Barrayar

Chapter Eighteen

Pre-dawn in the alleys of the caravanserai was not so pitchy-black as night in the mountains. The foggy night sky reflected back a faint amber glow from the surrounding city. The faces of her friends were grey blurs, like the very earliest of ancient photographs; Cordelia tried not to think, Like the faces of the dead.

Lady Vorpatril, cleaned and fed and rested a few hours, was still none too steady, but she could walk on her own. The housewoman had contributed some surprisingly sober clothes for her, a calf-length grey skirt and sweaters against the cold. Koudelka had exchanged all his military gear for loose trousers, old shoes, and a jacket to replace the one that had suffered from its emergency obstetrical use. He carried baby Lord Ivan, now makeshift-diapered and warmly wrapped, completing the picture of a timid little family trying to make it out of town to the wife’s parents in the country before the fighting started. Cordelia had seen hundreds of refugees just like them, in passing, on her way into Vorbarr Sultana.

Koudelka inspected his little group, ending with a frowning look at the swordstick in his hand. Even when seen as a mere cane, the satin wood, polished steel ferrule, and inlaid grip did not look very middle-class. Koudelka sighed. “Drou, can you hide this somehow? It’s conspicuous as hell with this outfit, and more of a hindrance than a help when I’m trying to carry this baby.”

Droushnakovi nodded, and knelt and wrapped the stick in a shirt, and stuffed it into the satchel. Cordelia remembered what had happened the last time Kou had carried that stick down to the caravanserai, and stared nervously into the shadows. “How likely are we to be jumped by someone, at this hour? We don’t look rich, certainly.”

“Some would kill you for your clothes,” said Bothari glumly, “with winter coming on. But it’s safer than usual. Vordarian’s troops have been sweeping the quarter for ’volunteers,’ to help dig those bomb shelters in the city parks.”

“I never thought I’d approve of slave labor,” Cordelia groaned.

“It’s nonsense anyway,” Koudelka said. “Tearing up the parks. Even if completed they wouldn’t shelter enough people. But it looks impressive, and it sets up Lord Vorkosigan as a threat, in people’s minds.”

“Besides,” Bothari lifted his jacket to reveal the silvered gleam of his nerve disruptor, “this time I’ve got the right weapon.”

This was it, then. Cordelia embraced Alys Vorpatril, who hugged her back, murmuring, “God help you, Cordelia. And God rot Vidal Vordarian in hell.”

“Go safely. See you back at Tanery Base, eh?” Cordelia glanced at Koudelka. “Live, and so confound our enemies.”

“We’ll tr—we will, Milady,” said Koudelka. Gravely, he saluted Droushnakovi. There was no irony in the military courtesy, though perhaps a last tinge of envy. She returned him a slow nod of understanding. Neither chose to confuse the moment with further words. The two groups parted in the clammy darkness. Drou watched over her shoulder till Koudelka and Lady Vorpatril turned out of sight, then picked up the pace.

They passed from black alleys to lit streets, from deserted darkness to occasional other human forms, hurrying about early winter morning business. Everybody seemed to cross streets to avoid everybody else, and Cordelia felt a little less noticeable. She stiffened inwardly when a municipal guard groundcar drove slowly past them, but it did not stop.

They paused, across the street, to be certain their target building had been unlocked for the morning. The structure was multi-storied, in the utilitarian style of the building boom that had come on the heels of Ezar Vorbarra’s ascent to power and stability thirty-plus years ago. It was commercial, not governmental; they crossed the lobby, entered the lift tubes, and descended unimpeded.

Drou began seriously looking over her shoulder when they reached the sub-basement. “Now we look out of place.” Bothari kept watch as she bent and forced a lock to a utility tunnel. She led them down it, taking two cross-turns. The passage was clearly used frequently, as the lights remained on. Cordelia’s ears strained for footsteps not their own.

An access cover was bolted to the floor. Droushnakovi loosened it quickly. “Hang and drop. It’s not much more than two meters. It’ll likely be wet.”

Cordelia slid into the dark circle, landing with a splash. She lit her hand-light. The water, slick and black and shimmering, came to her booted ankles in the synthacrete tube. It was icy cold. Bothari followed. Drou knelt on his shoulders, to coax the cover back into place, then splashed down beside her. “There’s about half a kilometer of this storm sewer. Come on,” she whispered. This close to their goal, Cordelia needed no urging to hurry.

