Chapter Six
“Tej, get away from that edge,” said Rish, irritably. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m only watching for Ivan Xav.” Tej gripped the balcony railing and craned her neck, studying the scurrying evening throng in the street far below. She’d had several false alarms already, of foreshortened dark-haired men in green uniforms exiting the bubble-car station and turning in her direction, but none of them had been the captain. Too old, too young, too stout, too slight, none with that particular rolling rhythm to his stride. None bearing bags. “Besides, he’s bringing dinner. I hope.”
Rish crossed her arms tighter. “If only the Baron and Baronne had known, they could have had all your parade of suitors offer you provisions, instead of those high House connections.”
Tej’s shoulders hunched. “I didn’t want high House connections. That was Star’s and Pidge’s passion, and Erik’s. And the Baronne’s. I thought there were enough Arquas trying to build economic empires. Family dinners got to be like board meetings, once they were all into it.” Tej had long since given up trying to get in a word at meals without a crowbar, certainly not about her own piddling interests, which, since they did not include schemes for House aggrandizement, interested no one else there.
Pidge, officially named Mercedes Sofia Esperanza Juana Paloma, was Tej’s other older even-sister, born in the era before the Baronne had finally made her spouse ease back on his inspirations, or maybe she’d hidden the book by the time the last few Arqua offspring were decanted from their uterine replicators, who knew. The Baronne always called her Mercedes; Dada, from the time she’d started precociously talking—and never again shut up, as far as Tej could tell—had dubbed her Little Wisdom as a play on Sofia, but as soon as her other siblings discovered that another meaning of Paloma was pigeon, her family nickname had stuck. Well, except when Erik transmuted it to Pudge, to get a rise out of her, which it reliably did.
Did you get out safely, Pidge? Have you made it to your assigned refuge yet? Or did your flight go as sour for you as mine did for me? Her elder sisters had supplied Tej with what she suspected was no more than the normal amount of adolescent hell, but she worried for them now with all that was left of her shredded heart. Erik…knowing that Erik had not got out, but not knowing how, had supplied the stuff of nightmares, both asleep and awake. Had he died fighting? Been captured and coldly executed? Tortured first? However it happened, he’s beyond all grief and pain and struggle and regret now. After all these months, Tej was beginning to be reconciled to that cold consolation, if only for want of any other. Amiri…her middle brother Amiri was still safe as far as Tej knew. And your hard-bought new life will not be betrayed through me, that’s an iron-clad contract. Even if she made the deal only with her own overwrought imagination.
She rose on her toes and leaned out, causing Rish, who stood well back with her shoulders snug to the wall, to make a strained noise in her throat. “Oh, there he is! And he’s got lots of big bags!” Tej watched that long stride close Ivan Xav’s distance to the building’s entry till he turned in out of sight, then gave up her spy-vantage. When they went inside, Rish locked the glass door firmly behind them.
Vorpatril bustled in with the dinner and what proved to be sacks of groceries, and cheerfully emptied them out onto the counter while Rish rescued the restaurant containers and set the table.
“It’s Barrayaran Greekie, tonight,” he told the women. “Wasn’t easy to find. Got a tip about this place from one of the fellows out at HQ. A Barrayaran Greekie sergeant whose family’d been in the restaurant business back in his home District married a Komarran woman and retired here, set up shop. It comes highly recommended—we’ll see.”
“Barrayaran Greekie?” asked Rish, brows rising in puzzlement.
“The smallest of our main languages,” he told her. “The Firsters actually arrived in four disparate settlement groups—Russian, British, French and Greek, as their home regions on Old Earth were back then. Over the centuries of the Time of Isolation, everyone pretty much blended together genetically—founder effect, you know—but they kept up those languages, which still gave folks plenty to fight about. I think there were some more minor tongues as well, to start, but those got rubbed out in what you galactics call the Lost Centuries. Except we weren’t lost, we were all right there. It was just the Nexus that got misplaced.”
Tej considered this novel view as he continued unpacking sacks, including, she was glad to see, fresh fruit and teas and coffees and vat-dairy cream and milk. How many days was he planning for?
He added, “Fortunately, we kept a lot of the food styles. Modified.”
“But not mutated,” murmured Tej.
“Indeed not.” But his lips twitched, so her tiny joke hadn’t really offended him, good. He drew out another large carton and folded the bag. “More instant groats. They’re a traditional Barrayaran breakfast food, among other things.”
