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The news rippled across Komarr. It came first to the communications room in the Solstice ImpSec HQ. The duty officer there read the header on the dispatch, took a deep breath, and woke the head of ImpSec Komarr at his home across the dome.
"It's Admiral Vorkosigan, sir," the duty officer said shakily. "He's dead, sir."
Sitting at the console in his rumpled pyjamas, for a moment Duv felt unable to process the information. "Oh," he said. Then, "I'll wake the Viceroy. Send the details here. Thank you--" he fished in his mind for officer's name, and recalled it in time "--Alan." A Komarran officer, one of the increasing number following his path and serving here in his department on Komarr, a young man born after the Revolt who had never known a Komarr without the Barrayarans. But his expression was troubled now, and as his mind began to wake up, Duv understood why. The Butcher of Komarr was dead.
"Sir, what's going to happen--" he began. Duv raised his hand.
"Just stay at your post. It'll be all right." He cut the comm, but didn't move, scanning the details without really taking them in.
Delia turned over in bed. "Duv?" she said sleepily.
She deserved to know at once; she'd grown up almost as part of the family. "Delia, I'm sorry. The news just came from Sergyar. Count Vorkosigan has died." He sat down on the bed beside her. "Peacefully, of natural causes."
She lay still, and Duv placed his hand supportively against her back, not speaking. "Oh God," she said at last. "Tante Cordelia."
"They'll be coming through Komarr in five days," he said. "Returning to Barrayar."
"Yes, of course..." She sat up. "You need to get to work, don't you? I'll just get you some breakfast--"
"It's all right, love." He pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair. "I'll get myself something, stay in bed. But you might want to keep the girls home from school today."
That made Delia freeze. "You think there might be trouble--oh, Duv, what are you going to do?"
"Take it slowly," he said. "I don't know how the news will go down. But we'll keep things as calm as we can."
"Yes. Yes." She hugged him back suddenly, tightly. "I know you liked him too. We'll be all right here today. Go and--and keep the peace."
The flotilla arrived in Komarran space five days later, a full quarter of the Sergyaran fleet escorting their flagship with all military panoply. Duv was grateful he didn't have to coordinate their arrival and reception into the Komarran fleet, not least since every single ship's captain was engaged in a silent contest to be one of the ones permitted to escort their beloved Admiral, lying in state on the flagship. Besides, he was too busy with his own concerns, too busy even to take time for his own grief.
The response had been muted so far in the domes. The public buildings and offices went into the proper mourning, and if there were private parties everywhere celebrating the Butcher's death, as long as they were kept private Duv could ignore them; the few public incidents had been minor and easily dispersed. But tomorrow there would be a state ceremony outside the Viceroy's palace, and every intelligence source Duv had was telling him the same thing: there was going to be trouble. There was a protest planned at the adjacent Massacre Shrine, which was bad enough. Worse was that the news of this was spreading in whispers, and angry Barrayarans were planning to march on the protesters and stop them by force. Duv was seriously considering asking the Viceroy to cancel the whole thing.
"Just shut the protest down," the Viceroy said when he raised the question. "I know we can't expect the Komarrans to cry their eyes out, but they can damned well bite their tongues."
"I don't think I can do that, sir," Duv said. "Not without causing more trouble than I avoid. And not without ... I've already spoken to the leaders of the protest. I understand why they wish to do this."
The Viceroy wheeled. "And you want the Dowager Countess Vorkosigan to see that, when we receive her here?"
"I don't want her to see a mass brawl and blood in the streets," Duv said. "The protest will be both peaceful and silent; I have negotiated that much from the leaders. Yes, they will be carrying signs and so forth, but they will not be shouting and they will not make a disturbance." He had won these concessions by invoking his aunt and the rest of his family, forcing them to admit that he had as much right to a view on this as any of them. He thought Aunt Rebecca might approve of that, and his certainty that his father would have burned with fury over it was an attraction too. "What we need to do now is control the Barrayarans. If we can avoid having a thousand off-duty soldiers marching in and tearing the place up, we can maintain public order."
The Viceroy looked at him for a long time. "Do you really think this is for the best?"
"I do, sir. I'm certain of it. As you say, whether we like it or not, this is what a great many people here think. A small, essentially harmless display of it, quietly tolerated, will prevent much more damaging expressions of the sentiment, where a strong opposition would only provoke more response."
"Count Vorkosigan told me when you were appointed," the Viceroy said at last, "that I should rely on your judgement when it came to these sorts of questions. Very well. The protest remains; I'll speak to the senior officers and get them to rein in their men. Any unofficial reprisals will be strictly punished. Though I expect you'll need a protective guard for them anyway."
"I've made arrangements for that already, sir." Not a popular task, but Duv had braced his subordinates for it, and knew they would do their duty.
"Of course you have. And one more thing." He placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward, not quite frowning at Duv. "If the Dowager Countess asks about it, it will be your problem to explain it to her."
The ceremony went off without disaster, the speeches were made, the guests welcomed, and now all the principals were inside, safely behind force screens, the crowds were dispersing, and Duv's blood pressure was going down to less dangerous levels. He paid his formal respects to the Dowager Countess, but then left Delia to hug her and talk to her quietly and show her pictures of the girls, not wanting to intrude. But after a few minutes, she left Delia and came to stand beside him.
"ImpSec protection for people waving placards saying 'Remember the Martyrs'," she said in a voice so neutral he had no idea what she was thinking. "You have freedom of speech on Komarr, do you now?"
"No, my lady," Duv said. "My brief is to keep Komarr peaceful. I judged this the best way to do so."
"Ah." She stared out at the protesters, her face as neutral as her voice had been. "Who are they protected from? Is the sentiment so unusual on Komarr, these days?"
"It is increasingly irrelevant to the daily lives of many Komarrans," Duv said, "but no, I'm afraid the sentiment is not unusual. But there are also a large number of Barrayarans living here, especially in Solstice. They were, unsurprisingly, opposed to this, and wanted to silence the protesters by force."
"I see." She put her hand on his arm then, leaning on him and steering him towards the window overlooking the square. "Aral often spoke of you," she said. "He followed your career even before we discovered Mark. I don't think you realise how much you, and the other Komarrans like you, meant to him. But you in particular. You were his redemption, he said."
Duv pressed his lips together tightly to choke back a sudden surge of emotion. He had been careful to keep his own feelings out of this, the complicated mixture of admiration and respect and fear and understanding he had felt towards Vorkosigan. It would not have helped anything in the negotiations or organisation. But now it was over, and he could allow himself to grieve for Vorkosigan. For the Butcher. The Dowager Countess looked at his face, and her hand pressed his arm for a moment.
Then she turned to the window, facing the protestors squarely. "And so you do this. I don't have to like it. I don't imagine you do either. But I think he would have said you were doing the right thing, here. Was Gervase sticky about it?" A nod to the Viceroy. "I can settle him, if you want."
"It's all right. He accepted my analysis."
She gave a grim, cold smile. "Then I won't need to remind him what Aral did to a Barrayaran officer who failed to protect Komarran civilians."
"I think ... we can avoid having to repeat the situation, my lady. It's all winding down now. There were a few minor scuffles in the roads away from here, but no injuries."
"Ah." She looked at the protesters and their ImpSec guard again, and raised her hand to them in what Duv recognised as a Betan-style salute. "Here's to a better way of doing things," she said. Then, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, "And perhaps Aral can rest in peace here too." For a moment Duv heard the agony behind her neutral tone, and he closed his hand around hers.
"I think he can," he said, equally low. "He got us all this far. It's my job to do the rest. And I will."