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"Yes, Count Vorsmythe," Gregor said, "my Lord Regent has informed me of the new lightflyer manufacturing facility in your district..." He stifled a yawn, keeping in mind what his Lord Regent had told him about Count Vorsmythe's ability "to buy anything he wants, including political favors." Luckily, at that moment a servitor appeared with the fish course -- real fish, caught at Vorkosigan Surleau and quick-frozen the previous summer. The fish now swam in butter -- appealing to Gregor's ever-increasing food capacity -- rather than in the cold lake.
Conversation stopped as everyone waited for him to take the first bite; no one would think of beginning to eat before their Emperor did. He heard a slight scuffling noise, and froze for a moment when he realized that it came from the "heating grate" behind the Lord Regent. It was not a heating grate at all, but a secret entrance to the maze of passageways that would allow him to escape the Residence, even from this, its most formal "small" dining room -- small meaning seating less than 100 people. When no armed invaders burst through, Gregor took a bite of the fish, and smiled to himself as his guests murmured appreciation of the high-quality cuisine. He assumed the scuffling had been some mice. The Residence was plagued with mice every winter, come in from the cold streets of Vorbarr Sultana to gather, mate, chew things, and generally annoy the human inhabitants.
He wondered what his young friends, Miles, Ivan, and Elena, were up to. He'd been able to stop in at the Residence's childrens' quarters for a few minutes before this banquet, where Miles had flattened him at Tacti-Go, Ivan had teased him about it, because since when was The Emperor beatable by a little kid, and Elena had just looked fiercely protective of him. Gregor had promised them -- so odd, now, to be the pseudo-adult promiser, rather than the promisee -- places on the Residence's highest tower to watch tonight's fireworks. This brought on nervous excitement and vows that none of them would allow the others to fall asleep before the sky lit up at midnight.
When the fish was just a buttery memory, there was more conversation, none of it of particular interest to Gregor, especially since he knew that, unlike the spontaneity he got from Miles or Ivan, every word was measured and constructed for his consumption. No other fourteen year old boy on Barrayar -- or anywhere in the Nexus for that matter -- received such deference from adults. He snuck a grin at Lady Vorkosigan, who was stuck in an interminable conversation between the tedious Count Vorsmythe and the High Minister for Trade, a man interesting only to those who appreciated long discourses on economic modeling.
A salad course interrupted the chatter once again. The Lord Regent Aral Vorkosigan seemed to approve of Gregor's performance tonight, and Lady Alys apparently found no fault with his table manners, as she hadn't even arched an eyebrow at him. Just a few months before, when Gregor was about to start upper-level boarding school, the Lord Regent had informed him that his school breaks would no longer be quiet vacations spent with his extended foster family. Now was the time for him to circulate more amongst the High Vor, to accustom them to thinking of him as the Emerging Emperor, rather than the Boy Emperor. Gregor had not comprehended the difference until he had been subject to several of his Aral's tart lectures on strategy, focusing especially on those points that had proven underdeveloped in his charge. But every time, Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan, the Regent Consort, had found time to spend with Gregor afterwards, reassuring him that he would grow into the role, and grow into it better so long as he thought of it as just that -- a role. "You should cut a swath through this milieu, keeping a bit of your humanity off display, a treasure to be shared only with those you love as well as serve." That was, in fact, exactly what she herself did, effortlessly remaining ever so slightly apart in public, turning lively and completely engaged in private. If he could just learn to do it half as well as she did....
There was a sudden commotion just outside the dining room, and several "servitors" dropped their pretence, instantly transforming into the Residence Guards and ImpSec agents they really were. They clustered around their Emperor, their keen duty to protect him from harm just making him feel more claustrophobic. All the High Vor chatter had come to a standstill, all eyes were on the door, and a few Counts were reaching for the ceremonial daggers they kept in their boots.
Armsman Bothari, Miles' bodyguard, burst into the room, a flimsy crumpled in his hand. His wail of "Elena..." sent Cordelia springing out of her seat and running towards him. She grabbed the flimsy, scanned it... and laughed. Her father-in-law, Count Vorkosigan, scowled at her impropriety from across the room. Her husband the Lord Regent went to her side, and the contents of the flimsy shot the corners of his mouth and his eyebrows up, and he spluttered a bit before regaining his usual sternness. Gregor was intrigued enough to go see for himself.