“I saw that little box in your cupboard. I wasn’t sure what a person was supposed to do with them.”
“Oh, is that why you weren’t eating them? Here, let me show you…” He drew boiling water from the heater tap and mixed up a small bowl of the stuff, and passed it around the table to sample as they sat to the new largess. Tej thought the little brown grains tasted like toasted cardboard, but perhaps they were some childhood comfort food of his, and she oughtn’t to criticize them.
Rish made a face, though. “A bit bland, don’t you think?”
“You usually add butter, maple syrup, cheese, all sorts of things. There’s also a cold salad with mint and chopped tomatoes and what-not. And they use them at weddings.”
The Greekie food, as he dished it out, looked more promising; her first bites delivered some quite wonderful aromas, flavors and textures. “How do they prepare your groats for weddings?”
“They don’t serve them. The grains get dyed different colors, and sprinkled on the ground for the wedding circle and what-not. Some sort of old fertility or abundance symbol, I suppose.”
It also seemed the food least likely to be regretted in that sacrifice, a suspicion Tej kept to herself.
Ivan Xav seemed much more relaxed tonight, and she couldn’t figure out quite why, except for the lack of his strange friend Byerly to stir him up. She would have thought that the revelation of her true identity would have alarmed him more, but maybe he disliked mysteries more than bad news?
“This is all right,” he said, leaning back replete when they’d demolished the Greekie dinner. “When I rented this place to sample the Solstice nightlife, I’d forgotten just how short the nights were. There’s time to either party or recover before work, but not both. So staying in actually suits, though not on your ownsome. That would be dull.”
He rose to go rummage at the comconsole. “My cousin told me about this dance thing you and Rish might like to see, if I can find an example…”
“Do you have a lot of cousins?” Tej asked, leaning over his shoulder. “Or just a lot of one cousin?”
He laughed at that last. “Both, actually. On my father’s side, there’s only my cousin Miles—not exactly a cousin, our grandmothers were sisters. That part of the family got pretty thinned out during Mad Yuri’s War, which came down soon after the end of the Occupation. I’ve half-a-dozen first cousins on my mother’s side, but they don’t live near the capital and I don’t see much of ’em. Ah, here we go!”
His search had turned up a recorded performance of the Minchenko Memorial Ballet Company, from a place called the Union of Free Habitats, or Quaddiespace. Tej had never heard of it, but as the vid started up Rish drifted in and said, “Oh! The gengineered four-armed people. Baron Fell had a quaddie musician, once. I saw a vid of one of her gigs. Played a hammer dulcimer with all four hands at once. But she jumped her contract and left, and no one’s heard of her since. I didn’t know they could dance…” Her face screwed up. “How do they dance, with no feet?”
“Free fall,” said Ivan Xav. “They live in it, work in it, dance in it…my cousin and his wife saw a live performance when they were out that way on, er, business last year—told me all about it, later. Very impressive, they said.”
Dance the quaddies did, it seemed, in zero-gee: hand to hand to hand to hand, singly, in pairs, but most amazingly, in groups, glittering colored costumes flashing through air. The Jewels gave the illusion of flying, at times—these dancers really flew, wheeling like flocks of bright birds. Both Rish and Tej watched in rapt fascination, Rish putting in mutters of excited critique now and then, and bouncing on the edge of her chair at especially complex maneuvers, her arms waving in unconscious mimicry.
Tej shared the sofa with Ivan Xav. His arm, laid out along the back, crept nearer, easing down over her shoulders till she was quite snugged in by it. After a few moments of silent consideration, she declined to shrug it off. It threw her back into a memory of watching shows with Dada, in her childhood—how patient he must have been with her choices, in retrospect—snuggled into his warm side, a stouter one than Ivan Xav’s, but smelling equally, if rather differently, masculine. She wasn’t sure if the recollection helped or hurt, but there it was. For a little hour, some simulacrum of peace.
It ended soon enough, when Ivan Xav turned off the holovid at the close of the performance and Rish said, “So how long were you planning to stay on Komarr, Captain Vorpatril?”
“Mm? Oh.” He sat up, and Tej edged regretfully away. “This whole duty—the annual inspections and conferences—usually runs about ten days or so. I’ve been here, um, let me see…” His lips moved as he counted on his fingers. “Seven nights, so far, including this one. So not much longer. I trust that By will be done with his business sooner, though. Seemed like his pace was picking up.”
