Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Chapter Eleven

A bit of rest being overdue for everyone, Ivan and his guests spent the day following the alarming interview with Gregor in the confines of Ivan’s flat. The women seemed content to limit their explorations of Barrayar to the safety of the comconsole, with meals delivered from some of the large array of providers of provender to bachelors on Ivan’s auto-call list. It wasn’t till conversation over a late brunch the next noon that Ivan discovered that his ladies’ objections to venturing out lay not in mistrust of his security, but in distaste for his groundcar. He then had the happy thought of renting a larger vehicle for the week, an inspiration greeted with applause. They were just discussing his offered menu of places to go and things to see in and around Vorbarr Sultana when they were interrupted by his door chime.

Tej and Rish both jerked in fresh alarm.

“No, no, it’s all right,” Ivan told them, swallowing his last bite of vat-ham and rising to answer it. “It has to be someone on my cleared list, or the front desk would’ve called for permission to let ’em come up.”

Not that cleared necessarily equated to welcome, Ivan reflected, when he checked the security vid to find Byerly Vorrutyer waiting in the corridor, looking around and tapping his fingers tensely on his trouser seam. Maybe it was time to review that list, and take certain names off it…Reluctantly—wasn’t this how he’d fallen into all of this trouble in the first place?—Ivan opened the door and let By in, rather like a delivery boy bringing not delicious meals, but bags of snakes. No tip for you, By.

By was perfectly neat, tidy, and well groomed, but he had a harried look in his eye. “Hello, Ivan,” he said, padding past his host. “Is everyone all still here? Ah, yes, good. Hello, Rish, Tej.” He waved to the women lingering around Ivan’s little dining table, who sat up with interest and waved back, and helped himself to a seat, settling in with a sigh.

“If you’re looking to hide out from my mother,” said Ivan, “this likely isn’t the best place.”

“Too late for that,” said By. “For the love of mercy, give me a drink.”

“Isn’t this, like, the equivalent of dawn for you? Drinking before breakfast is a sign of serious degeneration, you know.”

“You have no idea what serious degeneration is, Ivan. I just had a very long interview with your mother. Worse than my ImpSec debriefing by far, and that took a full day.”

Ivan balanced mercy against a tempting heartlessness. Mercy won by a hair, so he brought Byerly a clean glass to share out their champagne and orange juice, heavy on the champs. Byerly evidently wasn’t in a fussy mood, for he didn’t even look at the label till after he’d poured and taken his first sip, not quite a gulp, and raised a brow in belated appreciation.

“I’d have thought you would’ve had the sense to duck her,” said Ivan, settling back into his own chair.

“Wasn’t given a chance. I was publicly arrested in the Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport by an ImpSec goon squad as soon as I stepped off the shuttle yesterday, and hauled away in handcuffs.”

“Ivan Xav’s mother did that?” said Tej, sounding impressed. “She just sent Christos and a car for us.”

Byerly appeared to contemplate this. “Much the same thing, I suppose. It was actually my handler’s bright idea for getting me to my debriefing discreetly, now that the Vormercier scandal has hit the news. The public tale for me will be that I had no idea that all this brotherly chicanery was going on; I was just the caterer for the party yacht. Drinks, drugs, girls, you know.”

“Girls?” said Ivan. “I don’t think the term for that is caterer, By.”

By shrugged one shoulder. “They were actually my co-agents. ImpSec has found that it’s often better to recruit from those already in the trade, giving them a step up in the world in return for their loyalty, than to start with a trained agent and persuade them to—well, you see. I called right after I left your wedding, told them to get the hell off Vormercier’s yacht, met them on the orbital transfer station to, supposedly, go shopping—that was our code phrase for pulling the plug. We were all three boarding a commercial flight to Barrayar by the time Desplains and your crew descended on the Kanzian. Desplains’s jump-pinnace passed us by us en route, I suppose—ours wasn’t the fastest ship. Nor the best cabin. We had to share.” A smile flickered over Byerly’s face. “We were commended for our economy, though. ImpSec being in the throes of one of its periodic budget spasms.”

“Hot bunks?” inquired Ivan. “What suffering you ImpSec weasels do endure, to be sure. Just you and two beautiful call girls, stuck together for eight days in a tiny room with nothing to do. It must have been hell.”

