The Mountains of Mourning

maples, planted who-knew-how-many centuries ago but now raggedly marching up the vale by self-seeding. The mountain air was cool and pure and bright. A few chickens stalked and bobbed in the weeds. An algae-choked wooden pipe from the woods dribbled water into a trough, which overflowed into a squishy green streamlet and away.

Harra slid down, smoothed her skirt, and climbed the porch. 'Karal?' she called. Miles waited high on horseback for the initial contact. Never give up a psychological advantage.

'Harra? Is that you?' came a man's voice from within. He banged open the door and rushed out. 'Where have you been, girl? We've been beating the bushes for you! Thought you'd broke your neck in the scrub somewhere -' He stopped short before the three silent men on horseback.

'You wouldn't write down my charges, Karal,' said Harra rather breathlessly. Her hands kneaded her skirt. 'So I walked to the district magistrate at Vorkosigan Surleau to Speak them myself.'

'Oh, girl,' Karal breathed regretfully, 'that was a stupid thing to do…' His head lowered and swayed, as he stared uneasily at the riders. He was a balding man of maybe sixty, leathery and worn, and his left arm ended in a stump. Another veteran.

'Speaker Serg Karal?' began Miles sternly. 'I am the Voice of Count Vorkosigan. I am charged to investigate the crime Spoken by Harra Csurik before the Count's court, namely the murder of her infant daughter Raina. As Speaker of Silvy Vale, you are requested and required to assist me in all matters pertaining to the Count's justice.'

At this point Miles ran out of prescribed formalities and was on his own. That hadn't taken long. He waited. Fat Ninny snuffled. The silver-on-brown cloth of the standard made a few soft snapping sounds, lifted by a vagrant breeze.

'The district magistrate wasn't there,' put in Harra, 'but the Count was.'

Karal was gray-faced, staring. He pulled himself together with an effort, came to a species of attention, and essayed a creaking half-bow. 'Who — who are you, sir?'

'Lord Miles Vorkosigan.'

Karal's lips moved silently. Miles was no lip reader, but he was pretty sure it came to a dismayed variant of Oh, shit. 'This is my liveried man Sergeant Pym, and my medical examiner, Lieutenant Dea of the Imperial Service.'

'You are my lord Count's son?' Karal croaked.

'The one and only.' Miles was suddenly sick of the posing. Surely that was a sufficient first impression. He swung down off Ninny, landing lightly on the balls of his feet. Karal's gaze followed him down, and down. Yeah, so I'm short. But wait'll you see me dance. 'All right if we water our horses in your trough here?' Miles looped Ninny's reins through his arm and stepped toward it.

'Uh, that's for the people, m'lord,' said Karal. 'Just a minute and I'll fetch a bucket.' He hitched up his baggy trousers and trotted off around the side of the cabin. A minute's uncomfortable silence, then Karal's voice floating faintly, 'Where'd you put the goat bucket, Zed?'

Another voice, light and young, 'Behind the woodstack, Da.' The voices fell to a muffled undertone. Karal came trotting back with a battered aluminum bucket, which he placed beside the trough. He knocked out a wooden plug in the side and a bright stream arced out to splash and fill. Fat Ninny flicked his ears and snuffled and rubbed his big head against Miles, smearing his tunic with red and white horse hairs and nearly knocking him off his feet. Karal glanced up and smiled at the horse, though his smile fell away as his gaze passed on to the horse's owner. As Fat Ninny gulped his drink Miles caught a glimpse of the owner of the second voice, a boy of around twelve who flitted off into the woods behind the cabin.

Karal fell to, assisting Miles and Harra and Pym in securing the horses. Miles left Pym to unsaddle and feed, and followed Karal into his house. Harra stuck to Miles like glue, and Dr. Dea unpacked his medical kit and trailed along. Miles's boots rang loud and unevenly on the wooden floorboards.

