Chapter Text
Six years ago, Duv Galeni had been trying to pond the concept of histography into the heads of Barrayaran students who tended to regard with great suspicion the suggestion that they should interrogate history instead of simply recite what they had learned in their textbooks. Ten years before that, he had still been wearing his name like a coat that didn’t quite fit, eyes still looking for places where someone could linger out of mind or use as cover. Before that – back it goes, and so. Remember. Let it go.
Still, today Captain Duv Galeni is a member of the Barrayaran Imperial Service, a minor cog in the machine that hopes one day to be a man to watch for reasons other than fear of sudden reversal to terrorism, or just general foreignness. He bears the subtle looks with a dry irony as he sees them equally directed at other Komarrans. As if most of the few boys who’ve made it through the Academy would be a threat, unless they’re made into one. Still, the Emperor’s integration scheme has gotten them this far, he’s planning on helping to keep dragging it forward. Even if ‘this far’ sometimes means reflecting that there are days where being a soldier reminds him more of his time as a teacher then as a terrorist.
Days with Lieutenant Lord Ivan Vorpatril, for one, almost inevitably drag up memories of old students. He’d been unsure of the young man when he’d first been assigned to his office, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that Ivan is simply almost exactly what he seems, Duv’s paranoid assumptions of the first days to the contrary. Making assumptions is a dangerous quality in a historian.
Lieutenant Vorpatril’s open, handsome face and cheerful disposition don’t hide a sharp intellect, they can merely help distract from the fact he’s often too lazy to use it properly. That’s likely an unfair assessment. Ivan is simply content in a way that’s utterly foreign to Duv. He puts in his time at work, and then leaves, mostly remembering to return on time and accepts the deserved reprimands the few times he’s forgotten without any hint of the mutter complaints about Komarrans that some like to pull out. He’s proud of his uniform but doesn’t see any reason to be consumed by work. He does have ambitions but his desire to join the diplomatic core, like his father, is the sort of ambition that involves growing into the job instead of trying to hunt it down.
A diplomatic officer like his father before him. And like his great grandfather before him.
There are days when the desire to shake Vorpatril comes less from his resemblance to blithe undergrads across the planet and more from some sudden madness at remembering again that his junior officer is the great grandson of one of the men Duv had argued had some of the greatest impact on the Imperial Service, despite sometimes being considered an outsider to it. Vorpatril’s father remembers the man, Duv had just managed not to twitch at a stray remark about ‘a funny story m’father was telling about his grandfather’. Heroic acts of control, some practice for a position with more real meaning.
Right now, Duv just puts his time in, paying his dues in the hope of being able to request a post off Barrayar. It’s not too grand to dream of, and it’s something to make him feel like he’s moving forward instead of sinking. Besides, Duv tries to find some new gain in every posting and serving as first-hand witness to the social habits of the high Vor is the sort of thing some social anthropologists would kill for. They could kill for the chance, if they took his route. He had written plenty on the role of the soldier in Barrayar society, though he hadn’t provoked many of those who’d read his thesis to march over and sign up.
Lieutenant Vorpatril might occasionally be nearly as oblivious as he acts, but that’s still a far way from being oblivious enough to bring up the subject of family to a Komarran superior. Or, perhaps, he just can’t imagine Duv existing outside the realm of his title. Captain or Professor. But when given the chance to talk, Vorpatril’s stories are littered with mentions of his family and some of the most important people in Barrayaran society, without any sense that those might not be one and the same to some.
There’s Ivan’s eagerness to see his parents after their trip away from home, and how he supposes they might both leave more often now that his youngest siblings are older (Lord Padma and Lady Alys had been chosen to represent Barrayar on Cetaganda for the Empresses’ funeral, a choice that must have been long debated considering the current uneasy business in the Hegen hub). Ivan’s talk about what best to put in a care package for ‘the twins’, asking what he had missed at the Academy (high Vor Ladies at the Imperial Service Academy, causing a stir all their own after the production of their birth). His complaints about ‘the terrors’ (who clearly can get anything they want from their older brother) and having to field talks of what they’ve been up to a school (full of the scions of other great Vor families, Duv might one day walk into the Komarran Affairs building and find himself looking at Commodore Vor-Paste-Eater). And, of course, stories where ‘Sonya’ was always there, before she picked up her ‘strange’ interest in politics, the sister who’d once stolen his Vorthalia the Bold figures for a tea party, forever changing them, and also the woman who many still assume could become Empress of Barrayar. By the time Duv had realized just who the ‘Miles’ (said with the tenor of someone speaking only of a childhood friend and cousin) is in Ivan’s fretting over his sister’s refusal to tell him if they’re actually dating or not, he would like to claim to be used to it all. At least Ivan likely believes the blandness with which Duv reminds him they have actual work to do hides nothing but ironic commentary.
Duv doesn’t remember his aunt. He doesn’t remember Komarr Before (he doesn’t remember the father of Before that his mother sometimes spoke of and his brother never did). He had listened to his father’s stories and followed orders and decided he cared more about the deaths he saw than the metaphors his father had enjoyed, but it had taken much longer to realize that in a different life, he might have held a lot more in common with the young Vor lordlings that made him grit his teeth as he focused on achieving his aims than the ‘proles’ they grouped him in when thinking on him as anything other than Komarran.
