Miles in Love (99 page)

"Don't you look so scared either," Uncle Vorthys added to her.

She smiled wanly.

It was a short drive from the University district to the Imperial Residence. The guards scanned them and passed them smoothly through the high iron gates. The Residence was a vast stone building several times the size of Vorkosigan House, four stories high and built, over a couple of centuries and radical changes of architectural styles, in the form of a somewhat irregular hollow square. They drew up under a secondary portico on the east end.

Some sort of high household officer in Vorbarra livery met them, and guided them down two very long and echoing corridors to the north wing. Nikki and Ekaterin both stared around, Nikki openly, Ekaterin covertly. Uncle Vorthys seemed indifferent to the museum-quality décor; he'd trod this corridor dozens of times to deliver his personal reports to the ruler of three worlds. Miles had lived here till he was six, he'd said. Had he been oppressed by the somber weight of this history, or had he regarded it all as his personal play set?
One guess.

The liveried man ushered them into a sleekly-appointed office the size of most of one floor of the Professor's house. On the near end, a half-familiar figure leaned against a huge comconsole desk, his arms folded. Emperor Gregor Vorbarra was grave, lean, dark, good-looking in a narrow-faced, cerebral fashion. The holovid did not flatter him, Ekaterin decided instantly. He wore a dark blue suit, with only the barest hint of military decoration in the thin side-piping on the trousers and the high-necked tunic. Miles stood across from him dressed in his usual impeccable gray, rendered somewhat less impeccable by his feet-apart posture and his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets. He broke off in midsentence; his eyes rose anxiously to Ekaterin's face as she entered, and his lips parted. He gave his fellow Auditor a jerky little encouraging nod.

The Professor did not need the cue. "Sire, may I present my niece, Madame Ekaterin Vorsoisson, and her son, Nikolai Vorsoisson."

Ekaterin was spared an awkward attempt at a curtsey when Gregor stepped forward, took her hand, and shook it firmly, as though she were one of the equals he was first among. "Madame, I am honored." He turned to Nikki, and shook his hand in turn. "Welcome, Nikki. I'm sorry our first meeting should be occasioned by such a difficult matter, but I trust it will be followed by many happier ones." His tone was neither stiff nor patronizing, but perfectly straightforward. Nikki managed an adult handshake, and only goggled a little.

Ekaterin had met a few powerful men before; they had mostly looked through her, or past her, or at her with the sort of vague aesthetic appreciation she'd bestowed on the knickknacks in the corridor outside. Gregor looked her directly in the eye as if he saw all the way through to the back of her skull. It was at once unnervingly uncomfortable and strangely heartening. He gestured them all toward a square arrangement of leather-covered couches and armchairs at the far end of the room, and said softly, "Won't you please be seated?"

The tall windows overlooked a garden of descending terraces, brilliant with full summer growth. Ekaterin sank down with her back to it, Nikki beside her; the cool northern light fell on their Imperial host's face, as he took an armchair opposite them. Uncle Vorthys sat between; Miles pulled up a straight chair and sat a little apart from them all. He appeared arms crossed and at his ease. She wasn't quite sure how she came to read him as tense and nervous and miserable. And masked. A glass mask . . . 

Gregor leaned forward. "Lord Vorkosigan asked me to meet with you, Nikki, because of the unpleasant rumors which have sprung up surrounding your father's death. Under the circumstances, your mother and your great-uncle agreed it was needful."

"Mind you," Uncle Vorthys put in, "I wouldn't have chosen to drag the poor little fellow further into it if it weren't for those gabbling fools."

Gregor nodded understanding. "Before I begin, some caveats—words of warning. You may not be aware of it, Nikki, but in your uncle's household you have been living under a certain degree of security monitoring. At his request, it is usually as limited and unobtrusive as possible. It's only gone to a higher and more visible level twice in the last three years, during some unusually difficult cases of his."

"Aunt Vorthys showed us the outside vid pickups," Nikki offered tentatively.

"Those are part of it," Uncle Vorthys said. The least part, according to the thorough briefing a polite ImpSec officer in plainclothes had given Ekaterin the day after she and Nikki had moved in.

"All the comconsoles are also either secured or monitored," Gregor elaborated. "Both his vehicles are kept in guarded locations. Any unauthorized intruder should bring down an ImpSec response in under two minutes."