When Aral handed him the flimsy, he read, in Elena Bothari's childish but neat handwriting,
Dear Father,Miles and Ivan and I are in the secret tunnels looking for where Father Frost stores our presents. I am sorry.
Elena
P.S. I also took two of Miles' casts from your drawer for if he gets hurt.
He wished he could laugh. Poor Elena -- or was that lucky Elena, as he'd thought when they were younger and he was even more constrained than she was -- had been drawn in again as erstwhile companion to Ivan and Miles, yet the care in her words reflected a maturity well beyond what anyone would expect of a ten year old girl. He was suddenly aware that the earlier noise from the heating grate had been just a bit too loud to be mice. But the security tunnels were so extensive that his friends could be anywhere by now, maybe even outside the grounds, maybe even emerging into the sub-basement corridor of a nondescript industrial building far enough away that no one would think to look for the Emperor in such a place. He suppressed a shudder, remembering Captain Illyan's security drill that had taken him there, and returned his focus again to the immediate situation.
"I want to help look for them," Gregor said. "If nothing else, they're obviously having quite an adventure." He hoped that his boredom with the dinner party wasn't too obvious, and wondered if he ought to feel bad for preferring the company of children over a feast with the High Vor.
The Lord Regent frowned as he replied, "Sire, your duties as host preclude that. And the note may have been forced out of the girl... there could be kidnappers just waiting for you to be drawn in by your friends' peril."
In a furious whisper, Lady Vorkosigan said, "That's ridiculous! We would know if the Residence had been breached. This is his house. Gregor's home. And, Aral..." It was a bad sign when she addressed her husband by his first name in public, not to mention dropping all pretenses of protocol over the proper name for her foster son. "I insisted it be treated as such when he was five, and just because he's now fourteen and you've hyped up his indoctrination doesn't change that!"
Alys Vorpatril was not the only person, reading the body language of this argument even though they could not hear it, with hand over mouth. The two Vorkosigans were eye to eye, Lady and Lord equal in height and force. Gregor wondered if anyone else watching this scene was still breathing; he certainly wasn't. After a few moments, the slight slump appearing in Aral's shoulders told Gregor who would prevail.
As he and his entourage moved down a corridor -- rather noisily, Gregor thought, if their goal was to catch naughty children -- he was just relieved to not be the focus of the High Vor, at least temporarily. Aral Vorkosigan and Lady Vorpatril would make excuses for him as best they could, and keep the dinner party running in his absense, while Cordelia comforted the panicked Bothari in a side salon. Gregor recalled that the Sergeant had been in the tunnels before, on the rescue mission for Miles' replicator during the war. Whatever the Sergeant remembered, it must have been horrible, so it was no wonder that he was panicking over where his daughter was. He saw my mother die.... Gregor had tried to banish all his memories of her, but had found that the slightest reminder brough them all flooding back. Quiet, now... that's all gone. Stay here. He was, however, getting better at talking himself down from the distress this caused.
He heard an ImpSec guard behind him say, "A scullery maid?" They stopped for a moment while the man listened to the details transmitted through his earbug, and confirmed them out loud. "In her room. She and Colbert were stark naked? Lord Miles, Lord Ivan, and Miss Elena burst in? I see. The presents are undamaged but the maid's modesty is not. Oh, not the children's presents, the staff presents. The children left? A relief, yes, that they have not been kidnapped. Well, thank you." The guard sounded bemused, and had to collect himself for a moment before turning to them and said, "The below-stairs guard suggests that the children are likely below-stairs themselves, though no one has seen them except that maid and, um..." The man stopped short. "The maid and Colbert, um, yes, um Sire, a situation..."
The guard was stumbling over his words, no doubt because he wasn't sure that his Emperor should be hearing this. Not that Gregor didn't know exactly what the situation entailed. He definitely envied the guard Colbert, well, up until the interruption of three unwanted small guests.
"The children might be hungry by now, so we should start with the kitchens" one of Gregor's Armsmen interrupted, rescuing the guard from saying any more. The Armsman was a father of seven, so his nose for the motivations and mischief of children were well-respected.
