bloody birth-giving was taken for granted, but whack off some idiot’s head and you were really somebody, by God —!
It took Aral an hour, when they returned to his quarters, to calm her down, and then she had a crying jag. He stuck it out.
“Are you going to use this?” she asked him, when sheer weariness returned her to a semblance of coherence. “This, this … amazing new status of mine?” How she loathed the word, acid in her mouth.
“I’ll use anything,” he vowed quietly, “if it will help me put Gregor on the throne in fifteen years a sane and competent man, heading a stable government. Use you, me, whatever it takes. To pay this much, then fail, would not be tolerable.”
She sighed, and put her hand in his. “In case of accident, donate my remaining body parts, too. It’s the Betan way. Waste not.”
His lip curled up helplessly. Face-to-face, they rested their foreheads together for a moment, bracing each other. “Want not.”
Her silent promise to Kareen was made policy when she and Aral, as a couple, were officially appointed Gregor’s guardians by the Council of Counts. This was legally distinct somehow from Aral’s guardianship of the Imperium as Regent. Prime Minister Vortala took time to lecture her and make it clear her new duties involved no political powers. She did have economic functions, including trusteeship of certain Vorbarra holdings that were separate from Imperial properties, appending strictly to Gregor’s title as Count Vorbarra. And by Aral’s delegation, she was given oversight of the Emperor’s household. And education.
“But, Aral,” said Cordelia, stunned. “Vortala emphasized I was to have no power.”
“Vortala … is not all-wise. Let’s just say, he has a little trouble recognizing as such some forms of power which are not synonymous with force. Your window of opportunity is narrow, though; at age twelve Gregor will enter a pre-Academy preparatory school.”
“But do they realize … ?”
“I do. And you do. It’s enough.”
Chapter Twenty
One of Cordelia’s first orders was to assign Droushnakovi back to Gregor’s person, for his emotional continuity. This did not mean giving up the girl’s company, a comfort to which Cordelia had grown deeply accustomed, because upon Illyan’s renewed insistence Aral finally took up living quarters in the Imperial Residence. It eased Cordelias heart, when Drou and Kou were wed a month after Winterfair.
Cordelia offered herself as a go-between for the two families. For some reason, Kou and Drou both turned the offer down, hastily, though with profuse thanks. Given the bewildering pitfalls of Barrayaran social custom, Cordelia was just as happy to leave it to the experienced elderly lady the couple did contract.
Cordelia saw Alys Vorpatril often, exchanging domestic visits. Baby Lord Ivan was, if not exactly a comfort to Alys, certainly a distraction in her slow recovery from her physical ordeal. He grew rapidly despite a tendency to fussiness, an iatrogenic trait, Cordelia realized after a while, triggered by Alys’s fussing over him. Ivan should have three or four sibs to divide her attention among, Cordelia decided, watching Alys burp him on her shoulder while planning aloud his educational attack, come age eighteen, upon the formidable Imperial Military Academy entrance examinations.
Alys Vorpatril was drawn off her embittered mourning for Padma and her planning of Ivan’s life down to the last detail, when she was given a look at a picture of the wedding dress Drou was drooling over.
“No, no, no!” she cried, recoiling. “All that lace—you would look as furry as a big white bear. Silk, dear, long falls of silk is what you need—” and she was off. Motherless, sisterless Drou could scarcely have found a more knowledgeable bridal consultant. Lady Vorpatril ended by making the dress one of her several presents, to be sure of its aesthetic perfection, along with a “little holiday cottage” which turned out to be a substantial house on the eastern seashore. Come summer, Drou’s beach dream would come true. Cordelia grinned, and purchased the girl a nightgown and robe with enough tiers of lace layered on them to satiate the most frill-starved soul.
Aral lent the hall: the Imperial Residence’s Red Room and adjacent ballroom, the one with the beautiful marquetry floor, which to Cordelia’s immense relief had escaped the fire. In theory, this magnificent gesture was required to ease Illyan’s Security headaches, as Cordelia and Aral were to stand among the principal witnesses. Personally, Cordelia thought converting ImpSec into wedding caterers a promising turn of events.
