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Cordelia looked out the window and resisted the temptation to check the time again. Horus-eyed men walked back and forth across the courtyard to the checkpoint. The ImpSec guard on Vorkosigan House had been doubled a few days ago, and they'd started to look less like misguided boys and more like carrion-eaters circling around them to Cordelia's increasingly anxious gaze. Aral was worried that ImpSec wasn't functioning properly, that someone really could seize this opportunity to attack Gregor now that Hessman's incompetent crony had been placed in charge of it, but they seemed to be functioning very well at keeping her under house arrest.
She took a step back from the window. All the Armsmen were on alert apart from the pair who had accompanied Aral. Cordelia knew that if the wheels came off today, which seemed more and more likely, they would try to take her to the Betan Embassy, even if they had to fight their way out. She wished Bothari were here, because with him at her back she was never afraid. But she was afraid now.
Alys put a hand in hers, and Cordelia looked at her companion. She didn't try to smile, and Alys didn't try to speak. The duty of a Barrayaran woman: to watch and wait and wonder whether the next car to drive up would be full of soldiers to arrest them both.
Alys looked as tired and worn down as the rest of them, a circumstance that told Cordelia far more than she wanted to know about Alys' own inner state. She was as impeccably dressed as always, but no amount of make-up could rid her eyes of a haunted, frightened look, and her hand in Cordelia's was cold. She'd been concealing her terror on Ivan's behalf as well as anyone could, but Cordelia shared her fears far too closely not to see the signs. Oh Miles, she thought, oh Ivan, what are you doing out there?
Cordelia hadn't slept last night. She'd made Aral come to bed with her, and they'd had sex twice, the first time late at night, full of the awareness that it could be the last time, passionate and a little desperate. Then in the early morning, after a night spent pacing around, speaking occasionally, and Aral talking quietly to his Armsmen, she'd taken him to bed again and for a little timeless moment they'd escaped it all. Aral had slept afterwards, for about forty minutes, before getting up, dressing and heading off for the last day of the trial. Cordelia had watched him go and known he might not return. She'd tried to keep herself busy during the day, but she and Alys kept returning to this window to look out, and by now, when it might be over, they'd given up the pretense of doing anything else.
"I was getting used to peace," Cordelia said at last. "I suppose that was my mistake, here. Nobody had even made a serious assassination attempt in the last year." She looked at Alys. "Is it just that Barrayarans don't like peace, and when it comes along they have to start something, no matter how absurd, to make it stop?"
Alys gave a short, empty laugh. "Probably."
She hadn't believed it, at first. Hadn't believed that Gregor could really turn on them, had been distracted by worry about what Miles could possibly be up to, hadn't paid enough attention to her other boy. Even after Illyan had been arrested, she hadn't entirely understood how far this could go. Not until the start of this trial, when Gregor started keeping his ImpSec guard in the room with him when he had to talk to Aral, when this house arrest had begun, did she really see what was coming.
And now they were here. It was all, Cordelia thought, so very stupid, but she couldn't seem to find the place inside her that had marched up to Vordarian and cut off his head to save Miles and Aral. It was one thing to choose between a tyrannical stranger and your son; quite another to have to choose between your two sons. It was dismaying to realise that Vordarian had been the easy problem, the practice run. This was the hard one. The one she still didn't know how to solve.
The bustle in the courtyard increased abruptly, and yet more ImpSec men appeared, some walking leashed dogs around the perimeter of the property, others taking up guard posts along the walls, shutting down the traffic in the street beyond, speaking on their comm links and checking their weapons. Cordelia watched them frozenly. So. It was coming. She wasn't armed. Didn't want to be armed. The only weapons she had left were the words she could speak, and ImpSec's eye wouldn't hear them.
Alys moved closer to her. "You can still go," Cordelia said. Alys was not under house arrest and still had access to the Residence. She hadn't spoken a word to Gregor that wasn't business for weeks, leaving them one last channel open for later. Whoever was coming, they wouldn't be coming for her.
"No," Alys said steadily. "I'll stay with you." She was frightened, Cordelia knew, but she was also determined. And Cordelia had to admit she was glad not to be completely alone.
The gates opened suddenly and outriders on float-bikes came in. Cordelia and Alys both saw their black and silver arms at the same time.
"He's coming himself, then," Cordelia said, eyebrows raised. Gregor hadn't so much as looked at her for weeks. "Brave boy."
"Make sure to tell him so," Alys said drily. Downstairs, the Armsmen were moving, and Esterhazy came up to stand near them. They watched the Imperial entourage arrive. With it was Aral's groundcar from this morning. Cordelia blinked.
