The Mountains of Mourning

Pym held up his scanner, clearly about to volunteer its use, but Miles waved him down. Pym's brows rose, editorially. Miles shook his head slightly.

Karal needed no further urging. He dispatched Alex to call off the night search with torches. He remained wary of Miles. Perhaps Miles puzzled him as much as he puzzled Miles? Dourly, Miles hoped so.

Miles was not sure at what point the long summer evening segued into a party. After supper the men began to drift in, Karal's cronies, Silvy Vale's elders. Some were apparently regulars who shared the evening government news broadcasts on Karal's audio set. Too many names, and Miles daren't forget a one. A group of amateur musicians arrived with their homemade mountain instruments, rather breathless, obviously the band tapped for all the major weddings and wakes in Silvy Vale; this all seemed more like a funeral to Miles every minute.

The musicians stood in the middle of the yard and played. Miles's porch-HQ now became his aristocratic box seat. It was hard to get involved with the music when the audience was all so intently watching him. Some songs were serious, some — rather carefully at first — funny. Miles's spontaneity was frequently frozen in mid-laugh by a faint sigh of relief from those around him; his stiffening froze them in turn, self-stymied like two people trying to dodge each other in a corridor.

But one song was so hauntingly beautiful — a lament for lost love — that Miles was struck to the heart. Elena… In that moment, old pain transformed to melancholy, sweet and distant: a sort of healing, or at least the realization that a healing had taken place, unwatched. He almost had the singers stop there, while they were perfect, but feared they might think him displeased. But he remained quiet and inward for a time afterward, scarcely hearing their next offering in the gathering twilight.

At least the piles of food that had arrived all afternoon were thus accounted for. Miles had been afraid Ma Karal and her cronies had expected him to get around that culinary mountain all by himself.

At one point Miles leaned on the rail and glanced down the yard to see Fat Ninny at tether, making more friends. A whole flock of pubescent girls were clustered around him, petting him, brushing his fetlocks, braiding flowers and ribbons in his mane and tail, feeding him tidbits, or just resting their cheeks against his warm silky side. Ninny's eyes were half-closed in smug content.

God, thought Miles jealously, if I had half the sex-appeal of that bloody horse I'd have more girlfriends than my cousin Ivan. Miles considered, very briefly, the pros and cons of making a play for some unattached female. The striding lords of old and all that… no. There were some kinds of stupid he didn't have to be, and that was definitely one of them. The service he had already sworn to one small lady of Silvy Vale was surely all he could bear without breaking; he could feel the strain of it all around him now, like a dangerous pressure in his bones.

He turned to find Speaker Karal presenting a woman to him, far from pubescent; she was perhaps fifty, lean and little, work-worn. She was carefully clothed in an aging best-dress, her graying hair combed back and bound at the nape of her neck. She bit at her lips and cheeks in quick tense motions, half-suppressed in her self- consciousness.

' 'S Ma Csurik, m'lord. Lem's mother.' Speaker Karal ducked his head and backed away, abandoning Miles without aid or mercy — Come back, you coward!

'Ma'am,' Miles said. His throat was dry. Karal had set him up, dammit, a public play — no, the other guests were retreating out of earshot too, most of them.

'M'lord,' said Ma Csurik. She managed a nervous curtsey.

'Uh… do sit down.' With a ruthless jerk of his chin Miles evicted Dr. Dea from his chair and motioned the hill woman into it. He turned his own chair to face hers. Pym stood behind them, silent as a statue, tight as a wire. Did he imagine the old woman was about to whip a needler-pistol from her skirts? No — it was Pym's job to imagine things like that for Miles, so that Miles might free his whole mind for the problem at hand. Pym was almost as much an object of study as Miles himself. Wisely, he'd been holding himself apart, and would doubtless continue to do so till the dirty work was over.

'M'lord,' said Ma Csurik again, and stumbled again to silence. Miles could only wait. He prayed she wasn't about to come unglued and weep on his knees or some damned thing. This was excruciating. Stay strong, woman, he urged silently.

'Lem, he…' She swallowed. 'I'm sure he didn't kill the babe. There's never been any of that in our family, I swear it! He says he didn't, and I believe him.'

'Good,' said Miles affably. 'Let him come say the same thing to me under fast-penta, and I'll believe him too.'

'Come away, Ma,' urged a lean young man who had accompanied her and now stood waiting by the steps, as if ready to bolt into the dark at a motion. 'It's no good, can't you see.' He glowered at Miles.

She shot the boy a quelling frown — another of her five sons? — and turned back more urgently to Miles, groping for words. 'My Lem. He's only twenty, lord.'

'I'm only twenty, Ma Csurik,' Miles felt compelled to point out. There was another brief impasse.

'Look, I'll say it again,' Miles burst out impatiently. 'And again, and again, till the message penetrates all the way back to its intended recipient. I cannot condemn an innocent person. My truth drugs won't let me. Lem can clear himself. He has only to come in. Tell him, will you? Please?'

She went stony, guarded. 'I… haven't seen him, m'lord.'

'But you might.'

She tossed her head. 'So? I might not.' Her eyes shifted to Pym and away, as if the sight of him burned. The silver Vorkosigan logos embroidered on Pym's collar gleamed in the twilight like animal eyes, moving only with his breathing. Karal was now bringing lighted lamps onto the porch, but keeping his distance still.

'Ma'am,' said Miles tightly. 'The Count my father has ordered me to investigate the murder of your granddaughter. If your son means so much to you, how can his child mean so little? Was she… your first grandchild?'

Her face was sere. 'No, lord. Lem's older sister, she has two. They're all right,' she added with emphasis.

Miles sighed. 'If you truly believe your son is innocent of this crime, you must help me prove it. Or — do you doubt?'

She shifted uneasily. There was doubt in her eyes — she didn't know, blast it. Fast-penta would be useless on her, for sure. As Miles's magic wonder drug, much counted-upon, fast-penta seemed to be having wonderfully little utility in this case so far.

'Come away, Ma,' the young man urged again. 'It's no good. The mutie lord came up here for a killing. They have to have one. It's a show.'

Damn straight, thought Miles acidly. He was a perceptive young lunk, that one.

Ma Csurik let herself be persuaded away by her angry and embarrassed son plucking at her arm. She paused on the steps, though, and shot bitterly over her shoulder, 'It's all so easy for you, isn't it?'

My head hurts, thought Miles.

There was worse to come before the evening ended.

The new woman's voice was grating, low and angry. 'Don't you talk down to me, Serg Karal. I got a right for one good look at this mutie lord.'

She was tall and stringy and tough. Like her daughter, Miles thought. She had made no attempt to freshen up. A faint reek of summer sweat hung about her working dress. And how far had she walked? Her gray hair hung in a switch down her back, a few strands escaping the tie. If Ma Csurik's bitterness had been a stabbing pain behind the eyes, this one's rage was a wringing knot in the gut.

She shook off Karal's attempted restraint and stalked up to Miles in the lamplight. 'So.'

'Uh… this is Ma Mattulich, m'lord,' Karal introduced her. 'Harra's mother.'

Miles rose to his feet, managed a short formal nod. 'How do you do, madam.' He was very conscious of being a head shorter. She had once been of a height with Harra, Miles estimated, but her aging bones were beginning to pull her down.