Captain Vorpatril's alliance

“Except maybe that stuff you mumble about in your sleep.”

Ivan Xav stiffened, and not in the good way. He was, in fact, quite limp in that region at the moment. “I talk in my sleep? About classified…?”

“It’s kind of hard to tell.” Tej composed her mouth into Ivan Xav’s accent and cadences, and recited, “‘Don’t eat that avocado, Admiral, it’s gone blue. The blue ones have shifty eyes.’”

“Don’t remember that dream,” Ivan Xav muttered, looking vaguely horrified. “Fortunately…”

“I actually guessed it was a dream. Unless Barrayar’s running some sort of military bioengineering experiments, I suppose.”

“Not as far as I know. Not like that, anyway. The avocado didn’t… meow, did it?”

Tej stared. “I don’t know. You only said it looked shifty.”

Ivan Xav appeared inexplicably relieved. But then, alas, went on: “If it’s something benign, there’s no reason to keep it a secret.”

“Sure there is.”

“Like what?”

“Like, oh, to keep other people from stealing…whatever.”

“It’s a thing, then.”

It was a bit hopeless to tell herself Wake up! when her head was so filled with fatigue‑fog. Tej tried anyway. “Not necessarily. People steal ideas.”

“So it’s a thing, and…and Shiv and your family think it’s something that can somehow help their cause, I suppose. That would make sense. Well, really, By is right; it’s the only thing that would make sense. Something that would help them, something they need to take back their House. So, more power to them‑but not here. What can they be up to here?”

“I am not playing fast‑penta interrogation with you at this time of night. Or at any other time.”

“That’s…actually a party game. Fast‑penta Or Dare. People take turns asking questions, and you have to either tell the truth, or take the dare. Not with real fast‑penta, of course. Unless it’s a pretty dodgy party. By would know…”

“Barrayarans are strange.”

“Yes,” Ivan Xav agreed with a pensive sigh, then seemed to belatedly decide this might be considered a slur on his homeworld and revised it hastily, “No! Not as strange as Jacksonians, anyway. Or Cetagandans.” He added something under his breath that might have been, Frigging mutant space aliens, but swallowed it before Tej could be sure. She did not ask him to repeat it more loudly.

“It’s not just the House,” Tej tried, after a minute of silence stretched unpleasantly. “Prestene has Eric and Topaz. Held hostage or…or worse.”

“So…” Ivan Xav’s voice went uncomfortably uncertain. “Eric may well not be revivable. And Topaz is…just a Jewel, right? No genetic relation to Shiv. You said.”

Tej frowned. “Dada never made any distinction amongst us kids. Or else when he was yelling at us, he wouldn’t have kept mixing up our names.” Those cadences came easily to her mouth and memory; her voice deepened automatically. “‘You, Rish, Pidge, Jet, Em‑no‑Tej, you’re the one‑you, stop that!’” Her lips turned up despite herself. “I suppose you could think of him as a stepfather to the Jewels, but since he didn’t bother to sort us, we never bothered to sort him. Of course, he was a busy man. It might have just been equal inattention, but the point is…” She’d lost track of the point.

“And your mother? With all the names?”

“The Baronne,” sighed Tej, “never mixed up anything.” She paused. “Simon seems a funny sort of stepfather to you.”

Ivan flapped his hands. “If I’d been five. Or fifteen. When he took up with Mamere. Things might have been different. I’d wanted a father, then. At thirty, we could only be adult acquaintances, and him Mamere’s…husband. Sort of. Um‑husband. Partner. Whatever.” He hesitated for a longer time. “Leaving aside the thirty years he’d watched out for me before that. But then, Simon Illyan watched out for everybody. Not…not making a distinction amongst us. But Simon‑” Ivan Xav stuttered, and went on, “Do you realize that‑no, I can’t say that. Or that, I suppose. Or…or that…”

Tej, irate and exhausted and not just by the day, snapped, “Well, then, stop talking and go to sleep.”

Ivan Xav humphed, sounding like…a lot like Count Falco, really.

They rolled over with their backs to each other.

Chapter Seventeen

Ivan’s first thought on waking was the same as the last that had plagued him before he’d‑finally‑got to sleep. Could Simon be herding Shiv into a sting? Such a move was likely as instinctive as breathing to the former ImpSec chief. It was as plausible‑a lot more plausible, really‑as the idea that Shiv could be suborning Simon.

In that case, would Shiv lumber blindly into the trap, or would he guess this, and set a counter‑pitfall for Simon before Simon could do him…?

Neither vision was appealing.