"We'd better go down," she said. Esterhazy nodded and escorted them down the wide sweeping staircase. Cordelia drew in a deep breath, and saw Alys straighten beside her. They stood in the entry hall for what felt like a thousand years, waiting for the Emperor.
At last the door began to open. Cordelia braced. For a strange moment she wished she'd put on her old Survey uniform, to borrow confidence and authority from that remembered past. But when the door was fully open, the first to enter was Aral, and there was a smile on his face. Cordelia was transfixed by that smile, so transfixed that it was a moment before she saw who was flanking him. Miles. And Ivan.
She flew forwards and grabbed Miles by both shoulders and dragged him into her arms, then pulled him to Aral, and held them both with fierce joy. Dimly, in a corner of her eye she could see Alys seizing Ivan in much the same fashion.
"It's all right," Aral said into her ear, and his voice was unsteady. "Everything's all right. It's over. My dearest Captain..." He put his head down on her shoulder for a moment, leaning on her, and she saw how shattered he looked. But triumphant. Whatever he and Miles had done, they'd brought this off.
Looking over Aral's shoulder, she saw the last person to enter the house: Gregor himself, standing rigidly watching these reunions with a look of such desperate loneliness on his face that Cordelia couldn't be angry with him any longer. She broke away from Aral and Miles and went to embrace him too.
He held himself back from her, neck stiff. "My dear boy," Cordelia murmured, "you're back. I'm so happy."
Gregor made a small gasping sound and seemed to collapse against her, and Cordelia knew then that it would all be all right between them again, that what had been broken could be repaired. He pressed his face into her neck and whispered, "I'm sorry," and she held him close.
"I've missed you," Cordelia said. "Stick around, now, will you?"
He pulled back to look at her, and there were tears on his eyelashes. He gave a short nod, then took a step back, and Cordelia looked around the group.
"Where's Elena?" she asked as the absences registered. "And Bothari?"
A tension went through Aral and Gregor, and Miles's expression changed. Aral opened his hand to Miles, and Cordelia abruptly knew what he was going to say. There was only one reason Miles could be here without his Sergeant. She braced herself.
"Bothari died," he said. Quickly, he went on, "Elena's fine, though--she stayed with the mercenaries and got married."
"Oh," Cordelia managed. She studied Miles worriedly, and he looked back, his eyes heavy with pain and fatigue. "What happened?" she asked at last.
"A woman called Elena Visconti shot him."
Old memory flooded Cordelia. She understood--she couldn't not understand, much as she wanted to. For a minute she stood still, looking not at the wall but through it to Vorrutyer's cabin, to her cellmate in the prison camp, remembering everything. And it seemed Ensign Visconti had remembered too.
"What about Elena--our Elena?" she asked quickly. "Did she know..."
Miles knew too much about it now, she could see it on his face. "--she's her mother," he finished. "Yes. I think it's all right. They were talking to each other when I left. And she's safe."
"Well, that's something." Cordelia looked at Miles, and could almost see the Sergeant standing behind him, the way he'd stood since Miles had been born. And now he was dead.
"I brought his body back," Miles said abruptly. "To bury in the graveyard. He said--he said--"
"I made a promise to him, yes." Cordelia looked down. It was a very Barrayaran kind of promise, where death lurked in every corner and where your own burial was a sensible thing to plan young. And Ezar's plot and Vorrutyer's evil had finally taken Bothari down, the last casualty of their war. Her dog, her hero, to be buried at her feet.
Miles was looking at her as if he fully realised that she would die one day, and Cordelia quickly pulled him into her arms again, wondering what else had happened to him out there. He felt thin and small and tired, and she wanted to pick him up and carry him off to bed, but his eyes were an adult's eyes now, and she knew that those days were gone. She held him anyway.
"And the rest of it?" she asked, finally releasing Miles. "What happened?" She looked back at Gregor, still standing in silence, stiff, his attention apparently on his feet.
"It's over now," Aral said. "Vordrozda fell apart when Miles showed up. He's under arrest for drawing a weapon in the Presence. We'll be putting together conspiracy charges as well, with the new evidence. There shouldn't be any trouble getting a conviction. We all saw him draw on the Emperor." A quick glance at Gregor. "And Miles's mercenaries--well, they're going to be declared a Crown Troop, so that's fixed up. It's over."
Alys looked up from her mingled embracing and scolding of Ivan to say, "What about Captain Illyan? Has he been freed?"
"Not yet," Aral said. "We can't order his release until Miles has the acquittal. I want this to be scrupulously clean, no little irregularities for some future attacker to pick up on. It should be tomorrow, or the next day. Until then--he can hardly be safer than in the cells at ImpSec."