At the half-kilometer, they climbed into a darkened orifice high on the curving wall that led to a much older and smaller tunnel, made of time-blackened brick. Knees and backs bent, they shuffled along. It must be particularly painful for Bothari, Cordelia reflected. Drou slowed, and began tapping on the tunnel’s roof with the steel ferrule of Koudelka’s stick. When the ticks became hollow tocks, she stopped. “Here. It’s meant to swing downward.

Watch it.” She released the sheath, and slid the blade carefully between a line of slimy bricks. A click, and the false-brick-lined panel flopped down, nearly cracking her head. She returned the sword to its casing. “Up.” She pulled herself through.

They followed to find themselves in another ancient drain, even narrower. It sloped more steeply upward. They crouched along, their clothes brushing the sides and picking up damp stains. Drou rose suddenly, and clambered out over a pile of broken bricks into a dark, pillared chamber.

“What is this place?” whispered Cordelia. “Too big for a tunnel …”

“The old stables,” Drou whispered back. “We’re under the Residence grounds, now.”

“It doesn’t sound so secret to me. Surely they must appear in old drawings and elevations. People—Security—must know this is here.” Cordelia stared into the dim, musty recesses, past pale arches picked out by their wavering hand-lights.

“Yes, but this is the cellar of the old old stables. Not Dorcas, but Dorca’s great—uncle’s. He kept over three hundred horses. They burned down in a spectacular fire about two hundred years ago, and instead of rebuilding on the site, they knocked them flat and put up the new old stables on the east side, downwind. Those got converted to staff apartments in Dorca’s day. Most of the hostages are being kept over there now.” Drou marched firmly forward, as if sure of her ground. “We’re to the north of the main Residence now, under the gardens Ezar designed. Ezar apparently found this old cellar and arranged this passage with Negri, thirty years ago. A bolt-hole that even their own Security didn’t know about. Trusting, eh?”

“Thank you, Ezar,” Cordelia murmured wryly.

“Once we’re out of Ezar’s passage, the real risk starts,” the girl commented.

Yes, they could still pull out now, retrace their steps and no one the wiser. Why have these people so blithely handed me the right to risk their lives? God, I hate command. Something skittered in the shadows, and somewhere, water dripped.

“Here,” said Droushnakovi, shining her light on a pile of boxes. “Ezar’s cache. Clothes, weapons, money—Captain Negri had me add some women’s and boy’s clothes to it just last year, at the time of the Escobar invasion. He was keyed up for trouble about it, but the riots never reached here. My clothes should only be a little big for you.”

They discarded their beslimed street clothes. Droushnakovi shook out clean dresses, suitable for senior Residence womenservants too superior for menial’s uniforms; the girl had worn them for just such service. Bothari unbundled his black fatigue uniform again from the satchel, and donned it, adding correct Imperial Security insignia. From a distance he made a proper guard, though he was perhaps a little too rumpled to pass inspection up close. As Drou had promised, a complete array of weapons lay fully charged in sealed cases. Cordelia chose a fresh stunner, as did Drou; their eyes met. “No hesitation this time, eh?” Cordelia murmured. Drou nodded grimly. Bothari took one of each, stunner, nerve disruptor, and plasma arc. Cordelia trusted he wouldn’t clank when he walked.

“You can’t fire that thing indoors,” Droushnakovi objected to the plasma arc.

“You never know,” shrugged Bothari.

After a moment’s thought, Cordelia added the swordstick, tightening a loop of her belt around its grip. A serious weapon it wasn’t, but it had proved an unexpectedly useful tool on this trip. For luck. Then from the last depths of the satchel, Cordelia pulled what she privately considered to be the most potent weapon of all.

“A shoe?” said Droushnakovi blankly.

“Gregor’s shoe. For when we make contact with Kareen. I rather fancy she still has the other.” Cordelia nested it deeply in the inner pocket of one of Drou’s Vorbarra—crested boleros, worn over Cordelia’s dress to complete the picture of an inner Residence worker.

