Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [25]
"By no means. I've passed through the topside stations many times. I haven't got downside too often, I admit. This is the first time I've been to Serifosa."
"Have you ever visited Solstice?"
The planetary capital. "Of course."
Venier stared at the middle distance, past the concrete pillars and dim lighting, and smiled faintly. "Have you ever visited the Massacre Shrine there?"
A cheeky damned Komarran, that's what kind. The Solstice Massacre was infamous as the ugliest incident of the Barrayaran conquest. The two hundred Komarran Counselors, the then-ruling senate, had surrendered on terms—and subsequently been gunned down in a gymnasium by Barrayaran security forces. The political consequences had run a short range from dire to disastrous. Miles's smile became a little fixed. "Of course. How could I not?"
"All Barrayarans should make that pilgrimage. In my opinion."
"I went with a close friend. To help him burn a death offering for his aunt."
"A relative of a Martyr is a friend of yours?" Venier's eyes widened in a moment of genuine surprise, in what otherwise felt to Miles to be a highly choreographed conversation. How long had Venier been rehearsing his lines in his head, itching for a chance to try them out?
"Yes." Miles let his gaze become more directly challenging.
Venier apparently felt the weight of it, because he shifted uneasily, and said, "As you are your father's son, I'm just a little surprised, is all."
By what, that I have any Komarran friends? "Especially as I am my father's son, you should not be."
Venier's brows tweaked up. "Well . . . there is a theory that the massacre was ordered by Emperor Ezar without the knowledge of Admiral Vorkosigan. Ezar was certainly ruthless enough."
"Ruthless enough, yes. Stupid enough, never. It was the Barrayaran expedition's chief Political Officer's own bright idea, for which my father made him pay with his life, not that that did much good for anyone after the fact. Leaving aside every moral consideration, the massacre was a supremely stupid act. My father has been accused of many things, but stupidity has never, I believe, been one of them." His voice was growing dangerously clipped.
"We'll never know the whole truth, I suppose," said Venier.
Was that supposed to be a concession? "You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won't believe it, then no, I don't suppose you ever will know it." He bared his teeth in a non-smile. No, keep control; why let this Komarran git see he's scored you off?
The doors of a nearby elevator opened, and Venier abruptly dropped from Miles's attention as Madame Vorsoisson and Nikolai exited. She was wearing the same dull dun outfit she'd sported that morning, and carried a large pile of heavy jackets over her arm. She waved her hand around the jackets and stepped swiftly over to them. "Am I very late?" she asked a bit breathlessly. "Good afternoon, Venier."
Suppressing the first idiocy that came to his lips, which was, Any time is a good one for you, milady, Miles managed a, "Well, good afternoon, Madame Vorsoisson, Nikolai. I wasn't expecting you. Are you to accompany us?" I hope? "You husband has just gone off to fetch an aircar."
"Yes, Uncle Vorthys suggested it would be educational for Nikolai. And I haven't had much chance to see outside the domes myself. I jumped at the invitation." She smiled, and pushed back a strand of dark hair escaping its confinement, and almost dropped her bundle. "I wasn't sure if we were to land anywhere and get outside on foot, but I brought jackets for everyone just in case."
A large two-compartment sealed aircar hissed around the corner and sighed to the pavement beside them. The front canopy opened, and Vorsoisson clambered out, and greeted his wife and son. The Professor watched from the front seat with some amusement as the question of how to distribute six passengers among the two compartments was taken over by Nikolai, who wanted to sit both by his great-uncle and