Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Ivan Xav squirmed slightly, inching closer to Tej, or trying to. There weren’t any inches left.

Tej said sturdily, “He has so very many good qualities. He’s brave, he’s kind, he’s smart, he has excellent manners, and he thinks quickly in emergencies.” When pressed hard enough, anyway. “Very good‑looking, too, of course.” She probably ought not to add good in bed here; Barrayarans seemed to have funny notions about sex, which she didn’t quite understand yet. “And, um…” What was that unusual word Desplains had used? “Chivalrous, too, which is why he rescued us and brought us here, but really, he owes me nothing.”

Lady Alys pressed a finger to her lips. “That is not what those words in the groat circle say, however. Assuming Ivan managed to remember the right ones.”

“I did,” asserted Ivan Xav indignantly. “And anyway, I shouldn’t think you would be in such a tearing hurry to become the Dowager Lady Vorpatril.”

“My dear and only child, how did you come by that misapprehension? I’ve longed for it any time these past ten years. And anyway, if the title comes to seem too dreadfully aging, I now have other resources to correct the problem.” She glanced at Simon Illyan, who raised his brows and smiled back. Very private smiles that made Tej feel an intruder, though she wasn’t sure on what.

“So,” Lady Alys went on, “it is to be a marriage of convenience, then?”

Illyan put in, “Or inconvenience,” and pressed a concealing hand across his jaw. His eyes were alight, betraying his upward lip‑twitch nonetheless.

“The inconvenience,” said Lady Alys, “would seem to reside not in the marriage, but in this Jacksonian syndicate which pursues the girls. About which, I confess, I understand very little as yet. But I feel constrained to point out to you, Ivan‑just in case you have overlooked it‑that there is no point in your catching up with Falco for a divorce until you have figured out what happens to Tej and her companion after the protection of your name and position is removed. You dragged them here to Barrayar, after all.”

“I, uh…hadn’t got that far yet,” Ivan Xav admitted.

Lady Alys turned to Tej, and asked seriously, “Do you know what you would want?”

It came to Tej then, belatedly, that Lady Alys had just spent much of the prior conversation slowly, gently, and thoroughly roasting her son. And that she wasn’t at all the person Tej had been led to expect. She allowed herself a moment of crossness‑she would have words with Ivan Xav about that, later. But right now, she needed to give Lady Alys’s serious question the serious attention it deserved.

“We had a place we were planning to go‑not here on Barrayar, not in the Imperium, in fact. But we can only go there if we are absolutely certain that we’ve broken our trail in a way that the Prestene syndicate can’t pick up again. Otherwise, it’s…it would be worse than getting caught ourselves.”

“That would actually come to the same thing,” Rish pointed out. “Once they have us, they have…” A blue hand made an ambiguous, if fluid, wave.

Tej nodded grimly. “That was why the balcony, in the end.”

“So you protect another,” said Illyan, leaning back and tenting his hands together. “One very dear to you.” He blinked vaguely. “Must be the missing brother, what’s‑his‑name.”

Tej gasped and turned in alarm to Ivan Xav.

He shrugged, and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “I said he’d lost his memory, not his wits.”

“The point was mentioned in Morozov’s report,” said Illyan, sounding apologetic. “I only read it this morning. It hasn’t had time to go fuzzy yet.” He took up and emptied his glass, appearing to study the curious absence of his drink before setting it down again. “From the direction and duration of your travel, I would posit that he’s hiding on Escobar, with remoter possibilities being Beta Colony, Kibou‑daini, or Tau Ceti. Not farther.”

Rish had jerked upright in her chair. But there was nowhere to bolt to. Nothing to attack. Or to defend against, either.

“In which case,” Illyan continued, “one obvious solution presents itself. The ladies might be conveyed to Escobar as unlisted supercargo in a routine government fast courier, and discreetly deposited downside by the same means by which we used to insert agents. Or perhaps still do; I don’t suppose the procedures have changed all that much. The break in the trail from here, at least, would be clean, as our couriers go in all possible directions. And no record of your landing on Escobar, either.”

Rish’s mouth had fallen open; she leaned forward like a woman contemplating a bakery case. Tej’s heart was beating faster. She asked, “Could it really be done?”

“Ivan would no doubt have to call in some favors,” said Illyan, a bit blandly.

“Oh, yes, please!” said Rish.

“Er,” said Ivan Xav, glancing at Tej. “Is that what you really want?”

Tej sank back in new hesitation. No gifts came without price tags. “What would you want in return for this deal?” She looked in worry at Illyan, at Lady Alys. At Ivan Xav.