The Warrior`s Apprentice

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Miles banked the lightflyer in a gentle, demure turn around Vorhartung Castle, resisting a nervous urge to slam it directly down into the courtyard. The ice had broken on the river winding through the capital city of Vorbarr Sultana, running a chill green now from the snows melting in the Dendarii Mountains far to the south. The ancient building straddled high bluffs; the lightflyer rocked in the updraft puffing from the river.

The modern city spread out for kilometers around was bright and noisy with morning traffic. The parking areas near the castle were jammed with vehicles of all descriptions, and knots of men in half-a-hundred different liveries. Ivan, beside Miles, counted the banners snapping in the cold spring breeze on the battlements.

"It's a full Council session," said Ivan. "I don't think there's a banner missing—there's even Count Vortala's, and I don't think he's been to one in years. Must have been carried in. Ye gods, Miles! There's the Emperor's banner—Gregor must be inside."

"You could figure that from all the fellows on the roof in Imperial livery with the anti-aircraft plasma guns," observed Miles. He flinched inwardly. One such weapon was swivelling to follow their track even now, like a suspicious eye.

Slowly and carefully, he set the lightflyer down in a painted circle outside the castle walls.

"Y'know," said Ivan thoughtfully, "We're going to look a pair of damn fools busting in there if it turns out they're all having a debate on water rights or something."

"That thought has crossed my mind," Miles admitted. "It was a calculated risk, landing in secret. Well, we've both been fools before. There won't be anything new or startling in it."

He checked the time, and paused a moment in the pilot's seat, bent his head down, and breathed carefully.

"You feeling sick?" asked Ivan, alarmed. "You don't look so good."

Miles shook his head, a lie, and begged forgiveness in his heart for all the harsh things he'd once thought about Baz Jesek. So this was the real thing, paralyzing funk. He wasn't braver than Baz after all—he'd just never been as scared. He wished himself back with the Dendarii, doing something simple, like defusing dandelion bombs. "Pray to God this works," he muttered.

Ivan looked even more alarmed. "You've been pushing this surprise-scheme on me for the last two weeks—all right, so you've convinced me. It's too late to change your mind!"

"I haven't changed my mind." Miles rubbed the silver circles loose from his forehead, and stared up at the great grey wall of the castle.

"The guards are going to notice us, if we just keep sitting here," Ivan added after a time. "Not to mention the hell that's probably breaking loose back at the shuttleport right now."

"Right" said Miles. He dangled now at the end of a long, long chain of reason, swinging in the winds of doubt. Time to drop to solid ground.

"After you," said Ivan politely.

"Right."

"Any time now," added Ivan.

The vertigo of free fall … he popped the doors and clambered to the pavement.

They strode up to quartet of armed guards in Imperial livery at the castle gate. One's fingers twitched into a devil's horns, down by his side; he had a countryman's face. Miles sighed inwardly. Welcome home. He settled on an incisive nod, by way of greeting.

"Good morning, Armsmen. I am Lord Vorkosigan. I understand the Emperor has commanded me to appear here."

"Damn joker," began a guard, loosening his truncheon. A second guard grasped his arm, staring shocked at Miles.

"No, Dub—it really is!"

They underwent a second search in the vestibule of the great chamber itself. Ivan kept trying to peek around the door, to the annoyance of the guard charged with being the final check against weapons carried into the presence of the Emperor. Voices wafted from the council chamber to Miles's straining ear. He identified Count Vordrozda's, pitched to a carrying nasality, rhythmic in the cadences of formal debate.

"How long has this been going on?" Miles whispered to a guard.

"A week. This was to be the last day. They're doing the summing up now. You're just in time, my lord." he gave Miles an encouraging nod; the two guard captains finished a sotto voce argument, "—but he's supposed to be here!"

"You sure you wouldn't rather be in Betan therapy?" muttered Ivan.

Miles grinned blackly. "Too late now. Won't it be funny if we've arrived just in time for the sentencing?"

"Hysterical. You'll die laughing, no doubt," growled Ivan.

Ivan, approved by the guard, started for the door. Miles grabbed him. "Sh, wait! Listen."

Another identifiable voice; Admiral Hessman.

"What's he doing here?" whispered Ivan. "I thought this thing was closed and sealed to the Counts alone."

"Witness, I'll bet, just like you. Sh!"

"… If our illustrious Prime Minister knew nothing of this plot, then let him produce this 'missing' nephew," Vordrozda's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "He says he cannot. And why not? I submit it is because Lord Vorpatril was dispatched with a secret message. What message? Obviously, some variation of 'Fly for your life—all is revealed!' I ask you—is it reasonable that a plot of this magnitude could have been advanced so far by a son with no knowledge by his father? Where did those missing 275,000 marks, whose fate he so adamantly refuses to disclose, go but to secretly finance the operation? These repeated requests for delays are simply smokescreen. If Lord Vorkosigan is so innocent, why is he not here?" Vordrozda paused dramatically.

Ivan tugged Miles's sleeve. "Come on. You'll never get a better straight line than that if you wait all day."

"You're right. Let's go."

Stained glass windows high in the east wall splashed the heavy oak flooring of the chamber with colored light. Vordrozda stood in the speaker's circle. Upon the witness bench, behind it, sat Admiral Hessman. The gallery above, with its ornately carved railings, was indeed empty, but the rows of plain wooden benches and desks that ringed the room below were jammed with men.

