Cryoburn-ARC (21 page)

After a while, Mina's whisper came out of the dark: "Do you really think your galactic can get Mommy back? No one else ever could."

Had anyone else even tried? Jin didn't know. Miles-san, all dapper and alert and concentrated and never sitting still, was proving an alarming acquaintance. Jin wasn't sure but what he'd liked the grubby lost druggie better. Jin had a disconcerting feeling of having set a force in motion that he could not now stop, which wasn't made better by not even knowing whether he wanted to.

"I don't know, Mina," he said at last. "Be quiet and go to sleep." He rolled over and hid from it all under his covers.

Roic followed Consul Vorlynkin into the tight-room, where m'lord was already deeply involved with the comconsole, Johannes at his side, Raven leaning over and kibitzing. They all seemed to be examining some engineering schematics for the NewEgypt facility, pulled up from God knew where. Roic was relieved m'lord had finally decided to involve Johannes, if only by necessity. Backup at last! Inexperienced, but not untrained, and judging from his wide eyes it looked as if he was getting a tutorial in covert ops that would have done his ImpSec instructors proud.

M'lord wheeled in his station chair to take in the new arrivals. "Ah, Vorlynkin, good. Your clerk, Matson—he'll be back to work in the morning, right?"

"Yes?"

"I don't think we can keep those kids quiet enough to hide them from him in a house this small. He'll have to be told they are protected witnesses, in some danger. That should be enough to settle him."

"Is it true?" said Vorlynkin.

"How did someone so reluctant to tell lies become a diplomat? By the way, I can't believe, with all your training, that you failed to admire Miss Sato's blisters. What
is
it about this universal female conviction that medical conditions make one interesting? Judging from my daughter Helen, it starts younger than I would have believed possible."

"About the danger," said Vorlynkin, winning Roic's admiration by refusing to be drawn into m'lord's flight of fancy. Judging from the brightness of his eyes, m'lord was as over-stimulated right now as his own kids after one of his bedtime stories, right enough. "Is it real? Because it's unconscionable to keep those children from their guardians otherwise."

M'lord sobered. "Perhaps. This is an investigation, which means that not all leads pan out. Or otherwise one wouldn't
need
to investigate. But I shouldn't think Lisa Sato would have been removed in that brutal and effective way for any trivial reason. Which means waking her up could actually increase their hazard
.
.
." He tapped his lips, considering this. "I suspect Jin misjudges his aunt and uncle, actually. They may not merely lack the resources to fight the good fight for their kinswoman. They may be seriously intimidated."

"Hm," said Vorlynkin.

Roic's own conviction was that as soon as that poor frozen woman had intersected m'lord's orbit, this chain of events had become inevitable. Worse than dangling a string in front of a cat, it was. He likely shouldn't explain this to Vorlynkin; an armsman was supposed to be loyal in thought, word, and deed. But not
blind
.
.
.

"But if Jin and Mina were your children, would you want some off-worlder as good as kidnapping them to use for his own purposes?" Vorlynkin persisted. "No matter how well-intentioned?"

"In my defense, I must point out, they turned up here on their own, but—if I were dead, my widow frozen, my children fallen into the hands of people either unwilling or incapable of helping them? I doubt I would
care
where the man came from who could reunite them with Ekaterin. I'd shower all my posthumous blessings upon him." M'lord wheeled around and drummed his fingers on the comconsole counter. "Poor Jin! He makes me think about my missing grandmother, actually."

"Missing grandmother?" said Raven, leaning back against the counter. "I didn't know you had any."

"Most people have two—not you, of course. My Betan grandmother is alive and well and opinionated to this day, in fact. If you ever meet her, you'll understand a whole lot more about my mother. No, it's a Barrayaran tale, the fate of Princess-and-Countess Olivia Vorbarra Vorkosigan."

"Then delightfully bloody, I daresay." Raven's sweeping hand gesture invited m'lord to go on, not that he needed any encouragement. Johannes, too, was listening in apparent fascination.

