[Vorkosigan] Shade without Colour, Part 2/?

[hazelator]

Shade without Colour
Multipart, part 2/manymany

Series: Vorkosigan saga, 2010 Bujold Ficathon
Prompt: "Cordelia/Aral, the AU where he really does move to Beta Colony and become a judo instructor"

Rating: PG | Warnings: None

Summary: On Beta Colony, seventeen years after the events of Escobar, the shadows of the past still lie long over Aral and Cordelia...

A/N: Sorry about the long wait - I was travelling, and then I had to re-read most of the early books of the series (since this thing is now much, much bigger than I'd originally planned).



Chapter 2

Illyan. Of course. She recognised him now. It wasn't just his tendency to fade into the background; Illyan looked like he had aged ten years since the last time they had seen him, during their annual trip back to Barrayar last summer.

She had never, in the last two decades, heard of the Chief of ImpSec making a trip down to Beta in person, not even as part of a personal holiday. The days lost in transit were bad enough, nevermind the distance from Barrayar and the necessary lag time. There were undercurrents here, she realised, even as Aral pulled on a shirt quickly and hurried to the living room, where their unexpected guest was waiting. Her Betan trained mind didn't register them, but she read it in the lines of Aral's face, the way he seemed to shut down, withdraw to a world that had never been hers. For a brief moment she felt as lost as a ship in free-fall, sensors shot out. The world spun, tumbled on its axis through uncharted depth, towards a destination that she didn't know, couldn't see. It was Simon's and Aral's world, a world of blood and bright sunlight, smoking debris and wild flowers, a world she had left behind so long ago.

A touch on her arm brought her out of it. Concerned grey eyes caught her gaze. Held. Her spinning world was suddenly arrested, drawn towards Aral like a compass needle towards the north.

"Cordelia," he said, and she took a breath - and suddenly she saw it, like a star map playing out across the lights of his eyes. He was her navcom, through the murky dark of unchartered space. Barrayar was his world, she knew, but he was part of her world, and he was her key to unlocking the secrets that seemed to choke the very air tonight. That knowledge expanded, as though to fill her world from horizon to horizon, and then seemed to settle within her, a confidence that she hadn't felt since ... since Escobar, maybe.

She took another deep breath, gathering her scattered thoughts. "Your collar." She adjusted it with a quick motion. "Can't have you look shabby in front of Simon."

Simon. Now that she actually stopped to think about it, the entire exchange at the door was strange. Simon Illyan was one of the few familiar faces on Barrayar, one of the fewer familiar faces from Escobar, and had been on first name terms with both of them for years. The formal address, the lapse back into last names and honorifics - she had thought at first that it was simply a matter of Piotr's death. But that had been unnecessarily cruel and abrupt, if Simon's only role had been to be the bearer of the news of a death in the family. There was something more to it. Something that put tension in the line of Aral's shoulders.

They entered the living room together. Sergeant Bothari, the only armsman who had followed them from Barrayar, was already there and leaning against the wall, a quiet but lingering presence. They had stopped him from answering the door, way back when they had first arrived on Beta Colony, when trying to fit in had been the watchword and Bothari's grim features had terrified most of their guests. But Illyan was more than used to their armsman - rather approved of this presence, since ImpSec paranoia would never let Aral stay anywhere without some form of security, and Bothari had taken the liberty of allowing him in.

Illyan himself was seated on the couch, his body language so neutral that Cordelia was hard pressed to read it. He spotted them, and rose automatically.

"Simon," Aral said, his voice quiet, ringing with a slight note of inquiry.

Illyan was dressed in civvies, in his usual bland and tasteless style. A stray thought clicked in Cordelia's mind - while she would not have put it past Barrayar to send an envoy all the way to another planet to inform a count's heir that his father had passed, their extravagence almost certainly would not extend to sending the Chief of ImpSec himself, especially not looking like he'd just left Barrayar in a hurry...

"You're not here in an official capacity," she said. It wasn't a question.

