Irresistible Forces Read online

  What he? Roic couldn’t help wondering. She sounded rather sad about it. Some very tall admirer, now out of the picture? Larger than Roic? There weren’t too many men of that description around.

  Lady Alys rounded out the afternoon by guiding her new protégée to an exclusive tearoom, much frequented by high Vor matrons. This proved to be partly for the purposes of tutorial, party to refuel Taura’s ferocious metabolism. While the server brought dish after dish, Lady Alys offered a brisk stream of advice on everything from gracefully exiting a groundcar in restrictive clothing to posture to table manners to the intricacies of Vor social rank. Despite her outsized scale, Taura was naturally athletic and coordinated, seeming to improve almost as Roic watched.

  Drafted as practice gentleman, Roic found himself coming in for a few sharp corrections, too. He felt very conspicuous and clumsy at first, until he realized that, next to Taura, he might as well be invisible. If they drew sidelong looks from other diners, at least the comments were low-voiced or far enough away that he was not compelled to take notice; besides, Taura’s attention was entirely upon her mentor. Unlike Roic, she never needed the same instruction twice.

  When Lady Vorpatril removed herself to consult with the head server about some fine point, Taura leaned over to whisper, “She’s very good at this, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. The best.”

  She sat back with a smile of satisfaction. “Miles’s people generally are.” She regarded Roic appraisingly.

  A server guided a well-dressed Vor matron shepherding a girl-child about Nikki’s age past their table toward their own seating. The girl stopped short and stared at Taura. Her hand lifted, pointing in astonishment. “Mama, look at that gigantic—”

  The mother captured the hand, shot an alarmed glance at them, and began some hushed admonishment about it not being polite to point. Taura essayed a big friendly smile at the girl. A mistake…

  The girl screamed and buried her face in her mother’s skirts, hands frantically clutching. The woman shot Taura a furious, frightened glower and hustled the little girl away, not toward their table but to the exit. Across the tearoom, Lady Alys’s head swiveled around.

  Roic looked back at Taura, then wished he hadn’t. Her face froze, appalled, then crumpled in distress; she seemed about to burst into tears but caught herself with a long indrawn breath, held for a moment.

  Tensed to spring—where?—Roic instead eased back helplessly in his chair. Hadn’t m’lord specifically detailed him to prevent this sort of thing?

  With a gulp, Taura brought her breathing back under control. She looked as wan as though she’d been wounded by a knife thrust. Yet what could he have done? He couldn’t very well draw his stunner and pot some Vor lady’s terrified kid…

  Lady Alys, taking in the incident, returned quickly. With a special frown at Roic, she slid back into her seat. She smoothed over the moment with some light comment, but the outing did not recover its cheerful tone; Taura kept trying to shrink down and sit smaller, a futile exercise, and whenever she began to smile, stopped and tried to hold her hand over her mouth.

  Roic wished he were back patrolling Hassadar alleys.

  Roic arrived with his charges at Vorkosigan House feeling as though he’d been run through a wringer. Backward. Several times. He peered around the tower of garment boxes he carried—the rest, Madame Estelle had assured Taura, would be delivered—and managed not to drop them getting through the carved doors. Under Lady Vorpatril’s direction, he handed off the boxes to a pair of maidservants, who whisked them away.

  M’lord’s voice wafted from the antechamber to the library. “Is that you, Aunt Alys? We’re in here.”

  Roic trod belatedly after the two disparate women just in time to see m’lord introduce Sergeant Taura to his fiancée, Madame Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Like, it seemed, everyone but Roic, she had apparently been warned in advance; she didn’t even blink, holding out one hand to the huge galactic woman and offering her an impeccably polite welcome. M’lady-to-be looked fatigued this evening, although that might be partially the effect of the drab gray half-mourning she still wore, her dark hair drawn back in a severe knot. The garb went with the gray civilian suits m’lord favored, though, giving the effect of two players on the same team.

  M’lord regarded the new green outfit with unfeigned enthusiasm. “Splendid work, Aunt Alys! I knew I could rely on you. That’s a stunning look with the hair, Taura.” He peered upward. “Are the fleet medicos making some new headway with the extension treatments? I don’t see any gray at all. Great!”

