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laid?"
"Yes! But . . . Milady, I'm just about half a man, on a good day. Her family'd
take one look at me and laugh."
"Have you ever met her family? Have they met you?"
"No . . ."
"Kou, are you listening to yourself?"
He looked rather shamefaced. "Well . . ."
"A go-between. Huh." She stood up.
"Where are you going?" he asked nervously.
"Between," she said firmly. She marched down the hall to Lady Vorpatril's
door, and stuck her head in. Droushnakovi was sitting watching the sleeping
woman. Two beers and the sandwiches sat untouched on a bedside table.
Cordelia slipped within, and closed the door gently. "You know," she murmured,
"good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how
much they'll be called on to do, before the next chance."
"I'm not hungry." Drou too had a folded-in look, as if caught in some trap
within herself.
"Want to talk about it?"
She grimaced uncertainly, and moved away from the bed to a settee in the far
corner of the room. Cordelia sat beside her. "Tonight," she said lowly, "was
the first time I was ever in a real fight."
"You did well. You found your position, you reacted-"
"No." Droushnakovi made a bitter hand-chopping gesture. "I didn't."
"Oh? It looked good to me."
"I ran around behind the building-stunned the two security men waiting at the
back door. They never saw me. I got to my position, at the building's corner.
I watched those men, tormenting Lady Vorpatril in the street.
Insulting and staring and pushing and poking at her ... it made me so angry, I
switched to my nerve disruptor. I wanted to kill them. Then the firing
started. And . . . and I hesitated. And Lord Vorpatril died because of it. My
fault-"
"Whoa, girl! That goon who shot Padma Vorpatril wasn't the only one taking aim
at him. Padma was so penta-soaked and confused, he wasn't even trying to take
cover. They must have double-dosed him, to force him to lead them back to
Alys. He might as easily have died from another shot, or blundered into our
own cross-fire."
"Sergeant Bothari didn't hesitate," Droushnakovi said flatly.
"No," agreed Cordelia.
"Sergeant Bothari doesn't waste energy feeling . . . sorry, for the enemy,
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either."
"No. Do you?"
"I feel sick."
"You kill two total strangers, and expect to feel jolly?"
"Bothari does."
"Yes. Bothari enjoyed it. But Bothari is not, even by Barrayaran standards, a
sane man. Do you aspire to be a monster?"
"You call him that!"
"Oh, but he's my monster. My good dog." She always had trouble explaining
Bothari, sometimes even to herself. Cordelia wondered if Droushnakovi knew the
Earth-historical origin of the term, scapegoat. The sacrificial animal that
was released yearly into the wilderness, to carry the sins of its community
away . . . Bothari was surely her beast of burden; she saw clearly what he did
for her. She was less certain what she did for him, except that he seemed to
find it desperately important. "I, for one, am glad you are heartsick. Two
pathological killers in my service would be an excess. Treasure that nausea,
Drou."
She shook her head. "I think maybe I'm in the wrong trade."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Think what a monstrous thing an army of Botharis would be.
Any community's arm of force-military, police, security-needs people in it who
can do the necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the
necessary, and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the
slide into atrocity."
"The way that security colonel quashed that obscene corporal."
"Yes. Or the way that lieutenant questioned the colonel ... I wish we might
have saved him," Cordelia sighed.
Drou frowned deeply, into her lap.
"Kou thought you were angry with him," said Cordelia.
"Kou?" Droushnakovi looked up dimly. "Oh, yes, he was just in here. Did he
want something?"
Cordelia smiled. "Just like Kou, to imagine all your unhappiness must center
on him." Her smile faded. "I'm going to send him with Lady Vorpatril, to try
and smuggle her and the baby out. We'll go our separate ways as soon as she's
able to walk."
Drou's face grew worried. "He'll be in terrible danger. Vordarian's people
will be rabid over losing her and the young lord tonight."
Yes, there was still a Lord Vorpatril to disturb Vordarian's genealogical
calculations, wasn't there? Insane system, that made an infant seem a mortal
danger to a grown man. "There's no safety for anybody, till this vile war is
ended. Tell me. Do you still love Kou? I know you're over your initial starry-
eyed infatuation. You see his faults. Egocentric, and with a bug in his brain
about his injuries, and terribly worried about his masculinity. But he's not
stupid. There's hope for him. He has an interesting life ahead of him, in the
Regents service." Assuming they all lived through the next forty-eight hours.
A passionate desire to live was a good thing to instill in her agents,
Cordelia thought. "Do you want him?"
"I'm . . . bound to him, now. I don't know how to explain ... I gave him my
virginity. Who else would have me? I'd be ashamed-"
"Forget that! After we bring off this raid, you're going to be covered in so
much glory, men will be lining up for the status of courting you. You'll have
your pick. In Aral's household, you'll have a chance to meet the best.
What do you want? A general? An Imperial minister? A Vor lordling? An off-
world ambassador? Your only problem will be choosing, since Barrayaran custom
stingily only allows you one husband at a time. A clumsy young lieutenant
hasn't got a prayer of competing with all those polished seniors."
Droushnakovi smiled, a bit skeptically, at Cordelia's painted vision. "Who
says Kou won't be a general himself someday?" she said softly. She sighed, her
brow creasing. "Yes. I still want him. But . . . I guess I'm afraid he'll hurt
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me again."
Cordelia thought that one over. "Probably. Aral and I hurt each other all the
time."
"Oh, not you two, Milady! You seem so, so perfect."
"Think, Drou. Can you imagine what mental state Aral is in right this minute,
because of my actions? I can. I do."
"Oh."
"But pain . , . seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]