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As a senior trade representative of Komaar, Laisa was used to living a life that was tightly scheduled. However, in the whirlwind of preparation between the Imperial betrothal and wedding, Laisa found that her previous definition of “tightly” had gone from every half hour accounted for to every five minutes. Never mind weekends, or a “private conference” with Gregor.
So, it was a not unpleasant surprise when Gregor requested that she make herself available for a full afternoon and evening, to take lunch at his foster brother Lord Miles’ vacation manor at Vorkosigan Surleau. They flew out late that morning, Gregor’s own lightflyer boxed in by at least two visible ImpSec lightflyers, with Laisa betting there were more in the upper atmosphere just in case. Just part of the security bubble that had grown around her as her relationship with Gregor had deepened. It hadn’t grown chafing yet, but Laisa was starting to get an uncomfortable itch at the back of her neck when she allowed herself to become aware of it.
“I know we’re having lunch with Miles,” Laisa said to Gregor, as the lightflyer hummed along. “Is there anything else on the agenda?”
“A bit of sightseeing,” Gregor told her. “I find myself in a nostalgic mood.” Laisa had to wonder at that, though it did explain his recommendation to wear practical culottes and hiking boots. Even though he smiled at her warmly, there was a tension in his eyes that told Laisa he was worried about something.
The lightflyer settled down on a concrete pad near what Gregor informed her was a repurposed barracks, softened with enlarged windows and gardens into a quiet retreat for the Vorkosigans. It said something about the place that there was not a line of servants waiting outside to politely greet the emperor as he was helped out of the lightflyer by an ImpSec minder. A very private function, or are they so used to Gregor visiting they don’t bother with ceremony? She wondered.
“Gregor, Laisa!” Lord Miles called, coming out of the manor. He was dressed in what Laisa was recognizing as Backcountry Casual, in a tunic, pants, and half boots not unlike what citizens (subjects, she corrected herself) wore outside the cities, though in a subtly finer cut. “So glad you could make it!”
“I appreciated the invitation,” Gregor replied, shaking Miles’ hand before they walked together towards the manor. “Things have been… stressful. More so than usual.”
Miles nodded judiciously. “So I’ve been reliably informed.” The short lord turned his attention to Laisa. “I should have asked earlier, but do you eat natural meat, Laisa?”
“Yes,” Laisa said. An acquired skill since she had come to Barraryar. She tried to remind herself the proteins were all the same as vat meat, even if their creation was wildly different.
“Wonderful,” Miles said, grinning. “Ma Kosti is cooking up some lake trout for lunch, I can assure you the sauce is to die for.”
They were led inside to a comfortable luncheon. The trout really was excellent, and Laisa found herself fascinated by the view of the lake outside the dining room window, the water silver blue in the noonday light. It was an unfathomably large body of liquid compared to the paltry mud ponds of half-terraformed Komaar, with its own eco-system that the trout had emerged from.
Lord Miles played the gregarious host, giving Laisa the history of the manor as they finished the trout and went on to a dessert of homemade ice cream flavored with caramel and pecans. It almost distracted her enough not to catch the expression on Gregor’s face. It wasn’t glum precisely, but there was a tension there that had been absent in their last few meetings. Something is up, she realized.
“Please give my compliments to Ma Kosti as always,” Gregor told Miles. A smile rose to his face, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Are you absolutely certain you won’t loan her out to the Imperial Residence?”
“You have the pick of all the cooks in the Empire,” Miles protested with a laugh. “Besides, how am I supposed to impress you when I invite you to dinner otherwise?”
“Fair enough.” Gregor stood and offered his arm to Laisa. As she stood in turn. “Walk with me, Laisa? There’s a little ceremony I’d like to perform before we move on.”
“Of course,” Laisa agreed, though she did raise an eyebrow at the request. He led her down a garden path, their ImpSec minders discreetly following, towards a small graveyard surrounded by a low stone wall. Gregor opened the gate for her, before taking a silk bag handed to him by a retainer. Laisa tried to contain her surprise, recognizing the contents as Gregor drew them out. A shallow engraved steel bowl on tripod legs, a plastic bag with a bundle of wood chips and a firestarter, and another bag with clippings of hair and what appeared to be a handwritten note. So, she was going to see the unusual ancestor worship ceremony that Barrayarans occasionally performed to honor their dead.
Her eyes scanned the graves, wondering which Gregor was going to perform the burning before. The obvious one was the large black gravestone marking the burial spot of the famous General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, Lord Miles’ ancestor and the hero of the Cetagandan occupation. But to her surprise Gregor walked past it to a much smaller headstone, with the name Major Amor Klyeuvi engraved upon it. As Gregor set up the bowl, wood chips, and their offering, she asked tentatively, “Should I be doing anything?”
Gregor glanced up at her, the not-quite smile on his face. “No,” he replied. “There isn’t much to this, aside from the burning itself. Though if you’re so inclined I would appreciate it if you directed some good will towards old Kly’s memory.”
“Who was he?” Laisa asked.
