“Just a moment, my lord.” She left the range of the vid pick-up; he could hear her voice fading in the distance, calling “Kareen!”
There was a muffled bumping in the background, garbled voices, a shriek, and Kareen’s laughing voice crying, “No, Delia, it’s for me! Mother, make her go away! Mine, all mine! Out!” The sound of a door thumping closed on, presumably, flesh, a yelp, then a firmer and more final slam.
Panting and tousled, Kareen Koudelka arrived in range, and gave him a starry-eyed “Hi!”
If not just like the look Lady Cassia had given Ivan, it was a robust and blue near-cousin. Mark felt faint. “Hello,” he said breathlessly. “I called to say goodbye.” No, dammit, that was much too short—
“What?”
“Um, excuse me, that’s not quite what I meant. But I’m going to be traveling off-planet soon, and I didn’t want to leave without speaking to you again.”
“Oh.” Her smile drooped. “When will you come back?”
“I’m not sure. But when I do, I’d like to see you again.”
“Well … sure.”
Sure, she said. What a lot of joyful assumptions were embedded in that sure.
Her eyes narrowed. “Is there something wrong, Lord Mark?”
“No,” he said hastily. “Um … was that your sister I heard in the background just now?”
“Yes. I had to lock her out, or she’d stand out of range and make faces at me while we talked.” Her earnest air of injury was immediately spoiled when she added, “That’s what I do to her, when fellows call.”
He was a fellow. How … how normal. He led her on with one question after another, to talk about her sisters, her parents, and her life. Private schools and cherished children … The Commodore’s family was well-to-do, but with some sort of Barrayaran-style work ethic driving a passion for education and accomplishment, an ideal of service running like an undercurrent, towing them all into their future. He went awash in her words, dreamily sharing. She was so peaceable and real. No shadow of torment, nothing spoiled or deformed. He felt like he was feeding, not his belly but his head. His brain felt warm and distended and happy, a sensation near-erotic but less threatening. Alas, after a time she became conscious of the disproportion in the conversation.
“Good heavens, I’m babbling. I’m sorry.”
“No! I like listening to you talk.”
“That’s a first. In this family, I’m lucky to get a word in edgewise. I didn’t talk till I was three. They had me tested. It turned out it was just because my sisters were answering everything for me!”
Mark laughed.
“Now they say I’m making up for lost time.”
“I know about lost time,” Mark said ruefully.
“Yes, I’ve … heard a little. I guess your life has been quite an adventure.”
“Not an adventure,” he corrected. “A disaster, maybe.” He wondered what his life would look like, reflected in her eyes. Something shinier… . “Maybe when I get back I can tell you a bit about it.” If he got back. If he brought this off.
I’m not a nice person. ’You should know that, before. Before what? The more over-extended their acquaintance became, the harder it would be to tell her his repellent secrets.
“Look, I … you have to understand.” God, he sounded just like Bothari-Jesek, working up to her confession. “I’m kind of a mess, and I’m not just talking about my outsides.” Hell, hell, and what had this f nice young virgin to do with the arcane subtleties of psycho-programming tortures, and their erratic results? What right had he to put horrors in her head? “I don’t even know what I should tell you!”
Now was too soon, he could feel that clearly. But later might be too late, leaving her feeling betrayed and tricked. And if he continued this conversation one more minute, he’d drift into abject-blurting mode, and lose the one bright, un-poisoned thing he’d found.
Kareen tilted her head in puzzlement. “Maybe you ought to ask the Countess.”
“Do you know her well? To talk to?”
“Oh, yes. She and my mother are best friends. My mother used to be her personal bodyguard, before she retired to have us.”
Mark sensed the shadowy league of grandmothers again. Powerful old women with genetic agendas… . He felt obscurely that there were some things a man ought to do for himself. But on Barrayar, they used go-betweens. He had in his camp an ambassadoress-extraordinary to the whole female gender. The Countess would act for his good. Yeah, like a woman holding down a screaming child to get it a painful vaccination that would save it from a deadly disease.
How much did he trust the Countess? Did he dare trust her in this?
“Kareen … before I come back, do me a favor. If you get a chance to talk privately to the Countess, ask her what she thinks you ought to know about me, before we get better acquainted. Tell her I asked you to.”
“All right. I like to talk with Lady Cordelia. She’s sort of been my mentor. She makes me think I can do anything.” Kareen hesitated. “If you’re back by Winterfair, will you dance with me again at the Imperial Residence Ball? And not hide in the corner this time,” she added sternly.
“If I’m back by Winterfair, I won’t have to hide in the corner. Yes.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to your word.”
“My word as Vorkosigan,” he said lightly.
Her blue eyes widened. “Oh. My.” Her soft lips parted in a blinding smile.
He felt like a man who’s gone to spit, and had a diamond pop accidentally from his lips instead. And he couldn’t call it back and re-swallow it. There must be a Vorish streak in the girl, to take a man’s word so seriously.
“I have to go now,” he said.
“All right. Lord Mark—be careful?”
“I—why do you say that?” He hadn’t said a word about where he was going or why, he swore.
“My father is a soldier. You have that same look in your eyes that he gets, when he’s lying through his teeth about some difficulty he’s heading into. He can never fool my mother, either.”
No girl had ever told him to be careful, like she meant it. He was touched beyond measure. “Thank you, Kareen.” Reluctantly, he cut the comm, with a gesture that was nearly a caress.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mark and Bothari-Jesek hitched a ride from Barrayar back to Komarr on an ImpSec courier vessel very like the one they’d ridden before, the last favor, Mark swore, that he would ever ask of Simon Illyan. This resolve lasted till they arrived at Komarr orbit, where Mark found that the Dendarii had given him his Winterfair gift early. All of Medic Norwood’s personal effects had finally arrived, shipped from the main Dendarii fleet.
ImpSec being ImpSec, they had opened it first. So much the better; they would hardly have let Mark touch it if they had not convinced themselves they’d already emptied it of all its secrets. With Bothari-Jesek’s backing, Mark begged, bluffed, bullied and whined his way to access to it. With obvious reluctance, ImpSec admitted him under supervision to a locked room in their orbital HQ. But they admitted him.
Mark turned Bothari-Jesek loose to oversee the arrangements for the ship the Countess’s agent had located. As a Dendarii shipmaster Bothari-Jesek was not only the most logical person for the logistical tasks, she was probably overkill. With barely a pang of conscience Mark dismissed her from his thoughts to plunge into his examination of his new treasure box. Alone in an empty room. Heavenly.
After his first excited pass through the material—which included old clothing, a disk library, letters, and souvenir knickknacks from Norwood’s four years of Dendarii service—Mark, depressed, was inclined to allow ImpSec was right. There was nothing here of value. Nothing up any of the sleeves—ImpSec had checked; Mark set aside clothing, boots, mementos, and all the physical effects. It gave him a queer feeling to handle the old clothes, marked with the wear of a body that was gone forever. Too damn much mortality around here. He turned his attention instead to the more intellectual detritus of the medic’s life and career: his library and technical notes. ImpSec had gone through this same focusing before him, he noted glumly.