Illyan breathed a quiet sigh. "No."

The single word seemed to make the dread in the air crystalise until it was almost palpable.

"Have a seat," Aral said. It sounded more like an order, one that Illyan seemed only to happy to obey. He was swaying on his feet.

Tea. Coffee. She should have offered, gone for some, but by now the air was so tense that she felt like moving would make the moment shatter, to be lost beyond recall. A fortunate solution to her dilemma presented itself in the form of Miles, hovering nervously in the doorway to the kitchen. She gestured, he nodded and dashed off, and she moved to take a seat on the sofa beside Aral.

Illyan pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled again, stalling for time. Or perhaps trying to find a way to pitch the news. He tugged a little at the cuffs of the black civilian jacket that he was wearing, the action just failing to hide the edge of a bloodied bandage on one wrist. Any hope of this being a simple visit had long since vanished.

"Aral," evidently, Illyan had run through his store of official sounding condolances, and had settled on the most familiar, most straightforward form of address. "Your father passed away peacefully, in his sleep... one month and six days ago. I regret that I wasn't able to inform you earlier."

"Five weeks ago," Aral echoed very softly, the inquiring note in his voice a signal to elaborate. He lapsed into silence again, but every shred of his attention was clearly on Illyan.

"There has been some... excitement on Barrayar." Illyan's voice was exceedingly dry. "Which started... I suppose we could say the genesis of it was just after you left Barrayar last summer. But events only moved into high gear about two months ago."

Miles returned, juggling cups and a pot of coffee, and practically radiating curiosity. Illyan downed his, black without sugar. At the speed at which he inhaled it, he probably hadn't tasted a drop. Miles punctiliously refilled the cup, trying - and failing - to fade into the background thereafter. Illyan fiddled with the cup, and gave Miles a sidelong glance. Miles stared back.

"There is a matter that I must discuss with you in private, Aral. Cordelia," Illyan said, when Miles still didn't get the hint. There was silence for a heartbeat, which stretched when Miles still failed to move.

"It concerns Escobar," Illyan said pointedly, tired of waiting.

Aral immediately made a signal of dismissal. Miles made a noise of protest, which was quickly quelled by a look from his father. Cordelia risked a glance - Aral looked even more drawn, if that was even possible. Miles sighed very softly, then left, with the occasional glance over his shoulder. Neither Aral nor Illyan watched him go.

"So, Escobar," Aral said mildly. "Recent history, Simon?"

"Hardly," Illyan said. His eyes were hard. "It concerns the truth behind a certain botched invasion, years ago. The truth which was known to a very few, it seems."

"I'm almost surprised at how long it took you," Aral murmured.

Cordelia blinked as Illyan's gaze flicked to her, instead of Aral.

"I suspected for a while," Illyan said. "But there was very little impetus to pursue that particular line of inquiry down to its sordid end." He shrugged.

"Aral said you weren't aware of the original plan," Cordelia prompted, curious as to just how much he knew.

"A puppet, like everyone else. But a puppet with a seat in the front row. The key to the deception lay in Aral's supposed interrogation of you while you were sleeping - an inconsistency with Aral's character, with the benefit of hindsight. Also impossibe, upon closer inspection; Aral was confined to this quarters at the time, and my earlier sweeps of his room uncovered no drugs of any sort." He smiled, humourless. "A casual check of the chief surgeon's inventory revealed that no ..." his eyes went vague as he fished for the exact word that Aral had used so many years in the past, "'Potions' had been dispensed. A fact which the chief surgeon confirmed verbally. And the entire set up was way too... neat."

Aral raised an eyebrow. "Should have known btter than to trust an ImpSec analyst." But he sounded amused.

"It naturally followed that knowledge of the Escobaran plasma mirrors must have already been known to Aral. The only question was why it hadn't been disclosed to Serg. When one considered how organised the retreat was, especially when contrasted against that catastrophic charge to attack - it was suspicious, to say the least. But until recently, I was quite content to let the dead bury the dead. Other people were not. The paper trail for this operation had been quite thoroughly obliterated, but not, as it turns out, thoroughly enough."

