He strode forward. "Are you sure?"

"If you can open a picnic cooler, you can do this." They each took a latch and raised them in unison, breaking the sterile seal, and lifted the top off. Dr. Ritter moved in with a vibra- scalpel, cutting through the thick felt mat of nutrient tubing with a touch so delicate the silvery amniotic sac beneath was unscored, then cut Miles free of his last bit of biological packaging, clearing his mouth and nose of fluids before his first surprised inhalation. Aral's arm, around her, tightened so hard it hurt. A m.u.f.fled laugh, no more than a breath, broke from his lips; he swallowed and blinked to bring his features, suffused with elation and pain, back under strict control.

Happy birthday, thought Cordelia. Good color...

Unfortunately, that was about all that was really good. The contrast with baby Ivan was overwhelming. Despite the extra weeks of gestation, ten months to Ivan's nine-and-a-half, Miles was barely half Ivan's size at birth, and far more wizened and wrinkled. His spine was noticeably deformed, and his legs were drawn up and locked in a tight bend. He was definitely a male heir, though, no question about that. His first cry was thin, weak, nothing at all like Ivan's angry, hungry bellow. Behind her, she heard Piotr hiss with disappointment.

"Has he been getting enough nutrition?" she asked Vaagen. It was hard to keep the accusation out of her tone.

Vaagen shrugged helplessly. "All he would absorb."

The pediatrician and his colleague laid Miles out under a warming light, and began their examination, Cordelia and Aral on either side.

"This bend will straighten out on its own, Milady," the pediatrician pointed. "But the lower spine should have surgical correction as early as possible. You were right, Vaagen, the treatment to optimize skull development also fused the hip sockets. That's why the legs are locked in that strange position, m'lord. He'll require surgery to crack those bones loose and turn them around before he can start to crawl or walk. I don't recommend that in the first year, on top of the spinal work, let him gain strength and weight first--"

The surgeon, testing the infant's arms, swore suddenly and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his diagnostic viewer. Miles mewed. Aral's hand clenched, by his trouser seam. Cordelia's stomach sank. "h.e.l.l!" said the surgeon. "His humerus just snapped. You're right, Vaagen, the bones are abnormally brittle."

"At least he has bones," sighed Vaagen. "He almost didn't, at one point."

"Be careful," said the surgeon, "especially of the head and spine. If the rest are as bad as the long bones, we're going to have to come up with some kind of reinforcement...."

Piotr stamped toward the door. Aral glanced up, his lips thinning to a frown, and excused himself to follow. Cordelia was torn, but once observation a.s.sured her that the bone-setting was under way and the doctors' new caution would protect Miles from further damage today, she left their ingenious heads bent over him and followed Aral.

In the corridor, Piotr was stalking up and down. Aral stood at parade rest, unmoved and unmoving. Bothari was a silent witness in the background.

Piotr turned and saw her. "You! You've strung me along. This is what you call 'great repairs'? Gah!"

"They are great repairs. Miles is unquestionably much better than he was. n.o.body promised perfection."

"You lied. Vaagen lied."

"We did not," denied Cordelia. "I tried to give you accurate summaries of Vaagen's experiments all the way along. What he's delivered is about what his reports led us to expect. Check your ears."

"I see what you're trying, and it won't work. I've just told him," he pointed at Aral, "this is where I stop. I don't want to see that mutant again. Ever. While it lives, if it lives, and it looks pretty d.a.m.ned sickly to me, don't bring it around my door. As G.o.d is my judge, woman, you won't make a fool of me."

"That would be redundant," snapped Cordelia.

Piotr's lips curled in a silent snarl. Cheated of a cooperative target, he turned on Aral. "And you, you spineless, skirt-smothered--if your elder brother had lived--" Piotr's mouth clamped shut abruptly, too late.

Aral's face drained to a grey hue Cordelia had seen but twice before; both times he'd been a breath and a chance away from committing murder. Piotr had joked about Aral's famous rages. Only now did Cordelia realize Piotr, though he may have witnessed his son in irritation, had never seen the real thing. Piotr seemed to realize it, too, dimly. His brows lowered; he stared, off-balanced.

Aral's hands locked to each other, behind his back. Cordelia could see them shake, white-knuckled. His chin lifted, and he spoke in a whisper.

"If my brother had lived, he would have been perfect. You thought so; I thought so; Emperor Yuri thought so, too. So ever after you've had to make do with the leftovers from that b.l.o.o.d.y banquet, the son Mad Yuri's death squad overlooked. We Vorkosigans, we can make do." His voice fell still further. "But my firstborn will live. I will not fail him."

The icy statement was a near-lethal cut across the belly, as fine a slash as Bothari could have delivered with Koudelka's swordstick, and very accurately placed. Truly, Piotr should not have lowered the tone of this discussion. The breath huffed from him in disbelief and pain.

Aral's expression grew inward. "I will not fail him again," he corrected himself lowly. "A second chance you were never given, sir." Behind his back his hands unclenched. A small jerk of his head dismissed Piotr and all Piotr might say.