“So this safe house”—a graceful blue hand spiraled—“will go away when you do.”
“Uh…” he said. “I’m afraid so. Though I could book it an extra week for you, but…I figured to wait and see what By comes up with.”
Rish glanced significantly at Tej.
Ivan Xav cleared his throat. “Would you two consider making a deal with ImpSec? I mean, more than just with Byerly. I bet you know lots of things they’d like to share, for suitable considerations.”
Tej grimaced. “If there was one lesson both my parents took care to pound into me, it’s that it’s impossible to deal safely if the power differential between the two sides is too great. The high side just skins, and the low side gets stripped. Your ImpSec has no need to be nice to us.”
“Well, they’ve no need to be gratuitously nasty, either,” said Ivan Xav uneasily. “That I can see.”
“What if they decide they need to establish a fresh working relationship with the new House Cordonah, and that Rish and I would make dandy bargaining chips? I have nothing to stop them with—nothing.” She choked down her rising tone, refusing to turn her head toward the balcony. That nothing would stop them, too literally true.
“Look, I know they’re all weasels over there at ImpSec, but they’re pretty honorable weasels.”
“I thought they were a security organization,” said Rish. “Their honor has to consist of putting Barrayar’s interests first.”
Ivan shrugged somewhat helplessly, but did not deny this.
“We’ll think about it,” said Tej. “Meanwhile…do you want first claim on the bath, Captain? You have to get up before us.”
He glanced at the time and made a face. “I guess I’d better.” He looked as if he’d like to stay and argue more, but swallowed whatever he’d been going to say, and went off.
When the bedroom door had closed after him, Rish said, “Was that a Maybe yes we’ll think about it, or was that a No, but we won’t confirm it till we make it safely to the exit we’ll think about it?”
“Have you spotted a safe exit? I haven’t.”
Rish set her fine jaw. “Tomorrow. I think we should run tomorrow, as soon as he goes off to that HQ of his. The cash in his wallet would get us to another dome, at least.”
It would have to be one of the domes with its own commercial shuttleport. That cut it down to a couple of dozen choices planet-wide, all larger arcologies, which was a good feature, but none were close. Tej’s heart sank at the thought of another scurrying, fearful journey among strangers, from nowhere to nowhere, in the vague hope that their lost House’s enemies would look for them…nowhere.
“And are you sure we’re not being watched out for?” said Tej. “Are you sure he isn’t watched, for that matter?”
Rish shook her head. “I think we ran out of good choices a while back. We’re now down to the least-bad.”
Tej rubbed her aching forehead. “I’ll think about it.”
Rish flounced in her seat, a maneuver only she could imbue with such stylish censure. “And you have to stop cuddling that Barrayaran. It’s not as if you can keep him, or take him along with us, or whatever.”
“Oh, so it’s just me?” said Tej. “You liked his weasel friend well enough. Even I could smell it.”
“Did not!” Rish denied. “I just thought he was…interesting. A walking human puzzle who…works on human puzzles, I suppose.”
“Ferreting them out?” Tej snickered.
“Apparently.” Rish frowned. “He sure found us. Twice.”
A disturbing observation. Tej was still thinking about the implications when her turn came for the bath.
* * *
The door buzzer sounded in the half light of dawn, just as Ivan was finishing dressing for work, all but his shoes. And kept on sounding, continuously.
Byerly in a toot? Strange hour for it. It was too late for him to have been up since yesterday, and far too early for him to be up for today. Ivan padded to the door, and this time prudently checked the security vid. Yes, By, leaning on the buzzer and shifting from foot to foot. Maybe he really, really had to go to the lav. You wish. Ivan released the lock, the door slid aside, and Byerly tumbled within and hit the pad to close it with his bunched fist. “Ivan. Thank God I caught you,” he said. “We have a problem.”
“What, a new one? Or just more of the same one we have already?” said Ivan, refusing to be stirred by By’s histrionics at this hour. He gave way as By surged down his short hallway, beginning to rethink that stance already. By never surged; he sauntered. Or strolled. Or sometimes swayed, or even evaporated. But right now, he looked downright condensed, altogether too much here.