When their preparations were as complete as possible, Drou led them again into narrowing darkness. “Now we’re under the Residence itself,” she whispered, turning sideways. “We go up this ladder, between the walls. It was added after, there’s not much space.”

This proved an understatement. Cordelia sucked in her breath and climbed after her, sandwiched flat between two walls, trying not to accidently touch or thump. The ladder was made, naturally, of wood. Her head throbbed with exhaustion and adrenaline. She mentally measured the width. Getting the uterine replicator back down this ladder was going to be a bitch. She told herself sternly to think positively, then decided that was positive. Why am I doing this? I could be back at Tanery Base with Aral right now, letting these Barrayarans kill each other all day long, if it is their pleasure. …

Above her, Drou stepped aside onto some sort of tiny ledge, a mere board. When Cordelia came up beside her, she gestured “stop” and extinguished her hand-light. Drou touched some silent latch mechanism, and a wall panel swung outward before them. Clearly, everything had been kept well oiled right up to Ezar’s death.

They looked out into the old Emperors bedchamber. They had expected it to be empty. Drou’s mouth opened in a voiceless O of dismay and horror.

Ezar’s huge old carved wooden bed, the one he’d for-God’s-sake died in, was occupied. A shaded light, dimmed to an orange glow, cast highlight and shadow across two bare-torsoed, sleeping forms. Even in this foreshortened view, Cordelia instantly recognized the dish-face and moustache of Vidal Vordarian. He sprawled across four—fifths of the bed, his heavy arm flung possessively across Princess Kareen. Her dark hair was tumbled on the pillow. She slept in a tight, tiny ball in the upper corner of the bed, facing outward, white arms clutched to her chest, nearly in danger of falling out.

Well, we’re reached Kareen. But there’s a hitch. Cordelia shivered with the impulse to shoot Vordarian in his sleep. But the energy discharge must set off alarms. Until she had Miles’s replicator in her hand, she was not ready to run for it. She motioned Drou to close the panel again, and breathed “Down,” to Bothari, waiting beneath her. They reversed their painstaking four-flight climb. Back in the tunnel, Cordelia turned to face the girl, who was crying quite silently.

“She’s sold out to him,” Droushnakovi whispered, her voice shaking with grief and revulsion.

“If you’ll explain to me what power-base you imagine she has to resist the man right now, I’d be interested to hear it,” said Cordelia tartly. “What do you expect her to do, fling herself out a window to avoid a fate worse than death? She did fates worse than death with Serg, I don’t think they hold any more emotion for her.”

“But if only we’d got here sooner, I might—we might have saved her.”

“We still might.”

“But she’s really sold out!”

“Do people lie in their sleep?” asked Cordelia. At Drou’s confused look, she explained. “She didn’t look like a lover to me. She lay like a prisoner. I promised we’d try for her, and we will.” Time. “But we’ll go for Miles first. Let’s try the second exit.”

“We’ll have to pass through more monitored corridors,” Droushnakovi warned.

“Can’t be helped. If we wait, this place will start waking up, and we’ll hit more people.”

“They’re coming on duty in the kitchens right now,” sighed Drou. “I used to stop in for coffee and hot pastries, some days.”

Alas, a commando raid could not knock off for breakfast. This was it. Go or no-go? Was it bravery, or stupidity, that drove her on? It couldn’t be bravery, she was sick with fear, the same hot acid nausea she’d felt just before combat during the Escobar war. Familiarity with the sensation didn’t help. If I do not act, my child will die. She would simply have to do without courage. “Now,” Cordelia decided. “There will be no better chance.”

Up the narrow ladder again. The second panel opened in the old Emperor’s private office. To Cordelia’s relief it still remained dark and unused, untouched since it had been cleaned out and locked after Ezar’s death last spring. His comconsole desk, with all its Security overrides, was disconnected, wiped of secrets, dead as its owner. The windows were still dark, with the tardy winter morning.

Kou’s stick banged against Cordelia’s calf as she strode across the room. It did look odd, hitched to her waist too obviously like a sword. On a bureau in the office was a wide antique tray holding a flat ceramic bowl, typical of the knickknacks that cluttered the Residence. Cordelia laid the stick across the tray and lifted it solemnly, servant-fashion.