“Not quite nothing,” Byerly murmured back, taking another sip of champagne and orange juice. “We had all those reports to write…”

“What’s a call girl?” asked Tej, her brows crimping in puzzlement.

“Uh…” Ivan sought a translation. “Like a Betan licensed practical sexuality therapist, only without the licensed and the therapy parts.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Like a grubber sex worker. That doesn’t sound altogether safe.”

“It isn’t,” said By. “It’s not a trade that attracts the risk-averse, let us say.”

“Like an informer?” inquired Rish, with a small blue smile.

He raised his glass to her, and drained it. “There are parallels. Combine that with informer, and you may perhaps guess why I was anxious to extract them before the hammer came down.”

“Hm,” she said, eyeing him in fresh evaluation.

“So ImpSec released me back into the wild today, supposedly after a grueling night of incarceration and involuntary fast-penta interrogation, which cleared me of complicity in Vormercier’s crimes. But left me looking rather a public fool. All good so far.” He scowled, and added, “I was also commended for my months of meticulous and, if I may say it, wearing work on the Vormercier case, and raised one pay grade.”

“Congratulations!” said Rish. “But…you don’t look happy…?”

By’s lips twisted. “And then I was promptly reprimanded and docked one pay grade for involving you, Ivan.”

“Oh.” Ivan almost added Sorry! till he reflected that, actually, it wasn’t his fault. Had he asked By to hand-deliver him a bride? No. Not to mention the stunned, tied up, and threatened with arrest and/or the admiral’s sarcasm parts.

“They did it that way on purpose, you know.” By brooded. “If they’d presented it the other way around, it wouldn’t have been nearly so stinging. Or just said nothing at all, which would have come to the exact same end. Far more efficiently.”

Ivan assured Rish, who seemed taken aback, “Don’t worry about it. Byerly’s pay grade goes up and down a lot. Think of it as white noise in a general upward trend.”

“This marked a new speed record, though,” By grumbled.

Tej was still looking thoughtful. “How does one become a spy?” she asked Byerly.

His dark brows flicked in amusement. “Thinking of applying? A portion of candidates are filtered in from the Service side of things. Good people in their way, but, let us say, afflicted with a certain uniformity of world-view. Some are purpose-recruited from the civilian side, generally for some special expertise.”

“So which way did you get recruited?” asked Rish.

He waved his glass in a what-would-you gesture. “I came in by the third route, recruited piecemeal by a working Domestic Affairs agent. I had arrived in the capital at the age of not quite twenty, bent on going to hell as expeditiously as possible in my own callow fashion—meaning, as like to the other callow, ah, what Ivan and his ilk call town clowns, as I could manage. It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company—I more hunted them down—but among all the bad apples in my chosen barrel was one who was…not. He used me for a few favors, found me satisfactory, assigned me more small tasks, then larger ones, tested me…” Byerly grimaced at who-knew-what memory—Ivan suspected he wasn’t going to tell that one. “And then one day made me an offer which, by that time, did not astonish me—though it illuminated many things in retrospect. I was cycled through a few ImpSec short courses, and the rest was apprenticeship. And, ah…more spontaneous learning experiences.” He poured himself more champagne and orange juice. He doubtless needed the vitamins.

“Which brings me to the moment,” By went on. “We need to—”

“Wait, you skipped over my mother,” said Ivan.

“Would that I could have. She appeared to be remarkably well informed. I tried to explain that my testimony was redundant, but she insisted on the extra angle of view. What I was about to say is, that before any of you here go out into circulation in Vorbarr Sultana—I mean, beyond the extremely select company you’ve already kept—we need to get our stories straight about what really happened on Komarr.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, unsurprised. “Not a social visit, then.”

“Hardly.” Byerly glanced under his lashes at Rish. “Well, mostly not, but I’ll get to that later. Having, miraculously, not yet blown my cover and lost my livelihood, I would like to keep it that way.”

Ivan conceded the validity of this concern with a nod.

“The short version will be that Ivan met you, Tej, on Komarr when he went to mail his package. You indulged in a whirlwind affair, and, when you were suddenly threatened with deportation by Komarran immigration, he married you in a fit of gallantry.”

