Lois Bujold - Barrayar

“Love?” Now he looked baffled.

“You Barrayarans are—” she bit her tongue on the crazy. Impolite. “Aral is certainly more … practical.” Though she could hardly call him unromantic.

“That’s extremely interesting,” he breathed. His eyes flicked to and away from her abdomen. “Do you fancy he contemplates something more direct?”

Her mind was running tangential to this twisting conversation, somehow. “Beg pardon?”

He smiled and shrugged.

Cordelia frowned. “Do you mean to say, if we were having a girl, that’s what everyone would be thinking?”

“Certainly.”

She blew out her breath. “God. That’s … I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to get near the Barrayaran Imperium. It just makes you a target for every maniac with a grievance, as far as I can see.” An image of Lieutenant Koudelka, bloody-faced and deafened, flashed in her mind. “Also hard on the poor fellow who’s unlucky enough to be standing next to you.”

His attention sharpened. “Ah, yes, that unfortunate incident the other day. Has anything come of the investigation, do you know?”

“Nothing that I’ve heard. Negri and Illyan are talking Cetagandans, mostly. But the guy who launched the grenade got away clean.”

“Too bad.” He drained his glass, and exchanged it for a freshly charged one presented immediately by a passing Vorbarra-liveried servant. Cordelia eyed the wineglasses wistfully. But she was off metabolic poisons for the duration. Yet another advantage of Betan-style gestation in uterine replicators, none of this blasted enforced clean living. At home she could have poisoned and endangered herself freely, while her child grew, fully monitored round-the-clock by sober techs, safe and protected in the replicator banks. Suppose she had been under that sonic grenade … She longed for a drink.

Well, she did not need the mind-numbing buzz of ethanol; conversation with Barrayarans was mind-numbing enough. Her eyes sought Aral in the crowd—there he was, Kou at his shoulder, talking with Piotr and two other grizzled old men in counts’ liveries. As Aral had predicted, his hearing had returned to normal within a couple of days. Yet still his eyes shifted from face to face, drinking in cues of gesture and inflection, his glass a mere untasted ornament in his hand. On duty, no question. Was he ever off-duty, anymore?

“Was he much disturbed by the attack?” Vordarian inquired, following her gaze to Aral.

“Wouldn’t you be?” said Cordelia. “I don’t know … he’s seen so much violence in his life, almost more than I can imagine. It may be almost like … white noise. Tuned out.” I wish I could tune it out.

“You have not known him that long, though. Just since Escobar.”

“We met once before the war. Briefly.”

“Oh?” His brows rose. “I didn’t know that. How little one truly knows of people.” He paused, watching Aral, watching her watch Aral. One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. “He’s bisexual, you know.” He took a delicate sip of his wine.

“Was bisexual,” she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. “Now he’s monogamous.”

Vordarian choked, sputtering. Cordelia watched him with concern, wondering if she ought to pat him on the back or something, but he regained his breath and balance. “He told you that?” he wheezed in astonishment.

“No, Vorrutyer did. Just before he met his, um, fatal accident.” Vordarian was standing frozen; she felt a certain malicious glee at having at last baffled a Barrayaran as much as they sometimes baffled her. Now, if she could just figure out what she’d said that had thrown him … She went on seriously, “The more I look back on Vorrutyer, the more he seems a tragic figure. Still obsessed with a love affair that was over eighteen years ago. Yet I sometimes wonder, if he could have had what he wanted then—kept Aral—if Aral might have kept that sadistic streak that ultimately consumed Vorrutyer’s sanity under control. It’s as if the two of them were on some land of weird see-saw, each one’s survival entailing the other’s destruction.”

“A Betan.” His stunned look was gradually fading to one Cordelia mentally dubbed as Awful Realization. “I should have guessed. You are, after all, the people who bioengineered hermaphrodites… .” He paused. “How long did you know Vorrutyer?”

“About twenty minutes. But it was a very intense twenty minutes.” She decided to let him wonder what the hell that meant.

“Their, ah, affair, as you call it, was a great secret scandal, at the time.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Great secret scandal? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Like ’military intelligence,’ or ’friendly fire.’ Also typical Barrayaranisms, now that I think on it.”

Vordarian had the strangest look on his face. He looked, she realized, exactly like a man who had thrown a bomb, had it go fizz instead of BOOM! and was now trying to decide whether to stick his hand in and tap the firing mechanism to test it.

Then it was her turn for Awful Realization. This man just tried to blow up my marriage. No—Aral’s marriage. She fixed a bright, sunny, innocent smile on her face, her brain kicking—at last!—into overdrive. Vordarian couldn’t be of Vorrutyer’s old war party; their leaders had all met with their fatal accidents before Ezar had bowed out, and the rest were scattered and lying low. What did he want? She fiddled with a flower from her hair, and considered simpering. “I didn’t imagine I was marrying a forty-four-year-old virgin, Count Vordarian.”

“So it seems.” He knocked back another gulp of wine. “You galactics are all degenerate … what perversions does he tolerate in return, I wonder?” His eyes glinted in sudden open malice. “Do you know how Lord Vorkosigan’s first wife died?”

“Suicide. Plasma arc to the head,” she replied promptly.

“It was rumored he’d murdered her. For adultery. Betan, beware.” His smile had turned wholly acid.

“Yes, I knew that, too. In this case, an untrue rumor.” All pretense of cordiality had evaporated from their exchange. Cordelia had a bad sense of all control escaping with it. She leaned forward, and lowered her voice. “Do you know why Vorrutyer died?”

He couldn’t help it; he tilted toward her, drawn in. “No …”

“He tried to hurt Aral through me. I found that … annoying. I wish you would cease trying to annoy me, Count Vordarian, I’m afraid you might succeed.” Her voice fell further, almost to a whisper. “You should fear it, too.”

His initial patronizing tone had certainly given way to wariness. He made a smooth, openhanded gesture that seemed to symbolize a bow of farewell, and backed away. “Milady.” The glance over his shoulder as he moved off was thoroughly spooked.

She frowned after him. Whew. What an odd exchange. What had the man expected, dropping that obsolete datum on her as if it were some shocking surprise? Did 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?”