Lois Bujold - Komarr

“No.”

“Did you know he was to be killed?”

“No.”

Fast-penta frequently made subjects bloody literal-minded; you always asked the important questions, the ones you were hot about, in a number of different ways, to be sure.

“Did you kill him yourself?”

“No.”

“Did you love him?”

Ekaterin hesitated. Miles frowned. Facts were ImpSec’s rightful prey; feelings, maybe less so. But Tuomonen wasn’t quite out of line yet.

“I think I did, once. I must have. I remember the wonderful look on his face, the day Nikki was born. I must have. He wore it out. I can hardly remember that time.”

“Did you hate him?”

“No… yes… I don’t know. He wore that out too.” She looked earnestly at Tuomonen. “He never hit me, you know.”

What an obituary. When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, “He didn’t hit me.” Miles set his jaw and said nothing.

“Are you sorry he died?”

Watch it, Tuomonen…

“Oh, but it was such a relief. What a nightmare today would have been if Tien were still alive. Though I suppose ImpSec would have taken him away. Theft and treason. But I would have had to go see him. Lord Vorkosigan said I could not have saved him. There was not enough time after Foscol called me. I’m so glad. It’s so ugly to be so glad. I suppose I should forgive Tien for everything, because he’s dead now, but I’ll never forgive him for turning me into something so ugly.” Despite the drug, tears were leaking from her eyes now. “I didn’t use to be this kind of person, but now I can’t go back.”

Some truths cut deeper than even fast-penta could soak. Expressionlessly, Miles reached past Tuomonen and handed Ekaterin a tissue. She blotted the moisture in owlish distress.

“Does she need more drug?” the medtech whispered.

“No.” Miles made a hand-down gesture for silence.

Tuomonen asked some more neutral questions, till something like his subject’s original sunny and confiding air returned. Yeah. Nobody should have to do this much truth all at once.

Tuomonen looked at his flimsy, glanced uneasily at Miles, licked his lips, and said, “Your cases and Lord Vorkosigan’s were found together in your vestibule. Were you planning to leave together?”

Shock and fury flushed through Miles in a hot wave. Tuomonen, you dare-! But the memory of sorting through all that mixed underwear under the eye of the ImpSec guard stopped his words; so, yes, it could have looked odd, to someone who didn’t know what was going on. He converted his boiling words to a slow breath, which he let out in a trickle. Tuomonen’s eyes flicked sideways, wary of that sigh.

Ekaterin blinked at him in some confusion. “I’d hoped to.”

What? Oh. “She means, at the same time,” Miles gritted through his teeth to Tuomonen. “Not together. Try that.”

“Was Lord Vorkosigan planning to take you away?”

“Away? Oh, what a lovely idea. Nobody was taking me away. Who would? I had to take myself away. Tien threw my aunt’s skellytum over the balcony, but he didn’t quite dare throw me. He wanted to, I think.”

Miles was diverted to brood on these last words. How much physical courage had it taken her, to stand up to Tien at the last? Miles did not underestimate just what nerve it took to face down large angry men who had the power to pick you up and pitch you across the room. Nerve and wit and never letting yourself get within arm’s reach, nor blocked from the door. The calculations were automatic. And you had to stay in practice. For Ekaterin, it must have felt like landing a fully-loaded freight shuttle on her very first flying lesson.

Tuomonen, trying desperately for clarity and still with one eye on Miles, repeated, “Were you going to elope with Lord Vorkosigan?”

Her brows flew up. “No!” she said in astonishment.

No, of course not. Miles tried to recapture his first properly stunned reaction to the accusation, except that it now came out, What a great idea. Why didn’t I think of it? which rather blunted the fine edge of his outrage. Anyway, she’d never have run off with him. It was all he could do to get a Barrayaran woman to walk down the street with a sawed-off mutie like him…

Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy?

Um. Yeah.

He’d been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he’d finally hit the ground. He should have recognized the symptoms. Oh, Tuomonen. The things we learn under fast-penta.

He could finally see what Tuomonen was getting at, though, all complete. A nice neat little conspiracy: murder Tien, blame it on the Komarrans, run off with his wife over his dead body… “A most flattering scenario, Tuomonen,” Miles breathed to the ImpSec captain. “Quick work on my part, considering I only met her five days ago. I thank you.” Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won? I think not.

Tuomonen shot him a flat-lipped glower. “If my guard could think of it, and I could think of it, so could someone else. Best to knock the notion in the head as soon as possible. It’s not as though I could fast-penta you. My lord.”

No, not even if Miles volunteered. His known idiosyncratic reaction to the drug, so historically useful in evading hostile interrogation, also made it impossible for him to use it to clear himself of any accusation. Tuomonen was just doing his job, and doing it well. Miles leaned back, and growled, “Yeah, yeah, all right. But you’re optimistic, if you think even fast-penta is fast enough to compete with titillating rumor. As a courtesy to his Imperial Majesty’s Auditors’ reputations, do have a word with that guard of yours after this.”

Tuomonen didn’t argue, or pretend to misunderstand. “Yes, my lord.”

Temporarily undirected, Ekaterin was burbling along on her free-association tangent. “I wonder if the scars below his belt are as interesting as the ones above. I could hardly have got him out of his trousers in that bubble-car, I suppose. I had a chance last night, and I didn’t even think of it. Mutie Vor. How does he do it…? I wonder what it would be like to sleep with someone you actually liked…?”

“Stop,” said Tuomonen belatedly. She fell silent and blinked at him.

Just when it was getting really interesting… Miles quelled a narcissistic, or perhaps masochistic, impulse to encourage her to go on in this strain. He’d invited himself along on this interrogation to keep ImpSec from abusing its opportunities.

“I’m finished, my lord,” Tuomonen said aside to him in a low voice. He did not quite meet Miles’s eyes. “Is there anything else you think I should ask, or that you wish to ask?”

Could you ever love me, Ekaterin? Alas, questions of future probability were unanswerable, even under fast-penta.

“No. I would ask you to note, nothing she’s said under fast-penta substantially contradicts anything she’s told us straight out. The two versions are in fact unusually congruent, compared to other interrogations in my experience.”

“Mine as well,” Tuomonen allowed. “Very good.” He motioned to the silently waiting medtech. “Go ahead and administer the antagonist.”

The woman stepped forward, adjusted the new hypospray, and pressed it against the inside of Ekaterin’s arm. The lizard-hiss of the anti-drug going in licked Miles’s ears. He counted Ekaterin’s heartbeats again, one, two, three…

It was a horribly vampiric thing to watch, as if life itself were being sucked out of her. Her shoulders drew in, her whole body hunched in renewed tension, and she buried her face in her hands. When she raised it again, it was flushed and damp and strained, but she was not weeping, merely utterly exhausted, and closed again. He had thought she would weep. Fast-penta doesn’t hurt, eh? Couldn’t prove it now.