Formal liveries in a wild assortment of hues peeked out beneath their scarlet and silver robes of office, but for a sprinkling of robeless men who wore the red and blue parade uniform of active Imperial service. Emperor Gregor, on his raised dais to the left of the room, also wore Imperial service uniform. Miles gulped down a sharp spasm of stage fright. He wished he'd stopped at Vorkosigan House to change; he still wore the plain dark shirt, trousers, and boots he'd stood in when leaving Tau Verde. He estimated the distance to the center of the chamber as about a light-year.

His father sat, looking entirely at home in his red-and-blues, behind his desk in the first row not far from Vordrozda. Count Vorkosigan leaned back, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, arms draped along the backrest, yet looking no more casual than a tiger stalking his prey. His face was sour, murderous, concentrated on Vordrozda; Miles wondered briefly if the old slanderous sobriquet, 'the Butcher of Komarr', that had once attached to his father might have some basis in fact after all.

Vordrozda, in the speaker's circle, was the only one directly facing the darkened entrance arch. He was the first to see Miles and Ivan. He had just opened his mouth to continue; it hung there, slack.

"That's just the question I propose to make you answer, Count Vordrozda—and you, Admiral Hessman," Miles called. Two light-years, he thought, and limped forward.

The chamber stirred to murmurs and cries of astonishment. Of all the men's reactions, Miles searched for only one.

Count Vorkosigan snapped his head around, saw Miles. He inhaled, and his arms and legs drew in. He sat for a moment with his elbows on his desk, face buried in his hands. He rubbed his face, hard; when he raised it again, it was flushed and furrowed, blinking.

When did he grow to look so old? Miles grieved. Was his hair always that grey? Has he changed so much, or is it I? Or both?

Count Vorkosigan's eye fell on Ivan, and his face cleared to stunned exasperation. "Ivan, you idiot! Where have you been?"

Ivan glanced at Miles and rose to the occasion, bowing toward the witness bench. "Admiral Hessman sent me to find Miles, sir."

"I did. Somehow, I don't think that was what he really had in mind."

Vordrozda turned in the circle to glare furiously at Hessman, who was goggling at Ivan. "You—" Vordrozda hissed at the Admiral, voice venomous with rage. He caught himself up almost instantly, straightening his crouch, relaxing his hands from clawed rakes to elegant curves once again.

Miles swept a bow to the encircling assemblage, ending it on one knee in the direction of the dais. "My leige and my lords. I would have been here sooner, but my invitation was lost in the mail. To attest this I wish to call Lord Ivan Vorpatril as my witness."

Gregor's young face stared down at him, stiff, dark eyes troubled and distant. The Emperor's gaze turned in bewilderment to his new advisor, standing in the speaker's circle. His old advisor, Count Vorkosigan, looked wonderfully enlightened; his lips drew back in a tigerish smile.

Miles too glanced at Vordrozda from the corner of his eye. Now, he thought, instantly, is the time to push. By the time the Lord Guardian of the Circle admits Ivan with all due ceremony, they will have recovered. Give them sixty seconds to confer on the bench, and they will concoct new lies of utmost reasonableness, leaving it their word against ours in the hideous gamble of a stacked Council vote. Hessman, yes, it was Hessman he must put the wind up. Vordrozda was too supple to stampede. Strike now, and cleave the conspiracy in half.

He swallowed, cleared his locked throat, and swung to his feet. "I challenge Admiral Hessman, here before you, lords, on charges of sabotage, murder, and attempted murder. I can prove he ordered the sabotage of Captain Dimir's Imperial fast courier, resulting in the horrible deaths of all aboard her; I can prove his intent that my cousin Ivan have been among them."

"You are out of order," cried Vordrozda. "These insane charges do not belong in the Council of Counts. You must make them in a military court, if you make them at all, traitor."

"Where Admiral Hessman, most conveniently, must stand them alone, since you, Count Vordrozda, cannot be tried there," said Miles immediately.

Count Vorkosigan was tapping his fist softly on his desk, leaning forward urgently toward Miles; his lips formed a silent litany, yes, go, go …

Miles, encouraged, raised his voice. "He will stand alone, and he will die alone, since he has only his own unwitnessed word that his crimes were by your order. They were unwitnessed, were they not, Admiral? Do you really think that Count Vordrozda will be so overcome by emotions of loyalty to a comrade as to endorse that word?"

Hessman was dead white, breathing heavily, stare flicking back and forth between Vordrozda and Ivan. Miles could see the panic blossoming in his eyes.

Vordrozda, straddling the circle, gestured jerkily at Miles. "My lords, this is not a defense. He merely hopes to camouflage his guilt by these wild counter-accusations, and totally out of order at that! My Lord Guardian, I appeal to you to restore order!"

The Lord Guardian of the Circle began to rise, stopped, speared by a penetrating stare from Count Vorkosigan. He sank back weakly to his bench. "This is certainly very irregular …" he managed, then ran down. Count Vorkosigan smiled approvingly.

"You haven't answered my question, Vordrozda," called Miles. "Will you speak for Admiral Hessman?

"Subordinates have committed unauthorized excesses throughout history," began Vordrozda.