Droushnakovi nodded approval. “Carry it halfway between your waist and your chest,” she whispered. “And keep your spine straight, they always told me.”

Cordelia nodded. They closed the panel behind them, straightened themselves, and entered the lower corridor of the north wing.

Two Residence serving women and a security guard. At first glance, they looked perfectly natural in this setting, even in these troubled times. A guard corporal standing duty at the foot of the Petite Stairway at the corridor’s west end came to attention at the sight of Bothari’s ImpSec and rank tabs; they exchanged salutes. They were passing out of sight up around the stairs’ curve before he looked again, harder. Cordelia steeled herself not to break into a panicked run. A subtle piece of misdirection; the two women couldn’t be a threat, they were already guarded. That their guard could be the threat, might escape the corporal for minutes yet.

They turned into the upper corridor. There. Behind that door, according to the loyalists’ reports, Vordarian kept the captured replicator. Right under his eye. Perhaps as a human shield; any explosive dropped on Vordarian’s quarters must kill tiny Miles, as well. Or did the Barrayaran think of her damaged child as human?

Another guard stood outside that door. He stared at them suspiciously, his hand touching his sidearm. Cordelia and Droushnakovi walked on by without turning their heads. Bothari’s exchanged salute flowed smoothly into a clip to the man’s jaw that snapped his head back into the wall. Bothari caught him before he dropped. They swung the door open and dragged the guard inside; Bothari took his place in the corridor. Silently, Drou closed the door. Cordelia stared wildly around the little chamber, looking for automatic monitors. The room might formerly have been a bedroom of the sort once slept in by bodyservants to be near their Vorish masters, or perhaps an unusually large wardrobe; it didn’t even have a window overlooking some dull inner court. The portable uterine replicator sat on a cloth-covered table in the exact center of the room. Its lights still glowed their reassuring greens and ambers. No feral red eyes warned of malfunction yet. A breath half-agony, half-relief, tore from Cordelias lips at the sight of it.

Droushnakovi gazed around the room unhappily. “What’s wrong, Drou?” whispered Cordelia. “Too easy,” the girl muttered.

“We’re not done yet. Say ’easy’ an hour from now.” She licked her lips, shaken by secret subliminal agreement with Droushnakovi’s evaluation. No help for it. Grab and go. Speed, not secrecy, was their hope now.

She set the tray down on the table, reached for the replicator’s carrying handle, and stopped. Something, something wrong … she stared more closely at the readouts. The oxygenation monitor wasn’t even functioning. Though its indicator light glowed green, the nutrient fluid level read 00.00. Empty.

Cordelia’s mouth opened in a silent wail. Her stomach churned. She leaned closer, eyes devouring all the illogical hash of false readouts. Her hagridden nightmare, made suddenly and horribly real—had they dumped it on the floor, into a drain, down a toilet? Had Miles died quickly, mercifully smashed, or had they let the tiny infant, bereft of life-support, twitch to death in agony while they watched? Perhaps they hadn’t even bothered to watch … The serial number. Look at the serial number. A hopeless hope, but … she forced her blurring eyes to focus, her racing mind to try and remember. She had fingered that number, pensively, back in Vaagen and Henri’s lab, meditating upon this piece of technology and the distant world that had created it—and this number didn’t match. Not the same replicator, not Miles’s! One of the sixteen others, used to bait this trap.

Her heart sank. How many other traps were laid? She pictured herself running frantically from replicator to replicator, like a distraught child in some cruel game of keep-away, searching … I shall go mad.

No. Wherever the real replicator was, it was near to Vordarian’s person. Of that, she was sure. She knelt beside the table, putting her head down a moment to fight the blood—drained black balloons that clouded her vision and threatened to empty her mind of consciousness. She lifted the cloth. There. A pressure—sensor. Was this Vordarian’s own clever idea? Slick and vicious. Drou bent to follow her gesture.

“A trap,” whispered Cordelia. “Lift the replicator, and the alarms go off.”

“If we disarm it—”

“No. Don’t bother. It’s false bait. Not the right replicator. It’s an empty, with the controls buggered to make it look like it’s running.” Cordelia tried to think clearly through the pounding in her skull. “We’ll have to retrace our steps. Back down, and up. I hadn’t expected to encounter Vordarian here. But I guarantee he’ll know where Miles is. A little old-fashioned interrogation. We’ll be working against time. When the alarm goes up—”

Footsteps thudded in the corridor, and shouts. The chirping buzz of stunner fire. Swearing, Bothari flung himself backward through the door. “That’s done it. They’ve spotted us.”

