Ekaterin finished folding the last of Lord Vorkosigan's clothing into his travel bag, rather more carefully than their owner was wont to, judging from the stirred appearance of the layers beneath. She sealed his toiletries case and fitted it in, then the odd, gel-padded case containing that peculiar medical-looking device. She trusted it wasn't some sort of ImpSec secret weapon.
Vorkosigan's war story of his Sergeant Beatrice burned in Ekaterin's mind, as the marks on her wrists seemed to burn. O fortunate man, that his missed grasp had passed in a fraction of a second. What if he had had years to think about it first? Hours to calculate the masses and forces and the true arc of descent? Would it have been cowardice or courage to let go of a comrade he could not possibly have saved, to save himself at least? He'd had a command, he'd had responsibilities to others, too. How much would it have cost you, Captain Vorkosigan, to have opened your hands and deliberately let go?
She closed the bag and glanced at her chrono. Getting Nikolai settled at his friend's house "for overnight"—that first, before anything else—had taken longer than she'd planned, as had getting the rental company to come collect their grav-bed. Lord Vorkosigan had talked about removing to a hotel this evening, but done nothing toward it. When he returned with Tien, to find no dinner and his bed gone and his bags packed and waiting in the hall, surely he would take the hint and decamp at once. Their good-bye would be formal and permanent, and above all, brief. She was almost out of time and had not even begun on her own things.
She dragged Vorkosigan's bag to the vestibule and returned to her workroom, staring around at the seedlings and cuttings, lights and equipment. It was impossible to pack all that in a bag she could carry. Another garden was going to be abandoned. At least they were getting smaller and smaller.
She'd once wanted to cultivate her marriage like a garden; one of the legendary great Vor parks that people came from Districts away to admire for color and beauty through the changing seasons, the sort that took decades to reach full fruition, growing richer and more complex each year. When all other desires had died, shreds of that ambition still lingered, to tempt her with, If only I try one more time. . . . Her lips twisted in bleak derision. Time to admit she had a black thumb for marriage. Plow it under, surface it with concrete, and be done.
She began as a minimum gesture to pull her library off the wall and fit it into a box. The urge to cram a few of her things hastily into some shopping bag and flee before Tien returned was strong. But sooner or later, she would have to face him. Because of Nikki, there would have to be negotiations, formal plans, eventually legal petitions, the uncertainty of which made her sick to her stomach. But she had been years coming to this moment. If she could not do this now, when her anger was high, how could she find the strength to face the rest in colder blood?
She walked through the apartment, staring at the objects of her life. They were few enough; the major furnishings had all come with the place and would stay with the place. Her spasmodic efforts at decoration, at creating some semblance of a Barrayaran home, the hours of work—it was like deciding what to grab in a fire, only slower. Nothing. Let it all burn.
The sole awkward exception was her great-aunt's bonsai'd skellytum. It was her one memento of her life before Tien, and it was in the nature of a sacred trust to the dead. Keeping something that foolish and ugly alive for seventy and more years . . . well, it was a typical Vor woman's job. She smiled bitterly, and brought it off the balcony into the kitchen, and began to look around for some way to transport it. At the sound of the hall door opening, she caught her breath, and schooled her features to as little expression as possible.
"Kat?" Tien ducked into the kitchen and stared around. "Where's dinner?"
My first question would have been, Where's Nikolai? I wonder how long it will take that thought to come to him. "Where is Lord Vorkosigan?"
"He stayed on at the office. He'll be along later, he said, to take his things away."
"Oh." She realized then that some tiny part of her had been hoping to conduct the impending conversation while Vorkosigan was still finishing up in her workroom or something; his presence providing some margin of safety, of social restraint upon Tien. Maybe it was better this way. "Sit down, Tien. I have to talk with you."
He raised dubious brows, but sat at the head of the table, around to her left. She would have preferred to have him opposite her.
"I am leaving you tonight."
"What?" His astonishment appeared genuine. "Why?"
She hesitated, reluctant to be drawn into argument. "I suppose . . . because I have come to the end of myself." Only now, looking back over the long draining years, did she become aware of how much of her there had been to use up. No wonder it had taken so long. All gone now.