He twists, he turns, he's going to torque away—no! I can twist too. "Oh, you admit he is your subordinate, do you now?"

"He is nothing of a sort," snapped Vordrozda. "We have no connection but common interest in the good of the Imperium."

"No connection, Admiral Hessman; do you hear that? How does it feel to be stabbed in the back with such surpassing smoothness? I wager you can scarcely feel the knife going in. It will be like that right up to the end, you know."

Hessman's eyes bulged. He sprang to his feet. "No, it won't," he snarled. "You started this, Vordrozda. If I'm going down I'll take you with me!" He pointed at Vordrozda. "He came to me at Winterfair, wanting me to pass him the latest Imperial Security intelligence about Vorkosigan's son—"

"Shut up!" ground out Vordrozda desperately, fury firing his eyes at being so needlessly taken from behind, "Shut up—" His hand snaked under his scarlet robe, emerged with a glitter. Locked the needler's aim on the babbling Admiral. Stopped. Vordrozda stared down at the weapon in his hand as though it were a scorpion.

"Who now is out of order?" mocked Miles softly.

Barrayar's aristocracy still maintained its military tone. Drawing a deadly weapon in the presence of the Emperor struck a deep reflex. Twenty or thirty men started up from their benches.

Only on Barrayar, Miles reflected, would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one. Others ran between Vordrozda and the dais. Vordrozda abandoned Hessman and whirled to face his real tormentor, raising the weapon. Miles stood stock still, transfixed by the needler's tiny dark eye. Fascinating, that the pit of hell should have so narrow an entrance …

Vordrozda was buried in an avalanche of tackling bodies, their scarlet robes flapping. Ivan had the honor of the first hit, taking him in the knees.

Miles stood before his Emperor. The chamber had quieted, his late accusers hustled out under arrest. Now he faced his true tribunal.

Gregor sighed uneasily, and motioned the Lord Guardian of the Circle to his side. They conferred briefly.

"The Emperor requests and requires a recess of one hour, to examine the new testimony. For witness, Count Vorvolk, Count Vorhalas."

They all filed into the private chamber behind the dais, Gregor, Count Vorkosigan, Miles and Ivan, and Gregor's curious choice of witnesses. Henri Vorvolk was one of Gregor's few age-mates among the Counts, and a personal friend. Nucleus of a new generation of cronies, Miles supposed. No surprise that Gregor should desire his support. Count Vorhalas …

Vorhalas was Miles's father's oldest and most implacable enemy, since the deaths of his two sons on the wrong side of Vordarian's Pretendership eighteen years before. Miles eyed him queasily. The Count's son and heir had been the man who'd fired the soltoxin gas grenade through the window of Vorkosigan House one night, in a tangled attempt at vengeance for the death of his younger brother. He had been executed in turn for his treason. Had Count Vorhalas seen in Vordrozda's conspiracy an opportunity to complete the job, revenge in perfect symmetry, a son for a son?

Yet Vorhalas was known as a just and honest man—Miles could as easily picture him uniting with his father in disdain of Vordrozda's mushroom upstart plot. The two had been enemies so long, and outlived so many friends and foes, their enmity had almost achieved a kind of harmony. Still, no one would dare accuse Vorhalas of favoritism in witness to the former Regent.

Now the two men exchanged nods, like a pair of fencers en garde, and took seats opposite each other.

"So," said Count Vorkosigan, grown serious and intense, "What really happened out there, Miles? I've had Illyan's reports—until lately—but somehow they all seemed to raise more questions than they answered."

Miles was diverted moment. "Isn't his agent still sending? I promise you, I didn't interfere with his duties—"

"Captain Illyan is in prison."

"What!"

"Awaiting trial. He was included in your conspiracy charges."

"That's absurd!"

"Not at all. Most logical. Who, moving against me, would not take the precaution first of taking away my eyes and ears, if they could?"

Count Vorhalas nodded a tactician's approval and agreement, as if to say, Just how I'd have done it myself.

Miles's father's eyes narrowed with dry humor. "It's a learning experience for him to be on the other end of the process of justice for a time. No harm done. I admit, he is a trifle annoyed with you at the moment."

"The question," said Gregor distantly, "was whether the Captain served me, or my Prime Minister." Bitter uncertainty still lingered in his eyes.

"All who serve me serve you, through me," Count Vorkosigan stated. "It is the Vor system at work. Streams of experience, all flowing together, combining at last in a river of great power. Yours is the final confluence." It was the closest to flattery Miles had ever heard his father come, a measure of his unease. "You do Simon Illyan an injustice to suspect him. He has served you all your life, and your grandfather before you."

Miles wondered what sort of tributary he now constituted—the Dendarii Mercenaries included some very odd headwaters indeed. "What happened. Well, sir . .." he paused, groping along the chain of events to some starting point. Truly, it began at a wall not 100 kilometers outside Vorbarr Sultana. But he launched his account at his meeting with Arde Mayhew on Beta Colony. He stumbled in fearful hesitation, took a breath, then went on in an exact and honest description of his meeting with Baz Jesek. His father winced at the name. The blockade, the boarding, the battles—self-forgetfulness overcame him during his enthusiastic description of these; at one point he looked up to realize he had the Emperor playing the part of the Oseran fleet, Henri Vorvolk Captain Tung, and his father the Pelian high command. Bothari's death. His father's face grew drawn and inward at this news. "Well," he said after a time, "he is released from a great burden. May he find his ease at last."