Alys gave a slight snort. "True. Let me know if you need me to do anything. Otherwise, I want to take Ivan home." She put her arm around him, then turned to Gregor. "Sire," she said crisply, "if you'll excuse us."
He looked a little startled and dismayed by this formality. "Yes, of course... Aunt Alys."
She softened a little at the hesitancy in his voice, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, then Miles and Aral too, squeezed Cordelia's hand and whisked Ivan away.
"There's no point standing in the hall," Cordelia said at length, though the entrance hall at Vorkosigan House was as large as her mother's apartment on Beta. "Come on upstairs."
They followed her obediently, Gregor's pair of Armsmen following behind, but without any ImpSec guards now, and Cordelia shepherded them into her private sitting-room. Miles halted in the doorway.
"I'm sorry--I just want to go and sleep," he said. "I told everything to Da and Gregor--can I tell you in the morning?"
Cordelia glanced at Aral for confirmation. He nodded, so there probably wasn't anything she urgently needed to know from Miles's story beyond Bothari's death.
"Off you go, then," she said, but hugged him again, because she could. He smiled a little at her, whispered, "It's good to be home," in her ear, bowed to Gregor and went away down the corridor.
That left Cordelia with Aral and Gregor, who both looked shattered and still tense. This wasn't quite over, Cordelia began to realise. Neither of them had sat down, and they were carefully not looking at each other. Considering the last few weeks, Cordelia didn't have any difficulty understanding what was going on. But understanding it was one thing, fixing it another. She looked between them, but before she could say anything, Esterhazy came discreetly forward. "A call for you, my lord. Count Vorinnis."
"Oh, I'd better talk to him," Aral said. He looked at Gregor briefly, then said, "Excuse me, please," and retreated in good order.
"I guess it's just you and me," Cordelia said to Gregor. "Or do you want to go too?"
Gregor's eyes said yes, he wanted to escape, wanted to run away and hide, but he shook his head.
"Well, come and sit down, then. Do you want anything? Some tea?"
Nodding absently, he followed her to a sofa and sat beside her, not relaxing into the cushions. Esterhazy brought them tea, and Cordelia contemplated Gregor. He was obviously troubled. Well, she thought a little grimly, she was troubled too, by what had happened, by what had so nearly happened. But she had Miles and Aral safe, and it was time to see if she could bring Gregor safe home again as well.
"So here you are," she observed, pouring him a cup of tea. "I wondered when I'd see you again."
Gregor stared at the floor. Finally he said, in a small thin voice, "Can I--can I just be Gregor for a while?"
"Whenever you want, with me." Her answer was instant, automatic, relieved. It had been a promise she'd made to him years ago, that she was always ready to talk to Gregor-her-foster-son, not Gregor-the-Emperor, at any time, for any reason. She put her arm around his shoulders, then put her feet up on the coffee table, completing the gestures of informality.
"You've had a bit of a time of it too, haven't you, kiddo?" she said quietly. "Are you all right?"
"I think so," he said. "And--and I haven't had as bad a time as you have, isn't that true?" He made a small noise of pain. "I was so sure that--that Miles, that Aral..."
"That we were plotting against you?" she finished for him. She'd have been more worried about that if this hadn't been Barrayar, where imagining that one's relatives were plotting against one was not so much a symptom of clinical paranoia as a necessity of daily life. Especially when people frequently did plot against you.
He sighed. "Yes." Staring into space, he fidgeted with his teacup, raising it to his lips but not drinking. "Aral wouldn't let me apologise to him. Because I'm his Emperor. But you will."
Cordelia nodded. He needed to, she could feel it in him like an untreated wound. And, in truth, she needed him to.
"I hurt you. Both of you." He looked down. "And Miles, and ... and lots of people. I don't think I'm a very good Emperor."
"I don't judge you as an Emperor," Cordelia said. "Only as my boy. You did hurt us, but it's all right. It happens, when people care about each other. We forgive each other and start again. And don't take too much on yourself, Gregor. You certainly weren't the only person at fault in all this mess, and you didn't act out of malice. You trusted people who weren't worthy of your trust, and you didn't trust people who were. Those are normal mistakes to make. Learning to judge people, learning how to tell how they'll react, learning to see their agendas--these are skills that take time and practice to develop. I was making these same mistakes at your age--and older, come to think of it."
Gregor's eyes widened at that.
"You can't believe and trust everyone, and you can't mistrust everyone. You have to discern. And people vary, too. You can trust someone for one thing, but not another, at one time, but not at another. It's never simple."
