She scrubbed tired-looking eyes with the back of her hand. "Can I, uh, can I stay with you till they call?"
"Sure."
In a moment of true inspiration, he led her down to the kitchen and introduced her to the staff refrigerator. He'd been correct; her extraordinary metabolism was in need of fuel again. Ruthlessly, he cleared out everything on the shelves and laid it in front of her. The early morning crew could fend for themselves. There was no shame here in offering up servants' food to a guest; everyone ate well from Ma Kosti's kitchen. He dialed up coffee for himself and tea for her, and they perched together on two stools at the counter.
Pym found them there as they were finishing eating. The senior armsman's face was so drained of blood as to be nearly green.
"Well done, Roic, Sergeant Taura," he began in a stiff voice. "Very well done. I just now spoke with ImpSec headquarters. The pearls were doctored — with a designer neurotoxin. ImpSec thinks it's of Jacksonian origin, but they're still cross-checking. The dose was sealed under a chemically neutral transparent lacquer that dissolves with body heat. Casual handling wouldn't release it, but if someone put the necklace on and wore it for a time… half an hour or so…"
"Enough to kill someone?" Taura's tone was tense.
"Enough to kill a bloody elephant, the lab boys say." Pym moistened dry lips. "And I checked it myself. I bloody passed it." His teeth clenched. "She was going to wear them to — M'lord would have—" He choked himself off and ran a hand over his face, hard.
"Does ImpSec know who really sent them?" asked Taura.
"Not yet. But they're all over it, you can believe."
A vision of the deadly pale spheres lying on m'lady-to-be's warm throat flashed through Roic's memory. "Madame Vorsoisson touched the pearls last night — night before last, that is now," said Roic urgently. "She had them on for at least five minutes. Is she going to be all right?"
"ImpSec is dispatching a physician to Lord Auditor Vorthys's to check her — one of their toxins experts. If she'd taken in enough to kill her, she'd have died right then, so that's not going to happen, but I don't know what other… I have to go now and call m'lord there and warn him to expect a visitor. And — and tell him why. Well done, Roic. Did I say well done? Well done." Pym drew a shaken, unhappy breath and strode back out.
Taura, her chin in her hand as she drooped over her plate, scowled after him. "Jacksonian neurotoxin, eh? That doesn't prove much. The Jacksonians will sell anything to anyone. Mles made enough enemies there in some of our old sorties — if they knew it was intended for him, they'd probably offer a deep discount."
"Yeah, I imagine tracing the source is going to take a little longer. Even for ImpSec." He hesitated. "Although, wouldn't they know him on Jackson's Whole only under his old covert ops identity? Your little admiral?"
"That cover's been well-blown for a couple of years, he tells me. Partly as a result of the mess his last mission there produced, partly from some other things. Over my head." She yawned, hugely. It was… impressive. She'd been up since dawn, Roic was reminded, and hadn't slept through the afternoon as he had. Stranded in what must seem to her an alien place and wrestling terrible fears. All by herself. For the first time, he wondered if she was lonely. One of a kind, the last of her kind if he understood correctly, without home or kin except for that chancy wandering mercenary fleet. And then he wondered why he hadn't noticed her essential aloneness sooner. Armsmen were supposed to be observant. Yeah?
"If I promise to come by and tell you if I get any news, d'you suppose you could try to sleep?"
She rubbed the back of her neck. "Would you? Then I think I could. Try, that is."
He escorted her to her door, past m'lord's dark and empty suite. When he clasped her hand briefly, she clasped back. He swallowed, for courage.
"Dirty pearls, eh?" he said, still holding her hand. "Yknow… I can't speak for arty other Barrayarans… but I think your genetic modifications are beautiful."
Her lips curved up, he hoped not altogether bleakly. "You are getting better."
When she let go and turned in, a claw trailing lightly over the skin of his palm made his body shudder in involuntary, sensual surprise. He stared at the closing door and swallowed a perfectly foolish urge to call her back. Or follow her inside… He was still on duty, he reminded himself. The next monitors check was overdue. He forced himself to turn away.
The sky outside was shifting from the amber night of the city to a chill blue dawn when the gate guard called Roic to code down the house shields for m'lord's return. As the armsman who'd been called out to chauffeur drove the big car off to put away, Roic opened one door to admit the hunched, frowning figure. M'lord looked up to recognize Roic, and a rather ghastly smile lightened his furrowed features.
Roic had seen m'lord looking strung-out before, but never so alarmingly as this, not even after one of his bad seizures or when he'd had that spectacular hangover after the disastrous butter bug banquet. His eyes stared out from gray circles like feral animals from their dens. His skin was pale, and lines of tension mapped the anxiety across his face. His movements were simultaneously tired and stiff, and jerky and nervous, a spinning exhaustion that could find no place of rest.
"Roic. Thank you. Bless you," m'lord began in a voice that sounded as though it were coming from the bottom of a well.
"Is m'lady-to-be all right?" Roic asked in some apprehension.
M'lord nodded. "Yes, now. She fell asleep in my arms, finally, after the ImpSec doctor left. God, Roic! I can't believe I missed the signs. Poisoning! And I fastened that death around her neck with my own hands! It's a damned metaphor for this whole thing, that's what it is. She thought it was just her. I thought it was just her. How little faith in herself, or me in her, to misidentify dying of poison for dying of self-doubt?"
"She's not dying, is she?" Roic asked again, to be sure. In this spate of dramatic angst, it was a little hard to tell. "The bit of exposure she got isn't going to have any permanent effects, is it?"
M'lord began to pace in circles around the entry hall, while Roic followed vainly trying to take his coat. "The doctor said not, not once the headaches pass off, which they seem to have done now. She was so relieved to find out what it really was she burst into tears. Go figure that one out, eh?"
"Yeah, except that—" Roic began, then bit his tongue. Except that the crying jag he'd inadvertently witnessed had occurred well before the poisoning.
"What?"
"Nothing, m'lord."
Lord Vorkosigan paused at the archway to the antechamber. "ImpSec. We must call ImpSec to take away all those gifts and recheck them for—"
"They already came and collected them, m'lord," Roic soothed him, or tried to. "An hour ago. They say they'll try't' get as many as possible cleared and back before the wedding guests start arriving come midafternoon."
"Oh. Good." M'lord stood still a moment, staring into nothing, and Roic finally managed to get his coat away from him.
"M'lord… you don't think your Admiral Quinn sent that necklace, do you?"
"Oh, good heavens, no. Of course not." M'lord dismissed this fear with a startlingly casual wave of his hand. "Not her style at all. If she were ever that mad at me, she'd kick me downstairs personally. Great woman, Quinn."
"Sergeant Taura was worried. I think she thought this Quinn might a' been, um, jealous."