Tej wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“What, you were beautiful, you were in danger, and I hadn’t got laid yet,” said Ivan. “Seems simple enough.”

Byerly tilted his head. “You know, you were doing well there, Ivan, till that last—never mind. Verisimilitude is everything. Speaking of which, I was told Tej and Rish may as well go on being themselves for as long as they are on Barrayar. Making a virtue of necessity, as erasing them from earlier in the record would be nearly impossible, with all the trail you’ve left—like an Emperor’s Birthday parade, compete with marching bands and an elephant. Highborn but destitute refugees fleeing from a disastrous palace coup—Barrayarans will understand that part, have no fear, even if they remain suspicious of your Jacksonian aspects.” His eye fell on Ivan, and he added meditatively, “You spotted me on Komarr by chance, and nabbed me for a known witness when you suddenly needed one. I wonder if you should have been drunk at the time?”

“At dawn?” said Ivan indignantly. “No!” He added in false cordiality, “You’re welcome to have been, if you like.”

“What, and besmirch my impeccability as a witness? Surely not.”

“In other words,” said Tej slowly, “pretty much the same tale as we’ve been telling everyone. Except for Admiral Desplains, Lady Vorpatril, Simon Illyan, Lord and Lady Vorkosigan, Emperor Gregor…” She trailed off, plainly finding it an uncomfortably long list for a closely-held secret.

“It’s all right,” Ivan assured her. “That bunch holds more secrets among ’em than I can rightly imagine.”

“Moving on to my concerns,” Byerly continued. “In the interests of spreading the correct cover story as soon as possible to as many observers as possible, Rish, I wonder if you would care to attend a select little soirée with me this evening. Dinner beforehand, perhaps?”

“Go out?” Rish’s eyes grew wide with both longing and alarm. “On a date? With you? On Barrayar?”

Byerly tilted his free hand judiciously back and forth. “Not exactly a date. I need to get out and about to complain, gossip, backstab, and of course curse Theo Vormercier and ImpSec—jointly, severally, and loudly. A tough job, but somebody’s got to, and all that.”

“What about my”—Rish waved a hand down the slim length of her body—“non-standard appearance?”

“Some extra distraction for people’s eyes and minds while I set about my tedious task of disseminating disinformation seems…useful. Famous foreign artist, enjoying refugee status in the train of a mysterious romance, or possibly scandal, involving the scion of one of the stodgiest of high Vor families—I guarantee they’ll muscle past their prejudices for a taste of that. And in the company of the Vorrutyer clan’s most debonair non-heir, at that. Our audience will be positively agog.” He smiled. Ivan bared his teeth. Byerly ignored him, and went on, “Simultaneously, it will begin the process of habituating them to you. Also, it will give you a chance to see a bit of Barrayar not in Ivan’s stodgy company.”

“I am not stodgy! And your company is notoriously, notoriously unfit for…well, unfit, anyway!”

Rish raised her golden brows, and murmured, “Hm!” She regarded Byerly for a long moment through, narrowed, considering eyes. And flared nostrils? “It sounds a small enough task to start on. I think…yes.”

“I believe you will find the evening not without elements of interest,” By purred in triumph. “And I shall be fascinated by your observations.”

“What should I wear?”

“Ah, cerulean on the surface, woman to the bone. Casual-chic and striking would do the job nicely. A touch of the exotic a plus.”

Ivan thought the exotic was more of a default, but Rish merely said, “I can do that.”

Ivan struggled with a formless frustration. Rish was not his spouse, nor did he stand in any way in loco parentis to her. But who would be blamed, if something went wrong? Yeah. On the other hand, this would give him and Tej the flat to themselves for the whole evening. They could order in, and, and…Ivan finally managed, “Well…well, if you’re taking my employee out into deep waters, make damn sure you give her a better briefing than you gave me!”

Byerly set down his emptied glass and raised a brow. “Ivan, do I tell you how to run Ops?”

As Ivan sputtered, By grinned, arranged the hour for his return to collect Rish, stood up, and sauntered out, all in fine By style again. About a liter of Ivan’s most expensive champagne had relaxed him, presumably.

Ivan returned from escorting Byerly to the door and making sure it was locked after him to find Tej and Rish dividing the last of the fresh orange juice and frowning curiously.

