This obviously wasn’t the first time By had heard this proposal from Gregor—when the hell had they had time to meet?—but it was plain that he was still digesting it. “It’ll be all…new,” he said weakly.
Rish, recovering her composure, remarked, “I could probably help you out with that, By. Reciprocity, after all.” Shiv, turning around, eyed her in tolerant speculation.
Allegre put in, as a kind of backhanded encouragement, “Your Domestic Affairs handler has been afraid you were getting stale, Vorrutyer. He thought you needed a new challenge.”
No, I don’t! Byerly mouthed to his lap, shoulders hunching slightly. But he didn’t dare look around at Allegre while he did.
Allegre went on, “I’ll leave you and the Arquas to evolve your own plausible cover story, but at a glance, you seem spoiled for choice.” He managed a thin smile for Rish.
Shiv and Udine looked at each other. Udine glanced up. “May the two of us be excused to confer in private for a moment.”
“Of course,” said Gregor.
They retreated to the hallway; not exactly private, there were guards out there as well, but out of earshot of the room. They were gone a long time, during which there was a lot of shifting and stretching and a run on the coffee and remaining pastries, and on the adjoining lav. Allegre and Simon teamed up to have Colonel Otto rerun his colorful visual aid a few times, at various speeds. It was really hard to read Simon’s emotions, but he didn’t seem to get tired of the show.
At length, Shiv and Udine returned, to take up a united stance before Gregor.
“Gregor Vorbarra,” said Shiv, “I do believe you are a worthy grandson of your famous grandfather Ezar.” He stuck out his hand. “You have your deal.”
Meticulously, Gregor shook each of their hands in turn. “Baron. Baronne.” He couldn’t quite seem to bring himself to say thank you, under the circumstances. But he did manage, “Good luck in your future endeavors.”
Shiv, about to turn away, turned back. “Emperor Gregor. I do have one purely private favor to ask.”
A not-quite-nod invited him to go on.
“May I have the pleasure of informing the man known as Vigo Imola of the estimated valuation of the contents of the bunker—in person?”
A slight hesitation, as whatever lurid visions of eleventh-hour collusion crossed Gregor’s well-honed imagination. Happily, his imagination didn’t stop there. A faint smile turned his lips. “Fifteen percent, was it not? I believe I see your point.” He motioned to Byerly. “Vorrutyer may escort you.”
Armsman in front and secretary trailing, Gregor paused on his way out to deal with whatever next crisis might be crowding his queue. Because a three-planet empire delivered upset snakes by the basket-load to this man’s office, every damned morning. Yeah—for all the talk of men coveting the emperor’s throne, Ivan had never yet heard anyone speak of coveting his desk.
“Ivan.” Gregor’s mouth twisted. “Captain and Lady Vorpatril. I want to see you tomorrow. My secretary will call with your appointment.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
When orders were dropped from that high up, they packed a lot of momentum when they hit ground level, in Ivan’s experience. So he wasn’t surprised when things, which had seemed to be hovering in a holding pattern for the past four days, moved fast.
Deportation was to be the cover story, it turned out, which had the added advantage of being perfectly true. Just not perfectly complete. Since the members of House Cordonah were, for their own reasons, as anxious to depart as Barrayar was to be rid of them, they swallowed the appearance of defeat and disgrace without choking, much. And also the excellent farewell luncheon smoothly supplied by Dowager Lady Vorpatril.
After, everyone was escorted by the ImpSec guards downstairs to pack except Lady ghem Estif, captured by Duv Galeni and carried off to Simon’s office, along with a keenly interested Simon. The two hours they were closeted, Duv indicated to Ivan when they all emerged, were not nearly enough for a century’s worth of debriefing.
“I’m going to send an analyst along on their jumpship as far as Komarr, or maybe Pol Station,” he told Ivan, simultaneously calling up contact codes on his wristcom. “And one of Helen Vorthys’s post-docs or grad students, if she can scramble one in time. That’ll give five to ten more days. Damn I wish I could go myself.” He made his hurried call to the surprised but interested Professora. Chasing down one of his own people took a little longer, scattered all over town as they were at the moment, but at that point, all he had to do was snap commands, and some poor ImpSec schmuck’s Winterfair plans were sudden smoke. Ivan hoped there would be compensations.
“There’ll be a couple of dozen theses on the declassified papers alone,” Duv predicted confidently. “With honors.”
Well, that was probably someone’s idea of a reward, yeah. Because there was no accounting for taste. “You’re classifying this stuff? After a hundred years? Isn’t that paranoid even for ImpSec?”
“We’ll be declassifying most of it as fast as we can get through it. But there are some things about the old ghem-junta…never mind.” His lips compressed. And opened again to release a, “But you know that history book I gave Lady Tej?”
“Yes…?”
“I think there may have to be a new edition.”
Ivan walked him out to the hallway; by the time Duv reached the lift tubes in the penthouse foyer, he was jogging, and fielding more calls from his wristcom. Eight billion marks, Ivan couldn’t help thinking, and he worries more about the papers…
Or the truth, perhaps. What price that?
Gregor was providing a courtesy military jump pilot and crew for Vormercier’s yacht for the run to the borders of the empire at Pol Station. This, Ivan gathered, was to make sure they arrived 1) there and 2) nowhere else. The ten days of travel time would be plenty to tightbeam ahead and arrange whatever commercial crew the Arquas wanted to hire on for the next leg. Vetted, Ivan trusted, for ingenious bounty hunters. Jet would be rejoining the Jewels, but Amiri was to travel with his family only as far as Komarr, then transfer to a government courier vessel for a free ride to Escobar, and a safe delivery back to the Durona Clinic. Any stray bounty hunter who made it that far would be Lily Durona and Mark Vorkosigan’s problem; or rather, vice versa. Definitely vice versa, Ivan reflected.
His life was simplifying nicely. But not, Ivan trusted, too much. A little uneasy, he took the lift tube down from his mother’s flat to find Tej.
Tej, when she’d had about as much as she could stand of listening to Amiri burble about how happy he was to be going back to Escobar, wandered into her parents’ temporary bedroom. The flat had been hastily furnished with rental beds and a few sofas and chairs, the night they’d all been dumped in here by the Barrayaran authorities; a lot of the meals had been taken upstairs at Lady Alys’s place. No one had urged anything more permanent.
The Baronne and Lady Alys, or rather, Lady Alys’s competent dresser under their joint supervision, was just finishing packing. The Baronne was remarking, “…not my plan at all, but it will certainly do. Flexibility, as Shiv says.”
She broke off and both mothers looked across at Tej as she entered, Lady Alys rather bemusedly, the Baronne…her lips tightened, but not in anger.