Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [162]
"I hate this place, too," he continued. "Just as much as it hates me. More, some days. So you see, you're not alone."
"So many people trying to kill him," she whispered back, despising herself for her weakness. "Total strangers . . . one of them is bound to succeed in the end. I think about it all the time, now." Would it be a bomb? Some poison? Plasma arc, burning away Aral's face, leaving no lips even to kiss goodbye?
Koudelka's attention was drawn achingly from his pain to hers, brows drawing quizzically together.
"Oh, Kou," she went on, looking down blindly into his lap and stroking his sleeve. "No matter how much it hurts, don't do it to him. He loves you . . . you're like a son to him, just the sort of son he always wanted. That," she nodded toward the sword laid on the couch, shinier than silk, "would cut out his heart. This place pours craziness on him every day, and demands he give back justice. He can't do it except with a whole heart. Or he must eventually start giving back the craziness, like every one of his predecessors. And," she added in a burst of uncontrollable illogic, "it's so damn wet here! It won't be my fault if my son is born with gills!"
His arms encircled her in a kindly hug. "Are you . . . afraid of the childbirth?" he inquired, with a gentle and unexpected perceptiveness.
Cordelia went still, suddenly face-to-face with her tightly suppressed fears. "I don't trust your doctors," she admitted shakily.
He smiled in deep irony. "I can't blame you."
A laugh puffed from her, and she hugged him back, around the chest, and raised her hand to wipe away the tiny drops of blood from the side of his neck. "When you love someone, it's like your skin covers theirs. Every hurt is doubled. And I do love you so, Kou. I wish you'd let me help you."
"Therapy, Cordelia?" Vorkosigan's voice was cold, and cut like a stinging spray of rattling hail. She looked up, surprised, to see him standing before them, his face frozen as his voice. "I realize you have a great deal of Betan . . . expertise, in such matters, but I beg you will leave the project to someone else."
Koudelka turned red, and recoiled from her. "Sir," he began, and trailed off, as startled as Cordelia by the icy anger in Vorkosigan's eyes. Vorkosigan's gaze flicked over him, and they both clamped their jaws shut.
Cordelia drew in a very deep breath for a retort, but released it only as a furious "Oh!" at Vorkosigan's back as he wheeled and stalked out, spine stiff as Kou's swordblade.
Koudelka, still red, folded into himself, and using his sword as a prop levered himself to his feet, his breath too rapid. "Milady. I beg your pardon." The words seemed quite without meaning.
"Kou," said Cordelia, "you know he didn't mean that hateful thing. He spoke without thinking. I'm sure he doesn't, doesn't . . ."
"Yes, I realize," returned Koudelka, his eyes blank and hard. "I am universally known to be quite harmless to any man's marriage, I believe. But if you will excuse me—Milady—I do have some work to do. Of a sort."
"Oh!" Cordelia didn't know if she was more furious with Vorkosigan, Koudelka, or herself. She steamed to her feet and left the room, throwing her words back over her shoulder. "Damn all Barrayarans to hell anyway!"
Droushnakovi appeared in her path, with a timid, "Milady?"
"And you, you useless . . . frill," snarled Cordelia, her rage escaping helplessly in all directions now. "Why can't you manage your own affairs? You Barrayaran women seem to expect your lives to be handed to you on a platter. It doesn't work that way!"
The girl stepped back a pace, bewildered. Cordelia contained her seething outrage, and asked more sensibly, "Which way did Aral go?"
"Why . . . upstairs, I believe, Milady."
A little of her old and battered humor came to her rescue then. "Two steps at a time, by chance?"
"Um . . . three, actually," Drou replied faintly.
"I suppose I'd better go talk to him," said Cordelia, running her hands through her hair and wondering if tearing it out would have any practical