There was something universal, Miles reflected, about the sinister light in the eye of a mother with a long list of chores in her hand. "We'll see. I expect to have my part of this Auditor's investigation wrapped up for Gregor in a few more days. After that . . . I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself."
A short silence fell, while everybody applied themselves appreciatively to the dessert course. At length Illyan cleared his throat, and announced to the Countess, "I signed the lease on my new flat today, Cordelia. It will be ready for occupancy tomorrow."
"Oh, splendid."
"I want to thank you both, especially you, Miles, for your hospitality. And your help."
"What flat?" asked Miles. "I'm afraid I've been living inside my comconsole this week."
"Quite right. Lady Alys helped me find it."
"Is it in her building?" And a very exclusive venue that was, too. Could Illyan afford it? A vice-admiral's half-pay was merely decent, though, come to think of it, he had to have amassed considerable savings by now, given the enforced simplicity of his work-devoured former life.
"I feel I am less of a menace to my neighbors than I used to be, but just in case some old enemy has bad aim . . . it's a couple of streets away from her. It might not be a bad idea to float a few rumors that I am more mentally incapacitated than I actually am, should you get the chance. It will make me a less exciting target."
"Do you think you'll be continuing any ImpSec service, if not as chief, then … I don't know . . . consultant or something?"
"No. Now that my, hm, peculiar assassination has been solved, I'll be opting out. Don't look so shocked, Miles. Forty-five years of Imperial service does not qualify as a career cut tragically short."
"I suppose not. Gregor will miss you. We all will."
"Oh, I expect I'll be around."
Miles finished his Auditor's report late the following afternoon, including the table of contents and the cross-referenced index, and sat back in his comconsole chair, and stretched. It was as complete as he could make it, and as straightforward as his indignation with the central crime would allow. He only now realized, looking over the finished product, just how much subtle spin he used to put on even his most truthful Dendarii field reports, making the Dendarii and Admiral Naismith look good to assure the continued flow of funding and assignments. There was a dry serenity in not having to give a damn what Lord Auditor Vorkosigan looked like, that he quite enjoyed.
This report was for Gregor's eyes first, not for Gregor's eyes only. Miles had been on the other end of that stick, having to devise Dendarii missions on the basis of all sorts of dubious or incomplete intelligence. He was determined that no poor sod who had to make practical use of the report later would have cause to curse him as he had so often cursed others.
He decanted the final version onto a code-card, and called Gregor's secretary to arrange a formal appointment the following morning to turn it, and his chain of office and seal, over to the Emperor. He then rose for a muscle-unkinking stroll around Vorkosigan House, with an eye to checking his lightflyer. Chenko had promised the final surgical installation of his seizure-control device possibly as early as tomorrow afternoon. Martin, whose long-awaited birthday had gone by unnoticed by Miles sometime during the recent crisis, had delayed his application to the Imperial Service an extra couple of weeks, to save Miles having to break in an interim driver. But Miles knew exactly how anxious the boy was to be gone.
Illyan and his scant belongings had been carried off, most helpfully, by Lady Alys in her car this morning, and the Countess's household staff had restored the guest suite to its original, if slightly sterile, order. Miles wandered through it, to stare out onto the snowy back garden and be glad he wasn't frozen in a cryo-chamber. This really was the most splendid set of rooms in Vorkosigan House, with by far the best windows. Miles remembered the chambers from his grandfather's day, jammed with military memorabilia, thick with the formidable scent of old books, old leather, and the old man. He gazed around the suite's clean-swept emptiness.
"Why not?" he murmured, then more loudly, "Why the hell not?"
His mother found him half an hour later, leading a press-ganged troop consisting of Martin and half her retainers. They were carrying all Miles's possessions down one flight and around the corner from the other wing, and spreading them through the bathroom, bedroom, sitting room, and study under Miles's somewhat random direction. "Miles, love, what are you doing?"
"Taking over Grandfathers rooms. Nobody else is using them now. Why not?" He waited, a little nervously, for some objection from her, mentally marshaling his defensive arguments.
"Oh, good idea. It's about time you got out of that little room upstairs. You've been in it since you were five, for heavens sake."
"That's . . . what I thought."
"We only picked that one for you because Illyan calculated it had the most disadvantageous angle for anyone trying to lob a projectile through the window."
"I see." He cleared his throat, and, emboldened, added, "I thought I'd take over the whole second floor, the Yellow Parlor, the other guest rooms, and all. I might . . . entertain, have people in, something."
"You can have the whole place, when we're off to Sergyar."
"Yeah, but I want a space even when you're here. I never needed it before. I was never around."
"I know. Now you're here and I'm gone. Life is odd like that, sometimes." She wandered away, humming.
With that many porters, the moving job only took an hour. Spread out into a more reasonable area, his life made a thin layer. There was at least a metric ton of Admiral Naismith s possessions back with the Dendarii Fleet, which Miles supposed he ought to retrieve somehow. No one else was likely to be able to use his clothing or his customized space armor, after all. He wandered about, rearranging things, trying to guess how he would use them here. It was all wonderfully unconstrained. He felt a sympathetic twinge of identification with those root-bound plants that had waited too long to be moved to bigger pots, not that he was exactly planning to vegetate. Spacer Quinn would call him a dirt-sucker. Quinn would be … half-right.
He owed her a message. He owed her several, and a major apology, for setting her couple of more recent queries aside in the rush of recent events. He settled himself at his newly moved comconsole. The city lights reflected in an amber haze from the cloudy sky. The back garden, seen out his wide study window, was luminous and soft in the snowy night.
He composed his face and his thoughts, and began. He recorded cheerful reassurances, medical and otherwise, and sent it by tight-beam; she'd receive it in a week or so, depending on where the Dendarii fleet was now. Rather to his surprise, a task that had seemed impossible earlier came easily now. Maybe he'd only needed to free his brain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Miles decided to make a little ceremony out of returning his Auditors chain and seal to Gregor, along with the report. The traditional dignity of the office seemed to demand something more than just handing them back through the Residence door in a plastic bag. So he dressed in his brown-and-silver House uniform again, with all due care. He hesitated a long time before attaching his military decorations to his tunic, perhaps for the last time. But he was planning to ask Gregor for a very personal favor, and he would rather the decorations spoke for him than having to speak for himself.