  She hesitated, then replied, “No, I just got some customized dye to match it.”

  “Ah.” He made an apologetic motion, as if brushing away his last words. “Well, it looks lovely.”

  New voices sounded from the entry hall, Armsman Pym admitting a visitor.

  “No need to announce me, Pym.”

  “He’s right in there, then, sir. Lady Alys just arrived.”

  “Better still.”

  Simon Illyan (ImpSec, retired) entered upon these words, bent to kiss Lady Alys’s hand, then tucked it through one arm as he straightened. She smiled fondly at him, and he snugged her in close to his side. He, too, absorbed his introduction to the towering Sergeant Taura with unruffled calm, bowing over her hand and saying, “I am so pleased to have a chance to meet you at last, Sergeant. I hope your visit to Barrayar has been pleasant so far?”

  “Yes, sir,” she rumbled back, apparently controlling an impulse to salute the man only because he still held her hand. Roic didn’t blame her; he was taller than Illyan, too, but the formidable former Chief of Imperial Security made him want to salute, and he’d never even been in the military. “Lady Alys has been wonderful.” No one, it seemed, was going to mention the unfortunate incident in the tearoom.

  “I’m not surprised. Oh, Miles,” Illyan continued, “I’ve just come from the Imperial Residence. Some good news came in when I was saying good-bye to Gregor. Lord Vorbataille was arrested this afternoon at the Vorbarr Sultana shuttleport, trying to leave the planet in disguise.”

  M’lord blew out his breath. “That’s going to put that ugly little case to bed, then. Good. I was afraid it was going to drag on over Winterfair.”

  Illyan smiled. “I wondered if that might have had something to do with the energy with which you tackled it.”

  “Heh. I shall give dear Gregor the benefit of the doubt and assume he did not have my personal deadline in mind when he assigned me to it. The mess did proliferate unexpectedly.”

  “Case?” Sergeant Taura inquired.

  “My new job as one of the nine Imperial Auditors for Emperor Gregor took an odd and unexpected turn into criminal investigation a month or so back,” m’lord explained. “We found that Lord Vorbataille, who is a count’s heir—like me—from one of our southern districts, had involved himself with a Jacksonian smuggling ring. Or, possibly, been suborned by it. Anyway, by the time his sins caught up with him he was up to his eyebrows in illicit traffic, hijacking, and murder. Very bad company, now wholly out of business, I’m pleased to report. Gregor is considering sending the Jacksonians home in a box, suitably frozen; let their backers decide if they are worth the expense of reviving. If everything is finally proved on Vorbataille that I think will be…for his father’s sake, he may be allowed to suicide in his cell.” M’lord grimaced. “If not, the Council of Counts will have to be persuaded to endorse a more direct redemption of the honor of the Vor. Corruption on this level can’t be allowed to slop over and give us all a bad name.”

  “Gregor is very pleased with your work on this one,” Illyan remarked.

  “I’ll bet. He was livid about the Princess Olivia hijacking, in his own understated way. An unarmed ship, all those poor dead passengers—God, what a nightmare.”

  Roic listened a bit wistfully to all this. He thought he might have done more this past month when m’lord was buzzing in and out on the high-profile case, but Pym hadn’t assigned him to the duty. Granted
, someone had to stand night guard for Vorkosigan House. Week after week…

  “But enough of this nasty business”—m’lord caught Madame Vorsoisson’s grateful glance—“let’s turn to more cheerful affairs. Why don’t you finish opening that next package, love?”

  Madame Vorsoisson turned back to the crowded table and the task everyone’s arrival had interrupted. “Here’s the card. Oh. Admiral Quinn, again?”

  M’lord took it, brows rising. “What, no limerick this time? How disappointing.”

  “Perhaps this one is to make up for—Oh, my. I imagine so. And all the way from Earth!” From a small box, she drew a short, triple strand of matched pearls and held them up to her throat. “Choker-style…oh, how pretty.” Momentarily, she let the iridescent spheres line up upon her neck, touching the two ends of the clasp in back.

  “Would you like me to fasten it?” her bridegroom offered.

