Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [341]
They all piled into the rear compartment at last, waved to the Professora, and pulled away. Her eye was becoming more educated, Ekaterin decided. The first time she'd ridden in the courtesy car that the Imperium provided her uncle on permanent loan, she hadn't known to interpret its odd smooth handling as a cue to its level of armoring, nor the attentive young driver as ImpSec to the bone. For all her uncle's deceptive failure to deck himself out in high Vor mode, he moved in the same rarefied circles Miles inhabited with equal ease—Miles because he'd lived there all his life, her uncle because his engineer's eye gauged men by other criteria.
Uncle Vorthys smiled fondly down at Nikki, and patted him on the hand. "Don't look so scared, Nikki," he rumbled comfortably. "Gregor is a good fellow. You'll be fine, and we'll be with you."
Nikki nodded dubiously. It was his black suit that made him look so pale, Ekaterin told herself. His only really good suit; he'd last worn it at his father's funeral, a piece of unpleasant irony Ekaterin schooled herself to ignore. She'd drawn the line at donning her own funeral dress. Her everyday black-and-gray outfit was getting a trifle shabby, but it would have to do. At least it was clean and pressed. Her hair was pulled back with neat severity, braided into a knot at the back of her neck. She touched the lump of the little Barrayar pendant, hidden beneath her high-necked black blouse, for secret reassurance.
"Don't you look so scared either," Uncle Vorthys added to her.
She smiled wanly.
It was a short drive from the University district to the Imperial Residence. The guards scanned them and passed them smoothly through the high iron gates. The Residence was a vast stone building several times the size of Vorkosigan House, four stories high and built, over a couple of centuries and radical changes of architectural styles, in the form of a somewhat irregular hollow square. They drew up under a secondary portico on the east end.
Some sort of high household officer in Vorbarra livery met them, and guided them down two very long and echoing corridors to the north wing. Nikki and Ekaterin both stared around, Nikki openly, Ekaterin covertly. Uncle Vorthys seemed indifferent to the museum-quality décor; he'd trod this corridor dozens of times to deliver his personal reports to the ruler of three worlds. Miles had lived here till he was six, he'd said. Had he been oppressed by the somber weight of this history, or had he regarded it all as his personal play set? One guess.
The liveried man ushered them into a sleekly-appointed office the size of most of one floor of the Professor's house. On the near end, a half-familiar figure leaned against a huge comconsole desk, his arms folded. Emperor Gregor Vorbarra was grave, lean, dark, good-looking in a narrow-faced, cerebral fashion. The holovid did not flatter him, Ekaterin decided instantly. He wore a dark blue suit, with only the barest hint of military decoration in the thin side-piping on the trousers and the high-necked tunic. Miles stood across from him dressed in his usual impeccable gray, rendered somewhat less impeccable by his feet-apart posture and his hands stuffed in his trouser pockets. He broke off in midsentence; his eyes rose anxiously to Ekaterin's face as she entered, and his lips parted. He gave his fellow Auditor a jerky little encouraging nod.
The Professor did not need the cue. "Sire, may I present my niece, Madame Ekaterin Vorsoisson, and her son, Nikolai Vorsoisson."
Ekaterin was spared an awkward attempt at a curtsey when Gregor stepped forward, took her hand, and shook it firmly, as though she were one of the equals