Mirror Dance

back in Ivan’s ground car. This time Ivan drove much more slowly; residual terror, Mark judged, from having almost lost his charge.

“Where the hell was that outer perimeter guy who was supposed to be my guardian angel?” Mark asked, gingerly probing the contusions on his face. His nose had finally stopped bleeding. Ivan hadn’t let him in his ground car until it had, and he’d made sure Mark wasn’t going to throw up.

“Who d’you think called the municipal guards? The outer perimeter’s supposed to be discreet.”

“Oh.” His ribs hurt, but nothing was broken, Mark decided. Unlike his progenitor, he’d never had a broken bone. Mutie. “Was … did Miles have to deal with this kind of crap?” All he’d done to those people was walk past them. If Miles had been dressed as he was, been alone as he was, would they have attacked him?

“Miles wouldn’t have been stupid enough to wander in there by himself in the first place!”

Mark frowned. He’d gained the impression from Galen that Miles’s rank made him immune to Barrayar’s mutagenic prejudices. Did Miles actually have to run a constant safety-calculation in his head, editing where he could go, what he could do?

“And if he had,” Ivan continued, “he’d have talked his way out of it. Slid on by. Why the hell did you mix in with three guys? If you just want somebody to beat the shit out of you, come to me. I’d be glad to.”

Mark shrugged uncomfortably. Is that what he’d been secretly seeking? Punishment? Was that why things went so bad, so fast? “I thought you all were the great Vor. Why should you have to slide on by? Can’t you just stomp the scum?”

Ivan groaned. “No. And am I ever glad I’m not going to be your permanent bodyguard.”

“I’m glad too, if this is a sample of your work,” Mark snarled in return. He checked his left canine tooth; his gum and lips were puffy, but it wasn’t actually loose.

Ivan merely growled. Mark settled back, wondering how the kid with the damaged throat was doing. The municipal guards had taken him away for treatment. Mark should not have fought him; he’d come within a centimeter of killing him. He might have killed all three. The punks were only little cannibals, after all. Which was why, Mark realized, Miles would have talked and slid away; not fear, and not noblesse oblige, but because those people weren’t up to his … weight class. Mark felt ill. Barrayarans. God help me.

Ivan swung by his apartment, which was in a tower in one of the city’s better districts, not far from the entirely modern government buildings housing the Imperial Service Command headquarters. There he allowed Mark to wash up and remove the bloodstains from his clothing before his return to Vorkosigan House. Tossing Mark’s shirt back to him from the dryer, Ivan remarked, “Your torso is going to be piebald, tomorrow. Miles would have been in hospital for the next three weeks over that. I’d have had to cart him out of there on a board.”

Mark glanced down at the red blotches, just starting to turn purple. He was stiffening up all over. Half a dozen pulled muscles protested their abuse. All that, he could conceal, but his face bore marks that were going to have to be explained. Telling the Count and Countess that he’d been in a ground-car wreck with Ivan would be perfectly believable, but he doubted they’d get away with the lie for long.

In the event, Ivan did the talking again, delivering him back to the Countess with a true but absolutely minimized account of Mark’s adventure: “Aw, he wandered off and got pushed around a little by the local residents, but I caught up with him before anything much could happen. ’Bye, Aunt Cordelia …” Mark let him escape without impediment.

The whole report had certainly caught up with the Count and Countess by dinner. Mark sensed the cool faint tension even as he slid into his place at the table opposite Elena Bothari-Jesek, who was back at last from her lengthy and presumably grueling debriefing at ImpSec HQ.

The Count waited until the first course had been served and the human servant had departed the dining room before remarking, “I’m glad your learning experience today was not lethal, Mark.”

Mark managed to swallow without gagging, and said in a subdued voice, “For him, or me?”

“Either. Do you wish a report on your, ah, victim?”

No. “Yes. Please.”

“The physicians at the municipal hospital expect to release him in two days. He will be on a liquid diet for a week. He will recover his voice.”

“Oh. Good.” I didn’t mean to … What was the point of excuses, apologies, protests? None, surely.

“I looked into picking up his medical bill, privately, only to discover that Ivan had been in ahead of me. Upon reflection, I decided to let him stand for it.”

“Oh.” Ought he to offer to repay Ivan, then? Did he have any money, or any right to any? Legally? Morally?

“Tomorrow,” stated the Countess, “Elena will be your native guide. And Pym will accompany you.”

Elena looked very much less than thrilled.

“I spoke with Gregor,” Count Vorkosigan continued. “You apparently impressed him enough, somehow, that he has given his approval for my formal presentation of you as my heir, House Vorkosigan’s cadet member of the Council of Counts. At a time of my discretion, if and when Miles’s death is confirmed. Obviously, this step is still premature. I’m not sure myself whether it would be better to get your confirmation pushed through before the Counts get to know you, or after they have had time to get used to the idea. A swift maneuver, hit and run, or a long tedious siege. For once, I think a siege would be better. If we won, your victory would be far more secure.”

“Can they reject me?” Mark asked. Is that a light I see at the end of this tunnel?

“They must accept and approve you by a simple majority vote for you to inherit the Countship. My personal property is a separate matter. Normally, such approval is routine for the eldest son, or, lacking a son, whatever competent male relative a Count may put forward. It doesn’t even have to be a relative, technically, though it almost always is. There was the famous case of one of the Counts Vortala, back in the Time of Isolation, who had fallen out with his son. Young Lord Vortala had allied with his father-in-law in the Zidiarch Trade War. Vortala disinherited his son and somehow managed to maneuver a rump session of the Counts into approving his horse, Midnight, as his heir. Claimed the horse was just as bright and had never betrayed him.”

“What … a hopeful precedent for me,” Mark choked. “How did Count Midnight do? Compared to the average Count.”

“Lord Midnight. Alas, no one found out. The horse pre-deceased the Vortala, the war petered out, and the son eventually inherited after all. But it was one of the zoological high points of the Council’s varied political history, right up there with the infamous Incendiary Cat Plot.” Count Vorkosigan’s eye glinted with a certain skewed enthusiasm, relating all this. His eye fell on Mark and his momentary animation faded. “We’ve had several centuries to accumulate any precedent you please, from absurdities to horrors. And a few sound saving graces.”

The Count did not make further inquiries into Mark’s day, and Mark did not volunteer further details. The dinner went down like lead, and Mark escaped as soon as he decently could.

He slunk off to the library, the long room at the end of one wing of the oldest part of the house. The Countess had encouraged him to browse there. In addition to a reader accessing public data banks and a code- locked and secured government comconsole with its own dedicated comm links, the room was lined with bound books printed and even hand-calligraphed on paper from the Time of Isolation. The library reminded Mark of Vorhartung Castle, with its modern equipment and functions awkwardly stuffed into odd corners of an antique architecture that had never envisioned nor provided place for them.

As he was thinking about the museum, a large folio volume of woodcuts of arms and armor caught his eye, and he carefully pulled it from its slipcase and carried it to one of a pair of alcoves flanking the long glass doors to the back garden. The alcoves were luxuriously furnished, and a little table pulled up to a vast wing-chair provided support for the, in both senses, heavy volume. Bemused, Mark leafed through it. Fifty kinds of swords and knives, with every slight variation possessing its own name, and names for all the parts as well … what an absolutely