Vormidwitch - sequel to Time Shall Not Mend (HP-Vorkosigan crossover fic)
Vormidwitch by A.J.Hall
A sequel to Time Shall Not Mend.
Miles looked resentfully up and down the breakfast table.
By tradition, an Imperial Auditor's chain of command was short. It began - and ended - with the Emperor himself. His fingers stole up to entangle themselves in the symbolic length of chased gold links which encircled his neck. Gregor's choke chain, his cousin Ivan had called it, nearly twenty years ago now, when he had won it in a scrambled mess of (he was mature enough to admit it, now) wild-assed guessing and seat-of-the-pants brilliance.
A symbol, but even on modern-day Barrayar symbols had their potency. His chain was a short one. And not - he looked down the breakfast table again, and suppressed a hiss of frustration - assuredly not one to be lightly yanked by his mother, wife and - goddammit - even his brother!
Mark took time to snag another pat of butter and smear it liberally over his fourth slice of toast before slumping back in his chair and eying Miles through hooded eyes whose expression reminded Miles, disconcertingly, exactly how it was his brother had made the first of his many millions.
"So," he purred, his voice slow and even, "it all began with a routine peculation investigation, yes?"
"Hardly routine." The Head of ImpSec, seated at Miles's left hand, had been silent throughout most of the meal, his gaze abstracted, lingering on the group of children playing at the other end of the room by the huge fireplace bright with its Midsummer display of flowers cunningly entwined among gnarled twists of native Barrayaran timber.
"Hardly routine. Not given the sums abstracted and the years - no, decades - for which it seems it had persisted undetected."
"Nevertheless." Mark's tone was dangerous. "Some people might consider it a conflict of interest. Even for an Imperial Auditor. A peculation investigation ending in my brother's own - pet - Jacksonian," (he imbued the word with the hissed vehemence with which their mother was wont to express her own preferred oath of choice) "scientist."
"Indeed." Head of ImpSec was not a job which included "easily disconcerted" in its specification. Galeni's voice continued level, conversational. "Your brother's former rescuee. Which made it natural of Vorgustafson to call Miles in, as soon as he made the connection, to see if his inside knowledge could shed any light on what kind of research project might have driven Dr Weddell - Canaba to risk his entire career - his second career - and cheat the Imperium of a medium sized fortune - even measured by your standards."
"Duv!" The Dowager Countess's fist came down hard on the table, making the tea-cups jump. Involuntarily, Galeni flinched at last. The shrewd eyes betrayed the merest flicker of satisfaction before Miles's mother went for the jugular. "Duv. That - that " her hand gesticulated broadly towards the fireplace. "That is not a research project. He is a six-year old child. And I will be damned if I let you - either of you - leave this table without telling me what hellish notion of so-called scientific investigation Canaba had in mind when he arranged for him to be born in the first place."
At the sound of her voice the child had looked up; warily, automatically; clearly aware he was the subject of discussion among the grown-ups. With a pang of queasy recognition Miles noticed that though the boy's limbs were straight and athletic and even at six he was already one of the tallest of the little group he held himself with the wary consciousness of one who knows himself to be vulnerably other, and who must at all times sniff suspiciously at the wind, in case the uneasy tolerance of his fellows break, and they turn and rend him. A changeling; a cuckoo child; uneasy even in the midst of peace and security.
Galeni shrugged. "I only wish we knew. Canaba knew what he was about. His records wiped clean - or nearly so - and then that lightflyer accident-"
"Accident?" Mark's tone was self-consciously ironic. Galeni nodded.
"As you say, yes. Nevertheless, one of the best I've seen staged. Half a hillside slagged back to bedrock - Canaba himself almost vaporised in the fireball - the ImpSec forensic squad had to take ID practically back to molecular level- "
"And a small child three witnesses will say they saw get into the passenger seat found peacefully asleep in a patch of native scrub two hundred yards down-slope without a mark on him. Yes." The Dowager Countess propped her chin on her hand and looked across to the children at the fireplace with a sort of thoughtful hunger. Galeni's daughter - whose normally dazzlingly fair hair, her mother's gift, looked dimmed almost to mouse by contrast with the strange child's silver blondness - had put an arm around the boy's shoulder's to draw him back into the game. He yielded, but with a lingering look towards the adults discussing him at the breakfast table.
"Leaving that aside-" Mark gestured vigorously with a morsel of toast, "-The suicide is self-explanatory, surely? Canaba - for whatever reason - cheats the Imperium of a huge pot. When he works out they're on his tail, he takes the easy way out. No?"
"No." Galeni's face was grave. "No-one - no-one in the investigation is prepared to admit that Canaba could have had the slightest hint he'd been rumbled. Some of my best men have gone over the links, and all of them are solid."