“So…is By bi?” Tej asked. “Bisexual, that is.”

“I have no idea what By’s real preferences are,” Ivan stated firmly. “Nor do I wish to know.”

“What, couldn’t you smell him, that first night he came in on Komarr?” said Rish. Addressing Tej, Ivan hoped. “He’d had a busy two days or so. Any lingering scents from prior to that were too attenuated to discern.”

“He was pretty confusing,” said Tej. “In all ways, including that one.”

“To be sure, though I’d call it more compounded than confusing. But whether his contacts were sequential or together, for business or pleasure, enjoyed or endured, even I couldn’t guess.”

“I don’t want to know this,” Ivan repeated, although in a smaller voice. He bethought him of a new caution. “You do realize, Byerly has almost certainly been ordered by his handlers to keep a close eye on you? Surveillance is what he does. What could be a more efficient way of keeping you under his thumb than to ask you out himself?”

Rish smirked and rose. “There’s nothing that says a man can’t enjoy his work.” She added over her shoulder, as she drifted out like some exotic blue blossom floating down a stream, “Come on, Tej. Help me sort through this crazy Barrayaran wardrobe.”

Tej paused to whisper in reassurance to Ivan, “She adores being seen, you know. She’s bound to have a good time.” She bounced after Rish with a sort of happy-teakettle chortle.

A more horrid notion occurred to Ivan then. What if Byerly wanted Rish not for a smokescreen, but as bait? What could be a more efficient method of drawing their syndicate pursuers out to where ImpSec could see and nail them than that?

Well, Ivan reflected morosely, one way or another, at least ImpSec is on the job.

Rish returned to the flat very late that night; to Tej’s secret bemusement, Ivan Xav stayed up to let her in—but not Byerly, who had escorted her to the door, whom he sent to the right-about with complaints about keeping people awake past their bedtimes. By’s ribald return remarks merely made him grumpier. The next night, Rish had Ivan Xav issue her a door remote. Byerly took her out again, although not to a party, but to a dance performance put on by some touring folk group from the western part of the continent, his former and apparently forsaken home. On the third night, Rish called on Byerly’s wristcom to tell Tej not to wait up; she’d probably be back around noon the next day. Ivan Xav grumbled disjointedly.

The next morning, however, was his birthday, an event Tej had been anticipating with growing curiosity. They arose in the dark before dawn and dressed rather formally, he donning his green captain’s uniform for the first time on his week’s leave. They ate no breakfast, merely drank tea, and then he bundled her into his sporty groundcar and they threaded the dark, quiet streets, although to no great distance away. His driving was, thankfully, subdued, though whether because of the bleary hour of the day or the solemn task they were to undertake, she wasn’t sure.

He hadn’t been very forthcoming about the ceremony, some traditional Barrayaran memorial for his dead father that apparently involved burning a small sacrifice of hair—after it had been clipped from one’s head, Tej was relieved to learn. They pulled up in a street lined by older, grubbier, lower buildings, where a municipal guard vehicle was parked, its lights blinking. Two guardsmen were setting up a pair of lighted traffic deflectors on either side of a bronze plaque set in the pavement. The guard sergeant hurried over and started to wave Ivan out of the parking spot into which they eased, but then reversed his gesture into a beckoning upon recognizing the car and its driver.

“Captain Vorpatril, sir.” The man saluted as Ivan Xav helped Tej out. “We’re just about ready for you, here.”

Ivan nodded. “Thank you, sergeant, as always.”

Tej stood on the sidewalk in the damp autumn chill and stared around. “This is where your father died, then?”

Ivan Xav pointed to the plaque, glinting among the amber-and-shadow patterns woven by the street lights. “Right over there, according to Mamere. Shot down by the Pretender’s security forces, while they were trying to make their escape.”

“Wait, she was there? I mean, here? At the time?”

“Oh, yes.” He yawned and stared sleepily down the street, then perked up slightly as a long, sleek, familiar groundcar turned onto the block. The municipal guardsman waved it into its reserved parking space with studied officiousness, and saluted its occupants as they disembarked. Lady Vorpatril was accompanied, or escorted, by Simon Illyan, with the driver Christos bringing up the rear and holding a large cloth bag that clanked.

