![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenHey, I wrote a story about SPIES! And finally amended it, today, after work on my desk with my best for-work red pen!
Notes and acknowledgements go at the end, for once - there are rather a lot. Suffice it to say I am very grateful tophilomytha, forthwritten and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimgray for their help with this story.
No spoilers for… well, anything past Cordelia's Honor, actually. Here are the trigger warning notes, please bear in mind they are VERY spoilery for the story itself: (skip) strong references to suicide.
As usual, please feel free to email/message for clarification.
In two parts because of LJ's posting limits. The link to part 2 is at the bottom.
fic:: the winter here is cold, and bitter
by Raven
17,000w, Vorkosigan saga. Simon Illyan & Aral Vorkosigan, and Cordelia. Simon Illyan is loyal, loved, and a perfect spy. One of these things is not as true as the others.
"People don't dare have sex with me, once they know." Simon yawned hugely, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "Imagine your pitch of breathing, your little gasps and moans, and worse, your failures – on record forever. This whole thing - it might be a change."
Aral chuckled darkly. "You're drunk, Simon."
"I'm not" – a quick look from under hooded eyelids, sharp as glass – "but I'm as far down that road as I ever may go."
Aral said, uneasily, "I ask a lot of you."
Simon laughed. "If you're only tumbling to that now, sir, perhaps I've been serving the wrong master all these years."
Aral said, in the tone he privately thought of as the up-and-at-'em-troops best baritone, "You're ready for this?" Despite himself, he didn't stop it coming out as a question.
"Yes," Simon answered – drawling, a little drunk and very relaxed. It made him sound almost… Vor. "Honey traps, agents provocateurs" – this with a very passable French accent – "and all. It sounds like one of Miles's Vorthalia the Bold stories."
"I can almost recite those by now," Aral said, ruefully. "Why do all the children love the Time of Isolation stories? Why is it always the darkest times they want to hear about over and over?"
"Colourful times, colourful tales." Simon considered. "When we were that age, it was too recent for children's stories." The tension funnelled back into him as he looked up. "Are you ready?"
He reached out a hand as he said it, an oddly open gesture. Aral wasn't sure, for a moment, what it meant, if it meant anything.
Not yet, Aral was thinking. "Yes," he said, and reached out to touch those white fingers, aware about the coming together of skin, the memory of it, imprinting somewhere, forever. "The Cetagandan reception is soon, and we'd – we'd best be ready."
"Well, then," Simon said, looking down at his own hand clasping on Aral's as though not sure exactly when they'd ended up shaking on it, but holding it still, not wanting to let go.
*
Cordelia brought the last message. She was ushered into Simon's inner office by his somewhat harassed-looking secretary; they had never exactly defined the Lady Regent's security clearance, but Simon knew that historically it had been on a level with her husband's, so he could bring work home. Simon suspected the policy had been drafted with a more demure soul in its sights than Cordelia Vorkosigan.
"Milady, how may I serve?" he asked, smoothly, his lips moving in the shape of you can't…
"I'm here," Cordelia said primly, her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, "to give you the seating plan arrangements for the Imperial Winterfair Ball."
Eight times out of ten Lady Alys Vorpatril would perform that little task, but there had been those two times out of ten, before, and besides, they hadn't, not yet…
"Thank you, milady," he said, and took the flimsies from her with a small bow and no further comment.
"Speaking of Winterfair," Cordelia went on, half-turning on the spot, "I understand you won't be joining us at the lake house this year, after all."
He stared at her. Given the opening, he said, "Things have been… different, recently, milady. Best not." The best lie is the truth.
"Quite," Cordelia said. "The boys and I will miss you, of course."
Simon nodded; this wasn't Cordelia's forte, exactly, but he'd never underestimate her native intelligence. The second best lie is by omission. "And I them," he said, honestly. Normally he'd take an afternoon at this time of year, he thought suddenly. Pick out some toy, perhaps a radio-controlled scout ship for Miles with another set of controllers for Ivan, and books for Gregor. He'd make it up to them later, he decided. "I enjoy being their eccentric uncle Simon."
"If by 'eccentric' you mean 'professional paranoid', they have other uncles fitting the description."
Simon half-smiled. "Yes, of course. Was there anything else, milady?"
"Nothing of import." She paused, drew a small piece of parchment – was it parchment? No, his chip supplied, accurately and unhelpfully, it was rice-paper.
"Milady?" he tried again, but she brought her finger to her lips, and that was right, wasn't it: audio pickups in this room but not vid pickups, a courtesy to the elevation of his office and a deference to the better recording between his ears.
"That will be all, Captain Illyan," Cordelia said severely, laid the small piece of rice-paper on his desk and breezed out.
Simon picked it up. Luck, it said in handwriting as familiar as his own. He looked at it for a few seconds, held the miniscule weight of it for a few seconds more, and then slowly, contemplatively, ate it.
*
When it came to it, the witnesses were carefully chosen: Lady Alys was doing the second iteration of the seating chart with Cordelia in the next room; some Vorkosigan Armsmen, young and thus more inclined to gossip, were in the kitchen, scavenging some food before dinner; Vortala was in the library of the house, waiting for the Regent to come out of conference. Aral had said he would rather the children, upstairs, didn't hear it, but they had agreed they wouldn't shout.
Simon stood up as Aral entered the room. "Well?"
"Well," Aral said, briskly. "I assume you wanted to discuss security arrangements for my upcoming visit to Komarr."
"Ah, yes." Simon had them at his command with no notes in hand, which was just as well. "I had thought another security perimeter, between inner and outer, and another layer of screening…"
"Simon," Aral said, conversationally, "has anyone ever told you that you are a passionless automaton?"
Without missing a beat, he strode forwards, power uncoiling into motion, and kissed him. Simon froze, then sank into it unrehearsed. For the first time he could remember he cursed his organic memory, cursed muscles and sinews and flesh and each of their betrayals, caught up with himself and found Aral's hands threading through his hair. "Should give them something else to talk about," Aral murmured, almost into Simon's mouth, and stepped back.
"Ah," Simon began, and stopped.
"A professional paranoid," Aral said, calm. He must have been talking to Cordelia, Simon thought, a little dizzily. "That's the job description. But it appears my Chief of ImpSec has no notion of the theatrical. Of the power a simple gesture can yield."
"Komarr," Simon managed, with initial difficulty quickly resolving into fluency, "is a ticking time bomb. To go there unprotected…"
"Two security perimeters full of ImpSec's finest is hardly unprotected. And if I come to them protected but unarmed, and ready to talk," Aral said, "they'll come back to me the same way. If I come to them with hands open, then…"
"They'll shoot you dead," Simon said. "You can't do it."
"Tell me," Aral said, deceptively light, "is that what you really think, or another instance of your continued reliance on a limited lexical toolbox? Can't, won't, mustn't. It gets tiresome."
"Things don't go to plan," Simon insisted. "ImpSec is redundancy after redundancy after redundancy – that's what we're for."
Aral raised his eyebrows. "Don't you trust me, Simon?" Such soft-voiced, dangerous, disingenuousness, Simon was thinking – but this man had raised armies.
Simon took a deep breath, but the answer was drawn out of him before he could stop himself: "Yes."
Aral frowned, almost pensive. "Then why, when I make a perfectly reasonable plan intended to improve the relationship of Barrayar with Komarr, as I'm both entitled and duty-bound to do, do you insist on raising these roadblocks in my path?"
"To free your mind for other things!" Simon said. "My organisation is Imperial Security and what we do is security. Why bring in advisers when you refuse to take their advice, for God's sake?"
"I'd be perfectly willing to take your advice, Simon, if I understood it." Aral lifted a hand, then dropped it. "I am not saying that security isn't required, that a great deal of security isn't required. I'm the Regent for a ten-year-old Emperor, I understand the nature of insecure power. But what I don't understand is the paranoia. How am I to govern, without the space to govern?"
Simon sighed. "It's your job to grab their hearts and minds," he said, slowly. "You raise them up with oratory. You lead armies into battle, I've seen you do it. You are a leader of men. That's your job. It is my job… to look after you."
Aral looked momentarily bemused. "To look after me?"
Simon nodded. He couldn't speak.
"That's a dangerous thing to imply, Captain Illyan," Aral said, still softly. "As though you spent your nights scraping me out of the gutter."
"I've done that, too." Simon bit back the rising, genuine frustration. And, suddenly, echoing that softness: "Though I had lived through a war, myself. Though I couldn't forget. Though I had no one to grant me my share of absolution. I went and I picked you up out of the gutters. I do not have the luxury of being Vor."
Aral hit him.
Simon stood for a few seconds with the blow ringing in his ears and his palms up. He let his hands drop to his sides and went out of the room. Cordelia and Lady Alys and the Armsmen were stepping out into the hallway; Vortala was coming down the stairs; Miles and Ivan – damn – were behind the upstairs banisters. They were all silent as he walked out.
*
Barrayar still didn't have a news media, per se. Perhaps, Aral had said once, by the time Gregor's children reached their majority, ImpSec would face the same problems the Escobaran and Betan governments did now – a voracious, irreverent, incisive free press being the first of them. But that didn't mean there weren't the first shoots of something growing to an inevitable fruition. Democracy in action, Aral had said, with the sharp smile of a man with near-absolute power; Simon had been grateful for a lifetime of only three score and ten.
In other news, simpered the Vorbarr Sultana Gazette (distributed and received via one's Armsmen through the capital, and for a few marks extra, hand-delivered into the provinces; the first port of call for those seeking a blow-by-blow rundown of debutante troop movements) beneath an extensive examination of the dresses to be worn by the Counts' lady wives at the upcoming Winterfair Ball, if you listen to the rumours percolating out of Vorkosigan House – and why wouldn't you - it seems as though the longest-standing political marriage in the Imperial government may be hitting a seven-year itch.
An ImpSec servitor at a party held by Countess Vorkalloner gave a full report of his night's observations, including the comment by one of the drunker Counts that Aral's dog might be biting through its leash.
