Cordelia's Honor (38 page)

Count Vorhalas bowed profoundly over her hand. "Milady. I'm honored."

"Count. I . . . only saw your brother briefly. But Admiral Vorhalas struck me as a man of outstanding worth."
And my side blew him away
. She felt queasy, with her hand in his, but he seemed to hold no personal animosity.

"Thank you, Milady. We all thought so. Ah, there are the boys. I promised them an introduction. Evon is itching for a place on the Staff, but I told him he'd have to earn it. I wish Carl had as much interest in the Service. My daughter will be mad with jealousy. You've stirred up all the girls, you know, Milady."

The count darted away to round up his sons.
Oh, God,
thought Cordelia.
It would have to be them
. The two men who had sat before her in the gallery were presented to her. They both blanched, and bowed nervously over her hand.

"But you've met," said Vorkosigan. "I saw you talking in the gallery. What did you find to discuss so animatedly, Cordelia?"

"Oh . . . geology. Zoology. Courtesy. Much on courtesy. We had quite a wide-ranging discussion. We each of us taught the other something, I think." She smiled, and did not flick an eyelid.

Commander Evon Vorhalas, looking rather ill, said, "Yes. I've . . . had a lesson I'll never forget, Milady."

Vorkosigan was continuing the introductions. "Commander Vorhalas, Lord Carl; Lieutenant Koudelka."

Koudelka, loaded with plastic flimsys, disks, the baton of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces that had just been presented to Vorkosigan as Regent-elect, and his own stick, and uncertain whether to shake hands or salute, managed to drop them all and do neither. There was a general scramble to retrieve the load, and Koudelka went red, bending awkwardly after it. Droushnakovi and he put a hand on his stick at the same time.

"I don't need your help, miss," Koudelka snarled at her in a low voice, and she recoiled to go stand rigidly behind Cordelia.

Commander Vorhalas handed him back some disks. "Pardon me, sir," said Koudelka. "Thank you."

"Not at all, Lieutenant. I was almost hit by disruptor fire myself once. Scared the hell out of me. You are an example to us all."

"It . . . didn't hurt, sir."

Cordelia, who knew from personal experience that this was a lie, held her peace, satisfied. The group broke up for its separate destinations. Cordelia paused before Evon Vorhalas.

"Nice to meet you, Commander. I predict you will go far, in your future career—and
not
in the direction of Kyril Island."

Vorhalas smiled tightly. "I believe you will, too, Milady." They exchanged wary and respectful nods, and Cordelia turned to take Vorkosigan's arm, and follow him to his next task, trailed by Koudelka and Droushnakovi.

The Barrayaran Emperor slipped into his final coma a week later, but lingered on another week beyond that. Aral and Cordelia were routed out of bed at Vorkosigan House in the early hours of the morning by a special messenger from the Imperial Residence, with the simple words, "The doctor thinks it's time, sir." They dressed hastily, and accompanied the messenger back to the beautiful chamber Ezar had chosen for the last month of his life, its priceless antiques cluttered over with off-worlder medical equipment.

The room was crowded, with the old man's personal physicians, Vortala, Count Piotr and themselves, the Princess and Prince Gregor, several ministers, and some men from the General Staff. They kept a quiet, standing deathwatch for almost an hour before the still, decayed figure on the bed took on, almost imperceptibly, an added stillness. Cordelia thought it a gruesome scene to which to subject the boy, but his presence seemed ceremonially necessary. Very quietly, beginning with Vorkosigan, they turned to kneel and place their hands between Gregor's, to renew their oaths of fealty.

Cordelia too was guided by Vorkosigan to kneel before the boy. The prince—Emperor—had his mother's hair, but hazel eyes like Ezar and Serg, and Cordelia found herself wondering how much of his father, or his grandfather, was latent in him, its expression waiting on the power that would come with age.
Do you bear curses in your chromosomes, child?
she wondered as her hands were placed between his. Cursed or blessed, regardless, she gave him her oath. The words seemed to cut her last tie to Beta Colony; it parted with a
ping!
audible only to her.