"Why . . . why now?" At least he didn't say, You must be joking. "I don't understand, Kat." She could see him begin to grope, not toward understanding, but away from it, as far away as possible. "Is it the Vorzohn's Dystrophy? Damn, I knew—"
"Don't be stupid, Tien. If that was the issue, I'd have left years ago. I took oath to you in sickness and health."
He frowned and sat back, his brows lowering. "Is there someone else? There's someone else, isn't there!"
"I'm sure you wish there were. Because then it would be because of them, and not because of you." Her voice was level, utterly flat. Her stomach churned.
He was obviously shocked, and beginning to shake a little. "This is madness. I don't understand."
"I have nothing more to say." She began to rise, wishing nothing more than to be gone at once, away from him. You could have done this over the comconsole, you know.
No. I took my oath in the flesh. I will break it to pieces in the same way.
He rose with her, and his hand closed over hers, gripping it, stopping her. "There's more to it."
"You would know more about that than I would, Tien."
He hesitated now, beginning, she thought, to be really afraid. This might not be any safer for her. He's never hit me yet, I'll give him that much credit. Part of her almost wished he had. Then there would have been clarity, not this endless muddle. "What do you mean?"
"Let go of me."
"No."
She considered his hand on hers, tight but not grinding. But still much stronger than her own. He was half a head taller and outweighed her by thirty kilos. She did not feel as much physical fear as she had thought she would. She was too numb, perhaps. She raised her face to his. Her voice grew edged. "Let go of me."
A little to her surprise, he did so, his hand flexing awkwardly. "You have to tell me why. Or I'll believe it's to go to some lover."
"I no longer care what you believe."
"Is he Komarran? Some damned Komarran?"
Goading her in the usual spot, and why not? It had worked before to bring her into line. It half-worked still. She had sworn to herself that she wasn't even going to bring up the subject of Tien's actions and inactions. Complaint was a tacit plea for help, for reform, for . . . continuation. Complaint was to attempt to shuffle off the responsibility for action onto another. To act was to obliterate the need for complaint. She would act, or not act. She would not whine. Still in that dead-level voice, she said, "I found out about your trade shares, Tien."
His mouth opened, and shut again. After a moment he said, "I can make it up. I know what went wrong now. I can make the losses up again."
"I don't think so. Where did you get that forty thousand marks, Tien." Her lack of inflection made it not a question.
"I . . ." She could watch it in his face, as he ratcheted over his choice of lies. He settled on a fairly simple one. "Part I saved, part I borrowed. You're not the only one who can scrimp, you know."
"From Administrator Soudha?"
He flinched at the name, but said ingenuously, "How did you know?"
"It doesn't matter, Tien. I'm not going to turn you in." She stared at him in weariness. "I take no part in you anymore."
He paced, agitated, back and forth across the kitchen, his face working. "I did it for you," he said at last.
Yes. Now he will attempt to make me feel guilty. All my fault. It was as familiar as the steps of some well-practiced, poisonous dance. She watched silently.
"All for you. You wanted money. I worked my tail off, but it was never enough for you, was it?" His voice rose, as he tried to lash himself into a relieving, self-righteous anger. It fell a little flat to her experienced ear. "You pushed me into taking a chance, with your endless nagging and worrying. So it didn't work, and now you want to punish me, is that it? You'd have been quick enough to make up to me if it had paid off."
He was very good at this, she had to admit, his accusations echoing her own dark doubts. She listened to his patterned litany with a sort of detached appreciation, like a torture victim, gone beyond pain unbeknownst, admiring the color of her own blood. Now he will attempt to make me feel sorry for him. But I'm done feeling sorry. I'm done feeling anything.
"Money money money, is that what this is all about? What is it that you want to buy so damned much, Kat?"
Your health, as you may recall. And Nikki's future. And mine.
As he paced, sputtering, his eye fell on the bright red skellytum, sitting in its basin on the kitchen table. "You don't love me. You only love yourself. Selfish, Kat! You love your damned potted plants more than you love me. Here, I'll prove it to you."
He snatched up the pot and pressed the control for the door to the balcony. It opened a little too slowly for his dramatic timing, but he strode through nonetheless, and whirled to face her. "Which shall it be to go over the railing, Kat? Your precious plant, or me? Choose!"