When the alarm goes up, it’s all over, Cordelia’s thought completed itself, in a vertigo of loss. No window, one door, and they’d just lost control of their only exit. Vordarian’s trap had worked after all. May Vidal Vordarian rot in hell …

Droushnakovi clutched her stunner. “We won’t surrender you, Milady. We’ll fight to the end.”

“Rubbish,” snapped Cordelia. “There’s nothing our deaths would buy here but the deaths of a few more of Vordarian’s goons. Meaningless.”

“You mean we should just quit?”

“Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We’re not giving up. We’re waiting for a better opportunity to win. Which we can’t take if we’re stunned or nerve-fried.” Of course, if that had been the real replicator on the table … she was insane enough by now to sacrifice these people’s lives for her son’s, Cordelia reflected ruefully, but not yet mad enough to trade them for nothing. She hadn’t grown that Barrayaran yet.

“You give yourself to Vordarian as a hostage,” Bothari warned.

“Vordarian has held me hostage since the day he took Miles,” Cordelia said sadly. “This changes nothing.”

A few minutes of shouted negotiations through the door accomplished their surrender, despite the hair-trigger nerves of the security guards. They tossed out their weapons. The guards ran a scan for power packs to be sure, then four of them piled into the little room to frisk their new prisoners. Two more waited outside as backup. Cordelia made no sudden moves to startle them. A guard frowned puzzlement when the interesting lump in Cordelia’s vest turned out to be only a child’s shoe. He laid it on the table next to the tray.

The commander, a man in the maroon and gold

Vordarian livery, spoke into his wrist comm. “Yes. We’re secured here. Tell m’lord. No, he said to wake him. You want to explain why you didn’t? Thank you.”

The guards did not prod them into the corridor, but waited. The still-unconscious man Bothari had clipped was dragged out. The guards placed Cordelia, arms outstretched to the wall and legs straddled, in a row with Bothari and Droushnakovi. She was dizzy with despair. But Kareen would come to her sometime, even as a prisoner. Must come to her. All she needed was thirty seconds with Kareen, maybe less. When I see Kareen, you are a dead man, Vordarian. You may walk and talk and give orders, unconscious of your demise for weeks, but I’ll seal your fate as surely as you’ve sealed my son’s.

The reason for the wait materialized at last; Vordarian himself, in green uniform trousers and slippers, bare-chested, shouldered his way through the doorway. He was followed by Princess Kareen, clutching a dark red velvet robe around her. Cordelia’s heart hammered at a doubled rate. Now?

“So. The trap worked,” Vordarian began complacently, but added a genuinely shocked “Huh!” as Cordelia pushed away from the wall and turned to face him. A hand signal stopped a guard from shoving her back into position. The shock on Vordarian’s face gave way to a wolfish grin. “My God, did it work! Excellent!” Kareen, hovering behind him, stared at Cordelia in bewildered astonishment.

My trap worked, Cordelia thought, stunned with her opportunity. Watch me. …

“That’s the thing, my lord,” said the liveried man, not at all happily. “It didn’t work. We didn’t pick this party up at the outer perimeter of the Residence and clear their way, they just bloody turned up—without triggering anything. That shouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t come along looking for Roget, we might not have spotted ’em.”

Vordarian shrugged, too delighted by the magnitude of his prey to issue some trifling censure. “Fast-penta that frill,” he pointed at Droushnakovi, “and I imagine you’ll find out how. She used to work in Residence Security.”

Droushnakovi glowered over her shoulder at Princess Kareen in hurt accusation; Kareen unconsciously pulled her robe up more closely about her neck, her dark eyes full of equally hurt question.

“Well,” said Vordarian, still smiling at Cordelia, “is my Lord Vorkosigan so thin of troops he sends his wife to do their work? We cannot lose.” He smiled at his guards, who smiled back.

Damn, I wish I’d shot this lout in his sleep. “What have you done with my son, Vordarian?”

