“Ah, good,” Ivan Xav went on, striding to the bedroom and tossing his duffle down on a broad bed. “The cleaning service has been in. We’re all set.”
Having worked for nearly three weeks straight, Ivan Xav was due several days of leave, Admiral Desplains had told Tej upon parting for his own leave and Madame Desplains, who’d been waiting at the shuttleport to pick him up. He trusted Captain Vorpatril would use the time well to organize his affairs, right, Ivan? Ivan Xav had nodded earnestly. Just what that meant, Tej had no idea.
They were here. Now what? In her exhaustion and stress on Komarr, she’d scarcely thought past escape from. Escape to hadn’t even been on her mental horizon.
“Where do I sleep?” Rish inquired, wandering around and looking things over, her expression dubious.
“The sofa folds flat. It’s not too bad.” Ivan Xav stretched mightily and came back into his living room. “There are three people I’d most like to avoid in Vorbarr Sultana—m’mother, Miles, and Gregor, in that order. Well, and Falco, but he’s not so hard to dodge. He may well be up in the District. Though I suppose we’ll have to chase him down in due course. But other than that, what would you two like to do here in the great metropolis?”
Tej looked down at her travel-rumpled garments. Do? That implied Go out, surely. “We only have these Komarran clothes. Are they all right to wear on Barrayar, or should we find something to help us blend in better?”
Rish extended a slim blue hand and snorted. She then raised her arms and did a slow backbend, kicking over to a handstand and then up to her feet again.
“You know what I mean,” said Tej.
“Yeah, sure,” said Ivan Xav. “M’mother gets her clothes custom designed, but my other gir—I’ve been dragged around to enough other places, I’ll bet I could find you something nice. But Komarran styles are trendy, too—Empress Laisa, you know. Maybe you want to look around and see what you like, first, and then go picking.”
A pleasant chime sounded.
“T’ hell?” said Ivan Xav. “Nobody knows I’m back yet. Not expecting company…” He wandered to his door and carefully checked his security vid. It was far too early, Tej reminded herself, for her pursuers to have regrouped and caught up with her.
“Ah,” muttered Ivan Xav. “Christos. Maybe…maybe we’re not home just yet. Still caught in traffic, yeah.”
“Come on, Lord Ivan, open up,” came a man’s voice, balanced on some cusp between amused and irritated. “I know you’re in there. Or at least check the messages on your wristcom.”
“M’mother’s driver and errand boy,” Ivan Xav told Tej and Rish over his shoulder. “And bodyguard—the man’s a retired commando sergeant. Like my cousin’s armsmen in all but title and oath. I swear he aspires to the role. Came in about four years ago—he didn’t actually dandle me on his knee as a small boy, he just acts like it.” He added reluctantly after a moment, “Good at his job, though.”
Which one? Tej wondered.
Ivan Xav hit the pad to open the door.
The man looked big, gray-haired, and affable; for a change, his clothing did not resemble a uniform, just a neat shirt with wide sleeves, trousers with baggy cuffs tucked into short boots, and a sleeveless jacket with strange but attractive embroidery. But mostly, he looked big.
He eased around Ivan Xav, spotted Tej and Rish, and said, “Ah,” in a satisfied tone. He came to a species of attention before her. “Good afternoon, Lady Vorpatril, Mademoiselle Lapis Lazuli. I’m Christos, Dowager Lady Vorpatril’s driver. M’lady has charged me to convey you to a private dinner at her flat. And also to convey her earnest invitation for said dinner, should it unaccountably”—he cast a knife-flick of a glance at Ivan Xav—“have become lost somewhere on Lord Ivan’s wristcom.”
“Oh,” said Tej, glaring a plea at Ivan Xav. What was she supposed to do?
“We just got off the shuttle,” Ivan Xav began.
“Yeah, I know.” Christos held up a viewer. “I brought a book for while you clean up. I’m to wait while you get ready. Because she didn’t want me to miss you, if you took yourselves out or whatever.” He smiled thinly, trod into the living room, and helped himself to a chair, settling back for a comfortable read. He added as he keyed it on and found his place, “Dress is casual, she said. Which only means, not formal.”
“Trapped,” Ivan Xav muttered. “Like rats…”
“What now?” Tej whispered to him.
He scratched his head and sighed, as if in defeat. “Well, we’ve all got to eat sometime. And at least the food’ll be first-rate.”
“If we get this over with now,” murmured Rish, “we won’t have to sit around anticipating it, you know. It does seem an inevitable meeting.”
Ivan Xav grimaced, but Tej nodded. Even if Ivan Xav’s mother was a horrible harridan in hysterics, as his actions seemed to imply, the news of the impending divorce ought to calm her down. It seemed unlikely that she would pull out a weapon and shoot her son’s new bride over dinner, and besides, that would be redundant. She had only to stake Tej and Rish out where the enemy syndicate could find them, and the problem would be carried out of her ken without her having to lift, or tighten, a finger. Still…poisons? Rish could detect an astonishing number of these, if presented in food or drink. But—redundancy, again. Tej decided she was letting travel weariness and her nerves turn her thoughts just too strange. It would all be made plain soon enough.
A flurry of turns in the bath and dithering over their tiny selection of garb resulted in Rish in black Komarran trousers and top, with a long-sleeved jacket and her head-shawl, Tej similarly attired in shades of cream, a little shabby but easy on her acute color sensitivity, and Ivan Xav in civilian clothes similar to what he’d been wearing the first time they’d met, but pulled clean from his capacious closet and not crumpled and smelly from his duffle. The driver shepherded them out with bland courtesy.
A large groundcar with a separate driver’s compartment awaited them in the basement garage. As Christos handed them into the spacious back passenger compartment and started to close the silvered canopy, Ivan Xav held up a hand and said, “Uh, Christos—will Simon be there, do you know?”
“Of course, Lord Ivan.” The canopy snapped closed, sealing them in.
Ivan Xav sat back with a wince, but for a few minutes Tej and Rish were too busy craning their necks and trying to see the city for Tej to pursue this new mystery. Nearing sunset of what seemed to be a late fall or early winter day, traffic was heavy, but the car was bearing generally upriver and uphill.
Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “I should probably explain Simon,” he began, then stalled out, muttering, “No, there’s no explaining Simon…”
“All right, who is Simon?” said Tej. If they were being flung into this headfirst…“Aren’t you the one who was complaining to Byerly Vorrutyer about inadequate briefings?”
“How do I put this?” Ivan Xav rubbed his forehead. “Simon Illyan was Chief of Imperial Security for upwards of thirty years, from the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership till about four or so years back, when he suffered, um, a sort of stroke. Neurological damage to his memory functions. Retired out on a medical, y’know.”
Wait, that Simon Illyan? The same ImpSec boss whom Morozov, without a trace of irony, had dubbed the legendary?
“—and took up with m’mother. Why then, and not any time in the preceding three decades that they worked together, I have no idea, but there you are. So he’s like there, all the time now. With her. Unless she’s at the Residence working. They stick to each other like glue. It’s pretty damned unnerving, I can tell you.”