"Kludgy thing."
"Yes, m'lord. Tell me, am I to trust the consulate fellows here, or not?"
"I'm not sure yet. I've been caught out before with embassy staff or even ImpSec couriers being suborned."
"Because if you mean to use them for backup, which we very much need, you're going to have to start including them in your loop. I could see Lieutenant Johannes, f'r instance, didn't know what to make of you leaving him out just now."
"It's this Lord Auditor thing. I used to be able to get almost anyone to talk to me, damn it. In your spare minutes, try your hand at evaluating them, eh? I've no doubt they'll be more willing to be frank with you, simple honest face and all that."
"Yes, m'lord."
"I already know that somebody out there is buying people. Question is, has the consulate been bought already, or did there seem no need to secure it before I showed up? At least neither of the Barrayarans have families here, so I don't have to worry about negative incentives." M'lord scowled, lay back, and set the stimulator to the curve of his skull. Roic handed him the mouth guard, which he fitted around his teeth. He took a breath and squeezed his eyes shut like someone about to down a dose of some nasty-tasting medicine, and triggered the stimulator.
Roic timed the seizure-it was a long one, suggesting m'lord had been pushing the limit. Roic was used to the rolled-back eyes, the weird grimace, and the shivering, but he doubted he'd ever be quite reconciled to the strange absence of that driving personality animating the face. In due course, the neural storm passed, and m'lord lay slack, his eyes opening again on the universe as though his gaze recreated it.
"God, I hate this," he muttered. His standard mantra at this point.
"Yes, m'lord," Roic soothed. His standard response.
"I'll be useless for the rest of the night even if I do get slept out. And tomorrow as well."
"I'll bring you coffee."
"Thanks, Roic." M'lord rolled over and drew up the covers, surrendering at last to the demands of his depleted body. Muffled into the pillow, almost inaudibly, "F'r everythin'…"
Roic shook his head and tiptoed off to find his own bunk.
?
Jin blinked open sore eyes in the semi-darkness of his sister Minako's tiny bedroom, then bit his lip on a groan. He'd meant to stay awake, outwait and maybe outwit his captors, but the exhaustion of the past day had betrayed him. He sat up on his elbow. A nightlight low on the wall shed a dim pink glow, but the room lacked a clock. It was still full dark outside, and the muffled rumble of Uncle Hikaru's snores sounded through the thin walls of the next room, so everyone else was asleep, but it could be any hour from midnight to near-dawn.
He swung bare legs out from under the covers of the narrow futon. Aunt Lorna had put him to bed in his underwear, since his cousin Tetsu's pajamas had been too big, and his cousin Ken's too small. His own clothes she had hauled away to wash, or maybe burn, she'd said, since there was no telling where they'd been. Jin sure wasn't telling, anyway.
Hopelessly, he went to the window and tried the lock. It unlatched, but the window only slid aside about three centimeters. Uncle Hikaru had climbed up on a borrowed ladder, after the argument at dinner, and blocked the window groove with a rod. Jin could just curl his fingers around the frame, but couldn't get his hand through. He wasn't going to be able to repeat his escape of last year.
Jin pressed his forehead to the cool glass and looked down at the patch of patio, one floor below. In a way, Aunt Lorna had made it easy for him, back then, by exiling all his animals out there. After he'd climbed out the window and dropped down, he'd only had to load them all up on Minako's outgrown stroller, left in the lee of the fence earlier that day. He'd been terrified at the time that Gyre's squawk and Lucky's meowing would alert the household, or that the glass box holding the rats and the turtle would tip and clatter, but it had been a cold night, the windows closed, and nobody but him paid attention to his creatures anyway.
Well, Tetsu had got in the habit of teasing Gyre, till Gyre had, naturally, bit him. Then there'd been the trip to emergency care, and the surgical glue and antibiotics, and Aunt Lorna screeching more than Tetsu, though mostly about the bill. Tetsu had shown off his battle scar at school the next day pretty smugly, Jin thought.
Jin slipped over and tried the door, turning the latch as silently as he could. Still locked. There had been another big argument about whether people had to get up in the night to let Jin go to the bathroom, which Uncle Hikaru had settled, in a very practical way, by providing Jin with a bucket, which had scandalized Aunt Lorna and made Tetsu and Ken make fun of him, till Uncle had thumped them. That had been after the squabble over where Jin was to sleep, since his sister was now judged too big to share a bed with him, or maybe it was the other way around. Tetsu and Ken, already dividing a cramped room, complained about having yet a third boy shoved in atop their clutter, and had also objected to being made Jin's watchers. Jin had endured much in silence, last night and today, in anticipation of a timely escape. He hadn't expected to be locked in.
"Just till the boy settles down," Uncle Hikaru had said-as if Jin would abandon his creatures. As if he would ever stay here.
Was Miles-san taking care of his charges properly? What must he think, when Jin never came back with his money? Would he think Jin had stolen it? The police had stolen it, really, but would even that extraordinary off-worlder believe Jin over the grownups? He swallowed a lump in his throat, determined not to cry again, because maybe letting go like that was why he'd fallen asleep, earlier. Although what was the point in forcing himself to stay awake when he couldn't get out? He returned to the futon and sank down in despair.
Maybe tomorrow night he could hide a screwdriver or some other tools in the room, and try to take the window or the door lock apart from the inside. Tenbury would have known how, Jin was sure. He didn't think he could pretend to be all settled down so quickly and thus lull his captors into relaxing their guard, not when he was growing more and more frantic inside. Aunt Lorna had threatened she was going to sign him right up tomorrow for Tetsu and Ken's school, because she couldn't afford to lose any more work days over him. School, he recalled, had seemed even less easy to escape from than-Jin refused to think of this narrow rented row-house as home.
The door lock clicked. Aunt Lorna, checking up on him? He could still hear Uncle Hikaru's snores. He rolled over to face the wall, hitched his covers up over his shoulder, and scrunched his eyes shut.
"Jin?" a shy voice whispered. "Are you asleep?"
Jin rolled back, both relieved and annoyed. It was only Mina. "Yes," he growled.
A short silence. "No, you're not."
"What do you want?" Some forgotten doll or stuffed toy, he supposed, although she'd taken a basket of them with her to her temporary bed on the couch downstairs.
The door rumbled, sliding into its slot, and small feet padded to the side of his futon. He rolled over onto his elbow again and stared up at her, staring down at him. She shared Jin's brown eyes and tousled mop of black hair, but she was taller and less chubby than he remembered from fourteen months ago. Then, she hadn't even started school yet-now she was in her second year. She seemed less…?bewildered-looking, somehow.
"If I let you out," she said, "will you take me with you?"
"Huh?" Startled, Jin sat up and hugged his knees. What, she wasn't just lost on the way to the bathroom? "No, of course not. Are you crazy?"
Her face fell. "Oh." She retreated to the door and started to pull it shut behind her.
"No, wait!" Jin hissed, lumbering up.
Next door, the snores stopped. They both froze. After a moment, there came a creaking and a sort of gurgling-drain noise, and the snores started up again.