Nikki's eyes widened.

"One wonders how Vormoncrief got in," Ekaterin couldn't help darkly muttering.

Gregor smiled apologetically. "Your uncle doesn't choose to have ImpSec shake down his every casual visitor. And Vormoncrief was on the Known list due to his previous visits." He looked again at Nikki. "But if we continue this conversation today, you will perforce step over an invisible line, from a lower level of security monitoring to a rather higher one. While you live in your uncle's household, or if . . . you should ever go to live in Lord Vorkosigan's household, you wouldn't notice the difference. But any extensive travel on Barrayar will have to be cleared with a certain security officer, and your potential off-planet travel restricted. The list of schools you may attend will become suddenly much shorter, more exclusive, and, I'm sorry, more expensive. On the bright side, you won't have to worry much about encounters with casual criminals. On the dark side, any," he spared a nod for Ekaterin, "
hypothetical
kidnappers who did get through would have to be assumed to be highly professional and extremely dangerous."

Ekaterin caught her breath. "Miles didn't mention that part."

"I daresay Miles didn't even think about it. He's lived under exactly this sort of security screen most of his life. Does a fish think about water?"

Ekaterin darted a glance at Miles. He had a very odd look on his face, as though he'd just bounced off a force wall he hadn't known was there.

"Off-planet travel." Nikki seized on the one item in this intimidating list of importance to him. "But . . . I want to be a jump pilot."

"By the time you are old enough to study for a jump pilot, I expect the situation will have changed," said Gregor. "This applies mainly to the next few years. Do you still want to go on?"

He hadn't asked her. He'd asked Nikki. She held her breath, resisting the urge to prompt him.

Nikki licked his lips. "Yes," he said. "I want to know."

"Second warning," said Gregor. "You will not walk out of here with fewer questions than you have now. You will just trade one set for another. Everything I tell you will be true, but it will not be complete. And when I come to the end, you will be at the absolute limit of what you may presently know, both for your own safety and that of the Imperium. Do you still want to go on?"

Nikki nodded dumbly. He was transfixed by this intense man. So was Ekaterin.

"Third and last. Our Vor duties come upon us at a too-early age, sometimes. What I am about to tell you will impose a burden of silence upon you that would be hard for an adult to bear." He glanced at Miles and Ekaterin, and at Uncle Vorthys. "Though you will have your mother and aunt and uncle to share it with. But for what may be the first time, you must give your name's word in all seriousness. Can you?"

"Yes," Nikki whispered.

"Say it."

"I swear by my word as Vorsoisson . . ." Nikki hesitated, searching Gregor's face anxiously.

"To hold this conversation in confidence."

"To hold this conversation in confidence."

"Very well." Gregor sat back, apparently fully satisfied. "I'm going to make this as plain as possible. When Lord Vorkosigan went out-dome with your father that night to the experiment station, they surprised some thieves. And vice versa. Both your father and Lord Vorkosigan were hit with stunner fire. The thieves fled, leaving both men chained by the wrists to a railing on the outside of the station. Neither of them were strong enough to break the chains, though both tried."

Nikki sneaked a look at Miles, half the size of Tien, little bigger than Nikki himself. Ekaterin thought she could see the wheels turning in his head. If his father, so much bigger and stronger, had been unable to free himself, could Miles be blamed for likewise failing?

"The thieves did not mean for your father to die. They didn't know his breath-mask reservoirs were low. Nobody did. That was confirmed by fast-penta interrogation later. The technical name for this sort of accidental killing is not murder, but manslaughter, by the way."

Nikki was pale, but not yet on the verge of tears. He ventured, "And Lord Vorkosigan . . . couldn't share his mask because he was tied up . . . ?"

"We were about a meter apart," said Miles in a flat tone. "Neither of us could reach the other." He spread his hands a certain distance out to the sides. At the motion, his sleeves pulled back from his wrists; the ropy pink scars where the chains had cut to the bone edged into view. Could Nikki see that he'd nearly ripped his hands off, trying, Ekaterin wondered bleakly? Self-consciously, Miles pulled his cuffs back down, and put his hands on his knees.

"Now for the hard part," said Gregor, gathering Nikki back in by eye. It had to feel to Nikki as though they were the only two people in the universe.

