Miles in Love (116 page)

She smiled gratefully at him. "No, Sire. I think Miles and I can handle it from here, now that the unfortunate political aspect has been removed."

"I had that impression. Congratulations to you both." His mouth was solemn, but his eyes danced. "Ah." He beckoned to a secretary, who drew an official-looking document, two pages of calligraphy all stamped and sealed, from an envelope. "Here, Miles . . . I see Vormuir finally made it. I'll let you hand this off to him."

Miles glanced over the pages, and grinned. "As discussed. My pleasure, Sire."

Gregor flashed a rare smile at them both, and escaped his courtiers by ducking back through his private door.

Miles reordered the pages, and sauntered over to Vormuir's desk.

"Something for you, Count. My Imperial Master has considered your petition for the confirmation of your guardianship of all your lovely daughters. It is herewith granted."

"Ha!" said Vormuir triumphantly, fairly snatching the documents from Miles. "What did I say! Even the Imperial lawyers had to knuckle under to ties of blood, eh? Good! Good!"

"Enjoy." Miles smiled, and drew Ekaterin rapidly away.

"But Miles," she whispered, "does that mean Vormuir wins? He gets to carry on that dreadful child-assembly-line of his?"

"Under certain conditions. Step along—we really want to be out of the chamber before he gets to page two . . ."

Miles gestured his lunch guests out into the great hall, murmuring rapid instructions into his wristcom to have Pym bring up the car. The Viceroy and Vicereine excused themselves, saying they would be along later after they had a short chat with Gregor.

All paused, startled, as from the chamber, a voice echoed in a sudden howl of anguish.

"Dowries!
Dowries!
A hundred and eighteen
dowries
 . . ."

"Roic," said Mark ominously, "why are these trespassers still
alive
?"

"We can't go round just shooting casual visitors, m'lord," Roic attempted to excuse himself.

"Why not?"

"This isn't the Time of Isolation! Besides, m'lord," Roic nodded toward the bedraggled Escobarans, "they do seem to have a proper warrant."

The smaller Escobaran, who'd said his name was Parole Officer Gustioz, held up a wad of sticky flimsies as evidence, and shook it meaningfully, spattering a few last white drops. Mark stepped back, and carefully flicked the stray spot from the front of his good black suit. All three men appeared to have been recently dipped headfirst into a vat of yogurt. Studying Roic, Mark was put dimly in mind of the legend of Achilles, except that his bug butter marinade seemed to extend to both heels.

"We'll see." If they had hurt Kareen . . . Mark turned, and knocked on the locked laboratory door. "Kareen? Martya? Are you all right in there?"

"Mark? Is that you?" Martya's voice came back though the door. "At last!"

Mark studied the dents in the wood, and frowned, narrow-eyed, at the two Escobarans. Gustioz recoiled slightly, and Muno inhaled and tensed. Scraping noises, as of large objects being dragged back from the entryway, emanated from the lab. After another moment, the lock tweetled, and the door stuck, then was yanked open. Martya poked her head through. "Thank heavens!"

Anxiously, Mark pressed past her to find Kareen. She almost fell into his offered embrace, then they both thought better of it. Though not as well-coated as the men, her hair, vest, shirt and trousers were liberally splattered with bug butter. She bent, carefully, to greet him with a reassuring kiss instead. "Did they hurt you, love?" Mark demanded.

"No," she said a bit breathlessly. "We're all right. But Mark, they're trying to take Enrique away! The whole business will go down the toilet without him!"

Enrique, very disheveled and gummy, nodded frightened confirmation.

"Sh, sh. I'll straighten things out." Somehow . . . 

She ran a hand through her hair, half her blond curls standing wildly upright from the bug butter mousse, her chest rising and falling with her breathing. Mark had spent most of the morning finding the most remarkably obscene associations triggered in his mind by dairy packaging equipment. He'd kept his mind on his task only by promising himself an afternoon nap, not alone, when he'd got home. He'd had it all planned out. The romantic scenario hadn't included Escobarans. Dammit, if
he
had Kareen and a dozen tubs of bug butter, he would find more interesting things to do than rub it in her hair . . . . And so he did, and so he might, but first he had to get rid of these bloody unwelcome Escobaran skip-tracers.

He walked back out into the corridor, and said to them, "Well, you can't take him. In the first place, I paid his bail."

"Lord Vorkosigan—" began the irate Gustioz.

"Lord Mark," Mark corrected instantly.

