Captain Vorpatril's alliance

The Lord Auditor Coz made a strange little wheeing sound. He was biting his own hand, Tej noticed. Ivan Xav pointedly ignored him.

“Which proved to be very lucky,” Tej forged on, “because when the real kidnappers turned up, we woke up and heard them talking to him and were able to get the drop on them.”

“That wasn’t luck,” protested Ivan Xav. “I engaged them in delay as loudly as I could, till the reinforcements came up. Rather slowly.”

“Quick thinking‑for a man tied to a chair,” murmured the Coz.

“Well, it was!” said Ivan Xav.

“Anyway,” Tej plowed on, “he invited us to hide out in his flat for the next few days, which worked fine, till the Prestene contact thought of putting Komarran Immigration onto us, to smoke us out of hiding so they could target us. So Byerly, who came to warn us, and the Immigration officers, and those Dome cops who were trying to arrest Ivan Xav for kidnapping me, which he didn’t, all arrived at once before anyone had drunk any coffee, and then Admiral Desplains called Ivan Xav, very irate about the Dome cops, I think, and I was so tired and scared, and we‑we panicked.” She glanced at Rish. Still no help there.

“Quit laughing,” said Ivan Xav irritably to the Coz, who actually wasn’t, out loud at least, except for the madly crinkling eyes. “It wasn’t funny at the time.”

Ivan Xav glanced aside at Tej, and his hand squeezed hers. She squeezed back. No, it hadn’t been. Not that part, not at the time.

In retrospect, though…“So he threw his wristcom into the refrigerator, grabbed this box of instant groats, and asked me to marry him. To keep the Immigration people from arresting me and the Dome cops from arresting him. And I said yes.”

“I see,” said The Gregor. “I think…”

“It worked,” said Ivan Xav, sounding stung.

“Why did he throw his wristcom into the freezer?” asked the Coz, diverted by this detail.

“His admiral kept calling back.”

“Ah. Makes perfect sense.”

“It does?” said The Gregor. The Coz nodded, and he seemed to accept this.

“And then Ivan Xav brought us here to Barrayar, where we are supposed to find this man named Count Falco who will give us a divorce, and then…” Tej ran aground, till she bethought herself of the kind and shrewd Lady Alys. “And Lady Alys’s Simon suggested that Rish and I might be smuggled to Escobar on a Barrayaran government courier vessel, if Ivan Xav would ask the right people.” She gathered her courage and looked up from her lap at The Gregor. “Would that be you, sir?”

“Possibly.” He leaned over and propped his chin in his hand, regarding her quizzically. He had one of those wildly unfair male face‑transforming smiles, she noted, even more so than Ivan Xav’s; but then, The Gregor’s smile was transiting from a much sterner‑looking start‑point. Ivan Xav had to work hard to look stern, and even then it was more likely to come out just peeved. The emperor continued, “Where on Escobar is your brother?”

This was not the time to try to deal, Tej realized; this whole meeting was a deal. A big one, at that. “Amiri was never happy in the House, never wanted to be involved in the business with my brother Erik and my sisters. He had this passion all his life for biology and medicine, so eventually my parents made a deal for him to go to Escobar to this clinic where they had a special contact, and change his identity and finish his medical education. He’s a graduate researcher there, now, under a new name.” She moistened her lips and added, “It was always the plan that if something terrible happened, I would go to him, because we always got along best, and my sisters would go to Grandmama.”

The Gregor stretched out his arm and drummed his fingers on the sofa back. “Given that Shiv Arqua’s Jacksonian parents are both listed as long‑deceased, this would have to be your Cetagandan haut grandmother, General ghem Estif’s widow, exiled to Earth?”

“Good God!” said Ivan Xav. His hip being pressed to hers on the short sofa, Tej felt him start. “She’s still alive? ”

The Gregor looked across at him in some bemusement. “Didn’t you read the ImpSec reports?”

“Didn’t figure they’d disgorge ’em without arm wrestling. Besides, I spend all day every day up to my eyebrows in Ops reports for Desplains.”

“But there were all those evening‑never mind,” said The Gregor. Tej wasn’t sure if he was looking at her or Ivan Xav or both, but a ghost of that smile went past again.

“But ghem Estif’s widow‑she was on Barrayar back during the Occupation, and nobody still alive remembers that,” said Ivan Xav. “She must be over a hundred and twenty years old, at least! Mummified!”

“About a hundred and thirty,” said Rish. “If I recall correctly.”

“Did you ever meet her?” Ivan Xav asked Rish. But his glance went to Tej.