Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [165]
He sat back beside her, and took her in his arms. "And this is only the beginning. Every month, every week, there will be some other impossible thing. What's going to be left of me after fifteen years of this? A husk, like that thing we buried three months ago, praying with his last breath that there may be no God? Or a power-corrupted monstrosity, like his son, so infected it could only be sterilized by plasma arc? Or something even worse?"
His naked agony terrified her. She held him tightly in return. "I don't know. I don't know. But somebody . . . somebody has been making these kinds of decisions right along, while we went along blissfully unconscious, taking the world as given. And they were only human, too. No better, no worse than you."
"Frightening thought."
She sighed. "You can't choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle. I can't make your decision. But whatever principles you choose now are going to be your safety lines, to carry you forward. And for the sake of your people, they're going to have to be consistent ones."
He rested in her arms. "I know. There wasn't really a question, about the decision. I was just . . . kicking a bit, going down." He disengaged himself, and stood again. "Dear Captain. If I'm still sane, fifteen years from now, I believe it will be your doing."
She looked up at him. "So what decision is it?"
The pain in his eyes gave her the answer. "Oh, no," she said involuntarily, then bit off further words. And I was trying to speak so wisely. I didn't mean this.
"Don't you know?" he said gently, resigned. "Ezar's way is the only way that can work, here. It's true after all. He does rule from his grave." He headed for their bathroom, to wash and change clothes.
"But you're not him," she whispered to the empty room. "Can't you find a way of your own?"
Chapter Eight
Vorkosigan attended Carl Vorhalas's public execution three weeks later.
"Are you required to go?" Cordelia asked him that morning, as he dressed, cold and withdrawn. "I don't have to go, do I?"
"God, no, of course not. I don't have to go, officially, except . . . I have to go. You can see why, surely."
"Not . . . really, except as a form of self-punishment. I'm not sure that's a luxury you can afford, in your line of work."
"I must go. A dog returns to its vomit, doesn't it? His parents will be there, do you know? And his brother."
"What a barbaric custom."
"Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that's like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over years. . . . I don't know."
"How will they . . . do it?"
"Beheading. It's supposed to be almost painless."
"How do they know?"
His laugh was totally without humor. "A very cogent question."
He did not embrace her when he left. He returned a bare two hours later, silent, to shake his head at a tentative offer of lunch, cancel an afternoon appointment, and withdraw to Count Piotr's library and sit, not-reading a book-viewer. Cordelia joined him there after a while, resting on the couch, and waited patiently for him to come back to her from whatever distant country of the mind he dwelt in.
"The boy was going to be brave," he said after an hour's silence. "You could see that he had every gesture planned out in advance. But nobody else followed the script. His mother broke him down. . . . And to top it the damned executioner missed his stroke. Had to take three cuts, to get the head off."
"Sounds like Sergeant Bothari did better with a pocketknife." Vorrutyer had been haunting her more than usual that morning, scarletly.
"It lacked nothing for perfect hideousness. His mother cursed me, too. Until Evon and Count Vorhalas took her away." The dead-expressioned voice escaped him then. "Oh, Cordelia! It can't have been the right decision! And yet . . . and yet . . . no other one was possible. Was it?"
He came to her then, and held her in silence. He seemed very close to weeping, and it almost frightened her more