The two women, awakened by this entry, appeared through the door of the bedroom as Ivan followed By in from the hall. Tej looked deliciously bed-rumpled, warm and soft but for her frown. This was a woman who ought to greet each day with a sleepy, seductive smile, which Ivan wished he knew how to supply. Hell, I do know; I just haven’t had a chance to. Rish was her usual sleek self, concerned and fully alert mere seconds after being jerked from a sound sleep. Both women wore the tank tops they slept in and loose Komarran trousers, pulled on hastily; Rish spotted By and tucked her stunner back in her pants pocket. Tej wore no support garment under her top, and the effect as she moved forward was wonderfully distracting. Not now, Ivan told himself. Part of himself, the part with a single mind of its own.
“What’s going on?” asked Rish.
“Theo Vormercier has blindsided me,” said By bitterly. “When my hired goons didn’t produce you, instead of turning to me for my next solution, he implemented his very own brilliant idea, or so he thinks. He turned your identities and descriptions over to Komarran Immigration Services as illegal entries. He figured to let them do the legwork of locating you, and then snatch you somehow from incarceration after your arrests.”
Tej’s eyes grew big. Rish just went very, very still.
“So?” said Ivan. “They’re hidden for now. No way for Immigration to know they’re here…is there?”
“Unfortunately, Immigration shares databases with the dome cops, and your name, which you so thoughtfully supplied them, came up. The Immigration people will be on their way to check you first thing today.”
“They’ll have to catch me at work again. Nobody home here, right?”
“What if they break in to search?” asked Tej uneasily. “There’s no place to hide.” Her gaze shifted to the balcony door, where the first faint color in the sky was beginning to mute the city lights, and she swallowed.
“They have to have some sort of warrant,” said Ivan, beginning to share her unease. “I would think.”
“Ivan, those people issue warrants,” said By impatiently. “They don’t have the broad powers ImpSec does, but they’ve plenty enough for this. Probably more than they used to have back when Komarr was an independent polity. They don’t even have to break anything—they can make the building manager open the door.”
“We have to get out,” said Tej. “We can’t let ourselves be trapped in here.”
Ivan had some sympathy for that sentiment. Even though the flat wasn’t dark, or constricted, or wet. Also, they weren’t alone.…Maybe they were overreacting, really.
“That’s what I came to tell you,” said By.
“Wait, no,” said Ivan. Once they got away, and lost themselves, how would he ever find Tej again? The women had to be pretty good at hiding, or they wouldn’t have evaded their determined pursuers across four systems for what, seven months? Or maybe By had a plan—he wouldn’t have come boiling in here without one, would he? Some way to keep a string on them—
“You’ll have to get your things together—” By began, but was interrupted by the door buzzer. Two stern blats. Tej jumped and Rish tensed. By wheeled. “What the hell? They can’t be here already.”
Ivan nipped out to the short hallway and checked the security viewer. Unfortunately, he recognized his visitors. Detective Fano and Detective-patroller Sulmona, up bright and early, or dark and late, whichever. Fano leaned on the buzzer again, and Sulmona, after another moment, pounded on the door. “Vorpatril?” she shouted through it. “Answer your door.”
No polite please with that, Ivan noted as By and the women came up to peer anxiously around his shoulders.
“That’s not Immigration,” said By.
“No, it’s the dome cops. Same pair I talked to t’other day. Would Immigration have sent them?”
“No, they have their own uniformed squads for this sort of thing. There are procedures. This must be something else.”
Another buzz, longer. Sulmona pounded again. “Vorpatril? We know you’re in there. Open up.”
Ivan hit the com and called, “Why?”
By winced.
Fano drew a long breath. “We have a felony warrant for your arrest. That gives us the right to break down this door if you don’t open it.”
“Arrest! What the hell for? I haven’t done anything!”
“Kidnapping.”
“What?” said Ivan, outraged.
Fano’s jaw jutted. “We know you lied. The security vids from the Crater Lake bubble-car platform finally surfaced. They clearly show you and an unknown person escorting the missing Nanja Brindis into a bubble car. She hasn’t been heard from since. The abduction charge is enough to get us in your door, but the one I’m really after is murder. But you know that, don’t you, Captain?”
Ivan was struck nearly speechless, except for the wheeze of his hyperventilation.
“Don’t open it!” whispered Tej. Truly, Ivan didn’t want to. By and Rish dragged him back to the living room for a hissed conference.
“But I have to let them in,” said Ivan, harried. “In the first place, it’s another felony not to, and in the second place, Tej, you can make the kidnapping charge go away by telling them I didn’t abduct you, I just invited you. Not to mention murder, good God!”