I am a Barrayaran now
. It had been a long strange journey, that began with a view of a pair of boots in the mud, and ended in these clean child's hands.
Do you know I helped kill your father, boy? Will you ever know? Pray not
. She wondered if it was delicacy or oversight, that she had never been required to give oath to Ezar Vorbarra.

Of all present, only Captain Negri wept. Cordelia only knew this because she was standing next to him, in the darkest corner of the room, and saw him twice brush his face with the back of his hand. His face grew suffused, and more lined, for a time; when he stepped forward to take his oath, it had returned to his normal blank hardness.

The five days of funeral ceremonies that followed were grueling for Cordelia, but not, she was led to understand, so grueling as the ones had been for Crown Prince Serg, which had run for two weeks, despite the absence of a body for a centerpiece. The public view was that Prince Serg had died the death of a heroic soldier. By Cordelia's count, only five human beings knew the whole truth of that subtle assassination. No, four, now that Ezar was no more. Perhaps the grave was the safest repository of Ezar's secrets. Well, the old man's torment was over now, his time done, his era passing.

There was no coronation as such for the boy Emperor, but instead a surprisingly business-like, if elegantly garbed, several days spent back in the Council chambers collecting personal oaths from ministers, counts, a host of their relatives, and anybody else who had not already made their vows in Ezar's death chamber. Vorkosigan too received oaths, seeming to grow burdened with their accumulation as if each had a physical weight.

The boy, closely supported by his mother, held up well. Kareen made sure Gregor's hourly breaks to rest were respected by the busy, impatient men who had thronged to the capital to discharge their obligation. The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system, with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much at first glance, but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them, somehow. They made it work. Pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were such consensus fictions, at their hearts.

After the spate of ceremonies had died down, Cordelia began at last to establish her domestic routine at Vorkosigan House. Not that there was that much to do. Most days Vorkosigan left at dawn, Koudelka in tow, and returned after dark, to snatch a cold supper and lock himself in the library, or see men there, until bedtime. His long hours were a start-up cost, Cordelia told herself. He would settle in, become more efficient, when everything wasn't all for the first time. She remembered her first ship command in the Betan Astronomical Survey—not so very long ago—and her first few months of nervous hyper-preparedness. Later, the painfully studied tasks had become automatic, then nearly unconscious, and her personal life had re-emerged. Aral's would, too. She waited patiently, and smiled when she did see him.

Besides, she had a job. Gestating. It was a task of no little status, judging from the cosseting she received from everyone from Count Piotr down to the kitchen maid who brought her nutritious little snacks at odd hours. She hadn't received this much approval even when she'd returned from a yearlong survey mission with a zero-accident record. Reproduction seemed far more enthusiastically encouraged here than on Beta Colony.

After lunch one afternoon she lay with her feet up on a sofa in a shaded patio between the house and its back garden—gestating assiduously—and reflected upon the assorted reproductive customs of Barrayar versus Beta Colony. Gestation in uterine replicators, artifical wombs, seemed unknown here. On Beta Colony replicators were the most popular choice by three to one, but a large minority stood by claimed psycho-social advantages to the old-fashioned natural method. Cordelia had never been able to detect any difference between vitro and vivo babies, certainly not by the time they reached adulthood at twenty-two. Her brother had been vivo, herself vitro; her brother's co-parent had chosen vivo for both her children, and bragged about it rather a lot.

Cordelia had always assumed that when her turn came, she'd have her own kid cooked up in a replicator bank at the start of a Survey mission, to be ready and waiting for her arms upon her return. If she returned—there was always that possible catch, exploring the blind unknown. And assuming, also, that she could nail down an interested co-parent with whom to pool, willing and able to pass the physical, psychological, and economic tests and take the course to qualify for a parent's license.

Aral was going to be a suberb co-parent, she was certain. If he ever touched down again, from his new high place. Surely the first rush must be over soon. It was a long fall from that high place, with nowhere to land. Aral was her safe haven, if he fell first . . . she wrenched her meditations firmly into more positive channels.

