intellect working together for once, instead of at cross-purposes ?”
He snorted. “I don’t know. I don’t know … how to get through to her now. I said I was sorry.”
“It’s not all right between you two, is it?”
“No.”
“You know what’s bothered me most, on the journey up here?” said Cordelia.
“No …”
“I couldn’t say goodbye to Aral. If … anything happens to me—or to him, for that matter—it will leave something hanging, unraveled, between us. And no way to ever make it right.”
“Mm.” He folded a little more into himself, slumped in the chair.
She meditated a bit. “What have you tried besides ’I’m sorry’? How about, ’How do you feel? Are you all right? Can I help? I love you,’ there’s a classic. Words of one syllable. Mostly questions, now I think on it. Shows an interest in starting a conversation, y’know?”
He smiled sadly. “I don’t think she wants to talk to me anymore.”
“Suppose,” she leaned her head back, and stared unseeing down the hallway. “Suppose things hadn’t taken such a wrong turn, that night. Suppose you hadn’t panicked. Suppose that idiot Evon Vorhalas hadn’t interrupted with his little horror show.” There was a thought. Too painful, that might—not—have—been. “Drop back to square one. There you were, cuddling happily.” Aral had used that word, cuddling. It hurt too much to think of Aral just now, too. “You part friends, you wake up the next morning, er, aching with unrequited love … what happens next, on Barrayar?”
“A go-between.”
“Ah?”
“Her parents, or mine, would hire a go-between. And then they’d, well, arrange things.”
“And you do what?”
He shrugged. “Show up on time for the wedding and pay the bill, I guess. Actually, the parents pay the bill.”
No wonder the man was at a loss. “Did you want a wedding? Not just to get laid?”
“Yes! But … Milady, I’m just about half a man, on a good day. Her family’d take one look at me and laugh.”
“Have you ever met her family? Have they met you?”
“No …”
“Kou, are you listening to yourself?”
He looked rather shamefaced. “Well …”
“A go-between. Huh.” She stood up.
“Where are you going?” he asked nervously.
“Between,” she said firmly. She marched down the hall to Lady Vorpatril’s door, and stuck her head in. Droushnakovi was sitting watching the sleeping woman. Two beers and the sandwiches sat untouched on a bedside table.
Cordelia slipped within, and closed the door gently. “You know,” she murmured, “good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they’ll be called on to do, before the next chance.”
“I’m not hungry.” Drou too had a folded-in look, as if caught in some trap within herself.
“Want to talk about it?”
She grimaced uncertainly, and moved away from the bed to a settee in the far corner of the room. Cordelia sat beside her. “Tonight,” she said lowly, “was the first time I was ever in a real fight.”
“You did well. You found your position, you reacted—”
“No.” Droushnakovi made a bitter hand-chopping gesture. “I didn’t.”
“Oh? It looked good to me.”
“I ran around behind the building—stunned the two security men waiting at the back door. They never saw me. I got to my position, at the building’s corner. I watched those men, tormenting Lady Vorpatril in the street. Insulting and staring and pushing and poking at her … it made me so angry, I switched to my nerve disruptor. I wanted to kill them. Then the firing started. And … and I hesitated. And Lord Vorpatril died because of it. My fault —”
“Whoa, girl! That goon who shot Padma Vorpatril wasn’t the only one taking aim at him. Padma was so penta-soaked and confused, he wasn’t even trying to take cover. They must have double—dosed him, to force him to lead them back to Alys. He might as easily have died from another shot, or blundered into our own cross- fire.”
“Sergeant Bothari didn’t hesitate,” Droushnakovi said flatly.
“No,” agreed Cordelia.
“Sergeant Bothari doesn’t waste energy feeling … sorry, for the enemy, either.”
“No. Do you?”
“I feel sick.”
“You kill two total strangers, and expect to feel jolly?”
“Bothari does.”
“Yes. Bothari enjoyed it. But Bothari is not, even by Barrayaran standards, a sane man. Do you aspire to be a monster?”