David Galen, one of those Galens, just as much destined for politics and power as any of the Vor snobs, except for a life that taught him that destiny was an illusion. Would David had been interested in history? He doubts his father would have encouraged it, the old Komarr hadn’t considered a Professor of humanities that much more impressive than it’s seen on Barrayar. Not practical enough for either planet, to Duv’s dark amusement.
‘One share, one vote’ and the Galen family had many shares.
It had been ugly to realize, beyond the first vicious realization of the disgust he feels at blood shed in the cause of the People as well as well as by the Oppressors, that the world Ser Galen had spoken of so forcefully had been one where he had been a ruler of people. His rage hadn’t been at being another Komarran beaten unfairly in the street, but at being just one of the People he had spoken of in capital letters. Duv has met a lot of rebels. He’s met a lot of Vor lords who feel like they should have something better because of their name. He had questioned his father’s notion of justice, but it had been harder to question the nature of the loss that had twisted him so completely.
That anger hadn’t been completely fair. Duv is sure that his father had loved his Aunt as more than a martyr to rally to. He knows, he saw the crimes committed against Komarrans, and even if he doesn’t see a nobility in his father’s actions, he doesn’t think he’d have seen something better if Ser Galen had worked to let the Galen family flourish as much as it could under Barrayaran rule instead spending it on opposing them.
Duv knows what it is to be a Komarran on a conquered planet. To be a Komarran ‘example’ on Barrayar. He has a true passion for Barrayaran history, but there were days when he couldn’t forget that there’s a reason that he couldn’t bring that passion to the history of his own planet. There is much to be proud of on Komarr. There’s much that could be better. He’d known before his advisors had carefully (or bluntly, in the case of the teachers he preferred) let him know there were topics it was wiser to avoid if he wished to get published. He writes about the modernization of Barrayar, it’s paradoxes and complicities. He writes about soldiers. He writes with a Barrayaran name. His father would probably accuse him of forgetting if he was there to see it, but Duv remembers in every signature.
Maybe he still believes in what his father had preached. A better Komarr. He just has a different definition of ‘better’ and ‘free’. His father would sacrifice anyone, even himself, for Komarr’s future. Duv fights just as hard for it, even knowing that getting there means dragging Barrayar forward too. He likes to think that his fight has a chance of a far truer success. Komarr is a planet for sensible people, for people ready to plan for a world that won’t exist until after generations of hard work still to come. Duv Galeni is a Barrayaran, but that doesn’t have to mean being less Komarran.
Still, he remembers his old name, and the man he never was, and usually finds an extra inch of patience for a well-meaning oblivious Vor Lord, which doesn’t stop Ivan from frequently hitting his limits.
Vorpatril gives him his most cheerful smile, the one that somehow manages to both provoke a desire to strangle him and prevent Duv from doing so at the same time. He clearly doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the fact that his office has been invaded by a pair of extremely non-regulation civilians.
Even without the picture on Ivan’s desk (and in various, more public, photos) the tall, dark haired woman looks enough like her brother that she would be immediately recognizable. Luckily, that resemblance means her attractiveness leaves him more suspicious than moved. She’s dressed in a specific type of the latest fashions likely with the same instinctive understanding of the meaning of every choice as Ivan out of uniform, even if there’s a bit more conscious thought than her brother puts into ‘just knowing’ what’s right and proper. Despite being much taller, even without the heels he eyes warily, she sill manages to appear to be gracing the arm of the even more alarming visitor without a tinge of awkwardness.
Lord Vorkosigan smirks at Duv, ignoring the bickering siblings and Vorpatril’s sudden recollection that he has some sort of duty.
“Captain Galeni, my sister, Sonya, who is supposed to be on Doroteyar, and not wandering about without an armsman.”
Sonya ignores the brotherly scowl with the ease of long practice, granting Duv a dangerously dazzling smile. “A pleasure to meet you at last, Captain Galeni. Ivan’s some almost sensible things lately, it’s good to see where he’s been getting them from.” She turns a much less dazzling look on Ivan. “I told you I was going to be back this week, like I would miss papa, it’s not my fault if you don’t look at your calendar.” She sniffs. “And it’s not like I’m wandering the halls of likely the safest place on Barrayar alone, Miles makes a much more entertaining escort than you. He knows a lot about this history of this building.” Another warning sign, if Ivan has a clue of Galeni’s past, Duv will eat his hat.
But Vorpatril has remembered the other half of the introductions. “Right, and this is Miles. Lord Vorkosigan, that is.”
“Thank you, Ivan.” Duv would feel some sympathy with the sardonic resignation Ivan shakes off without apparently noticing, if he hadn’t found himself already dislike Lord Vorkosigan, more so because of the knowing look that suggests the younger man has guessed his opinion and finds it amusing.
Lord Vorkosigan. Son of the Prime Minister Count Vorkosigan. Assistant social secretory to the Emperor, in an astonishing display of nepotism, even for the Vor. Said by some to be an advisor to the Emperor, despite his age and the not-quite-public but known split between the Emperor and his Prime Minister. Some might whisper about mutants, but young men with reason for grudges and too much power are far more dangerous than Barrayars fear of mutation. And the look in Lord Vorkosigan’s eyes is too familiar for him not to recognize the danger, after all, Duv sees it in the mirror every morning.