although the visitor's uniform bore neither rank nor department insignia. He was thin, of middle height, with dark hair and intense hazel eyes. A crooked smile winked in a serious young face that lacked laugh lines.
'Sire,' Miles said formally.
Emperor Gregor Vorbarra jerked his head, and Miles keyed his door closed on the Security duo. The thin young man relaxed slightly.
'Hi, Miles.'
'Hello yourself. Uh . . .' Miles motioned toward the armchairs. 'Welcome to my humble abode. Are the bugs running?'
'I asked not, but I wouldn't be surprised if Illyan disobeys me, for my own good.' Gregor grimaced, and followed Miles. He swung a plastic bag from his left hand, from which came a muted clank. He flung himself into the larger chair, the one Miles had just vacated, leaned back, hooked a leg over one chair arm, and sighed wearily, as if all the air were being let out of him. He held out the bag. 'Here. Elegant anesthesia.'
Miles took it and peered in. Two bottles of wine, by God, already chilled. 'Bless you, my son. I've been wishing I could get drunk for days, now. How did you guess? For that matter, how did you get in here? I thought I was in solitary confinement.' Miles put the second bottle into the refrigerator, found two glasses, and blew the dust out of them.
Gregor shrugged. 'They could scarcely keep me out. I'm getting better at insisting, you know. Though Illyan made sure my private visit was really private, you can wager. And I can only stay till 2500.' Gregor's shoulders slumped, compressed by the minute-by-minute box of his schedule. 'Besides, your mother's religion grants some kind of good karma for visiting the sick and prisoners, and I hear you've been the two in one.'
Ah, so Mother had put Gregor up to this. He should have guessed by the Vorkosigan private label on the wine—heavens, she'd sent the
Miles contemplated his old playmate. If they'd been even a little, closer in age, he and Gregor, they might have fallen more into the role of foster-brothers; Count and Countess Vorkosigan had been Gregor's official guardians ever since the chaos and bloodshed of Vordarian's Pretendership. The child-cohort had been thrown together anyway as 'safe' companions, Miles and Ivan and Elena near-age-mates, Gregor, solemn even then, tolerating games a little younger than he might have preferred.
Gregor picked up his wine and sipped. 'Sorry things didn't work out for you,' he said gruffly.
Miles tilted his head. 'A short soldier, a short career.' He took a bigger gulp. 'I'd hoped to get off-planet. Ship duty.'
Gregor had graduated from the Imperial Academy two years before Miles entered it. His brows rose in agreement. 'Don't we all.'
'You had a year on active space duty,' Miles pointed out.
'Mostly in orbit. Pretend patrols, surrounded by Security shuttles. It got to be painful after a while, all the pretending. Pretending I was an officer, pretending I was doing a job instead of making everyone else's job harder just by being there . . . you at least were permitted real risk.'
'Most of it was unplanned, I assure you.'
'I'm increasingly convinced that's the trick of it,' Gregor went on. 'Your father, mine, both our grandfathers—all survived real military situations. That's how they became real officers, not this . . . study.' His free hand made a downward chopping motion.
'Flung into situations,' Miles disagreed. 'My father's military career officially began the day Mad Yuri's death squad broke in and blew up most of his family—I think he was eleven, or something. I'd just as soon pass on that sort of initiation, thanks. It's not something anybody in their right mind would choose.'
'Mm.' Gregor subsided glumly. As oppressed tonight, Miles guessed, by his legendary father Prince Serg as Miles was by his live one Count Vorkosigan. Miles reflected briefly on what he had come to think of as 'The Two Sergs.' One—maybe the only version Gregor knew?—was the dead hero, bravely sacrificed on the field of battle or at least cleanly disintegrated in orbit. The other, the Suppressed Serg: the hysteriac commander and sadistic sodomite whose early death in the ill-fated Escobar invasion might have been the greatest stroke of political good fortune ever to befall Barrayar . . . had even a hint of this multi-faceted personality ever been permitted to filter back to Gregor? Nobody who knew Serg talked about him, Count Vorkosigan least of all. Miles had once met one of Serg's victims. Miles hoped Gregor never would.
Miles decided to change the subject. 'So we all know what happened to me, what have you been up to for the last three months? I was sorry to miss your last birthday party. Up at Kyril Island they celebrated it by getting drunk, which made it virtually indistinguishable from any other day.'
Gregor grinned, then sighed. 'Too many ceremonies. Too much time standing up—I think I could be replaced at half my functions by a life-sized plastic model, and no one would notice. A lot of time spent ducking the broad marital hints of my assorted counsellors.'
'Actually, they have a point,' Miles had to allow. 'If you got . . . run over by a teacart tomorrow, the succession question goes up for grabs in a big way. I can think offhand of at least six candidates with arguable stakes in the Imperium, and more would come out of the woodwork. Some without personal ambition would nevertheless kill to see that some of the others didn't get it, which is precisely why you still don't have a named heir.'
Gregor cocked his head. 'You're in that crowd yourself, you know.'
'With this body?' Miles snorted. 'They'd have to … really hate somebody, to tag me. At that point it really would be time to run away from home. Far and fast. Do me a favor. Get married, settle down, and have six little Vorbarras real quick.'
Gregor looked even more depressed. 'Now there's an idea. Running away from home. I wonder how far I'd get before Illyan caught up with me?'
They both glanced involuntarily upward, though in fact Miles was still not certain where the room's bugs were located.
'Better hope Illyan caught up with you before anybody else did.' God, this conversation was getting morbid.
'I don't know, wasn't there an emperor of China who ended up pushing a broom somewhere? And a thousand lesser emigrees—countesses running restaurants—escape
'From being Vor? More like . . . trying to run away from your own shadow.' There would be moments, in the dark, when success would seem achieved, but then—Miles shook his head, and checked out the still-lumpy bag. 'Ah! You brought a tacti-go set.' He didn't foil the least want to play tacti-go, it had bored him by age fourteen, but anything was better than this. He pulled it out and set it up between them with determined good cheer. 'Brings back old times.' Hideous thought.
Gregor bestirred himself, and made an opening move. Pretending to be interested to amuse Miles, who was simulating interest to cheer Gregor, who was feigning . . . Miles, distracted, beat Gregor too fast on the first round, and began to pay more attention. On the next round he kept it closer, and was rewarded by a spark of genuine interest—blessed self-forgetfulness—on Gregor's part. They opened the second bottle of wine. At that point Miles began to feel the effects, going tongue-thick and sleepy and stupid; it took hardly any effort to let Gregor almost win the next round.
'I don't think I've beaten you at this since you were fourteen,' sighed Gregor, concealing secret satisfaction at the low point-spread of that last round. 'You should be an officer, dammit.'
'This isn't a good war game, Dad says,' commented Miles. 'Not enough random factors and uncontrolled surprises to simulate reality. I like it that way.' It was almost soothing, a mindless routine of logic, check and counter, multiple chained moves with, always, perfectly objective options.
'You should know.' Gregor glanced up. 'I still don't understand why they sent you to Kyril Island. You've already commanded a real space fleet. Even if they were only a pack of grubby mercenaries.'
'Shh. That episode is officially non-existent, in my military files. Fortunately. It wouldn't charm my superiors. I'd commanded, I hadn't obeyed. Anyway, I didn't so much command the Dendarii Mercenaries as hypnotize 'em. Without Captain Tung, who decided to prop up my pretensions for his own purposes, it would have all ended very unpleasantly. And much sooner.'