The dread that she had felt earlier began to take shape and form, and Cordelia suspected that this was worse than even what Aral had imagined, when Illyan had turned up on their doorstep. She could - no, she couldn't imagine the chaos that a leak of Barrayar's uglist secret would cause. Or had it already been caused?

Illyan was still speaking. "The file, it seems, was unearthed during Vordorian's Pretendership, during the upheavel in ImpSec between Negri's death and the months before my appointment as his successor. It fell into the hands of one of Vordarian's lackeys, was perhaps lost, or kept hidden, but never forgotten. It finally reached Gregor's hands this year."

The blood had drained from Aral's face. "How much was in that file?"

"The battle plan. In comprehensive detail. The personnel allocation. Everything factual, but not the motiviations. Not the justifications. Those of us who knew Ezar, Serg and the old Barrayar could have guessed. Gregor ... does not have the benefit of that knowledge."

"I can imagine," Aral was leaning forward, gripping his knees. "Did you try to tell him? How did he take it?"

"I tried. But Gregor - and most of Barrayar - knows Serg as a war hero. And now, it seems, a war hero betrayed." Illyan's eyes were back on Aral, and his gaze was very steady. "He called you a murderer. He wanted to issue an immediate order for your arrest on the capital charge of treason."

Silence fell, as sudden and complete as a guillotine. What had Aral said about the punishment for treason by a Count's heir? Death by starvation in the grand square? The world suddenly seemed dreamlike, as though Cordelia was watching the ill-fated launch of her father's shuttle, knowing that inevitable outcome. Wake up, she wanted to tell herself. Wake up, before the end comes...

Sergeant Bothari had tensed, from where he had been quietly lurking. He remembered very little of it, or so Cordelia had deduced, and whatever he remembered had nothing to do with the political slant of things. He wasn't interested in the machinations of an old Emperor who had rigged an entire invasion of a planet to send his only son to his doom. But he was, she could tell, preparing to take down the Chief of ImpSec if he so much as made a move to carry out that arrest warrant.

"Sergeant," Cordelia snapped, then made a motion at him to stand down. Illyan had a fearsome reputation, but there was no way he could take down Bothari alone. Surely, if he were here to arrest Aral, he would have brought a lot more men, and a lot more firepower.... or was this another Vor quirk, to allow Aral to surrender quietly, his honour - whatever passed for it when he was accused of being a traitor - intact?

Illyan never even glanced at Bothari, although Cordelia was dead certain that he was aware of the man's every move. "Would you," Illyan said calmly to Aral, "Consent to an interview under fast penta?"

Cordelia was Barrayaran enough to know how very grave an insult that was, to a Vor lord. And especially to a High Vor lord, whose word was synonymous with his honour. But protest was useless, she knew, and any hope that this was some kind of joke was obviously misplaced. Illyan's gaze, always intense, seemed to burn in the glow of the incandescent lights. Aral met that intensity, implaccable as stone, but his eyes were weary. Betrayal twisted in Cordelia's gut. Et tu, Brute? Do you doubt him as well, Captain Illyan - so much so that nothing short of an admission elicited under a potion of yours is the only way to prove his innocence? Or does need drive you, in the face of Gregor's suspicion?

Aral moved first, opening a hand, palm upwards in a gesture of acceptance. "If it has come to that - that my oath sworn word is no longer sufficient... if it has come to a time where the secrets of the past can no longer keep themselves, safer though that might have been... then yes." There was no trace of hesitation in that consent.

Aral, Cordelia thought, anguished. Will you let the Barrayar devour you, even here, even now?

Illyan inclined his head in acceptance of that consent, and opened his mouth to speak.

Aral beat him to the punch, his lip quirking. "But you don't have a fast penta kit on you now, do you, Simon." It was not a question.

Illyan exhaled softly and leaned back. The intensity vanished, dissipating back into his normal polite blandness, as though it had never existed. Suddenly, it was easier to breathe. "No," he conceded with a shake of his head. "I don't."