As they moved through the kitchens, the group found the staff in a frenzy of food preparation, trying to keep the as-yet unserved food presentable, but no children. Finally they reached the last kitchen in the hallway, the dessert kitchen normally ruled with a fierce hand by a very grouchy and talented chef, and it was obvious they had found their target, as gleeful laughter could be heard within. There was a damp thwop against the other side of the door, followed by a boyish, teasing, "Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me!" Ivan. Two ImpSec guards approached the door from either side, while a third stepped forward to open it.
"Stop," said Gregor, putting a hand on the man's shoulder. "It's just the children; what could they do to me?" The guard opened his mouth as if to argue, and closed it at Gregor's glare. He could hear in the background someone saying, "He's growing up, our boy..." Along with Lady Vorkosigan's earlier reminder, "Gregor's home," this was a statement Gregor could cherish for a long time.
He threw open the door, which sent Ivan crashing into one of the corners. And was hit in the chest -- which let him know that the target was Ivan's face -- by a cream torte. A high-pitched "Urk, Sire!" came from the other end of the kitchen. There was a moment of stunned silence.
Gregor surveyed the room, its inhabitants, and the damages. There was an Ivan-shaped depression crushed into the cream tortes on the kitchen island before him. In fact, the remnants of what should have been the Winterfair Ball's most traditional dessert offering were plastered all over the room -- floors, countertops, and walls, and there were even a few splats of cream filling on the ceilings. To Gregor's left, Lord Ivan Vorpatril was stifling his laughter. Only his face was not covered with ruined pastries, though the filth of the tunnels had turned it brown. To his right, wide-eyed Elena Bothari, not quite as bedraggled as Ivan, held a hand over her mouth.
And then there was Miles, even more filthy and torte-covered, the only one who'd tried to dignify the situation by addressing Gregor in proper Imperial etiquette, minus the "Urk" of course. In his most formal voice -- which did not crack, for once -- Gregor addressed him. "I commend you for your most excellent aim, Lord Vorkosigan."
There was really only one thing to do, he realized. He reached for one of the few intact tortes remaining, took aim....
...and was stopped short by a tremendous roar from a side entrance. "What! What have you done, you little monsters? I'll get you all...." It was the dessert chef, of course. "I'm, I'm.... aaaauggh!" She rushed towards Ivan, holding her hands out as if to strangle him, until Gregor coughed softly.
The chef stopped dead, the red in her face now a mix of anger and shame. She wrung her hands in her apron, as if expecting punishment. She'd been dessert chef since Emperor Ezar's time, so no doubt she had seen what the hand of an enraged Emperor could do. "S....sss...sire...." she finally managed to stutter out.
"Yes, I am," Gregor said quietly. The chef began to weep, and Ivan and Miles took advantage of this distraction to make a run for it. Gregor quickly dispatched a few guards to help clean up the mess, then beckoned Elena, took her arm, and said, "We should go find them before this gets any worse." She nodded gravely.
"So you went looking for Father Frost's gifts?" he asked Elena as they made their way upstairs. He'd sent several guards -- the younger, kinder ones -- on ahead to the childrens' quarters to corral Miles and Ivan.
"Yes, S..ss... Gregor. It was Ivan's idea..."
"You'd think he would have learned after last year." Yes, last year, when Miles and Ivan had found the Armsmen's dressing room, where the presents were stored, started opening them, and been interrupted by a furious Vorbarra Armsman -- as it turns out, the one who'd played Father Frost for years -- emerging naked from the shower. He'd been so offended that he'd resigned his position as Father Frost, and another Armsman had been pressed into service at the last minute. After consulting with Lady Alys, Aral Vorkosigan had decided that the only appropriate punishment was for Miles and Ivan to send all their Winterfair presents to the needy children of one of the poorest villages in the Dendarii mountains.
"I thought it was pretty stupid. But when they asked me..." Elena's voice shook, and her eyes brimmed with tears. "I had to go to help Miles if he got hurt. And I thought maybe if I saw my presents ahead of time, I wouldn't get Father and Aunt Alys mad at me like last year."
