Cordelia's Honor (65 page)

Cordelia's teeth closed on vile words. She converted her savage expression to a light, surprised smile, and turned. "Hello, Kou. What's up?"

He frowned, looking at her, at Droushnakovi, at the satchel. "I asked first." He was out of breath; he must have been chasing them down for some minutes, after not finding her in Aral's quarters. An ill-timed errand.

Cordelia kept her smile fixed, as her mind blinked on a vision of a Security team piling out of the lift tube to arrest her, or at least her plans. "We're . . . going into town."

His lips thinned in skepticism. "Oh? Does the Admiral know? Where's Illyan's outer-perimeter team, then?"

"Gone on ahead," said Cordelia blandly.

The vague plausibility actually raised a flicker of doubt in his eyes. Alas, only for a moment. "Now, wait just a bloody minute—"

"Lieutenant," Sergeant Bothari interrupted. "Take a look at this." He gestured toward the rear passenger compartment of the staff car.

Koudelka leaned to look. "What?" he said impatiently.

Cordelia winced as Bothari's open hand chopped down across the back of Koudelka's neck, and winced again at the heavy
thud
of Koudelka's head hitting the far side of the compartment's interior after a powerful boost-assist to neck and belt by Bothari. His swordstick clattered to the pavement.

"In." Bothari's voice was a strained low growl, accompanied by a quick glance across the bay toward the glass-walled transport office.

Droushnakovi flung the satchel into the compartment and dove in after Koudelka, shoving his long loose limbs out of the way. Cordelia grabbed up the stick and piled in after. Bothari stood back, saluted, closed the mirrored canopy, and entered the driver's compartment.

They started smoothly. Cordelia had to control irrational panic as Bothari stopped at the first checkpoint. She could see and hear the guards so clearly, it was difficult to remember they saw only the reflections of their own hard eyes. But apparently General Piotr could indeed pass anywhere at will. How pleasant, to be General Piotr. Though in these trying times, probably not even Piotr could have entered Tanery Base without that rear canopy being opened and scanned. The final gate crew that waved them out was busily engaged in just such an inspection of a large incoming convoy of freight haulers. Their timing was just as Cordelia had planned and prayed.

Cordelia and Droushnakovi finally got the sprawling Koudelka straightened up between them. His first alarming flaccidity was passing off. He blinked and moaned. Koudelka's head, neck, and upper torso were of the few areas of his body not rewired; Cordelia trusted nothing inorganic was broken.

Droushnakovi's voice was taut with worry. "What'll we do with him?"

"We can't dump him out on the road, he'd run back and give the word," said Cordelia. "Yet if we cinched him to a tree out of sight somewhere, there's a chance he might not be found . . . we'd better tie him up, he's coming around."

"I can handle him."

"He's had enough handling, I'm afraid."

Droushnakovi managed to immobilize Koudelka's hands with a twisted scarf from the satchel; she was quite good at clever knots.

"He might prove useful," mused Cordelia.

"He'll betray us," frowned Droushnakovi.

"Maybe not. Not once we're in enemy territory. Once the only way out is forward."

Koudelka's eyes stopped jerking, following some invisible starry blur, and came at last into focus. Both his pupils were still the same size, Cordelia was relieved to note.

"Milady—Cordelia," he croaked. His hands yanked futilely at the silky bonds. "This is crazy. You'll run right into Vordarian's forces. And then Vordarian will have two handles on the Admiral, instead of just one. And you and Bothari know where the Emperor is!"

"Was," corrected Cordelia. "A week ago. He's been moved since then, I'm sure. And Aral has demonstrated his capacity to resist Vordarian's leverage, I think. Don't underestimate him."

"Sergeant Bothari!" Koudelka leaned forward, appealing into the intercom. The front canopy was also silvered, now.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" Bothari's bass monotone returned.

"I order you to turn this vehicle around."

A slight pause. "I'm not in the Imperial Service anymore, sir. Retired."

"Piotr didn't order this! You're Count Piotr's man."

A longer pause; a lower tone. "No. I am Lady Vorkosigan's dog."

"You're off your meds!"

How such could travel over a purely audio link Cordelia was not sure, but a canine grin hung in the air before them.