Of course. Cordelia felt almost giddy with relief. Illyan wasn't here in his official capacity - he had said it himself. He hadn't come as part of the arrest squad - he had come to warn Aral. Or warn both of them? The shadows seemed darker, suddenly, fraught with danger and suspicion. But - a stray memory nagged, of that bandage around Illyan's wrist ... "Simon," she found herself saying, "What happened to you?"

Aral's eyes narrowed, confirming her suspicions. Illyan's expression grew briefly sardonic. "There has been some... excitement on Barrayar," he self-quoted.

He was evading, a sure sign of trouble. Cordelia opened her mouth, but this time Aral was faster.

"Gregor does you an injustice. There is no reason to suspect that you were - are - in any way, in conspiracy with me."

Particularly since those allegations of treason are completely false, Cordelia thought, annoyed.

"I was there, you remember," Illyan countered. "Your shadow at every turn."

"An observer only. A neutral party. Ezar's watchdog. The files should have removed any doubt of it."

"Whatever my official role was, it did not preclude me from being in cahoots with you. I believe that they were using my failure to disclose the information of your treason and the truth of Escobar to Gregor as the basis for their slander, made worse by my defense of your actions. Even that might not have been enough to persuade Gregor... but there was another little complication that even I was unaware of." Illyan slung an arm over the back of the couch. "It appears that in his sealed will, old Ezar willed Captain Negri to Gregor."

Aral nodded.

"He also willed me to you."

"That-- I was unaware of," Aral looked startled. "It would have made sense, if I had accepted the Regency. But it should have been amended the moment I turned it down..."

"Evidently, it was not."

Past and present - both seemed fraught with shadows tonight, the secrets of the past meshing with the secrets of the present, all seeking to tear the future down into chaos. And so, old man, you still seek to rule us from beyond the grave. But why? What did you see in your crystal ball? Cordelia bit her lip, seeing their hopes, their future on Beta Colony, starting to shrink as it receded into the horizon.

"Naturally," Illyan continued, "This combines to create a rather convenient result. Admiral Lord Vorkosigan, next in line for the Imperium, engineers the very ... elaborate murder of Prince Serg, then leaves while in disfavour with Ezar. Or is perhaps unable to face Ezar. He bides his time in secret. Previously, it was thought that your rejection of the Regency and emigration was conclusive of the sincerity of your resignation and the death of any design you might have had on the Imperium. But now, spun another way - you may have physically left Barrayar, but you left behind, like princers around the throne - your father the Regent, right arm of the Emperor, and your watchdog, the Chief of Imperial Security, as the left." Illyan's fingers tightened briefly, as though crushing the throne he spoke of. "To prepare for your eventual return and the start of the Vorkosigan dynasty. Rather convincing."

"Garbage," Cordelia snapped, unable to stay out of this discussion any longer. "If Aral wanted the Imperium, he would have taken the Regency and simply failed to give it back to Gregor. Or arranged for another convenient accident. Why wait for so long when he could have had it all?"

"Tell that to them," Illyan muttered. Then louder: "Not for himself, maybe, but for his son."

The sheer stupidity... Cordelia felt like her head was realing from it. Only Barrayarans would be capable of such... flights of fancy.

"Simon," Aral said, capturing Illyan's attention again. "You didn't answer the question. Were you charged with treason?"

Left with no way to squirm out of it this time, Illyan answered directly. "Not at the time I left Barrayar. I received word through unofficial channels--" Alys, Cordelia would have bet "--of the move to discredit me and then push for my arrest. They were still attempting to convince Gregor, and almost had him in the bag. The boy had stopped listening to me by then, but perhaps he still had his doubts, because he held out. They must have gotten antsy - and I suspect that they were working to some internal timetable, although damned if I know what it was - which was when they sent the death squad.

