"Forever," he snarled whitely. "I will avenge her--avenge them all--"

Wrong answer, Cordelia thought, with a curious lightheaded sadness. "Bothari." He was at her side instantly. "Pick up that sword." He did so. She set the replicator on the floor and laid her hand briefly atop his, wrapped around the hilt. "Bothari, execute this man for me, please." Her tone sounded weirdly serene in her own ears, as if she'd just asked Bothari to pa.s.s the b.u.t.ter. Murder didn't really require hysterics.

"Yes, Milady," Bothari intoned, and lifted the blade. His eyes gleamed with joy.

"What?" yelped Vordarian in astonishment. "You're a Betan! You can't do--"

The flashing stroke cut off his words, his head, and his life. It was really extremely neat, despite the last spurts of blood from the stump of his neck. Vorkosigan should have loaned Bothari's services the day they'd executed Carl Vorhalas. All that upper body strength, combined with that extraordinary steel... the bemused gyration of her thought snapped back to near-reality as Bothari fell to his knees with the body, dropping the swordstick and clutching his head. He screamed. It was as if Vordarian's death cry had been forced out of Bothari's throat.

She dropped beside him, suddenly afraid again, though she'd been numb to fear, white-out overloaded, ever since Kareen had grabbed for the nerve disruptor and triggered all this chaos. Keyed by similar stimuli, Bothari was having the forbidden flashback, Cordelia guessed, to the mutinous throat-cutting that the Barrayaran high command had decreed he must forget. She cursed herself for not forseeing this possibility. Would it kill him?

"This door is hot as h.e.l.l," Droushnakovi, white and shaken, reported from beside it. "Milady, we have to get out of here now."

Bothari was gasping raggedly, hands still pressed to his head, yet even as she watched his breathing grew marginally less disrupted. She left him, to crawl blindly over the floor. She needed something, something moisture-proof... .

There, at the bottom of the wardrobe, was a st.u.r.dy plastic bag containing several pairs of Kareen's shoes, no doubt hastily transported by some maidservant when Vordarian had Imperially decreed Kareen move in with him. Cordelia emptied out the shoes, stumbled back around the bed, and collected Vordarian's head from the place where it had rolled to a stop. It was heavy, but not so heavy as the uterine replicator. She pulled the drawstrings tight.

"Drou. You're in the best shape. Carry the replicator. Start down. Don't drop it." If she dropped Vordarian, Cordelia decided, it would scarcely do him further harm.

Droushnakovi nodded and grabbed up both the replicator and the abandoned swordstick. Cordelia wasn't sure if she retrieved the latter for its newly acquired historical value, or from some fractured sense of obligation for one of Kou's possessions. Cordelia coaxed Bothari to his feet. Cool air was rushing up out of the panel opening, drawn by the fire beyond the door. It would make a neat flue, till the burning wall crashed in and blocked the entry. Vordarian's people were going to have a very puzzling time, poking through the embers and wondering where they'd gone.

The descent was nightmarish, in the compressed s.p.a.ce, with Bothari whimpering below her feet. She could carry the bag neither beside nor in front of her, so had to balance it on one shoulder and go one--handed, palm slapping down the rungs and her wrist aching.

Once on the level, she prodded the weeping Bothari ruthlessly forward, and wouldn't let him stop till they came again to Ezar's cache in the ancient stable cellar.

"Is he all right?" Droushnakovi asked nervously, as Bothari sat down with his head between his knees.

"He has a headache," said Cordelia. "It may take a while to pa.s.s off."

Droushnakovi asked even more diffidently, "Are you all right, Milady?"

Cordelia couldn't help it; she laughed. She choked down the hysteria as Drou began to look really scared. "No."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Ezar's cache included a crate of currency, Barrayaran marks of various denominations. It also included a choice of IDs tailored to Drou, not all of which were obsolete. Cordelia put the two together, and sent Drou out to purchase a used groundcar. Cordelia waited by the cache while Bothari slowly uncurled from his tight fetal ball of pain, recovering enough to walk.