"But surely-"
Miles broke in. "What's more, being found out wouldn't explain the note."
"He left a note?"
"Yes." He could quote it from memory; the words squirrelled round, meaninglessly in his head. "Those that come after will call me Zellaby."
The Dowager Countess's brows rose. "Meaning what?"
He shrugged, meeting his mother's cool level scrutiny fully for the first time since their scrambled, early morning arrival.
"If I could answer that, I'd be giving half the analysts in ImpSec their weekend back. It doesn't tie into any links we've been able to run so far. We've matched it with half the aliases of three-quarters of the leading criminals in the Nexus, and turned up - precisely nothing. The computers have translated it into all four Barrayaran languages, 20 archaic sub-dialects, and forty two galactic tongues. Nothing. So now they're sitting down in the basement, data-crunching in the hope of a match. We've sent a tight-beam to our embassy on Jackson's Hole, to see if it ties into any form of local folk-lore or freemasonry, but until the answers come back-"
He allowed his voice to tail away. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the child had broken away from the others - who were now absorbed in teasing the latest brood of kittens - and had stolen within earshot of the table and then paused, irresolute, as though unable to move forward or back. Besides him, Ekaterin had turned on her chair. Her eyes were fixed only on the child, her arms held out, her concentration intense.
"Don't be afraid," she murmured. "I don't know what they've been doing to you. But it's going to stop now. I'm going to see you're protected. I give you my word."
The child looked up at her, his grey eyes locking with hers, the childish pudginess of his features at odds with the sharpness of his pointed chin, and the twig-like fragility of his arms and legs (had Canaba been starving him as part of his mysterious experiment?). The eerie depth of the look caused Miles's breath to catch in his throat.
The child spoke for the first time. "Why do you see pictures of water and - mountains - when you look at me?" His hand gestured, gracefully, archaically, and Ekaterin uttered a small, choked sob, and turned towards Miles, her eyes clouded with fear and - almost - accusation.
Galeni looked at her, and back to the child, and cleared his throat.
"Yes," he said slowly. "We don't know why Canaba chose to steal a fortune to create a clone. We don't know what qualities he was trying to isolate, and why he became so obsessed with it all. And we don't know how many unsuccessful attempts he may have made until he got to this one. Nor do we know what made him decide to commit suicide and take his - creation - with him. But - thanks to Miles's inside knowledge - there was one possibility which we could check up on straight away. And Miles was right. He can most assuredly read minds."
A sequel to Time Shall Not Mend.
Miles looked resentfully up and down the breakfast table.
By tradition, an Imperial Auditor's chain of command was short. It began - and ended - with the Emperor himself. His fingers stole up to entangle themselves in the symbolic length of chased gold links which encircled his neck. Gregor's choke chain, his cousin Ivan had called it, nearly twenty years ago now, when he had won it in a scrambled mess of (he was mature enough to admit it, now) wild-assed guessing and seat-of-the-pants brilliance.
A symbol, but even on modern-day Barrayar symbols had their potency. His chain was a short one. And not - he looked down the breakfast table again, and suppressed a hiss of frustration - assuredly not one to be lightly yanked by his mother, wife and - goddammit - even his brother!
Mark took time to snag another pat of butter and smear it liberally over his fourth slice of toast before slumping back in his chair and eying Miles through hooded eyes whose expression reminded Miles, disconcertingly, exactly how it was his brother had made the first of his many millions.
"So," he purred, his voice slow and even, "it all began with a routine peculation investigation, yes?"
"Hardly routine." The Head of ImpSec, seated at Miles's left hand, had been silent throughout most of the meal, his gaze abstracted, lingering on the group of children playing at the other end of the room by the huge fireplace bright with its Midsummer display of flowers cunningly entwined among gnarled twists of native Barrayaran timber.
"Hardly routine. Not given the sums abstracted and the years - no, decades - for which it seems it had persisted undetected."
"Nevertheless." Mark's tone was dangerous. "Some people might consider it a conflict of interest. Even for an Imperial Auditor. A peculation investigation ending in my brother's own - pet - Jacksonian," (he imbued the word with the hissed vehemence with which their mother was wont to express her own preferred oath of choice) "scientist."
"Indeed." Head of ImpSec was not a job which included "easily disconcerted" in its specification. Galeni's voice continued level, conversational. "Your brother's former rescuee. Which made it natural of Vorgustafson to call Miles in, as soon as he made the connection, to see if his inside knowledge could shed any light on what kind of research project might have driven Dr Weddell - Canaba to risk his entire career - his second career - and cheat the Imperium of a medium sized fortune - even measured by your standards."
