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shocked to find themselves of interest to Imperial
Security."
"Anything else?" said Vorkosigan.
Illyan yawned behind his hand, and apologized. "It's been a long night. My
night shift man got me out of bed after midnight.
Good man, good judgment. No, that about wraps it up, except for Kou's
motivation for going down there in the first place. He went all vague, and
started asking for pain medication, when we came to that subject. I was hoping
you might have a suggestion, to ease my paranoias. Being suspicious of Kou
gives me a crick in the neck." He yawned again.
"I do," said Cordelia, "but for your paranoia, not for your report, all
right?"
He nodded.
"I think he's in love with someone. After all, you don't test something unless
you're planning to use it. Unfortunately his test was a major disaster. I
expect he'll be pretty depressed and touchy for quite some time."
Vorkosigan nodded understanding.
"Any idea who?" asked Illyan automatically.
"Yes, but I don't think it's your business. Especially if it's not going to
happen."
Illyan shrugged acceptance, and left to pursue his lost sheep, the missing man
who'd first been assigned to follow Koudelka.
Sergeant Bothari was back at Vorkosigan House, though not yet back on duty,
within five days, a plastic casing on the broken arm. He volunteered no
information on the brutal affair, and discouraged curious questioners with a
sour glower and noncommittal grunts.
Droushnakovi asked no questions and offered no comments. But Cordelia saw her
occasionally cast a haunted look at the empty comconsole in the library, with
its double-scrambled links to the Imperial Residence and the General Staff
Headquarters, where Koudelka usually sat to work while at Vorkosigan House.
Cordelia wondered just how much detail of that night's events had been poured,
searing as lead, into her ears.
Lieutenant Koudelka returned to curtailed light duties the following month,
apparently quite cheerful and unaffected by his ordeal. But in his own way he
was as uninformative as Bothari. Questioning Bothari had been like questioning
a wall.
Questioning Koudelka was like talking to a stream; one got back babble, or
little eddies of jokes, or anecdotes that pulled the current of the discussion
inexorably away from the original subject. Cordelia responded to his sunniness
with automatic good grace, playing along with his obvious desire to slide over
the affair as lightly as possible. Inwardly she was far more doubtful.
Her own mood was not the best. Her imagination returned again and again to the
assassination scare of six weeks ago, dwelling uncomfortably on the chances
that had almost taken Vorkosigan from her. Only when he was with her was she
completely at ease, and he was gone more and more now. Something was brewing
at Imperial HQ; he had been gone four times to all-night sessions, and had
taken a trip without her, some flying inspection of military affairs, of which
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he gave her no details and from which he returned white-tired around the eyes.
He came in and out at odd hours. The flow of military and political gossip and
chitchat with which he was wont to entertain her at meals, or undressing for
bed, dried up to an uncommunicative silence, though he seemed to need her
presence no less.
Where would she be without him? A pregnant widow, without family or friends,
bearing a child already a focal point of dynastic paranoias, inheritor of a
legacy of violence. Could she get off-planet? And where would she go if she
could? Would Beta
Colony ever let her come back?
Even the autumn rain, and the fat lingering greenness of the city parks, began
to fail to please her. Oh, for a breath of really dry desert air, the familiar
alkali tang, the endless flat distances. Would her son ever know what a real
desert was? The horizons here, crowded close with buildings and vegetation,
seemed almost to rise around her like a huge wall at times. On really bad days
the wall seemed to topple inward.
She was holed up in the library one rainy afternoon, curled on an old
high-backed sofa, reading, for the third time, a page in an old volume from
the Count's shelves. The book was a relic of the printer's art from the Time
of Isolation. The English in which it was written was printed in a mutant
variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, all forty-six characters of it, once used
for all tongues on
Barrayar. Her mind seemed unusually mushy and unresponsive to it today. She
turned out the light and rested her eyes a few minutes. With relief, she
observed Lieutenant Koudelka enter the library and seat himself, stiffly and
carefully, at the comconsole.
I shan't interrupt him; he at least has real work to do, she thought, not yet
returning to her page, but still comforted by his unconscious company.
He worked only for a moment or two, then shut down the machine with a sigh,
staring abstractedly into the empty carved fireplace that was the room's
original centerpiece, still not noticing her. So, I'm not the only one who
can't concentrate. Maybe it's this strange grey weather. It does seem to have
a depressing effect on people...
Picking up his swordstick, he ran a hand down the smooth length of its casing.
He clicked it open, holding it firmly and releasing the spring silently and
slowly. He sighted along the length of the gleaming blade, which almost seemed
to glow with a light of its own in the shadowed room, and angled it, as if
meditating on its pattern and fine workmanship. He then turned it end for end,
point over his left shoulder and hilt away from him. He wrapped a handkerchief
around the blade for a hold, and pressed it, very lightly, against the side of
his neck over the area of the carotid artery. The expression on his face was
distant and thoughtful, his grip on the blade as light as a lover's. His hand
tightened suddenly.
Her indrawn breath, the first half of a sob, startled him from his reverie. He
looked up to see her for the first time; his lips thinned and his face turned
a dusky red. He swung the sword down. It left a white line on his neck, like
part of a necklace, with a few ruby drops of blood welling along it.
"I... didn't see you, Milady," he said hoarsely. "I... don't mind me. Just
fooling around, you know."
They stared at each other in silence. Her own words broke from her lips
against her will. "I hate this place! I'm afraid all the time, now."
She turned her face into the high side of the sofa, and, to her own horror,
began to cry. Stop it! Not in front of Kou of all people! The man has enough
real troubles without you dumping your imaginary ones on him. But she couldn't
stop.
He levered himself up and limped over to her couch, looking worried.
Tentatively, he seated himself beside her.
"Um..." he began. "Don't cry, Milady. I was just fooling around, really." He
patted her clumsily on the shoulder.
"Garbage," she choked back at him. "You scare the hell out of me." On impulse
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she transferred her tear-smeared face from the cold silken fabric of the sofa
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