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]

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."

[on_my_word]

Aral leans sideways a little to peer into the box and see the shiny toy for himself.

[isthisart]

"Will you let me know if there's anything that needs tweaking about the tutorial software? Most of the rest of it is imported directly from my pen, but the tutorial is new; I didn't need one."

[greatcomposure]

"Definitely," Cordelia assures her. "I'll go play with it right after dinner."

[isthisart]

Linya grins.

"I'm making progress on the optics for the fancy nib version," she adds. "I am now pretty sure it's doable."

[greatcomposure]

"Have you told Miles? Was he absurdly excited?"

[isthisart]

"I don't know about 'absurdly'. But yes."

[greatcomposure]

"I really hope these things prove to be as useful as they are charming. For once Barrayar could be technologically ahead of the rest of the galaxy on something."

[isthisart]

"One nice thing about them is that they will network with each other even if there isn't an underlying infrastructure. So if you distribute them to people who don't have comconsoles they will still be able to write each other notes - or send each other drawings, for that matter, though the current tutorial edition does presume literacy in English I could probably develop or contract out the development of a pictorial version. And they do have to have electricity, I didn't have a way around that part."

[greatcomposure]

"Interesting. That direction might have a lot of potential."

[isthisart]

"They are currently kind of expensive per unit, but the price point should drop over the next year or so as the supplies of relevant materials readjust to the demand."

[greatcomposure]

"It would sure be convenient if they could be made cheaply."

[isthisart]

"Yes. I might be able to simplify it further, the casing especially, but that would probably come at a cost of reduced performance - the casing is pressure-sensitive and will be able to learn how you hold your hand when you're making specific gestures, which lets you be a lot sloppier and faster," she explains.

[greatcomposure]

"Makes sense. Well, we'll see."

[isthisart]

"Mm-hm."

Time continues to pass - with the first edition of pen software awaiting reports from beta testing, Linya isn't doing programming, and she's learned all of her new planet's significant languages, so she plays music - mostly on the keyboard up in the suite to entertain her bored and flat husband - and she looks up everyone on the guest list so she'll know what they look like and a few things about them, and she downloads some miscellaneous textbooks to read with a view to seeing what seems most up her alley and maybe enrolling in formal classes at the university if they'll let her test out of what prerequisites she already knows.

She keeps a close eye on how much discomfort Miles seems to be in, and winds up snuggled less and less cautiously each morning as days march by.

[thisvorlunatic]

One particular morning, Miles is unusually chipper and fast-moving on his way back from the bathroom - less of a shuffle and more of an actual walk. He climbs into bed and snuggles up happily.

[isthisart]

Snuggle!

"You seem to be on the mend."