The guardsmen took up parade-rest poses at a respectful distance away, and Christos knelt in the street to withdraw a bronze tripod and bowl from the bag, setting them up next to the plaque. He nodded to his mistress and went to join the guardsmen; they greeted each other and conversed in low tones, then one of the guardsmen went out into the street to direct the growing trickle of traffic safely around the site.

“Good morning, Ivan,” Lady Alys greeted her son. “Happy birthday, dear.” She hugged him, and he returned her what seemed to be the regulation peck on the cheek. He nodded thanks to Illyan’s echoed, “Happy birthday, Ivan. Thirty-fifth, isn’t it?

“Yes, sir.”

“Halfway through your Old Earth three-score-and-ten, eh? Incredible that we’ve all survived so long.” He shook his head, as if in wonder. Ivan grimaced.

The War of Vordarian’s Pretendership had been more in the nature of an abortive palace coup, as Tej understood it from her recent reading. Shortly after the ascension of the five-year-old Emperor Gregor under the regency of Aral Vorkosigan, the rival Count Vidal Vordarian and his party had made a grab for power. In the first strike, they’d secured the capital city, the military and ImpSec headquarters, and the young emperor’s mother, but the boy himself had slipped through their fingers, to be hidden in the countryside by Vorkosigan’s gathering forces. It had proved an ultimately fatal fumble.

There had followed a months-long standoff, minor skirmishes while each side frantically maneuvered for allies among the other counts, the military, and the people. Captain Lord Padma Vorpatril and his wife, Lady Alys, relatives and known allies of Regent Vorkosigan, had been cut off in the capital during the coup and gone into hiding. Padma’s death rated barely a footnote, less even than the skirmishes. Had it been a chill and foggy night like this?

How much more, not less, surreal the tale all seemed, now that Tej had been in the same room—and shared cream cakes—with the grown-up, forty-year-old Gregor. Not to mention…

The present Lady Alys, composed and commanding, turned to take Tej by the hands. “Good morning, Tej. I’m pleased you came.”

Tej considered the significant difference between husband shot and husband shot in front of your eyes. She ducked her head, suddenly shy before this woman in a whole new way. “Thank you,” she managed, unsure what else to say.

“This is the first such memorial service you will have seen, I understand?”

“Yes. I’d never even heard of them before.”

“It’s nothing at all difficult. Especially not after thirty-five repetitions. Sometimes people perform it on the anniversary of their loved one’s death, sometimes on their birthday, sometimes other occasions. As need arises. Keeping the memory alive, or getting in the last word, depending.” A dry smile turned her lips. The amber light leached the color from her face, and turned Ivan Xav’s uniform drab olive.

Lady Alys and Ivan Xav knelt by the brazier. With a brisk efficiency, Lady Alys pulled a plastic sack of scented bark and wood shavings from the cloth bag and upended it into the metal bowl. She pulled a smaller packet from her purse and shook out a mat of black and silver hair clippings atop. Ivan rummaged in his trouser pocket and unearthed a similar packet, adding a fuzzy black blot to the pile. Parsimoniously saved from their most recent haircuts, maybe? They both stood up.

Lady Alys nodded to the plaque. “This is where my husband was shot down by Vordarian’s security forces. Nerve disruptors—poor Padma never had a chance. I’ll never forget the smell…burning hair, among other things. This ceremony always brings that back.” She grimaced. “Ivan was born not an hour later.”

“Where was his uterine replicator?” Tej asked.

Three faces turned toward hers; Lady Alys’s twisted in a wry humor. She touched her stomach. “Here, dear.”

Tej gasped in new and unexpected horror. “You mean Ivan Xav was a body birth?”

“Everyone was, in those days. Replicator technology had barely reached Barrayar, and didn’t become widespread for another generation.” Lady Alys stared at her uneasy son in reminded ire. “Two weeks late, he was. Nine pounds!”

“Not my fault,” muttered Ivan Xav, very much under his breath. He added to Tej, not much louder: “She mentions that every year.”

