It was after midnight when Rykov let him back out the front doors. His lightflyer was parked across the drive, and so this was why she’d told him to come to the Palace and they’d ride to dinner together—planning ahead. Nicely smooth.
“Cordelia asked me to tell you she didn’t expect any more duties for you tonight, and you could turn in.”
“Very good, sir.” Rykov hesitated. “Do you plan to be having many more conferences with the Vicereine?”
God, I hope so, Jole managed to keep from blurting. He hadn’t been drunk even earlier, right after dinner, but he felt a little inebriated still. “Cordelia…” He hesitated in turn. “Has indicated that she would actually prefer something more open, but I think discretion”—is a hard habit to break—“might be better advised.” At least for now.
“I am always,” stated Rykov, with a direct stare at him, “in favor of discretion.”
Allies of a sort, then? I’ll try not to make your job any harder than it already is seemed a mildly idiotic thing to say, so Jole returned only an acknowledging nod.
Letting himself into his own base apartment later, he looked around with new eyes. The prior Admiral of Sergyar Fleet had brought a family along and stayed in larger digs, a house off-base. Even after his latest promotion, Jole had contented himself with the same rather Spartan apartment in the senior bachelor officers’ building he’d occupied ever since he’d first been assigned to local space. All right, it was on a third-floor corner, and better supplied with windows; otherwise, the living room, single bedroom, bath and kitchenette were standardized and compact. A place to sleep, wash, keep his clothes, and grab breakfast. A base cleaning service and laundry allowed him to dispense with the bâtman that would otherwise be due his rank. He entertained at the officers’ mess, or assorted Kareenburg venues, or occasionally for formal functions jointly with the Vicereine at the Palace. A quarter of his time was spent on upside rotation anyway.
He tried to imagine bringing Cordelia here for a conference—Aral had visited now and again, as their opportunities arose—but, really. Besides, he lacked a Rykov to guard their privacy. And if Cordelia brought her armsman along, where would they stow him? Aral had excluded his own occasional outriders at the door with ruthless and utterly unselfconscious courtesy, sending them off to patrol on their own for imaginary hazards, or read in the downstairs lobby, or whatever they chose until he called them back. It wasn’t Vor arrogance, exactly, but whatever it was, prole Jole had never quite caught the knack. And…however misguidedly, Jole suspected his being alone with the Vicereine in his quarters would be seen differently than his being alone with the Viceroy.
After failing to imagine Cordelia here, he was suddenly struck by how much more out-of-place an infant would be. Let alone three of them. Family quarters. He would have to move to the base family quarters, he supposed. How would he—they—Jole and Sons fit in over there? There must be a few single parents in the crowd—how did they manage? Well, there was Fyodor Haines and his fractious Freddie, but Freddie was fifteen, outwardly mobile. The general—not yet a general then, of course, just a mid-grade officer—had not after all attempted to raise his infants himself, from scratch.
Was Cordelia’s model any help to Jole? Their two situations did not feel precisely parallel. He wasn’t sure what personal funds she held. The jointure of a count’s widow was not rigidly set, but constrained by law and custom to a range, never below a certain minimum nor above a certain maximum. Aral would certainly not have chosen the most straitened option for her. He might even have suspected Cordelia’s choice of more children, in the event of his premature death, and provided for it consciously.
There could have been no such thought for Jole, no place in Vor tradition or custom for this technological option, though one might perhaps stretch various provisions Vor lords sometimes made for their acknowledged bastards. But Jole’s sons would be legal and legitimate, properly fathered even in Barrayaran law, laboriously updated as it was. His lips twisted in dry amusement at that thought.
A Barrayaran admiral’s pay, though not generous by civilian or even galactic military standards, was expected to support a family, and normally did. Even an admiral’s retirement half-pay was less frugal than that of the prole household Jole had grown up in. His simple tastes had left him with more savings than he’d ever had the time to spend. It was merely a matter for careful management. Making do. You get what you pay for. He could choose to pay for this.
It wasn’t a father’s support this vision was missing, but a mother’s labor.
Jole’s childhood home had certainly not included servants. Yet even Cordelia, undeniably female, who’d grown up just as middling-prole and servant-less on Beta Colony, wasn’t planning to go it alone. Seventy-six might have something to do with that, true. Or just good sense.
On the other hand, Cordelia shared that noted Vorkosigan genius for personnel. If finding household help was a new challenge for Jole, Cordelia, forty years a high-Vor lady, even if simulated, certainly knew how by now. The obvious solution was to get her to find someone for him—hah. Problem solved. One did not reach Jole’s rank without learning how to delegate. He grinned, but his smile faded.
The nature of his work was a subtler problem. By oath, he owed the Emperor his time, his energy, his best efforts, and, if necessary, his life, all on an instant’s notice. How did that square with his taking on a twenty-year project of such profound responsibility? On the other hand, any parent, at any time, could be as unexpectedly run over by a groundcar. Maybe this wasn’t such a civilian versus military dilemma after all. Maybe it was a fundamental human risk. Which didn’t make it less intractable.
It came to Jole, staring around as he began to undress, that this space, however convenient it had been for his recent past, was much too small to hold his future. If he chose the great gamble.
Cordelia walked across the garden to the Vicereine’s Office the first morning of the next week in an exceptionally good mood. She and Oliver had managed an overnight at Shack One that past weekend, and found that its rustic delights not only stood up to repetition, but were enhanced by preparedness. They managed one sail devoted to actual sailing, and took out the crystal canoe that evening for a combination of sunset-watching and examination of the local lake fauna—Oliver had acquired a field guide and, while she steered them gently over the quiet shallows, attempted to match the exotic creatures he was seeing below with the images called up on his holo. The database, he informed her indignantly after this exercise, was entirely inadequate. She’d serenely agreed, while wondering how such a detail-oriented mind had managed to avoid the sciences all his life heretofore. Drawn away by all the pains and needs of Barrayar, as she had once been? Perhaps. He’d had the canoe out again alone early the following morning while she blissfully slept in, which she’d counted as a plus for both of them.
“Good morning, Ivy!” she cheerily greeted her executive secretary as she strolled into the outer office.
Ivy looked up from her comconsole, raised her eyebrows, and smiled back. Ivy Utkin also qualified as an old Sergyar hand, having arrived nearly two decades ago with her engineering-officer spouse and stayed on when he’d mustered out here. She’d held this post for about five years, shy and nervous at first but slowly growing into her tasks, and she’d been a life-saver for Cordelia all through the miserable stresses of Aral’s death and its aftermaths. Her children were mostly grown, but the experience of raising them while following the drum had endowed her with the brisk efficiency of someone who got everything done now, because she could be interrupted by the next emergency at any moment. Which made her an ideal fit for the Viceroy’s Office, to be sure. Also, she didn’t take her work home with her, which meant she didn’t bring more for her boss back.