Captain Vorpatril's alliance

“Ackle,” Lord Sasha remarked gnomically, reaching up to dislodge a hank of his mother’s sleeked‑back hair and chew on it.

Lady Ekaterin smiled in distraction. “Welcome to Vorkosigan House, Tej, Rish. I’m so glad you could visit before we have to leave.” She added aside to Ivan Xav, “I’m taking the twins to Sergyar to see their grandparents while Miles is about his affairs.”

“Nikki, too?” asked Ivan Xav.

She nodded. “He’s not too happy about having to do all the make‑up work for school, but he’s tremendously excited about the travel.” She added over her shoulder to her husband. “Miles, why don’t you take them on into the library, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

The burdened woman trudged back up the staircase, and Lord Vorkosigan gestured them to follow him through the archway to the left. On the far side of a large antechamber with walls covered in pale green silk, double doors painted white were swung open by an unseen hand. Their host ushered them into a long room lined with antique bookcases. Tej’s station‑bred eye was briefly shocked by the orange flicker of a fire, burning tamely in a white marble fireplace‑no, not an emergency here, just decor. A pair of short sofas and some other chairs were grouped invitingly around the hearth. Upon one of the sofas, a lean, dark‑haired, rather hatchet‑faced man looked up from his viewer at their entry, stood, and waited with a grave smile. He was dressed in one of those Barrayaran faux‑military suits, dark blue and very plain.

“Sire,” said Ivan Xav, as they herded up.

“Hi, Ivan. But I’m doing Count Vorbarra today,” said the man, his smile turning briefly saturnine. “It cuts down the circus by at least half.”

“Right,” said Ivan Xav. He was apparently growing introduction‑fatigued at the most inopportune time, for he went on far too casually, “Gregor, my wife Tej, her friend Rish. I suppose you read the reports?”

“I had Allegre’s precis. And I talked in person with your mother this morning, which was rather more informative.” He turned to the women. “How do you do, Lady Vorpatril, Mademoiselle Rish. Welcome to Barrayar.”

He said this in the exact same way that Lady Vorkosigan had said, Welcome to Vorkosigan House. It came to Tej that he was the one man here who was not a subject. Did that make him an object…? He sat, apparently the signal for everyone else to do likewise. Ivan Xav gathered Tej to him and seized the other sofa, Lord Vorkosigan swung his cane out of the way and dropped into a smallish armchair, and Rish perched gingerly on a similar one.

Rish had to be madly trying to parse the many unfamiliar scents, of which the wood smoke was the strongest and strangest. There were two more men in the black uniforms standing statue‑like in the room, one by a pair of glass doors at the far end, apparently leading outside, the other at the wall by their entry. They looked back over the two women like a pair of sleek guard dogs studying a couple of cats that had strayed onto their territory. As if they might grab them in their teeth and break their necks with one sharp shake, if their doggish reflexes were triggered by a wrong move. Tej tried to sit extra‑carefully, and not let her fur stand on end.

The emperor of Barrayar leaned back at his ease, one arm stretched out along the top of the sofa, and asked genially, “So, Lady Tej‑how did you come to meet our Ivan?”

Tej glanced wildly at Rish, whose stark, stuffed expression returned, This one’s all yours, sweetling. How far back was she supposed to begin? She swallowed, grabbed Ivan Xav’s hand for luck, and started at random: “We’d run out of money, trying to get to‑” Wait, should she‑but he said he’d talked to Lady Alys, how much of‑

“Trying to get to your brother on Escobar, as I now understand it?” said The Gregor.

Tej gulped and nodded. “We were stuck downside on Komarr, dodging what we think were hirelings of the Prestene syndicate. I was working at this grubber shipping store, trying to rebuild our stake, and Rish was in hiding at our flat. Ivan Xav brought in this vase, wanting it packed and shipped‑” To here, come to think. She looked up at him in belated indignation. “Hey! You bought that horrible thing on purpose just to have an excuse to come into the shop, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Well, sure.”

“We were just closing. He tried to pick me up.” Tej scowled in memory.

The Lord Auditor Coz pressed a hand to his lips, briefly. “What, and failed? ”

Tej nodded again. “Then he turned up on my front steps. I thought he might be a capper stalking me. So I invited him in, and Rish shot him.”

The cousin jerked slightly. The emperor’s eyebrows went up.

“ Stunned him, sweetling,” Rish corrected, urgently. “Just a little light stun, really.”

“And then we dragged him up to our flat,” Tej went on.

“ This wasn’t in the ImpSec report,” said The Gregor.

“It wasn’t relevant by then,” said Ivan Xav, in a distant tone. “Forgive, forget…”

“So we tied him to a chair for the night,” said Tej.