Miles glanced at the Emperor, and edited out the Escobaran woman's accusations about Prince Serg. From the sharp and grateful look Count Vorkosigan gave him, Miles gathered that was the correct thing to do. Some truths come in too fierce a flood for some structures to withstand; Miles had no wish to witness another devastation like Elena Bothari's.

By the time he reached the account of how he broke the blockade at last, Gregor's lips were parted in fascination, and Count Vorkosigan's eyes glinted with appreciation. Ivan's arrival, and Miles's deductions from it—he was reminded of the hour, and reached for his hip flask.

"What is that?" asked his father, startled.

"Antacid. Uh—want some?" he offered politely.

"Thank you," said Count Vorkosigan. "Don't mind if I do." He took a grave swig, so straight-faced even Miles was not sure if he was laughing.

Miles gave a brief, bald account of the thinking that led him to return in secret, to attempt to surprise Vordrozda and Hessman. Ivan endorsed all he had been eyewitness to, giving Hessman the lie. Gregor looked disturbed at having his assumptions about his new friends turned so bluntly inside-out. Wake up Gregor, thought Miles. You of all men cannot afford the luxury of comfortable illusions. No, indeed, I have no desire to trade places with you.

Gregor was downcast by the time Miles finished. Count Vorkosigan sat at Gregor's right hand, backwards on a plain chair as usual, and gazed at his son with a pensive hunger.

"Why, then?" asked Gregor. "What did you think to make of yourself, when you raised up such force, if not Emperor—if not of Barrayar, perhaps of someplace else?"

"My leige," Miles lowered his voice. "When we played together in the Imperial Residence in the winters, when did I ever demand any part except that of Vorthalia the loyal? You know me—now could you doubt? The Dendarii Mercenaries were an accident. I didn't plan them—they just happened, in the course of scrambling from crisis to crisis. I only wanted to serve Barrayar, as my father before me. When I couldn't serve Barrayar, I wanted—I wanted to serve something. To—" he raised his eyes to his father's, driven to a painful honesty, "to make my life an offering fit to lay at his feet." He shrugged. "Screwed up again."

"Clay, boy." Count Vorkosigan's voice was hoarse but clear. "Only clay. Not fit to receive so golden a sacrifice." His voice cracked.

For a moment, Miles forgot to care about his coming trial. He lidded his eyes, and stored tranquillity away in his heart's most secret recesses, to pleasure him in some lean and desperate future hour. Fatherless Gregor swallowed, and looked away, as if ashamed. Count Vorhalas stared at the floor discomfited, like a man accidentally intruding onto some private and delicate scene.

Gregor's right hand moved hesitantly to touch the shoulder of his first and most loyal protector. "I serve Barrayar," he offered. "It's justice is my duty. I never meant to dispense injustice."

"You were ring-led, boy," Count Vorkosigan muttered, to Gregor's ear alone. "Never mind. But learn from it."

Gregor sighed. "When we played together, Miles, you always beat me at Strat-O. It was because I knew you that I doubted."

Miles knelt, head bowed, and spread his arms. "Your will, my leige."

Gregor shook his head. "May I always endure such treason as that." He raised his voice to his witnesses. "Well, my lords? Are you satisfied that the substance of Vordozda's charge, intent to usurp the Imperium, is false and malicious? And will you so testify to your peers?"

"Absolutely," said Henri Vorvolk with enthusiasm. Miles gauged that the second-year cadet had fallen in love with him about halfway through his account of his adventures with the Dendarii Mercenaries.

Count Vorhalas remained cool and thoughtful. "The usurpation charge does indeed appear false," the old man agreed, "and by my honor I will so testify. But there is another treason here. By his own admission, Lord Vorkosigan was, and indeed remains, in violation of Vorloupulous's law, treason in its own right."

"No such charge," said Count Vorkosigan distantly, "has been laid in the Council of Counts."

Henri Vorvolk grinned. "Who'd dare, after this?"

"A man of proven loyalty to the Imperium, with an academic interest in perfect justice, might so dare," said Count Vorkosigan, still dispassionate. "A man with nothing to lose, might dare—much. Might he not?"

"Beg for it, Vorkosigan," whispered Vorhalas, his coolness slipping. "Beg for mercy, as I did." His eyes shut tight, and he trembled.

Count Vorkosigan gazed at him in silence for a long moment. Then, "As you wish," he said, and rose, and slid to one knee before his enemy. "Let it lay, then, and I will see the boy does not trouble those waters any more."

"Still too stiff-necked."

"If it please you, then."

"Say, 'I beg of you.' "

"I beg of you," repeated Count Vorkosigan obediently. Miles searched for tensions of rage in his father's backbone, found none; this was something old, older than himself, between the two men, labyrinthine; he could scarcely penetrate its inward places. Gregor looked sick, Henri Vorvolk bewildered, Ivan terrified.

Vorhalas's hard stillness seemed edged with a kind of ecstasy. He leaned close to Miles's father's ear. "Shove it, Vorkosigan," he whispered. Count Vorkosigan's head bowed, and his hands clenched.

He sees me, if at all, only as a handle on my father . ..