"But the stakes are so much higher, for me," Gregor said. "If I get it wrong, I run the risk of starting another war. I nearly did."
"Yes. But they're not that much higher than they are for, say, Ivan. He could start a war too, if he fell under the spell of a power-hungry user. All the people around you are involved in the same problems. Learn from them. Learn from Aral, if you can. Do you think he's never had to deal with flatterers who wanted to coax him into doing things for him, who wanted to undermine him, who wanted to use him as a pawn in their games? You have to refuse to be that pawn and never forget your own goals and who you are."
Gregor finished his tea. "It was thinking about you that made me doubt Vordrozda most," he said finally. "The things he said about Aral were--were almost true. Aral does know better than I do how to handle the politics. He is more loved by the military. He does have as strong a claim as I do to the throne."
"Don't let him hear you say that," Cordelia interrupted, and Gregor gave an unfelt laugh.
"It was all ... very close to being true. The things he said about you--weren't. Not that he said much, he didn't talk about you. But ... if I know anything, I know you don't want to control things here. You don't want to be Empress."
Cordelia gave him an incredulous look. "Why would I want to be Empress?" she said in honest bafflement, and Gregor's tense smile turned to a real one.
"Exactly. Vordrozda said you did. If I can trust anyone here, it has to be you."
It was Cordelia's turn to look away. "If you'd attacked Aral, if you'd really tried to hurt him, or Miles--you wouldn't be able to rely on that trust any longer. My first--my first loyalty, as you Barrayarans would say--is to them. And to you, as you are also my son, but ... what do you do when one of your sons starts attacking the rest of the family?" She covered her face with her hand for a moment, remembering the waking nightmare of the last few days, then looked straight at Gregor. "I wouldn't ever want to turn on you," she said. "It would be like turning on a part of myself. But I won't ever let you injure Aral or Miles. I won't let them injure you, either," she added, equally firmly. "You're all my family and I will fight if I have to, to keep you safe."
Gregor gave a strange laugh. "Nobody else," he said, "nobody else would ever say that to me."
"Children need boundaries," Cordelia muttered. "They say that in all the child psychology stuff, you know. This is yours, Gregor, as you are my child."
"The strange thing is," Gregor said, "is that about this, they're right. I'm glad. I need... I need to know there's someone who can say this to me. Someone who's not afraid of me." Without meeting her eye, he said, "Aral was afraid of me, a few days ago. I could see it. He was afraid of me, afraid of what I was doing, of what I might do."
"I know," Cordelia said. "But... you realise, that means he's more loyal to you than I am, as he would see it, not less. He was frightened because he knew you had power over him, because you are his liegelord. I ... don't see things the same way." She thought of the arguments she and Aral had had about this, when Aral had been adamant that he would not oppose his Emperor, when all Cordelia could see was a boy who needed parents to guide him.
She finished her tea. "The thing is," she said, "if you were to take that stupid sword you have there--" she gestured "--and go after Aral with it, he wouldn't stop you. Oh, he might argue with you, or run away, or something, but if it really came to it, he'd kneel and bend his neck to make it easier for you. It's his religion. And he'd kill anyone who tried to hurt you while you were doing it. Me, now--I'd have that sword off you in five seconds, and I'd pour a few buckets of cold water over your head until you got a grip on yourself."
Gregor gave her an wide-eyed look that turned into a strangled laugh. "Good," he said. "Please, do. I'll give you an Imperial Pardon in advance."
Studying him, Cordelia knew then that it was true, that she would have found a way to salvage something from this even if it had gone wrong today. The thought eased her. She hadn't lost her touch completely. Her arm was still around Gregor's shoulders, and she stroked his arm lightly.
"If Miles hadn't shown up then," Gregor said quietly, "I'd have gone through with it. I was all nerved up for it. I was ready to kill you if I had to, Cordelia." He began to cry suddenly, burying his face in her shoulder. "Nobody who could do that should be Emperor. I'm just like--I'm just like Yuri."
She pulled him into her arms then, tucking his head below her collarbone, stroking his hair. "No, you're not. You wouldn't have done it," she soothed him. "I know you wouldn't."
"For the safety of Barrayar--I might have. Aral--Aral taught me never to put anything before the safety of Barrayar."
"I know he did. And I tried to teach you to keep your heart and your spirit safe even when Barrayar demanded them from you. And you have."
"How do you know?" he asked wretchedly.
"Because you're here." She held him close. "Because you came back. Because you said you were sorry. Because you didn't do it, Gregor. Might-have-beens are just that. What matters is what you did. It's all right."