'My wife, she'll be back in the nooning,' said Karal, moving uncertainly around the room as Miles and Dea settled themselves on a bench and Harra curled up with her arms around her knees on the floor beside the fieldstone hearth. 'I'll… I'll make some tea, m'lord.' He skittered back out the door to fill a kettle at the trough before Miles could say, No, thank you. No, let him ease his nerves in ordinary movements. Then maybe Miles could begin to tease out how much of this static was social nervousness and how much was — perhaps — guilty conscience. By the time Karal had the kettle on the coals he was noticeably better controlled, so Miles began.

'I'd prefer to commence this investigation immediately, Speaker. It need not take long.'

'It need not… take place at all, m'lord. The baby's death was natural — there were no marks on her. She was weakly, she had the cat's mouth, who knows what else was wrong with her? She died in her sleep, or by some accident.'

'It is remarkable,' said Miles dryly, 'how often such accidents happen in this district. My father the Count himself has remarked on it.'

'There was no call to drag you up here.' Karal looked in exasperation at Harra. She sat silent, unmoved by his persuasion.

'It was no problem,' said Miles blandly.

'Truly, m'lord,' Karal lowered his voice, 'I believe the child might have been overlain. 'S no wonder, in her grief, that her mind rejected it. Lem Csurik, he's a good boy, a good provider. She really doesn't want to do this — her reason is just temporarily overset by her troubles.'

Harra's eyes, looking out from her hair-thatch, were poisonously cold.

'I begin to see,' Miles's voice was mild, encouraging.

Karal brightened slightly. 'It all could still be all right. If she will just be patient. Get over her sorrow. Talk to poor Lem. I'm sure he didn't kill the babe. Not rush to something she'll regret.'

'I begin to see,' Miles let his tone go ice cool, 'why Harra Csurik found it necessary to walk four days to get an unbiased hearing. 'You think.' 'You believe.' 'Who knows what?' Not you, it appears. I hear speculation — accusation — innuendo — assertion. I came for facts, Speaker Karal. The Count's justice doesn't turn on guesses. It doesn't have to. This isn't the Time of Isolation. Not even the backbeyond.

'My investigation of the facts will begin now. No judgment will be — rushed into, before the facts are complete. Confirmation of Lem Csurik's guilt or innocence will come from his own mouth, under fast-penta, administered by Dr. Dea before two witnesses — yourself and a deputy of your choice. Simple, clean, and quick.' And maybe I can be on my way out of this benighted hole before sundown. 'I require you, Speaker, to go now and bring Lem Csurik for questioning. Sergeant Pym will assist you.'

Karal killed another moment pouring the boiling water into a big brown pot before speaking. 'I'm a traveled man, lord. A twenty-year Service man. But most folks here have never been out of Silvy Vale. Interrogation chemistry might as well be magic to them. They might say it was a false confession, got that way.'

'Then you and your deputy can say otherwise. This isn't exactly like the good old days, when confessions were extracted under torture, Karal. Besides, if he's as innocent as you guess — he'll clear himself, no?'

Reluctantly, Karal went into the adjoining room. He came back shrugging on a faded Imperial Service uniform jacket with a corporal's rank marked on the collar, the buttons of which did not quite meet across his middle anymore. Preserved, evidently, for such official functions. Even as in Barrayaran custom one saluted the uniform, and not the man in it, so might the wrath engendered by an unpopular duty fall on the office and not the individual who carried it out. Miles appreciated the nuance.

Karal paused at the door. Harra still sat wrapped in silence by the hearth, rocking slightly.

'Mlord,' said Karal. 'I've been Speaker of Silvy Vale for sixteen years now. In all that time nobody has had to go to the district magistrate for a Speaking, not for water rights or stolen animals or swiving or even the time Neva accused Bors of tree piracy over the maple sap. We've not had a blood feud in all that time.'

'I have no intention of starting a blood feud, Karal. I just want the facts.'

'That's the thing, m'lord. I'm not so in love with facts as I used to be. Sometimes, they bite.' Karal's eyes were urgent.

Really, the man was doing everything but stand on his head and juggle cats — one-handed — to divert Miles. How overt was his obstruction likely to get?

'Silvy Vale cannot be permitted to have its own little Time of Isolation,' said Miles warningly. 'The Count's