Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [348]
"Useful! Have you found the name of the Butcher of Komarr a handy prop, then, sir?" Miles said indignantly.
His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. "I've found it a mixed . . . damnation. But yes, I have used the weight of that reputation, from time to time, to lean on certain susceptible men. Why not, I paid for it. Simon says he's experienced the same phenomenon. After inheriting ImpSec from Negri the Great, he claimed all he had to do in order to unnerve his opponents was stand there and keep his mouth shut."
"I worked with Simon. He damned well was unnerving. And it wasn't just because of his memory chip, or Negri's lingering ghost." Miles shook his head. Only his father could, with perfect sincerity, regard Simon Illyan as an ordinary, everyday sort of subordinate. "Anyway, people may have seen Simon as sinister, but never as corrupt. He wouldn't have been half as scary if he hadn't been able to convincingly project that implacable indifference to, well, any human appetite." He paused in contemplation of his former commander-and-mentor's quelling management style. "But dammit, if . . . if my enemies won't allow me minimal moral sense, I wish they'd at least give me credit for competence in my vices! If I were going to murder someone, I'd have done a much smoother job than that hideous mess. No one would even guess a murder had occurred, ha!"
"I believe you," soothed the Count. He cocked his head in sudden curiosity. "Ah . . . have you ever?"
Miles burrowed back into the sofa, and scratched his cheek. "There was one mission for Illyan . . . I don't want to talk about it. It was close, unpleasant work, but we brought it off." His eyes fixed broodingly on the carpet.
"Really. I had asked him not to use you for assassinations."
"Why? Afraid I'd pick up bad habits? Anyway, it was a lot more complicated than a simple assassination."
"It generally is."
Miles stared away for a minute into the middle distance. "So what you're telling me boils down to the same thing Galeni said. I have to stand here and eat this, and smile."
"No," said his father, "you don't have to smile. But if you're really asking for advice from my accumulated experience, I'm saying, Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."
Miles's gaze flicked up curiously to his father's face. He'd never known him when his hair wasn't gray; it was nearly all white now. "I know you've been up and down over the years. The first time your reputation took serious damage—how did you get through it?"
"Oh, the first time . . . that was a long time ago." The Count leaned forward, and tapped his thumbnail pensively on his lips. "It suddenly occurs to me, that among observers above a certain age—the few survivors of that generation—the dim memory of that episode may not be helping your cause. Like father, like son?" The Count regarded him with a concerned frown. "That's certainly a consequence I could never have foreseen. You see . . . after the suicide of my first wife, I was widely rumored to have killed her. For infidelity."
Miles blinked. He'd heard disjointed bits of this old tale, but not that last wrinkle. "And, um . . . was she? Unfaithful?"
"Oh, yes. We had a grotesque blowup about it. I was hurt, confused—which emerged as a sort of awkward, self-conscious rage—and severely handicapped by my cultural conditioning. A point in my life when I could definitely have used a Betan therapist, instead of the bad Barrayaran advice we got from . . . never mind. I didn't know—couldn't imagine such alternatives existed. It was a darker, older time. Men still dueled, you know, though it was illegal by then."
"But did you . . . um, you didn't really, um . . ."
"Murder