Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [96]
"What are you going to do with yours?" Mina asked.
"I'm not sure yet. I could buy food for my creatures for months with this. Or get something new. I always wanted to try keeping fish, but Aunt Lorna would never let me, and there was no way at Suze's. You can't cart fish around with you if you might have to go live on the street."
Mina's eyebrows knit. "Do you guess we're going to be here that long?"
Jin hesitated. "I don't know."
"Do you think I have enough for a pony?"
"Where would you keep a pony? You need, like, lots of terraformed ground, I think. The back garden here's not big enough."
"Aunt Lorna's patio sure wasn't big enough," Mina agreed. "At least Consul Vorlynkin has grass."
Jin tried to picture this. The consulate's patch of back lawn was barely larger than its living room. Nice for a chicken run, but he didn't think it would work for anything much bigger. "Anyway," he said bracingly, "you still have Lady Murasaki. Pony's got four legs, spider's got eight, so she has to be twice as good, right?"
Mina cast him a look of cold scorn. "I'd like to see you try and put a saddle and bridle and stuff on her."
Jin tried to imagine spider-sized tack-knotted thread, perhaps?-and what kind of insect could you persuade to ride a wolf spider? That the spider wouldn't eat? Riding would be a much more exciting sport, he thought, if ponies ate prey like spiders did. Did the consulate have any thread they could borrow . . . ? But before he could pursue the vision further, Consul Vorlynkin and Miles-san came through the kitchen pulling on their jackets.
"Vorlynkin is going to drive me down to Madame Suze's to see about something," Miles-san told them. He and Roic had been spending a lot of time there lately, Jin thought, and come back looking grim and thoughtful, though no one had said why. And Raven-sensei hadn't come back at all. "Yuuichi Matson's here, so you won't be alone. But if any strangers come in on consulate business, you'll need to stay out of the front rooms and hall. Upstairs should be all right, or the back garden, if you don't make too much noise."
"I'll be back directly," Vorlynkin promised.
Mina looked up. "Do you think you'll ever find Mommy?"
"We hope to have good news soon," said Miles-san.
Jin wasn't sure how to interpret that soothing tone of voice. More grownup lies? By her scrunched face, he didn't think Mina was buying it, either.
But what she said was, "Lord Vorkosigan, if you had children you'd give them ponies, wouldn't you? Not spiders?"
He looked a little taken aback. "I do and I have. Ponies, not spiders. Although I suppose they could have spiders if they wanted some. God knows we have butterbugs. Monogrammed. Didn't I ever show you my pictures?"
And then, to Jin's surprise and growing dismay, he pulled a holocube out of his pocket and proceeded to show off scans of a regular-sized, dark-haired woman-Jin could tell she was regular-sized because there were some shots of the two of them together, and the top of Miles-san's head barely reached her shoulder-and a bewildering succession of children at different ages. Jin didn't quite sort them out till they came to a group shot-a dark-haired boy and a red-haired girl a bit younger than Mina, an infant in the pretty woman's arms, and a leggy toddler in the middle of the pack. Four children. He hoped Mina would muster the wit to look interested and not distraught. He still wasn't altogether sure what Miles-san was, but he seemed to have a lot of clout. Even the consul did whatever he said.
"And here's Helen on her pony down at Vorkosigan Surleau-it's a place we have in the country, on a lake-and here's Sasha petting his. Xander. Alex, I mean."
Jin wondered