Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [185]
"Call him Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, then," said Cordelia, feigning calm over a sick and trembling belly. "My father will not begrudge it."
"Your father is dead," snapped Piotr.
Smeared to bright plasma in a shuttle accident more than a decade ago . . . She sometimes fancied, when she closed her eyes, that she could still sense his death imprinted on her retina in magenta and teal. "Not wholly. Not while I live, and remember."
Piotr looked as if she'd just hit him in his Barrayaran stomach. Barrayaran ceremonies for the dead approached ancestor-worship, as if remembrance could keep the souls alive. Did his own mortality run chill in his veins today? He had gone too far, and knew it, but could not back down. "Nothing, nothing wakes you up! Try this, then." He straddled the floor, boots planted, and glared at Aral. "Get out of my house. Both houses, Vorkosigan House, too. Take your woman and remove yourself. Today!"
Aral's eyes flicked only once around his childhood home. He set the viewer carefully aside, and stood. "Very well, sir."
Piotr's anger was anguished. "You'd throw away your home for this?!"
"My home is not a place. It is a person, sir," Aral said gravely. Then added reluctantly, "People."
Meaning Piotr, as well as Cordelia. She sat bent over, aching with the tension. Was the old man stone? Even now Aral offered him gestures of courtesy that nearly stopped her heart.
"You will return your rents and revenues to the District purse," said Piotr desperately.
"As you wish, sir." Aral headed for the door.
Piotr's voice went smaller. "Where will you live?"
"Illyan has been urging me for some time to move to the Imperial Residence, for security reasons. Evon Vorhalas has persuaded me Illyan is right."
Cordelia had risen when Aral did. She went now to the window and stared out over the moody grey, green, and brown landscape. Whitecaps foamed on the pewter water of the lake. The Barrayaran winter was going to be so cold. . . .
"So, you set yourself up with Imperial airs after all, eh?" jibed Piotr. "Is that what this is, hubris?"
Aral grimaced in profound irritation. "On the contrary, sir. If I'm to have no income but my admiral's half-pay, I cannot afford to pass up rent-free quarters."
A movement in the scudding clouds caught Cordelia's eye. She squinted uneasily. "What's wrong with that lightflyer?" she murmured half to herself.
The speck grew, jinking oddly. It trailed smoke. It stuttered over the lake, straight at them. "God, I wonder if it's full of bombs?"
"What?" said Aral and Piotr together, and stepped quickly to the window with her, Aral on her right hand, Piotr on her left.
"It has ImpSec markings," said Aral.
Piotr's old eyes narrowed. "Ah?"
Cordelia mentally planned a sprint down the back hall and out the end door. There was a bit of a ditch on the other side of the drive, if they went flat in it maybe . . . but the lightflyer was slowing at the end of its trajectory. It wobbled toward a landing on the front lawn. Men in Vorkosigan livery and ImpSec green and black cautiously surrounded it. The flyer's damage was clearly visible now, a plasma-slagged hole, black smears of soot, warped control surfaces—it was a miracle it flew at all.
"Who—?" said Aral.
Piotr's squint sharpened as a glimpse of the pilot winked through the damaged canopy. "Ye gods, it's Negri!"
"But who's that with—come on!" Aral flung over his shoulder, running out the door. They charged in his wake, around into the front hall, bursting out the door and churning down the green slope.
The guards had to pry open the warped canopy. Negri fell into their arms. They laid him on the grass. He had a grotesque burn a meter long on the left side of his body and thigh, his green uniform melted and charred away to reveal bleeding white bubbles, cracked-open flesh. He shivered uncontrollably.
The short figure strapped into the passenger seat