Barrayar

Epilogue

Vorkosigan Surleau—Five Years Later

“Dammit, Vaagen,” Cordelia panted under her breath. “You never told me the little bugger was going to be hyperactive.”

She galloped down the end stairs, through the kitchen, and out onto the terrace at the end of the rambling stone residence. Her gaze swept the lawn, probed the trees, and scanned the long lake sparkling in the summer sun. No movement.

Aral, dressed in old uniform trousers and a faded print shirt, came around the house, saw her, and opened his hands in a no-luck gesture. “He’s not out here.”

“He’s not inside. Down, or up, d’you think? Where’s little Elena? I bet they’re together. I forbade him to go down to the lake without an adult, but I don’t know… .”

“Surely not the lake,” said Aral. “They swam all morning. I was exhausted just watching them. In the fifteen minutes I timed it, he climbed the dock and jumped back in nineteen times. Multiply that by three hours.”

“Up, then,” decided Cordelia. They turned and trudged together up the hill on the gravel path lined with native, Earth-import, and exotic shrubbery and flowers. “And to think,” Cordelia wheezed, “I prayed for the day he would walk.”

“It’s five years pent-up motion all let loose at once,” Aral analyzed. “In a way, it’s reassuring that all that frustration didn’t turn in on itself and become despair. For a time, I was afraid it might.”

“Yes. Have you noticed, since the last operation, that the endless chatter’s dried up? At first I was glad, but do you suppose he’s going to go mute? I didn’t even know that refrigeration unit was supposed to come apart. A mute engineer.”

“I think the, er, verbal and mechanical aptitudes will come into balance eventually. If he survives.”

“There’s all of us adults, and one of him. We ought to be able to keep up. Why do I feel like he has us outnumbered and surrounded?” She crested the hill. Piotr’s stable complex lay in the shallow valley below, half a dozen red-painted wood and stone buildings, fenced paddocks, pastures planted to bright green Earth grasses. She saw horses, but no children. Bothari was ahead of them, though, just exiting one building and entering another. His bellow carried up to them, thinned by distance. “Lord Miles?”

“Oh, dear, I hope he’s not bothering Piotr’s horses,” said Cordelia. “Do you really think this reconciliation attempt will work, this time? Just because Miles is finally walking?”

“He was civil, last night at dinner,” said Aral, judiciously hopeful.

“I was civil, last night at dinner,” Cordelia shrugged. “He as much as accused me of starving your son into dwarfism. Can I help it if the kid would rather play with his food than eat it? I just don’t know about stepping up the growth hormone, Vaagen’s so uncertain about its effect on bone friability.”

A crooked smile stole over Aral’s face. “I did think the dialogue with the peas marching to surround the bread-roll and demand surrender was rather ingenious. You could almost picture them as little soldiers in Imperial greens.”

“Yes, and you were no help, laughing instead of terrorizing him into eating like a proper Da.”

“I did not laugh.”

“Your eyes were laughing. He knew it, too. Twisting you round his thumb.”

The warm organic scent of horses and their inevitable by-products permeated the air as they approached the buildings. Bothari re-appeared, saw them, and waved an apologetic hand. “I just saw Elena. I told her to get down out of that loft. She said Lord Miles wasn’t up there, but he’s around here somewhere. Sorry, Milady, when he talked about looking at the animals, I didn’t realize he meant immediately. I’m sure I’ll find him in just a moment.”

“I was hoping Piotr would offer a tour,” Cordelia sighed.

“I thought you didn’t like horses,” said Aral.

“I loathe them. But I thought it might get the old man talking to him, like a human being, instead of over him like a potted plant. And Miles was so excited about the stupid beasts. I don’t like to linger here, though. This place is so … Piotr.” Archaic, dangerous, and you have to watch your step.

Speak of the devil. Piotr himself emerged from the old stone tack storage shed, coiling a web rope. “Hah. There you are,” he said neutrally. He joined them sociably enough, though. “I don’t suppose you would like to see the new filly.”

His tone was so flat, she couldn’t tell if he wanted her to say yes, or no. But she seized the opportunity. “I’m sure Miles would.”

“Mm.”

She turned to Bothari. “Why don’t you go get—” But Bothari was staring past her, his lips rippling in dismay. She wheeled.

One of Piotr’s most enormous horses, quite naked of bridle, saddle, halter, or any other handle to grab, was trotting out of the barn. Clinging to its mane like a burr was a dark-haired, dwarfish little boy. Miles’s sharp features shone with a mixture of exaltation and terror. Cordelia nearly fainted.

“My imported stallion!” yelped Piotr in horror.

In pure reflex, Bothari snatched his stunner from its holster. He then stood paralyzed with the uncertainty of what to shoot and where. If the horse went down and rolled on its little rider—

“Look, Sergeant!” Miles’s thin voice called eagerly. “I’m taller than you!”

Bothari started to run toward him. The horse, spooked, wheeled away and broke into a canter.

“—and I can run faster, too!” The words were whipped away in the bounding motion of the gait. The horse shied out of sight around the stable.

The four adults pelted after. Cordelia heard no other cry, but when they turned the corner Miles was lying on the ground, and the horse had stopped further on and lowered its head to nibble at the grass. It snorted in hostility when it saw them, raised its head, danced from foot to foot, then snatched a few more bites.

Cordelia fell to her knees beside Miles, who was already sitting up and waving her away. He was pale, and his right hand clutched his left arm in an all-too-familiar signal of pain.