Getting back out of Vorbarr Sultana had always been the weak part of her plan, Cordelia felt, perhaps because she'd never really believed they'd get this far. Travel was tightly restricted, as Vordarian sought to keep the city from collapsing under him should its frightened populace attempt to stream away. The monorail required pa.s.ses and cross-checks. Lightflyers were absolutely forbidden, targets of opportunity for trigger-happy guards. Groundcars had to cross multiple roadblocks. Foot travel was too slow for her burdened and exhausted party. There were no good choices.

After an eternity, pale Drou returned, to lead them back through the tunnels and out to an obscure side street. The city was dusted with sooty snow. From the direction of the Residence, a kilometer off, a darker cloud boiled up to mix with the winter-grey sky; the fierce fire was still not under control, apparently. How long would Vordarian's decapitated command structure keep functioning? Had word of his death leaked out yet?

As instructed, Drou had found a very plain and un.o.btrusive old groundcar, though there had been enough funds to buy the most luxurious new vehicle the city still held. Cordelia wanted to save that reserve for the checkpoints.

But the checkpoints were not as bad as Cordelia had feared. Indeed, the first was empty, its guards pulled back, perhaps, to fight the fire or seal the perimeter of the Residence. The second was crowded with vehicles and impatient drivers. The inspectors were perfunctory and nervous, distracted and half--paralyzed by who-knew-what rumors coming from downtown. A fat wad of currency, handed out under Drou's perfect false ID, disappeared into a guard's pocket. He waved Drou through, driving her "sick uncle" home. Borthari looked sick enough, for sure, huddled under a blanket that also hid the replicator. At the last checkpoint Drou "repeated" a likely version of a rumor of Vordarian's death, and the worried guard deserted on the spot, shedding his uniform in favor of a civilian overcoat and vanishing down a side street.

They zigzagged over bad side roads all afternoon to reach Vorinnis's neutral District, where the aged groundcar died of a fractured power-train. They abandoned it and took to the monorail system then, Cordelia driving her exhausted little party on, racing the clock in her head. At midnight, they reported in at the first military installation over the next loyalist border, a supply depot. It took Drou several minutes of argument with the night duty officer to persuade him to 1) identify them, 2) let them in, and 3) let them use the military comm net to call Tanery Base to demand transport. At that point the D.O. abruptly became a lot more efficient. A high-speed air shuttle with a hot pilot was scrambled to pick them up.

Approaching Tanery Base at dawn from the air, Cordelia felt the most unpleasant flash of deja vu. It was so like her first arrival from the mountains, she had the sense of being caught in a time loop. Perhaps she'd died and gone to h.e.l.l, and her eternal torment would be to repeat the last three weeks' events over and over, endlessly. She shivered.

Droushnakovi watched her with concern. The exhausted Bothari dozed, in the air shuttle's pa.s.senger cabin. Illyan's two ImpSec men, identical twins for all Cordelia could tell to Vordarian's ones they'd murdered back at the Residence, maintained a nervous silence. Cordelia held the uterine replicator possessively on her lap. The plastic bag sat between her feet. She was irrationally unable to let either item out of her sight, though it was clear Drou would much rather the bag had ridden in the luggage compartment.

The air shuttle touched neatly down on its landing pad, and its engines whined to silence.

"I want Captain Vaagen, and I want him now," Cordelia repeated for the fifth time as Illyan's men led them underground into the Security debriefing area.

"Yes, Milady. He's on his way," the ImpSec man a.s.sured her again. She glowered suspiciously at him.