"Death wasn't an option, and neither was being arrested - if they were willing to take me out without the arrest warrant, they would have been just as willing to arrange for a convenient accident after I was thrown into prison, before I ever had a chance to testify before the court martial. I was forewarned, once more, and managed to get away in time. Unfortunately, the hasty manner of my departure convinced Gregor of my guilt. The warrant was sent out before I even completed my wormhole jump."

Aral... she had only seen him this angry once before. He had gone utterly still, as though all his energy was being reined in. As though he would explode, if even a fraction of that anger escaped. "And who are they?" he asked, his voice soft and venomous.

"Vordrozda was the main man whispering into Gregor's ear." Illyan's lips compressed into a line. "I tried to warn that idiot boy..." he shook his head. "Hessman was his crony, a friend of Gregor's from the Academy. But there were at least two others behind him. Vorhalas--"

"Surely not," Aral said sharply. "The Prime Minister may be a voice of open dissent from time to time, but he has always been impartial--"

"Not him. His son. Evon. Do you recall that nasty incident where the Regent your father ordered the execution of Carl Vorhalas for duelling?"

Aral nodded once. Barbaric practice, Cordelia though, but what had been the better option, in this case? Upholding the rule of law, no matter how barbaric, for the purpose of stamping out the equally barbaric practice of duelling? Where all paths lead to evil...

"Carl's younger brother never got over it. He's been going on for years about how he wants to change Barrayar. Supposes that he's the spearhead for change, the new generation, or whatever. But he's content to play by the rules. Usurpation isn't one of his motives, as far as I'm aware. Vorinnis, on the other hand..."

Aral frowned. "I was more familiar with his father. Refresh my memory."

"Count Vorinnis inherited the countship when his father passed about five years ago. He's always been a fairly obscure figure - stayed clear of the spotlight. Constantly courted by both the conservatives and the progressives. A damn weasal, if you ask me. He's gotten into Gregor's good books, but ..." Illyan looked vaguely annoyed. "My investigation had just churned up some interesting leads - the hypothesis so far was that he's been playing the conservatives against the progressives. The death of your father may not have been entirely of natural causes."

Aral sucked in a breath. His fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails had to be biting into his palms. "Proof, Simon." It was amazing how his voice still managed to stay level.

Illyan glanced away, apparently unable to meet Aral's gaze head on. "I don't have it yet. If I'd had five more days..." he shook his head. "There was no lapse in security. He died quietly, in his sleep. The forensics team uncovered no sign of poison and the coronor put it down to death by natural causes. But Vorinnis was the last person to see him... all I have is speculation."

Bombshell after bombshell. She could see where all of this was heading, and for a moment she had a vision of blasting out of here the same way as Illyan had blasted out of Barrayar. Aral, herself, the two boys. Bothari and his daughter Elena, who was attending school here. And Simon too, since he couldn't very well go back. The universe was a big place - surely somewhere out there, there was a haven for one group of misfits...

"Will they come for Aral, here?" There was no extradition treaty between Barrayar and Beta Colony, not after Escobar. But Beta Colony didn't like Aral - it had taken all of Illyan's skill to make Aral's war criminal history disappear from Beta's systems, but that wasn't the same as it never having existed in the first place. Beta might be all too pleased to hand him back to Barrayar, especially if it was to answer for supposed crimes about Escobar...

"The letter with the black seal, first," Aral was the one who answered, sounding distant. "A chance to return under my own will, to face the charges. The privilege of a Vor lord..."

Somewhere out there. A planet, a new frontier, some place that they could disappear into forever. Her eyes met Illyan's. He looked incredibly tired, whatever adrenalin that he had been running on wearing off fast. He had no doubt, she knew, as to what Aral would do, if the decision was solely up to him. But it wasn't, and so Illyan looked to her instead.

"It doesn't quite... make sense to me." As though anything out of Barrayar made any sense whatsoever. "Why target Aral? He's left. Gone. Hardly relevant to the balance of power on Barrayar." But even as she said it, she knew - Aral had been always bound to return some day, to take up his duties as Count Vorkosigan. That some day, it seemed, was today.

