Memory

here, a host of lesser lordlings, and the sort of new industrial wealthy non-Vor who were presently carrying off such a distressing percentage of eligible Vor maidens to preside over their homes in the style to which they aspired.

Miles tapped in a comconsole code. The pleasant, smiling face of the Vorkosigans' business manager, Tsipis, appeared with startling promptness over the vid plate upon Miles's call reaching his office in Hassadar. 'Good morning, Lord Vorkosigan! I was not aware you had returned from your off-planet duty. How may I serve you?'

He was not yet aware of Miles's medical discharge, either, apparently. Miles felt too weary to explain even the edited-for-public-consumption version of events, so only said, 'Yes. I got in a few weeks ago. It … looks like I'm going to be downside longer than I'd anticipated. What funds can I draw upon? Did Father leave you any instructions?'

'All of it,' said Tsipis.

'Excuse me? I don't understand.'

'All of the accounts and funds were made joint with you, just before the Count and Countess departed for Sergyar. Just in case. You are your fathers executor, you know.'

'Yes, but . . .' He hadn't thought Sergyar was that wild a frontier. 'Um . . . what can I do?'

'It's much easier to say what you can't do. You can't sell the entailed properties, namely the residence at Hassadar and Vorkosigan House. You can buy whatever you wish, of course, or sell anything your grandfather left you solely in your own name.'

'So . . . can I afford to hire a full-time driver?'

'Oh, my, yes, you could afford to staff Vorkosigan house in full. The funds are there, piling up.'

'Aren't they needed for the Viceroy's Palace on Sergyar?'

'Countess Vorkosigan has tapped a certain amount of her private moneys, apparently for some redecorating project, but your father is only maintaining his twenty Armsmen at present. Everything else on Sergyar comes out of the Imperial budget.'

'Oh.'

Tsipis brightened. 'Are you thinking of reopening Vorkosigan House, my lord? That would be splendid. It was such a fine sight, last year at Winterfair, when I dined there.'

'Not … at present.'

Tsipis drooped. 'Ah,' he murmured, in a tone of disappointment. Then a look of belated enlightenment came over his face. 'My lord … do you need money?'

'Er . . . yes. That was what I had in mind. To, like, pay a driver, maybe a cook, pay bills, buy things … a suitable living allowance, you know.' His ImpSec pay, accumulating in his lengthy absences on duty, had always been more than enough. He wondered how much to ask Tsipis for.

'But of course. How would you like it? A weekly deposit into your Service account, perhaps?'

'No … I'd like a new account. Separate. Just . . . to me as Lord Vorkosigan.'

'Excellent thinking. Your father is always very careful to keep his personal and Imperial funds identifiably separated. It's a good habit to start. Not that the most foolhardy Imperial Auditor would ever have dared to take him on, of course. Nor have looked anything but a fool afterwards, when the numbers were laid out.' Tsipis tapped on his comconsole, and glanced aside at some data readout. 'Suppose I transfer the entire accumulated unused Household fund over into your new account, for seed money. And then just send the usual weekly allotment to follow.'

'Fine.'

'Now, if you need any more, do call me right away.'

'Sure.'

'I'll send you your new account chit by courier within the hour.'

'Thank you.' Miles reached to cut the com, then added as an afterthought, 'How much is it?'

'Five thousand marks.'

'Oh, good.'

'And eighty thousand marks to start,' Tsipis added.

Miles did a quick mental reversal, and calculation, 'This place was sucking down five thousand marks a week?'

'Oh, much more than that, with the Armsmen, and the Countess's personal account. And this does not include major repairs, which are budgeted separately.'

'I … see.'

'Now, should you take an interest, I should be happy to go over all your financial affairs with you in much more detail,' Tsipis added eagerly. 'There's so much that could be done with a somewhat more aggressive, entrepreneurial, and, dare I say, less conservative and more inventive approach.'

'If … I ever have the time. Thank you, Tsipis.' Miles quit the com much less casually.

Good God. He could buy . . . damn near anything he wanted. He tried to think of something he wanted.

The Dendarii.

Yeah. We know. But their price, for him, wasn't measured in money. What else?

Once, in his increasingly distant youth, he'd lusted briefly after a lightflyer, faster and redder than Ivan's.

A particularly fine model, albeit several years old now, sat in the garage downstairs, only lightly used. Of course, he couldn't fly it at all now.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

What had that been? Well, an admiral, of course, a Barrayaran one, by age 35, one year younger than when his father had become the youngest in post-Isolation history at age 36. Despite Miles's height, and in the teeth of his handicaps. But even had he been abnormal of body, his era had brought him no convenient major wars to speed promotion. ImpSec covert ops had been the best he could do, not just the one branch of the Service that would take him, but the only one that could put him in the forefront of the only significant action presently available. How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged.

He turned to his list of five retired Vorkosigan Armsmen living in the Vorbarr Sultana area. Though elderly, an Armsman, with his wife perhaps to cook, would be the ideal solution to his problem. He wouldn't have to teach them anything about Vorkosigan House's routine, and they'd have no objection to a short-term gig. He began coding his calls. Maybe I'll get lucky on the first try.

One was too doddering to drive anymore himself. The other four's wives all said no, or rather, No!

It wasn't as if he were in the heat of battle; he could not justify invoking certain archaic loyalty oaths. With a snort, he gave it up, and went to collect last night's scraps from the kitchen in his ongoing campaign to convince Zap the Cat to not snatch food with razor claws, run under a chair, and growl through her gorge, but rather, eat daintily, and sit on one's lap and purr gratefully afterwards, like a proper Vor cat. In all, there was a lot about Zap that reminded Miles of his clone-brother Mark, and he'd done all right with Mark in the end. It wouldn't hurt to let the gate guard know about Tsipis's courier, too.

Miles arrived to find the gate guard had a visitor, a tall, blond young man who bore a notable, if softer, resemblance to the sharper-featured Corporal Kosti. He also bore a large lacquered box.

'Good morning, or should I say, afternoon, sir,' the guard greeted him with a vague aborted salute almost worthy of an HQ analyst, belatedly recognizing the fact that Miles wore no uniform. 'Um . . . may I introduce my younger brother Martin?'

You're not old enough to have a younger brother. Hello.' Miles stuck out his