Time to get his attention. "Count Vorhalas," Miles's voice flexed across the silence like a blade. "Be satisfied. For if you carry this through, at some point you are going to have to look my mother in the eye and repeat that. Dare you?"

Vorhalas wilted slightly. He frowned at Miles. "Can your mother look at you, and not understand desire for vengeance?" He gestured at Miles's stunted and twisted frame.

"Mother," said Miles, "calls it my great gift. Tests are a gift, she says, and great tests are a great gift. Of course," he added thoughtfully, "it's widely agreed my mother is a bit strange …" He trapped Vorhalas's gaze direct. "What do you propose to do with your gift, Count Vorhalas?"

"Hell," Vorhalas muttered, after a short, interminable silence, not to Miles but to Count Vorkosigan. "He's got his mother's eyes."

"I've noticed that," Count Vorkosigan murmured back. Vorhalas glared at him in exasperation.

"I am not a bloody saint," Vorhalas declared, to the air generally.

"No one is asking you to be," said Gregor, anxiously soothing. "But you are my sworn servant. And it does not serve me for my servants to be ripping up each other instead of my enemies."

Vorhalas sniffed, and shrugged grudgingly. "True, my leige." His hands unclenched, finger by finger, as if releasing some invisible possession. "Oh, get up," he added impatiently to Count Vorkosigan. The former Regent rose, quite bland again.

Vorhalas glared at Miles. "And just how, Aral, do you propose to keep this gifted young maniac and his accidental army under control? "

Count Vorkosigan measured out his words slowly, drop by drop, as though pursuing some delicate titration. "The Dendarii Mercenaries are a genuine puzzle." He glanced at Gregor. "What is your will, my liege?"

Gregor jerked, startled out of spectatorhood. He looked, rather pleadingly, at Miles. "Organizations do grow and die. Any chance of them just fading away?"

Miles chewed his lip. "That hope has crossed my mind, but—they looked awfully healthy when I left. Growing."

Gregor grimaced. "I can hardly march my army on them and break them up like old Dorca did—it's definitely too long a walk."

"They themselves are innocent of any wrongdoing," Miles hastened to point out. "They never knew who I was—most of them aren't even Barrayaran."

Gregor glanced uncertainly at Count Vorkosigan, who studied his boots, as if to say, You're the one who itched to make your own decisions, boy. But he did add, aloud, "You are just as much Emperor as Dorca ever was, Gregor. Do what you will."

Gregor's gaze returned to Miles for a long moment. "You couldn't break your blockade, within its military context. So you changed the context."

"Yes, sir.

"I cannot change Dorca's law …" said Gregor slowly. Count Vorkosigan, who had begun to look uneasy, relaxed again. "It saved Barrayar. "'

The Emperor paused a long time, awash in bafflement. Miles knew just how he felt. Miles let him stew a few moments more, until the silence was stretched taut with expectation, and Gregor was starting to get that desperate glazed look Miles recognized from his candidacy orals, of a man caught without the answer. Now.

"The Emperor's Own Dendarii Mercenaries," Miles said suggestively.

"What?"

"Why not?" Miles straightened, and turned his hands palm-out. "I'd be delighted to give them to you. Declare them a Crown Troop. It's been done."

"With horse cavalry!" said Count Vorkosigan. But his face was suddenly much lighter.

"Whatever he does with them will be a legal fiction anyway, since they are beyond his reach," Miles bowed apologetically to Gregor. "He may as well arrange it to his own maximum convenience."

"Whose maximum convenience?" inquired Count Vorhalas dryly.

"You were thinking of this as a private declaration, I trust," said Count Vorkosigan.

"Well, yes—I'm afraid most of the mercenaries would be, uh, rather disturbed to hear they'd been drafted into the Barrayaran Imperial Service. But why not put them in Captain Illyan's department? Their status would have to remain covert then. Let him figure out something useful to do with 'em. A free mercenary fleet secretly owned by Barrayaran Imperial Security."

Gregor looked suddenly more reconciled; indeed, intrigued. "That might be practical …"

Count Vorkosigan's teeth glinted in a white flash of a grin, instantly suppressed. "Simon," he murmured, "will be overjoyed."

"Really?" said Gregor dubiously.

"You have my personal guarantee." Count Vorkosigan sketched a bow, sitting.

Vorhalas snorted, and eyed Miles. "You're too bloody clever for your own good, you know, boy?"

"Exactly, sir," said Miles agreeably, in a mild hysteria of relief, feeling lighter by 3000 soldiers and God knew how many tons of equipment. He had done it—the last piece glued back in its place …

"… dare play the fool with me," muttered Vorhalas. He raised his voice to Count Vorkosigan. "That only answers half my question, Aral."

Count Vorkosigan studied his fingernails, eyes alight. "True, we can't leave him running around loose. I, too, shudder to think what accidents he might commit next. He should doubtless be confined to an institution, where he would be forced to labor all day long under many watchful eyes." He paused thoughtfully. "May I suggest the Imperial Service Academy?"

Miles looked up, mouth open in an idiocy of sudden hope. All his calculations had been concentrated on wriggling out from under Vorloupulous's law. He'd scarcely dared even to dream of life afterwards, let alone such reward as this …

His father lowered his voice to him. "Assuming it's not beneath you—Admiral Naismith. I never did get to congratulate you on your promotion."