Tej said, “We can’t let them in, they’ll take us.”
“Tell them through the intercom,” Ivan suggested. Would that work?
“How would they know you weren’t holding a weapon to her back?” asked By, unhelpfully.
“And don’t you believe for a minute that Prestene’s agents can’t whip us out of their custody before you can get back with help, and anyway, your help is worse,” said Tej. “ImpSec! I’d almost rather take my chances with Prestene!”
“Hey!” Byerly protested.
Rish turned in a complete circle, gold eyes dilated, reaching as if for some rope that wasn’t there. “We can’t get out. There’s no way out!”
Tej grabbed her hands, stopping her rotation. “It’ll have to be the balcony after all. Oh, Rish, I’m so sorry I led you into this!”
“What’s on the balcony,” Ivan began, but was interrupted by a chime from his wristcom. That particular tone wasn’t one he could ignore. He held up a hand, “Wait!” and opened his link. “Sir?” he said brightly.
“Vorpatril!”
Ivan rocked back. Desplains never bellowed. “Uh, yes?”
“What the hell is all this?”
“Are you at work already, sir?”
“No, I’m in my quarters. Just received an emergency heads-up from ImpSec Komarr that Dome Security has filed a felony charge on my aide-de-camp, so I finally opened their memo. That was no garden snake!”
“I can explain, sir.” The door buzzer sounded again, and more pounding. Muffled shouts. “Later. I have a bit of a situation on my hands right now.” Ivan gulped and cut the com. He’d never cut off any admiral, ever, let alone Desplains.
The pounding stopped. More muffled voices.
“We’ve got to block the door. Buy time,” said Ivan.
“Time for what?” said By.
“Time for me to think of something.”
“That could take all day.”
Ivan shot him an irate look, teeth clenching hard.
“The couches,” said Tej. “They’ll be through the door codes soon enough—we have to make a physical barrier.” The two women leapt to begin dragging furniture into the hall and propping it up against the door. By looked as if he didn’t think this would work, but, carried along by the fog of cold panic that seemed to be permeating the place, fell into helping them nonetheless. Damn but Rish was strong for her size…
Ivan peered into the security vid. The two detectives had been joined by four more people, three men and a woman. One man was the building manager. The other three were in unfamiliar uniforms. They appeared to be debating with each other, comparing official-looking forms displayed by their wrist holos. Unless it was some really arcane style of video arm wrestling? Dueling jurisdictions?
Ivan shoved By up to look in the vid. “That wouldn’t be Immigration, would it?”
“Uh, yes?”
The building manager fumbled with a code key. By opened his jacket and jerked out his stunner.
“Can you take down all six of them before they get you?” asked Tej uneasily. Picturing her and Rish escaping over a wall of bodies? Possibly including By’s and Ivan’s?
Still peering, By swore, set his stunner on high, and jammed it up against the electronic lock. It buzzed angrily, and after a long moment, sparks shot out of the mechanism. “At least that’ll hold the building manager,” said By, a glint of strained satisfaction in his eye.
“You’ve locked us in!” Ivan protested. “And now I can’t open the door.”
“Good!” said Rish, heaving another heavy armchair atop the pile and wedging it in tight.
They all retreated temporarily to Ivan’s emptied living room.
Tej swung around, stared deeply into Ivan’s eyes, gasped, “I’m so sorry it has to end this way, Ivan Xav. I know you tried,” and flung her arms around him. Ivan found himself holding what would, under other circumstances, be an absolutely delightful bundle of warm, soft woman. He opened his mouth to her frantic kiss nonetheless, and his arms wrapped her in turn, snugly and securely. He wasn’t sure what was happening here, but O God don’t let it stop…
She stopped. Pushed him away. He managed not to whimper. “That’s it,” she said simply, and turned to take her blue companion’s hand, with a nod toward the balcony. “It’s time, Rish.”
Rish nodded back, face very grim. They started for the door. By, uneasy, moved to block the glass.
“Where do you think you’re going?” By asked.
“Over the balcony.”
“But you don’t have grav belts! Or anything!” said Ivan.
Tej wheeled back and raised her chin at him. “That’s right.”
“But we’re twenty stories up!”
“Yes, that ought to be enough.”
“You’ll be killed!”
Rish stared at him in disbelief. “Are you slow, Captain?”
“But the dome cops will think I flung you off, or worse!”
