Count Vorhalas remained cool and thoughtful. 'The usurpation charge does indeed appear false,' the old man agreed, 'and by my honor I will so testify. But there is another treason here. By his own admission, Lord Vorkosigan was, and indeed remains, in violation of Vorloupulous's law, treason in its own right.'
'No such charge,' said Count Vorkosigan distantly, 'has been laid in the Council of Counts.'
Henri Vorvolk grinned. 'Who'd dare, after this?'
'A man of proven loyalty to the Imperium, with an academic interest in perfect justice, might so dare,' said Count Vorkosigan, still dispassionate. 'A man with nothing to lose, might dare—much. Might he not?'
'Beg for it, Vorkosigan,' whispered Vorhalas, his coolness slipping. 'Beg for mercy, as I did.' His eyes shut tight, and he trembled.
Count Vorkosigan gazed at him in silence for a long moment. Then, 'As you wish,' he said, and rose, and slid to one knee before his enemy. 'Let it lay, then, and I will see the boy does not trouble those waters any more.'
'Still too stiff-necked.'
'If it please you, then.'
'Say, 'I beg of you.' '
'I beg of you,' repeated Count Vorkosigan obediently. Miles searched for tensions of rage in his father's backbone, found none; this was something old, older than himself, between the two men, labyrinthine; he could scarcely penetrate its inward places. Gregor looked sick, Henri Vorvolk bewildered, Ivan terrified.
Vorhalas's hard stillness seemed edged with a kind of ecstasy. He leaned close to Miles's father's ear. 'Shove it, Vorkosigan,' he whispered. Count Vorkosigan's head bowed, and his hands clenched.
He sees me, if at all, only as a handle on my father . ..
Time to get his attention. 'Count Vorhalas,' Miles's voice flexed across the silence like a blade. 'Be satisfied. For if you carry this through, at some point you are going to have to look my mother in the eye and repeat that. Dare you?'
Vorhalas wilted slightly. He frowned at Miles. 'Can your mother look at you, and not understand desire for vengeance?' He gestured at Miles's stunted and twisted frame.
'Mother,' said Miles, 'calls it my great gift. Tests are a gift, she says, and great tests are a great gift. Of course,' he added thoughtfully, 'it's widely agreed my mother is a bit strange …' He trapped Vorhalas's gaze direct. 'What do you propose to do with your gift, Count Vorhalas?'
'Hell,' Vorhalas muttered, after a short, interminable silence, not to Miles but to Count Vorkosigan. 'He's got his mother's eyes.'
'I've noticed that,' Count Vorkosigan murmured back. Vorhalas glared at him in exasperation.
'I am not a bloody saint,' Vorhalas declared, to the air generally.
'No one is asking you to be,' said Gregor, anxiously soothing. 'But you are my sworn servant. And it does not serve me for my servants to be ripping up each other instead of my enemies.'
Vorhalas sniffed, and shrugged grudgingly. 'True, my leige.' His hands unclenched, finger by finger, as if releasing some invisible possession. 'Oh, get up,' he added impatiently to Count Vorkosigan. The former Regent rose, quite bland again.
Vorhalas glared at Miles. 'And just how, Aral, do you propose to keep this gifted young maniac and his accidental army under control? '
Count Vorkosigan measured out his words slowly, drop by drop, as though pursuing some delicate titration. 'The Dendarii Mercenaries are a genuine puzzle.' He glanced at Gregor. 'What is your will, my liege?'
Gregor jerked, startled out of spectatorhood. He looked, rather pleadingly, at Miles. 'Organizations do grow and die. Any chance of them just fading away?'
Miles chewed his lip. 'That hope has crossed my mind, but—they looked awfully healthy when I left. Growing.'
Gregor grimaced. 'I can hardly march my army on them and break them up like old Dorca did—it's definitely too long a walk.'
'They themselves are innocent of any wrongdoing,' Miles hastened to point out. 'They never knew who I was—most of them aren't even Barrayaran.'
Gregor glanced uncertainly at Count Vorkosigan, who studied his boots, as if to say, You're the one who itched to make your own decisions, boy. But he did add, aloud, 'You are just as much Emperor as Dorca ever was, Gregor. Do what you will.'
Gregor's gaze returned to Miles for a long moment. 'You couldn't break your blockade, within its military context. So you changed the context.'
'Yes, sir.
'I cannot change Dorca's law …' said Gregor slowly. Count Vorkosigan, who had begun to look uneasy, relaxed again. 'It saved Barrayar. ''
The Emperor paused a long time, awash in bafflement. Miles knew just how he felt. Miles let him stew a few moments more, until the silence was stretched taut with expectation, and Gregor was starting to get that desperate glazed look Miles recognized from his candidacy orals, of a man caught without the answer. Now.
'The Emperor's Own Dendarii Mercenaries,' Miles said suggestively.
'What?'
'Why not?' Miles straightened, and turned his hands palm-out. 'I'd be delighted to give them to you. Declare them a Crown Troop. It's been done.'
'With horse cavalry!' said Count Vorkosigan. But his face was suddenly much lighter.
'Whatever he does with them will be a legal fiction anyway, since they are beyond his reach,' Miles bowed apologetically to Gregor. 'He may as well arrange it to his own maximum convenience.'
'Whose maximum convenience?' inquired Count Vorhalas dryly.
'You were thinking of this as a private declaration, I trust,' said Count Vorkosigan.
'Well, yes—I'm afraid most of the mercenaries would be, uh, rather disturbed to hear they'd been drafted into the Barrayaran Imperial Service. But why not put them in Captain Illyan's department? Their status would have to remain covert then. Let him figure out something useful to do with 'em. A free mercenary fleet secretly owned by Barrayaran Imperial Security.'
Gregor looked suddenly more reconciled; indeed, intrigued. 'That might be practical …'
Count Vorkosigan's teeth glinted in a white flash of a grin, instantly suppressed. 'Simon,' he murmured, 'will be overjoyed.'
'Really?' said Gregor dubiously.
'You have my personal guarantee.' Count Vorkosigan sketched a bow, sitting.
Vorhalas snorted, and eyed Miles. 'You're too bloody clever for your own good, you know, boy?'
'Exactly, sir,' said Miles agreeably, in a mild hysteria of relief, feeling lighter by 3000 soldiers and God knew how many tons of equipment. He had done it—the last piece glued back in its place …
'… dare play the fool with me,' muttered Vorhalas. He raised his voice to Count Vorkosigan. 'That only answers half my question, Aral.'
Count Vorkosigan studied his fingernails, eyes alight. 'True, we can't leave him running around loose. I, too, shudder to think what accidents he might commit next. He should doubtless be confined to an institution, where he would be forced to labor all day long under many watchful eyes.' He paused thoughtfully. 'May I suggest the Imperial Service Academy?'
Miles looked up, mouth open in an idiocy of sudden hope. All his calculations had been concentrated on wriggling out from under Vorloupulous's law. He'd scarcely dared even to dream of life afterwards, let alone such reward as this …
His father lowered his voice to him. 'Assuming it's not beneath you—Admiral Naismith. I never did get to congratulate you on your promotion.'
Miles reddened. 'It was all just fakery. sir. You know that.'
'All?'
'Well—mostly.'
'Ah, you grow subtle, even with me … But you have tasted command. Can you go back to subordination? Demotions are a bitter meat to swallow.' An old irony played around his mouth.
'You were demoted, after Komarr, sir …'