Cautiously, the ImpSec men relieved them of their personal a.r.s.enal. Cordelia didn't blame them; she wouldn't have trusted her wild-looking crew with charged weapons either. Thanks to Ezar's cache the women were not ill dressed, though there had been nothing in Bothari's size, so he'd retained his smoked and stinking black fatigues. Fortunately the. dried blood spatters didn't show much. But all their faces were hollow-eyed, grooved and shadowed. Cordelia shivered, and Bothari's hands and eyelids twitched, and Droushnakovi had a distressing tendency to start crying, silently, at random moments, stopping as suddenly as she started.

At long last--only minutes, Cordelia told herself firmly--Captain Vaagen appeared, a tech at his side. He wore undress greens, and his steps were quick, up to Vaagen--speed again. The only residue of his injuries seemed to be a black patch over his eye; on him, it looked good, giving him a fine piratical air. Cordelia trusted the patch was only a temporary part of ongoing treatment.

"Milady!" He managed a smile, the first to shift those facial muscles in a while, Cordelia sensed. His one eye gleamed triumph. "You got it!"

"I hope so, Captain." She held up the replicator, which she had refused to let the ImpSec men touch. "I hope we're in time. There aren't any red lights yet, but there was a warning beeper. I shut it off, it was driving me crazy."

He looked the device over, checking key readouts. "Good. Good. Nutrient reservoir is very low, but not quite depleted yet. Filters still functioning, uric acid level high but not over tolerance--I think it's all right, Milady. Alive, that is. What this interruption has done to my calcification treatments will take more time to determine. We'll be in the infirmary. I should be able to begin servicing it within the hour."

"Do you have everything you need there? Supplies?"

His white teeth flashed. "Lord Vorkosigan had me begin setting up a lab the day after you left. Just in case, he said."

And, I love you. "Thank you. Go, go." She surrendered the replicator into Vaagen's hands, and he hurried out with it.

She sat back down like a marionette with the strings cut. Now she could allow herself to feel the full weight of her exhaustion. But she could not stop quite yet. She had one very important debriefing yet to accomplish. And not to these hovering ImpSec twits, who pestered her--she closed her eyes and pointedly ignored them, letting Drou stammer out answers to their foolish questions.

Desire warred with dread. She wanted Aral. She had defied Aral, most openly. Had it touched his honor, scorched his--admittedly, unusually flexible--Barrayaran male ego beyond tolerance? Would she be frozen out of his trust forever? No, that suspicion was surely unjust. But his public credibility among his peers, part of the delicate psychology of power--had she damaged it? Would some d.a.m.nable unforseen political consequence rebound out of all this, back on their heads? Did she care? Yes, she decided sadly. It was h.e.l.l to be so tired, and still care.

"Kou!"

Drou's cry snapped Cordelias eyes open. Koudelka was limping into the main portal Security debriefing office. Good Lord, the man was back in uniform, shaved and sharp. Only the grey rings under his eyes were non-regulation.

Kou and Drou's reunion, Cordelia was delighted to note, was not in the least military. The staff soldier was instantly plastered all over with tall and grubby blonde, exchanging m.u.f.fled unregulation greetings like darling, love, thank G.o.d, safe, sweet... . The ImpSec men turned away uncomfortably from the blast of naked emotion radiating from their faces. Cordelia basked in it. A far more sensible way to greet a friend than all that moronic saluting.

They parted only to see each other better, still holding hands. "You made it," chortled Droushnakovi. "How long have you--is Lady Vorpatril--?"

"We only made it in about two hours ahead of you," Kou said breathlessly, reoxygenating after a heroic kiss. "Lady Vorpatril and the young lord are bedded down in the infirmary. The doctor says she's suffering mainly from stress and exhaustion. She was incredible. We had a couple of bad moments, getting past Vordarian's Security, but she never cracked. And you--you did it! I pa.s.sed Vaagen in the corridor, with the replicator--you rescued m'lord's son!"

Droushnakovi's shoulders sagged. "But we lost Princess Kareen."