"Whatever. The Escobaran Cortes does not, as you seem to think, engage itself in the slave trade. However it's done on this benighted planet, on Escobar a bond is a guarantee of court appearance, not some kind of human meat market transaction."

"It is where I come from," Mark muttered.

"He's Jacksonian," Martya explained. "Not Barrayaran. Don't be alarmed. He's getting over it, mostly."

Possession was nine-tenths of . . . something. Until he was certain he could get Enrique back, Mark was loath to let him out of his sight. There had to be some way to legally block this extradition.
Miles
would likely know, but . . . Miles had made no secret of how he felt about butter bugs. Not a good choice of advisors. But the Countess had bought shares . . . "Mother!" said Mark. "Yes. I want you to at least wait till my mother gets home and can talk to you."

"The Vicereine is a very famous lady," said Gustioz warily, "and I would be honored to be presented to her, some other time. We have an orbital shuttle to catch."

"They go every hour. You can get the next one." Mark just bet the Escobarans would prefer not to encounter the Viceroy and Vicereine. And how long had they been watching Vorkosigan House, to seize this unpopulated moment to make their snatch?

Somehow—probably because Gustioz and Muno were good at their job—Mark found that the whole conversation was moving gently and inexorably down the hallway. They left a sort of slime trail behind them, as if a herd of monstrous snails were migrating through Vorkosigan House. "I must certainly examine your documentation."

"My documentation is entirely in order," Gustioz declared, clutching what looked like a giant spit-wad of flimsies to his glutinous chest as he began to climb the stairs. "And in any case, it has nothing whatever to do with
you
!"

"The hell it doesn't. I posted Dr. Borgos's bond; I have to have some legal interest. I paid for it!"

They reached the dining room; Muno had somehow wrapped a ham hand around Enrique's upper arm. Martya, frowning at him, took preemptive possession of the scientist's other arm. Enrique's look of alarm doubled.

The argument continued, at rising volume, through several antechambers. In the black-and-white tiled entry hall, Mark dug in his heels. He nipped around in front of the pack and stood between Enrique and the door, spread-legged and bulldoggish, and snarled, "If you've been after Enrique for two bloody months, Gustioz, another half hour can make no difference to you. You
will
wait!"

"If you dare to impede me in the legal discharge of my duties, I will find some way to charge you, I guarantee it!" Gustioz snarled back. "I don't care who you're related to!"

"You start a brawl in Vorkosigan House, and you'll damned well find it matters very much who I'm related to!"

"You tell him, Mark!" Kareen cried.

Enrique and Martya added their voices to the uproar. Muno took a tighter grip on his prisoner, and eyed Roic warily, but Kareen and Martya more warily. As long as the reddening Gustioz was still bellowing, Mark reasoned, he had him blocked; when he took a deep breath and switched to forward motion, it would then descend to the physical, and then Mark was not at all sure who would be in control anymore. Somewhere in the back of Mark's head, Killer whined and scratched like an impatient wolf.

Gustioz took a deep breath, but suddenly stopped yelling. Mark tensed, dizzy with the loss of center/self/safety as the
Other
started to surge forward.

Everybody else stopped yammering, too. In fact, the noise died away as though someone had cut the power line. A breath of warm summer air stirred the hairs on the back of Mark's neck as the double doors, behind him, swung wide. He wheeled.

Framed in the doorway, a large party of persons paused in astonishment. Miles, resplendent in full Vorkosigan House livery, stood in the center with Ekaterin Vorsoisson on his arm. Nikki and Professora Vorthys flanked the couple on one side. On the other, two men Mark didn't know, one in lieutenant's undress greens and the other a stoutish fellow in civvies, goggled at the butter-beslimed arguers. Pym stared over Miles's head.

"Who is that?" whispered Gustioz uneasily. And there just wasn't any question which
who
he referred to.

Kareen snapped back under her breath, "Lord Miles Vorkosigan.
Imperial Auditor
Lord Vorkosigan! Now you've done it!"

Miles's gaze traveled slowly over the assembled multitude: Mark, Kareen and Martya, the stranger-Escobarans, Enrique—he winced a little—and up and down the considerable length of Armsman Roic. After a long, long moment, Miles's teeth unclenched.

"Armsman Roic, you appear to be out of uniform."

Roic stood to attention, and swallowed. "I'm . . . I was off-duty. M'lord."

Miles stepped forward; Mark wished to hell he knew how Miles did it, but Gustioz and Muno automatically braced too. Muno didn't let go of Enrique, though.