A young analyst officer from a country Vor family was courting a girl from the Southern Continent, he explained, and her mother had invited him to dinner, and then asked, in the worthy context of her daughter's prospects, if Imperial Security were the right place any longer for an ambitious young man with an eye to government…
A minor policy briefing from the backbenchers of Aral Vorkosigan's Progressives, republished at this time every year, but this time with an unusual sentence highlighted: the Chief of Imperial Security is a political appointment, existing apart from the military rank of its holder…
From transcripts, oral reports, chip-aided memories: oh, but Alys Vorpatril was there, why don't you ask / she doesn't gossip, but my man Rowan had it from Vorkosigan's Armsman / Countess Vortala was at the Vorbrettens' last night, her husband, you know…
Simon slapped the stack of flimsies down on his desk in annoyance. Lady Alys, just entering from the outer office, looked at him in surprise. "The final guest arrangements for the reception for the guests from Eta Ceta," she said blandly, handing them over. "I understand Lady Vorkosigan has already undertaken the task of the Winterfair Ball."
Simon pulled himself together, took them from her, let the chip take care of instant cross-referencing against known threats, and signed with a flourish. "There you go."
"Thank you." She paused in the doorway. Her eyes were steady on him, and for some reason the chip dumped into his head the artificial memory of being slapped in the side of the head, an arcane, crystalline collision of forces with none of the organics: none of the shock and pain of it. "Captain Illyan. Simon…"
"Milady?" he said, automatically.
"It's nothing." She shook her head, uncharacteristically, and went out. He watched her go and sat back in his chair, wondering for a brief moment if the sun were high enough for him to start drinking. It was a very Aral Vorkosigan sort of thought, he decided, and went back to work.
*
Cordelia didn't generally drink at official Residence events, barring the inevitable and extensive toasts; against a background of vote-trading and intelligence-gathering, it was uncomfortably like drinking on the job. This, she reflected, was not the usual type of mornings after. Aral was in the bathroom shaving, and at the sound of her rolling over and groaning, brought through a glass of water and some painkillers.
"Thank you," she muttered, took them and waited the requisite five minutes for the analgesia to kick in. When the bright morning light had stopped drilling through her closed eyelids in a direct line to the back of her skull, she said, more animatedly, "Sorry."
"Nothing to apologise for." Aral waved a hand. "If I'd had the opportunity last night, I would have got totally smashed. Why are the Council of Ministers such a collective ass?"
"If I knew that, my love…" Cordelia waved a hand in return. "And you made some progress on Vorfolse and Vormercier, that's something."
"I did at that." Aral came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed and pushed her hair out of her face. "Was there any reason, particularly, or just the usual?"
"I suppose…" – Cordelia opened her eyes, screwed them up against the light and manfully went on – "in fact, there was a reason. Aral, Countess Vorinnis came up to me last night and asked me if I knew my husband was bisexual."
Aral said nothing, but straightened, lines of tension entering his body. "What did you say?"
Cordelia said, grinning at the memory, "I asked her if she knew what I did to the last person who implied as such to me."
On cue, he asked, "What did you…"
"I cut his head off." They exchanged practised and loving smiles. "And then I got fed up with the whole damn place and went to get drunk with Alys."
"Alys Vorpatril never…"
"No. But she was very kind to me, in a brisk sort of way." Cordelia smiled again, a little wryly. "Poor Alys. But in all seriousness, love, I am wondering why this particular piece of scandalous gossip is doing the rounds again now. It was so long ago, you and Ges Vorrutyer…"
Aral tensed again; Cordelia laid a hand on his arm, comforting but firm. "It's your horrendously bad taste in men that I disapprove of, love, not that you have taste in men. Why now?"
Still without relaxing his posture, Aral said, slowly, "Captain Illyan and I…"
"Ah, Simon," Cordelia said, understanding immediately, and thought about it for a moment. There was dust rising in the room, she noted absently, motes suspended in glorious sun.
"The infamous fight," she went on, reflective. "So… dramatic. Full of the requisite sexual undercurrents and of course muddied further by being broadcast to every corner of the capital by something like ten witnesses." She leaned back against her pillows, letting her gaze take in each corner of the room, the gaps beneath ancient skirting and moulding where, if they were there, the bugs would have been. ImpSec had swept the house thoroughly before the family and household had moved back in, following nearly six years' living at the Residence. Aral said nothing, and she glanced sideways at him. "Or… perhaps fewer witnesses than commonly thought. I didn't hear what he said to you before you hit him, love, but I heard – the sound of the impact."
"Cordelia," Aral said, in entreaty, and lifted two hands in a smooth curve, indicating those self-same corners and crannies. ImpSec, Cordelia thought, always ImpSec – and for a moment felt a dizzying vertigo, familiar but not felt, perhaps, since the very early days of this Regency, of being unable to trust anyone – or anything – at all. As an astrocartographer in the Survey, she had been on at least one ship plummeting into momentary freefall, delayed thruster spin coming online just a few moments later than strictly necessary. It was a similar feeling.
"The Cetagandan reception," Aral went on, "is the next event of note on the calendar. Perhaps the gossip will have died down by then."
"No," she said, truthfully. "You and Simon are constitutionally unable to resolve your differences without sexual tension and violence."
In a different tone, Aral said, "Cordelia, do you have to be so appallingly Betan about these things?"
"I have no choice," Cordelia answered, frowning. The warmth of a few moments before was conspicuous by its absence. "You and Simon…"
"Captain Illyan and I retain a professional working relationship," Aral said, for who knew what mythical listeners, and Cordelia got up, wandering in the direction of the bathroom to refill her glass. The water tasted of metal and salt.
*
The Regent left the capital in a lightflyer at the end of the week; his official statement said that he would be spending a few days with his family at Vorkosigan Surleau before returning, refreshed, in time for the pre-Winterfair festivities. It was true that this was a particularly political time of the year: a new Council session in the spring, and in the meantime, the closed rooms with smoke hanging in layers beneath the ceilings, the forging and reforging of alliances.
Experimentally, Simon tried the secure comconsole from his desk. "The Lord Regent has asked me to tell you," said the frosty voice emerging from the speakers even before the face had coalesced on the plate, "that he is sure you will only contact him in emergencies during this family time."
"I understand, Captain Koudelka," Simon said, wearily, and cut the com. Standing up, he looked around his office as though seeing it for the first time: the neat rows of flimsies and papers, the blinking lights. If he stepped out, there were two pictures on the wall in the outer office – a bland scene of the Dendarii Mountains, and a picture of the Investigatif Federale building on Escobar. The colours of the images merely served to highlight the drabness of their surroundings.
Making a decision, Simon picked up his coat and walked out, neglecting to call for a groundcar despite the snow coming down in billows outside. He'd walked through worse as a child and as a young man, born further north than Vorbarr Sultana to a crofting family, and besides, the city had what he'd come to think of as its prole compensations. He smiled a little at the sight of the Winterfair street markets, a nightmare for ImpSec when they set up within the set number of blocks from the Imperial Residence, but at the moment their lights and colours were a balm. He drew his hood down against the flurry and stopped to buy a hot twist of pastry with something sweet and creamy inside, chewing it methodically as he walked down the street towards his apartment.
Being born in the cold didn't mean you had to like it. He stepped away from the icy spray thrown up by the groundcars passing and pressed himself against the wall, his mind hitting a familiar groove and stubbornly refusing to move on to something else until it had completed the well-worn track. The capital city on Escobar, at this time of year, would be golden with sunlight. They had street vendors there, too, tiny booths selling glasses of lime and sugar with a sprig of mint. The fantasy lasted as long as the pastry – ImpSec's relations with Barrayaran consulates and embassies were multiply complex, interesting, firmly in his need-to-know pile, but it was a fantasy nonetheless: filling in his name, his rank, his useful skills, his potential contributions to the society of Escobar, all in the right boxes, then coming to rest on the one marked "Reasons for emigration from previous domicile", and writing "Please see attached continuation sheets".
The chip processed external inputs only – it couldn't tell you how many times you had a single dream. Simon sighed and threw the paper wrapper into a nearby receptacle, and went up the steps to his tiny apartment.
There was a rose in front of the door. Simon picked it up, thoughtfully – his mail, both here and at HQ, was checked by a team of analysts, parcels and letters scanned, the postal employees shaken down. If it was still here, after that, then it was just… a rose. Two, actually, twisted together round a sprig of wire, one white, one crimson.
"Ah," Simon said, out loud, and hissed at a thorn breaking his skin: it was the pad of his index finger, stinging now in the cold. Methodically, he pushed it as far it would go and watched the bright sphere of blood rise, drop like a red blossom on the snow. "Ah."
*
The only force more unstoppable than nerve disruptor fire, Imperial courier pickets and the family Vorkosigan was, Simon thought sourly, gossip. The ImpSec contingent tasked with checking his private mail were technically employed as security for Vorbarr Sultana District; the team who checked his mail on its way to his desk were HQ all through. And they all talked, within these walls, no matter how discreet and professional they were elsewhere; he had no doubt that the increase in suppressed smiles as he walked through the windowless corridors had them as its root cause. When run through on his chip, the men's expressions were depressingly readable. Illyan's got a secret admirer. Or, closer on-point: the Chief's finally getting laid. Simon wondered sometimes how old they thought he was. The youngest of them might be in their early twenties, but he was only just thirty-five, himself.
But, he thought, that was it, wasn't it: it could be from an admirer. There were no booby-traps, no results from the toxicology screen, no hidden poison darts, no innovative way of converting it into a weapon. It was just… two roses, one white, one red, twisted together with their own stems and a little wire. It could have come from any florist in the city. The one from the previous day was – he paused to groan at himself – on his bedside table. Carefully, avoiding the thorns, he picked up the second one from his in-tray and took it downstairs and out.
In the days when it had been occupied by Princess Kareen, the social secretary's office at the Imperial Residence had always had the air of a sanctuary to it. The Emperor, ImpSec, the Ministry for Political Education – none of them had thought it properly their own domain, and consequently it had an internal freedom not enjoyed elsewhere in the machinery of government. Since those days it had opened outwards and become a force in its own right, teaching ImpSec to buttle and the Imperial Service as a whole to behave itself. Simon stepped within when invited and said, "Milady."
"Captain Illyan, come in." Alys Vorpatril looked up from her broad and beautifully made desk and the seating charts spread enthusiastically across it. "Take a seat. Would you like something to drink?"
