'How long have you known him?' she asked cautiously, thinking of the bottomless well of hatred she had fallen down.
His eyes slid away from her. 'We were in school, and lieutenants together, back when he was only a common voyeur. He grew worse, I understand, in recent years, since he started associating with Prince Serg, and thinking he could get away with anything. God help us, he was nearly right. Bothari has done a great public service.'
You knew him better than that, my breath, thought Cordelia. Was that your infection of the imagination, so hard to fight off? Bothari has done a great private service, too, it seems … 'Speaking of Bothari—next time, you sedate him. He went wild when I came at him with the ampule.'
'Ah. Yes. I think I understand why. It was in one of Captain Negri's reports. Vorrutyer was in the habit of drugging his, uh, players, with a variety of concoctions, when he wanted a better show. I'm fairly certain Bothari was one of his victims that way.'
'Vile.' She felt sick. Her muscles cramped around the ache in her side. 'Who's this Captain Negri you keep talking about?'
'Negri? He does keep a low profile, but he's hardly secret. He heads the Emperor's personal security staff. Illyan's boss. They call him Ezar Vorbarra's familiar.
'If you think of the Ministry of Political Education as the Emperor's right hand, then Negri is his left, the one the right is not permitted to know. He watches internal security on the highest levels—the Ministry heads, the Counts, the Emperor's family—the Prince …' Vorkosigan frowned introspectively. 'I came to know him rather well during the preparations for this strategist's nightmare. Curious fellow. He could have any rank he wanted. But forms are meaningless to him. He's only interested in substance.'
'Is he a good guy or bad guy?'
'What an absurd question!'
'I just thought he might be the power behind the throne.'
'Hardly. If Ezar Vorbarra said, 'You're a frog,' he'd hop and croak. No. There is only one Emperor on Barrayar, and he permits no one to get behind him. He still remembers how he came to power.'
She stretched, and winced at the pain in her side.
'Something wrong?' he asked, instantly concerned.
'Oh, Bothari got me with his knee, when we had that go-round about the sedative. I thought for sure they'd hear us. Scared me to death.'
'May I see?' His fingers slid gently along her ribs. It was only in her imagination that they left a trail of rainbow light.
'Ow.'
'Yes. You have two cracked ribs.'
'Thought so. I'm lucky it wasn't my neck.' She lay hack, and he made shift to tape them with strips of cloth, then sat beside her on his bunk. 'Have you ever considered chucking it all, and moving someplace nobody ever bothers with?' Cordelia asked. 'Earth, for example.'
He smiled. 'Often. I even had a little fantasy about emigrating to Beta Colony, and turning up on your doorstep. Do you have a doorstep?'
'Not as such, but go on.'
'I can't imagine what I'd do for a living there. I'm a strategist, not a technician or navigator or pilot, so I couldn't go into your merchant fleet. They would scarcely take me in your military, and I can't see myself being elected to office.'
Cordelia snorted. 'Wouldn't that startle Steady Freddy?'
'Is that what you call your President?'
'I didn't vote for him.'
'The only employment I can think of would be as a teacher of martial arts, for sport. Would you marry a judo instructor, dear Captain? But no,' he sighed. 'Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. But exile, for no other motive than ease—that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.'
She thought of the deadly cargo she had convoyed, now safe on Escobar. Compared to all the lives that hung on it, her own and Vorkosigan's weighed less than a feather. He misread the grief in her face, she thought, for fear. 'It isn't exactly like waking from the nightmare, to see your face.' He touched it gently, fingertips on the curve of her jaw, thumb laid a moment across her lips, lighter than a kiss. 'More like, knowing, while dreaming still, that beyond the dream there is a waking world. I mean to join you in that waking world, someday. You'll see. You'll see.' He squeezed her hand and smiled reassuringly. On the floor Bothari stirred, and groaned. 'I'll take care of him,' Vorkosigan said. 'Get some sleep, while you can.'
CHAPTER NINE
She woke to movement, and voices. Vorkosigan was rising from his chair, and Illyan was standing before him taut as a bowstring, saying 'Vorhalas and the Prince! Here! Now!'
'Son-of-a …' Vorkosigan turned on his heel, eyes raking the little room. 'It'll have to be the bathroom. Fold him into the shower.'
Swiftly, Vorkosigan took Bothari's shoulders and Illyan his feet, bumping through the narrow door and dumping him pell-mell into the fixture.
'Should he have more sedative?' asked Illyan.
'Maybe he'd better. Cordelia, give him another ampule. It's too early, but it's death for you both if he makes a noise now.' He bundled her into the closet-sized room, shoving the drug into her hand and killing the light. 'No noise, no movement.'
'Door shut?' asked Illyan.
'Partway. Lean on the frame, look casual, and don't let the Princes bodyguard wander into your psychological space.'
Cordelia, feeling her way in the dimness, knelt and pressed another shot of sedative into the unconscious Sergeant's arm. Seating herself in the logical spot, she found she could just see a slice of Vorkosigan's cabin in the mirror, reversed and disorienting. She heard the cabin door open, and new voices.
'—unless you mean to officially relieve him of his duties as well, I will continue to follow standard procedure. I saw that room. Your charge is nonsensical.'
'We will see,' replied the second voice, tight and angry.
'Hello, Aral.' The owner of the first voice, an officer of perhaps fifty in dress greens, shook Vorkosigan's hand and presented him with a packet of data disks. 'We're off to Escobar within the hour. Courier just brought these—the latest hard-copy updates. I've ordered you to be kept up on events. The Escos are falling back through the whole volume. They've even abandoned that slugging match for the wormhole jump to Tau Ceti. We've got them on the run.' The owner of the second voice also wore dress greens, more heavily encrusted with gilt than any she had ever seen. Jeweled decorations on his breast glinted and winked like lizards' eyes in the light from Vorkosigan's desk lamp. He was about thirty, black haired, with a rectangular tense face, hooded eyes, and thin lips compressed now with annoyance. 'You're not both going, are you?' said Vorkosigan. 'The senior officer ought properly to stay with the flag. Now that Vorrutyer is dead, his duties devolve on the Prince. That dog-and-pony show you had planned was based on the assumption that he would still be at his post.'
Prince Serg went stiff with outrage. 'I will lead my troops on Escobar! Let my father and his cronies try to say I am no soldier now!'
'You will,' said Vorkosigan wearily, 'sit in that fortified palace that half the engineers are going to be tied up constructing, and party in it, and let your men do your dying for you, until you've bought your ground by the sheer weight of the corpses piled on it, because that's the kind of soldiering your mentor has taught you. And then send bulletins home about your great victory. Maybe you can have the casualty lists declared top secret.'
'Aral, careful,' warned Vorhalas, shocked.
'You go too far,' the Prince snarled. 'Especially for a man who will get no closer to the fighting than
