overture

[isthisart]

Nine days into their fourteen-day trip, the courier ship arrives in the Komarr system. Five more jumps to go. Miles is not yet capable of peeling himself off a willing Linya before he passes out (and willingness is in no short supply), and the resulting peculiar sleep schedule causes Ivan no end of giggling. Linya draws him diagrams of more complicated braids as aspirational goals (getting five and a half feet of slidy-soft hair to be in even the simplest braid properly is a little tricky), which induces Miles to spend most of a day fascinatedly braiding and rebraiding her hair in various configurations. She, meanwhile, writes pen software that eats standard comconsole software and renders it for pen-ability in what she thinks is a user-friendly manner, and works on Russian.

When they reach the Komarr system, there's a message squirt, bounced at lightspeed from the little ships that do nothing but dance back and forth from side to side of the intervening wormholes collecting and broadcasting data. It says that Captain Illyan invites Miles to supplement his mission report by bringing his wife along.

Comments

[as_i_remember]

He leads them through a maze of labyrinthine corridors to a smallish, minimally decorated, exquisitely tidy office, where he takes a seat behind the desk and gestures the wedded couple into the two chairs in front.

"Now," he says, looking contemplatively at Linyabel. "I would like to hear, from your own point of view, in as much detail as you feel is relevant, with as little editorial commentary from your husband as possible, just how the two of you came to be married."

[isthisart]

"In the course of my running errands for the then-Handmaiden, now-Empress, the haut Lisbet, I encountered Miles during a series of unusual events I imagine will be fully described in his report, though I will redundantly summarize them if you like. I was already more or less poised to be ejected from my constellation in favor of exogamous marriage most probably to a ghem-lord, though normally this would have waited a decade or two. This came up in conversation between myself and Miles, and I found him more appealing than an arbitrary ghem-lord or continuing to cool my heels in ornamental uselessness in a constellation apartment, and he found me more appealing than... most anything, as far as I can tell... so when he was sufficiently impressive to earn various rewards from the Cetagandan Empire, I asked Lisbet to arrange that I be one of them. She did."

[as_i_remember]

"I would be fascinated to hear your redundant summary," he says.

[isthisart]

"It involved a matter embarrassing to certain parties among the haut, and ideally would not spread willy-nilly as social gossip."

[as_i_remember]

"Of course," he says agreeably. "Believe me, I'm familiar with the principle."

[isthisart]

Linya nods.

"The haut gene bank was kept in a single central location and accessed with a single cryptographic Key. This Key was stolen, a decoy was made and fell into Miles's hands - I'm glossing over the whys and hows because the question you asked was about how we came to be married - and Lisbet sent me to draw him aside at one of the events surrounding the previous Celestial Lady's funeral and ask for it back in case what he had was the real one. He didn't have the decoy on his person that time; the second time he had, and I found it defective, and after that I conducted him to meet Lisbet directly, as she acknowledged his interest in the matter.

"There was a modest amount of social conversation between us around these interactions, and at one point Miles asked me why I didn't want to marry a ghem-lord, and I told him that it would be a step down in terms of ability to do practically useful things - discouraged more or less for aesthetic reasons while I was within the constellation, impractical for resource and time commitment reasons if married to a ghem-lord. And he produced a very appealing little speech about what he would do with a haut-wife if he had one, and I told him to warn me if he did anything very impressive in the environs of Cetaganda.

"And then when Lisbet sent him away on that occasion she asked me 'do you want to marry the little Barrayaran?' and I said that I did and she said she'd put a word in with Emperor Fletchir.

"Miles did something impressive within the environs of Cetaganda. I helped; I masqueraded as the haut Vio who was in on the key theft plot and smuggled Miles up to the culprit's shuttle in her rejiggered force-screen. The key was retrieved, the guilty were captured, and our helpful offworlder got - presents."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles gazes at his wife with transparent adoration.

[as_i_remember]

"I see," murmurs Illyan. It's possible that he may be slightly amused.

[isthisart]

Linya smiles down at her little Barraryaran.

[as_i_remember]

"Lieutenant Vorkosigan, I believe I originally requested a written report...?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, sir," he agrees, and he produces his cipher disk and hands it over. "I... really do think I didn't do anything you wouldn't have asked me to, if you'd been there." With a glance up at his wife, he adds, "Obvious exception aside."

[as_i_remember]

"Unfortunately," he says, tucking the report away in his desk for later perusal, "I suspect I'm going to agree."

[isthisart]

"If it turns out one way or another that the results of my presence here are intolerable, I will not make a fuss should Miles elect to send me to any reasonably civilized planet. But he seems optimistic."

[as_i_remember]

"What a refreshingly practical attitude you have," Illyan says dryly. "'Optimistic' might not be the word I'd use to describe him. 'Inhumanly stubborn and driven to overcome all opposition' seems more to the point."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Ideally I'd like to minimize the amount of opposition we encounter in the first place," Miles puts in, faintly indignant at Illyan's unsolicited accuracy.

[isthisart]

"Via whatever psychological mechanism, he appears to strongly anticipate success," Linya says.

[as_i_remember]

"Invariably," Illyan agrees. "Well, this has turned out to be a much shorter story than I anticipated."

[isthisart]

"There was hardly time for it to get much longer, considering how infrequently it was possible for me to extract him from his social engagements and conduct conversations."

[as_i_remember]

"I was disinclined to underestimate Lord Vorkosigan's ingenuity in escaping undesired social engagements for his own purposes," says Illyan.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah," says Miles, "I'd hope you know better than to underestimate my ingenuity by now, sir. If you're done making fun of me, can we go now?"

[as_i_remember]

He spreads his hands in a gesture of agreeable dismissal.

[isthisart]

Well then. Linya gets up.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles escorts her out of the maze, and when they are once again on the exterior of the appallingly ugly building, he pauses before calling somebody to pick them up.

"We could walk home from here, if you wanted," he suggests. "It's half an hour or so. The route's safe enough. Not all that scenic, but I promise we're standing in front of the ugliest thing you're going to see on the way."

[isthisart]

"Ah - sure. If it's safe."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah."

In that case, walking! Perhaps they can even hold hands. (Eee.)