"I'd made that connection too. But she seems to be standing by him." Unpleasant, to think this mischance might cost Ren? his marriage as well as his career.

"It's been hard on her too. She likes being a Countess. Olivia says, back in their school days, envy sometimes made the other girls mean to Tatya. Being picked out by Ren? was kind of a boost for her, not that the rest of them couldn't see it coming, with her glorious soprano. She does adore him."

"So you think their marriage will weather this?" he asked hopefully.

"Mm . . ."

"Mm . . . ?"

"This whole thing began when they were going to start their baby. And they haven't gone ahead. Tatya . . . doesn't talk about that part of things. She'll talk about everything else, but not that."

"Oh." Miles tried to figure out what that might mean. It didn't sound very encouraging.

"Olivia is almost the only one of Tatya's old friends who've shown up, after all this blew up. Even Ren?'s sisters have kind of gone to ground, though for the opposite reason I suppose. It's like nobody wants to look her in the eye."

"If you go back far enough, we're all descended from off-worlders, dammit," Miles growled in frustration. "What's one-eighth? A tinge. Why should it disqualify one of the best people we have? Competence should count for something."

Martya's grin twisted. "If you want sympathy, you've come to the wrong store, Miles. If my da were a Count, it wouldn't matter how competent I was, I still wouldn't inherit. All the brilliance in the world wouldn't matter a bit. If you're just now finding out that this world is unjust, well, you're behind the times."

Miles grimaced. "It's not news to me, Martya." The car pulled up outside Commodore Koudelka's townhouse. "But justice wasn't my job, before." And power isn't nearly as all-powerful as it looks from the outside. He added, "But that's probably the one issue I can't help you on. I have the strongest personal reasons for not wanting to reintroduce inheritance through the female line into Barrayaran law. Like, my survival. I like my job very well. I don't want Gregor's."

He popped the canopy, and she climbed out, and gave him a sort of acknowledging salaam for both this last point and the ride. "See you at your dinner party."

"Give my best to the Commodore and Drou," he called after her.

She shot him a bright Team Koudelka smile over her shoulder, and bounced away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mark gently banked the lightflyer, to give the rear-seat passengers, Kareen and Madame Vorsoisson, a better view of the Vorkosigan's District capital of Hassadar glittering on the horizon. The weather was cooperating, a beautiful sunny day that breathed promise of imminent summer. Miles's lightflyer was a delight: sleek, fast, and maneuverable, knifing through the soft warm air, and best of all with the controls precisely aligned to be ergonomically perfect for a man just Mark's height. So what if the seat was a little on the narrow side. You couldn't have everything. For example, Miles can't have this anymore. Mark grimaced at the thought, and shunted it aside.

"It's lovely land," Madame Vorsoisson remarked, pressing her face to the canopy to take it all in.

"Miles would be flattered to hear you say so," Mark carefully encouraged this trend of thought. "He's pretty stuck on this place."

They were certainly viewing it in the best possible light, literally, this morning. A patchwork of spring verdure in the farms and woods—the woods no less a product of back-breaking human cultivation than the fields—rippled across the landscape. The green was broken up and set off by irregular slashes of Barrayaran native red-brown, in the ravines and creek bottoms and along uncultivable slopes.

Enrique, his nose also pressed to the canopy, said, "It's not at all what I was expecting, from Barrayar."

"What were you expecting?" asked Madame Vorsoisson curiously.

"Kilometers of flat gray concrete, I suppose. Military barracks and people in uniform marching around in lockstep."

"Economically unlikely for an entire planetary surface. Though uniforms, we do have," Mark admitted.

"But once it gets up to several hundred different kinds, the effect isn't so uniform anymore. And some of the colors are a little . . . unexpected."

"Yes, I feel sorry for those Counts who ended up having to pick their House colors last," Mark agreed. "I think the Vorkosigans must have fallen somewhere in the middle. I mean, brown and silver isn't bad , but I can't help feeling that the fellows with the blue and gold—or the black and silver—do have a sartorial edge." He could fancy himself in black and silver, with Kareen all blond and tall on his arm.

"It could be worse," Kareen put in cheerfully. "How do you think you'd look in a House cadet's uniform of chartreuse and scarlet, like poor Vorharopulos, Mark?"

"Like a traffic signal in boots." Mark made a wry face. "The lockstep is lacking too, I've gradually come to realize. More like, milling around in a confused herd. It was . . . almost disappointing, at first. I mean, even disregarding enemy propaganda, it's not the image Barrayar itself tries to project, now is it? Though I've learned to kind of like it this way."

They banked again. "Where is the infamous radioactive area?" Madame Vorsoisson asked, scanning the changing scene.

The Cetagandan destruction of the old capital of Vorkosigan Vashnoi had torn the heart out of the Vorkosigan's District, three generations ago. "Southeast of Hassadar. Downwind and downstream," Mark replied. "We won't pass it today. You'll have to get Miles to show it to you sometime." He suppressed a slightly snarky grin. Betan dollars to sand the blighted lands hadn't been on Miles's projected itinerary.

"Barrayar doesn't all look like this," Madame Vorsoisson told Enrique. "The part of South Continent where I grew up was flat as a griddlecake, even though the highest mountain range on the planet—the Black Escarpment—was just over the horizon."

"Was it dull, being so flat?" asked Enrique.

"No, because the horizon was boundless. Stepping outdoors was like stepping into the sky. The clouds, the light, the storms—we had the best sunrises and sunsets ever."

They passed the invisible barrier of Hassadar's air traffic control system, and Mark gave over navigation to the city computers. After a few more minutes and some brief coded transmissions, they were brought gently down on a very private and highly restricted landing pad atop the Count's Residence. The Residence was a large modern building faced with polished Dendarii mountain stone. With its connections to the municipal and District offices, it occupied most of one side of the city's central square.

Tsipis stood waiting by the landing ring, neat and gray and spare as ever, to receive them. He shook hands with Madame Vorsoisson as though they were old friends, and greeted off-worlder Enrique with the grace and ease of a natural diplomat. Kareen gave, and got, a familial hug.

They switched vehicles to a waiting aircar, and Tsipis shepherded them off for a quick tour of three possible sites for their future facility, whatever it was to be named, including an underutilized city warehouse, and two nearby farms. Both farm sites were untenanted because their former inhabitants had followed the Count to his new post on Sergyar, and no one else had wanted to take on the challenge of wrestling profit from their decidedly marginal land, one being swampy and the other rocky and dry. Mark checked the radioactivity plats carefully. They were all Vorkosigan properties already, so there was nothing to negotiate with respect to their use.

"You might even persuade your brother to forgo the rent, if you ask," Tsipis pointed out with enthusiastic frugality about the two rural sites. "He can; your father assigned him full legal powers in the District when he left for Sergyar. After all, the family's not getting any income from the properties now. It would conserve more of your capital for your other startup costs."