"Come on, Kou," Cordelia coaxed. "Back me. Come for luck. Come for life. Come for the adrenaline rush."

Droushnakovi leaned over, a sharp smile on her lips, to breathe in Koudelka's other ear, "Look at it this way, Kou. Who else is ever going to give you a chance at field combat?"

His eyes shifted, right and left, between his two captors. The pitch of the groundcar's power-whine rose, as they arrowed into the growing twilight.

Illegal vegetables. Cordelia sat in bemused contemplation between sacks of cauliflower and boxes of cultivated brillberries as the creaking hovertruck coughed along. Southern vegetables, that flowed toward Vorbarr Sultana on a covert route just like hers. She was half-certain that under that pile were a few sacks of the same green cabbages she'd traveled with two or three weeks ago, migrating according to the strange economic pressures of the war.

The Districts controlled by Vordarian were now under strict interdiction by the Districts loyal to Vorkosigan. Though starvation was still a long way off, food prices in the capital of Vorbarr Sultana had skyrocketed, in the face of hoarding and the coming winter. So poor men were inspired to take chances. And a poor man already taking a chance was not averse to adding a few unlisted passengers to his load, for a bribe.

It was Koudelka who'd generated the scheme, abandoning his urgent disapproval, drawn in to their strategizing almost despite himself. It was Koudelka who'd found the produce wholesale warehouses in the town in Vorinnis's District, and cruised the loading docks for independents striking out with their loads. Though it was Bothari who'd ruled the size of the bribe, pitifully small to Cordelia's mind, but just right for the parts they now played of desperate countryfolk.

"My father was a grocer," Koudelka had explained stiffly, when selling his scheme to them. "I know what I'm doing."

Cordelia had puzzled for a moment what his wary glance at Droushnakovi meant, till she recalled Drou's father was a soldier. Kou had talked of his sister and widowed mother, but it was not till that moment that Cordelia realized Kou had edited his father from his reminiscences out of social embarrassment, not any lack of love between them. Koudelka had vetoed the choice of a meat truck for transport: "It's more likely to be stopped by Vordarian's guards," he'd explained, "so they can shake down the driver for steaks." Cordelia wasn't sure if he was speaking from military or food service experience, or both. In any case, she was grateful not to ride with grisly refrigerated carcasses.

They dressed for their parts as best they could, pooling the satchel and the clothes they stood in. Bothari and Koudelka played two recently discharged vets, looking to better their sorry lot, and Cordelia and Drou two countrywomen co-scheming with them. The women were decked in a realistically odd combination of worn mountain dress and upper-class castoffs apparently acquired from some secondhand shop. They managed the right touch of mis-fittedness, of women not wearing originals, by trading garments.

Cordelia's eyes closed in exhaustion, though sleep was far from her. Time ticked in her brain. It had taken them two days to get this far. So close to their goal, so far from success . . . Her eyes snapped open again when the truck halted and thumped to the ground.

Bothari eased through the opening to the driver's compartment. "We get out here," he called lowly. They all filed through, dropping to the city curb. Their breath smoked in the chill. It was pre-dawn dark, with fewer lights about than Cordelia thought there ought to be. Bothari waved the transport on.

"Didn't think we should ride all the way in to the Central Market," Bothari grunted. "Driver says Vorbohn's municipal guards are thick there this time of day, when the new stocks come in."

"Are they anticipating food riots?" Cordelia asked.

"No doubt, plus they like to get theirs first," said Koudelka. "Vordarian's going to have to put the army in soon, before the black market sucks all the food out of the rationing system." Kou, in the moments he forgot to pretend himself an artificial Vor, displayed an amazing and detailed grasp of black-market economics. Or, how
had
a grocer bought his son the education to gain entry to the fiercely competitive Imperial Military Academy? Cordelia grinned under her breath, and looked up and down the street. It was an old section of town, pre-dating lift tubes, no buildings more than six flights high. Shabby, with plumbing and electricity and light-pipes cut into the architecture, added as afterthoughts.

Bothari led off, seeming to know where he was going. The maintenance did not improve, in their direction of transit. Streets and alleys narrowed, channeling a moist aroma of decay, with an occasional whiff of urine. Lights grew fewer. Drou's shoulders hunched. Koudelka gripped his stick.