"Duv!" The Dowager Countess's fist came down hard on the table, making the tea-cups jump. Involuntarily, Galeni flinched at last. The shrewd eyes betrayed the merest flicker of satisfaction before Miles's mother went for the jugular. "Duv. That - that " her hand gesticulated broadly towards the fireplace. "That is not a research project. He is a six-year old child. And I will be damned if I let you - either of you - leave this table without telling me what hellish notion of so-called scientific investigation Canaba had in mind when he arranged for him to be born in the first place."
At the sound of her voice the child had looked up; warily, automatically; clearly aware he was the subject of discussion among the grown-ups. With a pang of queasy recognition Miles noticed that though the boy's limbs were straight and athletic and even at six he was already one of the tallest of the little group he held himself with the wary consciousness of one who knows himself to be vulnerably other, and who must at all times sniff suspiciously at the wind, in case the uneasy tolerance of his fellows break, and they turn and rend him. A changeling; a cuckoo child; uneasy even in the midst of peace and security.
Galeni shrugged. "I only wish we knew. Canaba knew what he was about. His records wiped clean - or nearly so - and then that lightflyer accident-"
"Accident?" Mark's tone was self-consciously ironic. Galeni nodded.
"As you say, yes. Nevertheless, one of the best I've seen staged. Half a hillside slagged back to bedrock - Canaba himself almost vaporised in the fireball - the ImpSec forensic squad had to take ID practically back to molecular level- "
"And a small child three witnesses will say they saw get into the passenger seat found peacefully asleep in a patch of native scrub two hundred yards down-slope without a mark on him. Yes." The Dowager Countess propped her chin on her hand and looked across to the children at the fireplace with a sort of thoughtful hunger. Galeni's daughter - whose normally dazzlingly fair hair, her mother's gift, looked dimmed almost to mouse by contrast with the strange child's silver blondness - had put an arm around the boy's shoulder's to draw him back into the game. He yielded, but with a lingering look towards the adults discussing him at the breakfast table.
"Leaving that aside-" Mark gestured vigorously with a morsel of toast, "-The suicide is self-explanatory, surely? Canaba - for whatever reason - cheats the Imperium of a huge pot. When he works out they're on his tail, he takes the easy way out. No?"
"No." Galeni's face was grave. "No-one - no-one in the investigation is prepared to admit that Canaba could have had the slightest hint he'd been rumbled. Some of my best men have gone over the links, and all of them are solid."
"But surely-"
Miles broke in. "What's more, being found out wouldn't explain the note."
"He left a note?"
"Yes." He could quote it from memory; the words squirrelled round, meaninglessly in his head. "Those that come after will call me Zellaby."
The Dowager Countess's brows rose. "Meaning what?"
He shrugged, meeting his mother's cool level scrutiny fully for the first time since their scrambled, early morning arrival.
"If I could answer that, I'd be giving half the analysts in ImpSec their weekend back. It doesn't tie into any links we've been able to run so far. We've matched it with half the aliases of three-quarters of the leading criminals in the Nexus, and turned up - precisely nothing. The computers have translated it into all four Barrayaran languages, 20 archaic sub-dialects, and forty two galactic tongues. Nothing. So now they're sitting down in the basement, data-crunching in the hope of a match. We've sent a tight-beam to our embassy on Jackson's Hole, to see if it ties into any form of local folk-lore or freemasonry, but until the answers come back-"
He allowed his voice to tail away. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the child had broken away from the others - who were now absorbed in teasing the latest brood of kittens - and had stolen within earshot of the table and then paused, irresolute, as though unable to move forward or back. Besides him, Ekaterin had turned on her chair. Her eyes were fixed only on the child, her arms held out, her concentration intense.
"Don't be afraid," she murmured. "I don't know what they've been doing to you. But it's going to stop now. I'm going to see you're protected. I give you my word."
The child looked up at her, his grey eyes locking with hers, the childish pudginess of his features at odds with the sharpness of his pointed chin, and the twig-like fragility of his arms and legs (had Canaba been starving him as part of his mysterious experiment?). The eerie depth of the look caused Miles's breath to catch in his throat.
The child spoke for the first time. "Why do you see pictures of water and - mountains - when you look at me?" His hand gestured, gracefully, archaically, and Ekaterin uttered a small, choked sob, and turned towards Miles, her eyes clouded with fear and - almost - accusation.
Galeni looked at her, and back to the child, and cleared his throat.
"Yes," he said slowly. "We don't know why Canaba chose to steal a fortune to create a clone. We don't know what qualities he was trying to isolate, and why he became so obsessed with it all. And we don't know how many unsuccessful attempts he may have made until he got to this one. Nor do we know what made him decide to commit suicide and take his - creation - with him. But - thanks to Miles's inside knowledge - there was one possibility which we could check up on straight away. And Miles was right. He can most assuredly read minds."