'Right now, nobody, which is why everybody is on his back to marry and start swiving—'
'If salic descent were allowed, who would be his heir?'
Ivan refused to be stampeded. 'Your father. Everybody knows that. Everybody also knows he wouldn't touch the Imperium with a stick, so what? This is pretty wild, Miles.'
'Can you think of another theory that will account or the facts?'
'Sure,' said Ivan, happily continuing the role of devil's advocate. 'Easy. Maybe that parchment was addressed to someone else. Damir took it to him, which is why he hasn't shown up here. Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor, Miles?'
'It sounds simpler, until you start to think about it. Ivan, listen. Think back on the exact circumstances of your midnight departure from the Imperial Academy, and that dawn lift-off. Who signed you out? Who saw you go? Who do you know, for certain, who knows where you are right now? Why didn't my father give you any personal messages for me—or my mother or Captain Illyan either, for that matter?' His voice became insistent. 'If Admiral Hessman took you off to some quiet, isolated place right now and offered you a glass of wine with his own hands, would you drink it?'
Ivan was silent for a long, thoughtful time, staring out at the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet. When he turned back to Miles, his face was painfully somber. 'No.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He tracked them down finally in the crew's mess of the Triumph, now parked in Docking Bay 9. It was an off-hour for meals, and the mess was nearly empty but for a few die-hard caffeine addicts swilling an assortment of brews.
They sat, dark heads close, opposite each other. Baz's hand lay open, palm-up, on the small table as he leaned forward. Elena's shoulders were hunched, her hands shredding a napkin in her lap. Neither looked happy.
Miles took a deep breath, carefully adjusted his own expression to one of benevolent good cheer, and sauntered up to them. He no longer bled inside, the surgeon had assured him. Couldn't prove it now. 'Hi.'
They both started. Elena, still hunched, shot him a look of resentment. Baz answered with a hesitant, dismayed 'My lord?' that made Miles feel very small indeed. He suppressed an urge to turn tail and slither out under the door.
'I've been thinking over what you said,' Miles began, leaning against an adjoining table in a pose of nonchalance. 'Your arguments made a lot of sense, when I came to really examine them. I've changed my opinion. For what it's worth, you're welcome to my blessing.'
Baz's face lit with honest delight. Elena's posture opened like a daylily in sudden noon, and as suddenly closed again. The winged brows drew down in puzzlement. She looked at him directly, he felt, for the first time in weeks. 'Really?'
He supplied her with a chipper grin. 'Really. And we shall satisfy all the forms of etiquette, as well. All it takes is a little ingenuity.'
He pulled a colored scarf from his pocket, secreted there for the occasion, and walked around to Baz's side of the table. 'We'll start over, on the right foot this time. Picture, if you will, this banal plastic table bolted to the floor before you as a starlit balcony, with a pierced lattice window crawling with those little flowers with the long sharp thorns that make you itch like fire, behind which is, rightly and properly, concealed your heart's desire. Got that? Now—Armsman Jesek, speaking as your leige lord, I understand you have a request.'
Miles's pantomime gestures cued the engineer. Baz leaned back with a grin, and picked up his lead.
'My lord I ask your permission and aid to wed the first daughter of Armsman Konstantine Bothari, that my sons may serve you.'
Miles cocked his head, and smirked. 'Ah, good, we've all been watching the same vid dramas, I see. Yes, certainly, Armsman; may they all serve me as well as you do. I shall send the Baba.'
He flipped the scarf into a triangle and tied it around his head. Leaning on an imaginary cane, he hobbled arthritically over to Elena's side of the table, muttering in a cracked falsetto. Once there, he removed the scarf and reverted to the role of Elena's liege lord and guardian, and grilled the Baba as to the suitability of the suitor she represented. The Baba was sent bobbing back twice to Baz's leige commander, to personally check and guarantee his a) continued employment prospects and b) personal hygiene and absence of head-lice.
Muttering obscene little old lady imprecations, the Baba returned at last to Elena's side of the table to conclude her transaction. Baz by this time was cackling with laughter at assorted Barrayaran in-jokes, and Elena's smile had at last reached her eyes.
When his clowning was over and the last somewhat scrambled formula was completed, Miles hooked a third chair into its floor bolts and fell into it.
'Whew! No wonder the custom is dying out. That's exhausting.'
Elena grinned. 'I've always had the impression you were trying to be three people. Perhaps you've found your calling.'
'What, one-man shows? I've had enough of them lately to last a lifetime.' Miles sighed, and grew serious. 'You may consider yourselves well and officially betrothed, at any rate. When do you plan to register your marriage?'
'Soon,' said Baz, and 'I'm not sure,' said Elena.
'May I suggest tonight?'
'Why—why …' stammered Baz. His eyes sought his lady's. 'Elena? Could we?'
'I . ..' she searched Miles's face. 'Why, my lord?'
'Because I want to dance at your wedding and fill your bed with buckwheat groats, if I can find any on this benighted space station. You may have to settle for gravel, they've got plenty of that. I'm leaving tomorrow.'
Three words should not be so hard to grasp as all that. ..
'What?' cried Baz.
'Why?' repeated Elena in a shocked whisper.
'I have some obligations to pursue,' Miles shrugged. 'There's Tav Calhoun to pay off, and—and the Sergeant's burial.' And, very possibly, my own …
'You don't have to go in person, do you?' protested Elena. 'Can't you send Calhoun a draft, and ship the body? Why go back? What is there for you?'
'The Dendarii Mercenaries,' said Baz. 'How can they function without you?'
'I expect them to function quite well, because I am appointing you, Baz, as their commander, and you, Elena, as his executive officer—and apprentice. Commodore Tung will be your chief of staff. You understand that, Baz? I'm going to charge you and Tung jointly with her training, and I expect it to be the best.'
'I—I—' gasped the engineer. 'My lord, the honor—I couldn't—'
'You'll find that you can, because you must. And besides, a lady should have a dowry worthy of her. That's what a dowry is for, after all, to provide for the bride's support. Bad form for the bridegroom to squander it, note. And you'll still be working for me, after all.'
Baz looked relieved. 'Oh—you'll be coming back, then. I thought—never mind. When will you return, my lord?'
'I'll catch up with you sometime,' Miles said vaguely. Sometime, never … 'That's the other thing. I want you to clear out of Tau Verde local space. Pick any direction away from Barrayar, and go. Find employment when you get there, but go soon. The Dendarii Mercenaries have had enough of this Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee war. It's bad for morale when it gets too hard to remember which side you're working for this week. Your next contract should have clearly defined objectives that will weld this motley bunch into a single force, under your command. No more committee warfare. Its weaknesses have been amply demonstrated, I trust—'
Miles went on with instructions and advice until he began to sound like a pint-sized Polonius in his own ears. There was no way he could anticipate every contingency. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference.
His heart cringed from his next interview even more than from the last, but he forced his feet to carry him
