line dance

[isthisart]

Linya settles thoroughly in. The rest of her Barrayaran clothes filter in and she mixes and matches in Alys-approved ways. Cordelia continues to be welcoming; the Count continues to be more or less awkward (though she does catch him stifling a laugh the first time she has occasion to scoop up her husband in his presence). Tsipis continues to be marvelously helpful; between them they pick a factory that will be able to make pens for a reasonable bid, and she goes in to visit and makes sure they have everything right and decides what colors the chassis ought to come in (four standard colors, a dozen more available as custom order with optional engraving). She asks Cordelia what color she wants hers; since she doesn't want a complicated nib-end she can have the first one off the production line. For the complicated-nib version, Linya is still studying optics. She writes a letter to a local manufacturer of holoprojectors to see if they have any insight. She wraps up her study of Greek and starts on French - French, she already knew, but this is a different dialect with peculiar Barrayaran Cyrillic spelling rules, so it still requires nonzero effort.

Oh, and she snuggles her tiny Barrayaran. And makes music and has groats for breakfast roughly every other day.

Setting a date for a groat-related wedding as opposed to a groat-related breakfast is a little complicated, but they are formally, as it were, engaged.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"Hungry," he admits. "Sleepy. And very cuddled."

[isthisart]

"We can get breakfast sent up." She gets her pen and sends the kitchen a note; it took a little doing to make the comm system accept the pen as one of its nodes but that's long handled. "At dinner the 'Lady Vorkosigan Doesn't Bite' party became somewhat less hypothetical. Although apparently ethanol is not optional at Barrayaran parties."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Optional to drink, sure. Optional to serve? God, no, of course not - at least not the big social-elite kind of party. It'd be like hosting a Cetagandan party with a strict dress code telling your guests to show up in clothing made exclusively from potato sacks. Do you even have potato sacks?"

[isthisart]

"Well, we have potatoes, although their transport containers tended to be secreted away in the servitors' areas, so whether they come in sacks specifically I could not say. Would it really? How is it so essential?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Tradition. There's a whole cultural thing about wine, it almost is like a parallel to fashion in its way - people judge your wealth and your aesthetics by what drinks you serve with what at what occasions. And there's a cultural language surrounding other alcoholic beverages, too, wine is just the most complicated subcategory. Like, Vorkosigan District maple mead is famously a poor rural beverage, you'd never serve it at a high-class gathering like the Linya Doesn't Bite Party, but in the poor rural areas of Vorkosigan District - which is most of Vorkosigan District - they serve it at their parties. If I took it into my head to bring you to Silvy Vale and introduce you to the Csuriks, you can bet there'd be maple mead involved. Providing socially appropriate forms of ethanol to your guests is a standard aspect of hospitality."

[isthisart]

"What a lot of fuss over the mix-ins for one's intoxicants."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, well, no one ever said tradition had to make sense."

[isthisart]

"It's true. Am I sacrificing a lot of opportunity to favorably impress people if I don't take the occasional sip of wine? At least in theory my liver should be able to handle it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"If you can learn all the aesthetic ins and outs, which I have every faith you can do, that certainly will be an opportunity to favourably impress people. Up to you if it's worth the amount of wine you'd have to sip and the amount of expert advice you'd have to seek out from God knows who - my grandfather could've set you right up, assuming he didn't shoot you on sight, but unfortunately my grandfather is dead and I have no taste in wine whatsoever. I don't think Father does either, and Mother avoids ethanol where possible."

[isthisart]

"So perhaps at this party I'll refrain, but if I make friends with a wine expert and don't find the stuff totally unpalatable I'll keep it in mind, I suppose, put my metabolism through its paces. Shot me on sight, really? I didn't think that was standard for unarmed noncombatant females even while actively at war."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm exaggerating. But I wouldn't consider it one hundred percent impossible, the way I did with Da. Grandfather was, um... complicated."

[isthisart]

"Is 'complicated' here a word for 'opposed to a Cetagandan marrying his grandchild' or did he have traits besides that and knowing wine?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Plenty of them. He was all kinds of a hero. The way I think of it... he lived through so many huge cultural shifts, carried the planet through so many huge cultural shifts, by the time I was born he was just too old to change one last time. He gave it an effort - I won him over by falling in love with his horses when I was five, I think - but he just couldn't deal with a mutie grandson, not completely. If he'd lived long enough to see me marry you, I think the shrivelled remnants of his mental flexibility wouldn't have been up to handling a haut Lady Vorkosigan, and he would've defaulted back to the military mindset."

[isthisart]

"That sounds - unpleasant. For both of you, really."

Snuggle.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles sighs. "Yeah."

[isthisart]

Snuggle, snuggle.

A few days later Linya brings Miles a preliminary guest list - no invitations have yet been sent, but there are the Count and Countess's first picks plus a few of Emperor Gregor's suggestions, recently appended.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles browses it, mostly silently until he reaches the end.

"Lord Auditor Vorparadijs? What the hell's Gregor want that old stick on the roster for? All I've ever seen him do is complain about anything that's happened since Emperor Ezar died and give everyone in earshot detailed updates on the condition of his bowels." He scans a few lines down. "And Lord Auditor Vorthys? Good God, what did I do?"

[isthisart]

"Lord Auditors are the sort of people who ominously appear at parties when you have gotten up to shenanigans?" inquires Linya.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um... Imperial Auditors are... I don't know any offworld equivalent. They don't have an explicit job description as such, but in the old days when Counts were the Emperor's tax collectors, Imperial Auditors were the fellows who went out to shake them down when they got sticky fingers. Nowadays, Counts have more duties than overseeing the flow of money to Gregor from his subjects, and Imperial Auditors have more duties than unclogging their financial pipes. But the basic concept of being the person the Emperor sends to deal with things when somebody important has majorly effed something up is still the foundation of the post. They speak with the Emperor's Voice - meaning, for practical purposes, that they wield his full authority and only he can countermand their orders. It's supremely prestigious, needless to say, and they all have to be men of absolute integrity and impeccable reputation."

He frowns thoughtfully at the list.

"I suppose inviting two of the less threatening ones is Gregor's way of firmly declaring his Imperial approval of our marriage without actually showing up and saying," he puts on a half-decent impression of Gregor's dry tones, "'We request and require that you louts be very, very polite to the new Lady Vorkosigan.' Although I see he's also written himself in as Count Vorbarra. A nice little bit of social sleight-of-hand so he can come to the party without the kind of fuss generated by a public appearance of the Emperor."

[isthisart]

"I really do not understand how coming under his alternative title means that he is not making an Imperial appearance, but if you say that's how it works I suppose I'll believe you."

[thisvorlunatic]

"He's not making an official Imperial appearance. He's still the Emperor, but he's not - actively empering. So people can address him as 'Count Vorbarra' instead of 'Sire', and he drops some of the more ostentatious security arrangements, and it's generally understood that he is present in a low-key social capacity."

[isthisart]

"I suppose it's nice to have the option if people will cooperate with the associated polite fictions."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes."

[isthisart]

Linya gives him a kiss.

The first batch-produced pen rolls off the line, blue with the custom transparent swirl in the colored enamel. Linya consults Alys and gets a little beribboned box to put the pen, its charger/external data storage object, its basic instructional flimsy, and its necklace collar into all together, and presents it to Cordelia at dinner the following day.

[greatcomposure]

"Ooh. Shiny toy," says Cordelia, gazing delightedly into the box. "Thank you, Linyabel."