Lois Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's alliance

Tej wrinkled her nose, and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure of the dynamics of that. Star and Pidge both accepted Eric as heir. Do you think either of them would accept the other?”

Amiri looked as if he took the point. “Well…in either case, it wouldn’t be my problem.” He drank again.

“How long have the rest of you known about the treasure hunt?” Tej asked.

“Just since last night. After we got back from Lady Vorpatril’s. Dada and Grandmama and the Baronne called a family meeting and told us the new scheme. They’d really kept it tight before then—I suppose because they weren’t sure yet that the bio-bunker-thing would still be here. I thought we were just coming here to get you two, and I’d wondered why we all had to be dragged five wormhole jumps when we could have just sent one rep. And much more discreetly.”

Tej wondered what she and Rish would have done if just one Arqua had turned up, demanding they depart at once. Might have depended on which one…

“Why did they haul you along?” Tej asked.

“That was the big mystery to me, too, till last night. They seem to have some idea of fencing any interesting old Cetagandan bio-stuff out through Lily Durona. I wonder if they’d told her about it all? That would explain why she was so ready to let me go, at least. Makes me feel a bit better.” Amiri paused, then countered, “How long have you known?”

“Only since yesterday afternoon, when Rish was briefing the rest of you on local terrain. But did they tell you what the Barrayarans have planted on top of Grandmama’s old place?”

“Yeah, that sounded a bit…challenging. But Dada seemed to think he had it all under control.” An uncertain tone entered Amiri’s voice. Dada and the Baronne had presumably thought they’d had Cordonah Station under control, once, too.

Amiri turned to Tej with more urgency. “But you have to help make sure this comes off, Tej, you have to. My whole life is riding on it.”

What about my whole life? Tej stemmed the rebellious thought. Of course Amiri’s life was more important. Amiri did things. Tej, as her family never seemed to tire of pointing out, didn’t. She sighed. “I’ll try, Amiri.”

“Don’t just try, do ,” he urged. “It’s really important to me. To everybody, really, but especially to me.”

“Yes, yes…” said Tej, distracted. I was prepared to jump off a damned balcony for you. Shouldn’t that be enough? She was beginning to rethink that balcony business. True, it had been as much to escape the exhaustion and the being-afraid-all-the-time as it had been for imagined family heroism. None of which had been a problem since…since Ivan Xav, really. He was not the balcony type .

I like that in a man. She was just beginning to realize how much.

The Baronne was calling her away to consult on local transportation logistics with Dada. She sighed and trudged off to do her Arqua duty.

Ivan woke, not as late as he’d have liked, on his first day off after the Invasion of the Arquas to an unexpectedly empty bed. A gulping moment of panic was quelled, as he sat up, by the sound of voices from the next room and someone rattling around in the bathroom.

Ivan had needed to work yesterday; Tej had spent all the long day and into the evening driving assorted Arquas around town on mysterious errands which she’d barely talked about. From years of practice with his cousin, Ivan could recognize evasion both when he heard it, and when he didn’t hear it. He wasn’t reassured by either mode. He’d held her attention briefly with Raudsepp’s account of the intercepted bounty hunters, which she’d assured him she would pass on to her folks, but with unfeigned tiredness she had slipped— away , perhaps?—into sleep shortly thereafter.

Yawning, he dragged on trousers and went in search of caffeine. Tej was in the comconsole niche, talking to someone—a Barrayaran, a commercial clerk of some sort, apparently. She switched to Barrayaran Russian in mid-sentence; the man brightened and became more voluble. And cooperative? In any case, her business was concluded by the time Ivan came back with a steaming mug in his hand.

Ivan nodded at the comconsole. “How did you know that fellow’s mother tongue? He had a pretty urban accent.”

Tej gestured to the now-blank vid-plate. “I can hear it in their voices. Can’t you?”

“Accents, sure. But he sounded pure Vorbarr Sultana to me.”

“Not really. I haven’t got all the District dialect variations sorted out yet, though. Sixty-times-four plus South Continent. I have to pick up more local geography.”

“Do you expect to? Sort them all out?”

She shrugged. “If I’m here long enough, they’ll sort themselves.”

“Tej…” He wanted to follow up that ambiguous-sounding if I’m here long enough , but stuck to his first thought. “How many languages do you speak ?”

“I dunno.” Her nose wrinkled. “Since I came here—nine?”

“That’s a lot.”

“Not really. Good translator earbugs will handle hundreds. Why bother making work out of it, when the ones you need likely won’t be the ones you learned anyway? I never even heard of Barrayaran Russian before I came here. Or your local Greek dialect, which is pretty corrupt—well, altered—see, I didn’t say mutated . I mean, learning them yourself isn’t a practical hobby. The earbugs do it better.” A crooked smile. “Kind of fun, though. I like fun.”

“Fun,” said Ivan, bemusedly reflecting on all the lack of fun he’d had in his school language drills.

Rish emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed. “Tej, did you get the ground-van and the big speakers? Are we ready to go now?”

“Yes and yes.” Tej popped up and offered Ivan a placatory kiss on the cheek. “Gotta run.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Jewels wanted a place for some dance practice, since this is the first they’ve been together for ages, and Simon found us this nice park. There wasn’t any place big enough in the hotel. I’m doing tech on the music.”

“Outdoors? In this weather?” Ivan wandered to a window and peered blearily out. All right, the angled winter sun was shining brightly, and it was windless and well above freezing, but still.

“It’s really pretty nice out today. Supposed to change tomorrow, though, so I really have to go now…”

She and Rish blew out.

Ivan munched groats, a little later, with his uneasiness growing. He shaved, dressed, and, with extreme reluctance, called his mother.

“Mamere,” he said, when her impeccably groomed features appeared over the vid plate, wearing an expression of surprised inquiry. “Do you know anything about some dance practice place Simon recommended to the Jewels? A park or commons, outdoors.” Vorbarra Sultana had dozens of such nooks.

“Oh, yes, he mentioned that. He’s gone off to watch. I thought it was good for him to get out. I’d have loved to go with him, but I’m running a diplomatic luncheon at the Residence today for Laisa, as she had to go down to that Vorbarra District economics conference in Nizhne-Whitekirk.”

“Where? The dance practice, I mean.”

“He suggested the little park across the street from ImpSec headquarters. Hardly anyone ever uses it, you know. Except those poor fellows with that seasonal affective problem, who come out to eat their lunches sometimes. Simon did make full-spectrum lighting an allowable requisition, years back.”

“Um, yeah. Thanks.” About to sign off, he hesitated. “Mamere—has Simon told you anything about what Shiv had to say to him? Or vice versa?”