“Please throw your vote in. I know he can’t fool you, and he knows it too. Ah—just what can I expect tonight, medically speaking?”
“He’ll dance twice, once to prove he can do it, and the second time to prove the first wasn’t a fluke. After that you’ll have no trouble at all persuading him to sit down,” Miles predicted with confidence. “Go ahead and play mother hen, and he can pretend he’s stopping to please you, and not because he’s about to fall over. Hassadar strikes me as a very good plan.”
“Yes. Barrayar does not quite know what to do with retired strong men. Traditionally, they are decently deceased, and not hanging around to pass comments on their successors. Aral may be something of a first. Though Gregor has had the most horrifying idea.”
“Oh?”
“He’s muttering about the Vice-royalty of Sergyar, as a post for Aral, when he is fully recovered. The present viceroy has been begging to come home, it seems. Whining, actually. A more thankless task than colonial governor I cannot imagine. An honest man gets ground to powder, trying to play interface between two sets of conflicting needs, the home government above and the colonists below. Anything you can do to disabuse Gregor of this notion, I would greatly appreciate.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Miles’s brows rose thoughtfully. “I mean—what a retirement project. A whole planet to play with. Sergyar. And didn’t you discover it yourself, back when you were a Betan Astronomical Survey captain?”
“Indeed. If the Barrayaran military expedition hadn’t been ahead of us, Sergyar would be a Betan daughter-colony right now. And much better managed, believe me. It really needs someone to take it in hand. The ecological issues alone are crying for an injection of intelligence—I mean, take that worm plague. A little Betan-style prudence could have … well. They figured it out eventually, I guess.”
Miles and Mark looked at each other. It wasn’t telepathy. But the thought that perhaps Aral Vorkosigan wasn’t the only over-energetic aging expert Gregor might be glad to export from his capital was surely being shared between them, right this second.
Mark’s brows drew down. “How soon might this be, ma’am?”
“Oh, not for at least a year.”
“Ah.” Mark brightened.
Armsman Pym stuck his head around the archway. “Ready, milady,” he reported.
They all herded into the black-and-white paved hall, to find the Count standing at the foot of the curved stairs. He watched them with delight as they trooped into his view. The Count had lost weight in his medical ordeal too, but it only made him look more fit, in his red-and-blues. He managed uniform and sword-set with unconscious ease. In three hours, he’d be drooping, Miles gauged, but by then he’d have made a lasting first impression on his many observers, on this his first formal outing with his new heart. His color was excellent, his gaze as knife-sharp as ever. But there was no dark at all in his hair anymore. Aside from that, you really might think he could live forever.
Except Miles didn’t think that anymore. It had scared the hell out of him, retroactively, this whole cardiac episode. Not that his father must die someday, perhaps before him—that was the proper order of things, and Miles could not wish it upon the Count for it to be the other way around—but that Miles might not be here when it happened. When he was needed. Might be off indulging himself with the Dendarii Mercenaries, say, and not get the word for weeks. Too late.
Being both in uniform, the Lieutenant saluted his father the Admiral now with the usual tinge of irony with which they commonly exchanged such military courtesies. Miles would rather have embraced him, but it would look odd.
To hell with what it looked like. He walked over and hugged his father.
“Hey, boy, hey,” said the Count, surprised and pleased. “It’s not that bad, really.” He embraced Miles in return. The Count stood back and looked them all over, his elegant wife, his—two, now—sons. Smiling as smugly as any rich man could, he opened his arms as if to embrace them all, briefly and almost shyly. “Are the Vorkosigans ready to storm the Winterfair Ball, then? Dear Captain, I predict they will surrender to you in droves. How’s your foot, Mark?”
Mark stuck out his right shoe, and wriggled it. “Fit to be trod upon by any Vor maiden up a hundred kilos, sir. Steel toe caps, underneath,” he added to Miles, aside. “I’m taking no chances.”
The Countess attached herself to her husband’s arm. “Lead on, love. Vorkosigans Victorious.”
Vorkosigans Convalescent, was more like it, Miles reflected, following. But you should see what the other guys look like.
Not to Miles’s surprise, practically the first person the Vorkosigans’ party met upon entering the Imperial Residence was Simon Illyan. Illyan was dressed as usual for these functions, parade red-and-blues concealing a multitude of comm links.
“Ah, he’s here in person tonight,” the Count murmured, spotting his old Security chief across the vestibule. “There must be no major messes going on elsewhere, then. Good.”
They divested their snow-spangled wraps to Gregor’s household staff. Miles was shivering. He decided his timing had been skewed by this last adventure. Usually, he managed to arrange an off-planet assignment during winter in the capital. Illyan nodded, and came over to them.
“Good evening, Simon,” said the Count.
“Good evening, sir. All calm and quiet, so far tonight.”
“That’s nice.” The Count raised a dryly amused eyebrow at him. “I’m sure Prime Minister Racozy will be delighted to hear it.”
Illyan opened his mouth, and closed it. “Er. Habit,” he said in embarrassment. He stared at Count Vorkosigan with a look almost of frustration. As if the only way he knew how to relate to his commander of thirty years was by making reports; but Admiral Count Vorkosigan was no longer receiving them. “This feels very strange,” he admitted.
“You’ll get used to it, Simon,” Countess Vorkosigan assured him. And towed her husband determinedly out of Illyan’s orbit. The Count gave him a parting half-salute, seconding the Countess’s words.
Illyan’s eye fell on Miles and Mark, instead. “Hm,” he said, in the tone of a man who had just come out second-best in some horse-trade.
Miles stood up straighter. The ImpSec medicos had cleared him to return to duty in two months, pending a final physical exam. He had not bothered mentioning the little problem with the convulsions to them. Perhaps the first one had just been an idiosyncratic effect of the fast-penta. Sure, and the second and third ones, drug flashbacks.
But he hadn’t had any more, after that. Miles smiled diffidently, trying to look very healthy. Illyan just shook his head, looking at him.
“Good evening, sir,” Mark said to Illyan in turn. “Was ImpSec able to deliver my Winterfair gift to my clones all eight?”
Illyan nodded. “Five hundred marks each, individually addressed and on time, yes, my lord.”
“Good.” Mark gave one of his sharper-edged smiles, the sort that made one wonder what he was thinking. The clones had been the pretext Mark had given Illyan for handing over to ImpSec the million Betan dollars he’d sworn he would; the funds were now in escrow for their needs, among other things paying for their place in that exclusive school. Illyan had been so boggled he’d gone absolutely robotic, an effect Miles had watched with great fascination. By the time the clones were out on their own the million would be about used up, Mark had figured. But the Winterfair gifts had been personal and separate.
Mark did not ask how his gift had been received, though Miles was dying to know; but rather, drifted on with another polite nod, as if Illyan were a clerk with whom he had just concluded some minor business. Miles saluted and caught up. Mark was suppressing a deep grin, resulting in a smirk-like look.
“All this time,” Mark confided to Miles in a low voice, “I was worried about never having received a present. It never even crossed my mind to worry about never having given one. Winterfair is an entrancing holiday, y’know?” He sighed. “I wish I’d known those clone-kids well enough to pick something right for each. But at least this way, they have a gift of choice. It’s like giving them two presents in one. How the devil do you folks give anything to, say, Gregor, though?”