"Ah, no," he said, unconsciously reaching for his best manners. There were very few memories of his mother on the chip, but one of them appeared before his mind's eye for a moment: a simple family meal, a little before Escobar, take your elbows off the table, Simon, and have more potatoes. He smiled a little and sat up straight. "Thank you."
She smiled in return, the winter sun filtering through the window behind her, bringing life to the sculpted bones of her face. Not for the first time, Simon was struck with the sheer vivid presence of her. "How can I help you, Captain Illyan?" she asked, her hands opening in welcome. "And are you here in official capacity?"
"Yes, I am," he said, relaxing a little. "An officer in ImpSec's employ" – the best lie is the truth – "has been receiving, ah, interesting deliveries." As he spoke, he took out the roses from the envelope he'd put them in for safekeeping. "Short of freeze-drying them and dissolving them in acid, these have been subject to every kind of weapons and toxicology testing. If there is a message in them, it's not lethal, and it's not a cipher: what message there may be exists in the things themselves. It occurs to me that the symbolism of flowers might be more in your line than ImpSec's."
"Let me see," she said, and he handed them over. "Locally obtained," she said, thoughtfully, turning them over in her hands, bringing them to her nose and taking a moment to assess the fragrance. "I assume your analysts got that far? It's a variety grown around Vorbarr Sultana. They're very similar to the ones we use for Imperial functions. They could be from the same supplier, in fact."
Simon nodded – ImpSec had got so far, without the fine detail. "So we take them at face value?"
"For a particular notion of 'face value', yes." She offered them back to him; surprised, he accepted and held them loosely in both hands. "Red roses symbolise true love undying. White, innocence and purity. Hence the bouquets for girls coming out. But together…" She paused, then looked up at him. "We try to avoid it, especially in arrangements for official events. Blood" – her hand on the red rose he was holding, then the white one – "and bone. Does that mean anything to you?"
"A threat," he said, quietly. "Rather, a warning. Of what will remain."
Alys held his gaze. "You received this yourself, didn't you?"
He gave her a half-smile. "Someone in ImpSec's employ. Thank you for your help, Lady Alys."
She nodded and rose alongside him, walking with him to the door. "Good luck, Simon," she said, almost too softly to hear, as he went out.
*
The offer came three days after the Lord Regent and his household returned to the capital. The reception was that night – supposedly for the edification of the Cetagandan delegation, but part of the usual glittering dance. Politically speaking, playing host to the Cetagandan ambassador and his entourage was diplomacy; the real interest had been the drawing in of the intelligence network, if only for a few days. "There will be more of them," Aral had said, "and they will be close together and in train to their masters, and they will make mistakes."
ImpSec were out in full force, no doubt playing their roles as wait staff and footmen with their usual aplomb. Lady Alys had insisted that they receive instruction in their housekeeping duties as well as the more usual weapons training; Simon had been grimly amused at men he knew to be expert marksmen discovering hitherto unsuspected talents for wait service. Each unfamiliar face had been checked, cross-checked and cleared, but as Simon had observed to his secretary, by usual protocol, "Cetagandan" was enough to have a person wiped from a guest list at Vorkosigan House. Each one had a tail, at least, and there were a dozen more agents secreted at various points around the house and its perimeter on top of the usual complement. Simon breathed in, breathed out and went up the steps.
The house guard commander was former ImpSec and saluted by instinct; Simon acknowledged it with a nod and entered the house, the polished marble ringing beneath his polished boots.
Aral said, "Good evening, Captain Illyan."
"Good evening, my lord Regent," Simon said, bowing a little, and handed over his day's reports. "For your perusal."
"Thank you," Aral said, eyes resting coolly on him for a few moments before he turned to continue his conversation with two more progressive Counts. "You're dismissed."
Simon nodded before he went on, turning to make the walk through the internal doors towards the large hall. His chip processed in the background – no one here who wasn't on his list; women beginning to re-enter the great space of the room now the post-prandial cigars and port-drinking had finished – and there was Cordelia at the end of the room, resplendent in sea-green and silver. Her eyes skimmed over him, never quite settling long enough to catch his gaze.
Suddenly feeling tired, Simon leaned against a table covered in canapés. It was a myth, he reflected, that the Chief of ImpSec tasted the Regent's food – but it had been a long time since lunch. He took a bite into a shrimp puff, chewed it thoughtfully, swallowed and looked up at the man beside him. "Good evening, ghem-Colonel Esteban."
Esteban chuckled with something approaching delight. "It's true, then. You do remember everything."
It was true that the chip had cross-referenced the man's facial features against every report and list he'd laid eyes on over the last week, almost without conscious input from him. But Simon had a brief, fuzzy organic memory of the man's face in the entourage following the ambassador into the house from the fleet of ImpSec-provided groundcars. It was the advantage of the sweeping robes and the face paint, he decided: take them away, and the anonymity was eerily efficient. "Captain Simon Illyan, sir," he said politely. "I am the Lord Regent's Chief of Imperial Security."
Esteban chuckled again. "Believe me, I know. Simon Illyan, the most frightening mind in the Barrayaran Imperium. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Likewise." Cetagandans didn't shake hands. Simon bowed, slightly, and looked down at his feet for a moment.
"I've been to one of these things before," Esteban volunteered unexpectedly. "Couple of years back. Don't have your memory, of course, but I'm sure you were at the Regent's heels then. Abolishing you, is he?"
"No." Simon risked a quick glance to either side, letting the chip take in the data and reviewing it while staring directly at Esteban's pleasant, bland face. The party was mellowing; the first people were edging from drinking to drunk; the dancing was coming to a close. All well, then. He schooled his own expression into a matching blandness. "The Lord Regent and I maintain a professional working relationship."
"Oh, really?" This time, Esteban's gaze followed his own downwards. "There is a sonic baffler on the base of that table leg, I believe."
"Yes." Simon smiled. "It muffles all conversation within a three-metre radius."
"Someone must monitor it, of course." The bluffness slid off the man's face like water, to be replaced with a more calculating look.
"Yes. I do."
Esteban snorted. "How very convenient for us. Let me say again, then: the last time I attended one of these gatherings, you were at the Regent's heels. As I believe you have been for seven years or more."
"At first," Simon murmured, "I was spying on him. Things do have a way of changing in an instant, especially after they've been building up for some time."
"I’m not, now, offering you anything you don't have already," Esteban said, direct. "Nor asking for anything you're unwilling to give. Allow me a further audience, Captain Illyan. That's a beginning."
Simon nodded. "I'll consider it."
"An analyst's caution." Esteban looked at him with equally cautious approval. "I see my colleagues are beckoning me over. It was good meeting you."
"And you," Simon said, leaning back against the table as the Cetagandan stepped briskly away. After a moment he reached out for his half-eaten shrimp puff, and ate the rest in a single bite.
*
Simon went into HQ on Winterfair, as usual; he walked down the silent streets early in the morning, picking his way carefully through the slush. He dropped in on the skeleton staff and dispensed encouragement and gratitude – the men were slouched in their chairs and handing around candied fruit, but not one had uttered a complaint about missing the holiday with their families, and Simon's appreciation was genuine if muted – and then went up to his own office, checking his message and chasing the status of several galactic reports he was waiting for. There were two roses, one red, one white, perched on the corner of his in-tray, and a tiny bud vase with an inch of water in the base had been left by his secretary in the outer office. Simon rolled his eyes, put the roses into the water and placed them on his desk, at his right hand.
The silence in the building was unusually complete, the dim sounds of water pipes and heating emerging as a deep resonance beneath everything. He used the time to undertake equally quiet housekeeping tasks of his own, inserting marginalia into field agent reports before requesting amendments. From outside, even through the force-shielding, he could hear the sound of bells. Mid-morning, when the sun had begun to emerge from the low winter cloud, he reached for his coat and scarf and went back out.
There was a little traffic, now, carefully sweeping through the standing water on the streets. The chip chose that moment to dump images of lime and sugar in glasses; he smiled, briefly, as his mind worked its way through the same old fantasy, all the details of the emigration paperwork, the mint sprig. The chip gave him the memory of the last winter walk home, the sweetness of the pastry, and lingered on the bloodied rose thorn.
On his doorstep were two more roses; he picked them up and threw them in the sink on his way to flop down in one of his kitchen chairs. He pushed away some reports on the little wooden table so he could rest his head on his elbows. The room was quiet, quieter than HQ had been, though still with the underscoring notes of the bells. When they faded, the silence was choking. He was tired, again, feeling tired in his bones, as though they were cracking from within in the cold.
He lifted his head, and then put it back down.
From memory, he reviewed the shelves above his head: there was a box, wrapped, containing a radio-controlled courier ship, next to another viewer loaded with adventure stories for boys, and on the shelf above that, two bottles of maple mead, brought back from Vorkosigan's District. He considered cracking one of them open, but the weariness, suddenly, was too much for him; in one rush of movement he threw off his boots and lay down on his bed on top of the covers.
He slept, soundly and dreamlessly, for several hours, until the bells rang again, shortly after sunset. Simon came awake at the change in the air, glanced at his chrono and began mustering his formal dress greens.
At the Imperial Winterfair Ball, glittering with candlelight and sconces and alive with political machination, Simon presented the day's report to the Lord Regent, who had returned from Vorkosigan Surleau in the early afternoon, nodded coolly at Cordelia and Lady Alys, took a tiny cheese tart from a roving waiter with a tray of canapés – ImpSec; the man gave no sign of recognition – and went to lean against the far wall, beside a large potted plant and a tiny, wall-mounted sonic baffler.
"The greetings of the season to you, Captain Illyan." Despite his bulk, Esteban moved like a cat. "Is that the customary phrasing?"
"Something like that." Simon nodded. "And to you, Colonel."
"I believe the holiday has its roots in old Earth culture," Esteban mused. "From what preparatory reading I was able to do."
"Yes, that's right." Simon nodded again. "It arises from an old religious festival celebrated at the close of the year. There were several, in fact, celebrated at similar times. My first language is Barrayaran Russian; my mother's family came originally from a part of the old world where the winter festival was marked later, after the New Year celebration."
Esteban nodded, and there was a pregnant pause. "Well, Captain Illyan?"
Simon looked out over the glittering room, the dancers turning in slow circles around the floor. It was early and there were still a very few children present, Miles and Ivan with heads bent together in one corner, flanked by Armsmen Bothari and Esterhazy; Gregor, too, still a child despite the alarmingly serious expression on his little face, with Cordelia and Lady Alys watching over him from a safe distance. None of them turned to meet his gaze.