Now, family
size;
that was the real, secret, wicked fascination of Barrayar. There were no legal limits here, no certificates to be earned, no third-child variances to be scrimped for; no rules, in fact, at all. She'd seen a woman on the street with not three but four children in tow, and no one had even stared. Cordelia had upped her own imagined brood from two to three, and felt deliciously sinful, till she'd met a woman with ten. Four, maybe? Six? Vorkosigan could afford it. Cordelia wriggled her toes and cuddled into the cushions, afloat on an atavistic cloud of genetic greed.

Barrayar's economy was wide open now, Aral said, despite the losses of the recent war. No wounds had touched the surface of the planet this time. The terraforming of the second continent opened new frontiers every day, and when the new planet Sergyar was cleared for colonization, the effect would triple. Labor was short everywhere, wages rising. Barrayar perceived itself to be severely underpopulated. Vorkosigan called the economic situation his gift from the gods, politically. So did Cordelia, for more personal, secret reasons;
herds
of little Vorkosigans. . . .

She could have a daughter. Not just one, but two—sisters! Cordelia had never had a sister. Captain Vorpatril's wife had two, she'd said.

Cordelia had meet Lady Vorpatril at one of the rare evening political-social events at Vorkosigan House. The affair was managed smoothly by the Vorkosigan House staff. All Cordelia had to do was show up appropriately dressed (she had acquired more clothes), smile a lot, and keep her mouth shut. She listened with fascination, trying to puzzle out yet more about How Things Were Done Here.

Alys Vorpatril too was pregnant. Lord Vorpatril had sort of stuck them together and ducked out. Naturally, they talked shop. Lady Vorpatril mourned much at her personal discomforts. Cordelia decided she herself must be fortunate; the anti-nausea med, the same chemical formulation that they used at home, worked, and she was only naturally tired, not from the weight of the still-tiny baby but from the surprising metabolic load.
Peeing for two
was how Cordelia thought of it. Well, after five-space navigational math, how hard could motherhood be?

Leaving aside Alys's whispered obstetrical horror stories, of course. Hemorrhages, strokes, kidney failure, birth injuries, oxygen interruption to fetal brains, infant heads grown larger than pelvic diameters and a spasming uterus laboring both mother and child to death . . . Medical complications were only a problem if one was somehow caught alone and isolated at term, and with these mobs of guards about that wasn't likely to happen to her. Bothari as a midwife? Bemusing thought. She shuddered.

She rolled over again on the lawn sofa, her brow creasing. Ah, Barrayar's primitive medicine. True, moms had popped kids for hundreds of thousands of years, pre-space-flight, with less help than what was available here. Yet the niggling worry gnawed still,
Maybe I ought to go home for the birth
.

No. She was Barrayaran now, oath-sworn like the rest of the lunatics. It was a two-month journey. And besides, as far as she knew there was still an arrest warrant outstanding for her, charging military desertion, suspicion of espionage, fraud, anti-social violence—she probably shouldn't have tried to drown that idiot army psychiatrist in her aquarium, Cordelia supposed, sighing in memory of her harried and disordered departure from Beta Colony. Would her name ever be cleared? Not while Ezar's secrets stayed chambered in four skulls, surely.

No. Beta Colony was closed to her, had driven her out. Barrayar held no monopoly on political idiocy, that much was certain.

I can handle Barrayar. Aral and I. You bet.

It was time to go in. The sun was giving her a slight headache.

One aspect of her new life as Regent-consort that Cordelia found easier to deal with than she'd anticipated was the influx of personal guards into their home. Her experience in the Betan Survey, and Vorkosigan's in the Barrayaran military service, had given them both practice with life in close quarters. It didn't take Cordelia long to start to know the persons in the uniforms, and take them on their own terms. The guards were a lively young group, hand-picked for their service and proud of it. Although when Piotr was also in residence, with all his liveried men including Bothari, the sense it gave Cordelia of living in a barracks became acute.

It was the Count who first suggested the informal hand-to-hand combat tournament between Illyan's men and his own. In spite of a vague mutter from the security commander about free training at the Emperor's expense, a ring was set up in the back garden, and the contest quickly became a weekly tradition. Even Koudelka was roped in, as referee and expert judge, with Piotr and Cordelia as cheering sections. Vorkosigan attended whenever time permitted, to Cordelia's gratification; she felt he needed the break in the grinding routine of government business to which he subjected himself daily.