"Very. If you'd learned your Barrayaran history, not that you would be expected to, you'd know that once upon a time—all the best stories start that way, you realize—that once upon a time, the death squads of Mad Emperor Yuri attempted to erase most of my family, thereby triggering the civil war that ended, eventually, in Yuri's dismemberment. So many people wanted a piece of him by then, they were forced to share, y'see. The death squad shot my grandmother in front of my father, messily. He was eleven at the time, which is part of why Jin keeps reminding me of it.

"But you see
.
.
.
for all the horrors of that day, and of the war that followed it, nobody, I'm not sure how to put this, nobody
denied
my father his experience. Jin's mother was just as abruptly and unjustly taken from him, but he's not been permitted his grief. No funeral, no mourning, no protest, even. No revenge—certainly not whatever satisfaction there might be of knowing she was escorted down into death by a procession of her enemies. For Jin and Mina, there's just
.
.
.
silence. Frozen silence."

A rather frozen silence followed this, among the Barrayarans in the room.

Vorlynkin cleared his throat, leaned on his hand, stared into the comconsole. "So. Lord Auditor. And, um
.
.
.
just how are we planning to give this woman her voice back
.
.
.
?"

Chapter Ten

"Don't land on the chickens," Jin said, leaning anxiously over the back of the seat between Johannes, who was flying the lift van, and Miles, occupying the passenger side.

Johannes grimaced and eased the lift van forward under the canopy of Jin's rooftop refuge, then paused again while Jin leaped out to pull the cafe table out of the way, glance underneath the van, look relieved, and motion Johannes forward. As Johannes gingerly set them down atop the roof, a woman at the back of the tent-room stood hands-on-hips, watching them in suspicion, though she smiled briefly as Jin danced up to her. The whine of the van's engines went silent.

"Ah, Ako, good, she's been faithful," said Miles, and slid open his door. "The rest of you wait here till I signal," he added over his shoulder. "We don't want to stampede the poor woman."
Or look like a clown car,
he did not add aloud. Johannes and Raven nodded silently; Roic's disapproving frown at Miles seizing point-man position might as well have been audible.

Ako was evidently attempting to feed Gyre; she wore heavy oven mitts and brandished a long fork with a fragment of raw meat fluttering from it. As she gestured to Jin, the bird stretched forward and snatched the slithery morsel, twisting its head and gulping it down. Ako jumped. "He bites, you know," she said to Jin, almost apologetically.

"Not
very
hard," said Jin.

"I needed antibiotic salve and plastic bandages the first time, thank you very much. I'll allow the bird didn't actually take off a finger." She put her hands on her hips again and stared hard at Miles. "So you're back! You gave me quite a turn, sneaking up in that van."

Miles hoped their sneaking had been successful. Though not hidden from more sophisticated scanners, at least the tent roof concealed their activities from casual observation, in this level morning light. Discreet, if not secret.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming back, and was wondering what to do with all these animals. But you found Jin after all!" She had nearly decided, Miles read in her eyes, that he'd dodged off without any intention of finding Jin.

"We were both unavoidably delayed," Miles said. "Jin actually found me, but in any case, we're reunited. Thank you so much for looking after his creatures. They mean the world to him."

She sniffed, not displeased with some recognition of her efforts. "I know."

Jin returned from taking a rapid inventory of his menagerie, including counting his chickens. "Miles-san is going to take me and all my creatures away to, to his place. For a while," he told Ako.

Her brows tightened. "Yah?"

"Yes, and I need to speak to Madame Suze about that," Miles said. Ako looked marginally appeased at this indication of aboveboard-ness. "Tenbury told me you are something of an apprentice to the plant medtech?" Miles would be meeting her again soon, if things went as he hoped. Best to placate her.

Ako went wary. "I help her clean and things. In the infirmary."

"Just so." Miles motioned to the van; the rest of his entourage piled out.

Miles was relieved of the problem of introductions by Jin taking them over, possibly more reassuringly than Miles could have: "This is Raven-sensei, he's a friend from Escobar, this is Roic-san, he works for Miles-san, this is Lieutenant Johannes, he's all right."