“A mailman,” Gregor answered. Before she could continue, he flicked the firestarter and the little pile of wood chips lit up, filling the air with the smell of fragrant burning cedar and acrid hair. Gregor knelt before the bowl, hands clasped in his lap, eyes closed for a long moment. Laisa maintained a respectful silence, until Gregor stood again, allowing the same retainer to move up to douse the bowl with water from a bottle.
“Mailman?” Laisa repeated, eyebrow raised.
“Kly began in the Imperial Service,” Gregor explained, walking Laisa back up the path towards their parked lightflyer. “He served forty years in the military, and another twenty as a mail carrier, delivering letters to the villages in the Dendarii Mountains. This was before widespread electronic communication services were available you understand. A ‘triple twenty man’ as we refer to them on Barrayar. Very prestigious, and rare.”
Which meant he had served in the during the Cetagandan Occupation, the so-called Mad Yuri’s War, and later the Vordarian Pretendership, Laisa quickly realized, matching the dates on the tombstone with Barrayaran history. An eventful service indeed.
Lord Miles was waiting for them both by the lightflyer, handing a small datachip to its ImpSec pilot as they approached. “Oh, good. You were able to find the location?” Gregor asked Miles.
“It took a few tightbeam messages back and forth between myself and my parents,” Miles told Gregor. “Mother had the direct experience and could describe the place, but Father knew the name the nearest village, which helped me track it down.” Miles shrugged. “I’m not sure how much is actually left of it. Apparently, it’s been abandoned for a couple of decades as people moved on to Vorkosigan Surleau.”
“Just so long as there’s something to look at,” Gregor replied. He helped Laisa back into the flyer, and it rose into the air a moment later, flying barely a hundred meters above the trees as the pilot guided them to a seemly random point on the map. Within ten minutes the craft set down again on a small hillside, finding a spot in between small saplings that infested the top. “Ah, it has been abandoned,” Gregor said without explanation. They exited the flyer, which took off again to begin orbiting around the hill at perhaps a kilometer’s distance, while a pair of ImpSec men stayed politely out of earshot.
“Gregor, what is this place?” Laisa asked, as they trudged up the final few meters to the top of the hill. There they found the remains of a small cabin, the slate roof collapsed, windows filled with broken glass, one wall fallen in, overlooking the valley below. People had lived here once, she thought, searching in vain for any evidence of solar cells or a beamed power receiver. Or plumbing for that matter.
“This was a family’s home. Or at least it was thirty years ago,” Gregor replied, a grim expression on his face.
“Why would anyone live like this?” Laisa asked in astonishment.
“Because they had no choice,” Gregor replied. “Vorkosigan District was hit hard during the Cetagandan Occupation, its capitol destroyed with nuclear weapons specifically designed to poison the land. No one resisted the Ghem warlords harder than the people here. But it cost them dearly.” He sighed. “In recent years I’ve come to realize that my time as emperor has only exacerbated the situation, as Count Vorkosigan served as my prime minister, and now as governor of Sergyar, distracting him from his duty to his district. I have hopes that Lord Miles will give it more attention, now that he has left the Imperial Service, allowing him to spend more time in his district in between my occasional requests for his service as Eighth Auditor.”
“But it is getting better, yes?” Laisa asked.
Gregor nodded. “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “Vorkosigan Surleau has matured into a proper city in recent decades, and there’s been a net increase of immigration into the district, as Miles will tell you. The situation is improving.” He gestured to the collapsed cabin. “Places such as this still exist but are nowhere as common as they once were.”
“What’s so special about this one?” Laisa pressed. “You had Lord Miles search it up for a reason.”
Gregor began to uncharacteristically pace in front of the ruined cabin. “The last time I saw my mother, I was six years old,” he began. “I remember Captain Negri, Illyan’s predecessor, coming into my mother’s suite in the palace, several of his men with him. He demanded we follow him. As we ran down the halls, I could hear shouting and plasma fire. We made it out to where the ImpSec lightflyers were parked, but there were men waiting for us, wearing the same uniform as Negri. He shot them, but more were pouring out from the palace, trying to grab us. My mother picked me up, intending to put me in the lightflyer I think, but the men grabbed her. Negri grabbed me in turn. She tried to hold on to me, but she ended up pulling off my shoe instead. That was the last moment I saw her alive. Negri threw me into the lightflyer and took off. We were hit at least once, and the ‘flyer was damaged, but we made it to Vorkosigan Surleau. I remember Negri kept shouting at me to keep quiet, even though I didn’t say anything. Perhaps I had been crying. I don’t remember.” Gregor paused. “Strange. I can remember the smell now. Melted plastic from the hit we took. Cooked flesh from where Negri had been shot. Hadn’t thought about that for years. Decades really.”
Laisa, not daring to interrupt this narrative, merely nodded. She’d been aware of the history of Vordarian’s Pretendership. It had been taught in school when she’d been growing up after all, and she’d studied it further when she had been assigned to the Komaaran trade delegation to the capitol. But cold history was a poor meal compared to hearing this harrowing eyewitness account. She tried to compare thirty-six-year-old Gregor to the stone-faced child from the official portraits of that period and was unable to reconcile the images in her mind. How could you be the same person? How could you be sane?