Bothari paused before a narrow, ill-lit doorway bearing a hand-lettered sign,
Rooms.
"This'll do." The door, an ancient non-automatic that swung on hinges, was locked. He rattled it, then knocked. After a long time, a little door within the door opened, and suspicious eyes stared out.

"Whatcha want?"

"Room."

"At this hour? Not damned likely."

Bothari pulled Drou forward. The stripe of light from the opening played over her face.

"Huh," grunted the door-muffled voice. "Well . . ." Some clinking of chains, the grind of metal, and the door swung open.

They all huddled in to a narrow hallway featuring stairs, a desk, and an archway leading back to a darkened chamber. Their host grew even grumpier when he learned they desired only one room among the four of them. Yet he did not question it; apparently their real desperation lent their pose of poverty a genuine edge. With the two women and especially Koudelka in the party, no one seemed to leap to identify them as secret agents.

They settled into a cramped, cheap upstairs room, giving Kou and Drou first shot at the beds. As dawn seeped through the window, Cordelia followed Bothari back downstairs to forage.

"I should have realized we'd need to bring rations, to a city under siege," Cordelia muttered.

"It's not that bad yet," said Bothari. "Ah—best you don't talk, Milady. Your accent."

"Right. In that case, strike up a conversation with this fellow, if you can. I want to hear the local view of things."

They found the innkeeper, or whatever he was, in the little room beyond the archway, which, judging from a counter and a couple of battered tables with chairs, doubled as a bar and a dining room. The man reluctantly sold them some seal-packed food and bottled drinks at inflated prices, while complaining about the rationing and angling for information about them.

"I been planning this trip for months," said Bothari, leaning on the bar, "and the damned war's bitched it."

The innkeep made an encouraging noise, one entrepreneur to another. "Oh? What's your strat?"

Bothari licked his lips, eyes narrowing in thought. "You saw that blonde?"

"Yo?"

"Virgin."

"No way. Too old."

"Oh, yeah. She can pass for class, that one. We were gonna sell it to some Vor lord at Winterfair. Get us a grubstake. But they've all skipped town. Could try for a rich merchant, I guess. But she won't like it. I promised her a real lord."

Cordelia hid her mouth behind her hand, and tried not to emit any attention-drawing noises. It was an excellent thing Drou was not there to learn Bothari's idea of a cover story. Good God. Did Barrayaran men actually pay for the privilege of committing that bit of sexual torture upon uninitiated women?

The 'keep glanced at Cordelia. "You leave her alone with your partner without her duenna, you could lose what you came to sell."

"Naw," said Bothari. "He would if he could, but he took a nerve-disruptor bolt, once. Below the belt, like. He's out on medical discharge."

"What're you out on?"

"Discharged without prejudice."

This was a code-phrase for, Quit or be housed in the stockade, as Cordelia understood it, the ultimate fate of chronic troublemakers who fell just, but only just, short of felony.

"You put up with a spastic?" The 'keep jerked his head, indicating their upstairs room and its inhabitants.

"He's the brains of the outfit."

"Not too many brains, to come up here and try to do that bit of business now."

"Yeah. I think I could've had a better price for that same piece of meat here if I'd had her butchered and dressed."

"You got that right," snorted the 'keep glumly, eyeing the food piled on the counter before Cordelia.

"She's too good to waste, though. Guess I'll have to find something else, till this mess blows over. Kill some time. Somebody may be hiring muscle. . . ." Bothari let this trail off. Was he running out of inspiration?

The 'keep studied him with interest. "Yo? I've had something in my eye I could use a, like, agent for. Been afraid for a week somebody else'd go after it first. You could be just what I need."

"Yo?"

The 'keep leaned forward across the bar, confidentially. "Count Vordarian's boys are giving out some fat rewards, down at ImpSec, for information-leading-to. Now, I wouldn't normally mess with ImpSec whoever was running it this week, but there's a strange fellow down the street who's taken a room. And he keeps to it, 'cept when he goes out for food, more food than one man might eat . . . he's got someone in there with him no one ever sees. And he sure isn't one of us. I can't help thinking he might be . . . worth something to somebody, eh?"

Bothari frowned judiciously. "Could be dangerous. Admiral Vorkosigan blows back into town, they'll be looking real hard for that little list of informers. And you have an address."