"The influence that father has -- had -- on Gregor was substantial," Aral said slowly, "If one were to win Gregor over to their side, better to cut him off from other potential forms of influence. There is probably concern on their part that I would return and demand some form of power, riding on my father's position as Gregor's top advisor."

"It seems extreme, to me," Cordelia huffed.

Aral's lips quirked in a sad smile.

"Possibly, one of the motives is revenge," Illyan ventured. "Not only for Evon Vorhalas, but for anyone who had lost friends and family at Escobar. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how far the knowledge of that mission has spread."

Cordelia leaned back, resisting the urge to close her eyes in the vain hope that when she opened them again, none of this would ever have existed. "So it seems that there are two choices before us. To return to Barrayar - to offer ourselves up in hopes of convincing Gregor to somehow accept that the murder of his father was not an act of treachery... or to run, for as long as we can, until they finally catch up with us."

"I have men who are loyal to me personally," Illyan said carefully. "Who may be able to hinder Barrayar, if they were to try to pursue."

"And besmirch their honours? Make their traitors to their Imperium too?" Cordelia shook her head at Illyan. "Even I know that that's not something we can ask of them."

Illyan made a vague gesture, which might have been agreement or something else. He had gone back to being unreadable. Aral was no help- she could read those coordinates clear enough; he would take the wormhole jump back to hell, sucked back into Barrayar's gravity well as surely as a satellite whose orbit had decayed. There had to be another way. "How much time do we have to decide?"

"As much time as we need," Aral said firmly. Cordelia opened her mouth to protest that time and tide and Imperial Orders waited for no man, when she saw the look he shot to Illyan. Make it happen, it said, as clear as any order uttered by Barrayar's most brilliant Admiral. Illyan sat up automatically, and nodded sharply. Something sharpened in his eyes - he hadn't just been tired, Cordelia realised, he had been as lost as she had felt, if not more. Where did a displaced Barrayaran, oath-sworn to an Emperor who had betrayed him, go? And if even Simon Illyan, one of the least defential, least subordinate Barrayarans she knew, could be drawn to Aral's orbit as surely as a comet to the sun...

"Is our location secure, Simon?" Aral asked.

"As secure as it can be, on Beta Colony," Illyan sighed. "For now."

"Then rest. We'll call a doctor," Aral's firm voice overrode the start of a token protest by Illyan.

Men would follow Aral, she realised - the hero of Komarr and Escobar, tested and honoured in war, his blood claim to the Imperium as solid as Gregor's. For a moment she saw the future as Vordrozda and the others must have imagined it - if Aral returned to Barrayar to raise his banner, men would flock to it. His was a power that could rip the Imperium apart, especially against a green Emperor barely into his maturity.

But the Vorkosigan they remembered had been in his thirties - younger, more energetic. They had not seen him mellow over the past seventeen years, had not seen the softer side that was a father to two children and the teacher to more. Her gaze moved involuntarily to the grey starting to show at his temples, normal by Barrayaran standards, pre-mature by Betan.

We are too old for another war, my love.

*

"Damn," Miles swore softly. Mark, next to him, stifled a yawn and shifted impatiently.

"Well?" Mark said. "What on earth are they talking about?"

Miles shook his head, frustrated. "That Illyan." Irritated, he yanked the headset off and chucked it at a black box that was half-hidden behind his console. Theoretically, Miles' system should have been able to pick up every whisper from any corner of the house. "He must be carrying a hand-held cone of silence. I thought those things were top secret Betan developments."

Mark snorted and grinned. "Outfoxed you, eh? I bet he knows about your bugs in dad's study."

Miles growled, but a gleam was starting to grow in his eyes. He ignored the wary look that Mark shot him. On the tabletop, his fingers tapped out an erratic, staccato rhythm. "Well. There was something he said... right before dad asked me to leave--" he frowned, then the stray memory clicked, and the grin that lit up his face had Mark inching nervously back. "Escobar. It has to do with Escobar."

TBC.