"Oh." He touched her lips. "Don't tell me--Lord Vorkosigan instructed me to bring you all to him the instant you arrived. Debrief to him before anyone. I'll take you to him now." He waved away the ImpSec men like flies, something Cordelia had been longing to do.

Bothari had to help her rise. She gathered up the yellow plastic bag. She noted ironically that it bore the name and logo of one of the capital's most exclusive women's clothiers. Kareen encompa.s.ses you at last, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"What's that?" asked Kou.

"Yes, Lieutenant," the urgent ImpSec man put in, "please--she's refused to let us examine it in any way. By regulations, we shouldn't let her carry it into the base."

Cordelia pulled open the top of the bag and held it out for Kou's inspection. He peered within.

"s.h.i.t." The ImpSec men surged forward as Koudelka jumped back. He waved them down. "I... I see," he swallowed. "Yes, Admiral Vorkosigan will certainly want to see that."

"Lieutenant, what should I put on my inventory?" the ImpSec man--whined, Cordelia decided, was what he was doing. "I have to register it, if it's going in."

"Let him cover his a.s.s, Kou," Cordelia sighed.

Kou peeked again, his lips twisting into a very crooked grin. "It's all right. Put it down as a Winterfair gift for Admiral Vorkosigan. From his wife."

"Oh, Kou," Drou held out his sword. "I saved this. But we lost the casing, I'm sorry."

Kou took it, looked at the bag, made the connection, and carried it more carefully. "That's... that's all right. Thank you."

"I'll take it back to Siegling's and get a duplicate casing made," Cordelia promised.

The ImpSec men gave way before Admiral Vorkosigan's top aide. Kou led Cordelia, Bothari, and Drou into the base. Cordelia pulled the drawstring tight, and let the bag swing from her hand.

"We're going down to the Staff level. The admiral's been in a sealed meeting for the last hour. Two of Vordarian's top officers came in secretly last night. Negotiating to sell him out. The best hostage-rescue plan hinges on their cooperation."

"Did they know about this yet?" Cordelia held up the bag.

"I don't think so, Milady. You've just changed everything." His grin grew feral, and his uneven stride lengthened.

"I expect that raid is still going to be required," Cordelia sighed. "Even in collapse, Vordarian's side is still dangerous. Maybe more dangerous, in their desperation." She thought of that downtown Vorbarr Sultana hotel, where Bothari's baby girl Elena was, as far as she knew, still housed. Lesser hostages. Could she persuade Aral to apportion a few more resources for lesser hostages? Alas, she had probably not put all the soldiers out of work even yet. I tried. G.o.d, I tried.

They went down, and down, to the nerve center of Tanery Base. They came to a highly secured conference chamber; a lethally armed squad stood ramrod-guard outside it. Koudelka wafted them past. The doors slid aside, and closed again behind them.

Cordelia took in the tableau, that paused to look back up at her from around the polished table. Aral was in the center, of course. Illyan and Count Piotr flanked him on either side. Prime Minister Vortala was there, and Kanzian, and some other senior staffers all in formal dress greens. The two double-traitors sat across, with their aides. Clouds of witnesses. She wanted to be alone with Aral, be rid of the whole b.l.o.o.d.y mob of them. Soon.

Aral's eyes locked to hers in silent agony. His lips curled in an utterly ironic smile. That was all; and yet her stomach warmed with confidence again, sure of him. No frost. It was going to be all right. They were in step again, and a torrent of words and hard embraces could not have communicated it any better. Embraces would come, though, the grey eyes promised. Her own lips curved up for the first time since--when?

Count Piotr's hand slapped down hard upon the table. "Good G.o.d, woman, where have you been?" he cried furiously.

A morbid lunacy overtook her. She smiled fiercely at him, and held up the bag. "Shopping."

For a second, the old man nearly believed her; conflicting expressions whiplashed over his face, astonishment, disbelief, then anger as it penetrated he was being mocked.

