Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

Mina cast him a look of cold scorn. “I’d like to see you try and put a saddle and bridle and stuff on her.”

Jin tried to imagine spider-sized tack—knotted thread, perhaps?—and what kind of insect could you persuade to ride a wolf spider? That the spider wouldn’t eat? Riding would be a much more exciting sport, he thought, if ponies ate prey like spiders did. Did the consulate have any thread they could borrow… ? But before he could pursue the vision further, Consul Vorlynkin and Miles-san came through the kitchen pulling on their jackets.

“Vorlynkin is going to drive me down to Madame Suze’s to see about something,” Miles-san told them. He and Roic had been spending a lot of time there lately, Jin thought, and come back looking grim and thoughtful, though no one had said why. And Raven-sensei hadn’t come back at all. “Yuuichi Matson’s here, so you won’t be alone. But if any strangers come in on consulate business, you’ll need to stay out of the front rooms and hall. Upstairs should be all right, or the back garden, if you don’t make too much noise.”

“I’ll be back directly,” Vorlynkin promised.

Mina looked up. “Do you think you’ll ever find Mommy?”

“We hope to have good news soon,” said Miles-san.

Jin wasn’t sure how to interpret that soothing tone of voice. More grownup lies? By her scrunched face, he didn’t think Mina was buying it, either.

But what she said was, “Lord Vorkosigan, if you had children you’d give them ponies, wouldn’t you? Not spiders?”

He looked a little taken aback. “I do and I have. Ponies, not spiders. Although I suppose they could have spiders if they wanted some. God knows we have butterbugs. Monogrammed . Didn’t I ever show you my pictures?”

And then, to Jin’s surprise and growing dismay, he pulled a holocube out of his pocket and proceeded to show off scans of a regular-sized, dark-haired woman—Jin could tell she was regular-sized because there were some shots of the two of them together, and the top of Miles-san’s head barely reached her shoulder—and a bewildering succession of children at different ages. Jin didn’t quite sort them out till they came to a group shot—a dark-haired boy and a red-haired girl a bit younger than Mina, an infant in the pretty woman’s arms, and a leggy toddler in the middle of the pack. Four children. He hoped Mina would muster the wit to look interested and not distraught. He still wasn’t altogether sure what Miles-san was, but he seemed to have a lot of clout. Even the consul did whatever he said.

“And here’s Helen on her pony down at Vorkosigan Surleau—it’s a place we have in the country, on a lake—and here’s Sasha petting his. Xander. Alex, I mean.”

Jin wondered what kind of inattentive father Miles-san was, that he couldn’t seem to remember his own son’s name. There was only the one boy, after all. It wasn’t as if he needed to run down a list till he got to the one who was irritating him, the way Uncle Hikaru had with him and Tetsu and Ken sometimes.

But Jin had to admit, they were very fine-looking ponies, one dappled silvery-gray, the other a glossy dark brown with black socks and mane and tail and a white star on its forehead, both with dark, liquid, friendly gazes, seeming tolerant of their child-admirers. Mina goggled, her mouth dropping open in naked longing. Yah and double-yah—a big place in the country . With lots of animals—there had been dogs and cats and birds in the backgrounds of some of those shots, and who knew what creatures lurked in those wooded hills? And fish in a real lake, not just in some little glass tank, and maybe creeping and crawling native marvels living in the streams running down into it—better than Jin had dared to dream.

And all belonging to these other children. Children who had a live mother and father, too. What was that line of Uncle Hikaru’s? Them what has, gets .

And those that didn’t have, didn’t get, Jin supposed was the unspoken half of that lesson. He looked at those other children, and at Miles-san, so obviously pleased and proud, and didn’t doubt that Mina probably felt like crying. His own throat was tight with envy and ridiculous anger. It wasn’t as if Miles-san had kept his family a secret on purpose, just to bait Jin so belatedly.

“I wouldn’t have dared not teach them to ride,” Miles-san went on. “My grandfather’s ghost would have haunted me if I hadn’t, not that the old buzzard doesn’t anyway. The Vor were a military caste, back in the Time of Isolation. Knights, of a sort—or bandits, perhaps, depending on your point of view. Horse soldiers, in any case. It’s a tradition.” He gave that last word a peculiar emphasis, as if it tasted funny in his mouth. “A perfectly useless skill, nowadays, but we keep it up all the same.”

“Perhaps we’d better go,” said Vorlynkin, and “Yeah,” said Miles-san. He pocketed his holocube carefully, like it was something special to him. They went off through the garden toward the big garage.

Jin and Mina stared at each other.

“Well,” said Mina at last. “At least I was right about the ponies.” She blinked rapidly, and rubbed her reddened eyes.

Jin glowered down at his little stack of money, which had seemed such a big pile of possibilities just minutes ago.

“It’s no good, after all,” said Mina. “Maybe it never was. Maybe we should just go back to Aunt Lorna and Uncle Hikaru’s.”

Stop struggling? “You could, maybe,” Jin said bitterly. “Not me. No, wait, you couldn’t either—you’d gab.”

Mina looked indignant at this accusation. With a “ Huh!” she rose to go back upstairs. At the archway into the kitchen, she flung back over her shoulder, “ Two ponies have eight legs, so there!”

Jin couldn’t think of a counter-argument to that.

As Jin was fingering his nuyen and wondering if he dared help himself to a snack, the consulate clerk wandered into the kitchen to refill his mug of green tea. He leaned against the counter and stared at Jin, who fidgeted under the cool regard.

“You’re Lisa Sato’s children, aren’t you? The cryo-rights activist?”

“Uh… yah?” Jin wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a secret here, but Matson-san obviously already knew.

Matson-san took a sip of tea and frowned. “Nobody’s really told me anything. But, ah… if you want me to call the police for you and your sister, before the Barrayarans all get back, I could… ?”

Jin shot to his feet, almost knocking over his chair, and cried in horror, “No!”

Matson-san sloshed hot tea, swore, set the cup down, and wiped his scalded hand on his trousers.

“It was the police who took Mom!” said Jin.

“Call your relatives, then?”

“No! That’s even worse!”

“Er,” said Matson-san. “So you two kids are not, um, not… prisoners, here, are you?”

“Of course not! Miles-san is helping us!” He considered events so far, and amended that to, “Trying to, anyway.” And then, because that sounded weak and ungrateful, “Nobody else has ever tried like him,” which was certainly true.

Matson-san scratched his head and grimaced. “Ah.” He took up his tea again. “Well, if you change you mind, you can tell me, all right?” Jin glowered at him in a dismay that made him hold up a placating hand. “Just trying to help, too.”

Jin wanted to cry, If that’s your idea of help, don’t! but it seemed too rude a thing to say to a grownup. He settled on, “All right. But I won’t. Change my mind.”

Matson-san shrugged uneasily and went back out to that front office-room. Jin gathered his money and fled upstairs to hide it away.