Work Text:
"Burn an offering?" Galeni tried to lean back in his temporary folding chair, but it gave an alarming wobble and he straightened hastily. He gazed at Miles and rubbed his eyes, stinging from the smoke and sleep deprivation. "Are you serious?"
"I'll come with you if you like," Miles said.
The chaos around him was making it hard to think. "I should have applied for a transfer to Sector IV when I heard you were coming here, even without that damned fleet of yours. Look at this place!"
"That's why you should go somewhere else," Miles said reasonably. "And it's not that bad. You don't have any more weapons smugglers."
"I also don't have a departmental building," Galeni snapped. "It's a miracle there weren't casualties."
"Your evacuation procedures worked perfectly," Miles said. "You've got them really well trained."
Galeni snorted and reached out automatically for his console, but came up short against the unfamiliar trestle table serving as a desk. "I want my office back," he muttered.
"I can't believe you haven't burned an offering," Miles said, prudently changing the subject.
"I'm not Barrayaran," Galeni said through gritted teeth. "I don't practice your ... religion, or whatever you want to call it."
"Ancestor veneration," Miles said. "I think it's more a cultural habit than a religion, really." He sat back, managing to look completely comfortable on his folding chair, though it was, Galeni noticed, awkwardly big for him. "It's ... important. Especially for people who've suffered violent deaths."
Galeni looked down. Finally he said, "It's complicated enough here without me drawing attention to the fact that my aunt was killed in the massacre."
Miles gave an understanding nod. "Everyone knows who you are, though. The men would understand. And it would link your--your Barrayaran and your Komarran identities together."
"You're a fine one to talk."
That made Miles flinch a little. "Neither of your identities is a secret, though," he said. "Come on. I've got a brazier and incense with my kit, it's only a short drive to the shrine and we've definitely been fasting since last night."
"That's because we've been running around all night chasing smugglers," Galeni pointed out sourly. He took a breath. There really wasn't anything they could do here until things were straightened out, and they were both long past due to go off-duty. "They'll have to clear the area, if you're going there," he added as his mind caught up with the idea of Lord Miles Vorkosigan going to the Massacre Shrine. "It's just as well this isn't a public thing, or there would be protesters six feet deep behind the police lines, and the media circus of the year." He sighed. "I'll contact Dome Security."
"Oh. Yes." Miles paused. "You will come, then?"
Someone dropped a crate of disks with a clatter. Galeni winced. "Yeah. I'll come."
Miles headed off to retrieve his kit whilst Galeni spoke to Dome Security--and, after a thoughtful pause, Fire Control. He didn't want to get in trouble for lighting illegal fires inside the Dome, and it wasn't as though Barrayarans came to burn offerings at the Shrine on a regular basis. They met at Galeni's groundcar some ten minutes later, and a silent ImpSec sergeant took the wheel.
In the back, Galeni tried to relax against the cushioned seat, but the adrenaline from the night's adventures was still echoing through his system and he couldn't seem to stop.
"Did you know your aunt well?" Miles asked after a while.
"I was four," Galeni said obliquely. "How well can you know someone when you're four?" The question gave him a flashback to the hours and hours of interviews for the Imperial Service, every aspect of his life dissected by hard-eyed security officers who clearly thought that the son of a terrorist could only be trying to infiltrate the Service for one reason. But Miles--better not to think of him as 'Vorkosigan' under these circumstances--was asking out of friendliness, not suspicion. So he said something he hadn't said to the interviewers, something he hadn't even thought about for a long time. "She'd been at my birthday party that morning. She gave me a robodog. Then she went to join the negotiations at the Senate."
Miles took a deep breath and said, "And then we launched ground strikes and captured the Senate and took all the members to that gymnasium." He paused. "And then an order came from my father's command deck to kill them all."
They both fell silent, and Galeni thought about the ugliness of history. There were so many stories like the Solstice Massacre, every planet had them, time and time again. Perhaps it was folly to think that by going into politics he could hope to prevent another. He was bound to fail. Perhaps even make things worse by his efforts; that had happened more than once. Nobody got through a political career with completely clean hands. Then again, it wasn't as if his hands were clean now.
Miles had been watching him sideways for a while, Galeni realised. At length he said, "He didn't order it, you know."
Did Miles think he had been brooding about that? And did he really believe that he would be considered a reliable witness anyway? Galeni smiled faintly. "I used to argue with my father about that--well, actually I was baiting him. I would say that perhaps the Admiral hadn't ordered the massacre, we had no evidence, and my father would rant and rave. But one time he said that it didn't matter whether Admiral Vorkosigan ordered the massacre or not, a Barrayaran in his command did and that meant he was guilty either way and all Barrayar with him." Galeni took a breath. "Later on, I turned that on its head. It doesn't matter to me who ordered the massacre. It happened, a Barrayaran ordered it, and the only way for us to have any hope of a stable future is if we come to terms with it and work for peace."
"Oh," said Miles. "I'm sorry--I thought--"
"It's all right."
They rode in silence the rest of the way to the shrine, for which Galeni was grateful. Miles ought by all rights to be exhausted too, but he seemed as energetic as always. The groundcar came out from the service tunnels and went through the quiet early morning streets, then pulled up a short way from the Shrine. Galeni got out, stretching his back and neck and wondering how many bruises he was going to have from that fall.