Aral looked over the guest list and smiled. “Do you realize,” he said to Cordelia, “every class is represented? A year ago this event, here, would not have been possible. The grocer’s son and the non-com’s daughter. They bought it with blood, but maybe next year it can be bought with peaceful achievement. Medicine, education, engineering, entrepreneurship—shall we have a party for librarians?”
“Won’t those terrible Vorish crones all Piotr’s friends are married to complain about social over- progressiveness?”
“With Alys Vorpatril behind this? They wouldn’t dare.” The affair grew from there. By a week in advance Kou and Drou were considering eloping out of sheer panic, having lost all control of everything whatsoever to their eager helpers. But the Imperial Residence’s staff brought it all together with practiced ease. The senior housewoman flew about, chortling, “And here I was afraid we weren’t going to have anything to do, once the admiral moved in, but those dreadful boring General Staff dinners.”
The day and hour came at last. A large circle made of colored groats was laid out on the floor of the Red Room, encompassed by a star with a variable number of points, one for each parent or principal witness to stand at: in this case, four. In Barrayaran custom a couple married themselves, speaking their vows within the circle, requiring neither priest nor magistrate. Practically, a coach, called appropriately enough the Coach, stood outside the circle and read the script for the fainthearted or faint-headed to repeat. This dispensed with the need for higher neural functions such as learning and memory on the part of the stressed couple. Lost motor coordination was supplied by a friend each, who steered them to the circle. It was all very practical, Cordelia decided, as well as splendid.
With a grin and a flourish Aral placed her at her assigned star point, as if setting out a bouquet, and took his own place. Lady Vorpatril had insisted on a new gown for Cordelia, a sweeping length of blue and white with red floral accents, color-coordinated with Aral’s ultra-formal parade red-and-blues. Drou’s proud and nervous father also wore his red-and-blues and held down his point. Strange to think of the military, which Cordelia normally associated with totalitarian impulses, as the spearhead of egalitarianism on Barrayar. The Cetagandans’ gift, Aral called it; their invasion had first forced the promotion of talent regardless of origin, and the waves of that change were still traveling through Barrayaran society.
Sergeant Droushnakovi was a shorter, slighter man than Cordelia had expected. Either Drou’s mother’s genes, better nutrition, or both had boosted all his children up taller than himself. All three brothers, from the captain to the corporal, had been broken loose from their military assignments to attend, and stood now in the big outer circle of other witnesses along with Kou’s excited younger sister. Kou’s mother stood on the star’s last point, crying and smiling, in a blue dress so color-perfect Cordelia decided Alys Vorpatril must have somehow gotten to her, too.
Koudelka marched in first, propped by his stick with its new cover and Sergeant Bothari. Sergeant Bothari wore the most glittery version of Piotr’s brown and silver livery, and whispered helpful, horribly suggestive advice like “If you feel really nauseous, Lieutenant, put your head down.” The very thought turned Kou’s face greener, an extraordinary color-contrast with his red-and-blues that Lady Vorpatril would no doubt have disapproved.
Heads turned. Oh, my. Alys Vorpatril had been absolutely right about Drou’s gown. She swept in, as stunningly graceful as a sailing ship, a tall clean perfection of form and function, ivory silk, gold hair, blue eyes, white, blue, and red flowers, so that when she stepped up beside Kou one suddenly realized how tall he must be. Alys Vorpatril, in silver-grey, released Drou at the circle’s edge with a gesture like some hunting goddess releasing a white falcon, to soar and settle on Kou’s outstretched arm.
Kou and Drou made it through their oaths without stammering or passing out, and managed to conceal their mutual embarrassment at the public declaration of their despised first names, Clement and Ludmilla.
(“My brothers used to call me Lud,” Drou had confided to Cordelia during the practice yesterday. “Rhymes
