Komarr

herself into his arms and weep relief into—well, if not his shoulder, at least the top of his head—in front of that herd of ImpSec fellows, he had to admit he admired this style even more. So what is this thing you have about tall women and unrequited love? His cousin Ivan would doubtless have some cutting things to say—he growled in anticipation, in his mind. He would deal with Ivan and other hazards to his courtship later.

'Do you know you saved about five thousand lives?' he asked her.

Her dark brows drew down. 'What?'

'The novel device was defective. If the Komarrans had managed to get it started, the gravitational back- blow from the wormhole would have taken out this station just like the soletta array, possibly with as few survivors. And I shudder at the thought of the property damage bill. To think how Illyan used to complain about my equipment losses back when I was just covert ops. …'

'You mean … it didn't work after all? I did all that for nothing?' She stopped short, her shoulders sagging.

'What do you mean, nothing? I've met Imperial generals who completed their entire careers with less to show for them. You should get a bloody medal, I think. Except that this whole thing is going to end up so classified, they're going to have to invent a whole new level of classification just to put it in. And then classify the classification.'

Her lips puffed, not quite mirthfully. 'What would I do with so useless an object as a medal?'

He thought bemusedly of the contents of a certain drawer at home in Vorkosigan House. 'Frame it? Use it as a paperweight? Dust it?'

'Just what I always wanted. More clutter.'

He grinned at her; she smiled back at last, clearly beginning to come off her adrenaline jag, and without breaking down, either. She drew breath and started forward again, and he kept pace. She had met the enemy, mastered her moment, hung three hours on death's doorstep, all that, and she'd emerged still on her feet and snarling. Oversocialized, hah. Oh, yeah, Da, I want this one.

He stopped at the door to the infirmary; the Professora vanished within, borne off by her medical minions like a lady on a palanquin. Ekaterin paused with him.

'I have to leave you for a time and check on my prisoners. The stationers will take care of you.'

Her brow wrinkled. 'Prisoners? Oh. Yes. How did you get rid of the Komarrans?'

Miles smiled grimly. 'Persuasion.'

She stared down at him, one side of her lovely mouth curving up. Her lower lip was split; he wanted to kiss it and make it well. Not yet. Timing, boy. And one other thing.

'You must be very persuasive.'

'I hope so.' He took a deep breath. 'I bluffed them into believing that I wouldn't let them go no matter what they did to you and the Professora. Except that I wasn't bluffing. We could not have let them go.' There. Betrayal confessed. His empty hands clenched.

She stared at him in disbelief; his heart shrank. 'Well, of course not!'

'Eh . . . what?'

'Don't you know what they wanted to do to Barrayar?' she demanded. 'It was a horror show. Utterly vile, and they couldn't even see it. They actually tried to tell me that collapsing the wormhole wouldn't hurt anyone! Monstrous fools.'

'That's what I thought, actually.'

'So, wouldn't you put your life on the line to stop them?'

'Yes, but I wasn't putting my life—I was putting yours.'

'But I'm Vor,' she said simply.

His smile and his heart revived, dizzy with delight. 'True Vor, milady,' he breathed.

A female medtech was approaching, murmuring anxiously, 'Madame Vorsoisson?' Miles yielded to her shepherding motions, gave Ekaterin an analyst's salute, and turned away. He was humming, off-key, by the time he rounded the first corner.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The station infirmary personnel insisted on keeping both Vor women overnight, a precaution with which neither argued. Despite her exhaustion Ekaterin did get dispensation to go pick up her valise from her never-used hostel room, under the watchful eye of a very young ImpSec guard who called her 'Ma'am' in every sentence and was determined to carry her luggage.

One message waited on her hostel room's comconsole: an urgent order from Lord Vorkosigan for her to take her aunt and flee the station at once, delivered in a tone of such intense conviction as to almost send her scurrying off despite its obviously outdated content. Instructions only, she noted; no explanations whatsoever. He really must have once held military command. The contrast between this strained, forceful lord and the almost goofy geniality of the young man who'd bowed her out of the airlock bemused her; which was the real Lord Vorkosigan? For all his apparently self-revealing babble, the man remained as elusive as a handful of water. Water in the desert. The thought popped unbidden into her mind, and she shook her head to clear it.

After she returned to the infirmary, Ekaterin sat up for a while with her aunt, waiting for the Professor. Uncle Vorthys arrived in the next hour. He was unusually breathless and subdued as he sat on the edge of his wife's bed and embraced her. She hugged him back, tears starting in her eyes for almost the first time in this whole night's ordeal.

'You shouldn't frighten me like that, woman,' he told her in mock severity. 'Running around getting kidnapped, thwarting Komarran terrorists, putting ImpSec out of a job … Your premature demise would entirely disarrange my selfish plan to drop dead first and leave you to pick up after me. Kindly don't do that!'

She laughed shakily. 'I'll try not to, dear.' The patient gown she wore was not a very flattering fashion, but her color did look rather better, Ekaterin thought. Synergine, hot liquids, warmth, quiet, and safety were working to banish her more alarming symptoms without further medical intervention, so that even her anxious husband was fairly quickly reassured. Ekaterin let her aunt tell him most of the story of their harrowing hours with the Komarrans, only putting in a few murmurs of correction when she waxed too flattering of her niece's part in it all.

Ekaterin reflected with bleak envy on the nature of a marriage that its principals could regard as prematurely threatened after a mere forty-plus years. Not for me. I've lost that option. The Professor and the Professora were surely among the fortunate few. Whatever personal qualities it took to achieve this happy state, it was abundantly plain to Ekaterin that she did not possess them. So be it.

The Professor's booming voice and precise academic diction returned to usual as he proceeded to harry the medtechs, unnecessarily, on his wife's behalf. Ekaterin intervened to suggest firmly that what Aunt Vorthys needed most now was rest; after one last disruptive pass through the private room, he took himself off to find Lord Vorkosigan and tour the late battlefield at the Southport locks. Ekaterin didn't think she could ever sleep again, but after she cleaned up and crawled into her own infirmary bed, a medtech brought her a potion and invited her to drink it. Ekaterin was still complaining muzzily that such things didn't work for her when the bed sheets seemed to suck her right down.

Whether due to the potion, exhaustion, sheer nervous collapse, or the absence of a nine-year-old demanding services, she slept late. The restful residue of the morning, spent chatting desultorily with her aunt, had drifted toward noon when Lord Vorkosigan trooped into the infirmary room. He was clean as a cat and his fine gray suit was crisp and fresh, though his face was traced with fatigue. He carried an enormous and awkward flower arrangement under each arm. Ekaterin hurried to help relieve him of them, sliding them onto a table before he dropped them both.

'Good day, Madame Dr. Vorthys, you're looking much better. Excellent. Madame Vorsoisson.' He ducked his head at her, and his white grin winked.

'Wherever did you find such gorgeous flowers on a space station?' Ekaterin asked, astonished.

'In a shop. It's a Komarran space station. They'll sell you anything. Well, not anything—