military life . . . when it wasn't a goddamn game anymore, when things went real, and really scary, with lives and souls too going down the flash-disposer for it . . . Raina was the one symbol of his service that still made sense. He had a horrible feeling he'd somehow lost touch with Raina too, lately, in all this mess.
Had he got so wound up with playing Naismith, and with winning that game, that he'd forgotten what he was playing for? Raina was one prisoner Naismith would never rescue, down underground these ten years.
There was a probably apocryphal tale told of Miles's ancestor Count Selig Vorkosigan, collecting—or more likely, attempting to collect—taxes from his District's people, no more thrilled by the prospect then than they were now. One impoverished widow, left with her feckless late husband's debts, offered up the only thing she had, her son's drum-playing, son included. Selig, it was said, accepted the drumming but gave back the boy. Self-serving Vorish propaganda, no doubt. Naismith had been Miles's own best sacrifice, his all in all, what he came up with when he turned himself inside-out with the trying. Barrayar's galactic interests seemed very far away in this mountain morning light, but serving those interests had been his part. Naismith was the drum-song he'd played, but Vorkosigan was the one who'd played it.
So he knew exactly how he'd lost Naismith, misstep by misstep. He could touch and name every link in that disastrous chain of events. Where the hell had he lost Vorkosigan?
When they landed, he would tell Martin to take a walk, or go fly the lightflyer around some more. This was one conversation with the dead he didn't want a witness to. He'd failed Gregor, yet faced him, failed his family, and would have to face them soon. But facing Raina . . . that was going to hurt like needle grenade fire.
Martins voice broke into his increasingly agonized reverie. 'M'lord? What should I do? I can't land in the valley where you said, it's all water.'
'What?' Miles sat up, and opened his eyes, and stared out in astonishment.
'There seems to be a lake there,' said Martin.
Indeed. Across the narrow shoulder where the two descending streams had met now sat a small hydroelectric dam. Behind it, filling the steep valleys, a winding sheet of water reflected the hazy morning blue. Miles rechecked the vid map, just to be sure, and then the date on the map. 'This map's only two years old. But this sure as hell isn't on it. But . . . this is the place, all right.'
'Do you still want to land?'
'Yes, um . . . try to set down on the shore there on the east side, as close to the mark as you can.'
It wasn't an easy task, but Martin at last found a spot and eased the lightflyer down among the trees. He popped the canopy, and Miles climbed out, and stood on the steep bank, and peered down at the clear brown water. He could only see a few meters into it. A scattering of white tree stumps stuck up out of it like bones. Martin, curious, followed him, and stood by his side, as if to help him look.
'So … is the cemetery still under there, or have the folk of Silvy Vale moved their graves? And if so, where have they moved them to?' Miles muttered.
Martin shrugged. The blank and placid mirror of the water gave no answer either.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After Martin jockeyed the lightflyer up out of the trees, Miles located the clearing he sought about a kilometer away. He had Martin put them down in the yard in front of a cabin built of weathered silvery wood. The cabin, with its familiar full-length porch giving a fine view over the valley and the new lake, appeared unchanged, though there were a couple of new outbuildings downslope.
A man came out onto the porch to see what was landing in his yard. It was not the balding, one-armed Speaker Karal. This was a total stranger, a tall fellow with a neatly trimmed black beard. But he leaned, interested, on the porch railing of bark-peeled sapling as if he owned the place. Miles climbed out of the lightflyer, and stood by it for an uncertain moment, staring up at the man, rehearsing explanations for himself and secretly glad of Martins bulk. Perhaps he should have brought a trained bodyguard.
But the stranger's face lit with recognition and excitement. 'Lord Vorkosigan!' he cried. He ran down off the porch two steps at a time, and strode toward Miles, his hands out in greeting, smiling broadly. 'Great to see you again!' His smile faded. 'Nothing wrong, I hope?'
Well, this one remembered
The man stepped back, looking down at his face, and his smile turned into a sly grin. 'Don't you know who I am?'
'Urn . . .'
'I'm Zed Karal.'
'Zed?' Zed Karal, Speaker Karal's middle son, had been twelve years old. . . . Miles did a little quick math. Twenty-two, or thereabouts. Yeah. 'The last time I saw you, you were shorter than me.'
'Well, my ma was a good cook.'
'Indeed. I remember.' Miles hesitated. 'Was? Are your parents, um . . .'
'Oh, they're fine. Just not here. My older brother married this lowlander girl from Seligrad, and went there to work and live. Ma and Da go down to live with them for the winter, 'cause the winters are getting hard for them up here. Ma helps with their kids.'
'Is . . . Karal not the Speaker of Silvy Vale anymore, then?'
'No, we have a new Speaker, as of about two years ago. A young hotshot full of Progressive ideas he picked up living in Hassadar, just your type. I think you'll remember him all right. Name's Lem Csurik.' Zed's smile broadened.
'Oh!' said Miles. For the first time today a smile tugged at his own lips. 'Really. I'd … like to see him.'
'I'll take you to him right now, if you'll give me a lift. He's probably working on the clinic today. You won't know where that is, it's bright-new. Just a second.' Zed dashed back into his cabin to put something in order, a hint of that former twelve-year-old in his run. Miles felt like banging his head on the lightflyer's canopy, to try to force his spinning brain back into gear.
Zed returned, to hop into the lightflyer's backseat, and give Martin a string of directions interspersed with running commentary as they rose into the air and passed over the next ridge. He brought them down about two kilometers away in front of the rising frame of a six-room building, the biggest structure Miles had ever seen in Silvy Vale. Power lines were already strung to it, feeding a rack of pack-rechargers for power tools. Half a dozen men paused in their labors to watch them land.
Zed clambered out and waved. 'Lem, hey Lem! You'll never guess who's here!' Miles followed him toward the building site; Martin sat at the controls and watched in bemusement.
'My lord!' Lem Csurik's recognition was instantaneous too; but then, Miles's appearance was, ah, distinctive. Miles could probably have picked Lem out of the crowd in turn with a moment's study. He was still the wiry hillman of about Miles's age that Miles remembered, though obviously much happier than the day a decade back when he'd been falsely accused of murder, and even more confident-looking than the time Miles had briefly seen him in Hassadar six years ago. Lem too went for an engulfing two-handed greeting.
'Speaker Csurik. Congratulations,' Miles said in return. 'I see you've been busy.'
'Oh, you don't know the half of it, my lord! Come see. We're getting our own clinic—it's going to serve the whole area. I'm pushing to have it undercover before the first snow flies, and all ready by Winterfair. That's when we're getting our doctor, a real one, not just the medtech who flies the circuit once a week. The doc's one of your lady mother's scholarship students from the new school in Hassadar; he's going to serve us here four years in exchange for his schooling. Winterfair's when he's supposed to graduate. We're fixing him up a cabin, too, upslope; it's got a real nice view—'
Lem introduced his crew all around, and took Miles on a tour of, if not the clinic yet, the dream of the clinic