“You see, Sergeant?” Miles panted. “I can ride, I can.”

Piotr, on his way toward his horse, paused and looked down.

“I didn’t mean to say you weren’t able” said the sergeant in a driven tone. “I meant you didn’t have permission.”

“Oh.”

“Did you break it?” Bothari nodded to the arm.

“Yeah,” the boy sighed. There were tears of pain in his eyes, but his teeth set against any quaver entering his voice.

The sergeant grumbled, and rolled up Miles’s sleeve, and palpated the forearm. Miles hissed. “Yep.” Bothari pulled, twisted, adjusted, took a plastic sleeve from his pocket, slipped it over the arm and wrist, and blew it up. “That’ll keep it till the doctor sees it.”

“Hadn’t you better … containerize that horrendous horse?” Cordelia said to Piotr.

“ ’S not h’rrendous,” Miles insisted, scrambling to his feet. “It’s the prettiest.”

“You think so, eh?” said Piotr roughly. “How do you figure that? You like brown?”

“It moves the springiest,” Miles explained earnestly, bouncing in imitation.

Piotr’s attention was arrested. “And so it does,” he said, sounding bemused. “It’s my hottest dressage prospect … You like horses?”

“They’re great. They’re wonderful.” Miles pirouetted.

“I could never much interest your father in them.” Piotr gave Aral a dirty look.

Thank God, thought Cordelia.

“On a horse, I could go as fast as anybody, I bet,” said Miles.

“I doubt it,” said Piotr coldly, “if that was a sample. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it right.”

“Teach me,” said Miles instantly.

Piotr’s brows shot up. He glanced at Cordelia, and smiled sourly. “If your mother gives permission.” He rocked on his heels, in certain smug safety, knowing Cordelias rooted antipathy to the beasts.

Cordelia bit her tongue on Over my dead body, and thought fast. Aral’s intent eyes were signaling something, but she couldn’t read it. Was this a new way for Piotr to try and kill Miles? Take him out and get him smashed, trampled, broken … tired out? Now there was a thought. …

Risk, or security? In the few months since Miles had at last acquired a full range of motion, she’d run on panicked overdrive, trying to save him from physical harm; he’d spent the same time near-frantically trying to escape her supervision. Much more of this struggle, and either she’d be insane, or he would.

If she could not keep him safe, perhaps the next best thing was to teach him competence at living dangerously. He was almost undrownable already. His big grey eyes were radiating a desperate, silent plea at her, Let me, let me, let me … with enough transmission energy to burn through steel. I would fight the world for you, but I’m damned if I can figure out how to save you from yourself. Go for it, kid.

“Yes,” she said. “If the sergeant accompanies you.”

Bothari shot her a look of horrified reproach. Aral rubbed his chin, his eyes alight. Piotr looked utterly taken aback to have his bluff called.

“Good,” said Miles. “Can I have my own horse? Can I have that one?”

“No, not that one,” said Piotr indignantly. Then drawn in, added, “Perhaps a pony.”

“Horse,” said Miles, watching his face.

Cordelia recognized the Instant Re-Negotiation Mode, a spinal reflex, as far as she could tell, triggered by the faintest concession. The kid should be put to work beating out treaties with the Cetagandans. She wondered how many horses he’d finally end up with. “A pony,” she put in, giving Piotr the support that he did not yet recognize how badly he was going to need. “A gentle pony. A gentle short pony.”

Piotr pursed his lips, and gave her a challenging look. “Perhaps you can work up to a horse,” he said to Miles. “Earn it, by learning well.”

“Can I start now?”

“You have to get your arm set first,” said Cordelia firmly.

“I don’t have to wait till it heals, do I?”

“It will teach you not to run around breaking things!”

Piotr regarded Cordelia through half-lidded eyes. “Actually, proper dressage training starts on a lunge line. You aren’t permitted to use your arms till you’ve developed your seat.”

“Yeah?” said Miles, hanging worshipfully on his words. “What else—?”

By the time Cordelia withdrew to hunt up the personal physician who accompanied the Lord Regent’s traveling circus, ah, entourage, Piotr had recaptured his horse—rather efficiently, though Cordelia wondered if the sugar in his pockets was cheating—and was already explaining to Miles how to make a simple line into an effective halter, which side of the beast to stand on, and what direction to face while leading. The boy, barely waist-high to the old man, was taking it in like a sponge, upturned face passionately intent.

“Want to lay a side-bet, who’s leading who on that lunge line by the end of the week?” Aral murmured in her ear.

“No contest. I must say, the months Miles spent immobilized in that dreadful spinal brace did teach him how to do charm. The most efficient long-term way to control those about you, and thus exert your will. I’m glad he didn’t decide to perfect whining as a strategy. He’s the most willful little monster I’ve ever encountered, but he makes you not notice.”

“I don’t think the Count has a chance,” Aral agreed.

She smiled at the vision, then glanced at him more seriously. “When my father was home on leave one time from the Betan Astronomical Survey, we made model gliders together. Two things were required to get them to fly. First we had to give them a running start. Then we had to let them go.” She sighed. “Learning just when to let go was the hardest part.”

Piotr, his horse, Bothari, and Miles turned out of sight into the barn. By his gestures, Miles was asking questions at a rapid-fire rate.

Aral gripped her hand as they turned to go up the hill. “I believe he’ll soar high, dear Captain.”