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

[thisvorlunatic]

"Really? Did they manage to dig up a picture of the one in Vorkosigan Vashnoi before—ah—it was destroyed?"

[isthisart]

"They found architectural blueprints, but there wasn't a photo of that one."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I own Vorkosigan Vashnoi," he mentions. "Directly, I mean. Grandfather left it to me specifically, God knows why. Some kind of obscure statement."

[isthisart]

"...I have no idea what kind of statement that might serve to make."

[thisvorlunatic]

"An obscure one, of course. Possibly relating to the fact that it'll be sometime late-ish in my life when the place starts to be potentially habitable again. If I feel like being kind and ruling out all interpretations along the lines of 'let the tainted land go to the tainted grandson'."

And with that, they arrive at the house. Miles nods to the armsman in brown-and-silver livery who lets them in. "Hello, Pym. Is Mother home?"

"Yes, milord," says, apparently, Pym. "In the library."

"Right then. To the library we go," says Miles. He notes in passing that their combined luggage has been lined up neatly in the front hall, out of the way of pedestrian traffic.

[isthisart]

Linya inclines her head in acknowledgment of Pym and memorizes his name. She is tempted to check on her keyboard to make sure that it has again been transported safely, but she follows Miles without giving in to this distraction; she can look at it later.

[thisvorlunatic]

Once again, Miles is called upon to navigate. Vorkosigan House is not quite as mazelike as ImpSec HQ, but it definitely has its quirks.

[isthisart]

Linya plucks her pen from its resting place and draws herself a little map as they walk. She doesn't break stride, but she does slow down a little; it is not externally obvious whether this is to make cartography easier or because she's nervous about meeting the Countess.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Ooh, that's well thought of," says Miles when she starts drawing the map. "Maybe you won't get lost here as often as most people."

[isthisart]

"Is that a common problem?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah. New Armsmen, new servants, new anybody."

[isthisart]

"Perhaps there should be a stack of flimsies at the door with maps."

[thisvorlunatic]

He laughs. "Maybe. I don't know, it's not really that people get lost frequently per se, it's just that nearly everyone gets lost at least once or twice. I could easily imagine all the newcomers deciding the maps were overkill, only to regret that judgment sometime after midnight when they take a wrong turn on the way to the lav."

[isthisart]

"No one could say they had not been warned, though."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, now, that just makes setting out the maps seem cruel."

[isthisart]

"Perhaps they should be pinned to the walls at intervals. With 'you are here' marked."

[thisvorlunatic]

He giggles. "Will that be your contribution? It's sort of a tradition, for every new Lady or Countess Vorkosigan to add something or change something about the house - my mother put in a lift tube."

[isthisart]

"I think I'd want to mull that one over longer. I didn't know I was actually entitled to remodel something when I suggested the maps."

[thisvorlunatic]

"There's nothing stopping you from making more than one change, of course - well, not in principle. In practice, of course everything has to run by my parents, who might squawk a bit if you suggested a force dome over the whole house or, I don't know, a kitten orchard."

[isthisart]

"Your house is not ugly enough for me to suggest force-doming it, and I do not have any particular interest in overseeing a kitten orchard."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, that's a promising start."

[isthisart]

"Something in the garden department is a possibility, but I think it would probably wind up being strictly composed of plants."

[thisvorlunatic]

"No rush, anyway. Get to know the house before deciding what you want to do to it, that seems logical."

[isthisart]

"Mm-hm." Map map. Follow follow.

[thisvorlunatic]

They arrive at the library soon enough. Shelves of real print books stand in tidy old-fashioned rows, interrupted by the occasional cozy-looking alcove in which to read them. The overwhelming majority are printed in the Barrayaran variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that saw common use for all four of the planet's languages during the Time of Isolation. A comconsole perches near the empty fireplace at the far end of the room, looking faintly out of place, a newcomer uncertain of its welcome even after however many years it has lived here. Miles paces into the room, scouting for parents.