Miles reddened. "It was all just fakery. sir. You know that."

"All?"

"Well—mostly."

"Ah, you grow subtle, even with me … But you have tasted command. Can you go back to subordination? Demotions are a bitter meat to swallow." An old irony played around his mouth.

"You were demoted, after Komarr, sir …"

"Broken back to Captain, yes."

One corner of Miles's mouth twisted up. "I have a bionic stomach now, that can digest anything. I can handle it."

Count Vorhalas raised skeptical brows. "What sort of ensign do you think he will make, Admiral Vorkosigan?"

"I think he will make a terrible ensign," said Count Vorkosigan frankly. "But if he can avoid being strangled by his harried superiors for—er—excessive initiative, I think he might be a fine General Staff officer someday."

Vorhalas nodded reluctant agreement. Miles's eyes blazed up like bonfires, in reflection to his father's.

After two days of testimony and behind the-scenes maneuvering, the Council vote was unanimous for acquittal. For one thing, Gregor took his place by right as Count Vorbarra and cast a resounding "innocent" as the fourth vote called, instead of the usual abstention customary for the Emperor. The rest swung meekly into line.

Some of Count Vorkosigan's older political opponents looked as if they'd rather spit, but only Count Vorhalas voted an abstention. Then, Vorhalas had never been of Vordrozda's party, and had no taint of association to wash off.

"Ballsy bastard." Count Vorkosigan exchanged a familiar salute across the chamber with his closest enemy. "I wish they all had his backbone, if not his opinions."

Miles sat quietly, absorbing this most mitigated triumph. Elena would have been safe, after all. But not happy. Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

He sighed, and rose to go wrestle with his destiny.

The vinyards garlanding the terraced slopes of the long lake above Vorkosigan Surleau were misted with new green. The surface of the water glittered in a warm breath of air, a spatter of silver coins. It had once been a custom somewhere to put coins on the eyes of the dead, Miles had read, for their journey; it seemed appropriate. He imagined the sun-coins sinking to the bottom of the lake, there to pile up and up until they broke the surface, a new island.

The clods of earth were cold and wet yet, winter lingering beneath the surface of the soil. Heavy. He tossed a shovelful shoulder-high from the hole he dug.

"Your hands are bleeding," observed his mother. "You could do that in five seconds with a plasma arc."

"Blood," said Miles, "washes away sin. The Sergeant said so."

"I see." She made no further demur, but sat in companionable silence, her back against a tree, watching the lake. It was her Betan upbringing, Miles supposed; she never seemed to tire of the delight of water open to the sky.

He finished at last. Countess Vorkosigan gave him a hand up out of the pit. He took up the control lead of the float pallet, and lowered the oblong box, waiting patiently all this time, into its rest. Bothari had always waited patiently for him.

Covering it back up was quicker work. The marker his father had ordered was not yet finished; hand-carved, like the others in this family plot. Miles's grandfather lay not far away, next to the grandmother Miles had never known, dead decades before in Barrayaran civil strife. His eye lingered a moment, uncomfortably, on a double space reserved next to his grandfather, above the slope and perpendicular to the Sergeant's new grave. But that burden was yet to come.

He placed a shallow beaten copper bowl upon a tripod at the foot of the grave. In it he piled juniper twigs from the mountains, and a lock of his own hair. He then pulled a colored scarf from his jacket, carefully unfolded it, and placed a curl of finer dark hair among the twigs. His mother added a clipping of short grey hair, and a thick, generous tress of her own red roan, and withdrew to a distance.

Miles, after a pause, laid the scarf beside the hair. "I'm afraid I made a most improper Baba," he whispered in apology. "I never meant to mock you. But Baz loves her, he'll take good care of her … My word was too easy to give, too hard to keep. But there. There." He added flakes of aromatic bark. "You shall lie warm here, watching the long lake change its faces, winter to spring, summer to fall. No armies march here, and even the deepest midnights aren't wholly dark. Surely God won't overlook you, in such a spot as this. There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you." He lit the offering. "I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you."

EPILOGUE

The emergency docking drill was called in the middle of the night cycle, naturally. He'd probably have timed it that way himself, Miles thought, as he scrambled through the corridors of the orbital weapons platform with his fellow cadets. This four-week stint of orbital and free-fall training was due to end tomorrow for his group, and the instructors hadn't pulled anything nasty for at least four days. Not for him the galloping anticipation of upcoming leave planetside that had formed the bulk of the conversation in the officer's mess last night. He had sat quietly, meditating on all the marvelous possibilities for a grand finale.

He arrived at his assigned shuttle hatch corridor at the same moment as his co-trainee and the instructor. The instructor's face was a mask of neutrality. Cadet Kostolitz looked Miles over sourly.

"Still carrying that obsolete pig-sticker, eh?" said Kostolitz, with an irritated nod at the dagger at Miles's waist.

"I have permission," said Miles tranquilly.

"D'you sleep with it?"

A small, bland smile. "Yes."

Miles considered the ongoing problem of Kostolitz. The accidents of Barrayaran history guaranteed he would be dealing with class-consciousness in his officers throughout his Imperial Service career, aggressive like Kostolitz's or in more subtle forms. He must learn to handle it not merely well, but creatively, if his officers were ever to give him their best.

