Captain Vorpatril's alliance

“Mm, mutual acquaintance? Well, maybe not too mutual‑he didn’t seem to know much about you. But he did seem to think you were in some kind of danger.” Vorpatril looked down rather ironically at the bindings now securing him to a kitchen chair, dragged out to the living room for the purpose. “It seems you think so, too.”

Tej stared at him in disbelief. “Are you saying someone sent you to me as a bodyguard? ”

He appeared affronted by her rising tones. “Why not?”

“Aside from the fact that the two of us took you down without even getting winded?” said Rish.

“You did too get winded. Dragging me up here. Anyway, I don’t hit girls. Generally. Well, there was that time with Delia Koudelka when I was twelve, but she hit me first, and it really hurt, too. Her mama and mine were inclined to be merciful, but Uncle Aral wasn’t‑gave me a permanent twitch on the subject, let me tell you.”

“Shut. Up,” said Rish, driven to twitch a bit herself. “Nothing about him makes sense!”

“Unless he’s telling the truth,” said Tej slowly.

“Even if he’s telling the truth, he’s blithering,” said Rish. “Our dinner is getting cold. Come on, eat, then we’ll figure out what to do with him.”

With reluctance, Tej allowed herself to be drawn into the kitchen. A glance over her shoulder elicited a look of hope from the man, which faded disconsolately as she didn’t turn back. She heard his trailing mutter: “Hell, maybe I should’ve started with ponies…”

Chapter Two

Ivan sat in the dark and contemplated his progress. It was not heartening.

Not that his reputation for success with women was undeserved, but it was due to brains, not luck, and steady allegiance to a few simple rules. The first rule was to go to places where lots of women already in the mood for company had congregated‑parties, dances, bars. Although not weddings, because those tended to put the wrong sorts of thoughts into their heads. Next, try likely prospects till you hit one who smiled back. Next, be amusing, perhaps in a slightly risque but tasteful way, until she laughed. Extra points if the laughter was genuine. Continue ad lib from there. A 10:1 ratio of trials to hits was not a problem as long as the original pool contained ten or more prospects to start with. It was simple statistics, as he’d tried to explain to his cousin Miles on more than one occasion.

He’d entered that shop knowing the odds were not in his favor; a pool with only one fish required a fellow to get it right the first time. Well, he might have got lucky; it wasn’t unprecedented. He wriggled his wrists against his scarf bonds, which were unexpectedly unyielding for such soft, feminine cloth. Some sort of metaphor, there. This is not my fault.

It was By’s fault, he decided. Ivan was a victim of poor intel from his own side, like many a forlorn hope before him. Ivan had encountered overprotective duennas before, but never one who’d shot him from ambush the first time he walked through the door. The unfriendly blue woman…was a puzzle. He disliked puzzles. He’d never been good at them, not even as a child. His impatient playmates had generally plucked them out of his hands and finished them for him.

Rish was incredibly beautiful‑sculpted bones, flowing muscles, stained‑glass skin shimmering as she moved‑but not in the least attractive, at least in the sense of someone he’d want to cuddle up to. Sort of a cross between a pixie and a python. She was shorter and slimmer than Nanja, and very bendy, but, he had noticed when the two women were dragging him up here, much the stronger. He also suspected genetically augmented reflexes, and the devil knew what else. Best appreciated from several meters’ distance, like a work of art, which he suspected she was.

Whose work? That degree of genetic manipulation on humans was wildly illegal on all three planets of the Barrayaran Imperium. Unless one had it done to oneself, offworld, in which case it might still be better to go live somewhere else, after. Nanja was certainly neither Komarran nor Barrayaran, or she’d have had a more visible reaction to that famous name and address where he’d shipped the ghastly vase. Not only Not From Around Here, but also Not Been Here Long.

Her companion’s elegant gengineering was almost Cetagandan in its subtlety‑but the Cetagandans didn’t make human novelties as such. Their aesthetic boundaries in that material were very strict, not to mention restricted, reserved for more serious and long‑range goals. Now, animals‑when Cetagandans were working with animal or plant genomes, or worse, both at once, all bets were off. He shuddered in memory. He would be glad to cross Cetagandans off his list, renegade or otherwise. He would be ecstatic.