“Potentially,” said the Baronne, in a voice of caution. “Potentially. This is all still such a long shot.”
“Long shot’s better than no shot at all,” sighed Dada. “Which is what we’ll have if the Barrayaran Imperial government finds out about this, so no gossiping about this to anyone who hasn’t already been brought inside, eh, Tej?”
Tej wrinkled her nose. “Do you mean that old underground lab? Who’d want an old gene library? I mean, it’s all got to have spoiled by now.” And what would that smell like?
“Actually, anything that was stored sporulated ought to be fully reconstitutable,” said Grandmama. “And then there was all that tedious trash the ghem generals and their friends insisted on stuffing in at the last. I suppose some of them really believed they would have a chance to get back to it all, someday.”
“Tedious trash…?”
Dada sat back, his grin deepening. “Old records, both Cetagandan and captured Barrayaran. Several art collections, apparently—”
“Mere native objects, for the most part,” put in Grandmama. “Though I do believe there were a few good pieces brought from home.”
“—Ninth Satrapy currency and coin—that’s where the chests of gold come in—”
“The primitives in the Barrayaran backcountry always preferred those awkward gold coins, for some reason,” Grandmama confirmed.
“—and, basically, anything that a select mob of Cetagandan ghem lords in a panic didn’t have room or time to pack and couldn’t bring themselves to abandon,” Dada concluded. “I don’t think even Moira knows what all might be in there.”
“No one did,” Grandmama said. “The haut Zaia was quite upset with the incursion on her space, but really, no one could do anything at that point.”
Tej had started out determined not to be sucked into any more doomed Arqua clan ventures, but she couldn’t help growing a little bug-eyed at this litany. “How do you know…how do you know someone hasn’t found it long before this?”
The Baronne rubbed her hands thoughtfully together, and touched her fingertips to her lips. “Even if smuggled out in secret, some of the known objects ought to have surfaced and left a trail. Some of the records, as well. They haven’t.”
“What—how—how would we get at it? In secret?”
Dada flicked his fingers. “Simplest is best. If the building still exists, buy it. Or possibly rent it. If it’s been knocked down and built over, buy whatever is atop it, and proceed the same at our leisure. I understand the place wasn’t in the best part of the city. If that isn’t feasible, buy or rent an adjacent property and penetrate laterally. As always, fencing the stash is where the profit is made or lost—lost, usually, back when I was a young shipjacker. The best value of any item can only be realized when it is matched to the best customer for it. Which will be best done from some future secure base out of this debatable empire.”
“Fell Station, to start with,” said the Baronne, “if we can present ourselves credibly enough to Baron Fell. Once we attain that leverage point, our options open. And I’ll have Ruby back.”
“Isn’t, um, the historical value greatest when things are excavated and recorded on site?” said Tej, tentatively.
“A sad loss,” the Baronne agreed, “but, in this case, not avoidable.”
“How long have you three been planning this, this lowjacking?”
“Since Earth,” said Dada. “We had reached the nadir of marketing my mother-in-law’s hair, when Moira recalled this place.”
“I hadn’t thought about it in years,” said Grandmama. “Decades, really. But Shiv never did receive a proper wedding gift, when he married Udine. Ghem Estif having wasted the first one on that idiot Komarran he picked out, who wasted it in turn on, oh, so many bad decisions.”
“I came to you in nothing but my skin,” murmured the Baronne, with a fond look at her mate. “And”—she plucked a trifle mournfully at her short fringe—“hair.”
“I remember that,” said her mate, with a fond look back. “Vividly. I had very little more myself, at the time.”
“Your wits, at least.”
“Making this cache into test and wedding gift in one, if Shiv can extract it,” said Grandmama. “Does it occur to you two that you are running your courtship backward?”
“As long as we fit it all in somewhere,” said Dada, sounding amused.
“Your sudden Barrayaran husband,” said the Baronne to Tej, “put several wrinkles in our planning. We had originally intended to arrive here entirely incognito, but your reappearance gave us a second-choice level of plausibility, even as this Vorpatril fellow’s unexpectedly high security profile forced the necessity. I hadn’t wanted to activate our real identities quite so soon. Not till after the war chest was refilled, and we could prepare some richer welcome for our enemies.”
“Flexibility, Udine,” rumbled Dada.
“I admit,” said the Baronne to Tej, “I was quite frantic about Rish and you, when Amiri reported you’d failed to make any timely rendezvous or contact with him. Lily’s roundabout news was the greatest fortune—it made this Barrayar plan seem quite irresistible.”
“If we can extract this treasure,” said Dada, “it will be the saving of our House. The key to everything. It’s been a long time since I wagered so much on a single throw. Though if I’m to revisit the desperation of my youth, I want the body back, too.” He slapped his stomach and grimaced. His wife snorted. Though Dada looked more stimulated than desperate, to Tej’s eye.
“Now all we have to do,” said Grandmama briskly, “is find Ladderbeck Close.”
Ivan settled his in-laws in the back of Mamere’s big groundcar, and took the rearward-facing seat across from them. The canopy sighed shut. He gripped Tej’s hand briefly, for reassurance. Of some sort. When he’d sped home to his flat to clean up and dress for this command performance, he’d found Tej and Rish had already gone on. No chance to talk then, no chance, really, to talk now, nor for hours yet, probably. At least, shaved and sharp in the dress greens that he seldom wore after-hours, he ought to look a more impressive son-in-law than last night. He hoped.
Christos began The Tour To Please Grandmama with a spin past Vorhartung Castle. Ivan mentioned the military museum, within, for future innocuous entertainment.
“This place, at least, seems to have survived the century intact,” Lady ghem Estif observed, staring out at the archaic battlements. A few bright District flags flew there, snapping in the winter wind, indicating some rump meeting of the Counts in session. “It looks so odd without the laser-wire, though.”
A whispered conference with Christos had concluded that the Imperial Residence was best viewed from a distance, this first trip, which they duly did. Christos managed to wedge the groundcar as close to the restored pedestrian alleys and shops of the old Caravanserai area as it would fit.
“Well, that’s an improvement,” murmured Lady ghem Estif, not sounding too grudging. “This part of town was considered a pestilential death-trap, in my day.”
Ivan decided not to mention being born there, for now. Let someone else tell that story, this round. “The last Barrayaran I knew who’d been alive during the Occupation died, what…” Ivan had to stop and work it out in his head. “Eighteen years ago.” When he’d been barely more than seventeen. Was it really more than half his lifetime ago that his ancient and formidable great-uncle General Piotr had passed to his fathers? Um…yeah, it was.
A drive past the fully modern Ops building drew no special reaction, a little to Ivan’s disappointment, but Lady ghem Estif sat up and peered more avidly as they drew away from the river. The Baronne, seated next to her, and the Baron observed her—pleasure? it was hard to tell, on that reserved face—with interest. “This was close to the edge of town, in the days of the Ninth Satrapy,” she remarked.