Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [119]
"Well, if I ever inherit a Countship, I'm praying it will be of a city," Ivan concluded.
"You're not in line for any I can think of," grinned Miles. He tried to recapture the thread of their conversation, but Ivan's remarks made lines of inheritance map themselves in his head. He traced his own descent through his Grandmother Vorkosigan to Prince Xav to Emperor Dorca Vorbarra himself. Had the great Emperor ever foreseen what a turn his law, that finally broke the private armies and the private wars of the Counts forever, would give his great-great-grandson?
"Who's your heir, Ivan?" Miles asked idly, staring out at the Dendarii ships, but dreaming of the Dendarii Mountains. "Lord Vortaine, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but I expect to outlive the old boy any minute. His health wasn't too good, last I heard. Too bad this inheritance thing doesn't work backwards, I'd be in for a bundle."
"Who does get his bundle?"
"His daughter, I guess. His titles go to—let me think—Count Vordrozda, who doesn't even need 'em. From what I've heard of Vordrozda, he'd rather have the money. Don't know if he'd go as far as marrying the daughter to get it, though, she's about fifty years old."
They both gazed into space.
"God," said Ivan after a while, "I hope those orders Dimir got when I ducked out weren't to go home or something. They'll think I've been AWOL for three weeks—there won't be enough room on my record for all the demerits. Thank God they've eliminated the old-style discipline parades."
"You were there when Dimir got his orders? And you didn't stick around to see what they were?" asked Miles, astonished.
"It was like pulling teeth to get that pass out of him. I didn't want to risk it. There was this girl, you see—I wish now I'd taken my beeper."
"You left your comm link?"
"There was this girl—I really did almost really forget it. But he was opening the stuff by then, and I didn't want to go back in and get nabbed."
Miles shook his head hopelessly. "Can you remember anything unusual about the orders? Anything out of the ordinary?"
"Oh, sure. It was the damnedest packet. In the first place, it was delivered by an Imperial Household courier in full livery. Lessee, four data discs, one green for Intelligence, two red for Security, one blue for Operations. And the parchment, of course."
Ivan had the family memory, at least. What would it be like to have a mind that retained nearly everything, but never bothered to put it in any kind of order? Exactly like living in Ivan's room, Miles decided. "Parchment?" he said. "Parchment?"
"Yeah, I thought that was kind of unusual."
"Do you have any idea how bloody—" He surged up, sat back down, squeezed his temples with the heels of his hands in an effort to get his brain into motion. Not only was Ivan an idiot, but he generated a telepathic damping field that turned people nearby into idiots too. He would point this out to Barrayaran Intelligence, who would make of his cousin the newest weapon in their arsenal—if anyone could be found who could remember what they were doing once they closed on him. . . . "Ivan, there are only three kinds of thing written on parchment any more. Imperial edicts, the originals of the official edicts from the Council of Counts and from the Council of Ministers, and certain orders from the Council of Counts to their own members."
"I know that."
"As my father's heir, I am a cadet member of that Council."
"You have my sympathy," said Ivan, his gaze wandering back to the window. "Which of those ships out there is the fastest, d'you think, the Illyrican cruiser or the—"
"Ivan, I'm psychic," Miles announced suddenly. "I'm so psychic, I can tell what color the ribbon was on that parchment without even seeing it."
"I know what color it was," said Ivan irritably. "It was—"
"Black," Miles cut across him. "Black, you idiot! And you never thought to mention it!"
"Look, I have to take that stuff from my mother and your father, I don't have to take it from you, too—" Ivan paused. "How did you