He's going to go on? No—no, stop there . . . 
She wasn't sure what apprehension showed in her face, but Gregor spared it an acknowledging nod.

"This is the part your mother would never tell you. The
reason
your da took Lord Vorkosigan out to the station was because your da had let himself be bribed by the thieves. But he had changed his mind, and wanted Lord Vorkosigan to declare him an Imperial Witness. The thieves were angry at this betrayal. They chained him to the rail in that cruel way to punish his attempt to retrieve his honor. They left a data disc with documentation of his involvement taped to his back for his rescuers to find, to be certain of disgracing him, and then called your mama to come get him. But—not knowing about the low reservoirs—they called her too late."

Now Nikki was looking stunned and small.
Oh, poor son. I would not have tarnished Tien's honor in your eyes; surely in your eyes is where all our honor is kept . . . .

"Due to further facts about the thieves that no one can discuss with you, all of this is a State secret. As far as the rest of the world knows, your da and Lord Vorkosigan went out alone, met no one, became separated while on foot in the dark, and Lord Vorkosigan found your da too late. If anyone thinks Lord Vorkosigan had something to do with your da's death, we are not going to argue with them. You may state that it's not true and that you don't wish to discuss it. But don't let yourself be drawn into disputes."

"But . . ." said Nikki, "but that's not fair!"

"It's hard," said Gregor, "but it's necessary. Fair has nothing to do with it. To spare you the hardest part, your mama and uncle and Lord Vorkosigan told you the cover story, and not the real one. I can't say they were wrong to do so."

His eye and Miles's caught each other in a steady gaze; Miles's eyebrows inched up in a quizzical look, to which Gregor returned a tiny ironic nod. The Emperor's lips thinned in something that was not quite a smile.

"All the thieves are in Imperial custody, in a top-security prison. None of them will be leaving soon. All the justice that could be done, has been done; there's nothing left to finish there. If your father had lived, he would be in prison now too. Death wipes out all debts of honor. In my eyes, he has redeemed his crime and his name. He cannot do more."

It was all much, much tougher than anything Ekaterin had pictured, had dared to imagine Gregor or anyone forcing Nikki to confront. Uncle Vorthys looked very grim, and even Miles looked daunted.

No: this
was
the softened version. Tien had not been trying to retrieve his honor; he'd merely learned that his crime had been discovered and was scrambling to evade the consequences. But if Nikki were to cry out,
I don't care about honor! I want my da back!
could she say he was wrong? A little of that cry flickered in his eyes, she imagined.

Nikki looked across at Miles. "What
were
your two mistakes?"

He replied steadily, with what effort Ekaterin could not guess, "First, I failed to inform my security backup when I left the dome. When Tien took me out to the station we were both anticipating a cooperative confession, not a hostile confrontation. Then, when we surprised the . . . thieves, I was a second too slow drawing my own stunner. They fired first. A diplomatic hesitation. A second's delay. The greatest regrets are the tiniest."

"I want to see your wrists."

Miles pushed back his cuffs, and held out his hands, palm down and then palm up, for Nikki's close inspection.

Nikki's brow wrinkled. "Was your breath mask running out too?"

"No. Mine was fine. I'd checked it when I'd put it on."

"Oh." Nikki sat back, looking extremely subdued and pensive.

Everyone waited. After a minute, Gregor asked gently, "Do you have any more questions at this time?"

Mutely, Nikki shook his head.

Frowning thoughtfully, Gregor glanced at his chrono and rose, with a hand-down gesture that kept everyone else from popping to their feet. He strode to his desk, rummaged in a drawer, and returned to his seat. Leaning across the table he held out a code-card to Nikki. "Here, Nikki. This is for you to keep. Don't lose it."

The card had no markings at all. Nikki turned it over curiously, and looked his inquiry at Gregor.

"This card will code you in to my personal comconsole channel. A very few friends and relatives of mine have this access. When you put it in the read-slot of your comconsole, a man will appear and identify you and, if I am available, pass you through to the comconsole nearest to me. You don't have to tell him anything about your business. If you think of more questions later—as you may, I gave you a lot to absorb in a very short time—or if you simply need someone to talk to about this matter, you may use it to call me."