Vordarian said through his teeth, “An outworlder frill will never gain power on Barrayar by scheming to give a mutant the Imperium. That, I guarantee.”

“Is that the official line, now? I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.”

Behind Vordarian, Kareen’s lips quirked sadly. Yes, listen to me, Kareen!

“Where’s my son, Vordarian?” Cordelia repeated doggedly.

“He’s Emperor Vidal now,” Kareen remarked, her glance going back and forth between them, “if he can keep it.”

“I will,” Vordarian promised. “Aral Vorkosigan has no better a blood-claim than my own. And I will protect where Vorkosigan’s party has failed. Protect and preserve the real Barrayar.” His head shifted; apparently this assertion was directed over his shoulder to Kareen.

“We have not failed,” Cordelia whispered, meeting Kareen’s eyes. Now. She lifted the shoe from the table, and stretched out her arm with it; Kareen’s eyes widened. She darted forward and grabbed it. Cordelia’s hand spasmed like a dying runner’s giving up the baton in some mortal relay race. Fierce certainty bloomed like fire in her soul. I have you now, Vordarian. The sudden movement sent a ripple through the armed guards. Kareen examined the shoe with passionate intensity, turning it in her hands. Vordarian’s brows rose in bafflement, then he dismissed Kareen from his attention and turned to his liveried guard commander.

“We’ll keep all three of these prisoners here in the Residence. I’ll personally attend the fast-penta interrogations. This is a spectacular opportunity—” . Kareen’s face, when she lifted it again to Cordelia, was terrible with hope.

Yes, thought Cordelia. You were betrayed. Lied to. Your son lives; you must move and think and feel again, no more the walking numbness of a dead spirit beyond pain. This is no gift I’ve brought you. It is a curse.

“Kareen,” said Cordelia softly, “where is my son?”

“The replicator is on a shelf in the oak wardrobe, in the old Emperor’s bedchamber,” Kareen replied steadily, locking her eyes to Cordelia’s. “Where is mine?”

Cordelia’s heart melted in gratitude for her curse, live pain. “Safe and well, when I last saw him, as long as this pretender,” she jerked her head at Vordarian, “doesn’t find out where. Gregor misses you. He sends his love.” Her words might have been spikes, pounded into Kareen’s body.

That got Vordarian’s attention. “Gregor is at the bottom of a lake, killed in the flyer crash with that traitor Negri,” he said roughly. “The most insidious lie is the one you want to hear. Guard yourself, my lady Kareen. I could not save him, but I will avenge him. I promise you that.”

Uh—oh. Wait, Kareen. Cordelia bit her lip. Not here. Too dangerous. Wait your best opportunity. Wait till the bastard’s asleep, at least—but if even a Betan hesitated to shoot her enemy sleeping, how much less a Vor? She is true Vor… .

An unfriendly smile crinkled Kareen’s lips. Her eyes were alight. “This has never been immersed,” she said softly.

Cordelia heard the murderous undertones ringing like a bell; Vordarian, apparently, only heard the breathiness of some girlish grief. He glanced at the shoe, not grasping its message, and shook his head as if to clear it of static. “You’ll bear another son someday,” he promised her kindly. “Our son.”

Wait, wait, wait, Cordelia screamed inside. “Never,” whispered Kareen. She stepped back beside the guard in the doorway, snatched his nerve disruptor from his open holster, aimed it point-blank at Vordarian, and fired.

The startled guard knocked her hand up; the shot went wide, crackling into the ceiling. Vordarian dove behind the table, the only furniture in the room, rolling. His liveried man, in pure spinal reflex, snapped up his nerve disruptor and fired. Kareen’s face muscles locked in death-agony as the blue fire washed around her head; her mouth pulled open in a last soundless cry. Wait, Cordelia’s thought wailed.

Vordarian, utterly horrified, bellowed “No!”, scrambled to his feet, and tore a nerve disruptor from the hand of another guard. The liveried man, realizing the enormity of his error, tossed his weapon away as if to divorce himself from his action. Vordarian shot him.

