Captain Vorpatril's alliance

The clerk passed Falco a swiftly‑scribbled note. He squinted, read it, and nodded. “Do either of you make any financial claims upon the other?”

“No,” said Tej, and “No,” said Ivan.

“Now, that is interesting. And nearly unique, if I may say so.” Falco sat back, sighing. At length, his tapping fingers stilled. He drew a breath. “It is the ruling of this Count’s Court that the respondents, Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril and Lady Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua Vorpatril, have no grounds for the dissolution of their respective, freely spoken marital oaths. Your petition is denied. Case closed.”

The clerk reached over and banged the spear butt in its rest with two loud, echoing clacks.

Tej’s mouth had fallen open. Ivan was so stunned he could scarcely suck in air to sputter. “But, but, but…you can’t do that, sir!”

“Of course I can,” said Falco serenely. “That’s what I come here every session to do, in case you missed the turn, Ivan. Sit, listen to people, form and deliver judgments.” His smile stretched, endlessly it seemed. “I do this quite a lot, you know,” Falco confided to Tej. “Sometimes I begin to imagine I’ve heard it all, yet every once in a while there’s still some new surprise. Human beings are so endlessly variable.”

“But didn’t you say you’d talked to my mother?” said Ivan desperately.

“Oh, yes. At great length.” Falco leaned forward for the last time, his expression chilling down, and for a moment Ivan was conscious that he stood not before an elderly relative, but a count of Barrayar. “These are some words not from your mother. Do not ever again attempt to play fast and loose with solemn oaths in any jurisdiction of mine, Captain and Lady Vorpatril. If you should in the future acquire grounds for your petition, you may again bring it, but my court‑which is very busy, I must point out, and has no time for frivolous suits‑will not hear you again on the same matter in less than one‑half year.”

“But,” moaned Ivan, still in shock. Even he wasn’t sure but what.

Falco made a finger‑flicking gesture. “ Out, Ivan. Good day, Lady Tej. Countess Vorpatril hopes to see you both at Vorpatril House in the near future.”

Count Falco jerked his head at the sergeant‑at‑arms, who came forward and grasped Ivan by the sleeve, towing him gently but inexorably toward the door. Tej followed, bewilderment in every line of her body. A mob of people waiting to enter shouldered impatiently past them as they cleared the doorframe and stood, directionless, in the corridor, and the sergeant‑at‑arms turned his attention to herding the newcomers toward their respective benches. The door closed on the babble, although it opened again in a moment to emit the lawyer, papers and files stacked in her arms.

She twisted around her stack and reached into her case to extract a card, which she handed to Ivan. “My number, Captain.”

Ivan took it in numb fingers. “Is this…if we want legal advice?”

“No, love. It’s for if you ever want a date.” She trod away up the hall, laughing. By the time she reached the far end of the corridor, the echoes had died, but then she glanced back and her un‑lawyerly giggles burst forth once more as she turned down the stairwell.

Holding onto each other like two people drowning, Ivan and Tej staggered out of the archaic building and into watery early‑winter sunlight. Apparently, still married.

At least I was right about one thing, Ivan thought. It did only take ten minutes.

Chapter Thirteen

Tej paced up and down Ivan Xav’s living room. Ivan Xav sat with a drink in his hands, occasionally putting it down in favor of holding his head, instead. Rish perched on the couch with her feet drawn up, listening to their tale; at first with gratifying disbelief, then with increasing and much less gratifying impatience, which was now edging into exasperation.

“I still can’t believe that one old man, who wasn’t even there, could cancel out my deal like that!” fumed Tej. “I thought this was supposed to be all fixed up in advance!”

“It was, it seems‑but not by me,” said Ivan Xav, sounding morose. “That was my first mistake, going to someone who knows Mamere. We should have taken this to some judge who didn’t know me from a hole in the ground, let alone since childhood. Total strangers wouldn’t have known what the hell was going on, and might have let us just slide on through.”

“So what do you have to do?” said Rish. “To provide these grounds they want.”

Ivan Xav shook his head. “Divorce turns out to be a lot of work. Way more than I thought.”

“There has to be something. Let’s go down your list again,” said Rish in an annoyingly reasonable tone, squaring her shoulders. “Mutation. Couldn’t one of you pretend to be a mutant? Well, not Tej, I suppose. But the captain here is just a natural conception‑a body‑birth, if you can believe it! Run him through an exhaustive enough gene scan, something would be bound to turn up that you could pretend to object to.”