Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [260]
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ostensibly to allow Mark to recover from jump-lag, the Count and Countess set no tasks for him the first two days. Indeed, except for the rather formal mealtimes, Mark did not see Count Vorkosigan at all. He wandered the house and grounds at will, with no apparent guard but the Countess's discreet observation of him. There were uniformed guards at the gates; he did not yet have the nerve to test and discover if they were charged to keep him in as well as unauthorized persons out.
He had studied Vorkosigan House, yes, but the immediacy of actually being here took some getting used to. It all seemed subtly askew from his expectations. The place was a warren. But despite all the antiques with which Vorkosigan House was cluttered, every original window had been replaced with modern high-grade armor-glass and automatic shutters, even the ones high up on the wall in the basement kitchen. It was like a shell, if a vast one, of protection, palace/fortress/prison. Could he slide into this shell?
I've been a prisoner all my life. I want to be a free man.
On the third day, his new clothing arrived. The Countess came to help him unpack it all. The morning light and cool air of early autumn streamed into his bedchamber through the window which he had, mulishly, opened wide to the mysterious, dangerous, unknown world.
He opened one bag on a hanger to reveal a garment in a disturbingly military style, a high-necked tunic and side-piped trousers in Vorkosigan brown and silver, very like the Count's armsmen's liveries, but with more glitter on the collar and epaulettes. "What's this?" he asked suspiciously.
"Ah," said the Countess. "Gaudy, isn't it? It's your uniform as a cadet lord of House Vorkosigan."
His, not Miles's. All the new clothes were computer-cut to generous fit; his heart sank as he calculated how much he'd have to eat to escape this one.
The Countess's lips curved up at the dismayed expression on his face. "The only two places you actually have to wear it are if you attend a session of the Council of Counts, or if you go to the Emperor's birthday ceremonies. Which you might; they're coming up in a few weeks." She hesitated, her finger tracing over the Vorkosigan logo embroidered on the tunic's collar. "Miles's birthday isn't very long after that."
Well, Miles wasn't aging at the moment, wherever he was. "Birthdays are sort of a non-concept, for me. What do you call it when you take someone out of a uterine replicator?"
"When I was taken out of my uterine replicator, my parents called it my birthday," she said dryly.
She was Betan. Right. "I don't even know when mine is."
"You don't? It's in your records."
"What records?"
"Your Bharaputran medical file. Haven't you ever seen it? I'll have to get you a copy. It's, um, fascinating reading, in a sort of horrifying way. Your birthday was the seventeenth of last month, in point of fact."
"I missed it anyway, then." He closed the bag and stuffed the uniform far back in his closet. "Not important."
"It's important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture."
"That's . . . true," he admitted, remembering his own recent imprisonment. "Hm." The next garment he shook out suited his mood: solid black. Though on closer examination it proved to be almost the same design as the cadet lord's uniform, the logos and piping muted in black silk instead of glowing in silver thread, almost invisible against the black cloth.
"That's for funerals," commented the Countess. Her voice was suddenly rather