Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [131]
Barrayar's economy was wide open now, Aral said, despite the losses of the recent war. No wounds had touched the surface of the planet this time. The terraforming of the second continent opened new frontiers every day, and when the new planet Sergyar was cleared for colonization, the effect would triple. Labor was short everywhere, wages rising. Barrayar perceived itself to be severely underpopulated. Vorkosigan called the economic situation his gift from the gods, politically. So did Cordelia, for more personal, secret reasons; herds of little Vorkosigans. . . .
She could have a daughter. Not just one, but two—sisters! Cordelia had never had a sister. Captain Vorpatril's wife had two, she'd said.
Cordelia had meet Lady Vorpatril at one of the rare evening political-social events at Vorkosigan House. The affair was managed smoothly by the Vorkosigan House staff. All Cordelia had to do was show up appropriately dressed (she had acquired more clothes), smile a lot, and keep her mouth shut. She listened with fascination, trying to puzzle out yet more about How Things Were Done Here.
Alys Vorpatril too was pregnant. Lord Vorpatril had sort of stuck them together and ducked out. Naturally, they talked shop. Lady Vorpatril mourned much at her personal discomforts. Cordelia decided she herself must be fortunate; the anti-nausea med, the same chemical formulation that they used at home, worked, and she was only naturally tired, not from the weight of the still-tiny baby but from the surprising metabolic load. Peeing for two was how Cordelia thought of it. Well, after five-space navigational math, how hard could motherhood be?
Leaving aside Alys's whispered obstetrical horror stories, of course. Hemorrhages, strokes, kidney failure, birth injuries, oxygen interruption to fetal brains, infant heads grown larger than pelvic diameters and a spasming uterus laboring both mother and child to death . . . Medical complications were only a problem if one was somehow caught alone and isolated at term, and with these mobs of guards about that wasn't likely to happen to her. Bothari as a midwife? Bemusing thought. She shuddered.
She rolled over again on the lawn sofa, her brow creasing. Ah, Barrayar's primitive medicine. True, moms had popped kids for hundreds of thousands of years, pre-space-flight, with less help than what was available here. Yet the niggling worry gnawed still, Maybe I ought to go home for the birth.
No. She was Barrayaran now, oath-sworn like the rest of the lunatics. It was a two-month journey. And besides, as far as she knew there was still an arrest warrant outstanding for her, charging military desertion, suspicion of espionage, fraud, anti-social violence—she probably shouldn't have tried to drown that idiot army psychiatrist in her aquarium, Cordelia supposed, sighing in memory of her harried and disordered departure from Beta Colony. Would her name ever be cleared? Not while Ezar's secrets stayed chambered in four skulls, surely.
No. Beta Colony was closed to her, had driven her out. Barrayar held no monopoly on political idiocy, that much was certain.
I can handle Barrayar. Aral and I. You bet.
It was time to go in. The sun was giving her a slight headache.
Chapter Four
One aspect of her new life as Regent-consort that Cordelia found easier to deal with than she'd anticipated was the influx of personal guards into their home. Her experience in the Betan Survey, and Vorkosigan's in the Barrayaran military service, had given them both practice with life in close quarters. It didn't take Cordelia long to start to know the persons in the uniforms, and take them on their own terms. The guards were a lively young group, hand-picked for their service and proud of it. Although when Piotr was also in residence, with all his liveried men including Bothari, the sense it gave Cordelia of living in a barracks became acute.
It was the Count who first suggested the informal hand-to-hand combat tournament between Illyan's men and his own. In spite of a vague mutter from the