Ivan Xav glanced aside at Tej, and his hand squeezed hers. She squeezed back. No, it hadn’t been. Not that part, not at the time.
In retrospect, though…“So he threw his wristcom into the refrigerator, grabbed this box of instant groats, and asked me to marry him. To keep the Immigration people from arresting me and the Dome cops from arresting him. And I said yes.”
“I see,” said The Gregor. “I think…”
“It worked,” said Ivan Xav, sounding stung.
“Why did he throw his wristcom into the freezer?” asked the Coz, diverted by this detail.
“His admiral kept calling back.”
“Ah. Makes perfect sense.”
“It does?” said The Gregor. The Coz nodded, and he seemed to accept this.
“And then Ivan Xav brought us here to Barrayar, where we are supposed to find this man named Count Falco who will give us a divorce, and then…” Tej ran aground, till she bethought herself of the kind and shrewd Lady Alys. “And Lady Alys’s Simon suggested that Rish and I might be smuggled to Escobar on a Barrayaran government courier vessel, if Ivan Xav would ask the right people.” She gathered her courage and looked up from her lap at The Gregor. “Would that be you, sir?”
“Possibly.” He leaned over and propped his chin in his hand, regarding her quizzically. He had one of those wildly unfair male face-transforming smiles, she noted, even more so than Ivan Xav’s; but then, The Gregor’s smile was transiting from a much sterner-looking start-point. Ivan Xav had to work hard to look stern, and even then it was more likely to come out just peeved. The emperor continued, “Where on Escobar is your brother?”
This was not the time to try to deal, Tej realized; this whole meeting was a deal. A big one, at that. “Amiri was never happy in the House, never wanted to be involved in the business with my brother Erik and my sisters. He had this passion all his life for biology and medicine, so eventually my parents made a deal for him to go to Escobar to this clinic where they had a special contact, and change his identity and finish his medical education. He’s a graduate researcher there, now, under a new name.” She moistened her lips and added, “It was always the plan that if something terrible happened, I would go to him, because we always got along best, and my sisters would go to Grandmama.”
The Gregor stretched out his arm and drummed his fingers on the sofa back. “Given that Shiv Arqua’s Jacksonian parents are both listed as long-deceased, this would have to be your Cetagandan haut grandmother, General ghem Estif’s widow, exiled to Earth?”
“Good God!” said Ivan Xav. His hip being pressed to hers on the short sofa, Tej felt him start. “She’s still alive?”
The Gregor looked across at him in some bemusement. “Didn’t you read the ImpSec reports?”
“Didn’t figure they’d disgorge ’em without arm wrestling. Besides, I spend all day every day up to my eyebrows in Ops reports for Desplains.”
“But there were all those evening—never mind,” said The Gregor. Tej wasn’t sure if he was looking at her or Ivan Xav or both, but a ghost of that smile went past again.
“But ghem Estif’s widow—she was on Barrayar back during the Occupation, and nobody still alive remembers that,” said Ivan Xav. “She must be over a hundred and twenty years old, at least! Mummified!”
“About a hundred and thirty,” said Rish. “If I recall correctly.”
“Did you ever meet her?” Ivan Xav asked Rish. But his glance went to Tej.
Tej replied, “After the old general died, she came to live with the Baronne and us for a while. When we kids were all younger. She left almost eight years ago. I haven’t seen her since—but she wasn’t in the least mummified then. She wasn’t young, of course, and her hair had turned this fascinating silver color, meters of it, it seemed like, but she was perfectly limber. And tall. And very dignified. It was like—it wasn’t that she couldn’t move fast, it was simply that she didn’t choose to.”
A smile of memory flickered across Rish’s lips. “That was her.”
There was a bustle at the door to the antechamber, and Lady Vorkosigan—Lady Ekaterin?—entered, followed by two maidservants with not so much a trolley as a train of carts loaded high with a bountiful formal tea. Everyone came to attention, even The Gregor. The two black-clad guards were already at attention, but every once in a while their eyes flicked longingly toward all the clinking and gurgling going on around the fireplace. It was not until coffee, two kinds of teas, a dozen sorts of little sandwiches and cakes and tarts, freshly candied fruits, marzipan dainties, and miniature and rather messy cream cakes were served that the conversation resumed, limping around the chewing and swallowing. Rish was nearly mesmerized with sensory bliss.
“Ma Kosti is always especially inspired by one of your visits, Gregor,” Lady Ekaterin told the emperor, who smiled.
“Don’t even think about it, Gregor,” said the Coz.
“I suppose an Imperial military draft would be cheating,” replied The Gregor with a sigh, and homed in on his third cream cakelet.
Everyone was amused. Except for Tej and Rish, who were bewildered. Tej nudged Ivan Xav, but he was chewing, too, and just shook his head. “’Splain later,” he mumbled. “Miles defends his cook with his life.”
The Coz washed down his bite with a gulp of tea and told his wife, “Just before you came in, Lady Tej was starting to tell us about her Cetagandan haut grandmother, the late General ghem Estif’s relict. She was apparently on Barrayar toward the end of the Occupation, if you can imagine. She must have been close to old General Piotr’s age.”
Lady Ekaterin nibbled a frosted cherry, licked her fingers, and nodded. “Oh, Ivan, you’ll have to introduce Tej to René and Tatya Vorbretten when they get back to town.”
Giving up on Ivan, Tej looked her question at the Coz.
He waved a cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwich expansively in the air, and said, “Count Vorbretten. Bit of a scandal a few years back, when a gene scan turned up that he was one-eighth Cetagandan ghem. On the male side, unfortunately for Barrayaran inheritance law. Dating back to his great-grandmother and the Occupation, it seemed.”
Ivan put in, “They were dubbing him René Ghembretten for a while, but the Council of Counts finally voted to let him keep his countship. A near thing, it was. I was glad of it. Exceptionally nice fellow.”
“Exceptionally diligent District count,” said The Gregor.
“Now that gene scanning has become widely available,” said Lady Ekaterin to Tej and Rish, “quite a few such hidden links are being turned up. Despite huge pressures at the time from both sides against such crosses. The Occupation lasted for two decades, after all.”
“Humans will be humans,” said her husband. “And so make more humans.” They exchanged amused smiles, which fell rather short of private.
“René’s case is hardly unique, as far as inter-Nexus romances on Barrayar go,” said The Gregor. “Miles’s mother Countess Cordelia is famously from Beta Colony, as was Ivan’s—and Miles’s—great-grandmother who married the celebrated diplomat Prince Xav.”
Tej turned in surprise to Ivan. “You’re really one-eighth Betan? You never said!” Rish’s gold eyebrows, too, went up.
Ivan Xav shrugged. “Can’t say as I much think about it. It was a long time ago. Before I was born.” He topped this unassailable observation with a marzipan violet, and chewed defensively.
“This medical clinic on Escobar that took your brother the Jacksonian refugee under its wing, the one with the special contact with your late parents…” the Coz said slowly, returning to a subject Tej had hoped was lost in the shuffle.