She neither spoke nor moved. Now he will attempt to terrify me with suicide gestures. This made, what, the fourth time around for that ploy? His trump card, which had always before ended the game in his favor.
He brandished the skellytum high. "Me, or it?" He watched her face, waiting for her to break. An almost clinical curiosity prompted her to say You, just to see how he would wriggle out of his challenge, but she kept silent still. When she did not speak, he hesitated in confusion for a moment, then launched the ancient absurd thing over the side.
Five floors up. She counted the seconds in her head, waiting for the crash from below. It came as more of a distant, sodden thump, mixed with the crack of exploding pottery.
"You ass, Tien. You didn't even look to see if there was anyone below."
With a look of sudden alarm that almost made her want to laugh, he peeked fearfully over the side. Apparently he hadn't managed to kill anyone after all, for he inhaled deeply and turned back toward her, taking a few steps through the open airseal door into the kitchen, but not too near to her. "React, damn you! What do I have to do to get through to you?"
"Don't bother," she said levelly. "I cannot imagine anything you could do that would make me more angry than I am."
He had come to the end of his menu of tactics and stood at a loss. His voice grew smaller. "What do you want?"
"I want my honor back. But you cannot give it to me."
His voice grew smaller still; his hands opened in pleading. "I'm sorry about your aunt's skellytum. I don't know what . . ."
"Are you sorry about grand theft and petty treason, bribery and peculation?"
"I did it for you, Kat!"
"In eleven years," she said slowly, "you have apparently never figured out who I am. I don't understand that. How you can live with someone so intimately, so long, and yet never see them. Maybe you were living with some Kat holovid projection from your own mind, I don't know."
"What do you want, dammit? It's not like I can go back. I can't confess. That would be public dishonor! For me, you, Nikki, your uncle—you can't want that!"
"I want never to have to tell a lie again for as long as I live. What you do is your problem." She took a deep breath. "But know this. Whatever you do, or don't do, from now on had better be for yourself. Because it won't touch me." Done once, done for all time. She was never going through this again.
"I can—I can fix it."
Was he referring to her skellytum, their marriage, his crime? Wrong anyway, in all cases.
When she still did not respond, he blurted desperately, "Nikolai is mine, by Barrayaran law."
Interesting. Nikki was the one tactic he had never employed before, off limits. She knew then how deathly serious he knew her to be. Good. He glanced around, and added belatedly, "Where is Nikki?"
"Someplace safer."
"You can't keep him from me!"
I can if you're in prison. She didn't bother saying it aloud. Under the circumstances, Tien was perhaps unlikely to challenge her possession of Nikki before the law. But she wanted to keep Nikolai's concerns as far separated as possible from the ugliest part of this thing. She would not start that war, but if Tien dared to do so, she would finish it. She watched him more coldly than ever.
"I will fix it. I can. I have a plan. I've been thinking about it all day."
Tien with a plan was about as reassuring as a two-year-old with a charged plasma arc. No. You are not to take responsibility for him anymore. That's what this is all about, remember? Let go. "Do whatever you wish, Tien. I'm going to go finish packing now."
"Wait—" He swung around her. It disturbed her to have him between her and the door, but she did not let her fear show. "Wait. I'll make it up. You'll see. I'll fix it. Wait here!"
With an anxious wave of his hands, he made for the hall door, and was gone.
She listened to his retreating footsteps. Only when she heard the faint whisper from the lift tube did she step back onto the balcony and look over. Far below, the shattered remains of her skellytum made an irregular wet blotch on the pavement, the broken scarlet tendrils looking like spattered blood. A passer-by was staring curiously at it. After a minute, she saw Tien emerge from the building and stride across the park toward the bubble-car platform, almost breaking into a run from time to time. He twice looked back up toward their balcony, over his shoulder; she stepped back into the shadows. He disappeared into the station.
Every muscle of her body seemed to be spasming with tension. She felt close to vomiting. She returned to her—to the kitchen, and drank a glass of water, which helped settle her breathing and her stomach. She went to her work room to fetch a basket and some plastic sheeting and a trowel, to go scrape the mess off the walkway five floors down.