Lady Alys went on more serenely, “The friends who rescued us…me, almost in time, hustled me away to an abandoned building in the old Caravanserai district—very run-down and dangerous, back then—not too far from here. Sergeant Bothari, rest to his troubled soul, played midwife, for lack of any other with the least experience in the task, including me. I was so terrified, but I couldn’t scream, you know, because Vordarian’s men were still out there looking for us. Bothari gave me a rag to bite…I can still remember the horrid taste, when I think of it. Nauseating. And we got through it somehow, dear heavens, but I still don’t know how. We were all so young. Ivan is older now than Padma was then.” She regarded Tej in sudden wonder. “I was just twenty-five. Your age, my dear. Now, there’s a strange chance.”

Half past strange and aiming for very unsettling, Tej thought. But a new, or newly-revealed, reason for this aging woman’s unexpected sympathy to another young refugee mourning her dead grew very clear, like ice, or crystal, or broken glass, or something else with sharp and dangerous edges. Oh.

She knows. She knows it all, and more, probably. Maybe Lady Alys’s glossy surface had to be so thick and smooth because it hid so much…?

Simon Illyan’s brow furrowed. “Where was I, during all of this? I do wish I could have been there for you, Alys…”

She touched his supporting arm in reassurance. “You were smuggling Admiral Kanzian out, to Aral’s great tactical benefit.”

His face cleared. “Ah, yes, now I recall.” He frowned again. “Fragments, at least.”

“Trust me, love, after thirty-five years, fragments are all anyone recalls.” She turned again to Tej. “As Ivan’s bride, you are now a part of this—however temporarily. Would you care to lay some hair on the fire as well? Since you’re here.”

Tej was taken aback all over again. That seemed to be happening a lot, lately. “I…is it permitted?” Not offensive? Apparently, it was perfectly allowable, because all the Barrayarans nodded. Lady Alys drew a small pair of scissors from her purse—secreted for just this hope, or did she always carry them?—and snipped a curl from Tej’s bent head. She handed it to Ivan Xav, who laid it atop the pile and set the wood shavings alight. Little flames crackled up, hot and swift. There did not seem to be any formal words to be recited, because everyone just stood around watching, the flames reflecting in their shadowed eyes as tiny molten glints. The tops of the highest buildings, visible in the distance, sprang into color as the first sunlight reached them, but down here all was yet a pool of damp gray, with the fire a shimmering orange blur in the autumn murk.

Not formal, but words—very low, from Lady Alys; as though she told secrets. “Padma and I were hiding in what was then a cheap boarding house down the street. Just there.” She pointed to a building a few doors down, half-concealed by renovation scaffolding. The scent of burning hair was very pungent, now. “When I went into labor, Padma panicked. I begged him not to go out, but he was frantic to find someone, anyone, to take over the terrifying task of delivering a baby that women all over the planet had been doing every damned day since the Firsters landed. Though I had the biggest part of the job, and wasn’t going to be able to wriggle out of it by any means whatsoever. So he went out, leaving me alone and petrified for hours with my contractions getting worse, waiting, and of course he promptly got picked up. Once they brought him back and we’d both been dragged out into the street, he tried to stand up to armed men, all penta-drunk as he was. But I knew, then and forever after, that it wasn’t his bravery that killed him—it was his cowardice. Oh, dear God, I was so angry at him for that. For years.”

Illyan touched her shoulder; Ivan Xav stood warily away. Illyan said, “Kou got you and baby Ivan out, didn’t he?” Giving her thoughts a more positive direction?

“Yes. Lieutenant Koudelka—later Commodore,” she glossed to Tej, “Kou managed to smuggle us out of the city in the back of a grocery van, of all things. His father had been a grocer, you see. Lurching along in the vegetable detritus—Ivan very hungry and noisy, to be sure, and not happy to be thrust out into the cold world in the middle of a war.”

The little flames were almost gone, gray ash starting to drift away in the stirrings of air from the passing vehicles. The acrid smell was abating.

“This is a Barrayaran ceremony for remembrance,” said Lady Alys, turning to Tej. “It was always my intention, when Ivan married, to turn this task of remembrance over to him, to continue or not as he willed. Because…memory isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Her hand reached out and gripped Illyan’s, who gripped it back in a disturbed little shake, though he smiled at her.

