Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [104]
"Mm." She picked up a hand-viewer that was lying upside-down on the floor, and looked for a place to set it. But there was only one level surface in the cabin that held no clutter or dust. "Miles, how long are you going to keep that coffin in here?"
"It might as well be stored here as anywhere. The morgue's cold. He didn't like the cold."
"People are beginning to think you're strange."
"Let 'em think what they like. I gave him my word once that I'd take him back to be buried on Barrayar, if—if anything happened to him out here."
She shrugged angrily. "Why bother keeping your word to a corpse? It'll never know the difference."
"I'm alive," Miles said quietly, "and I'd know."
She stalked around the cabin, lips tight. Face tight, whole body tight—"I've been running your unarmed combat classes for ten days now. You haven't come to a single session."
He wondered if he ought to tell her about throwing up the blood. No, she'd drag him off to the medtech for sure. He didn't want to see the medtech. His age, the secret weakness of his bones—too much would become apparent on a close medical examination.
She went on. "Baz is doing double shifts, reconditioning equipment, Tung and Thorne and Auson are running their tails off organizing the new recruits—but it's all starting to come apart. Everybody's spending all their time arguing with everybody else. Miles, if you spend another week holed up in here, the Dendarii Mercenaries are going to start looking just like this cabin."
"I know. I've been to the staff meetings. Just because I don't say anything doesn't mean I'm not listening."
"Then listen to them when they say they need your leadership."
"I swear to God, Elena, I don't know what for." He ran his hands through his hair, and jerked up his chin. "Baz fixes things, Arde runs them, Tung and Thorne and Auson and their people do the fighting, you keep them all sharp and in condition—I'm the one person who doesn't do anything real at all." He paused. "They say? What do you say?"
"What does it matter what I say?"
"You came . . ."
"They asked me to come. You haven't been letting anyone else in, remember? They've been pestering me for days. They act like a bunch of ancient Christians asking the Virgin Mary to intercede with God."
A ghost of his old grin flitted across his mouth. "No, only with Jesus. God is back on Barrayar."
She choked, then buried her face in her hands. "Damn you for making me laugh!" she said, muffled.
He rose to capture her hands and make her sit beside him. "Why shouldn't you laugh? You deserve laughter, and all good things."
She did not answer, but stared across the room at the oblong silver box resting in the corner, at the bright scars on the far wall. "You never doubted her accusations," she said at last. "Not even for the first instant."
"I saw a lot more of him than you ever did. He practically lived in my back pocket for seventeen years."
"Yes . . ." Her eyes fell to her hands, now twisting in her lap. "I suppose I never did see more than glimpses. He would come to the village at Vorkosigan Surleau and give Mistress Hysopi her money once a month—he'd hardly ever stay more than an hour. Looking three meters tall in that brown and silver livery of yours. I'd be so excited, I couldn't sleep for a day before or after. Summers were heaven, because when your mother asked me up the lake to the summer place to play with you, I'd see him all day long." Her hands tightened to fists, and her voice broke. "And it was all lies. Faking glory, while all the time underneath was this—cesspit."
He made his voice more gentle than he had ever known he could. "I don't think he was lying, Elena. I think he was trying to forge a new truth."
Her teeth were clenched and feral. "The truth is, I am a madman's rape-bred bastard, my mother is a murderess who hates the very shape of my shadow—I can't believe I've inherited no more from them than my nose and my eyes—"
There it was, the dark fear, most secret. He started in recognition, and dove after it like a knight pursuing