The room tilted around her. Cordelia’s hand locked around the hilt of the swordstick and triggered its sheath flying into the head of one guard, then brought the blade smartly down across Vordarian’s weapon—wrist. He screamed, and blood and the nerve disruptor flew wide. Droushnakovi was already diving for the first discarded nerve disruptor. Bothari just took his target out with one lethal hand-blow to the neck. Cordelia slammed the door shut against the guards in the corridor, surging forward. A stunner charge buzzed into the walls, then three blue bolts in rapid succession from Droushnakovi took out the last of Vordarian’s men.

“Grab him,” Cordelia yelled to Bothari. Vordarian, shaking, his left hand clamped around his half-severed right wrist, was in poor condition to resist, though he kicked and shouted. His blood ran the color of Kareen’s robe. Bothari locked Vordarian’s head in a firm grip, nerve disruptor pressed to his skull.

“Out of here,” snarled Cordelia, and kicked the door back open. “To the Emperor’s chamber.” To Miles. Vordarian’s other guards, preparing to fire, held back at the sight of their master.

“Back off!” Bothari roared, and they fell away from the door. Cordelia grabbed Droushnakovi by the arm, and they stepped over Kareen’s body. Her ivory limbs lay muddled in the red fabric, abstractly beautiful forms even in death. The women kept Bothari and Vordarian between themselves and Vordarian’s troops, and retreated down the corridor. “Pull that plasma arc out of my holster and start firing,” Bothari savagely directed Cordelia. Yes; Bothari had managed to retrieve it in the melee, probably why his body count hadn’t been higher.

“You can’t set fire to the Residence,” Drou gasped in horror.

A fortune in antiquities and Barrayaran historical artifacts were housed in this wing alone, no doubt. Cordelia grinned wildly, grabbed the weapon, and fired back down the corridor. Wooden furniture, wooden parquetry, and age-dry tapestries roared into flame as the beam’s searing fingers touched them.

Burn, you. Burn for Kareen. Pile a death-offering to match her courage and agony, blazing higher and higher– As they reached the door of the old Emperor’s bedchamber, she fired the hallway in the opposite direction for good measure. THAT for what you’ve done to me, and to my boy—the flames should hold back pursuit for a few minutes. She felt as though her body were floating, light as air. Is this how Bothari feels, when he kills? Droushnakovi went for the wall panel to the secret ladder. She was functioning steadily now, as if her hands belonged to a different body than her tear-ravaged face. Cordelia dropped the sword on the bed and raced straight for the huge old carved oak wardrobe that stood against the near wall, and flung its doors wide. Green and amber lights glowed in the dim recesses of the center shelf. God, don’t let it be another decoy… . Cordelia wrapped her arms around the canister and lifted it out into the light. The right weight, this time, heavy with fluids; the right readouts, the right numbers. The right one.

Thank you, Kareen. I didn’t mean to kill you. Surely she was mad. She didn’t feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.

Vordarian was still struggling against Bothari’s grip, swearing horribly. “You won’t escape!” He stopped bucking, and tried to catch Cordelia’s eyes. He took a deep breath. “Think, Lady Vorkosigan. You’ll never make it. You must have me for a shield, but you can’t carry me stunned. Conscious, I’ll fight you every meter of the way. My men will be all over you, out there.” His head jerked toward the window. “Stun us all and take you prisoner.” His voice went persuasive. “Surrender now, and you’ll save your lives. That one’s life, too, if it means so much to you.” He nodded to the replicator Cordelia held in her arms. Her steps were heavier than Alys Vorpatril’s, now.

“I never gave orders for that fool Vorhalas to kill Vorkosigan’s heir,” Vordarian continued desperately into her silence. Blood leaked rapidly between his fingers. “It was only his father, with his fatal progressive policies, who threatened Barrayar. Your son might have inherited the Countship from Piotr with my goodwill. Piotr should never have been divided from his party of true allegiance. It’s a crime, what Lord Aral has put Piotr through—”

So. It was you. Even at the very beginning. Blood loss and shock were making a jerky parody of Vordarian’s usual smooth delivery of political argument. It was as if he sensed he could talk his way out of retribution, if only he hit on the right key words. Somehow, Cordelia doubted he would. Vordarian was not gaudily evil like Vorrutyer had been, not personally degraded like Serg; yet evil had flowed from him nonetheless, not from his vices, but from his virtues: the courage of his conservative convictions, his passion for Kareen. Cordelia’s head ached, vilely.

