“I use your garden every day,” Cordelia told Ekaterin. “For entertaining, diplomacy, work, and even, occasionally, sitting down and resting. It’s been a superb space.”
Her smile grew genuine. “Thank you. It will be good to get a chance to review it.”
“Actually, now you’re here, there’s another project I might have you look over. With the Gridgrad base project going live, my next goal is to move the planetary capital, while I still can. Which will, among other things, require a new Viceroy’s Palace. With a new garden, in a rather different climatic zone than this semi-desert.”
“That sounds interesting,” Ekaterin allowed. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be staying on this trip, though. And I didn’t plan to burden your staff with the children.”
Meaning, Cordelia decoded easily, that Ekaterin herself was understaffed for working. “I’ll see if I can rustle you up some local help, in that case.” Cordelia kicked off her shoes and wriggled her tired toes. “This was a wonderful surprise and I love you all dearly, Miles, but I’m quite tightly scheduled at present. Usually, I have several weeks’ notice to clear my time before a family visit.” She could see that the few breaks she’d earmarked for private time with Oliver were going to be the first to go on the fire, too. Dammit.
Ekaterin glanced at her husband, who was not-sipping wine and flexing his feet. She was far too loyal to say, I told him this was a bad idea, but Cordelia fancied she could read it in her body language.
Cordelia went on, “While a box of chocolates is a lovely gift, what I really need is a box of plumbers. You don’t happen to have a building-materials manufacturer up your sleeve, do you, Miles?”
“Sorry, no,” replied her son. “Ask Mark?”
“Tried that already. He’s not got back to me in any useful way, yet.”
“Ah.” Miles shifted uncomfortably. Probably looking for an opening to choke out his pitch, whatever it was. Ekaterin sat back and sipped, palpably not helping.
Not having been handed an easy hook, Miles refashioned the one in play. “So, ah…have you told Mark about this plan to resign the viceroyalty? And the, um, personal scheme?”
That was in reverse order of his chief concern, Cordelia suspected. “Yes, I sent a tightbeam to him and Kareen at the same time I messaged you and Ekaterin. And Gregor and Alys and Simon, for that matter. Don’t you people talk to each other anymore?”
“Mark’s offworld,” he excused this.
Slight, awkward pause, right. Cordelia prodded gently, “And Gregor and Alys and Simon? You didn’t bring me any personal greetings? I would almost trade the plumbers for those.” Almost.
“I talked to Gregor. He said he didn’t know any more than I did, and I should talk to you myself.”
Good boy, Gregor. Cordelia smiled. She wondered when the adult Gregor had been apprised of the complexities in his greatest supporter’s private life. Not during the earlier Vorbarr Sultana days, she would swear. Not later than that period in-between, when Aral had sent Oliver off to build his career, and it was all assumed to have been an anomalous fling—seven years was not just a fling, boys—regretfully, gently, and carefully concluded. So who had conducted that briefing, if not her? Simon? Aral? Some tag team? Aral must have endorsed it, certainly. Simon would have been relieved. Gregor, well, who knew what Gregor thought of it all. But the reunion on Sergyar hadn’t thrown him.
Miles continued, “I was wondering what brought on this extraordinary decision. About the daughters. I mean, now.”
“I thought I explained all that in my tightbeam message.”
“Yes, but…”
Miles, at a loss for words? Cordelia leaned her head back against the cushion and observed, “You know, we’ll likely all get to bed earlier if you try for a little Betan frankness, here.”
“Good idea,” murmured Ekaterin. Yes, if Miles had been venting any Betan frankness heretofore, it had probably been to her. Beleaguered woman. Wasn’t this spring in Vorbarr Sultana, the busiest season for Ekaterin’s garden design business? She could only have been dragged away by a force of nature. Which, Cordelia conceded, Miles on a tear could be.
Miles straightened his shoulders and steeled himself to bluntness. Thankfully. “But you already have six grandchildren. Isn’t that, like, enough?” And in a somewhat smaller voice—getting down to it, she recognized the style, “Don’t you like my work?” And blinked, as if surprised by the words that had fallen out of his own mouth.
Such a raw truth should be handled with care. Cordelia hoped she was up to it. “I adore your work. Consider it my inspiration, if you like.”
“It seems like…double dipping, somehow.”
She grinned over her wineglass. “That, too.” But I can. And I’m going to. “Look on the bright side. I’m not nearly as greedy as your Count Vormuir.”
Vormuir had tried to help his underpopulated district by a scheme involving a bank of uterine replicators, some dubiously acquired eggs, and a single sperm donor—himself—till he’d been shut down by Imperial order. Not quite directly; he’d merely been ordered to supply his progeny with proper Vor dowries. Two hundred of them. Ekaterin, who had originated that solution for the investigating Lord Auditor, made a face, laughing under her breath. Cordelia wondered how the count was doing these days. The first girls must be teenagers by now…
“Then why not when Da was still alive?” Miles’s voice, in the shadows, was smaller still.
That was harder. “We talked about it, a few times. He seemed to think he was too old to start such a long-term project.” Maybe he’d been shrewd. “If he’d lived to make it home, I might have persuaded him to it as, I don’t know, a retirement hobby.” Or not. Cordelia had been eleven years younger than Aral even without the Betan lifespan. Or maybe he had just been reluctant to give more hostages to fortune. From life came death, inevitably, and then grief. Possibly not something she ought to say to Miles, who had died once already. He might take it personally. He might be right to.
“Are you coming home, then? To retire?”
Hadn’t she mentioned that part of her plans? She really needed to review those tightbeam messages. She was losing track of what she’d said to whom. “No, I’m staying on Sergyar. I like everything about it except the name.” She wondered if she could fix that, as even the edited version of the late Crown Prince Serg was slowly fading from Barrayaran memory. And good riddance. “Barrayar was home while Aral was there. Now…” She didn’t want to say I’m freer, although it was true.
Miles’s voice grew nearly microscopic. “He still is, sort of.”
There was a place reserved for her beside that grave above the long lake at Vorkosigan Surleau. Was she planning to abandon that bed as well? The chill thought came to her that given his health issues, she might well outlive Miles. Thus no later change in her destination could dismay him, and there was no point in troubling him with such now. She settled on, “Of all of Barrayar, which he loved with all the passion, dispassion and anguish of his heart, Aral loved the lake place best. It’s so right that he be there.” And, experimentally, “But I prefer to build a more living monument to his memory.”
“Mm.” Miles seemed to take this in as a reconciling thought, suitably Barrayaran-romantic. Making this All About Aral would probably work on him rather well. She hid a grimace in a sip of wine.
“You really think you’ll be all right out here? So far away?”