Simon nodded. "I accept."
"I'm pleased to hear it." Esteban's expression didn't change. "It's the time of year for sweet things and flowers, Captain Illyan."
Simon nodded again and found he was smiling despite himself. "Yes. Let's talk Winterfair gifts."
*
"All right." Aral looked carefully around the room. "You, Prime Minister, you stand there. Admiral Kanzian, you next to him. Cordelia…"
Cordelia shrugged and stepped forwards for a better view.
"Ridiculous idea," Aral muttered, pushing his seal dagger into his thumb and letting the blood run out, "this sort of ritual self-mutilation in the spirit of some kind of faux-archaic veracity." He sealed the document with his signet ring, the mark quickly drying to dull red-brown. "Right, Kanzian, Vortala? Did you see that? You may have to give your names' words on it, so please don't say you blinked."
"My lord Regent," Vortala said, "one receives the impression you may not be taking this quite seriously."
"That’s the influence of my lady wife," Aral said, "who quite rightly believes that any government maintained on the force of ancient signs and sigils and a hefty dollop of concentrated belief should not take itself quite seriously. Are we quite finished now?"
"That should do it," Vortala said. "Good luck, my lord. And you, milady."
"Thank you." Aral bowed at them both, formally; they returned the gesture and left the room, Kanzian saluting before he disappeared through the door. Once the Admiral and Prime Minister were in their downward shuttle, the ship would leave its home orbit and set out for Komarr. For a few minutes, Aral was left alone with Cordelia, next to the window showing Barrayar revolving below. The ship made a circuit of the planet every two hours, and had made several since leaving Tannery Base on the cold morning after Winterfair.
"The terminator," Cordelia said suddenly, as the abrupt slice into darkness hove into view. Aral watched it, remembering that Cordelia had seen many more worlds than he had, had lifted new earth from their surfaces with her bare hands, had looked up into their alien skies and mapped their stars.
"Why are we doing this?" he asked, suddenly.
Cordelia glanced at him. "We're doing this to make things better. We're doing this to convince the Komarran government that we have their best interests at heart. We're doing this so Gregor won't have the same troubles you have. But you knew all that, so I don't think that's what you were asking."
"Not this." Aral made an expansive gesture, trying to bring it all in. It had been a day for thinking about it: about the battlefield of history that had led them this far. "This. All of this. Everything."
Cordelia said nothing for a moment, looking out at the planet below. "There," she said quietly, pointing to the last of the day, the last glow of the world's light. In its wake came the regions in night, lit in jewelled patterns of cities and roads, transit networks like terrestrial constellations. It had a rawness underneath its beauty. "That's why. For the good of us all, my love."
Aral put an arm around her, took a deep breath, and felt the lurch beneath his skin, the ship starting to accelerate.
*
The rumour mill was no doubt going to be working overtime. The agents assigned as his own personal security screen when out and about were under strict permanent instructions to keep their distance. But they had been witnesses to the flowers, of course, and they would have been shamefully remiss in their duties not to notice their Chief had been waylaid from his simple route home, via a local drinking establishment, by a woman with a great deal of dark hair braided and piled on top of her head, and just the right crimson lipstick for contrast.
Simon tried to explain this to his new companion, who merely chuckled irritatingly and attempted to put an arm around his shoulders; his reflexes cut in, and they jerked back to walking with half a metre's separation. "Look like you aren't quite hating it, can you?" she said, laughing, but quietly. And after a moment, "Are you telling me that they've never seen – that you've never…"
Simon sighed. "Is this relevant?"
"Well, I'd say so. Our success rather depends on it, doesn't it? Is there somewhere…"
"Not my apartment, not yet," Simon said quickly. "There are public parks to the back of the Residence and HQ, but they're likely bugged or may have other agents out tonight." He took a moment to sift through the relevant data on his chip. "Yes, they do. I think I know. Come on."
It only took a few minutes' scanning of the street to find what he was looking for; she followed him obediently as he flagged down the tiny red lightflyer, and the door lifted open to allow them inside. "On the automated traffic network," he explained as she slid in beside him and the door closed. He touched the panel almost at random, and they began moving, smoothly, into the next gap in airborne traffic. "At quiet times they don't need drivers – just enter a credit chit and key in your destination. They're under ordinary city surveillance, but that's routed through ImpSec HQ. Through my office." He gave her a constrained smile.
"And the agents tailing? Where will they think you're going?"
He spread his hands. "Your place, not mine."
She chuckled. "Lord save me from professional spies." Under the protection of the glass canopy, she had relaxed, and he caught the tinge of an accent in her voice. "So… efficient."
"You don't number yourself in that category?" he asked, curiously.
"I consider myself… a talented amateur." She grinned cheerfully at him. "With some very generous and interesting employers, of course."
"Of course," he agreed. His almost-random choice of destination was out on the edge of the city transport network, and they were beginning to lift free of urban crush, out towards clear green landscape. Thoughtfully, he altered their speed to two thirds of maximum. "And who are you?"
She fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly at him. "You don't know?"
He raised his index finger. "One, you're clearly experienced at the work – no one who wasn't could have come upon me quite so quietly in the bar." Another finger. "Two – you're in the employ of our mutual friends, but you're not one of them." He paused. "Which suggests, three: you're in this for pay rather than conviction. From Escobar, by the accent? But perhaps by way of somewhere else. Beta Colony?" A thought occurred. "Komarr?"
"Very good." She gave him a flirtatious smile. "Now, to business." She drew a small item from her pocket, made of nondescript brushed metal. "A portable version of the useful things on your table legs," she explained. "I appreciate the privacy you've obtained for us, but we can't be too careful. My masters have asked me to establish things. Firstly, a handle."
"A handle?"
"You haven't had a handler before, have you?" She smiled. "It's how we do things: the agent names their handler, and vice versa."
Simon thought about it. "January."
"Ah, a classical education, I see. Sure you haven't done this before?"
"Military education," he corrected. "Don't confuse the two, not here. I reported to Emperor Ezar directly, and now…" He shrugged. "And now the rest is dust."
"Yes." She grinned. "There's the question of keeping you, ah, handled."
"Excuse me?"
"Perhaps it can wait for our next meeting." She motioned at the glass; the lightflyer was tipping into descent, at a broad green space just outside the city limits. It was owned by the Vorkosigan family in their capacity as caretakers of their District; at the moment it represented a last strip of city green belt, quiet and undeveloped. Simon took manual control six feet from the ground and gave them a gentle landing.
"I take it," he said dryly, "we are having another meeting."
"You can still…" She gestured, then her eyes turned wicked. "Perhaps it didn't work out. Perhaps the planet didn't move for you."
Simon smiled, humourlessly, and leaned back. "I wouldn't give up, in that case."
"Good." She popped the canopy and dropped lightly onto the dark ground. "Don’t call us, we'll call you" – and she was gone.
*
"Native Komarrans," said Dr. Prestwick impressively, sitting back in his velvet-upholstered chair, "have leadership without caste."
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "That's a generalisation."
Aral laid a hand on her arm. "From which I'm to understand that you don't believe you can cooperate with a society that does?"
"Well, quite." Prestwick leaned in. "That you, the Butcher of Komarr, should come here and say to us – to me – that you're trying to enter into, what is it, some sort of secret political scheme to buy my allegiance…"
"Not at all." Aral was calm. "It wouldn't be my first choice for how to go about things, sir, but it's how your government works, after all. You have voting shares – I'm offering to buy them. A beneficial interest in them, at any rate. You can see here" – he pulled out his sealed charter – "the list of what I'm willing to offer. This is a document sealed by Imperial order. Believe me, for me to renege on any of its terms would not be political machination, it would be treason. What's offered here benefits your planet, and you personally, and all you have to do is offer your voice, and your share, in my support."
Prestwick looked unimpressed. "If it's all even and above board, then why are you making these visits in secret?"
Aral smiled thinly. "I believe you have legislation forbidding insider trading of publically listed securities? Consider it analogous."
Prestwick sat silently for a moment, the cogs visibly turning. Then he straightened, his muscles tensing with decision. "This interview is over." He stood up, and to her clear surprise, nodded at Cordelia. "I've greatly enjoyed your company, Captain Naismith. But your husband's demands are not primus inter pares but those of the conqueror to the conquered. A very good night to you."
They were shown out, from the man's inner sanctum through to his lusciously appointed anterooms, and onto the street outside. The dome blurred the sky above, but not enough to obscure how much time had passed.
"Well," Aral said, sighing, "that went well. Armsman, onwards and upwards."
Esterhazy nodded. "Are you quite all right, sir?"
"What?" Aral glanced at him. "Oh, I'm fine. Just discouraged by the shameful refusal of these people to, ah, be bought." He smiled despite himself. "On to the next one on the list, please."
The list wasn't recorded anywhere but inside Esterhazy's head. He nodded, and they began the short walk to their anonymous-looking vehicle, parked somewhere out of the way during their conference.
"It's not that bad," Cordelia said consolingly. "At least he granted us an audience. And he was right, you know – this sneaking around, from oligarch to prominent politician to head of family with suspiciously large business interests, pushing our own agenda, it does feel like…"
"It's above board," Aral said firmly. "Surely no one here is so politically naïve that they believe decisions are made anywhere but in the small back rooms. That's why we went through the whole palaver with the sealing – to show them that this is real."
"On Beta Colony," Cordelia began, "we wouldn't…"
Esterhazy reacted so smoothly she was still opening her mouth to speak as they hit the ground. "Down!" he yelled, pushed them both, dropped and rolled himself, pushing his wristcom. Aral landed properly through the reflexes of long training, making sure Cordelia was following as they took cover behind the car; above them they could hear Esterhazy's shouts, the distant buzzing of stunner fire, and then the sound of a vehicle accelerating so fast it skidded round a corner, the shriek of tyres against the gravelled road surface, and then, at last, silence.
