Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [291]
"I think your just just answered your own question. If your execrable handwriting has improved, it would perhaps be a nice touch."
"Proves it wasn't dictated to your secretary, for one thing," put in the Count. "Or worse, composed by him at your order."
"Haven't got a secretary yet." Miles sighed. "Gregor hasn't given me enough work to justify one."
"Since work for an Auditor hinges on awkward crises arising in the Empire, I can't very well wish more for you," the Count said. "But no doubt things will pick up after the wedding. Which will have one less crisis because of the good work you just did on Komarr, I might say."
He glanced up, and his father gave him an understanding nod; yes, the Viceroy and Vicereine of Sergyar were most definitely in the need-to-know pool about the late events on Komarr. Gregor had undoubtedly sent on a copy of Miles's eyes-only Auditor's report for the Viceroy's perusal. "Well . . . yes. At the very least, if the conspirators had maintained their original schedule, there'd have been several thousand innocent people killed that day. It would have marred the festivities, I think."
"Then you've earned some time off."
The Countess looked momentarily introspective. "And what did Madame Vorsoisson earn? We had her aunt give us her eyewitness description of their involvement. It sounded like a frightening experience."
"The public gratitude of the Empire is what she should have earned," said Miles, in reminded aggravation. "Instead, it's all been buried deep-deep under the ImpSec security cap. No one will ever know. All her courage, all her cool and clever moves, all her bloody heroism, dammit, was just . . . made to disappear. It's not fair."
"One does what one has to, in a crisis," said the Countess.
"No." Miles glanced up at her. "Some people do. Others just fold. I've seen them. I know the difference. Ekaterin—she'll never fold. She can go the distance, she can find the speed. She'll . . . she'll do."
"Leaving aside whether we are discussing a woman or a horse," said the Countess—dammit, Mark had said practically the same thing, what was with all Miles's nearest and dearest?—"everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location."
The Count and Countess gave each other one of those Telepathic Looks again. It was extremely annoying. Miles squirmed with envy.
He drew the tattered shreds of his dignity around him, and rose. "Excuse me. I have to go . . . water a plant."
It took him thirty minutes of wandering around the bare, crusted garden in the dark, with his hand-light wavering and the water from his mug dribbling over his fingers, to even find the blasted thing. In its pot, the skellytum rootling had looked sturdy enough, but out here, it looked lost and lonely: a scrap of life the size of his thumb in an acre of sterility. It also looked disturbingly limp. Was it wilting? He emptied the cup over it; the water made a dark spot in the reddish soil that began to evaporate and fade all too quickly.
He tried to imagine the plant full grown, five meters high, its central barrel the size, and shape, of a sumo wrestler, its tendril-like branches gracing the space with distinctive corkscrew curves. Then he tried to imagine himself forty-five or fifty years old, which was the age to which he'd have to survive to see that sight. Would he be a reclusive, gnarled bachelor, eccentric, shrunken, invalidish, tended only by his bored Armsmen? Or a proud, if stressed, paterfamilias with a serene, elegant, dark-haired woman on his arm and half a dozen hyperactive progeny in tow? Maybe . . . maybe the hyperactivity could be toned down in the gene-cleaning, though he was sure his parents would accuse him of cheating . . . .
Abject.
He went back inside Vorkosigan House to his study, where he sat himself down to attempt, through a dozen drafts, the best damned abject anybody'd ever seen.
Chapter Eleven
Kareen leaned over the porch rail of Lord Auditor Vorthys's house