façade

[isthisart]

Linya gradually feels her way around being proper friends with Ekaterin, not wishing to wreck things with a premature "will you be my Second at my duplicate wedding" request. There is companionable gardening. There is, when Linya and Jocelyn make an unexpected sudden breakthrough in causing the nibs to behave, which holds when they fabricate a prototype and test it out, a fountain pen for Ekaterin. (In addition to Miles's and Count Vorkosigan's. And one for Emperor Gregor, which has got to be worth all the R&D in advertising alone.) When Miles's legs are more or less completely healed, they skip off to Vorkosigan Surleau for a few days and he teaches her to fly a lightflyer, which she enjoys very much and picks up very quickly. Linya writes Miles a song. (It has no words, she doesn't feel up to lyrics, but it is very pretty and slightly different every time she plays/sings it.) With the nibs handled and all the Barrayaran languages learned Linya spends more time reading textbooks and signs up for a university placement exam to see how far ahead into advanced classes on various things she can skip, and awaits her results.

And snuggles her tiny Barrayaran.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles puts a hand on the pipe to steady himself, but he needn't bother. Seven is a bony perch, but solid as the bedrock on which he stands. Now, grab here and there, and turn... blessed luck, the joint gives way before Miles's fragile fingers do anything more than ache warningly. With a squeak and a crack, the pipe disjoins, sagging a few inches at the juncture and loosing a sparkling stream of water to splash onto the rocky floor.

[ofthestars]

One powerful hand grabs Miles by the back of his shirt again and deposits him on the floor; then Seven puts his face in the stream, gulping down water as fast as semihumanly possible. He runs his fingers through his hair, rinses away the smears and encrustations of what is most probably rat blood, scrubs at his face and his hands and his arms until everything he can see is more or less clean. Then he has another long drink, splashing water everywhere.

Then he turns back to Miles.

"Can you find heat?" he rumbles. No longer quite so hoarse and dry, his voice turns out to be a deep husky near-growl, unpracticed with words but still clear enough to convey meaning.

[thisvorlunatic]

What sort of a wizard must he seem, to this unloved creature?

"Heat," says Miles, "heat... yeah, some of these pipes are for hot air. Better get close to the ceiling first, or it'll all just go to waste. I don't see the right kind here..." He squints into the darkness. "Let's try over there - ?" Before Seven can pick him up again, Miles starts off on his own steam, dodging around the intermittent pillars in search of a heating pipe low enough to be worth breaking open.

[ofthestars]

Seven trails him silently.

[thisvorlunatic]

At last: "There!" He points triumphantly, then deflates slightly. "I can't get the joints this time, though, they don't twist open the same way and the pipe's too big for me to turn if they did. I don't suppose you...?" He eyes the looming figure of Seven, seemingly comprised of muscle and bone and damn little else. "Maybe if you, I don't know, scored the plastic with your nails and then gave it a really good shove?" He scratches his own nails lightly around the circumference of the pipe, by way of demonstration.

[ofthestars]

Seven follows this suggestion. Scratch scratch scratch - his talonlike fingernails appear to weaken the plastic considerably, and then he climbs up between the pipe and the ceiling and braces himself there and pushes down. The hard plastic splinters apart where he scored it and gives a vast exhalation of hot air, before Seven wraps himself around the broken place and clings.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles contemplates this spectacle.

Miles pictures his original mission plan written on a plastic flimsy, and pictures himself taking that flimsy and crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it down a waste chute.

This creature, this Seven, is far from the doomed genetic mistake that Dr. Canaba described. He walks, he talks, he washes, he weeps; Miles can think of no viable definition of human from which this - man? boy? how old is he? - should be excluded. He is surprised by the strength of his own protective feelings.

When Seven unclasps the heat pipe and rubs at his eyes, Miles moves closer, seeking some of that warmth for himself. And answers. God, for some answers.

"They - um - call you Seven?" The old joke about who Six is afraid of flashes through his mind. He suppresses it as wildly inappropriate.

[ofthestars]

"Yeah. What do they call you?" he inquires, shifting to one side to allow Miles a spot in the cozy breeze.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Admiral Miles Naismith."

[ofthestars]

"Hm," says Seven. "I always thought officers would be... bigger."

[thisvorlunatic]

...Despite himself, Miles giggles.

"You're not the only one," he confides. "It's hell sometimes, trying to get people to pay attention. I have to be twice as spectacular as the next guy."

[ofthestars]

Seven nods thoughtfully.

"What did you do to get thrown down here?"

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles does a rapid evaluation of how much truth he can safely get away with. He fears strong reactions if he reveals the exact parameters of his mission.

"I was... actually looking for you," he says. "I'd heard something about some kind of super-soldier prototype being sold to Ryoval - actually, come to think, the first I heard of it was when the Baron got a call about what I suspect is what got you thrown down here. Three days or so ago, wasn't it? There was a, um, customer...? Described as 'mercifully unconscious'."

[ofthestars]

Seven displays teeth. The 'fangs' description may have been exaggerated, but not by all that much.

"I'm surprised he lived. Go on."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles manages not to gulp.

"So - so anyway, it seems to me that nobody deserves to be sold to Ryoval, and it seems to me that I could productively offer you a job, if I managed to get you away from him. I tried buying you first, but he didn't want to sell. Tried breaking in next - I got as far as interrogating their security chief before they caught me. I think they threw me in with you for ironic purposes, but I might as well make the most of it while I'm here... how do you feel about joining the Dendarii Mercenaries? We feed our recruits," he says, which he imagines will be a strong temptation. "And clothe them and house them and arm them and train them. Real soldier's training - I expect you haven't had a lot of that. What do you say?"

[ofthestars]

Seven looks around contemplatively at their surroundings.

Then he shrugs.

"I'm out of rats. Might as well. You get me out of here, I'll join your thing."

[thisvorlunatic]

"We'll get each other out of here," he promises. "Recruit-trainee... look, do you like being called Seven?"

[ofthestars]

He shakes his head.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles free-associates - beast, maze -

"Asterion," he says decisively, climbing to his chilled and aching feet. "Recruit-trainee Asterion. Let's have a look around."

[ofthestars]

Asterion smiles. It is infinitely less terrifying than the previous example.

[thisvorlunatic]

God, but Miles's heart aches...

"How old are you, Recruit-trainee Asterion?"

[ofthestars]

He claws his hair out of his face and follows Miles into the dark. "Fifteen and three months, standard."

[thisvorlunatic]

A veritable child, younger even than Miles was when he launched his premature galactic military career. Miles vividly recalls being fifteen and a freak. The well of his sympathy deepens.

"I got in here through the ducts. My team would boost me up, and I'd scurry around until I found out how to open the door they were stuck behind, then come back to collect them. I'm thinking of employing a similar strategy on the way out, provided we can find a duct for me to scurry into. How well do you know this hole in the ground?"

[ofthestars]

"Pretty well." He points out various features. "There's the ladder you came down, and three more, there and there and there - only one of them has a handle up top, and that's been locked every time I've tried it. There's a few different kinds of pillars all over the place. Over by the far end there's a big door that looks like it's supposed to roll up, but the controls to roll it up with don't work, or I couldn't get them to."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Right," says Miles. "So..." He thinks aloud. "We can head straight out the door, if I can get it open. And trek twenty-seven kilometers barefoot through the snow to the nearest settlement, with no money or comm equipment to call for a ride at the end of it. Or we can hang around and look for some promising ducts and see if we can't make off with something useful. The kit they took away from me when they caught me would be a prime start. I think I'm going to go with ducts on this one. Agreed?"