Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Ivan rolled up and received it, turning it over and reading the inscription. “This is a really old style. Mine look different. Somebody must have saved it for a souvenir. Maybe it dropped out of his pocket.” Ivan’s imagination flashed another, sadder picture. “Or hers.”

“That would make sense.”

“I bet they’ll want it back. Which garage?”

“Um, I don’t remember. There were so many.”

“Maybe I can look this fellow up tomorrow, in the Ops archives.”

“Oh! Can you?” Tej looked briefly cheered, then alarmed. “But maybe…I’d like to keep it as a souvenir myself.” Her hand reached uncertainly after the relic.

“If you want that, I can give you my old set. From when I was a lieutenant.” Ivan’s even older set, from when he’d been an ensign, had gone with some girlfriend or another and not come back, Ivan suddenly remembered. Proving that, as a girl‑leash, they didn’t work, despite the name, though it seemed as if they ought to.

Tej at last sat on the edge of the bed, still looking abstracted. His stretch for her halted in midair when her next question was, “Ivan Xav…do you know anything much about old Barrayaran military plastic explosives?”

He sank back, flummoxed. “I hope you didn’t find any of that on the floor of a garage!”

“No, no.”

“How old?”

“Really old. Twenty years, maybe more?”

“I had a munitions course back at the Academy, but that was all about current stuff.”

“How long ago?”

“Er…seventeen years?”

“But that’s almost twenty years.”

Ivan blinked. “So it is. Um.” He re‑marshaled his forces. “Anyway, if you ever run across anything that looks the least suspicious, what you do is call a bomb squad. Or call me, and I’ll call a bomb squad.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“Of course! Well, except for that old guerilla cache Miles and Elena and I found up in the Dendarii Mountains when we were kids. But we were being very stupid kids, as everyone from Uncle Aral on down explained, very memorably, after the‑never mind that now. Anyway, the point is, people can still find old, dangerous stuff lying around on this planet, and civilians shouldn’t fool with it.” Untangling himself from this digression, Ivan finally got back to the important question, which was, “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Tej said airily.

Right. Avocados probably did shifty better than Tej. It was most un‑Jacksonian of her.

“It was just something I was reading about,” she added, finding who‑knew‑what in his expression. Consternation, belike.

“How’s about,” said Ivan after a minute, “I take some personal leave?” And to hell with whether any busy‑ImpSec‑body thought he was admitting to being a security risk. “If your family’s only going to be here for a while, I should seize the chance to get to know them better. It only makes sense.”

“Oh!” She looked briefly pleased, then dismayed. “I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work. I know your career is very important.”

“We’re not at war. This week, anyway. Ops can suffer along without me for a few days without collapsing, I expect. They always have before.”

Her eyes were bright, like those of an animal in the headlights. “Good, that’s settled. Let’s make love!”

It was a patent diversion. Dammit, she’d be faking orgasms, next.

…But not, it appeared, yet.

This means she likes me, right? some awkward young Ivan who still lived at the bottom of his brain urged, just before the physiologically induced lights‑out.

Surly old Ivan could only think, Ivan, you idiot.

And not one Ivan on the whole pathetic committee had yet been able to muster aloud the only question that mattered. Tej, will you stay?

Chapter Twenty

On the next morning’s drive Tej found herself threading through a new part of the city, an unexpected suburban sprawl north of the ridges that cradled the river valley and the Old Town. Barrayarans seemed to date all their activities in terms of famous military events‑before the Occupation, during Mad Yuri’s War, after the Pretender’s War‑but in this rare case, by a peaceful one: the area had mostly been built up since Gregor took the reins, or in other words, in the past two decades.

Tej turned in at a modest industrial park, and found a slot for the rented groundcar in front of what was soon to be a rather bewildered minor pipe‑laying firm. Star took her notecase and headed purposefully for the door, but for a change Dada did not go with her, nor instruct Tej to stay with the vehicle. Instead, he gestured Tej after him, and walked off toward the street. Tej turned up the collar of her coat against the thick, chilly fog‑a change from the recent rains‑and followed.

“Where are we going?”

“To see a man I know.”

“Does he expect us?”

“Not yet.”

No appointment, no comconsole contact, and the rental car, which had a mapping system that also served to precisely locate the vehicle for anyone who might be wanting to follow its movements, had a legitimate place to be. Well, faux‑legitimate. Tej found herself growing unwillingly alert.