“I don’t know what hold you think you have on ImpSec,” the man began furiously.
But he was interrupted. A smiling servant in the Residence’s livery walked down the path carrying a tray of glasses. He was a very physically-fit young man.
“Drinks, gentlemen?” he offered.
The anonymous Vor glowered at him. “No, thank you.” He turned on his heel and strode off. Shrubbery whipped in his wake, scattering droplets of dew.
“I’ll take one, thanks,” said Mark brightly. The servant proffered the tray with a slight bow. For his abused stomach’s sake Mark stuck with the same light wine he’d been drinking most of the evening. “Eighty-five seconds. Your timing is lousy. He could have killed me three times over, but you interrupted just as the talk was getting interesting. How do you fellows pick this stuff out, real-time? You can’t possibly have enough people upstairs to be following every conversation in the building. Automated key-word searches?”
“Canape, sir?” Blandly, the servant turned the tray and offered the other side.
“Thank you again. Who was that proud Vor?”
The servant glanced down the now-empty pathway. “Captain Edwin Vorventa. He’s on personal leave while his ship is in orbital dock.”
“He’s not in ImpSec?”
“No, my lord.”
“Oh? Well, tell your boss I’d like to talk to him, at his earliest convenience.”
“That would be Lord Voraronberg, the castellan’s food and beverage manager.”
Mark grinned. “Oh, sure. Go away, I’m drunk enough.”
“Very good, my lord.”
“Not come morning. Ah! One more thing. You wouldn’t know where I could find Ivan Vorpatril right now, would you?”
The young man stared absently over the balcony a moment, as though listening, though no earbug showed. “There is a sort of gazebo at the bottom of the next left-hand turn, my lord, near a fountain. You might try there.”
“Thank you.”
Mark followed his directions, through the cool night mist. In a stray ray of light, fog droplets on his uniform sleeve shone like a cloud across the little silver rivers of the embroidery. He soon heard the plash of the fountain. A petite stone building, no walls, just deeply shadowed arches, overlooked it.
It was so quiet in this pocket of the garden, he could hear the breathing of the person inside. Only one person; good, he wasn’t about to diminish his already low popularity still further by interrupting a tryst. But it was strangely hoarse. “Ivan?”
There was a long pause. He was trying to decide whether to call again or tiptoe off when Ivan’s voice returned an uninviting growl of, “What?”
“I just … wondered what you were doing.”
“Nothing.”
“Hiding from your mother?”
“… Yeah.”
“I, ah, won’t tell her where you are.”
“Good for you,” was the sour reply.
“Well … see you later.” He turned to go.
“Wait.”
He waited, puzzled.
“Want a drink?” Ivan offered after a long pause.
“Uh … sure.”
“So, come get it.”
Mark ducked inside, and waited for his eyes to adjust. The usual stone bench, and Ivan a seated shadow. Ivan proffered the gleaming bottle, and Mark topped up his glass, only to find too late that Ivan wasn’t drinking wine, but rather some sort of brandy. The accidental cocktail tasted vile. He sat down by the steps with his back to a stone post, and set his glass aside. Ivan had dispensed with the formality of a glass.
“Are you going to be able to make it back to your ground car?” asked Mark doubtfully.
“Don’t plan to. The Residence’s staff will cart me out in the morning, when they pick up the rest of the trash.”
“Oh.” His night vision continued to improve. He could pick out the glittery bits on Ivan’s uniform, and the polished glow of his boots. The reflections of his eyes. The gleam of wet tracks down his cheeks. “Ivan, are you—” Mark bit his tongue on crying, and changed it in mid-sentence to, “all right?”
“I,” Ivan stated firmly, “have decided to get very drunk.”
“I can see that. Why?”
“Never have, at the Emperor’s Birthday. It’s a traditional challenge, like getting laid here.”
“Do people do that?”
“Sometimes. On a dare.”
“How entertaining for ImpSec.”
Ivan snorted a laugh. “Yeah, there is that.”
“So who dared you?”
“Nobody.”
Mark felt he was running out of probing questions faster than Ivan was running out of monosyllabic replies.
But, “Miles and I,” Ivan said in the dark, “used to work this party together, most every year. I was surprised … how much I missed the little bugger’s slanderous political commentary, this time around. Used to make me laugh.” Ivan laughed. It was a hollow and unfunny noise. He stopped abruptly.
“They told you about finding the empty cryo-chamber, didn’t they,” said Mark.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Couple of days ago. I’ve been thinking about it, since. Not good.”
“No.” Mark hesitated. Ivan was shivering, in the dark. “Do you … want to go home and go to bed?” I sure do.
“Never make it up the hill, now,” shrugged Ivan.
“I’ll give you a hand. Or a shoulder.”
“… All right.”
It took some doing, but he hoisted Ivan to his unsteady feet, and they navigated back up the steep garden. Mark didn’t know what charitable ImpSec guardian angel passed the word, but they were met at the top not by Ivan’s mother, but by his aunt.
“He’s, ah …” Mark was not sure what to say. Ivan peered around blearily.
“So I see,” said the Countess.
“Can we spare an armsman, to drive him home?” Ivan sagged, and Mark’s knees buckled. “Better make it two armsmen.”
“Yes.” The Countess touched a decorative comm pin on her bodice. “Pym … ?”
Ivan was thus taken off his hands, and Mark breathed a sigh of relief. His relief grew to outright gratitude when the Countess commented that it was time for them to quit, too. In a few minutes Pym brought the Count’s groundcar around to the entrance, and the night’s ordeal was over.
The Countess didn’t talk much, for a change, in the groundcar going back to Vorkosigan House. She leaned back against her seat and closed her eyes in exhaustion. She didn’t even ask him anything.
In the black-and-white paved foyer the Countess handed off her cloak to a maid, and headed left, toward the library.
“You’ll excuse me, Mark. I’m going to call ImpMil.”
She looked so tired. “Surely they’d have called you, ma’am, if there was any change in the Count’s condition.”
“I’m going to call ImpMil,” she said flatly. Her eyes were puffy slits. “Go to bed, Mark.”
He didn’t argue with her. He trudged wearily up the stairs to his bedroom corridor.
He paused outside the door to his room. It was very late at night. The hallway was deserted. The silence of the great house pressed on his ears. On an impulse, he turned back and stepped down the hall to Miles’s room. There he paused again. In all his weeks on Barrayar, he had not ventured in here. He had not been invited. He tried the antique knob. The door was not locked.
Hesitantly, he entered, and keyed up the lights with a word. It was a spacious bedchamber, given the limits of the house’s old architecture. An adjoining antechamber once meant for personal servants had long ago been converted to a private bathroom. At first glance the room seemed almost stripped, bare and neat and clean. All the clutter of childhood must have been boxed and put away in an attic, in some spasm of maturity. He suspected Vorkosigan House’s attics were astonishing.
Yet a trace of the owner’s personality remained. He walked slowly around the room, hands in his pockets like a patron at a museum.
Reasonably enough, the few mementos that had been retained tended heavily to reminders of successes. Miles’s diploma from the Imperial Service Academy, and his officer’s commission, were normal enough, though Mark wondered why a battered old Service issue weather manual was also framed and placed exactly between them. A box of old gymkhana awards going back to youth looked like they might be heading for an attic very soon. Half a wall was devoted to a massive book-disk and vid collection, thousands of titles. How many had Miles actually read? Curious, he took the hand-viewer off its hook on the wall nearby, and tried three disks at random. All had at least a few notes or glosses entered in the margin-boxes, tracks of Miles’s thought. Mark gave up the survey, and passed on.