"Want to see what I bought?" Cordelia continued, still floating. She yanked the bag's top open, and rolled Vordarian's head out across the table. Fortunately, it had ceased leaking some hours back. It stopped faceup before him, lips grinning, drying eyes staring.

Piotr's mouth fell open. Kanzian jumped, the staffers swore, and one of Vordarian's traitors actually fell out of his chair, recoiling. Vortala pursed his lips and raised his brows. Koudelka, grimly proud of his key role in stage-managing this historic moment in one-upsmanship, laid the swordstick on the table as further evidence. Illyan puffed, and grinned triumphantly through his shock.

Aral was perfect. His eyes widened only briefly, then he rested his chin on his hands and gazed over his father's shoulder with an expression of cool interest. "But of course," he breathed. "Every Vor lady goes to the capital to shop."

"I paid too much for it," Cordelia confessed.

"That, too, is traditional." A sardonic smile quirked his lips.

"Kareen is dead. Shot in the melee. I couldn't save her."

He Opened his hand, as if to let the nascent black humor fall through his fingers. "I see." He raised his eyes again to hers, as if asking Are you all right?, and apparently finding the answer, No.

"Gentlemen. If you will be pleased to excuse yourselves for a few minutes. I wish to be alone with my wife."

In the shuffle of the men rising to their feet, Cordelia caught a mutter, "Brave man..."

She nailed Vordarian's men by eye, as they backed from the table. "Officers. I recommend that when this conference resumes, you surrender unconditionally upon Lord Vorkosigan's mercy. He may still have some." I certainly don't, was the unspoken cap to that. "I'm tired of your stupid war. End it."

Piotr edged past her. She smiled bitterly at him. He grimaced uneasily back. "It appears I underestimated you," he murmured.

"Don't you ever... cross me again. And stay away from my son."

A look from Vorkosigan held back her outpouring of rage, quivering on the lip of her cup. She and Piotr exchanged wary nods, like the vestigial bows of two duelists.

"Kou," said Vorkosigan, staring bemusedly at the grisly object lying by his elbow. "Will you please arrange for this thing to be removed to the base morgue. I don't fancy it as a table decoration. It will have to be stored till it can be buried with the rest of him. Wherever that may be."

"Sure you don't want to leave it there to inspire Vordarian's staffers to come to terms?" said Kou.

"No," said Vorkosigan firmly. "It's had a sufficiently salutary effect already."

Gingerly, Kou took the bag from Cordelia, opened it, and used it to capture Vordarian's head without actually touching it.

Aral's eye took in her weary team, Droushnakovi's grief, Bothari's compulsive twitching. "Drou. Sergeant. You are dismissed to wash and eat. Report back to me in my quarters after we finish here."

Droushnakovi nodded, and the sergeant saluted, and they followed Koudelka out.

Cordelia fell into Aral's arms as the door sighed shut, into his lap, catching him as he rose for her. They both landed with enough force to threaten the balance of the chair. They embraced each other so tightly, they had to back off to manage a kiss.

"Don't you ever," he husked, "pull a stunt like that again."

"Don't you ever let it become necessary, again."

"Deal."

He held her face away from his, between his hands, his eyes devouring her. "I was so afraid for you, I forgot to be afraid for your enemies. I should have remembered. Dear Captain."

"I couldn't have done a thing, alone. Drou was my eyes, Bothari my right arm, Koudelka our feet. You must forgive Kou for going AWOL. We sort of kidnapped him."

"So I heard."

"Did he tell you about your cousin Padma?"

"Yes," a grieved sigh. He stared back through time. "Padma and I were the only survivors of Mad Yuri's ma.s.sacre of Prince Xav's descendants, that day. I was eleven. Padma was one, a baby... I always thought of him as the baby, ever after. Tried to watch out for him... Now I'm the only one left. Yuri's work is almost done."

"Bothari's Elena. She must be rescued. She's a lot more important than that barn full of counts at the Residence."