  “Just for a moment…” She bent her head, and m’lord reached up and fiddled with the catch at her nape. She walked to the mirror over the room’s unlit fireplace, turning to watch the exquisite ornament catch the light, and gave m’lord a quizzical smile. “I believe they would go perfectly with what I’m wearing the day after tomorrow. Don’t you think, Lady Alys?”

  Lady Alys tilted her head in sartorial judgment. “Why, yes, indeed.”

  M’lord bowed at this endorsement by the highest authority. The look he exchanged with his bride was less decipherable to Roic, but he seemed very pleased, even relieved. Sergeant Taura, watching the byplay, frowned in unease.

  Madame Vorsoisson removed the strands and laid them back in their velvet-lined box, where they glowed softly. “I believe we should let your guests freshen up before dinner, Miles.”

  “Oh, yes. Except I need to borrow Simon for a moment. Will you excuse us? There will be drinks in the library again when you are all ready. Someone let Arde know. Where is Arde?”

  “Nikki captured him and carried him off,” said Madame Vorsoisson. “I should probably go rescue the poor man.”

  M’lord and Illyan withdrew to the library. Lady Alys escorted Taura away, presumably for one last tutorial on Barrayaran etiquette before the impending formal dinner with Count and Countess Vorkosigan. Taura glanced back at the bride, still frowning. Roic watched the giant woman out with some regret, distracted by the sudden speculation of what it would be like to patrol a Hassadar alley with her.

  “M’lady—Madame Vorsoisson, that is,” Roic began as she started to turn away.

  “Not for much longer.” She smiled, turning back.

  “What’s with…that is, how old is Sergeant Taura? Do you know?”

  “Around twenty-six standard, I believe.”

  A little younger than Roic, actually. It felt unfair that the galactic woman should seem so much more…complicated. “Then why is her hair turning gray? If she’s bioengineered, I wouldn’t have thought they’d muff up such details.”

  Madame Vorsoisson made a little gesture of apology. “I believe that is a private matter for her, which is not mine to discuss.”

  “Oh.” Roic’s brow wrinkled in bafflement. “Where’d she come from? Where did m’lord meet her?”

  “On one of his old covert ops missions, he tells me. He rescued her from a particularly vile bioengineering facility on the planet of Jackson’s Whole. They were trying to develop a super-soldier. Having escaped enslavement, she became an especially valued colleague on his ops team.” She added after a contemplative moment, “And sometime-lover. Also especially valued, I understand.”

  Roic felt suddenly very…rural. Backcountry. Not up to speed on the sophisticated, galactic-tinged Vor life of the capital. “Er…he told you? And—and you’re all right with that?” He wondered if meeting Sergeant Taura had rattled her more than she’d let on.

  “It was before my time, Roic.” Her smile crimped a little. “I actually wasn’t sure if he was confessing or bragging, but now that I’ve seen her, I rather think he was bragging.”

  “But—but how would…I mean, she’s so tall, and he’s, um…”

  Now her eyes narrowed with laughter at him, although her lips remained demure. “He didn’t supply me with that much detail, Roic. It wouldn’t have been gentlemanly.”

  “To you? No, I guess not.”

  “To her.”

  “Oh. Oh. Um, yeah.”

  “For what it’s worth, I have heard him remark that a height differential matters much less when two people are lying down. I find I must agree.” With a smile he really didn’t dare try to interpret, she moved off in search of Nikki.

  A scant hour later, Roic was surprised when Pym gave him a heads-up on his wrist com to bring m’lord’s groundcar around. He parked it under the porte cochere and entered the black-and-white paved hall to find m’lord assisting Madame Vorsoisson on with her wraps.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” m’lord asked her anxiously. “I’d like to go with you, see you get home and in all right.”

  Madame Vorsoisson pressed a hand to her forehead. Her face was pale and damp, almost greenish. “No. No. Roic will get me there. Go back to your guests. They’ve come so far, and you’ll only be getting to see them for such a short time. I’m sorry to be such a drip. Give my abject apologies to the count and countess.”

  “If you don’t feel well, you don’t feel well. Don’t apologize. Do you think you’re coming down with something? I could send our personal physician round.”

  “I don’t know. I hope not, not now! It mostly seems to be a headache.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think I have a fever.”

