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Vordarian actually imagine she would go off and tax her husband with his poor
taste in companions two decades ago? Would a naive young
Barrayaran bride have gone into hysterics? Not Lady Vorpatril, whose social
enthusiasms concealed an acid judgment; not Princess Kareen, whose naivete had
surely been burned out long ago by that expert sadist Serg. He fired, but he
missed.
And, more coldly, Has he fired and missed once before? That had not been a
normal social interaction, not even by Barrayaran standards of one-upsmanship.
Or maybe he was just drunk. She suddenly wanted to talk to Illyan. She closed
her eyes, trying to clear her fogged head.
"Are you well, love?" Aral's concerned voice murmured in her ear. "Do you need
your nausea medication?"
Her eyes flew open. There he was, safe and sound beside her. "Oh, I'm fine."
She attached herself to his arm, lightly, not a panicked limpet-like
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clamp. "Just thinking."
"They're seating us for dinner."
"Good. It will be nice to sit down, my feet are swelling."
He looked as if he wanted to pick her up and carry her, but they paraded in
normally, joining the other formal pairs. They sat at a raised table set a
little apart from the others, with Gregor, Kareen, Piotr, the Lord Guardian of
the Speaker's Circle and his wife, and Prime Minister Vortala. At Gregor's
insistance, Droushnakovi was seated with them; the boy seemed painfully glad
to see his old bodyguard. Did I take away your playmate, child? Cordelia
wondered apologetically. It seemed so; Gregor engaged in a negotiation with
Kareen for Drou's weekly return "for judo lessons." Drou, used to the
Residence atmosphere, was not so overawed as Koudelka, who was stiff with
exaggerated care against betrayal by his own clumsiness.
Cordelia found herself seated between Vortala and the Speaker, and carried on
conversations with reasonable ease; Vortala was charming, in his blunt way.
Cordelia managed nibbles of all the elegantly served food except a slice off
the carcass of a roast bovine, carried in whole. Usually she was able to put
out of her mind the fact that Barrayaran protein was not grown in vats, but
taken from the bodies of real dead animals. She'd known about their primitive
culinary practices before she'd chosen to come here, after all, and had tasted
animal muscle before on Survey missions, in the interests of science,
survival, or potential new product development for the homeworld. The
Barrayarans applauded the fruit- and flower-decked beast, seeming to actually
find it attractive and not horrific, and the cook, who'd followed it anxiously
out, took a bow. The primitive olfactory circuits of her brain had to agree,
it smelled great. Vorkosigan had his portion bloody-rare. Cordelia sipped
water.
After dessert, and some brief formal toasts offered by Vortala and
Vorkosigan, the boy Gregor was at last taken off to bed by his mother. Kareen
motioned Cordelia and Droushnakovi to join her. The tension eased in
Cordelia's shoulders as they left the big public assembly and climbed to the
Emperor's quiet, private quarters.
Gregor was peeled out of his little uniform and dove into pajamas, becoming
boy and not icon once again. Drou supervised his teeth-brushing, and was
inveigled into "just one round" of some game they'd used to play with a board
and pieces, as a bedtime treat. This Kareen indulgently permitted, and after a
kiss for and from her son, she and Cordelia withdrew to a softly lit sitting
room nearby. A night breeze from the open windows cooled the upper chamber.
Both women sat with a sigh, unwinding; Cordelia kicked off her shoes
immediately after Kareen did so. Distance-muffled voices and laughter drifted
through the windows from the gardens below.
"How long does this party go on?" Cordelia asked.
"Dawn, for those with more endurance than myself. I shall retire at midnight,
after which the serious drinkers will take over."
"Some of them looked pretty serious already."
"Unfortunately." Kareen smiled. "You will be able to see the Vor class at both
its best and its worst, before the night is over."
"I can imagine. I'm surprised you don't import less lethal mood-altering
drugs."
Kareen's smile sharpened. "But drunken brawls are traditional." She allowed
the cutting edge of her voice to soften. "In fact, such things are coming in,
at least in the shuttleport cities. As usual, we seem to be adding to rather
than replacing our own customs."
"Perhaps that's the best way." Cordelia frowned. How best to probe delicately
. . . ? "Is Count Vidal Vordarian one of those in the habit of getting
publicly potted?"
"No." Kareen glanced up, narrowing her eyes. "Why do you ask?"
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"I had a peculiar conversation with him. I thought an overdose of ethanol
might account for it." She remembered Vordarian's hand resting lightly upon
the Princess's knee, just short of an intimate caress. "Do you know him well?
How would you estimate him?"
Kareen said judiciously, "He's rich . . . proud . . . He was loyal to Ezar
during Serg's late machinations against his father. Loyal to the Imperium, to
the Vor class. There are four major manufacturing cities in Vordarian's
District, plus military bases, supply depots, the biggest military
shuttleport. . . . Vidal's is certainly the most economically important area
on Barrayar today. The war barely touched the Vordarians' District; it's one
of the few the Cetagandans pulled out of by treaty. We sited our first space
bases there because we took over facilities the Cetagandans had built and
abandoned, and a good deal of economic development followed from that."
"That's . . . interesting," said Cordelia, "but I was wondering about the man
personally. His, ah, likes and dislikes, for example. Do you like him?"
"At one time," said Kareen slowly, "I wondered if Vidal might be powerful
enough to protect me from Serg. After Ezar died. As Ezar grew more ill, I was
thinking, I had better look to my own defense. Nothing appeared to be
happening, and no one told me anything."
"If Serg had become emperor, how could a mere count have protected you?"
asked Cordelia.
"He would have had to become . . . more. Vidal had ambition, if it were
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