Chapter Text
Filippa Cherenkova, age twenty-four, was far from pleased to be woken up at five in the morning. Even if it was a comconsole call from someone in the Imperial Residence.
No-one would expect her to be fully dressed at this unearthly hour, so she just tossed a shawl over her night clothes before answering.
The caller was a very panicky-looking ImpSec Lieutenant Aleksei Kostolitz.
“Oh, good, Filippa, I need your help!”
“With what? The Emperor need more horses as bribes?”
Aleksei looked puzzled in that way one can only be achieved during an all-nighter. “Bribes? Erm, uh, a favor, more like...”
Filippa sighed. “Aleksei?”
“Yes?”
“Go to sleep. Call me in the morning.”
Six hours later, Filippa was in Aleksei's tiny apartment, sipping tea good enough to mark him as an aficionado. Aleksei was in mufti, with noticeable bags under his eyes, obviously fighting to stay awake.
“So, what do you need my help for?” Filippa asked.
“Apparently, Lord Auditor Vorkosigan expressed regret that his grandfather's herd of horses was so much diminished after the old man's death. And, since the Lord Auditor was the one who first introduced the Emperor to Empress Laisa...”
“...he wants to repay the favor.” Filippa stopped to think for a moment. “Wait, does the Emperor actually think we should buy or bring back from the dead all the horses sold after the old Count's death? Could the Vorkosigans actually afford their upkeep? – Horses are expensive”, she added at Aleksei's confused expression. “They're less expensive South of Vorbarr Sultana where they can graze year-roound, but vet bills and shoeing costs add up.”
“Well, the Emperor cited the number five at one point... ImpSec records all conversations in the Residence, so we could even get our hands on what was actually said.” Aleksei cheered up.
“All right, so first we look up the conversation. I suggest we do that n- after we're done with our tea.”
In the early evening, after their fifth time watching the recording of a steadily drunkening Lord Auditor talking at his nearly sober Emperor, they looked at their notes.
“Okay, who are Midnight and Cleena? From the context, I'll assume they are horses”, Aleksei asked.
“There was at least one stallion called Midnight bred by Piotr Vorkosigan – an Arabian. Remember Falcon? Midnight was Falcon's sire. He's deceased now, of course. Buried at the Vorhartung Graveyard of Excellence.”
Aleksei looked at her as if he was unsure whether she was trying to pull his leg.
“The Vorhartung Graveyard of Excellence”, Filippa began with a sigh, “is a graveyard where particularly excellent horses are buried. It was originally founded by Count Ivan Vorhartung as a burial place for his favorite horses. After the Vorhartungs went poof, it went into the possession of Count Vorbarra. After the War, Emperor Dorca founded the Barrayaran Horse Society on his death bed, and Mad Yuri gave the Society free rein on burying horses there.”
“Oh. So, we can just ask the Society for a genetic sample?” Aleksei asked.
“No, they have a strict policy against giving genetic material to anyone – y'see, we might be working for the Cetagandans in a nefarious plot to bring down the Empire. If we want anything, either we have to lean on a curator – and inform every horse person on Barrayar of our interest – or we have to engage in grave robbing. Oh, and they only started preserving genetic samples recently, so the curator might not be able to do anything.”
“So grave-robbing it is.” The expression on Aleksei's face was priceless.
Two days later and after dark, Filippa and Aleksei were walking in the graveyard. Aleksei had decided that no-one would dare to blabber about ImpSec doing anything, so he'd procured an ImpSec Lieutenant's uniform for Filippa as well. (It had been the smallest size in mass manufacture. It fit reasonably well, considering that she was a woman.)
They found Midnight's grave. Filippa laid down a tarp next to it. Thankfully, the graveyard's soil wasn't rich enough to support grass, and no-one would care about cut Barrayaran plants.
Some shoveling later, they got to the coffin. They uncovered it enough to open it.
Filippa opened the coffin lid. She heard Aleksei make a disturbed noise.
Midnight had been dead for half a decade. His corpse stank and looked deformed.
Filippa held out her hand. Aleksei gave her the sampling machine. She punched it around in multiple places, hoping it would come up with Midnight's genetic code, not a maggot's.
They had just closed the lid when they heard a group of people walking somewhere near.
Aleksei dumped the tarp's contents into the hole they'd digged. Filippa grabbed their equipment. They turned to find a light being shined into their eyes.
The light was switched off. Filippa barely made out three figures.
“Lieutenant!” one of them said. They collectively moved and gave a salute. Taking her cue from Aleksei, Filippa, too, returned the salute.
Now that her eyes were adapting to the darkness again, Filippa saw that the three were ImpSec Ensigns. She wondered what they were here for.
“Sirs, our apologies, we're running a classified operation for Sergyaran Affairs, so we can't stop to help you”, their leader said apologetically. Aleksei nodded, said something about Imperial affairs, then extracted himself from the conversation. Filippa tailed him as they walked away to their waiting lightflyer over the hills.
“So, are we going to engage in further grave-robbing to get the pony's DNA?” Aleksei asked.
“Not necessarily, apparently the Lord Auditor kept a lock of her mane somewhere. I suggest sending ImpSec who are not you to do the deed and nick a few strands from it.”
Thankfully for her sanity, Aleksei obeyed her suggestion, and eventually they had both genetic samples.
“Do we have any alternatives to House Bharaputra?” Filippa asked.
Aleksei shook his head. “Have you tracked down any Akhal-Teke?”
“There are very small numbers on Earth, Ylla and Tau Verde. For understandable reasons, no-one's interested in exporting. The only place with a significant amount of them is Argamakia. It's a Cetagandan satrapy”, she added at Aleksei's look of complete loss.
Aleksei finally acquired visas to Argamakia. The visa interviewer in the Cetagandan Embassy had told him to his face that he was a suicidal idiot. Apparently, the Argamakians weren't that fond of Cetagandans, thus all the roadside bombs and lynchings.
Some poor Ensign had been volunteered for the task of bringing the two sequences of horse DNA to House Bharaputra. Meanwhile, Aleksei was to masquerade as equine connoisseur Filippa's long-suffering lover for the trip.