It was later, when they had been removed into orbit for their own safety, and Solstice dome police and ImpSec Komarr had traded threats and insults and forged, in their inimitable way, the sort of separate peace this whole trip was about in any case, that the doubts began to creep in.
on to part two
Notes and acknowledgements go at the end, for once - there are rather a lot. Suffice it to say I am very grateful to
philomytha, forthwritten and shimgray for their help with this story.No spoilers for… well, anything past Cordelia's Honor, actually. Here are the trigger warning notes, please bear in mind they are VERY spoilery for the story itself: (skip) strong references to suicide.
As usual, please feel free to email/message for clarification.
In two parts because of LJ's posting limits. The link to part 2 is at the bottom.
fic:: the winter here is cold, and bitter
by Raven
17,000w, Vorkosigan saga. Simon Illyan & Aral Vorkosigan, and Cordelia. Simon Illyan is loyal, loved, and a perfect spy. One of these things is not as true as the others.
"People don't dare have sex with me, once they know." Simon yawned hugely, leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. "Imagine your pitch of breathing, your little gasps and moans, and worse, your failures – on record forever. This whole thing - it might be a change."
Aral chuckled darkly. "You're drunk, Simon."
"I'm not" – a quick look from under hooded eyelids, sharp as glass – "but I'm as far down that road as I ever may go."
Aral said, uneasily, "I ask a lot of you."
Simon laughed. "If you're only tumbling to that now, sir, perhaps I've been serving the wrong master all these years."
Aral said, in the tone he privately thought of as the up-and-at-'em-troops best baritone, "You're ready for this?" Despite himself, he didn't stop it coming out as a question.
"Yes," Simon answered – drawling, a little drunk and very relaxed. It made him sound almost… Vor. "Honey traps, agents provocateurs" – this with a very passable French accent – "and all. It sounds like one of Miles's Vorthalia the Bold stories."
"I can almost recite those by now," Aral said, ruefully. "Why do all the children love the Time of Isolation stories? Why is it always the darkest times they want to hear about over and over?"
"Colourful times, colourful tales." Simon considered. "When we were that age, it was too recent for children's stories." The tension funnelled back into him as he looked up. "Are you ready?"
He reached out a hand as he said it, an oddly open gesture. Aral wasn't sure, for a moment, what it meant, if it meant anything.
Not yet, Aral was thinking. "Yes," he said, and reached out to touch those white fingers, aware about the coming together of skin, the memory of it, imprinting somewhere, forever. "The Cetagandan reception is soon, and we'd – we'd best be ready."
"Well, then," Simon said, looking down at his own hand clasping on Aral's as though not sure exactly when they'd ended up shaking on it, but holding it still, not wanting to let go.
Cordelia brought the last message. She was ushered into Simon's inner office by his somewhat harassed-looking secretary; they had never exactly defined the Lady Regent's security clearance, but Simon knew that historically it had been on a level with her husband's, so he could bring work home. Simon suspected the policy had been drafted with a more demure soul in its sights than Cordelia Vorkosigan.
"Milady, how may I serve?" he asked, smoothly, his lips moving in the shape of you can't…
"I'm here," Cordelia said primly, her eyes fixed on the opposite wall, "to give you the seating plan arrangements for the Imperial Winterfair Ball."
Eight times out of ten Lady Alys Vorpatril would perform that little task, but there had been those two times out of ten, before, and besides, they hadn't, not yet…
"Thank you, milady," he said, and took the flimsies from her with a small bow and no further comment.
"Speaking of Winterfair," Cordelia went on, half-turning on the spot, "I understand you won't be joining us at the lake house this year, after all."
He stared at her. Given the opening, he said, "Things have been… different, recently, milady. Best not." The best lie is the truth.
"Quite," Cordelia said. "The boys and I will miss you, of course."
Simon nodded; this wasn't Cordelia's forte, exactly, but he'd never underestimate her native intelligence. The second best lie is by omission. "And I them," he said, honestly. Normally he'd take an afternoon at this time of year, he thought suddenly. Pick out some toy, perhaps a radio-controlled scout ship for Miles with another set of controllers for Ivan, and books for Gregor. He'd make it up to them later, he decided. "I enjoy being their eccentric uncle Simon."
"If by 'eccentric' you mean 'professional paranoid', they have other uncles fitting the description."
Simon half-smiled. "Yes, of course. Was there anything else, milady?"
"Nothing of import." She paused, drew a small piece of parchment – was it parchment? No, his chip supplied, accurately and unhelpfully, it was rice-paper.
"Milady?" he tried again, but she brought her finger to her lips, and that was right, wasn't it: audio pickups in this room but not vid pickups, a courtesy to the elevation of his office and a deference to the better recording between his ears.
"That will be all, Captain Illyan," Cordelia said severely, laid the small piece of rice-paper on his desk and breezed out.
Simon picked it up. Luck, it said in handwriting as familiar as his own. He looked at it for a few seconds, held the miniscule weight of it for a few seconds more, and then slowly, contemplatively, ate it.
When it came to it, the witnesses were carefully chosen: Lady Alys was doing the second iteration of the seating chart with Cordelia in the next room; some Vorkosigan Armsmen, young and thus more inclined to gossip, were in the kitchen, scavenging some food before dinner; Vortala was in the library of the house, waiting for the Regent to come out of conference. Aral had said he would rather the children, upstairs, didn't hear it, but they had agreed they wouldn't shout.
Simon stood up as Aral entered the room. "Well?"
"Well," Aral said, briskly. "I assume you wanted to discuss security arrangements for my upcoming visit to Komarr."
"Ah, yes." Simon had them at his command with no notes in hand, which was just as well. "I had thought another security perimeter, between inner and outer, and another layer of screening…"
"Simon," Aral said, conversationally, "has anyone ever told you that you are a passionless automaton?"
Without missing a beat, he strode forwards, power uncoiling into motion, and kissed him. Simon froze, then sank into it unrehearsed. For the first time he could remember he cursed his organic memory, cursed muscles and sinews and flesh and each of their betrayals, caught up with himself and found Aral's hands threading through his hair. "Should give them something else to talk about," Aral murmured, almost into Simon's mouth, and stepped back.
"Ah," Simon began, and stopped.
"A professional paranoid," Aral said, calm. He must have been talking to Cordelia, Simon thought, a little dizzily. "That's the job description. But it appears my Chief of ImpSec has no notion of the theatrical. Of the power a simple gesture can yield."
"Komarr," Simon managed, with initial difficulty quickly resolving into fluency, "is a ticking time bomb. To go there unprotected…"
"Two security perimeters full of ImpSec's finest is hardly unprotected. And if I come to them protected but unarmed, and ready to talk," Aral said, "they'll come back to me the same way. If I come to them with hands open, then…"
"They'll shoot you dead," Simon said. "You can't do it."
"Tell me," Aral said, deceptively light, "is that what you really think, or another instance of your continued reliance on a limited lexical toolbox? Can't, won't, mustn't. It gets tiresome."
"Things don't go to plan," Simon insisted. "ImpSec is redundancy after redundancy after redundancy – that's what we're for."
Aral raised his eyebrows. "Don't you trust me, Simon?" Such soft-voiced, dangerous, disingenuousness, Simon was thinking – but this man had raised armies.
Simon took a deep breath, but the answer was drawn out of him before he could stop himself: "Yes."
Aral frowned, almost pensive. "Then why, when I make a perfectly reasonable plan intended to improve the relationship of Barrayar with Komarr, as I'm both entitled and duty-bound to do, do you insist on raising these roadblocks in my path?"
"To free your mind for other things!" Simon said. "My organisation is Imperial Security and what we do is security. Why bring in advisers when you refuse to take their advice, for God's sake?"
"I'd be perfectly willing to take your advice, Simon, if I understood it." Aral lifted a hand, then dropped it. "I am not saying that security isn't required, that a great deal of security isn't required. I'm the Regent for a ten-year-old Emperor, I understand the nature of insecure power. But what I don't understand is the paranoia. How am I to govern, without the space to govern?"
Simon sighed. "It's your job to grab their hearts and minds," he said, slowly. "You raise them up with oratory. You lead armies into battle, I've seen you do it. You are a leader of men. That's your job. It is my job… to look after you."
Aral looked momentarily bemused. "To look after me?"
Simon nodded. He couldn't speak.
"That's a dangerous thing to imply, Captain Illyan," Aral said, still softly. "As though you spent your nights scraping me out of the gutter."
"I've done that, too." Simon bit back the rising, genuine frustration. And, suddenly, echoing that softness: "Though I had lived through a war, myself. Though I couldn't forget. Though I had no one to grant me my share of absolution. I went and I picked you up out of the gutters. I do not have the luxury of being Vor."
Aral hit him.
Simon stood for a few seconds with the blow ringing in his ears and his palms up. He let his hands drop to his sides and went out of the room. Cordelia and Lady Alys and the Armsmen were stepping out into the hallway; Vortala was coming down the stairs; Miles and Ivan – damn – were behind the upstairs banisters. They were all silent as he walked out.
Barrayar still didn't have a news media, per se. Perhaps, Aral had said once, by the time Gregor's children reached their majority, ImpSec would face the same problems the Escobaran and Betan governments did now – a voracious, irreverent, incisive free press being the first of them. But that didn't mean there weren't the first shoots of something growing to an inevitable fruition. Democracy in action, Aral had said, with the sharp smile of a man with near-absolute power; Simon had been grateful for a lifetime of only three score and ten.
In other news, simpered the Vorbarr Sultana Gazette (distributed and received via one's Armsmen through the capital, and for a few marks extra, hand-delivered into the provinces; the first port of call for those seeking a blow-by-blow rundown of debutante troop movements) beneath an extensive examination of the dresses to be worn by the Counts' lady wives at the upcoming Winterfair Ball, if you listen to the rumours percolating out of Vorkosigan House – and why wouldn't you - it seems as though the longest-standing political marriage in the Imperial government may be hitting a seven-year itch.
An ImpSec servitor at a party held by Countess Vorkalloner gave a full report of his night's observations, including the comment by one of the drunker Counts that Aral's dog might be biting through its leash.