Gregor stopped and turned Elena to face him. She was tall for her age, and quiet, and tried so hard to keep her father's good graces. "I know hair ribbons and dolls weren't what you wanted," Gregor said. "This year, we have a Mother Frost, a cetain Betan Vor in fact," he said with a wink, "who is making sure you get some, um, less girly gifts too." What had happened with Elena last Winterfair was even worse than Ivan and Miles getting into the presents early. She'd cried at her haul, the "pretties" that had satisfied her when she was younger now representing the restraints put on her future. He'd nearly wept with her, because it was just what he had experienced when he was the same age, when he'd realized Emperors could never become jump pilots.
As they continued, Gregor found out from Elena that the explorers had, in fact, been responsible for the noises he'd heard while waiting for the fish course. That they'd nearly been discovered when they climbed up the inside of one of the Residence turrets, and an unknowing ImpSec guard had kicked a shower of dirty snow through the grate onto their heads. And that they'd gone "down and down and down" as Elena put it, and found a secret stash of commoner's clothing and false IDs. It was only through Elena's insistence that they had left these undisturbed. Simon Illyan would be very displeased at hearing the "secure" hiding place had been discovered. Elena blushed furiously while she described their encounter with Colbert and the hapless maid, worrying that Colbert would be mean to her because she'd seen him naked.
Gregor let that lie, even though he knew that his quartermaster would certainly fire Colbert -- and the maid -- before the stench of the powder from the Winterfair fireworks disappeared from the air. He would miss the guard, one of the few who was within the upper reaches of Gregor's generation, and felt badly for his companion. He was slightly embarrassed to have no idea which maid she might be, one of perhaps a hundred girls working in the Residence. He realized that he wanted to know the servants better, to squeeze in some time to talk with them, maybe two or three at a time. In between the boarding school, and the Lord Regent's politicking, and Lady Alys's social instructions... Oh, she'll just die over this, he thought. He could already see, in her careful shepherding, that she intended to be his matchmaker, his baba, when the time came. "Meeting the servants" would not be on her agenda. But maybe Lady Vorkosigan, from servant-less Beta, would understand.
As they reached a junction in the hallway, an Armsman came up to escort Elena back to the children's rooms, but she tugged on Gregor's sleeve, and asked, "Could I go see if my father is OK?"
"Oh, of course!" he answered. "Last I saw, Lady Vorkosigan was comforting him in a side room by the banquet. I am sure he would be relieved to see you."
"I think he'll just be mad at me..."
"But you still want to go, right?"
"Yes."
The Armsman jumped into the conversation. "Sire, Miss Elena is not... presentable, don't you think?"
Well, Elena was filthy and bedraggled, and had added tear-streaks running down through the grime on her face, but Gregor just firmly said, "It won't matter to Armsman Bothari," and they went on.
At about ten meters distance from the banquet room, the guards swept the doors open. The chatter within immediately changed to a low murmur as the attendees anticipated their Emperor's return, never mind that their Emperor, given a choice, would have hauled off to the children's quarters himself, at the very least to prove to Miles that he would not always win at Tacti-Go. Gregor's valet appeared from nowhere, and helped him exchange his torte-splattered uniform jacket for a fresh one.
But before they got any further, a grate just beside the door clanged to the floor, and Gregor found himself momentarily surrounded by guards, many of whom were drawing weapons. Two small figures appeared -- Miles, as if Gregor's thought had summoned him, and Ivan, clearly having escaped their escorts. "Wait, they can't go in there! The Count! The Lord Regent!" one of the guards shouted, as Miles and Ivan rushed away from them right into the banquet.
Gregor pushed forward, just in time to see Miles trip on the carpet in the entryway and fall to the floor with an audible crack of bone. Gregor smiled, just barely, as Elena pulled an inflatable cast from her skirt pockets and ran to help her friend.
They waited in the salon just off the "small" dining room at the Imperial Residence. "I don't see, kiddo," Cordelia said, "how you could expect anything else. They are your sons, after all..."
Miles hated it when his mother called him "kiddo." He was in his forties, married, had three children of his own... two of whom had gone missing from the childrens' quarters during the Emperor's Winterfair banquet. They'd been detected in the secret passageways disguised as a heating system, and at last report seemed to be headed towards the dessert kitchen. Gregor, for some reason, had insisted on leaving the banquet to aid his staff.
"Did you have to remind me?" Miles groaned.
"Do I need to answer that question?"
Miles sighed.