Lois Bujold - The Warrior's Apprentice

"The Dendarii Mercenaries," said Baz. "How can they function without you?"

"I expect them to function quite well, because I am appointing you, Baz, as their commander, and you, Elena, as his executive officer—and apprentice. Commodore Tung will be your chief of staff. You understand that, Baz? I'm going to charge you and Tung jointly with her training, and I expect it to be the best."

"I—I—" gasped the engineer. "My lord, the honor—I couldn't—"

"You'll find that you can, because you must. And besides, a lady should have a dowry worthy of her. That's what a dowry is for, after all, to provide for the bride's support. Bad form for the bridegroom to squander it, note. And you'll still be working for me, after all."

Baz looked relieved. "Oh—you'll be coming back, then. I thought—never mind. When will you return, my lord?"

"I'll catch up with you sometime," Miles said vaguely. Sometime, never … "That's the other thing. I want you to clear out of Tau Verde local space. Pick any direction away from Barrayar, and go. Find employment when you get there, but go soon. The Dendarii Mercenaries have had enough of this Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee war. It's bad for morale when it gets too hard to remember which side you're working for this week. Your next contract should have clearly defined objectives that will weld this motley bunch into a single force, under your command. No more committee warfare. Its weaknesses have been amply demonstrated, I trust—"

Miles went on with instructions and advice until he began to sound like a pint-sized Polonius in his own ears. There was no way he could anticipate every contingency. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference.

His heart cringed from his next interview even more than from the last, but he forced his feet to carry him to it anyway. He found the comm link technician at work at the electron microscope bench of the Triumph's engineering repairs section. Elena Visconti frowned at his gesture of invitation, but turned the work over to her assistant and came slowly to Miles's side.

"Sir?"

"Trainee Visconti. Ma'am. Can we take a walk?"

"What for?"

"Just to talk."

"If it's what I think, you may as well save your breath. I can't go to her."

"I'm not any more comfortable talking about it than you are, but it's an obligation I cannot honorably evade."

"I've spent eighteen years trying to put what happened at Escobar behind me. Must I be dragged through it again?"

"This is the last time, I promise. I'm leaving tomorrow. The Dendarii fleet will follow soon after. All you short-contract people will be dropped off at Dalton Station, where you can take ship for Tau Ceti or wherever you want. I suppose you'll be going home?"

She fell in reluctantly beside him, and they paced down the corridor. "Yes, my employers will doubtless be astonished at how much back pay they owe me."

"I owe you something myself. Baz says you were outstanding on the mission."

She shrugged. "Straightforward stuff."

"He didn't mean just your technical efforts. Anyway, I didn't want to leave Elena—my Elena—up in the air like this, you see," he began. "She ought to at least have something, to replace what was taken from her. Some little crumb of comfort."

"The only thing she lost was some illusion. And believe me, Admiral Naismith, or whatever you are, the only thing I could give her would be another illusion. Maybe if she didn't look so much like him … Anyway, I don't want her following me around, or showing up at my door."

"Whatever Sergeant Bothari was guilty of, she is surely innocent."

Elena Visconti rubbed her forehead wearily with the back of her hand. "I'm not saying you're not right. I'm just saying I can't. For me, she radiates nightmares."

Miles chewed his lip gently. They turned out of the Triumph into a flex tube and walked across the quiet docking bay. Only a few techs were busy at some small tasks.

"An illusion …" he mused. "You could live a long time on an illusion," he offered. "Maybe even a lifetime, if you're lucky. Would it be so difficult, to do a few days—even a few minutes—of acting? I'm going to have to dip some Dendarii funds anyway to pay for a dead ship, and buy a lady a new face. I could make it worth your time."

He regretted his words immediately at the loathing that flashed across her face, but the look she finally gave him was ironically thoughtful.

"You really care about that girl, don't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought she was making time with your chief engineer."

"Suits me."

"Pardon my slowness, but that does not compute."

"Association with me could be lethal, where I'm going next. I'd rather she were travelling in the opposite direction."

The next docking bay was busy and noisy with a Felician freighter being loaded with ingots of refined rare metals, vital to the Felician war industries. They avoided it, and searched out another quiet corridor. Miles found himself fingering the bright scarf in his pocket.

"He dreamed of you for eighteen years too, you know," he said suddenly. It wasn't what he meant to say. "He had this fantasy. You were his wife, in all honor. He held it so hard, I think it was real to him, at least part of the time. That's how he made it so real for Elena. You can touch hallucinations. Hallucinations can even touch you."

The Escobaran woman, pale, paused to lean against the wall and swallow. Miles pulled the scarf from his pocket and crumpled it anxiously in his hands; he had an absurd impulse to offer it to her, heaven knew what for—a basin?

"I'm sorry," Elena said at last. "But the very thought that he was pawing over me in his twisted imagination all these years makes me ill."

"He was never an easy person …" Miles began inanely, then cut himself off. He paced, frustrated, two steps, turn, two steps. He then took a gulp of air, and flung himself to one knee before the Escobaran woman.

"Ma'am. Konstantine Bothari sends me to beg your forgiveness for the wrongs he did you. Keep your revenge, if you will—it is your just right—but be satisfied," he implored her. "At least give me a death-offering to burn for him, some token. I give him aid in this as his go-between by my right as his leige lord, his friend, and, as he was a father's hand, held over me in protection all my life, as his son."

Elena Visconti was backed up against the wall as though cornered. Miles, still on one knee, shuffled back a step and shrank into himself, as if to crush all hint of pride and coercion to the deck.

"Damned if I'm not starting to think you're as weird—you're no Betan," she muttered. "Oh, do get up. What if somebody comes down this corridor?"

"Not until you give me a death-offering," he said firmly.

"What do you want from me? What's a death-offering?"

"Something of yourself, that you burn, for the peace of the soul of the dead. Sometimes you burn it for friends or relatives, sometimes for the souls of slain enemies, so they don't come back to haunt you. A lock of hair would do." He ran his hand over a short gap in his own crown. "That wedge represents twenty-two dead Pelians last month."

"Some local superstition, is it?"

He shrugged helplessly. "Superstition, custom—I've always thought of myself as an agnostic. It's only lately that I've come to—to need for men to have souls. Please. I won't bother you any more."

She blew out her breath in troubled exasperation. "Well—well … Give me that knife in your belt, then. But get up."

He rose, and handed her his grandfather's dagger. She sawed off a short curl. "Is that enough?"

"Yes, that's fine." He took it in his palm, cool and silken like water, and closed his fingers over it. "Thank you."