A young analyst officer from a country Vor family was courting a girl from the Southern Continent, he explained, and her mother had invited him to dinner, and then asked, in the worthy context of her daughter's prospects, if Imperial Security were the right place any longer for an ambitious young man with an eye to government…
A minor policy briefing from the backbenchers of Aral Vorkosigan's Progressives, republished at this time every year, but this time with an unusual sentence highlighted: the Chief of Imperial Security is a political appointment, existing apart from the military rank of its holder…
From transcripts, oral reports, chip-aided memories: oh, but Alys Vorpatril was there, why don't you ask / she doesn't gossip, but my man Rowan had it from Vorkosigan's Armsman / Countess Vortala was at the Vorbrettens' last night, her husband, you know…
Simon slapped the stack of flimsies down on his desk in annoyance. Lady Alys, just entering from the outer office, looked at him in surprise. "The final guest arrangements for the reception for the guests from Eta Ceta," she said blandly, handing them over. "I understand Lady Vorkosigan has already undertaken the task of the Winterfair Ball."
Simon pulled himself together, took them from her, let the chip take care of instant cross-referencing against known threats, and signed with a flourish. "There you go."
"Thank you." She paused in the doorway. Her eyes were steady on him, and for some reason the chip dumped into his head the artificial memory of being slapped in the side of the head, an arcane, crystalline collision of forces with none of the organics: none of the shock and pain of it. "Captain Illyan. Simon…"
"Milady?" he said, automatically.
"It's nothing." She shook her head, uncharacteristically, and went out. He watched her go and sat back in his chair, wondering for a brief moment if the sun were high enough for him to start drinking. It was a very Aral Vorkosigan sort of thought, he decided, and went back to work.
Cordelia didn't generally drink at official Residence events, barring the inevitable and extensive toasts; against a background of vote-trading and intelligence-gathering, it was uncomfortably like drinking on the job. This, she reflected, was not the usual type of mornings after. Aral was in the bathroom shaving, and at the sound of her rolling over and groaning, brought through a glass of water and some painkillers.
"Thank you," she muttered, took them and waited the requisite five minutes for the analgesia to kick in. When the bright morning light had stopped drilling through her closed eyelids in a direct line to the back of her skull, she said, more animatedly, "Sorry."
"Nothing to apologise for." Aral waved a hand. "If I'd had the opportunity last night, I would have got totally smashed. Why are the Council of Ministers such a collective ass?"
"If I knew that, my love…" Cordelia waved a hand in return. "And you made some progress on Vorfolse and Vormercier, that's something."
"I did at that." Aral came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed and pushed her hair out of her face. "Was there any reason, particularly, or just the usual?"
"I suppose…" – Cordelia opened her eyes, screwed them up against the light and manfully went on – "in fact, there was a reason. Aral, Countess Vorinnis came up to me last night and asked me if I knew my husband was bisexual."
Aral said nothing, but straightened, lines of tension entering his body. "What did you say?"
Cordelia said, grinning at the memory, "I asked her if she knew what I did to the last person who implied as such to me."
On cue, he asked, "What did you…"
"I cut his head off." They exchanged practised and loving smiles. "And then I got fed up with the whole damn place and went to get drunk with Alys."
"Alys Vorpatril never…"
"No. But she was very kind to me, in a brisk sort of way." Cordelia smiled again, a little wryly. "Poor Alys. But in all seriousness, love, I am wondering why this particular piece of scandalous gossip is doing the rounds again now. It was so long ago, you and Ges Vorrutyer…"
Aral tensed again; Cordelia laid a hand on his arm, comforting but firm. "It's your horrendously bad taste in men that I disapprove of, love, not that you have taste in men. Why now?"
Still without relaxing his posture, Aral said, slowly, "Captain Illyan and I…"
"Ah, Simon," Cordelia said, understanding immediately, and thought about it for a moment. There was dust rising in the room, she noted absently, motes suspended in glorious sun.
"The infamous fight," she went on, reflective. "So… dramatic. Full of the requisite sexual undercurrents and of course muddied further by being broadcast to every corner of the capital by something like ten witnesses." She leaned back against her pillows, letting her gaze take in each corner of the room, the gaps beneath ancient skirting and moulding where, if they were there, the bugs would have been. ImpSec had swept the house thoroughly before the family and household had moved back in, following nearly six years' living at the Residence. Aral said nothing, and she glanced sideways at him. "Or… perhaps fewer witnesses than commonly thought. I didn't hear what he said to you before you hit him, love, but I heard – the sound of the impact."
"Cordelia," Aral said, in entreaty, and lifted two hands in a smooth curve, indicating those self-same corners and crannies. ImpSec, Cordelia thought, always ImpSec – and for a moment felt a dizzying vertigo, familiar but not felt, perhaps, since the very early days of this Regency, of being unable to trust anyone – or anything – at all. As an astrocartographer in the Survey, she had been on at least one ship plummeting into momentary freefall, delayed thruster spin coming online just a few moments later than strictly necessary. It was a similar feeling.
"The Cetagandan reception," Aral went on, "is the next event of note on the calendar. Perhaps the gossip will have died down by then."
"No," she said, truthfully. "You and Simon are constitutionally unable to resolve your differences without sexual tension and violence."
In a different tone, Aral said, "Cordelia, do you have to be so appallingly Betan about these things?"
"I have no choice," Cordelia answered, frowning. The warmth of a few moments before was conspicuous by its absence. "You and Simon…"
"Captain Illyan and I retain a professional working relationship," Aral said, for who knew what mythical listeners, and Cordelia got up, wandering in the direction of the bathroom to refill her glass. The water tasted of metal and salt.
The Regent left the capital in a lightflyer at the end of the week; his official statement said that he would be spending a few days with his family at Vorkosigan Surleau before returning, refreshed, in time for the pre-Winterfair festivities. It was true that this was a particularly political time of the year: a new Council session in the spring, and in the meantime, the closed rooms with smoke hanging in layers beneath the ceilings, the forging and reforging of alliances.
Experimentally, Simon tried the secure comconsole from his desk. "The Lord Regent has asked me to tell you," said the frosty voice emerging from the speakers even before the face had coalesced on the plate, "that he is sure you will only contact him in emergencies during this family time."
"I understand, Captain Koudelka," Simon said, wearily, and cut the com. Standing up, he looked around his office as though seeing it for the first time: the neat rows of flimsies and papers, the blinking lights. If he stepped out, there were two pictures on the wall in the outer office – a bland scene of the Dendarii Mountains, and a picture of the Investigatif Federale building on Escobar. The colours of the images merely served to highlight the drabness of their surroundings.
Making a decision, Simon picked up his coat and walked out, neglecting to call for a groundcar despite the snow coming down in billows outside. He'd walked through worse as a child and as a young man, born further north than Vorbarr Sultana to a crofting family, and besides, the city had what he'd come to think of as its prole compensations. He smiled a little at the sight of the Winterfair street markets, a nightmare for ImpSec when they set up within the set number of blocks from the Imperial Residence, but at the moment their lights and colours were a balm. He drew his hood down against the flurry and stopped to buy a hot twist of pastry with something sweet and creamy inside, chewing it methodically as he walked down the street towards his apartment.
Being born in the cold didn't mean you had to like it. He stepped away from the icy spray thrown up by the groundcars passing and pressed himself against the wall, his mind hitting a familiar groove and stubbornly refusing to move on to something else until it had completed the well-worn track. The capital city on Escobar, at this time of year, would be golden with sunlight. They had street vendors there, too, tiny booths selling glasses of lime and sugar with a sprig of mint. The fantasy lasted as long as the pastry – ImpSec's relations with Barrayaran consulates and embassies were multiply complex, interesting, firmly in his need-to-know pile, but it was a fantasy nonetheless: filling in his name, his rank, his useful skills, his potential contributions to the society of Escobar, all in the right boxes, then coming to rest on the one marked "Reasons for emigration from previous domicile", and writing "Please see attached continuation sheets".
The chip processed external inputs only – it couldn't tell you how many times you had a single dream. Simon sighed and threw the paper wrapper into a nearby receptacle, and went up the steps to his tiny apartment.
There was a rose in front of the door. Simon picked it up, thoughtfully – his mail, both here and at HQ, was checked by a team of analysts, parcels and letters scanned, the postal employees shaken down. If it was still here, after that, then it was just… a rose. Two, actually, twisted together round a sprig of wire, one white, one crimson.
"Ah," Simon said, out loud, and hissed at a thorn breaking his skin: it was the pad of his index finger, stinging now in the cold. Methodically, he pushed it as far it would go and watched the bright sphere of blood rise, drop like a red blossom on the snow. "Ah."
The only force more unstoppable than nerve disruptor fire, Imperial courier pickets and the family Vorkosigan was, Simon thought sourly, gossip. The ImpSec contingent tasked with checking his private mail were technically employed as security for Vorbarr Sultana District; the team who checked his mail on its way to his desk were HQ all through. And they all talked, within these walls, no matter how discreet and professional they were elsewhere; he had no doubt that the increase in suppressed smiles as he walked through the windowless corridors had them as its root cause. When run through on his chip, the men's expressions were depressingly readable. Illyan's got a secret admirer. Or, closer on-point: the Chief's finally getting laid. Simon wondered sometimes how old they thought he was. The youngest of them might be in their early twenties, but he was only just thirty-five, himself.
But, he thought, that was it, wasn't it: it could be from an admirer. There were no booby-traps, no results from the toxicology screen, no hidden poison darts, no innovative way of converting it into a weapon. It was just… two roses, one white, one red, twisted together with their own stems and a little wire. It could have come from any florist in the city. The one from the previous day was – he paused to groan at himself – on his bedside table. Carefully, avoiding the thorns, he picked up the second one from his in-tray and took it downstairs and out.
In the days when it had been occupied by Princess Kareen, the social secretary's office at the Imperial Residence had always had the air of a sanctuary to it. The Emperor, ImpSec, the Ministry for Political Education – none of them had thought it properly their own domain, and consequently it had an internal freedom not enjoyed elsewhere in the machinery of government. Since those days it had opened outwards and become a force in its own right, teaching ImpSec to buttle and the Imperial Service as a whole to behave itself. Simon stepped within when invited and said, "Milady."
"Captain Illyan, come in." Alys Vorpatril looked up from her broad and beautifully made desk and the seating charts spread enthusiastically across it. "Take a seat. Would you like something to drink?"
"Ah, no," he said, unconsciously reaching for his best manners. There were very few memories of his mother on the chip, but one of them appeared before his mind's eye for a moment: a simple family meal, a little before Escobar, take your elbows off the table, Simon, and have more potatoes. He smiled a little and sat up straight. "Thank you."