"This way, Captain Galeni, Lieutenant Vorkosigan." Galeni thought there was a slight undertone to the guard's voice as he spoke, but for once he wasn't sure whether the guard disapproved more of him being here, or Vorkosigan. They entered the square where the shrine stood. Galeni had been here often, even before the official shrine had been built. It had been prohibited in the early years of the Barrayaran occupation--conquest, Galeni corrected himself--but Galeni had been amongst the people who had left flowers and wreaths and food and placards here before the shrine had been built. Their offerings had always been swept away each night by the soldiers, but the next day more would arrive. And then in the first year of the Regency the colonial government had suddenly changed its position and allowed the people of Solstice to construct the Massacre Shrine.
It was a simple pillar of a local igneous rock with a brief, unemotional description of the massacre and the names of all the dead carved on it. There had been bitter debates as members of various religions had petitioned to have their symbols used, supporters of the resistance wanted their slogans and names of the Barrayarans involved, but in the end simplicity and prudence had won out. It was not unusual for it to be deserted at this hour of the morning, but Galeni saw the ImpSec officers at the entrances, keeping away anyone who might see the son of the Butcher at the Massacre Shrine.
Miles stopped a good few metres back and looked up at it in silence. Galeni watched him, but whatever Miles was thinking didn't show on his face. His eyes travelled to the spot where his aunt's name was inscribed--he couldn't read it from this distance, but he knew where it was.
"Do you know how to do this?" Miles asked, his voice unexpectedly diffident.
"I've studied it," Galeni said. He'd never been involved in a Barrayaran death offering ceremony before, but after spending days locked in prison with him, not to mention a horrendous evening in his company chasing and being chased by smugglers, he didn't feel uncomfortable around Miles. "I have to cut off some of my hair, don't I?"
Miles glanced at his close military cut. "If you can." He took out a small brass bowl and tripod, some chemical firestarters and a folded paper packet which proved to contain a strong-smelling powdered incense. Galeni fumbled with his belt knife and his hair and tried not to slice into his scalp.
"Let me," Miles said, and then there was a slight awkwardness as Galeni had to bend down so that Miles could reach. Then Miles put a small tuft of his hair into the bowl along with the firestarters and the incense.
"Do mine for me, will you?" Miles said. He paused. "If you don't mind?"
Galeni hesitated, thinking about what he had read about death offerings and who could or should provide something to be burned. In the anthropology literature there had been anecotes of fights about whose hair would be mingled together, who was excluded from making an offering, whose hair had been a noble gift ... it had all seemed very alien to Galeni, but clearly this was important to Barrayarans.
And it meant something if Lord Miles Vorkosigan participated in his offering for his aunt. In answer he took the knife and carefully cut off a piece of Miles' hair and dropped it in the bowl. Miles nodded.
"Do people burn other things than hair?" Galeni asked curiously.
"Sometimes. I burned a copy of my officer's commission on my grandfather's grave one time. It's ... it's like a last word, I guess."
Galeni made himself not look at Miles then, because there was an unexpectedly self-revelatory note in Miles' voice. "I can see that," he said. But he didn't really have anything more he wanted to say to Aunt Rebecca here beyond the message contained in the offering itself. He had looked up her political views after his father had died, and discovered that she had voted for making a treaty with Barrayar even before the invasion happened. His father had always spoken of her as a martyr of the resistance, as a reason why the struggle for freedom must continue, but the more he studied the more certain Galeni was that Aunt Rebecca would not have turned to terrorism. She might even approve of her nephew burning a Barrayaran offering for her.
Miles rummaged around in his bag again and came up with a taper and lighter.
"You should light the offering," he said. "Here." He lit the taper and passed it to Galeni, then faded a few discreet steps backwards, and Galeni realised that Miles probably was quite good at the quieter kind of covert ops as well as the kind with explosions and people running in circles. He didn't think he would need the kind of privacy that a Barrayaran would want for this; he didn't have the instincts that a Barrayaran would about burning a death offering. But he also didn't have a Komarran's distaste for the whole idea. It was a little strange, but as ways of remembering the dead went it wasn't bad. Especially when he compared it to his father's chosen method of honouring Aunt Rebecca's memory.
Galeni held the taper up. There was no real draught here in the dome; when people burned offerings on Barrayar they must have to contend with uncontrolled planetary winds and even precipitation. He knelt down and touched the flame to the firestarters in the bowl, and watched as it ignited. Almost at once the scent from the incense began to rise, and then the hair began to catch light.
The hair burned rapidly, but its acrid scent hung in the air with the incense after the last strands were gone. If it meant anything to Aunt Rebecca, Galeni couldn't tell, but he felt the beginnings of an understanding within him of why this was an important ceremony to Barrayarans. He watched the embers die down, glowing red and purple in the bottom of the bowl, and sat back on his heels. He was going to be stiff and sore later, he could feel it, but his mind was finally beginning to relax. Perhaps, he thought, he would get a copy of his own officer's commission, and then burn another death offering, this time for his father.