Work Text:
Alys was exhausted. She'd been up most of the night, first waiting for Ivan to get back from his friend's party, then, when he returned alarmingly drunk, looking after him. She hoped it had at least been an educational experience for him, but it worried her. Perhaps if she'd remarried, Vortaine maybe, or Luc Vorkalloner, he would be less wild. She'd tried discussing it casually with Natasha Vorvayne, whose son was Ivan's age, but Natasha had merely laughed and said that they had to start trying out how to be men someday. And she couldn't ask Cordelia, because with Miles away on Beta she was constantly in the District 'raising living standards to something a bit closer to halfway acceptable,' as she had tartly put it. Alys had managed to snatch a few hours' sleep when Ivan finally stopped throwing up and babbling nonsense and trying to demonstrate new dance steps and falling over, but nowhere near enough. She'd been put to quite a bit of work with her makeup to disguise the dark shadows beneath her eyes.
With such an inauspicious start, Alys supposed her day had been doomed. Nothing had fitted her properly at the early morning trying-on with Estelle, and Estelle's new girl had pricked her five times with pins; the Tau Cetan ambassador had spent twenty minutes straight complaining about being seated next to the Betan ambassador, who he said had been flirting with him; Alys' new driver from ImpSec had evidently failed to pay attention to the traffic briefing and had managed to get her stuck in the redevelopment works in the Russian Quarter, making her late for the meeting with the new Minister of Terraforming and his wife. The rest of the day followed that pattern and by the evening Alys' temper was in shreds, she had a thundering headache and another four hours of Imperial Reception to get through.
So, inevitably, the guest of honour mentioned two serious food allergies and a violent aversion to vat-grown meat in conversation half an hour before the meal. Alys sent urgent instructions to the kitchens, then had to listen to Gregor's head chef rant for ten minutes in a profanity-laden mixture of French and colloquial Greek and calm him down before he made his fifth resignation threat of the year. The Betans griped about the security measures that meant they'd had to go through two sets of scanners and blamed her when an ImpSec man had confiscated an unknown drug that was apparently perfectly legal on Beta Colony from an aide's purse. And during the dancing Captain Emil Vormoncrief, three sheets to the wind, tried repeatedly to get a hand into her bodice, and none of Alys' usual defensive strategies for this flavour of Vor male activity worked as well as she would have liked. There was very little left of her nerves when the last dragging guest finally went out.
And then Simon appeared at her elbow. "My lady, we need to plan a time for the next full-dress security drill."
"Never," Alys snapped, a vivid memory of the last time Simon had pulled a security drill during a reception racing through her aching head. "We are never, never going to do that again and I'm not going to discuss it."
Simon blinked and took a step backwards. "My lady--"
"No," Alys repeated. Simon looked baffled by her vehemence, and that just made her angrier, until her entire day's pent-up frustration burst into speech. "My son is running wild and nobody in this city appears to be capable of looking after themselves and enduring a little discomfort without shrieking at me for help and your new driver is incompetent and I have a splitting headache and I am going to go and sleep for twelve hours without anyone asking me for anything."
Simon stood still for a moment, visibly considering and discarding a number of responses, before saying, "Would you rather I call for your car right away, or would you like to step into my office and sit down for a minute first?"
Alys nearly snarled at him again for such presumption, but his expression, mostly bland but with a hint of concern beneath, broke her anger. She tried to glare, and Simon looked back without moving. "Your office," she said at last. Simon extended an arm, and Alys let herself lean on him, suddenly so tired she could barely hold her head up.
Simon saw her to a comfortable wing chair, and a few moments later, with a perhaps excusable air of a man laying down a winning hand of cards, presented her with a glass of water and a packet of painkillers. He said nothing for the three minutes it took the pills to start to work, and the daggers in Alys' head shrank to pins, and then to nothing.
"Better?" he said.