She smiled in return, the winter sun filtering through the window behind her, bringing life to the sculpted bones of her face. Not for the first time, Simon was struck with the sheer vivid presence of her. "How can I help you, Captain Illyan?" she asked, her hands opening in welcome. "And are you here in official capacity?"
"Yes, I am," he said, relaxing a little. "An officer in ImpSec's employ" – the best lie is the truth – "has been receiving, ah, interesting deliveries." As he spoke, he took out the roses from the envelope he'd put them in for safekeeping. "Short of freeze-drying them and dissolving them in acid, these have been subject to every kind of weapons and toxicology testing. If there is a message in them, it's not lethal, and it's not a cipher: what message there may be exists in the things themselves. It occurs to me that the symbolism of flowers might be more in your line than ImpSec's."
"Let me see," she said, and he handed them over. "Locally obtained," she said, thoughtfully, turning them over in her hands, bringing them to her nose and taking a moment to assess the fragrance. "I assume your analysts got that far? It's a variety grown around Vorbarr Sultana. They're very similar to the ones we use for Imperial functions. They could be from the same supplier, in fact."
Simon nodded – ImpSec had got so far, without the fine detail. "So we take them at face value?"
"For a particular notion of 'face value', yes." She offered them back to him; surprised, he accepted and held them loosely in both hands. "Red roses symbolise true love undying. White, innocence and purity. Hence the bouquets for girls coming out. But together…" She paused, then looked up at him. "We try to avoid it, especially in arrangements for official events. Blood" – her hand on the red rose he was holding, then the white one – "and bone. Does that mean anything to you?"
"A threat," he said, quietly. "Rather, a warning. Of what will remain."
Alys held his gaze. "You received this yourself, didn't you?"
He gave her a half-smile. "Someone in ImpSec's employ. Thank you for your help, Lady Alys."
She nodded and rose alongside him, walking with him to the door. "Good luck, Simon," she said, almost too softly to hear, as he went out.
The offer came three days after the Lord Regent and his household returned to the capital. The reception was that night – supposedly for the edification of the Cetagandan delegation, but part of the usual glittering dance. Politically speaking, playing host to the Cetagandan ambassador and his entourage was diplomacy; the real interest had been the drawing in of the intelligence network, if only for a few days. "There will be more of them," Aral had said, "and they will be close together and in train to their masters, and they will make mistakes."
ImpSec were out in full force, no doubt playing their roles as wait staff and footmen with their usual aplomb. Lady Alys had insisted that they receive instruction in their housekeeping duties as well as the more usual weapons training; Simon had been grimly amused at men he knew to be expert marksmen discovering hitherto unsuspected talents for wait service. Each unfamiliar face had been checked, cross-checked and cleared, but as Simon had observed to his secretary, by usual protocol, "Cetagandan" was enough to have a person wiped from a guest list at Vorkosigan House. Each one had a tail, at least, and there were a dozen more agents secreted at various points around the house and its perimeter on top of the usual complement. Simon breathed in, breathed out and went up the steps.
The house guard commander was former ImpSec and saluted by instinct; Simon acknowledged it with a nod and entered the house, the polished marble ringing beneath his polished boots.
Aral said, "Good evening, Captain Illyan."
"Good evening, my lord Regent," Simon said, bowing a little, and handed over his day's reports. "For your perusal."
"Thank you," Aral said, eyes resting coolly on him for a few moments before he turned to continue his conversation with two more progressive Counts. "You're dismissed."
Simon nodded before he went on, turning to make the walk through the internal doors towards the large hall. His chip processed in the background – no one here who wasn't on his list; women beginning to re-enter the great space of the room now the post-prandial cigars and port-drinking had finished – and there was Cordelia at the end of the room, resplendent in sea-green and silver. Her eyes skimmed over him, never quite settling long enough to catch his gaze.
Suddenly feeling tired, Simon leaned against a table covered in canapés. It was a myth, he reflected, that the Chief of ImpSec tasted the Regent's food – but it had been a long time since lunch. He took a bite into a shrimp puff, chewed it thoughtfully, swallowed and looked up at the man beside him. "Good evening, ghem-Colonel Esteban."
Esteban chuckled with something approaching delight. "It's true, then. You do remember everything."
It was true that the chip had cross-referenced the man's facial features against every report and list he'd laid eyes on over the last week, almost without conscious input from him. But Simon had a brief, fuzzy organic memory of the man's face in the entourage following the ambassador into the house from the fleet of ImpSec-provided groundcars. It was the advantage of the sweeping robes and the face paint, he decided: take them away, and the anonymity was eerily efficient. "Captain Simon Illyan, sir," he said politely. "I am the Lord Regent's Chief of Imperial Security."
Esteban chuckled again. "Believe me, I know. Simon Illyan, the most frightening mind in the Barrayaran Imperium. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Likewise." Cetagandans didn't shake hands. Simon bowed, slightly, and looked down at his feet for a moment.
"I've been to one of these things before," Esteban volunteered unexpectedly. "Couple of years back. Don't have your memory, of course, but I'm sure you were at the Regent's heels then. Abolishing you, is he?"
"No." Simon risked a quick glance to either side, letting the chip take in the data and reviewing it while staring directly at Esteban's pleasant, bland face. The party was mellowing; the first people were edging from drinking to drunk; the dancing was coming to a close. All well, then. He schooled his own expression into a matching blandness. "The Lord Regent and I maintain a professional working relationship."
"Oh, really?" This time, Esteban's gaze followed his own downwards. "There is a sonic baffler on the base of that table leg, I believe."
"Yes." Simon smiled. "It muffles all conversation within a three-metre radius."
"Someone must monitor it, of course." The bluffness slid off the man's face like water, to be replaced with a more calculating look.
"Yes. I do."
Esteban snorted. "How very convenient for us. Let me say again, then: the last time I attended one of these gatherings, you were at the Regent's heels. As I believe you have been for seven years or more."
"At first," Simon murmured, "I was spying on him. Things do have a way of changing in an instant, especially after they've been building up for some time."
"I’m not, now, offering you anything you don't have already," Esteban said, direct. "Nor asking for anything you're unwilling to give. Allow me a further audience, Captain Illyan. That's a beginning."
Simon nodded. "I'll consider it."
"An analyst's caution." Esteban looked at him with equally cautious approval. "I see my colleagues are beckoning me over. It was good meeting you."
"And you," Simon said, leaning back against the table as the Cetagandan stepped briskly away. After a moment he reached out for his half-eaten shrimp puff, and ate the rest in a single bite.
Simon went into HQ on Winterfair, as usual; he walked down the silent streets early in the morning, picking his way carefully through the slush. He dropped in on the skeleton staff and dispensed encouragement and gratitude – the men were slouched in their chairs and handing around candied fruit, but not one had uttered a complaint about missing the holiday with their families, and Simon's appreciation was genuine if muted – and then went up to his own office, checking his message and chasing the status of several galactic reports he was waiting for. There were two roses, one red, one white, perched on the corner of his in-tray, and a tiny bud vase with an inch of water in the base had been left by his secretary in the outer office. Simon rolled his eyes, put the roses into the water and placed them on his desk, at his right hand.
The silence in the building was unusually complete, the dim sounds of water pipes and heating emerging as a deep resonance beneath everything. He used the time to undertake equally quiet housekeeping tasks of his own, inserting marginalia into field agent reports before requesting amendments. From outside, even through the force-shielding, he could hear the sound of bells. Mid-morning, when the sun had begun to emerge from the low winter cloud, he reached for his coat and scarf and went back out.
There was a little traffic, now, carefully sweeping through the standing water on the streets. The chip chose that moment to dump images of lime and sugar in glasses; he smiled, briefly, as his mind worked its way through the same old fantasy, all the details of the emigration paperwork, the mint sprig. The chip gave him the memory of the last winter walk home, the sweetness of the pastry, and lingered on the bloodied rose thorn.
On his doorstep were two more roses; he picked them up and threw them in the sink on his way to flop down in one of his kitchen chairs. He pushed away some reports on the little wooden table so he could rest his head on his elbows. The room was quiet, quieter than HQ had been, though still with the underscoring notes of the bells. When they faded, the silence was choking. He was tired, again, feeling tired in his bones, as though they were cracking from within in the cold.
He lifted his head, and then put it back down.
From memory, he reviewed the shelves above his head: there was a box, wrapped, containing a radio-controlled courier ship, next to another viewer loaded with adventure stories for boys, and on the shelf above that, two bottles of maple mead, brought back from Vorkosigan's District. He considered cracking one of them open, but the weariness, suddenly, was too much for him; in one rush of movement he threw off his boots and lay down on his bed on top of the covers.
He slept, soundly and dreamlessly, for several hours, until the bells rang again, shortly after sunset. Simon came awake at the change in the air, glanced at his chrono and began mustering his formal dress greens.
At the Imperial Winterfair Ball, glittering with candlelight and sconces and alive with political machination, Simon presented the day's report to the Lord Regent, who had returned from Vorkosigan Surleau in the early afternoon, nodded coolly at Cordelia and Lady Alys, took a tiny cheese tart from a roving waiter with a tray of canapés – ImpSec; the man gave no sign of recognition – and went to lean against the far wall, beside a large potted plant and a tiny, wall-mounted sonic baffler.
"The greetings of the season to you, Captain Illyan." Despite his bulk, Esteban moved like a cat. "Is that the customary phrasing?"
"Something like that." Simon nodded. "And to you, Colonel."
"I believe the holiday has its roots in old Earth culture," Esteban mused. "From what preparatory reading I was able to do."
"Yes, that's right." Simon nodded again. "It arises from an old religious festival celebrated at the close of the year. There were several, in fact, celebrated at similar times. My first language is Barrayaran Russian; my mother's family came originally from a part of the old world where the winter festival was marked later, after the New Year celebration."
Esteban nodded, and there was a pregnant pause. "Well, Captain Illyan?"
Simon looked out over the glittering room, the dancers turning in slow circles around the floor. It was early and there were still a very few children present, Miles and Ivan with heads bent together in one corner, flanked by Armsmen Bothari and Esterhazy; Gregor, too, still a child despite the alarmingly serious expression on his little face, with Cordelia and Lady Alys watching over him from a safe distance. None of them turned to meet his gaze.