“We’d never proved you were behind Evon Vorhalas,” Cordelia said quietly. “Thank you for the information.”

That shut him up, for a moment. His eyes shifted uneasily to the door, soon to burst inward, ignited by the inferno behind it.

“Dead, I’m no use to you as a hostage,” he said, drawing himself up in dignity.

“’You’re no use to me at all, Emperor Vidal,” said Cordelia frankly. “There are at least five thousand casualties in this war so far. Now that Kareen is dead, how long will you keep fighting?”

“Forever,” he snarled whitely. “I will avenge her—avenge them all—”

Wrong answer, Cordelia thought, with a curious lightheaded sadness. “Bothari.” He was at her side instantly. “Pick up that sword.” He did so. She set the replicator on the floor and laid her hand briefly atop his, wrapped around the hilt. “Bothari, execute this man for me, please.” Her tone sounded weirdly serene in her own ears, as if she’d just asked Bothari to pass the butter. Murder didn’t really require hysterics.

“Yes, Milady,” Bothari intoned, and lifted the blade. His eyes gleamed with joy.

“What?” yelped Vordarian in astonishment. “You’re a Betan! You can’t do—”

The flashing stroke cut off his words, his head, and his life. It was really extremely neat, despite the last spurts of blood from the stump of his neck. Vorkosigan should have loaned Bothari’s services the day they’d executed Carl Vorhalas. All that upper body strength, combined with that extraordinary steel … the bemused gyration of her thought snapped back to near-reality as Bothari fell to his knees with the body, dropping the swordstick and clutching his head. He screamed. It was as if Vordarian’s death cry had been forced out of Bothari’s throat.

She dropped beside him, suddenly afraid again, though she’d been numb to fear, white-out overloaded, ever since Kareen had grabbed for the nerve disruptor and triggered all this chaos. Keyed by similar stimuli, Bothari was having the forbidden flashback, Cordelia guessed, to the mutinous throat-cutting that the Barrayaran high command had decreed he must forget. She cursed herself for not forseeing this possibility. Would it kill him?

“This door is hot as hell,” Droushnakovi, white and shaken, reported from beside it. “Milady, we have to get out of here now.”

Bothari was gasping raggedly, hands still pressed to his head, yet even as she watched his breathing grew marginally less disrupted. She left him, to crawl blindly over the floor. She needed something, something moisture-proof… .

There, at the bottom of the wardrobe, was a sturdy plastic bag containing several pairs of Kareen’s shoes, no doubt hastily transported by some maidservant when Vordarian had Imperially decreed Kareen move in with him. Cordelia emptied out the shoes, stumbled back around the bed, and collected Vordarian’s head from the place where it had rolled to a stop. It was heavy, but not so heavy as the uterine replicator. She pulled the drawstrings tight.

“Drou. You’re in the best shape. Carry the replicator. Start down. Don’t drop it.” If she dropped Vordarian, Cordelia decided, it would scarcely do him further harm.

Droushnakovi nodded and grabbed up both the replicator and the abandoned swordstick. Cordelia wasn’t sure if she retrieved the latter for its newly acquired historical value, or from some fractured sense of obligation for one of Kou’s possessions. Cordelia coaxed Bothari to his feet. Cool air was rushing up out of the panel opening, drawn by the fire beyond the door. It would make a neat flue, till the burning wall crashed in and blocked the entry. Vordarian’s people were going to have a very puzzling time, poking through the embers and wondering where they’d gone.

The descent was nightmarish, in the compressed space, with Bothari whimpering below her feet. She could carry the bag neither beside nor in front of her, so had to balance it on one shoulder and go one—handed, palm slapping down the rungs and her wrist aching.

Once on the level, she prodded the weeping Bothari ruthlessly forward, and wouldn’t let him stop till they came again to Ezar’s cache in the ancient stable cellar.

“Is he all right?” Droushnakovi asked nervously, as Bothari sat down with his head between his knees.

“He has a headache,” said Cordelia. “It may take a while to pass off.”

Droushnakovi asked even more diffidently, “Are you all right, Milady?”

Cordelia couldn’t help it; she laughed. She choked down the hysteria as Drou began to look really scared. “No.”