Komarr

Tien returned to report success and the Vor lord suitably settled.

'Tien, were you watching that fellow closely?' asked Ekaterin. 'A mutie, a mutie Vor, yet he carried on as if nothing were the least out of the ordinary. If he can …' she trailed off hopefully, leaving the surely you can for Tien to conclude.

Tien frowned. 'Don't start that again. It's obvious he doesn't think the rules apply to him. He's Aral Vorkosigan's son, for God's sake. Practically the Emperor's foster brother. No wonder he got this cushy Imperial appointment.'

'I don't think so, Tien. Were you listening to him at all?' All those undercurrents … 'I think … I think he's the Emperor's hatchet man, sent to judge the whole Terraforming Project. Powerful . . . maybe dangerous.'

Tien shook his head. 'His father was powerful and dangerous. He's just privileged. Damned high Vor twit. Don't worry about him. Your uncle will take him away soon enough.'

'I'm not worried about him.'

Tien's face darkened. 'I'm getting so tired of this! You argue with everything I say, you practically insult my intelligence in front of your so-noble relative—'

'I didn't!' Did I? She began a confused mental review of her evening's remarks. What in the world had she said, to set him on edge like this—

'Just because you're the great Auditor's niece doesn't make you anybody, girl! This is disloyalty, that's what it is.'

'No—no, I'm sorry—'

But he was already stalking out. There would be a cold silence between them tonight. She almost ran after him, to beg his forgiveness. He was under a lot of pressure at work, it was very ill-timed of her to push for a resolution to his medical dilemma now. . . . But she was abruptly too weary to try anymore. She finished putting away the last of the food, and took the leftover half bottle of wine and a glass out onto the balcony. She turned off the cheery colored plant lights and just sat in the dim reflected illumination from the sealed Komarran city. The crippled star-flake of the insolation mirror had almost reached the western horizon, following the true-sun into night as the planet turned.

A white shape moved silently in the kitchen, briefly startling her. But it was only the mutie lord, who had shed his elegant gray tunic and, apparently, his boots. He stuck his head through the unsealed doors. 'Hello?'

'Hello, Lord Vorkosigan. I'm just out here watching the mirror set. Would you, um, care for some more wine . . . ? Here, I'll get you a glass—'

'No, don't get up, Madame Vorsoisson. I'll fetch it.' His pale smile winked out of the shadows at her. A few muted clinks came from within, then he trod silently onto the balcony. She poured, good hostess, generously into the glass he set beside her own, then he took it up again and went to the railing to study what could be seen of the sky past the girders of the dome.

'It's the best aspect of this location,' she said. 'This bit of western view.' The mirror-array was magnified by the atmosphere close to the horizon, but its normal evening color-effects in the wispy clouds were dimmed by its damage. 'Mirror-set's usually much prettier than this.' She sipped her wine, cool and sweet on her tongue, and felt herself finally starting to become a little furry in the brain. Furry was good. Soothing.

'I can see that it must be,' he agreed, still staring out. He drank deeply. Had he switched, then, from resisting sleep through alcohol to pursuing it?

'This horizon is so crowded and cluttered, compared to home. I'm afraid I find these sealed arcologies a touch claustrophobic.'

'And where is home, for you?' He turned to watch her.

'South Continent. Vandeville.'

'So you grew up around terraforming.'

'The Komarrans would say, that wasn't terraforming, that was just soil conditioning.' He chuckled along with her, at her deadpan rendition of Komarran techno-snobbery. She continued, 'They're right, of course. It wasn't as though we had to start by spending half a millennium altering an entire planet's atmosphere. The only thing that made it hard for us, back in the Time of Isolation, was trying to do it with practically no technology. Still … I loved the open spaces at home. I miss that wide sky, horizon to horizon.'

'That's true in any city, domed or not. So you're a country girl?'

'In part. Though I liked Vorbarr Sultana when I was at university. It had other kinds of horizons.'

'Did you study botany? I noticed the library rack on the wall of your plant room. Impressive.'

'No. It's just a hobby.'

'Oh? I could have mistaken it for a passion. Or a profession.'

'No. I didn't know what I wanted, then.'

'Do you know now?'

She laughed a little, uneasily. When she didn't answer, he merely smiled, and strolled along the balcony examining her plantings. He stopped before the skellytum, squatting in its pot like some bright red alien Buddha, tendrils raised in a pose of placid supplication. 'I have to ask,' he said plaintively, 'what is this thing?'

'It's a bonsai'd skellytum.'

'Really! That's a—I didn't know you could do that to a skellytum. They're usually five meters tall. And a really ugly brown.'

'I had a great aunt, on my father's side, who loved gardening. I used to help her when I was a girl. She was very much a crusty old frontier woman, very Vor—she'd come to the South Continent right after the Cetagandan War. Survived a succession of husbands, survived . . . well, everything. I inherited the skellytum from her. It's the only plant I brought to Komarr from Barrayar. It's over seventy years old.'

'Good God.'

'It's the complete tree, fully functional.'

'And—ha!—short.'

She was afraid for a moment that she'd inadvertently offended him, but apparently not. He finished his inspection, and returned to the railing, and his wine. He stared out again at the western horizon, and the sinking mirror, his brows lowering.

He had a presence which, by ignoring his elusive physical peculiarities himself, defied the observer to dare comment. But the little lord had had all his life to adjust to his condition. Not like the hideous surprise Tien had found among his late brother's papers, and subsequently confirmed for himself and Nikolai through carefully secret testing. You can get tested anonymously, she had argued. But I can't get treated anonymously, he had countered.

Since coming to Komarr, she'd been so close to defying custom, law, and her lord-and-husband's orders, and unilaterally taking his son and heir for treatment. Would the Komarran doctors know a Vor mother was not her son's legal guardian? Maybe she could pretend the genetic defect had come from her, not from Tien? But the geneticists, if they were any good, would surely figure out the truth.

After a while, she said elliptically, 'A Vor man's first loyalty is supposed to be to his Emperor, but a Vor woman's first loyalty is supposed to be to her husband.'

'Historically and legally, that's so.' His voice was amused, or bemused, as he turned again to watch her. 'This was not always to her disadvantage. When he was executed for treason, she was presumed to be only following orders, and got off. Actually, I wonder if the underlying practical reason was that an underpopulated world just couldn't spare her labor.'

'Haven't you ever found that oddly asymmetrical?'

'But simpler for her. Most women usually only had one husband at a time, but the Vor were all too frequently presented with a choice of emperors, and where was your loyalty then? Bad guesses could be lethal. Though when my grandfather General Piotr—and his army—abandoned Mad Emperor Yuri for Emperor Ezar, it was lethal for Yuri. Good for Barrayar, though.'

She sipped again. From where she sat, he was silhouetted against the darkening dome, shadowed, enigmatic. 'Indeed. Is your passion politics, then?'

'God, no! I don't think so.'