“Thirty-five years seems long enough, to me,” Lady Alys went on. “Long enough to mourn, quite long enough to be enraged. It’s time for me to retire from remembering. From the pain and sorrow and anger and attachment, and the smell of burning hair in the fog. For Ivan, it’s not the same, of course. His memories of this place are very different from mine.”

“I never knew,” said Ivan Xav, shifting uncomfortably. “All that.”

Lady Alys shrugged. “I never said. First you were too young to understand, and then you were too adolescent to understand, and then…we were both much busier with our lives, and this had all become a rote exercise. But lately…in recent years…I began to think more and more about giving it up.”

By every sign, she’d been thinking about this for quite a while, Tej thought. No one built up that much head-pressure overnight. She looked her alarm at Ivan Xav who, belatedly, slid closer and put a bracing arm around her waist.

“It was just something we did, every year,” said Ivan Xav. “When I was really little, of course, I didn’t understand it at all. We just came here, burned this stuff, stood around for a few minutes, and then you took me to the Keroslav bakery, because we’d not had breakfast. I was all about the bakery, for the longest time.”

“They closed last year,” Lady Alys observed dispassionately.

“Not surprised. They’d kind of gone downhill, I thought.”

“Mm, that, and your palate grew more educated than when you were six.” She added after a reflective moment, “Fortunately.”

The flames had burned out. At Lady Alys’ gesture, Christos came back with the bag and a padded glove, upended the bronze bowl and tapped out the ash, wiped it with a cloth, and put it all away again. He stood up with a grunt.

Lady Alys brightened. “Well. That’s all over with, for another year at least. Given that the bakery is gone, removing an occasion for tradition without any effort on our parts, would you both care to come back to breakfast at my flat?”

Tej glanced at Ivan Xav, who nodded, so said “Sure! Thank you, Lady Alys.”

They followed the sedate groundcar in Ivan Xav’s two-seater. Tej looked over her shoulder to see the municipal guardsmen taking down the lighted barriers and putting them away in their vehicle, returning the street to its normal morning traffic, which was growing notably busier. It was full dawn, now, and the city was awake, eager to get started on another brand-new day. Looking forward, not back.

Thirty-five funerals seemed too many. Yet none was not enough. Tej wondered, if Ivan Xav would help them to it, if she and Rish would feel any better for burning some hair in a little pan for Dada and the Baronne, and Erik. Maybe you had to be raised to this.

She turned to Ivan Xav. “What a morbid way to start your every birthday, when you were a child. I mean, most children get presents, and sweets, parties, maybe ponies here on Barrayar—even we and the Jewels all did. Well, not ponies, not on a space station. But you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I had all that, too,” said Ivan Xav. “Later in the day. Quite ornate parties, for a few years, when the mothers in Mamere’s set were competing with each other. All that was damped down by my mid-teens, when we kids were all more intent on moving into adulthood as fast as we could, God knows why.” He blinked reflectively. “Not that their teens are something most people would want to linger in.” And after another moment, “It felt like childhood came to a pretty abrupt halt when I started the Imperial Service Academy at age eighteen, but looking at some of the frighteningly dewy new-minted ensigns they’re sending us these days, I’m not so sure. Maybe that was an illusion on our parts.”

And, after a much longer pause, while he negotiated a few corners and dodged incoming traffic: “Sure taught me the price of Vorpatrils mixing in politics, though. I didn’t understand much, but I had that down by the time I was eight. I mean—other boys had fathers, most of ’em, even Miles had Uncle Aral, scary as he was—I had a bronze plaque in the street that groundcars ran over. That made Mamere either sad or twitchy or bitchy by turns, but never happy.”

“Is—was—she always this, um?” Tej wasn’t sure how else to describe Lady Alys. Desperate for escape? “When you do this burning thing?”

His brows drew in. “No. She’d never told me some of those crazy details, before. Funny thing, that. I mean, she’s the one who had that damned plaque installed in the first place, right? Makes me wonder—if she didn’t enjoy this, and I didn’t enjoy this, and my father, whatever he was or would have been, is decades past caring, why do we keep doing this? She didn’t have to wait for me to get married to stop. She could’ve stopped any time.”

“Some passing-of-the-generations thing?” Tej hazarded.

“I guess.” Following Christos, Ivan Xav turned in at the garage under his mother’s building, and offered no more illumination.