"I could kiss you," Alys said, a little indiscreetly. Simon's expression barely flickered, then settled on a polite amused smile at the jest. "Thank you." She paused. "I'm not saying I'm happy to discuss security drills right now, mind you."
"No," Simon agreed. "No business. But if there is any way I can be of service...?"
"You can get Emil Vormoncrief out of town," Alys said, still a little euphoric from the relief of pain. "He's a public menace."
Simon frowned, and she saw his face turn blank as he searched through his mental recording of the reception. "I see," he said a moment later, his voice carefully neutral. His eyes were hard. "Does that sort of thing ... happen often?"
"Less and less as I get older," Alys said with a shrug. "You try and keep the younger girls away from the worst offenders, of course."
"I see," he repeated grimly. "I can get rid of him for you, if you like."
She blinked, not quite sure what he meant. "Get rid of him?"
Simon's eyes glinted. "Well, there are several dozen easy ways to arrange a lightflyer accident, if you really want, but I was actually thinking of giving Major Reynolds a nod to reassign him to Sector IV. He's a supply officer, and I happen to know they require another one at our post there. Six weeks' travel time just to get there."
Alys couldn't quite prevent a small satisfied smile from escaping.
"He won't trouble you again, nor any other lady here, for a long time." He smiled in return. "Anyone else you'd like reassigned?"
"That'll do for now." His intent eyes were worrying her, despite the lightness of his tone. They couldn't...
Simon watched her for another moment, then subsided. "Very well. Shall I call your car now?"
"Please." The relief from her headache was making her sleepy, so much so that she would have almost considered tucking up her knees and taking a nap in Simon's chair. Simon murmured an order, and said, "It'll be at the portico in three minutes. May I see you down?"
She nodded and let Simon help her up. She had stiffened after the dancing, her feet were sore and she felt foggy and weak with exhaustion. It was annoying not being twenty-five any longer. Simon, after brief hesitation, put an arm around her, and Alys permitted herself to lean into his calm support. "Ivan's being very wild," she said quietly as they left the office. "It's worrying me so much."
Simon's silence was somehow inviting, and Alys went on, "I wonder sometimes ... if he had a father, he would behave better."
"My mother raised my brother and me on her own, and we turned out fine," Simon said.
"I didn't know that," Alys said, distracted. "Well, if Ivan turns out to be a man like you then I'll be content." They went down a staircase, and Alys said, "But he doesn't ever apply himself to anything. He's bright and courageous and strong, but he never exerts himself to show it to the world. It makes me so angry sometimes."
Simon glanced sideways at her. "You're an unusually driven person, though. You remind me..." his voice slowed "... you remind me of Aral, in that respect. Padma was quite different."
Alys gave a laugh at that. "Yes, he was. But he wasn't lazy." She smiled. "I'm glad you at least can remember Padma well." It was her turn to give him a sidelong look. "They say the dead live on in our memory of them," she said. "What does that make you?"
"Haunted," Simon said shortly.
Too tired to think of a good answer to that, Alys closed her fingers around his hand. She knew how unpleasant he found the chip, and she'd asked him once why he didn't have it removed, prepared to do immediate battle on his behalf if necessary, but he'd told her Aral had offered to have it removed at the start of the Regency, and he'd refused. He'd paid for the chip, he'd said, and he'd keep the benefits. But Alys thought the price seemed terribly high.
They reached the portico, and Alys' groundcar was waiting. Simon opened the door for her, but Alys didn't get in. "I'm sorry," she said. "You can have your security drill."
"We can discuss that some other time," Simon said. "Don't let it worry you now. Go have your twelve hours of unbroken sleep, my lady."
"Assuming nothing else interrupts me."
"Oh," Simon said quietly, "I don't think anything will."
Alys eyed him for a moment, then decided not to comment on that. He took her hand and kissed it, closed the door of the groundcar, and nodded to her driver, who drove her home without incident.
Whether it was chance or Simon at work she never knew, but nothing did interrupt her sleep that night.