Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [131]
"Jin, are you all right?"
He sat up on one elbow to find his mother leaning over the side of the bed-table. She was wearing her filtering mask again, her robe all belted up tight, and her eyes searched him anxiously.
"I guess so." He rubbed his face some more, then scrubbed his scalp where it still hurt from the hair-pulling.
Mina skipped to their mother's side and looked up at him with great interest. "Armsman Roic shot you. I'd never seen anyone get shot for real before."
Neither had Jin. It felt very strange to have been shot. For the first time, he wondered what it had really been like for Miles-san when he'd been shot with that needle-grenade. Of course, that was nothing like being merely stunned, Jin supposed, but that weird moment of looking into Armsman Roic's unyielding face, and feeling so helpless and too late and that his world was being taken away from him by people he didn't, couldn't, control . . . He scowled, not liking that feeling much.
"It's not broken," came Raven-sensei's voice, and, "You couldn't prove it by me," Vorlynkin's voice returned.
Jin twisted around to find the pair of them at the next table over. Vorlynkin was sitting up with his legs dangling. His wide-sleeved coat was off, tossed aside, along with his undercoat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. Raven-sensei stood in front of him, poking at his left arm, which Vorlynkin was holding rather defensively.
Vorlynkin's face was all washed, and Nefertiti's claw marks were now three thin red lines beneath a shiny layer of transparent plastic bandage. There was a lot of drying blood soaked on his shirt collar, though, and spattered elsewhere on his clothes, and Jin cringed in guilt for his new pet.
"You will have some magnificent bruises," Raven-sensei continued.
"A crowbar will do that. I'm lucky I didn't get my face bashed in."
"Vorlynkin-san found more ninjas," Mina confided to Jin. "They had a fight. Vorlynkin-san won."
Vorlynkin looked over and smiled rather ruefully at her. "Fortunately for me, not ninjas. They were just a couple of borrowed thugs from the local chapter of the N.H.L.L. Finally trying to carry out their slogan, I suppose."
"I thought they were all arrested after the conference kidnappings," said Raven-sensei.
"That was an especially radical splinter group, apparently. Their organization is not very unified at the best of times, I gather." Vorlynkin added to Jin, "I found the pair of them around the far end of the next building over from your hideout, trying to pry the door open and get down into the tunnels with more fire-starter. If they'd succeeded it would have been a major mess."
Raven-sensei's eyebrows lifted. "Would the arsonists even have gotten themselves out alive?"
"Hard to say. It seems awfully easy to get turned around down there. But the department was able to get the fire in the exchanger building under control quickly, once I'd told them it was asterzine. Ugly product, asterzine. You don't want to put water on it, and it would have been a horrible surprise for the firefighters if they had. You can believe they'll be going after the N.H.L.L. in the morning."
Jin's brow wrinkled. "Why a crowbar? The door around the next side after that is always left unlocked."
Vorlynkin blinked, then laughed, then winced, touching his scratched face. "Just as well that none of us knew that, I suppose. After I confiscated the crowbar, I was able to hold them till the police arrived. Some of the firemen were more than eager to help. The pair fingered the NewEgypt security guards as having engaged them, evidently just to create a diversion for Dr. Leiber's re-kidnapping, though I gather that some of the Liberators grew over-eager and exceeded their instructions. But it should lead back nicely to the senior men Lord Auditor Vorkosigan wished to target."
Their mother rubbed her forehead, frown-lines deepening