one door, and they’d just lost control of their only exit. Vordarian’s trap had worked after all. May Vidal Vordarian rot in hell …
Droushnakovi clutched her stunner. “We won’t surrender you, Milady. We’ll fight to the end.”
“Rubbish,” snapped Cordelia. “There’s nothing our deaths would buy here but the deaths of a few more of Vordarian’s goons. Meaningless.”
“You mean we should just quit?”
“Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We’re not giving up. We’re waiting for a better opportunity to win. Which we can’t take if we’re stunned or nerve-fried.” Of course, if that had been the real replicator on the table … she was insane enough by now to sacrifice these people’s lives for her son’s, Cordelia reflected ruefully, but not yet mad enough to trade them for nothing. She hadn’t grown that Barrayaran yet.
“You give yourself to Vordarian as a hostage,” Bothari warned.
“Vordarian has held me hostage since the day he took Miles,” Cordelia said sadly. “This changes nothing.”
A few minutes of shouted negotiations through the door accomplished their surrender, despite the hair- trigger nerves of the security guards. They tossed out their weapons. The guards ran a scan for power packs to be sure, then four of them piled into the little room to frisk their new prisoners. Two more waited outside as backup. Cordelia made no sudden moves to startle them. A guard frowned puzzlement when the interesting lump in Cordelia’s vest turned out to be only a child’s shoe. He laid it on the table next to the tray.
The commander, a man in the maroon and gold
Vordarian livery, spoke into his wrist comm. “Yes. We’re secured here. Tell m’lord. No, he said to wake him. You want to explain why you didn’t? Thank you.”
The guards did not prod them into the corridor, but waited. The still-unconscious man Bothari had clipped was dragged out. The guards placed Cordelia, arms outstretched to the wall and legs straddled, in a row with Bothari and Droushnakovi. She was dizzy with despair. But Kareen would come to her sometime, even as a prisoner. Must come to her. All she needed was thirty seconds with Kareen, maybe less. When I see Kareen, you are a dead man, Vordarian. You may walk and talk and give orders, unconscious of your demise for weeks, but I’ll seal your fate as surely as you’ve sealed my son’s.
The reason for the wait materialized at last; Vordarian himself, in green uniform trousers and slippers, bare-chested, shouldered his way through the doorway. He was followed by Princess Kareen, clutching a dark red velvet robe around her. Cordelia’s heart hammered at a doubled rate. Now?
“So. The trap worked,” Vordarian began complacently, but added a genuinely shocked “Huh!” as Cordelia pushed away from the wall and turned to face him. A hand signal stopped a guard from shoving her back into position. The shock on Vordarian’s face gave way to a wolfish grin. “My God, did it work! Excellent!” Kareen, hovering behind him, stared at Cordelia in bewildered astonishment.
My trap worked, Cordelia thought, stunned with her opportunity. Watch me. …
“That’s the thing, my lord,” said the liveried man, not at all happily. “It didn’t work. We didn’t pick this party up at the outer perimeter of the Residence and clear their way, they just bloody turned up—without triggering anything. That shouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t come along looking for Roget, we might not have spotted ’em.”
Vordarian shrugged, too delighted by the magnitude of his prey to issue some trifling censure. “Fast-penta that frill,” he pointed at Droushnakovi, “and I imagine you’ll find out how. She used to work in Residence Security.”
Droushnakovi glowered over her shoulder at Princess Kareen in hurt accusation; Kareen unconsciously pulled her robe up more closely about her neck, her dark eyes full of equally hurt question.
“Well,” said Vordarian, still smiling at Cordelia, “is my Lord Vorkosigan so thin of troops he sends his wife to do their work? We cannot lose.” He smiled at his guards, who smiled back.
Damn, I wish I’d shot this lout in his sleep. “What have you done with my son, Vordarian?”
Vordarian said through his teeth, “An outworlder frill will never gain power on Barrayar by scheming to give a mutant the Imperium. That, I guarantee.”
“Is that the official line, now? I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.”
Behind Vordarian, Kareen’s lips quirked sadly. Yes, listen to me, Kareen!