Simon nodded. "I accept."
"I'm pleased to hear it." Esteban's expression didn't change. "It's the time of year for sweet things and flowers, Captain Illyan."
Simon nodded again and found he was smiling despite himself. "Yes. Let's talk Winterfair gifts."
"All right." Aral looked carefully around the room. "You, Prime Minister, you stand there. Admiral Kanzian, you next to him. Cordelia…"
Cordelia shrugged and stepped forwards for a better view.
"Ridiculous idea," Aral muttered, pushing his seal dagger into his thumb and letting the blood run out, "this sort of ritual self-mutilation in the spirit of some kind of faux-archaic veracity." He sealed the document with his signet ring, the mark quickly drying to dull red-brown. "Right, Kanzian, Vortala? Did you see that? You may have to give your names' words on it, so please don't say you blinked."
"My lord Regent," Vortala said, "one receives the impression you may not be taking this quite seriously."
"That’s the influence of my lady wife," Aral said, "who quite rightly believes that any government maintained on the force of ancient signs and sigils and a hefty dollop of concentrated belief should not take itself quite seriously. Are we quite finished now?"
"That should do it," Vortala said. "Good luck, my lord. And you, milady."
"Thank you." Aral bowed at them both, formally; they returned the gesture and left the room, Kanzian saluting before he disappeared through the door. Once the Admiral and Prime Minister were in their downward shuttle, the ship would leave its home orbit and set out for Komarr. For a few minutes, Aral was left alone with Cordelia, next to the window showing Barrayar revolving below. The ship made a circuit of the planet every two hours, and had made several since leaving Tannery Base on the cold morning after Winterfair.
"The terminator," Cordelia said suddenly, as the abrupt slice into darkness hove into view. Aral watched it, remembering that Cordelia had seen many more worlds than he had, had lifted new earth from their surfaces with her bare hands, had looked up into their alien skies and mapped their stars.
"Why are we doing this?" he asked, suddenly.
Cordelia glanced at him. "We're doing this to make things better. We're doing this to convince the Komarran government that we have their best interests at heart. We're doing this so Gregor won't have the same troubles you have. But you knew all that, so I don't think that's what you were asking."
"Not this." Aral made an expansive gesture, trying to bring it all in. It had been a day for thinking about it: about the battlefield of history that had led them this far. "This. All of this. Everything."
Cordelia said nothing for a moment, looking out at the planet below. "There," she said quietly, pointing to the last of the day, the last glow of the world's light. In its wake came the regions in night, lit in jewelled patterns of cities and roads, transit networks like terrestrial constellations. It had a rawness underneath its beauty. "That's why. For the good of us all, my love."
Aral put an arm around her, took a deep breath, and felt the lurch beneath his skin, the ship starting to accelerate.
The rumour mill was no doubt going to be working overtime. The agents assigned as his own personal security screen when out and about were under strict permanent instructions to keep their distance. But they had been witnesses to the flowers, of course, and they would have been shamefully remiss in their duties not to notice their Chief had been waylaid from his simple route home, via a local drinking establishment, by a woman with a great deal of dark hair braided and piled on top of her head, and just the right crimson lipstick for contrast.
Simon tried to explain this to his new companion, who merely chuckled irritatingly and attempted to put an arm around his shoulders; his reflexes cut in, and they jerked back to walking with half a metre's separation. "Look like you aren't quite hating it, can you?" she said, laughing, but quietly. And after a moment, "Are you telling me that they've never seen – that you've never…"
Simon sighed. "Is this relevant?"
"Well, I'd say so. Our success rather depends on it, doesn't it? Is there somewhere…"
"Not my apartment, not yet," Simon said quickly. "There are public parks to the back of the Residence and HQ, but they're likely bugged or may have other agents out tonight." He took a moment to sift through the relevant data on his chip. "Yes, they do. I think I know. Come on."
It only took a few minutes' scanning of the street to find what he was looking for; she followed him obediently as he flagged down the tiny red lightflyer, and the door lifted open to allow them inside. "On the automated traffic network," he explained as she slid in beside him and the door closed. He touched the panel almost at random, and they began moving, smoothly, into the next gap in airborne traffic. "At quiet times they don't need drivers – just enter a credit chit and key in your destination. They're under ordinary city surveillance, but that's routed through ImpSec HQ. Through my office." He gave her a constrained smile.
"And the agents tailing? Where will they think you're going?"
He spread his hands. "Your place, not mine."
She chuckled. "Lord save me from professional spies." Under the protection of the glass canopy, she had relaxed, and he caught the tinge of an accent in her voice. "So… efficient."
"You don't number yourself in that category?" he asked, curiously.
"I consider myself… a talented amateur." She grinned cheerfully at him. "With some very generous and interesting employers, of course."
"Of course," he agreed. His almost-random choice of destination was out on the edge of the city transport network, and they were beginning to lift free of urban crush, out towards clear green landscape. Thoughtfully, he altered their speed to two thirds of maximum. "And who are you?"
She fluttered her eyelashes coquettishly at him. "You don't know?"
He raised his index finger. "One, you're clearly experienced at the work – no one who wasn't could have come upon me quite so quietly in the bar." Another finger. "Two – you're in the employ of our mutual friends, but you're not one of them." He paused. "Which suggests, three: you're in this for pay rather than conviction. From Escobar, by the accent? But perhaps by way of somewhere else. Beta Colony?" A thought occurred. "Komarr?"
"Very good." She gave him a flirtatious smile. "Now, to business." She drew a small item from her pocket, made of nondescript brushed metal. "A portable version of the useful things on your table legs," she explained. "I appreciate the privacy you've obtained for us, but we can't be too careful. My masters have asked me to establish things. Firstly, a handle."
"A handle?"
"You haven't had a handler before, have you?" She smiled. "It's how we do things: the agent names their handler, and vice versa."
Simon thought about it. "January."
"Ah, a classical education, I see. Sure you haven't done this before?"
"Military education," he corrected. "Don't confuse the two, not here. I reported to Emperor Ezar directly, and now…" He shrugged. "And now the rest is dust."
"Yes." She grinned. "There's the question of keeping you, ah, handled."
"Excuse me?"
"Perhaps it can wait for our next meeting." She motioned at the glass; the lightflyer was tipping into descent, at a broad green space just outside the city limits. It was owned by the Vorkosigan family in their capacity as caretakers of their District; at the moment it represented a last strip of city green belt, quiet and undeveloped. Simon took manual control six feet from the ground and gave them a gentle landing.
"I take it," he said dryly, "we are having another meeting."
"You can still…" She gestured, then her eyes turned wicked. "Perhaps it didn't work out. Perhaps the planet didn't move for you."
Simon smiled, humourlessly, and leaned back. "I wouldn't give up, in that case."
"Good." She popped the canopy and dropped lightly onto the dark ground. "Don’t call us, we'll call you" – and she was gone.
"Native Komarrans," said Dr. Prestwick impressively, sitting back in his velvet-upholstered chair, "have leadership without caste."
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "That's a generalisation."
Aral laid a hand on her arm. "From which I'm to understand that you don't believe you can cooperate with a society that does?"
"Well, quite." Prestwick leaned in. "That you, the Butcher of Komarr, should come here and say to us – to me – that you're trying to enter into, what is it, some sort of secret political scheme to buy my allegiance…"
"Not at all." Aral was calm. "It wouldn't be my first choice for how to go about things, sir, but it's how your government works, after all. You have voting shares – I'm offering to buy them. A beneficial interest in them, at any rate. You can see here" – he pulled out his sealed charter – "the list of what I'm willing to offer. This is a document sealed by Imperial order. Believe me, for me to renege on any of its terms would not be political machination, it would be treason. What's offered here benefits your planet, and you personally, and all you have to do is offer your voice, and your share, in my support."
Prestwick looked unimpressed. "If it's all even and above board, then why are you making these visits in secret?"
Aral smiled thinly. "I believe you have legislation forbidding insider trading of publically listed securities? Consider it analogous."
Prestwick sat silently for a moment, the cogs visibly turning. Then he straightened, his muscles tensing with decision. "This interview is over." He stood up, and to her clear surprise, nodded at Cordelia. "I've greatly enjoyed your company, Captain Naismith. But your husband's demands are not primus inter pares but those of the conqueror to the conquered. A very good night to you."
They were shown out, from the man's inner sanctum through to his lusciously appointed anterooms, and onto the street outside. The dome blurred the sky above, but not enough to obscure how much time had passed.
"Well," Aral said, sighing, "that went well. Armsman, onwards and upwards."
Esterhazy nodded. "Are you quite all right, sir?"
"What?" Aral glanced at him. "Oh, I'm fine. Just discouraged by the shameful refusal of these people to, ah, be bought." He smiled despite himself. "On to the next one on the list, please."
The list wasn't recorded anywhere but inside Esterhazy's head. He nodded, and they began the short walk to their anonymous-looking vehicle, parked somewhere out of the way during their conference.
"It's not that bad," Cordelia said consolingly. "At least he granted us an audience. And he was right, you know – this sneaking around, from oligarch to prominent politician to head of family with suspiciously large business interests, pushing our own agenda, it does feel like…"
"It's above board," Aral said firmly. "Surely no one here is so politically naïve that they believe decisions are made anywhere but in the small back rooms. That's why we went through the whole palaver with the sealing – to show them that this is real."
"On Beta Colony," Cordelia began, "we wouldn't…"
Esterhazy reacted so smoothly she was still opening her mouth to speak as they hit the ground. "Down!" he yelled, pushed them both, dropped and rolled himself, pushing his wristcom. Aral landed properly through the reflexes of long training, making sure Cordelia was following as they took cover behind the car; above them they could hear Esterhazy's shouts, the distant buzzing of stunner fire, and then the sound of a vehicle accelerating so fast it skidded round a corner, the shriek of tyres against the gravelled road surface, and then, at last, silence.
It was later, when they had been removed into orbit for their own safety, and Solstice dome police and ImpSec Komarr had traded threats and insults and forged, in their inimitable way, the sort of separate peace this whole trip was about in any case, that the doubts began to creep in.
on to part two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2012-09-14 10:03 pm (UTC)Oh, Simon. Oh, Aral. >:( (*is very cross with Aral right here*)
no subject
on 2012-09-15 04:27 pm (UTC)