“Hm,” said Ivan Xav, sticking his toothbrush into his T-shirt pocket and sinking down into a chair. “The thing we have to do is fly up to the Vorpatril’s District on one of the days Falco is holding Count’s Court in person. He does that at least once a week, when he’s in the District, more if he has time. That’ll save a world of explanation. We go in, say Please, Falco, grant us a divorce, he says Right, you’re divorced. Done! bangs his courtly spear butt, and we skitter out.”
“Don’t you need lawyers and things?” said Rish.
“Shouldn’t think so. You’re not suing me for support, are you?” Ivan Xav asked Tej.
She shook her head. “No, just for a ride to Escobar, which The Gregor is giving us anyway.”
“If it’s something this Count Falco only does once a week, for a whole District-how many people are in the Vorpatril’s District, anyway?” said Rish.
“I dunno. Millions?”
“How does one man play judge to millions of people?” asked Rish, astonished.
“He doesn’t, of course. He’s got a whole District justice department, with all kinds of sub-territorial divisions for cities and towns and right on down to the Village Speaker level. But he keeps a hand in for the political symbolism of it, and to sample what his people really have to say. Most counts do, even Uncle Aral when he’s home. Which isn’t very often, true.”
“Hadn’t you better check his schedule?” asked Rish, sounding a trifle exasperated. “In case ImpSec calls with our ride, oh, say, tomorrow morning?”
“Um. Yeah, maybe…” said Ivan Xav, and lumbered off reluctantly to his comconsole. He was gone for a long time.
When he came back, he looked sheepish. “In fact, Falco’s Count’s Court docket is packed for months out. If that fast courier opening comes up sooner, I’ll have to pull personal strings. Which I can do, but would rather avoid if I can. Because the thing about me owing a big favor to Falco is, he’ll collect. And grin while he’s doing it. But I put us on the court’s waiting list-they say they sometimes get last-minute openings, which they fill first-come, first-served.” He took a breath. “Your protection won’t be withdrawn till you’re safe on Escobar, anyway, regardless of when we do this divorce deal.”
Rish nodded. Tej felt…odd.
They were going to Escobar, in theory, to take up a new life under new identities. Lady Vorpatril was certainly a new identity, enjoying a safety that didn’t rely on obscurity… No. Stick to the plan. Without the plan, they had no anchor at all; it was the last lifeline her parents had thrown to her, as they went down with their House.
Worried that Tej might be a little homesick, Ivan stopped on the way back to his flat one afternoon and found a brand-new Great House set, with six player panels. If he’d had any doubt that Rish was Byerly’s assignment as well as his hobby, it was put to rest by By’s apparent willingness to devote several evenings in a row to a children’s game, if, admittedly, a fast-moving, complex, and strangely addictive one. It didn’t help that By took to it so well, he was soon giving the born Jacksonians real competition, leaving Ivan to bring up the rear time and time again.
But Ivan found Morozov’s other way of winning at Great House to carry over, too. As one friendly anecdote followed another, in the relaxation and triggering reminders of the old game, Ivan learned a great deal about Tej’s upbringing as a real Jacksonian Great House baron’s daughter, apparently much doted-upon by her powerful Dada. Ivan traded with a few tales out of school, himself. Only Byerly did not contribute to the exchange, although Ivan was sure he was sucking it all in. But they were in the middle of a round of Great House when Ivan finally learned the real relationship of the late Baronne, her children, and her Jewels.
“Even-sister and odd-sister?” said Tej. “We call each other that because we are, more-or-less. Half-siblings, at least. The Baronne used a lot of her own genome as a base to create the Jewels. Although not Dada’s, except for the Y chromosome for Onyx. In a way, Ruby was really the first, the Baronne’s prototype, so she claims to count as One, in a class by herself. Erik was the next first, and then Topaz, and Star, then Pearl, and then Pidge, and then Emerald, and then Amiri, and then Rish and then finally me, and right after me, Jet-Onyx, that is. Odds and evens, see? It became a sort of family joke.” She sighed in memory. “Only now we’re all scattered. And Erik…I wish we could get some word about Topaz. I won’t say it’s worse, not knowing if she’s alive or not. But it’s…not good.”
Ivan stared open-mouthed at Rish, who stared back in somewhat affronted dignity. “So you’re my sister-in-law?” He sat a moment, not so much in reflection as stunned-like an ox that had just met a mallet. “That sure explains a lot…”
Byerly didn’t help by laughing like a loon.
“You could take some other course,” said Ivan Xav a week later, when Tej’s ground-vehicle operation training had concluded in triumph, or at least not disaster, and left her with a certification giving her the freedom of the city-if she could, first, borrow a vehicle, and second, wedge through the traffic. Bubble-tube systems were being retrofitted in some areas, but the installation was evidently slow, plagued with problems. It sometimes seemed to Tej as if this entire planet was in process of being retrofitted.
“There are three major universities and over a dozen colleges and who knows how many tech schools in this town,” Ivan Xav went on. “They have courses for everything. Well, maybe not licensed practicing sexuality whats-its, but given the way the conservative crowd complains, that may be next. You’re smart. You could pick anything you liked.”
Tej contemplated this offer, both uneasy and enticed. “I always had tutors, before. I never chose my own, like, off a menu.”
“It might be a way for you to meet more people, too,” Ivan Xav speculated. “I should really introduce you to more than the Koudelka girls, come to think. All the women I know have women friends-to excess, sometimes.” He paused for thought. “There’s Tatya Vorbretten, though she’s up to her ears in infants right now, as bad as Ekaterin and Delia. Tattie Vorsmythe? She was always fun, despite her strange taste in men. Not sure who all Mamere could suggest, of the younger generation. She used to know lots of Vor maidens, daughters of her cronies, y’know, but they mostly seem to have gotten married and moved along.”
This mental search for names was interrupted when he went to answer his comconsole. When he came back, he looked stricken.
“Bad news?” asked Tej, sitting up on the couch and setting aside her reader.
“No, not…not really. It was the Clerk’s office at the Vorpatril District Court. Says they had a case fall off Falco’s docket for the first afternoon of next week, and did I want the slot? I, uh…said yes. Because God knows when there’ll be another, y’know?”
“Oh, excellent,” said Rish, wandering in from the kitchen with a fresh mug of tea in her hand in time to hear this. “One more chore out of the way.”
“Oh,” Tej echoed hollowly. “Yeah. Good.”
It was like some weird sort of honeymoon in reverse, Ivan thought. Taking a personal day’s leave from Ops left him facing a three-day weekend, not something to waste. So Ivan seized the chance to show Tej more of Barrayar while he could, outside of the hectic confines of the capital. Rish, upon finding that her witness was not required, elected to stay behind under the loose supervision of Byerly, and just how loose that might be, Ivan wasn’t asking, gift horses and all that. It left him with a great chance for a real get-away with Tej, just the two of them at last.
It was not the season for tourists in the northeastern coastal District traditionally held by the Vorpatril counts. As his lightflyer beat its way up the shoreline against a cold sea wind, Ivan explained to Tej, “People come up here from the south in the summer to escape the heat. Then go back down in the winter to find it again. If there’s time, maybe I could take you down to see the south coast, too.” Time. There wasn’t enough time. Yes, the marriage was supposed to have been temporary. But not bleeding instantaneous.