He had the uncanny sensation of being able to look through Kostolitz the way a doctor saw through a body with his diagnostic viewers. Every twist and tear and emotional abrasion, every young cancer of resentment growing from them, seemed red-lined in his mind's eye. Patience. The problem displayed itself with ever-increasing clarity. The solution would follow, in time, with opportunity. Kostolitz could teach him much. This docking drill might prove interesting after all.

Kostolitz had acquired a thin green armband since they had last been paired, Miles saw. He wondered what wit among the instructors had come up with that idea. The armbands were rather like getting a gold star on your paper in reverse; green represented injury in drills, yellow represented death, in the judgment of whatever instructor was umpiring the simulated catastrophe. Very few cadets managed to escape these training cycles without a collection of them. Miles had encountered Ivan Vorpatril yesterday, sporting two greens and a yellow, not as bad as the unfortunate fellow he'd seen at mess last night with five yellows.

Miles's own undecorated sleeve was attracting a bit more attention from the instructors than he really wanted, lately. The notoriety had a pleasant flip-side; some of the more alert among his fellow cadets vied quietly to have Miles in their groups, as armband repellent. Of course, the very most alert were now avoiding him like a plague, realizing he was beginning to draw fire. Miles grinned to himself, in happy anticipation of something really sneaky and underhanded coming up. Every cell of his body seemed awake and singing.

Kostolitz, with a stifled yawn and a last growl at Miles's upper-class decorative blade, took the starboard side of the shuttle and began working forward with his checklist. Miles took the port side, ditto. The instructor floated between them, watching sharply over their shoulders. He'd got one good thing out of his adventures with the Dendarii Mercenaries, Miles reflected; his free-fall nausea had vanished, an unexpected side-benefit of the work Tung's surgeon had done on his stomach. Small favors.

Kostolitz was working swiftly, Miles saw from the corner of his eye. They were being timed. Kostolitz counted emergency breath masks through the plexiglass of their case and hurried on. Miles almost called a suggestion to him, then clamped his jaw. It wouldn't be appreciated. Patience. Item. Item. Item—first aid kit, correctly in its wall socket. Automatically suspicious, Miles unlocked it and checked to see that all its contents were indeed intact. Tape, tourniquets, plastic bandage, IV tubing, meds, emergency oxygen—no surprises concealed there. He ran a hand along the bottom of the case, and caught his breath—plastic explosive? No, only a wad of chewing gum. Shucks.

Kostolitz was finished and waiting impatiently as Miles arrived up front. "You're slow, Vorkosigian." Kostolitz jammed his report panel into the read-slot, and slid into the pilot's seat.

Miles eyed an interesting bulge in the instructor's breast pocket. He patted his own pockets, and essayed a helpless smile. "Oh, sir," he chirped politely to the instructor, "I seem to have misplaced my light-pen. May I borrow yours?"

The instructor disgorged it unwillingly. Miles lidded his eyes. In addition to the light-pen, the instructor's pocket contained three emergency breath-masks, folded. An interesting number, three. Anyone on a space station might carry a breath mask in his pocket as a matter of course, but three? Yet they had a dozen breath-masks ready to hand, Kostolitz had just checked them—no. Kostolitz had just counted them.

"Your light pens are standard issue," said the instructor coldly. "You're supposed to hang onto them. You careless characters are going to bring the Accounting Office down on us all, one of these days."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Miles signed his name with a flourish, made to pocket the pen, came up with two. "Oh, here's mine. Sorry, sir."

He entered his report, and strapped himself into the co-pilot's chair. With his seat at the limit of its forward adjustment, he could just reach the foot controls. Imperial equipment was not so flexible as the mercenaries' had been. No matter. He schooled himself to strict attention. He was still awkward in his handling of shuttle controls. But a bit more practice, and he would never be at the mercy of a shuttle pilot for transportation again.

It was Kostolitz's turn now, though. Miles was pressed into his padded seat by the acceleration as the shuttle popped free of its clamps and began to boost toward its assigned station. Breath masks. Check lists. Assumptions. The chip on Kostolitz's shoulder. Assumptions … Miles's nerves extended themselves, spider-patient, questing. Minutes crept by.

A sharp report, and a hissing, came from the rear of the cabin. Miles's heart lurched and began to pound violently, in spite of his anticipation. He swung around and took it in at a glance, as when a strobe-flash of lightning betrays the secrets of the dark. Kostolitz swore violently. Miles breathed, "Ha!"

A jagged hole in the paneling on the starboard side of the shuttle was pouring out a thick green gas; a coolant line had snapped, as from a meteor hit. The "meteor" was undoubtedly plastic explosive, since the stuff was streaming into and not out of the cabin. Besides, the instructor was still seated, watching them. Kostolitz leaped for the case of emergency breath masks.

Miles dove instead for the controls. He snapped the atmosphere circuit from recycle to exterior venting, and in one pauseless motion fired the shuttle's attitude verniers at maximum boost. After a groaning moment, the shuttle began to turn, then spin, around an axis through the center of the cabin. Miles, the instructor, and Kostolitz were thrown forward. The coolant gas, heavier than their atmosphere mix, began to pile up against the back wall of the cabin in noxious billows under the influence of this simplest of artificial gravities.

"You crazy bastard!" screamed Kostolitz, scrabbling at a breath mask. "What are you doing?"

