Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Tej was taken aback all over again. That seemed to be happening a lot, lately. “I…is it permitted?” Not offensive? Apparently, it was perfectly allowable, because all the Barrayarans nodded. Lady Alys drew a small pair of scissors from her purse‑secreted for just this hope, or did she always carry them? – and snipped a curl from Tej’s bent head. She handed it to Ivan Xav, who laid it atop the pile and set the wood shavings alight. Little flames crackled up, hot and swift. There did not seem to be any formal words to be recited, because everyone just stood around watching, the flames reflecting in their shadowed eyes as tiny molten glints. The tops of the highest buildings, visible in the distance, sprang into color as the first sunlight reached them, but down here all was yet a pool of damp gray, with the fire a shimmering orange blur in the autumn murk.

Not formal, but words‑very low, from Lady Alys; as though she told secrets. “Padma and I were hiding in what was then a cheap boarding house down the street. Just there.” She pointed to a building a few doors down, half‑concealed by renovation scaffolding. The scent of burning hair was very pungent, now. “When I went into labor, Padma panicked. I begged him not to go out, but he was frantic to find someone, anyone, to take over the terrifying task of delivering a baby that women all over the planet had been doing every damned day since the Firsters landed. Though I had the biggest part of the job, and wasn’t going to be able to wriggle out of it by any means whatsoever. So he went out, leaving me alone and petrified for hours with my contractions getting worse, waiting, and of course he promptly got picked up. Once they brought him back and we’d both been dragged out into the street, he tried to stand up to armed men, all penta‑drunk as he was. But I knew, then and forever after, that it wasn’t his bravery that killed him‑it was his cowardice. Oh, dear God, I was so angry at him for that. For years. ”

Illyan touched her shoulder; Ivan Xav stood warily away. Illyan said, “Kou got you and baby Ivan out, didn’t he?” Giving her thoughts a more positive direction?

“Yes. Lieutenant Koudelka‑later Commodore,” she glossed to Tej, “Kou managed to smuggle us out of the city in the back of a grocery van, of all things. His father had been a grocer, you see. Lurching along in the vegetable detritus‑Ivan very hungry and noisy, to be sure, and not happy to be thrust out into the cold world in the middle of a war.”

The little flames were almost gone, gray ash starting to drift away in the stirrings of air from the passing vehicles. The acrid smell was abating.

“This is a Barrayaran ceremony for remembrance,” said Lady Alys, turning to Tej. “It was always my intention, when Ivan married, to turn this task of remembrance over to him, to continue or not as he willed. Because…memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Her hand reached out and gripped Illyan’s, who gripped it back in a disturbed little shake, though he smiled at her.

“Thirty‑five years seems long enough, to me,” Lady Alys went on. “Long enough to mourn, quite long enough to be enraged. It’s time for me to retire from remembering. From the pain and sorrow and anger and attachment, and the smell of burning hair in the fog. For Ivan, it’s not the same, of course. His memories of this place are very different from mine.”

“I never knew,” said Ivan Xav, shifting uncomfortably. “All that.”

Lady Alys shrugged. “I never said. First you were too young to understand, and then you were too adolescent to understand, and then…we were both much busier with our lives, and this had all become a rote exercise. But lately…in recent years…I began to think more and more about giving it up.”

By every sign, she’d been thinking about this for quite a while, Tej thought. No one built up that much head‑pressure overnight. She looked her alarm at Ivan Xav who, belatedly, slid closer and put a bracing arm around her waist.

“It was just something we did, every year,” said Ivan Xav. “When I was really little, of course, I didn’t understand it at all. We just came here, burned this stuff, stood around for a few minutes, and then you took me to the Keroslav bakery, because we’d not had breakfast. I was all about the bakery, for the longest time.”

“They closed last year,” Lady Alys observed dispassionately.

“Not surprised. They’d kind of gone downhill, I thought.”

“Mm, that, and your palate grew more educated than when you were six.” She added after a reflective moment, “Fortunately.”

The flames had burned out. At Lady Aly’s gesture, Christos came back with the bag and a padded glove, upended the bronze bowl and tapped out the ash, wiped it with a cloth, and put it all away again. He stood up with a grunt.

Lady Alys brightened. “Well. That’s all over with, for another year at least. Given that the bakery is gone, removing an occasion for tradition without any effort on our parts, would you both care to come back to breakfast at my flat?”