“Old Count Piotr was… For the life of me I still don’t know why, but he was wearing his dress greens, all his medals on display. I have no idea the reason. I must ask Aral someday. Count Piotr arranged for the lightflyer to be dumped into the lake, with Negri’s body still in it, and we, Count Piotr, Lady Cordelia, Sgt. Bothari, Sgt. Esterhazy, and myself, rode horses into the woods to hide. A day or two later we met up with Kly. ‘Kly the Mail’ he called himself. He’d been part of Piotr’s resistance during the Occupation. Not an educated man, but in his area of expertise he was very skilled. He split off with Piotr and Esterhazy, but before they left, he found this place for Cordelia, Sgt. Bothari, and I to hide. The family living here sheltered us for about a week.” Gregor rubbed his chin. “I had no shoes. I was dressed in backcountry castoffs the wrong size. I didn’t bathe for days. I was scared out of my mind, and more so when I realized what a brave front Cordelia was trying to put on, when she was nearly as helpless as myself, still recovering from her caesarian section.
“We left when Vordarian’s forces came close to our position. I was separated from Cordelia and Sgt. Bothari shortly thereafter, and Esterhazy and I moved to another home, pretending to be father and son.” Gregor paused again. “I wasn’t very good at that, I don’t think. My own father was mostly notable for his absence from I and my mother’s life, so I wasn’t sure what do when Esterhazy acted… well, normal with me. That went on for several weeks, until Cordelia succeeded in rescuing Miles in his uterine replicator, taking off the Pretender’s head, and… not… rescuing my mother. I was brought back to Vorbarr Sultana, bathed, dressed in my House uniform. Cordelia told me what happened to my mother in a way I could understand at that age. Then I was paraded about to prove that I was alive.” He shrugged. “And we went on. Because what else was there to do?”
Laisa licked her lips, trying to form a reply, then finally gave up. “I’m trying to think of something to say that won’t sound idiotic. I’m sorry. I know your history, Gregor. But I’ll admit I didn’t really know it.”
“You grew up in a home of comfort and privilege,” Gregor replied, his voice without accusation. “So did I. I took no notice of it, assumed it was normal because I had no other frame of reference, until it was ripped away from me.” He finally stopped pacing, resting one hand on the rotting wooden wall. “I think, as terrifying as that time was, it made me a better emperor. To see poverty as a set of statistics on a budget spreadsheet is one thing. To live it, however briefly, is quite another. And I never took my comfortable existence for granted ever again.” He turned to face her saying, “I know you complained to Miles once about Duv Galeni blowing the fairy dust off our history. And it is a colorful history, with horses, and heroes, ladies and lords, and their castles to defend.” He patted the wall with his palm. “But this is Barrrayar too. Proles living in poverty, on the edge of disaster. But even then willing to place themselves at terrible risk for the sake of an ignorant child and his guardians.”
“Is that why you brought me here, to understand this?” Laisa asked.
“Partly,” Gregor admitted. “But there is another reason.”
“What?”
He started pacing again. “I am the emperor of three planets, and my reign is blessed by peace and prosperity. The last serious incursion by the Cetagandans was nearly ten years ago, and since then the Hegen Hub Alliance has placed My empire in the position of an ally, rather than a planet filled with dangerous barbarians. Komaar provides us with both taxes and trade opportunities that allow us to raise our people out of the poverty you see here. And yet…” He paused, looking at her, his attention fully upon Laisa in a manner that made the hairs rise up on the back of her neck. “One lucky sniper shot can send it all into chaos. Until I have an heir in place, my death would send us spiraling into civil war yet again. And you would be a pawn, or victim. You might even find yourself hiding in a cabin such as this, while soldiers in the uniform of My military hunt you. I need you to understand that. To look past the fairy dust with your eyes wide open, and understand the potential danger of being my Empress.”
“I’m a Toscane, Gregor,” Laisa replied firmly. “I’ve lived in security bubble my entire life, and I grew up knowing my family’s power made them targets.” She smiled ironically. “And I live on a planet subjected to the rule of an invading empire, with your adoptive father, my future father-in-law, the Butcher of Komaar. I know what I’m getting into, my love.”
Gregor nodded. “I thought you did, but…” He smiled in turn at her, genuinely this time. “I wanted make sure that you understood there were better options for marriage than me.”
“Gregor!” she exclaimed, fighting the urge to suddenly punch him in the shoulder like she would one of her brothers. He laughed, and the tension between them suddenly disappeared. After he had leaned down to kiss her cheek, she asked, “So what’s next on the agenda for this afternoon, dinner with Miles?”
“Not exactly,” Gregor replied. “He wants to take us to see Silvy Vale, a village nearby. An excellent example of the Empire’s progressive policies bearing fruit, or so he tells me. He’s informed them that he will be visiting this evening with a couple of friends, so look forward to being Entertained.”
“And did Lord Miles inform the village that his ‘friends’ are Emperor Gregor and his consort?” Laisa asked, eyes twinkling.
Gregor chuckled. “I believe he left out that vital piece of information. I will admit I am looking forward to everyone’s reaction.”
“As am I, love. As am I.”
The End