Tej was plainly moved by this, but steeled herself and said sternly, “If you haven’t got a better plan, right now, we’re going. Because later will be too late.”
“No, yes, what—” Ivan’s wristcom chimed, insistently. He opened the link, yelled, “Not now, sir!” into it, and closed it again. After a moment, it chimed once more. Louder. No override for this code.
“By, don’t let them get out!” said Ivan, ran to the kitchenette, ripped off his wristcom, opened the refrigerator door, tossed it in, and slammed the door shut again. The wristcom still whimpered, but very faint and plaintive.
He turned back to the women, and By, who stood with his back tight against the glass. Both he and Rish had their stunners out, pointed at each other. Rish’s was shaking in her death-grip. The new pounding from the hall was growing louder, more disturbingly mechanical. Not just fists anymore. The flat’s doors were designed to keep air from getting out, in a dome-pressurization emergency. Not determined policemen, backed up by building maintenance personnel, from getting in.
What else had he just seen sitting out on that kitchen counter…“Don’t shoot!” Ivan cried. “And don’t jump! I have an idea!”
This held the tableau, if only in morbid curiosity, long enough for him to run back into the kitchenette and grab the instant groats from the countertop, the large economy-size box that he’d purchased yesterday evening. He ran back into his living room and brandished it. “This’ll do the job!”
“You’re going to throw cereal at them?” asked Rish, perplexed.
“Or shall we all sit down and have a hearty Barrayaran breakfast together while the police break in?” asked By, in an all-too-similar tone. But both stunners drooped.
Shrugging off the sarcasms, and dear God hadn’t he had enough practice at that in his life, Ivan drew a long breath. “Tej. Will you marry me?”
“What?” she said. It wasn’t a thrilled sort of what? either, that ought to greet such a proposal, more of a have-you-lost-your-mind? what. Ivan cringed.
“No, this’ll work! A woman who marries a Barrayaran subject automatically becomes a Barrayaran subject. It’s one of those fundamental oaths that underlie all other oaths, biology before politics, so to speak. From the moment we finish speaking, Immigration won’t be able to arrest you. And the dome cops won’t be able to arrest me, either.” What he was going to do about Desplains, Ivan was less sure. His wristcom was still thinly chiming in its exile, cold and lonely and far off. Ivan ripped open the box and began dancing sock-foot through the living room, dribbling out a circle of cereal on the carpet.
“Don’t we have to go somewhere and register it, even for a simple civil match?” asked Tej. “We’d never make it to wherever! They’ll seize us as soon as we go out the door!”
“But not,” said Rish blackly, “the other door.” By braced his back harder against the latch, though he still stared, confounded, at the growing circle. His eyes were as wide as Ivan had ever seen them.
“No, that’s the beauty of it!” Ivan explained. “In Barrayaran law, the couple marry themselves. It’s a Time of Isolation thing, you wouldn’t understand. Your breath is your bond. You each prop up your Second—your witness—on the edge, you step into the circle, you speak your oaths, you step out, it’s done. The core oaths are really simple, though people gussy them up with all kinds of additions to stretch the ceremony out, God knows why, it’s usually racking enough.” He appealed for support. “Tell them I’m right, Byerly!”
“Actually”—By coughed, swallowed, found his voice—“he is. About the legalities, anyway.”
“I can use my military dependent travel chits to get you back to Barrayar,” Ivan went on. “Five jumps further away from your pursuers, and besides, once you’re married to me, you’ll have ImpSec totally on your side because, um, because. This’ll buy time. And as soon as you’ve figured out what you really want to do, we can go get a divorce in the Count’s Court. Not quite as easy as getting married—my Betan aunt thinks it should be t’other way around—but Count Falco’s an old friend of Mamere’s. Ten minutes, in and out, I swear! And you’ll both be on your way.”
“On our way where?” asked Rish, sounding confused.
“I don’t know, somewhere! I can’t think of everything all at once, you know!”
“Oh, so not a permanent—but I don’t know your oaths,” said Tej faintly, staring at him in a kind of hypnotized fascination as he stood before her waving the emptied box in time with his urgent persuasion.
“That’s all right, I have them memorized. I must have been dragged to about a thousand high Vor weddings in the past decade. I could probably recite them in my sleep. Or my nightmares. We won’t tell the dome cops about the divorce, of course. None of their business.”
Tej glanced toward the balcony. Toward him. Toward the balcony. Toward him. Why is this a hard choice?
