Captain Vorpatril's alliance

The first snake in Ivan’s garden raised its head briefly on the fourth day out. He’d forwarded a memo to Desplains’s comconsole from General Allegre, Chief of ImpSec, marked Personal, Eyes Only. A few minutes later, Desplains looked up and remarked mildly, “Ivan‑you have messaged home with an account of your adventures, have you not?”

“No reason to, sir. I mean, you know all about it. And my mother stopped asking about my girlfriends after I turned thirty.”

“Vorpatril, I decline to get between you and your mother on any of your personal matters.”

“As well you shouldn’t have to, sir.”

And that was, Ivan hoped, the end of that, but a number of hours later‑they were, after all, getting closer to Barrayar‑he fielded another Eyes Only message, from an all‑too‑familiar address. Though the temptation to make it vanish between his comconsole and Desplains’s was very strong, Ivan nobly resisted it, a spasm of virtue that he suspected no one was going to appreciate.

About fifteen minutes later, Desplains remarked, “May I ask why, if Lady Alys Vorpatril wishes to know what is going on in her only son’s life, she applies to me and not to you?”

Ivan blinked. “Experience?”

The silence from across the room took on a curious frigid quality, and Ivan looked up. “Oh. That was one of those, what d’you call it, rhetorical questions, was it, sir?”

“Yes.”

Ivan cleared his throat. “You don’t suppose ImpSec’s been feeding her their reports, do you? That’s bound to be confusing. I mean, look at the stuff they send us.”

That last line almost worked. But, alas, not quite. Desplains’s lips tightened. “As she works directly, every day, with General Allegre and his key staff on matters of the emperor’s personal security, and lives with the man who ran ImpSec out of his head for decades before that, and you are her closest living relative, I would think you were in a better position to guess the answer to that question than I am, Captain.”

“I’ll, ah”‑Ivan swallowed‑“I’ll just fire her off a little reassuring note right now, shall I, sir?”

“You do that.”

Ivan hated that dead‑level tone. Ugly unnerving thing, it was. Reminded him of his Uncle Aral in a mood.

But a written note, that was the ticket. A vid recording was nothing but an invitation to blather, with no living person in real‑time opposite you to give a visual or verbal cue how you were getting on, or when to stop.

Ivan bent to his comconsole, setting the header and the security codes. Medium security would likely do. Enough to shield the message from the eyes of people who didn’t need to know, not enough to make it sound like some sort of emergency.

Dear Mother.

He sat a moment, while lights blinked at him.

I don’t know what ImpSec’s been telling you, but actually, everything’s all right. I seem to have accidentally gotten married, but it’s only temporary. Don’t change the headings on your cards. I will explain it all to you when we get there.

Love, Ivan.

He contemplated that for a moment, then went back and cut the middle lines as redundant. If he was going to explain it all when he got there, surely he needn’t explain anything now.

I don’t know what ImpSec’s been telling you, but actually, everything’s all right. I will explain it all to you when we get there.

That looked much better. Now a little short, though. A slow smile turned his lips. He bent and added: P.S.‑Byerly Vorrutyer has the whole story, if you can catch up with him.

Actually, he didn’t expect By to be back in Vorbarr Sultana till some days after he and Tej and Rish arrived, at the earliest. But what was that tale from Old Earth, about throwing one’s fellow traveler out of the troika to distract the pursuing wolves? Yeah, like that, only more virtual, since Mamere wouldn’t be able to lay her hands on By either. But it sounded good.

He sent the message on its way, racing ahead of them at the speed of light.

Chapter Nine

For a capital that had hosted so many wars, both civil and interplanetary, Vorbarr Sultana seemed in remarkably good shape to Tej’s eye. From her readings of Barrayaran history aboard the JP‑9, she’d half expected to see gutted buildings with blackened timbers still smoking, bomb craters in the streets, and haunted, emaciated people scurrying like rats among the barricades. Instead, it was fully modernized, if not always fully modern, chock‑a‑block with galactic‑standard transportation and architecture, with citizens‑no, subjects, she corrected the term‑out everywhere, looking busy and well‑fed and alarmingly assertive. Terms like lively or even vibrant rose to Tej’s mind. It was extremely disorienting.