Miles gestured at Mark. "This is my brother, Lord Mark. And Kareen Koudelka, and her sister Martya. Dr. Enrique Borgos, from Escobar, my brother's, um, houseguest." He indicated the group of people who'd trailed him in. "Lieutenant Vassily Vorsiosson. Hugo Vorvayne," he nodded at the stoutish man, "Ekaterin's
brother
." His emphasis supplied the undertext,
This had better not be the sort of screwup it looks like
. Kareen winced.

"Everyone else, you know. I'm afraid I haven't met these other two gentlemen. Are your visitors, by chance, on their way out, Mark?" Miles suggested gently.

The dam broke; half a dozen people simultaneously began to explain, complain, excuse, plea, demand, accuse, and defend. Miles listened for a couple of minutes—Mark was uncomfortably reminded of how appallingly smoothly his progenitor-brother handled the multitracking inputs of a combat command helmet—then, at last, flung up a hand. Miraculously, he got silence, barring a few trailing words from Martya.

"Let me see if I have this straight," he murmured. "You two gentlemen," he nodded at the slowly drying Escobarans, "wish to take Dr. Borgos away and lock him up? Forever?"

Mark cringed at the hopeful tone in Miles's voice.

"Not forever," Parole Officer Gustioz admitted regretfully. "But certainly for a good long time." He paused, and held out his wad of flimsies. "I have all the proper orders and warrants, sir!"

"Ah," said Miles, eyeing the sticky jumble. "Indeed." He hesitated. "You will, of course, permit me to examine them."

He excused himself to the mob of people who'd accompanied him, gave a squeeze to Ekaterin's hand—wait a minute, hadn't they been not talking to each other? Miles had walked around all day yesterday in a dark cloud of negative energy like a black hole in motion; just looking at him had given Mark a headache. Now, beneath that heavy layer of irony, he frigging
glowed
. What the hell was happening here? Kareen, too, eyed the pair with growing surmise.

Mark abandoned this puzzle temporarily as Miles beckoned Gustioz to a side table beneath a mirror. He plucked the flower arrangement from it and handed it off to Roic, who scrambled to receive it, and had Gustioz lay down his extradition documents in a pile.

Slowly, and Mark had not the least doubt Miles was using every theatrical trick to buy time to think, he leafed gingerly through them. The entire audience in the entry hall watched him in utter silence, as if enspelled. He carefully touched the documents only with his fingertips, with an occasional glance up at Gustioz that had the Escobaran squirming in very short order. Every once in a while he had to pick up a couple of flimsies and gently peel them apart. "Mm-hm," he said, and "Mm-hm," and "All eighteen, yes, very good."

He came to the end, and stood thoughtfully a moment, his fingers just touching the pile, not releasing them back to the hovering Gustioz. He glanced up questioningly under his eyebrows at Ekaterin. She gazed rather anxiously back at him, and smiled wryly.

"Mark," he said slowly. "You did pay Ekaterin for her design work in shares, not cash, as I understand?"

"Yes," said Mark. "And Ma Kosti too," he hastened to point out.

"And me!" Kareen put in.

"And me!" added Martya.

"The company's been a little cash-strapped," Mark offered cautiously.

"Ma Kosti too. Hm. Oh, dear." Miles stared off into space a moment, then turned and smiled at Gustioz.

"Parole Officer Gustioz."

Gustioz stood upright, as if to attention.

"All the documents you have here do indeed appear to be legal and in order."

Miles picked the stack up between thumb and forefinger, and returned them to the officer's grasp. Gustioz accepted them, smiled, and inhaled.

"However," Miles continued, "you are missing one jurisdiction. Quite a critical one: the Imp Sec gate guard should not have let you in here without it. Well, the boys are soldiers, not lawyers; I don't think the poor corporal should be reprimanded. I will have to tell General Allegre to make sure it's part of their briefing in future, though."

Gustioz stared at him in horror and disbelief. "I have permissions from the Empire—the planetary local space—the Vorbarra District—and the City of Vorbarr Sultana. What other jurisdiction
is
there?"

"Vorkosigan House is the official residence of the Count of the Vorkosigan's District," Miles explained to him in a kindly tone. "As such, its grounds are considered Vorkosigan District soil, very like an embassy's. To take this man
from Vorkosigan House
, in the city of Vorbarr Sultana, in the Vorbarra District, on Barrayar, in the Imperium, you need all those," he waved at the tacky pile, "and also an extradition authorization, an order in the Count's Voice—just like this one you have here for the Vorbarra's District—from the Vorkosigan's District."