From the hallway, a teeth-gritting mechanical whine began, as of someone cutting through an airseal door.
“You can’t tell me you’d rather jump off a twenty-story building and smash in your skull than marry me,” Ivan went on desperately. “I am not a fate worse than death, dammit! Or at least not worse than that death, good God!”
“But what about Rish?” asked Tej. Her chin came up. “You can’t marry us both…can you?”
“Uh.” said Ivan. He cast a beseeching look at By, who held up his hand as if to fend off an attacking mini-drone.
“No,” said Rish, coolly.
“Thank you,” said By. His expression grew inward for a moment. “I think…”
“I’ll, I’ll, I’ll…hire you for something, after,” said Ivan. “Lady’s maid? Lots of Vor women have them. M’mother does, I know. At that point, you’ll be properly employed by a Barrayaran subject, a Vor subject, and we can fudge it with Immigration later. From a safe distance.”
“Then who will protect us from ImpSec?” said Rish.
“I will,” Ivan promised recklessly. “I can call in some favors. And if not, I know people who can. Starting with m’mother’s gentleman friend, if I have to. Or maybe as a last resort.” Definitely as a last resort. “Can’t I, By?”
This last proposal left By standing like a mesmerized waxwork effigy. But he did manage to make his mouth move—it was By, of course he managed to make his mouth move. “I don’t know if I want to watch when you tell your mother about this, or flee the Empire. Given that you’re making me complicit as your Second, maybe Old Earth would be far enough…no, farther than that…” He shook himself out of his paralysis and turned to the women. “Much as I hate to admit it, this notion of Ivan’s would work. Temporarily. It’s the long-term consequences that terrify me.”
“And after what you just did,” Ivan went on to Tej, disregarding By’s last comment, “you can’t convince me that you’d rather kiss the pavement than kiss me.” My mouth is still tingling. “Not that you’ll have to kiss me, if you don’t want to. Totally up to you, what happens after, I hope that goes without saying.”
More alarming thumps and crashes from the hallway. Rish wet her lips and said, “Do it, Tej. And we’ll find out if it works soon enough. We’re out of time to debate. Or for the tub.” She reset the safety and slipped her stunner back into her pocket in wordless acquiescence.
Ivan held out his hand to Tej. “Tej, will you please try this?”
She rubbed her forehead, and said doubtfully, “I guess so…” As the first acceptance to a marriage proposal that Ivan had ever received in his life, this lacked a certain something, but she took his hand and stepped over the line of groats into the circle.
Ivan pointed. “By, Rish, you stand on either side, facing each other. You’re the witnesses, so watch.”
“I doubt I’ll be able to look away,” murmured Byerly, holstering his stunner as well and stepping up to his assigned spot. “It’ll be just like watching a monorail wreck.” Rish rolled her eyes—in agreement?—and took her place opposite.
“All right, I’ll go first,” said Ivan to his bride-to-be, “and then I’ll coach you through your part. Wording’s about the same. ‘I, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, being of sound mind and body—’”
“That’s for wills, Ivan,” muttered By. “I thought you said you knew this stuff?”
Ivan ignored him and plowed on. “Do take thee, uh…what did you say your name was, again?”
By buried his face in his hands.
Tej repeated it. All of it.
“Do take thee, Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua”—and he’d got the pronunciation right the first time, and didn’t even choke on the ghem part, hah!—“to be my spouse and helpmeet, forsaking all others…” The core of the oath was only three sentences. He got them out somehow, and coached Tej through her half. “…do take thee, Ivan Xav Vorpatril, to be my spouse…” Her hands were shaking, held in his. So were his.
“And that’s it!” said Ivan. “We now pronounce each other spouse and spouse, before these witnesses, and I get to kiss you. Again. For the first time. Because before, you kissed me, right?” He locked himself to her lips, rolling his eyes as By stepped forward and swept a break through the groat barrier with his shoe. They swung out of the circle together, Byerly stretched his neck and pecked her on the cheek in passing, and six irate, swearing Komarrans stumbled over each other out of Ivan’s hallway and advanced upon them, stunners at the ready.
Ivan drew a wad of cash from his wallet, thrust it into the startled Rish’s hand, and added, “You’re hired. Officially.”
And, as a uniformed woman reached out to seize Tej, who shrank away, continued in a forceful bellow modeled directly on Count Falco: “Unhand Lady Vorpatril!”