Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Tej’s shoulders hunched. “I didn’t want high House connections. That was Star’s and Pidge’s passion, and Erik’s. And the Baronne’s. I thought there were enough Arquas trying to build economic empires. Family dinners got to be like board meetings, once they were all into it.” Tej had long since given up trying to get in a word at meals without a crowbar, certainly not about her own piddling interests, which, since they did not include schemes for House aggrandizement, interested no one else there.

Pidge, officially named Mercedes Sofia Esperanza Juana Paloma, was Tej’s other older even‑sister, born in the era before the Baronne had finally made her spouse ease back on his inspirations, or maybe she’d hidden the book by the time the last few Arqua offspring were decanted from their uterine replicators, who knew. The Baronne always called her Mercedes; Dada, from the time she’d started precociously talking‑and never again shut up, as far as Tej could tell‑had dubbed her Little Wisdom as a play on Sofia, but as soon as her other siblings discovered that another meaning of Paloma was pigeon, her family nickname had stuck. Well, except when Erik transmuted it to Pudge, to get a rise out of her, which it reliably did.

Did you get out safely, Pidge? Have you made it to your assigned refuge yet? Or did your flight go as sour for you as mine did for me? Her elder sisters had supplied Tej with what she suspected was no more than the normal amount of adolescent hell, but she worried for them now with all that was left of her shredded heart. Erik…knowing that Erik had not got out, but not knowing how, had supplied the stuff of nightmares, both asleep and awake. Had he died fighting? Been captured and coldly executed? Tortured first? However it happened, he’s beyond all grief and pain and struggle and regret now. After all these months, Tej was beginning to be reconciled to that cold consolation, if only for want of any other. Amiri…her middle brother Amiri was still safe as far as Tej knew. And your hard‑bought new life will not be betrayed through me, that’s an iron‑clad contract. Even if she made the deal only with her own overwrought imagination.

She rose on her toes and leaned out, causing Rish, who stood well back with her shoulders snug to the wall, to make a strained noise in her throat. “Oh, there he is! And he’s got lots of big bags!” Tej watched that long stride close Ivan Xav’s distance to the building’s entry till he turned in out of sight, then gave up her spy‑vantage. When they went inside, Rish locked the glass door firmly behind them.

Vorpatril bustled in with the dinner and what proved to be sacks of groceries, and cheerfully emptied them out onto the counter while Rish rescued the restaurant containers and set the table.

“It’s Barrayaran Greekie, tonight,” he told the women. “Wasn’t easy to find. Got a tip about this place from one of the fellows out at HQ. A Barrayaran Greekie sergeant whose family’d been in the restaurant business back in his home District married a Komarran woman and retired here, set up shop. It comes highly recommended‑we’ll see.”

“Barrayaran Greekie?” asked Rish, brows rising in puzzlement.

“The smallest of our main languages,” he told her. “The Firsters actually arrived in four disparate settlement groups‑Russian, British, French and Greek, as their home regions on Old Earth were back then. Over the centuries of the Time of Isolation, everyone pretty much blended together genetically‑founder effect, you know‑but they kept up those languages, which still gave folks plenty to fight about. I think there were some more minor tongues as well, to start, but those got rubbed out in what you galactics call the Lost Centuries. Except we weren’t lost, we were all right there. It was just the Nexus that got misplaced.”

Tej considered this novel view as he continued unpacking sacks, including, she was glad to see, fresh fruit and teas and coffees and vat‑dairy cream and milk. How many days was he planning for?

He added, “Fortunately, we kept a lot of the food styles. Modified.”

“But not mutated,” murmured Tej.

“ Indeed not.” But his lips twitched, so her tiny joke hadn’t really offended him, good. He drew out another large carton and folded the bag. “More instant groats. They’re a traditional Barrayaran breakfast food, among other things.”

“I saw that little box in your cupboard. I wasn’t sure what a person was supposed to do with them.”

“Oh, is that why you weren’t eating them? Here, let me show you…” He drew boiling water from the heater tap and mixed up a small bowl of the stuff, and passed it around the table to sample as they sat to the new largess. Tej thought the little brown grains tasted like toasted cardboard, but perhaps they were some childhood comfort food of his, and she oughtn’t to criticize them.

Rish made a face, though. “A bit bland, don’t you think?”