There were a great many people whose business this was not. If there was a short list of others, Gregor probably headed it, as usual. She sighed and started again.
“What follows is, for the moment, strictly confidential between me and you.” She explained about the leftover eggshells, and her bright idea of offering them to Oliver. She underlined the issue of Barrayaran special custody rights of fathers and sons, parallel with that of mothers and daughters. “Which makes this Miles’s legal business not at all, although I expect we shall apprise him in due course, just as a family courtesy. But too much is still uncertain about Oliver’s future choices, and their timing, for premature announcements in that direction.” And so there was one decision about her next message, made.
“And to close on a still-more-personal, if happy, note, I should probably mention that Oliver and I have started, er, dating.” Her lips curved up in memory of her debate with Oliver over the best terminology, but she wasn’t sure if she ought to share the joke with Gregor. Gregor harbored a sense of humor under his deep reserve somewhere, but the weight of the Imperium did a pretty good job of keeping it suppressed, poor boy. “Neither of us have any idea where this will be going in the long run, so there is no point in asking, but…it’s good to know we both can grow a little more alive again after all.” In the midst of death, reaching out for life. With all due defiance. Ekaterin might well offer some lovely metaphor about shoots struggling up from a burned-over place. Cordelia’s emotions certainly felt like that, tender and green and vulnerable. She hoped her parting smile looked happy and not just goofy. Not able to think of what else to add, she signed off.
She reran the message for review, but it all seemed sound; true and succinct. That last smile did indeed look a trifle goofy, but a replacement would probably just come out looking strained, which would be worse. Whatever else Gregor wanted to know, he could ask. She set the security code to the highest level, and sent it on its way. She pictured the data packet travelling from the Viceroy’s Palace to the orbital relay station, from there to the wormhole jump-point on the Komarr route, and onward, stitched from jump to jump at light speed, past Komarr, into the cul-de-sac route to Barrayar itself, to its governmental orbital communications station to the Imperial Residence to Gregor’s comconsole desk, in that sober, modern office he kept, also looking out over a garden. Would it be day or night when it arrived? She was too tired just now to work out the time differentials in her head.
And now for the next message on her short list. She was, she decided, glad for the practice on Gregor’s. She considered, and promptly rejected, some cheerful opening like Good news, Miles, you’re getting a little sister! For one thing, she suspected it would seem to him less good than startling. For another, any sibling relationship was going to be generationally skewed. Functionally, Miles would be more like a distant uncle, his children more like their Aunt Aurelia’s slightly older cousins. She wondered how often the two dislocated—in both time and space—parts of the family would even meet in person. Tied to his count’s duties in his ancestral district, Miles traveled off-world less and less now, and without the need to make the annual Viceroy’s Report, not to mention an Imperially-supplied jump pinnace in which to travel, how often would Cordelia make the trek back to Barrayar? Well, time would tell, though as usual it could benefit from a dose of fast-penta. She started the next recording and launched herself into the void once more.
“Hello, Miles, and Ekaterin if you are listening. Miles should play this for you in any case, by the way. First of all, don’t be alarmed, the security code on this is just because the message is personal, not because it’s a crisis. My health is fine, by the way. But I will be resigning my position here on Sergyar within the year. The reason is…” She paused and backed up over the start of that last sentence. “First, a little history…” The story of the gametes was getting easier to tell with practice. It led up reasonably naturally to the Announcement of Aurelia, Cordelia fancied. Because it was pertinent to district business, Cordelia detailed her scheme of continuing to draw her Dowager’s Jointure for her girls’ support till they were grown, then cutting it off. “Such arrangements were not made with galactic-style lifespans in mind, after all. But given that I never received a tenth-mark of salary for all the expected—and unexpected—work I ever did as Lady and then Countess Vorkosigan, a pension seems a reasonable recompense. There’s something to spring on the Council of Counts, if you’re looking for a project, by the way. Salaries for their wives. I’ll bet that would set off some fascinating debates.” She half-suppressed a very dry grin, which she suspected came out looking vulpine.
Oliver’s embryos could remain off this table, for now. The Oliver and I are dating part could wait a little, as well. She was not, certainly, ashamed—Oliver was a pretty damned remarkable acquisition by any standard, in Cordelia’s opinion—she was just…shy, she supposed. Were vicereines allowed to be shy? She could better imagine discussing her renewed love life with Ekaterin than with Miles. Later.
She finished with a few brief, amusing anecdotes of the latest chaos on Chaos Colony, and closed.
Her tightbeam to Miles’s clone-brother Mark and his partner Kareen Koudelka was shorter, and oddly easier. Mark, certainly, was well-up on the complexities of nonstandard family creation. She tried not to let any hint of And when are you two going to get started on some children? leak through, although she was not above hitting the sequester gametes for future contingencies, you could be glad you did pretty firmly. She was not sure just where in the empire or out of it Mark’s far-flung business enterprises had taken him and Kareen this week, but his reliable forwarding service would catch the message up to them.
That left her with Simon Illyan and Alys Vorpatril, among her and Aral’s oldest and closest friends on Barrayar. At least the same message, address, and security clearance would do for both recipients.
The resignation news, gametes-tale, and Aurelia-announcement were all much the same, more fluent and confident-sounding for the repetition, Cordelia fancied. She wasn’t sure how they’d construe the subtext. She’d suggested years ago to the pair that they weren’t too old to be parents, but time had slipped by since then, while Alys’s son Ivan had acquired his wife Tej and a start on Alys’s long-desired grandchildren. Simon, though, had been married to his job for decades. Did he even have any thwarted desire for genetic offspring? Cordelia had never quite been certain. She decided to let her worked example of how sit uncommented-upon. And if Oliver wanted to share his news-in-potential that should probably be Oliver’s choice; they were his friends, too.
Cordelia hit pause again. This was where her efficiency rose up to bite her, she supposed. She really wanted to burble to Alys about Oliver. She really did not want to burble to Simon about Oliver. Simon liked and valued Oliver at his true worth, but it could not be denied that the years of security tensions that Aral’s extracurricular relationship had trailed in its wake on Simon’s watch had left scars. Furthermore, Simon absolutely could be counted upon to note the slight jump in the vid message where Cordelia had paused to think about it all. She sighed in frustration.