choreography

[isthisart]

Linya unpacks. She is introduced to the armsmen and the other householders, and those of them younger and less thoroughly worn smooth by experience than Pym react to her with various combinations of glassy-eyed staring and suspicion - none of which fails to retreat at a well-timed throat-clearing, though, so she is able to bring one along with her for protection when she makes a trip to a music store for piano tuning tools. It goes without incident. She also makes sure she will be able to find food in the wee hours of the morning when she's up late or early.

She well-tempers the piano, and plays one of her relatively few memorized pieces (there are, in fact, a lot of them, but fewer than musicians of her acquaintance acquire for their repertoires) to make sure it's how she wants it.

The next morning, she draws Miles a diagram of the cascade braid and lets him practice it until he's got it down and she can wear it out. Cordelia mentions that she has invited Gregor over.

Linya tries groats with maple syrup on them for breakfast and, unexpectedly, loves them. (She does not try ethanol in any form, nor animal meat, this early in her residence.) She gets her pen to connect to the Barryaran comm networks. She meets, by comm-call, the Vorkosigan family accountant Tsipis, with whom she gets on absolutely famously; after fifteen minutes they have an enthusiastic agreement to talk thrice weekly so he can teach her economics and keep her up to date on how he's doing with errands for her nascent pen development business - sourcing materials and tools for her prototypes, materials and tools and manufacturers and programmers for scaling up when she has a solid consumer version.

She starts teaching herself the local form of Greek and has another bowl of groats in the dimness when there's nobody about but the night guard.

She slips into bed with her husband contentedly and snuggles up and goes to sleep.

Comments

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm all in favour of colourful groats!"

[isthisart]

"The one line that gave me much pause was the bit about guarding each other's honor. It seems like a very Barrayaran notion, and consequently not one I have a non-academic understanding of. What does that constitute?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um..."

Miles looks at his mother.

[greatcomposure]

"It's open to a certain degree of interpretation," she says. "I'm sure the book mentioned that it used to be a coded way of saying that the wife wasn't going to cheat on the husband and the husband wasn't going to tolerate adultery in the wife, but modern readings tend to be rather more open-ended... for me personally, I would say it means supporting each other in difficult decisions and helping each other find the right choices. But I'm Betan, so perhaps I'm missing something."

[isthisart]

"The book did mention that, but since 'forsaking all others' is also in the text it seemed redundant if that was the entire point - unless, as is perhaps plausible, those composing these vows were rather obsessed with adultery. There was a footnote about someone attempting to use it as an excuse to arguably abuse his political power to protect his wife from what was either slander or substantiated rumor, the book did not opine on the veracity of the unkind words in question..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I think part of it might be - trying to be worthy of each other," says Miles. "Because when you're married, you're not quite entirely separate people anymore. Things one spouse does reflect on the other one. So you guard each other's honour by acting honourably. Which leads right back to 'what is honour', I suppose."

[isthisart]

"It really does," agrees Linyabel. "Is it easier to answer in more concrete form? Do I currently have some status with respect to honor, and what things would change that status?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um... no, that's not very much easier," he says. "I mean, I suppose you could say honour is just not breaking your word. But I feel like that doesn't quite cover it, somehow."

[isthisart]

"It does sound like that would be some sort of oversimplification..."

[seewhathappens]

"It's certainly arguable that being forsworn is at the root of all dishonor. But there are more complex cases," says Gregor. "If I had to boil the concept down to two oversimplified rules, it would be 'behave ethically and don't break your word'. Which, if not exactly a complete explanation, does have the advantage of putting things in more galactically accessible terms."

[isthisart]

"That... may be enough of a description to be getting on with," acknowledges Linya.

[seewhathappens]

Gregor smiles.

[isthisart]

"I do think I want to meet Count Vorkosigan before doing anything dramatic like setting a date, though. It seems both prudent and polite."

[greatcomposure]

"Sensible," agrees Cordelia.

[isthisart]

"He's expected - tomorrow? The day after?"

[greatcomposure]

"Either one, depending how long it takes him to finish his business in Hassadar. I'll let you know as soon as we have an arrival time."

[isthisart]

"Right. Hopefully this meeting will be as pleasantly anticlimactic as all my others so far."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Hopefully," agrees Miles.