Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [132]
"Not this time, I suspect," said Vorlynkin, smiling at her in reassurance.
"Where's Nefertiti?" asked Jin in sudden alarm.
Mina pointed at the desk built into the far wall, along with a lot of cupboards. From the shadows beneath came a mumbling sort of growl. "She's hiding. Maybe you can get her to come out after she calms down. I tried some food, but I don't think she's hungry right now."
Raven-sensei stepped around the tables to smile at Jin, peer into his eyes, thumb back his eyelids, and feel his pulse. "Headache? Nausea?"
"Not really." Jin felt down his tingling face to find a strip of plastic bandage across his neck.
"Just a nick," Raven-sensei assured him.
"My face is a little numb."
"That's normal. It'll pass in another hour. If it doesn't, let me know." Raven-sensei paused and cleared his throat. "Lord Vorkosigan said to tell you when you woke up, those few minutes of delay you and Mina caused with those NewEgypt thugs made all the difference to us. The rescue party, as it turned out."
"Oh," said Mina, sounding pleased.
Raven-sensei nodded. "If they'd hustled you out of the building before we arrived, he said, it would have been a long stern chase-one of his military turns of phrase, that-meaning, we'd have had a hell of a time catching up with you. Although I imagine he would have, somehow. He, ah . . . tends to be persistent."
For the first time, Jin sat all the way up. In the glass booth next to his mother's, the two big NewEgypt guys were penned, and Jin flinched in fear, till he saw that Hans was still out cold on the floor, and Oki was sitting with his hands fastened behind his back and his shoulders slumped, not paying attention to anything.
Jin pictured it-all of them dragged away in some windowless van to who-knew-where, and Mom taken away again . . . He gulped, which made the bandage tug on his skin. His desperate struggle with those big men hadn't seemed to do much good at the time, had seemed utterly futile in fact, but maybe . . .
Miles-san himself blew in then, his step brisk, with Armsman Roic in tow. Oki still didn't look up, and Jin was reminded that you couldn't hear anything in those booths.
"Ah," said Roic, smiling at Jin and giving him a friendly wave. "You're awake. Good."
Jin scowled back, not quite able to get that new picture out of his mind's eye of Roic looking through him like he wasn't there while he aimed the stunner. Roic's face fell, a little, though he then tried his smile on Mina to better effect. Was it all a fake, that smile? Which was the real Roic, the big smiling man or that cold, intent, scary one?
"You're all here, excellent," said Miles-san to the room at large. He hopped up on a chair like a teacher about to give a lecture, commanding everyone's attention, and making himself quite as tall as Roic. It should have looked silly, and Jin wasn't sure why it didn't.
"The Northbridge police will be here in minutes to start recording statements, and to take delivery of our NewEgypt guests," Miles-san went on, with a wave at the jail-booth. "We should be getting a couple of sleepy lawyers by then, too. Madame Xia has categorically insisted she has no expertise in criminal law, but we've woken up a couple of associates from her firm's criminal department. We'll have the senior partner in later today, when we're all back at the consulate and have rested up a bit."
Jin's mother stiffened. "We never had good luck with lawyers before."
"This time, they'll be on your side," Miles-san promised. "Meanwhile, Raven, Dr. Leiber, Consul Vorlynkin, we have just time to get our stories straight."
Raven-sensei looked interested, Leiber-sensei alarmed, and Consul Vorlynkin resigned.
Miles-san went on, "This whole chain of events is too complex and interlocking to adjust much, but on the whole I'd prefer to be less prominent in it, for reasons having to do with the other half of my investigations on Kibou. Which do not concern and should not impinge on your affairs, Madame Sato, so don't be alarmed. Fortunately,