Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [69]
"Don't bother," she said levelly. "I cannot imagine anything you could do that would make me more angry than I am."
He had come to the end of his menu of tactics and stood at a loss. His voice grew smaller. "What do you want?"
"I want my honor back. But you cannot give it to me."
His voice grew smaller still; his hands opened in pleading. "I'm sorry about your aunt's skellytum. I don't know what . . ."
"Are you sorry about grand theft and petty treason, bribery and peculation?"
"I did it for you, Kat!"
"In eleven years," she said slowly, "you have apparently never figured out who I am. I don't understand that. How you can live with someone so intimately, so long, and yet never see them. Maybe you were living with some Kat holovid projection from your own mind, I don't know."
"What do you want, dammit? It's not like I can go back. I can't confess. That would be public dishonor! For me, you, Nikki, your uncle—you can't want that!"
"I want never to have to tell a lie again for as long as I live. What you do is your problem." She took a deep breath. "But know this. Whatever you do, or don't do, from now on had better be for yourself. Because it won't touch me." Done once, done for all time. She was never going through this again.
"I can—I can fix it."
Was he referring to her skellytum, their marriage, his crime? Wrong anyway, in all cases.
When she still did not respond, he blurted desperately, "Nikolai is mine, by Barrayaran law."
Interesting. Nikki was the one tactic he had never employed before, off limits. She knew then how deathly serious he knew her to be. Good. He glanced around, and added belatedly, "Where is Nikki?"
"Someplace safer."
"You can't keep him from me!"
I can if you're in prison. She didn't bother saying it aloud. Under the circumstances, Tien was perhaps unlikely to challenge her possession of Nikki before the law. But she wanted to keep Nikolai's concerns as far separated as possible from the ugliest part of this thing. She would not start that war, but if Tien dared to do so, she would finish it. She watched him more coldly than ever.
"I will fix it. I can. I have a plan. I've been thinking about it all day."
Tien with a plan was about as reassuring as a two-year-old with a charged plasma arc. No. You are not to take responsibility for him anymore. That's what this is all about, remember? Let go. "Do whatever you wish, Tien. I'm going to go finish packing now."
"Wait—" He swung around her. It disturbed her to have him between her and the door, but she did not let her fear show. "Wait. I'll make it up. You'll see. I'll fix it. Wait here!"
With an anxious wave of his hands, he made for the hall door, and was gone.
She listened to his retreating footsteps. Only when she heard the faint whisper from the lift tube did she step back onto the balcony and look over. Far below, the shattered remains of her skellytum made an irregular wet blotch on the pavement, the broken scarlet tendrils looking like spattered blood. A passer-by was staring curiously at it. After a minute, she saw Tien emerge from the building and stride across the park toward the bubble-car platform, almost breaking into a run from time to time. He twice looked back up toward their balcony, over his shoulder; she stepped back into the shadows. He disappeared into the station.
Every muscle of her body seemed to be spasming with tension. She felt close to vomiting. She returned to her—to the kitchen, and drank a glass of water, which helped settle her breathing and her stomach. She went to her work room to fetch a basket and some plastic sheeting and a trowel, to go scrape the mess off the walkway five floors down.
Chapter Ten
Miles sat at Administrator Vorsoisson's comconsole desk, methodically reading through the files of all the employees of the Waste