Blocked twice, visibly suffering from his profound misstep, Piotr looked around for a target of opportunity upon which to vent his frustration. His eye fell on Bothari, watching blank-faced.

"And you. Your hand was in this from beginning to end. Did my son place you as a spy in my household? Where do your loyalties lie? Do you obey me, or him?"

An odd gleam flared in Bothari's eye. He tilted his head toward Cordelia. "Her."

Piotr was so taken aback, it took him several seconds to regain his speech. "Fine," he sputtered at last. "She can have you. I don't want to see your ugly face again. Don't come back to Vorkosigan House. Esterhazy will deliver your things before nightfall."

He wheeled and marched away. His grand exit, already weak, was spoiled when he looked back over his shoulder before he rounded the corner.

Aral vented a very weary sigh.

"Do you think he means it this time?" Cordelia asked. "All that never-ever stuff?"

"Government concerns will require us to communicate. He knows that. Let him go home and listen to the silence for a bit. Then we'll see." He smiled bleakly. "While we live, we cannot disengage."

She thought of the child whose blood now bound them, her to Aral, Aral to Piotr, and Piotr to herself. "So it seems." She looked an apology to Bothari. "I'm sorry, Sergeant. I didn't know Piotr could fire an oath-armsman."

"Well, technically, he can't," Aral explained. "Bothari was just rea.s.signed to another branch of the household. You."

"Oh." Just what I always wanted, my very own monster. What am I supposed to do, keep him in my closet? She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then regarded her hand. The hand that had encompa.s.sed Bothari's on the swordstick. So. And so. "Lord Miles will need a bodyguard, won't he?"

Aral tilted his head in interest. "Indeed."

Bothari looked suddenly so intently hopeful, it made Cordelia catch her breath. "A bodyguard," he said, "and backup. No raff could give him a hard time if... let me help, Milady."

Let me help. Rhymes with I love you, right? "It would be..." impossible, crazy, dangerous, irresponsible, "my pleasure, Sergeant."

His face lit like a torch. "Can I start now?"

"Why not?"

"I'll wait for you in there, then." He nodded toward Vaagen's lab. He slipped back through the door. Cordelia could just picture him, leaning watchfully against the wall--she trusted that malevolent presence wouldn't make the doctors so nervous they would drop their fragile charge.

Aral blew out his breath, and took her in his arms. "Do you Betans have any nursery tales about the witch's name-day gifts?"

"The good and bad fairies seem to all be out in force for this one, don't they?" She leaned against the scratchy fabric of his uniformed shoulder. "I don't know if Piotr meant Bothari for a blessing or a curse. But I bet he really will keep the raff off. Whatever the raff turns out to be. It's a strange list of birthday presents we've given our boychick."

They returned to the lab, to listen attentively to the rest of the doctors' lecture on Miles's special needs and vulnerabilities, arrange the first round of treatment schedules, and wrap him warmly for the trip home. He was so small, a sc.r.a.p of flesh, lighter than a cat, Cordelia found when she at last took him up in her arms, skin to skin for the first time since he'd been cut from her body. She had a moment's panic. Put him back in the vat for about eighteen years, I can't handle this... . Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely d.a.m.nation. Even Piotr knew that. Aral held the door open for them.

Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a t.i.tle, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from h.e.l.l. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.

EPILOGUE.

VORKOSIGAN SURLEAU--FIVE YEARS LATER.

"Dammit, Vaagen," Cordelia panted under her breath. "You never told me the little b.u.g.g.e.r was going to be hyperactive."

She galloped down the end stairs, through the kitchen, and out onto the terrace at the end of the rambling stone residence. Her gaze swept the lawn, probed the trees, and scanned the long lake sparkling in the summer sun. No movement.

Aral, dressed in old uniform trousers and a faded print shirt, came around the house, saw her, and opened his hands in a no-luck gesture. "He's not out here."

"He's not inside. Down, or up, d'you think? Where's little Elena? I bet they're together. I forbade him to go down to the lake without an adult, but I don't know... ."

"Surely not the lake," said Aral. "They swam all morning. I was exhausted just watching them. In the fifteen minutes I timed it, he climbed the dock and jumped back in nineteen times. Multiply that by three hours."

"Up, then," decided Cordelia. They turned and trudged together up the hill on the gravel path lined with native, Earth-import, and exotic shrubbery and flowers. "And to think," Cordelia wheezed, "I prayed for the day he would walk."

"It's five years pent-up motion all let loose at once," Aral a.n.a.lyzed. "In a way, it's rea.s.suring that all that frustration didn't turn in on itself and become despair. For a time, I was afraid it might."

"Yes. Have you noticed, since the last operation, that the endless chatter's dried up? At first I was glad, but do you suppose he's going to go mute? I didn't even know that refrigeration unit was supposed to come apart. A mute engineer."

"I think the, er, verbal and mechanical apt.i.tudes will come into balance eventually. If he survives."