  He reached up to touch her brow; she winced. “No, you’re not hot. But you’re all clammy.” He hesitated, then asked more quietly, “Nerves, d’you think?”

  She hesitated, too. “I don’t know.”

  “I have all the wedding logistics under control, you know. All you have to do is show up.”

  Her smile was pained. “And not fall over.”

  He was silent a little longer this time. “You know, if you decide that you really can’t go through with it, you can call a halt. Any time. Right up to the last. Hope you won’t, of course. But I need you to know you could.”

  “What, with everyone from the emperor and the empress on down coming? I think not.”

  “I’d cover it, if I had to.” He swallowed. “I know you said you wanted a small wedding, but I didn’t realize you meant tiny. I’m sorry.”

  She blew out her breath in something like exasperation. “Miles, I love you dearly, but if I’m going to start throwing up, I’d really prefer to be home first.”

  “Oh. Yes. Roic, if you please?” He motioned to his armsman.

  Roic took Madame Vorsoisson’s arm, which was trembling.

  “I’ll send Nikki home safely with one of the armsmen after dessert, or after he wears Arde out. I’ll call your house and let them know you’re coming,” m’lord called after her.

  She waved in acknowledgment; Roic helped her into the rear compartment and closed the canopy. Her shadowed form sat bent, head clutched in her hands.

  M’lord chewed on his knuckle and stared in distress as the house doors swung shut upon him.

  Roic’s night shift was cut short at dawn the next morning when the count’s guard commander called him on his wrist com and told him to report to the front hall in running gear; one of m’lord’s guests wanted to go out to take some exercise.

  He arrived, shrugging on his jacket, to find Taura bending and stretching in a vigorous series of warm-ups under Pym’s bemused eye. Lady Alys’s modiste hadn’t gotten around to providing active wear, it appeared, because the huge woman wore a plain set of well-worn ship knits, although in neutral gray rather than blinding pink. The fabric hugged the smooth curves of a lean musculature that, without being bulky, gave an unmistakable impression of coiled power. The braid down her back looked cheery and sporting in this comfortable context.

  “Oh, Armsman Roic, good morning,” she said, start
ed to smile, then lifted her hand to her mouth.

  “You don’t—” Roic motioned inarticulately. “You don’t have to do that for me. I like your smile.” It wasn’t, he realized, altogether a polite lie. Now that I’m getting used to it.

  Her fangs glinted. “I hope they didn’t drag you out of bed. Miles said his people just used the sidewalk around this block for their running track, since it was about a kilometer. I don’t think I can go astray.”

  Roic intercepted a Look from Pym. Roic hadn’t been called out to keep m’lord’s galactic guest from getting lost; he was there to deal with any altercations that might result from startled Vorbarr Sultana drivers crashing their vehicles into the sidewalk or each other at the sight of her.

  “No problem,” said Roic promptly. “We usually use the ballroom for a sort of gymnasium in weather like this, but it’s being all decorated for the reception. So I’m behind on my fitness training for the month. It’ll be a nice change to do my laps with someone who’s not so much older, um, that is, so much shorter than me.” He sneaked a glance at Pym.

  Pym’s wintry smile promised retribution for that dig as he coded open the doors for them. “Enjoy yourselves, children.”

  The biting air blew away Roic’s night-fatigue. He guided Taura out past the guard at the main gate and turned right along the high gray wall. After a few steps, she extended herself and began an easy lope. Within a very few minutes, Roic was regretting his cheap shot at the middle-aged Pym; Taura’s long legs ate the distance. Roic kept half an eye on the early morning traffic, fortunately still light, and concentrated the rest of his attention on not disgracing House Vorkosigan by collapsing in a gasping heap. Taura’s eyes grew brilliant with exhilaration as she ran, as if her spirit expanded into her body as her body stretched out to make room.

  Half a dozen laps barely winded her, but she slowed at last to a walk, perhaps out of pity for her guide. “Let’s circle through the garden to cool down,” Roic wheezed. Madame Vorsoisson’s garden, which occupied a third of the block and was her bride-gift to m’lord, was among other things sheltered from view of the cross streets by walls and banks. They dodged around the barricades temporarily barring public access till after the wedding.