The instructor's expression was first an echo of Kostolitz's, then suddenly enlightened. He eased back into the seat he had begun to shoot out of, hanging on tightly and observing, his eyes crinkling with interest.

Miles was too busy to reply. Kostolitz would figure it out shortly, he was sure. Kostolitz donned a breath mask, attempted to inhale. He snatched it off his face and threw it aside, and grabbed up the second of the three he'd brought forward. Miles climbed up the wall toward the first aid kit.

The second breath mask curved past him. Empty reservoirs, no doubt. Kostolitz had counted the breath masks without checking their working condition. Miles levered the first aid kit open and pulled out IV tubing and two Y-connectors. Kostolitz threw aside the third breath mask and began climbing back up the starboard wall toward the case of breath masks. The coolant gas made an acrid, burning stench in Miles's nostrils, but its harmful concentrations remained in the other end of the cabin, for now.

A cry of rage and fear, interrupted by coughing, came from Kostolitz as he began pawing through breath masks, checking their condition readouts at last. Miles's lips drew back in a wicked grin. He pulled his grandfather's dagger from its sheath, cut the IV tubing into four pieces, inserted the Y-connectors, sealed them with blobs of plastic bandage, jammed the hookah-like apparatus into the single outlet of the emergency medical oxygen canister, and skidded back to the instructor.

"Air, sir?" He offered a hissing end of IV tubing to the officer. "I suggest you breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose."

"Thank you, Cadet Vorkosigan," said the instructor in a fascinated tone, taking it. Kostolitz, coughing, eyes rolling desperately, fell back toward them, barely managing not to put his feet through the control panel. Miles blandly handed him a tube. He sucked on it, eyes wide and watering, not, Miles thought, only from the effects of the coolant gas.

Clenching his air-tube between his teeth, Miles began to climb the starboard wall. Kostolitz started after him, then discovered that both he and the instructor had been issued short tethers. Miles uncoiled tubing behind

him; yes, it would reach, although just barely. Kostolitz and the instructor could only watch, breathing in yogalike cadence.

Miles reversed his hold as he passed the midpoint of the cabin and centrifugal force began to pull him toward the pooling green gas slowly filling the shuttle from the back wall. He counted down wall panels, 4a, 4b, 4c—that should be it. He popped it open, and found the manual shut-off valves. That one? No, that one. He turned it. It slipped in his sweating hand.

The panel door on which he rested his weight gave way with a sudden crack, and he swung out over the evilly heaving green gas. The oxygen tube ripped from his mouth and flapped around wildly. He was saved from yelping only by the fact that he was holding his breath. The instructor, forward, lurched futilely, tied to his air supply. But by the time he'd fumbled his pocket open, Miles had swallowed, achieved a more secure grip on the wall, and recovered his tube in a heart-stopping grab. Try again. He turned the valve, hard, and the hissing from the hole in the wall a meter astern of him faded to an elfin moan, then stopped.

The tide of green gas began to recede and thin at last, as the cabin ventilators labored. Miles, shaking only slightly, climbed back to the front end of the shuttle and strapped himself into his co-pilot's seat without comment. Comment would have been awkward around his oxygen tube anyway.

Cadet Kostolitz, in his role as pilot, returned to his controls. The atmosphere cleared at last. He stopped the spin and aimed the damaged shuttle slowly back toward dock, paying strict and subdued attention to engine temperature readouts. The instructor looked extremely thoughtful, and only little pale.

The chief instructor himself was waiting in the shuttle hatch corridor of the orbital station when they docked, along with a repairs tech. He smiled cheerily, turning two yellow armbands absently in his hands.

Their own instructor sighed, and shook his head dolefully at the armbands. "No."

"No?" queried the chief instructor. Miles was not sure if it was with amazement or disappointment.

"No."

"This I've got to see." The two instructors ducked into the shuttle, leaving Miles and Kostolitz alone a moment.

Kostolitz cleared his throat. "That, ah—blade of yours came in pretty handy after all."

"Yes, there are times when a plasma arc beam isn't nearly as suitable for cutting," Miles agreed. "Like when you're in a chamber full of inflammable gas."

"Oh, hell," Kostolitz seemed suddenly struck. "That stuff will go off, mixed with oxygen. I almost .. ." He cut himself off, cleared his throat again. "You don't miss much, do you?" A sudden suspicion filled his face. "Did you know about this set up in advance?"

"Not exactly. But I figured something must be up when I counted the three breath masks in the instructor's pocket."

"You—" Kostolitz paused, turned. "Did you really lose track of your light-pen?"

"No."

"Hell," Kostolitz muttered again. He scuffed around the corridor a moment, hunched, red, dismally recalcitrant.

Now, thought Miles. "I know a place you can buy good blades, in Vorbarr Sultana," he said with nicely calculated diffidence. "Better than standard issue stuff. You can get a real bargain there sometimes, if you know what to look for."

Kostolitz stopped. "Oh, yeah?" He began to straighten, as though being relieved of a weight. "You, ah—I don't suppose …"

"It's kind of a hole-in-the-wall. I could take you there sometime, during leave, if you're interested."

"Really? You'd—you'd—yes, I'd be interested." Kostolitz feigned a casual air. "Sure." He looked suddenly much more cheerful.

Miles smiled.