"There's all of us adults, and one of him. We ought to be able to keep up. Why do I feel like he has us outnumbered and surrounded?" She crested the hill. Piotr's stable complex lay in the shallow valley below, half a dozen red-painted wood and stone buildings, fenced paddocks, pastures planted to bright green Earth gra.s.ses. She saw horses, but no children. Bothari was ahead of them, though, just exiting one building and entering another. His bellow carried up to them, thinned by distance. "Lord Miles?"

"Oh, dear, I hope he's not bothering Piotr's horses," said Cordelia. "Do you really think this reconciliation attempt will work, this time? Just because Miles is finally walking?"

"He was civil, last night at dinner," said Aral, judiciously hopeful.

"I was civil, last night at dinner," Cordelia shrugged. "He as much as accused me of starving your son into dwarfism. Can I help it if the kid would rather play with his food than eat it? I just don't know about stepping up the growth hormone, Vaagen's so uncertain about its effect on bone friability."

A crooked smile stole over Aral's face. "I did think the dialogue with the peas marching to surround the bread-roll and demand surrender was rather ingenious. You could almost picture them as little soldiers in Imperial greens."

"Yes, and you were no help, laughing instead of terrorizing him into eating like a proper Da."

"I did not laugh."

"Your eyes were laughing. He knew it, too. Twisting you round his thumb."

The warm organic scent of horses and their inevitable by-products permeated the air as they approached the buildings. Bothari re-appeared, saw them, and waved an apologetic hand. "I just saw Elena. I told her to get down out of that loft. She said Lord Miles wasn't up there, but he's around here somewhere. Sorry, Milady, when he talked about looking at the animals, I didn't realize he meant immediately. I'm sure I'll find him in just a moment."

"I was hoping Piotr would offer a tour," Cordelia sighed.

"I thought you didn't like horses," said Aral.

"I loathe them. But I thought it might get the old man talking to him, like a human being, instead of over him like a potted plant. And Miles was so excited about the stupid beasts. I don't like to linger here, though. This place is so... Piotr." Archaic, dangerous, and you have to watch your step.

Speak of the devil. Piotr himself emerged from the old stone tack storage shed, coiling a web rope. "Hah. There you are," he said neutrally. He joined them sociably enough, though. "I don't suppose you would like to see the new filly."

His tone was so flat, she couldn't tell if he wanted her to say yes, or no. But she seized the opportunity. "I'm sure Miles would."

"Mm."

She turned to Bothari. "Why don't you go get--" But Bothari was staring past her, his lips rippling in dismay. She wheeled.

One of Piotr's most enormous horses, quite naked of bridle, saddle, halter, or any other handle to grab, was trotting out of the barn. Clinging to its mane like a burr was a dark-haired, dwarfish little boy. Miles's sharp features shone with a mixture of exaltation and terror. Cordelia nearly fainted.

"My imported stallion!" yelped Piotr in horror.

In pure reflex, Bothari s.n.a.t.c.hed his stunner from its holster. He then stood paralyzed with the uncertainty of what to shoot and where. If the horse went down and rolled on its little rider-- "Look, Sergeant!" Miles's thin voice called eagerly. "I'm taller than you!"

Bothari started to run toward him. The horse, spooked, wheeled away and broke into a canter.

"--and I can run faster, too!" The words were whipped away in the bounding motion of the gait. The horse shied out of sight around the stable.

The four adults pelted after. Cordelia heard no other cry, but when they turned the corner Miles was lying on the ground, and the horse had stopped further on and lowered its head to nibble at the gra.s.s. It snorted in hostility when it saw them, raised its head, danced from foot to foot, then s.n.a.t.c.hed a few more bites.

Cordelia fell to her knees beside Miles, who was already sitting up and waving her away. He was pale, and his right hand clutched his left arm in an all-too-familiar signal of pain.

"You see, Sergeant?" Miles panted. "I can ride, I can."

Piotr, on his way toward his horse, paused and looked down.

"I didn't mean to say you weren't able" said the sergeant in a driven tone. "I meant you didn't have permission."

"Oh."

"Did you break it?" Bothari nodded to the arm.

"Yeah," the boy sighed. There were tears of pain in his eyes, but his teeth set against any quaver entering his voice.

The sergeant grumbled, and rolled up Miles's sleeve, and palpated the forearm. Miles hissed. "Yep." Bothari pulled, twisted, adjusted, took a plastic sleeve from his pocket, slipped it over the arm and wrist, and blew it up. "That'll keep it till the doctor sees it."

"Hadn't you better... containerize that horrendous horse?" Cordelia said to Piotr.

" 'S not h'rrendous," Miles insisted, scrambling to his feet. "It's the prettiest."

"You think so, eh?" said Piotr roughly. "How do you figure that? You like brown?"

"It moves the springiest," Miles explained earnestly, bouncing in imitation.

Piotr's attention was arrested. "And so it does," he said, sounding bemused. "It's my hottest dressage prospect... You like horses?"

"They're great. They're wonderful." Miles pirouetted.

"I could never much interest your father in them." Piotr gave Aral a dirty look.

Thank G.o.d, thought Cordelia.

"On a horse, I could go as fast as anybody, I bet," said Miles.

"I doubt it," said Piotr coldly, "if that was a sample. If you're going to do it, you have to do it right."