They waited, by unspoken agreement, until the soft sound of his steps had gone. When she turned, the anger in her eyes had been displaced by pleading.
'Don't you see, Miles? This is my chance to walk away from it all. Start new, fresh and clean, somewhere else. As far away as possible.'
He shook his head. He'd have fallen to his knees if he'd thought it would do any good. 'How can I give you up? You're the mountains and the lake, the memories—you have them all. When you're with me, I'm at home, wherever I am.'
'If Barrayar was my right arm, I'd take a plasma arc and burn it off. Your father and mother knew what he was all the time, and yet they sheltered him. What are they, then?'
'The Sergeant was doing all right—doing well, even, until … You were to be his expiation, don't you see it-'
'What, a sacrifice for his sins? Am I to form myself into the pattern of a perfect Barrayaran maiden like trying to work a magic spell for absolution? I could spend my whole life working out that ritual and not come to the end of it, damn it!'
'Not the sacrifice,' he tried to tell her. 'The altar, perhaps.'
'Bah!' She began to pace, leopardess on a short chain. Her emotional wounds seemed to work themselves open and bleed before his eyes. He ached to staunch them.
'Don't you see,' he launched himself again, passionate with conviction, 'you'd do better with me. Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can't walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he'll be the compass. He'll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know.'
She was shaken, and shaking. 'You make me,' she stated, 'feel quite ill.'
As she stalked away, Ivan Vorpatril emerged from the catwalk. 'Ah, there you are, Miles.'
Ivan circled warily around Elena as they passed, his hands moving in an unconscious protective gesture toward his crotch. One corner of Elena's mouth turned venomously upward, and she tilted her head in a polite nod. He acknowledged the greeting with a fixed and nervous smile. So much, thought Miles sadly, for his chivalrous plans to protect Elena from Ivan's unwanted attentions.
Ivan settled himself beside Miles with a sigh. 'Have you heard anything from Captain Dimir yet?'
'Not a thing. Are you sure they were coming to Tau Verde, and not suddenly ordered somewhere else? I don't see how a fast courier could be two weeks late.'
'Oh, God,' said Ivan, 'do you think that's possible? I'm going to be in so much trouble—'
'I don't know.' Miles tried to assuage his alarm. 'Your original orders were to find me, and so far you're the only one who seems to have succeeded in carrying them out. Mention that, when you ask Father to get you off the hook.'
'Ha,' muttered his cousin. 'What's the use of living with a system of inherited power if you can't have a little nepotism now and then? Miles, your father doesn't do favors for anybody.' He gazed out at the Dendarii fleet, and added elliptically, 'That's impressive, y'know?'
Miles was insensibly cheered. 'Do you really think so?' He added facetiously, 'Do you want to join? It seems to be the hot new fashion around here.'
Ivan chuckled. 'No, thanks. I have no desire to diet for the Emperor. Vorloupulous's law, y'know.'
Miles's smile died on his lips. Ivan's chuckle drained away like something going down the sink. They stared at each other in stunned silence.
'Oh, shit …' said Miles at last. 'I forgot about Vorloupulous's law. It never even crossed my mind.'
'Surely nobody could interpret this as raising a private army,' Ivan reassured him feebly. 'Not proper livery and maintenance. I mean, they're not liege-sworn to you or anything—are they?'
'Only Baz and Arde,' said Miles. 'I don't know how Barrayaran law would interpret a mercenary contract. They're not for life, after all—unless you happen to be killed …'
'Who is that Baz fellow, anyway?' asked Ivan. 'He seems to be your right-hand man.'
'I couldn't have done this without him. He was an Imperial Service engineer, before he—' Miles choked himself off, 'quit.' Miles tried to guess what the laws might be about harboring deserters. He hadn't, after all, originally intended to be caught doing so. Upon reflection, his nebulous plan for returning home with Baz and begging his father to arrange some sort of pardon began to feel more and more like a man falling from an aircraft making plans to land on that soft fluffy cloud rushing up below him. What looked solid at a distance might well turn to fog at closer range.
Miles glanced at Ivan. Then he gazed at Ivan. Then he stared at Ivan. Ivan blinked back in innocent inquiry. There was something about that cheerful, frank face that made Miles hideously uneasy.
'You know,' Miles said at last, 'the more I think about your being here, the weirder it seems.'
'Don't you believe it,' said Ivan. 'I had to work for my passage. That old bird was the most insatiable —'
'I don't mean your getting here—I mean your being sent in the first place. Since when do they pull first- year cadets out of class and send them on Security missions?'
'I don't know. I assumed they wanted somebody who could identify the body or something.'
'Yes, but they've got almost enough medical data on me to build a new one. That idea only makes sense if you don't think about it too hard.'
'Look, when a General Staff Admiral calls a cadet in the middle of the night and says go, you go. You don't stop to debate with him. He wouldn't appreciate it.'
'Well—what did your recorded orders say?'
'Come to think or it, I never saw my recorded orders. I assumed Admiral Hessman must have given them to Captain Dimir personally.'
Miles decided his uneasiness stemmed from the number of times the phrase 'I assumed' was turning up in this conversation. There was something else—he almost had it … 'Hessman? Hessman gave you your orders?'
'In person,' Ivan said proudly.
'Hessman doesn't have anything to do with either Intelligence or Security. He's in charge of Procurement. Ivan, this is getting screwier and screwier.'
'An Admiral is an Admiral.'
'This Admiral is on my father's shit list, though. For one thing, he's Count Vordrozda's pipeline to Imperial Service Headquarters, and Father hates his officers getting involved in party politics. Father also suspects him of peculating Service funds, some kind of sleight-of-hand in shipbuilding contracts. At the time I left home, he was itchy enough to put Captain Illyan on it personally, and you know he wouldn't waste Illyan's talents on anything minor.'
'All that's way over my head. I've got enough problems with navigational math.'
'It shouldn't be over your head. Oh, as a cadet, sure—but you're also Lord Vorpatril. If anything happened to me, you'd inherit the Countship of our district from my father.'
'God forbid,' said Ivan. 'I want to be an officer, and travel around, and pick up girls. Not chase around through those mountains trying to collect taxes from homicidal illiterates and keep chicken-stealing cases from turning into minor guerilla wars. No insult intended, but your district is the most intractable on Barrayar. Miles, there are people back behind Dendarii Gorge who live in caves.' Ivan shuddered. 'And they like it.'
'There are some great caves back there,' Miles agreed. 'Gorgeous colors when you get the right light on the rock formations.' Homesick remembrance twinged through him.
'Well, if I ever inherit a Countship, I'm praying it will be of a city,' Ivan concluded.
'You're not in line for any I can think of,' grinned Miles. He tried to recapture the thread of their conversation, but Ivan's remarks made lines of inheritance map themselves in his head. He traced his own descent through his Grandmother Vorkosigan to Prince Xav to Emperor Dorca Vorbarra himself. Had the great Emperor ever foreseen what a turn his law, that finally broke the private armies and the private wars of the Counts forever, would give his great-great-grandson?
'Who's your heir, Ivan?' Miles asked idly, staring out at the Dendarii ships, but dreaming of the Dendarii Mountains. 'Lord Vortaine, isn't it?'
'Yeah, but I expect to outlive the old boy any minute. His health wasn't too good, last I heard. Too bad this inheritance thing doesn't work backwards, I'd be in for a bundle.'