He looked at her, desperate hope and misery mixed on his face. "Is it?"
"Yes."
Gregor wiped his face, then looked at the door Aral had left by. "With you, maybe," he said finally. "But Aral..."
Cordelia watched Gregor thoughtfully, waiting.
"I don't know what to say to him," Gregor said at last. "I said--you weren't there, Cordelia, but I said some really unforgivable things to him. I hurt him as badly as I knew how. And now I don't know how to make it better."
"What do you want to say?"
Gregor stared into the bottom of his teacup. "That I'm sorry. That I should have listened to him more. That I will listen to him more. That I do trust him, that I will always trust him." He stared into space again. "That I love him," he whispered.
Cordelia smiled. "Sounds good to me. Words of one syllable, my dear one, that's what you need. Go on, then."
He looked terrified.
"If I know Aral, he'll have finished with Vorinnis and be somewhere around the middle of the first bottle by now." He didn't drink when things were bad, but when the relief came, that was when he dissolved all his past terrors in ethanol. "Go talk to him. Tell him what you just said. You need to say it, and he needs to hear it. Everything will be all right, Gregor. He loves you too, you know."
There were tears on Gregor's face again, but he stood up, looking as if he were going to his own execution. Cordelia got up and put a hand in the small of his back.
"Come on. It'll be fine."
She walked with him through to Aral's office, where they found him precisely as she'd expected. "My love," she said, preceding Gregor through the door in defiance of all proper Imperial protocol. "Gregor wants to talk to you."
Aral looked at her, and Cordelia gave him a firm nod, which he returned a little vaguely. His eyes reached behind her to Gregor, full of uncertainty and pain. Yes, she thought, you need this too. She stood aside to let Gregor in. "Words of one syllable," she whispered in his ear, then turned and closed the door, and left them to heal each other. Her job was done.
*
An hour and a half later, after taking a long bath with the company of a silly holonovel, Cordelia judged it time to go and see how Gregor and Aral were getting on. She found them still in Aral's study, spread out on the sofa side by side, two empty bottles and a half-full one on the table before them. Aral was half-asleep, and Gregor was leaning against him, head resting on his shoulder comfortably. Barrayarans, she thought with a certain fond exasperation, why did they always think that difficult emotional conversations were best held drunk? Though from the looks of them, this time it had worked. There was no more strain, no secret hurt on their faces, just tired contentment.
"Time for bed," Cordelia announced in the doorway, much as she had when Gregor was much smaller. "You're staying here tonight, aren't you, sweetheart?"
"Yeah," Gregor said drowsily. "I mean--if you don't mind."
"Your room is always ready for you here," Cordelia said. "Everything all right, then?"
A little crooked smile crossed Gregor's face. "I know how to take down every single member of my government if I need to, now," he announced. "Isn't that right?"
Aral roused a little, his eyes opening fully. "I don't know why you think this is so funny," he complained. "It's important."
"Cordelia says I need to learn when to trust people," Gregor countered.
"Cordelia trusts everyone," was Aral's reply. "Except people who shouldn't be trusted. Then she doesn't trust them. She's very good at it." He looked up at her as if that was supposed to make perfect sense.
"Cordelia says you both need to go to bed," she repeated, coming over to perch on the side of the sofa. "Come on, Gregor, make yourself useful."
Gregor helped her get Aral up and through to their bedroom, and then Cordelia put her arm through Gregor's and walked with him to the Imperial Suite--at least, that was what it had been called on ImpSec's detailed plans of Vorkosigan House, until Cordelia had made Illyan replace the name with 'Gregor's bedroom'. She stopped in the doorway and put both hands on Gregor's shoulders.
"Are you all right, now?"
"Are you?" Gregor returned, and that made Cordelia smile wryly.
"Much better."
"So am I," Gregor whispered. "Tante Cordelia, I missed you so much."
"It's going to get better now," Cordelia said. "I promise." She paused. "And drink a big glass of water before you go to bed. One miserably hungover man in this house is going to be quite enough."
Gregor laughed. "I will." He leaned in suddenly and kissed her cheek, shyly. "Good night."
"Good night, sweetheart."
Cordelia stopped at Miles's room as she walked back along the corridor, opened the door and went in. He was sleeping deeply. She bent and kissed his forehead, and he stirred a little, his eyes half-opening. "Mother," he mumbled, and went back to sleep. She stood by his bed for a while, then returned to her own room.
Aral was in bed and already snoring. Cordelia grinned, gave him a shove to roll him onto his side to make him stop, and wrapped herself around him in the bed. It was over. Her whole family was home and safe, and whatever it took, she would keep them that way.