Ako bent and whispered, "Jin, they're not policemen, are they? You should know better—"

"Naw, they're Barrayarans. Galactics."

Ako bit her lip, but seemed to accept this provisional guarantee. She watched as they sorted themselves out, Johannes and Roic to stay with the van till Jin got back to supervise loading it, Raven and Jin to accompany Miles.

"I should come with you," Roic muttered to Miles's ear.

"These people are justifiably nervous of outsiders. I won't get what I want if we hit them
en masse,
and you're
en masse
all by yourself." Miles tapped his wristcom. "I'll call you if I need you."

Roic returned him The Sigh, familiar shorthand for the usual argument. Miles let Jin lead him and Raven off down the exchanger tower. Ako trailed as far as the kitchen, where Miles prudently detoured to grab a carafe of coffee and some cups. She stared after them as they trod away toward the stairs to Suze's suite.

As they waited for an answer to Miles's knock, he turned his head and said to Jin, "I had better pitch this to her in my own way. I'll let you know when you can chime in."

Jin, shifting from foot to foot, gulped and nodded.

A slow shuffle from within heralded the door opening a crack. Suze's bleary eye peered out. "You again!" she said. "I thought we were well rid of you." She squinted at Jin. "Of both of you." The eye traveled on to Raven. "Who the hell are you?"

"Raven Durona, from Escobar," Raven answered readily. "Pleased to meet you."

"He's a friend," Miles said. "As in,
Pass, friend
." He brandished the carafe. "May we come in?"

"Eh
.
.
." Reluctantly, but with her one open eye on the carafe, Suze gave way. She wore the same loose black garments as before; she probably slept in them. Her inner chamber had the same close geriatric smell. She went to her window and set the polarization to admit a grudging shade more morning, and waved Miles, and his carafe, cups, and followers, to her battered seats.

"You found your wallet, I see," she said, settling across from them. At Miles's gesture, Jin hastened to distribute coffee.

"Yes, and my luggage and my friends. I'm back in business."

"And just what is your business? Thank you, Jin."

"I'm an investigator, of a sort."

Suze's cup halted on its way to her lips. Her seamed face set in stiff panic.

"Not for any authority on Kibou, however," Miles added.

"Insurance fraud," Jin put in, in hasty reassurance. "He's not a policeman. Or a doctor or a lawyer, even though he went to that conference. Raven-sensei's the doctor."

Miles's eyebrows went up at this description of himself. Clearly, at some point he was going to have to take the boy aside and explain
Imperial Auditor
to him in greater detail, but perhaps this would do for now. "Not precisely, but close enough. As it happens, the powers-that-be on Kibou are the subject of my inquiries, not its sponsors. I have no interest whatsoever in shutting down your operation. I'd actually like to make use of your facilities. I may be able to make it worth your time."

Suze's eyes narrowed over her coffee cup; she finally drank. "We get by here because we don't draw anyone's attention."

"I don't wish to draw attention, either."

Suze sat back, leathery lips pursing. "You want someone illegally frozen? Hoping you can bribe me into storing the body for you?" Her tone was remarkably neutral, neither leading nor guiding.

Her suggestion came up far too readily—ye gods, had Suze ever provided such services, perhaps for the local underworld? Did Kibou-daini
have
an underworld? Aside from the literal one he'd been lost in, that is. Could this be the source of some of her protection? Because crime lords would want to cheat death, too. Though you'd think they could afford their own private arrangements—still, they would need benefits to distribute to lesser followers. And for the discreet disposal of enemies, those ranks of anonymous drawers downstairs would certainly trump lead weights and a swim in the nearest river. It would even render murder reversible, if one had been too hasty in one's crime-lordly commands, or otherwise made a mistake.
Man, if I wanted to hide a body on Kibou
.
.
.
Miles wrenched his mind from this fascinating side-path. "Have you done such favors before?" he asked cautiously.