Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [227]
Miles's women. Elena-the-childhood-sweetheart, now Captain Bothari-Jesek, Mark had studied back when the Komarrans had tutored him to play Lord Vorkosigan. Yet she was not quite what he had expected. Quinn the Dendarii had taken the Komarran plotters by surprise. The two women had a coincidental resemblance in coloration, both with short dark hair, fine pale skin, liquid brown eyes. Or was it so coincidental? Had Vorkosigan subconsciously chosen Quinn as Bothari-Jesek's substitute, when he couldn't have the real thing? Even their first names were similar, Elli and Elena.
Bothari-Jesek was the taller by a head, with long aristocratic features, and was more cool and reserved, an effect augmented by her clean officer's undress grays. Quinn, fatigue-clad and combat-booted, was shorter, though still a head taller than himself, rounder and hotter. Both were terrifying. Mark's own taste in women, if ever he should live to exercise it, ran more to something like that little blonde clone they'd pulled from under the bed, if only she'd been the age she looked to be. Somebody short, soft, pink, timid, somebody who wouldn't kill and eat him after they mated.
Elena Bothari-Jesek was watching him with a sort of appalled fascination. "So like him. Yet not him. Why are you shivering?"
"I'm cold," muttered Mark.
"You're cold!" Quinn echoed in outrage. "You're cold! You gods be-damned little sucker—" She turned her station chair abruptly around, and sat with her back to him.
Bothari-Jesek rose and walked around to his end of the table. Willow-wand woman. She touched his forehead, which was clammy; he flinched almost explosively. She bent and stared into his eyes. "Quinnie, back off. He's in psychological shock."
"He doesn't deserve consideration!" Quinn choked.
"He's still in shock, regardless. If you want results, you have to take it into account."
"Hell." Quinn turned back. New clean wet tracks ran down from her eyes across her red-and-white, dirt-and-dried-blood-smudged face. "You didn't see. You didn't see Miles lying there with his heart blown all over the room."
"Quinnie, he's not really dead. Is he? He's just frozen, and . . . and misplaced." Was there the faintest tinge of uncertainty, denial, in her voice?
"Oh, he's really dead all right. Very really frozen dead. And he's going to stay that way forever if we don't get him back!" The blood all over her fatigues, caked in the grooves of her hands, smeared across her face, was finally turning brown.
Bothari-Jesek took a breath. "Let's focus on the business to hand. The immediate question is, can Mark fool Baron Fell? Fell met the real Miles once."
"That's one of the reasons I didn't put Bel Thorne under close arrest. Bel was there, and can advise, I hope."
"Yes. And that's the curious thing . . ." She hitched a hip over the tabletop and let one long booted leg swing. "Shock or no shock, Mark hasn't blown Miles's deep-cover. The name Vorkosigan hasn't passed his lips, has it?"
"No," Quinn admitted.
Bothari-Jesek twisted up her mouth, and studied him. "Why not?" she asked suddenly.
He crouched down a little further in his station chair, trying to escape the impact of her stare. "I don't know," he muttered. She waited implacably for more, and he mustered in an only slightly louder voice, "Habit, I guess." Mostly Ser Galen's habit of beating the shit out of him whenever he'd screwed up, back in the bad old days. "When I do the part, I do the part. M-Miles would never have slipped on that one, so I don't either."
"Who are you when you're not doing the part?" Bothari-Jesek's gaze was narrowed, calculating.
"I . . . hardly know." He swallowed, and tried again for more volume in his voice. "What's going to happen to my—to the clones?"
As Quinn began to speak, Bothari-Jesek held up her hand, stopping her. Bothari-Jesek said instead, "What do you want to have happen