“Where’s my son, Vordarian?” Cordelia repeated doggedly.
“He’s Emperor Vidal now,” Kareen remarked, her glance going back and forth between them, “if he can keep it.”
“I will,” Vordarian promised. “Aral Vorkosigan has no better a blood-claim than my own. And I will protect where Vorkosigan’s party has failed. Protect and preserve the real Barrayar.” His head shifted; apparently this assertion was directed over his shoulder to Kareen.
“We have not failed,” Cordelia whispered, meeting Kareen’s eyes. Now. She lifted the shoe from the table, and stretched out her arm with it; Kareen’s eyes widened. She darted forward and grabbed it. Cordelia’s hand spasmed like a dying runner’s giving up the baton in some mortal relay race. Fierce certainty bloomed like fire in her soul. I have you now, Vordarian. The sudden movement sent a ripple through the armed guards. Kareen examined the shoe with passionate intensity, turning it in her hands. Vordarian’s brows rose in bafflement, then he dismissed Kareen from his attention and turned to his liveried guard commander.
“We’ll keep all three of these prisoners here in the Residence. I’ll personally attend the fast-penta interrogations. This is a spectacular opportunity—” . Kareen’s face, when she lifted it again to Cordelia, was terrible with hope.
Yes, thought Cordelia. You were betrayed. Lied to. Your son lives; you must move and think and feel again, no more the walking numbness of a dead spirit beyond pain. This is no gift I’ve brought you. It is a curse.
“Kareen,” said Cordelia softly, “where is my son?”
“The replicator is on a shelf in the oak wardrobe, in the old Emperor’s bedchamber,” Kareen replied steadily, locking her eyes to Cordelia’s. “Where is mine?”
Cordelia’s heart melted in gratitude for her curse, live pain. “Safe and well, when I last saw him, as long as this pretender,” she jerked her head at Vordarian, “doesn’t find out where. Gregor misses you. He sends his love.” Her words might have been spikes, pounded into Kareen’s body.
That got Vordarian’s attention. “Gregor is at the bottom of a lake, killed in the flyer crash with that traitor Negri,” he said roughly. “The most insidious lie is the one you want to hear. Guard yourself, my lady Kareen. I could not save him, but I will avenge him. I promise you that.”
Uh—oh. Wait, Kareen. Cordelia bit her lip. Not here. Too dangerous. Wait your best opportunity. Wait till the bastard’s asleep, at least—but if even a Betan hesitated to shoot her enemy sleeping, how much less a Vor? She is true Vor… .
An unfriendly smile crinkled Kareen’s lips. Her eyes were alight. “This has never been immersed,” she said softly.
Cordelia heard the murderous undertones ringing like a bell; Vordarian, apparently, only heard the breathiness of some girlish grief. He glanced at the shoe, not grasping its message, and shook his head as if to clear it of static. “You’ll bear another son someday,” he promised her kindly. “Our son.”
Wait, wait, wait, Cordelia screamed inside. “Never,” whispered Kareen. She stepped back beside the guard in the doorway, snatched his nerve disruptor from his open holster, aimed it point-blank at Vordarian, and fired.
The startled guard knocked her hand up; the shot went wide, crackling into the ceiling. Vordarian dove behind the table, the only furniture in the room, rolling. His liveried man, in pure spinal reflex, snapped up his nerve disruptor and fired. Kareen’s face muscles locked in death-agony as the blue fire washed around her head; her mouth pulled open in a last soundless cry. Wait, Cordelia’s thought wailed.
Vordarian, utterly horrified, bellowed “No!”, scrambled to his feet, and tore a nerve disruptor from the hand of another guard. The liveried man, realizing the enormity of his error, tossed his weapon away as if to divorce himself from his action. Vordarian shot him.
The room tilted around her. Cordelia’s hand locked around the hilt of the swordstick and triggered its sheath flying into the head of one guard, then brought the blade smartly down across Vordarian’s weapon—wrist. He screamed, and blood and the nerve disruptor flew wide. Droushnakovi was already diving for the first discarded nerve disruptor. Bothari just took his target out with one lethal hand-blow to the neck. Cordelia slammed the door
