tremolo

[isthisart]

Gregor and his accompanying security personnel depart to do other imperial things. Linya is on time for her video call economics lesson and business planning session with Tsipis, which she enjoys enormously. He wants a nicely packaged concept report on her pen - obviously she can't part with the existing prototype itself, but to get electronics companies bidding on its construction and investors to foot the bill for the initial run, he needs to tell them what they'd be making. She gets some details about what format he wants that in, spends the rest of the day less dinner and midnight snack time and an hour on the piano putting that together, sends it in, and goes to bed with her tiny Barrayaran. He is so snuggly.

Linya is underburdened with clothes for a haut-woman, even one who has only had her adult height for about a year, which means that she only has an excessive number instead of a preposterous number, but she's not sure it's a good long-term plan to go around in her Cetagandan clothes. They aren't recognizable as Cetagandan, exactly - haut styles overlap little with the ghem and prole fashions even on the same planet, and technically every garment she owns is unique if only in color, embroidery, and tailoring and not entire concept; and to the extent there is a coherent aesthetic among haut-ladies, it is not the sort of thing that would have ever filtered to Barrayaran public consciousness. She does not, however, look like she's trying very hard to fit in with Barrayar. When she mentions this over breakfast the following day Cordelia introduces her to Ivan's mother, Alys, who is only cordial on a personal level but actively intent on being helpful as far as clothes are concerned. She seems to consider Linya an interesting canvas on which to ply her art, and Linya is all too willing to let her.

After that long shopping trip (again accompanied by an Armsman, again uneventful except for strange looks, and interrupted in the middle by dinner) Linya hasn't brought home any Barrayaran garments except for one midnight-blue bolero jacket and a pair of black shoes, as everything else needs to be nipped in or let out or remade from new cloth to meet Alys's fit standards. She does, however, wear that jacket and those shoes with one of her existing dresses the next day, after she has - eventually - rolled out of bed with her tiny Barrayaran to put clothes on. Any time today she doesn't spend meeting Count Vorkosigan or otherwise being sociable, she plans to divide between refining the gesture-assignment interface for the consumer pen and studying Greek.

Comments

[isthisart]

"Yes. And I retuned it."

[on_my_word]

"Well... well, I hope it brings you some enjoyment," he says.

[isthisart]

"It has. My keyboard's perfectly nice, but a real, good piano is inimitable."

[on_my_word]

He smiles again, hesitant but genuine.

[isthisart]

"I sing too," she offers. "But I've been spending more of my time teaching myself the local Greek dialect and programming and taking economics lessons from Tsipis, who is helping me arrange to market a little gadget I invented - did Cordelia tell you about my pen?"

[on_my_word]

"She mentioned some sort of technological project...?"

[isthisart]

"This is my prototype, after a fashion - the consumer version will be different in a few ways," she says, tugging her pen free from her necklace. She woggles it and draws a line of light through the air. "It's almost like a portable comconsole."

[on_my_word]

"Interesting," he says. "I can see how that would be convenient."

[isthisart]

"Mm-hm." She puts it back on her necklace and the light winks out when she lets go of it. "Do you want one?"

[on_my_word]

"I very well might."

[isthisart]

"Miles asked first, but he is going to have to wait since he wants one that will require complicated optics finagling."

[on_my_word]

"Eh?"

[isthisart]

"He wants it to look like an old-fashioned pen, nib and everything, instead of having the round ends," she says, tapping one of the cabochons. "I don't know how to do that yet."

[on_my_word]

"I might wait around for one of those myself," the Count muses. "The aesthetic is very appealing."

[isthisart]

"It's definitely going to take a while, but Tsipis is being so helpful that I can probably find time to figure it out sooner than I was imagining a couple of weeks ago - Cordelia said you hired him?"

[on_my_word]

"Yes. A decision I have never regretted."

[isthisart]

"Yes, he's fantastic," agrees Linya. And, more shyly: "So is Miles."

[on_my_word]

Aral grins brilliantly. The expression quite transforms him, briefly obliterating any hint of the neutral-to-stern countenance that seems to be his default.

[isthisart]

"He is. I don't know how much of the story you have..."

[on_my_word]

"Not much. What, in fact, happened?"

[isthisart]

"Vast swathes of it are variously classified; Cordelia has been referring to 'whatever it is that earned Miles a haut-wife' as the 'mythical feat' and I am reasonably sure I should not be deciding on my own recognizance who it is and is not classified to. But it was suitably mythical and featlike."

[on_my_word]

"Of course it was; Miles did it," he snorts. "He's very much the type."

[isthisart]

"Clearly. So Lisbet put in a word for me about seeing that he got - how was it that Lord Vorpatril put it - a grab bag of prizes."

[on_my_word]

"Lisbet—? The new Empress?"

[isthisart]

"Yes."