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When the alarm goes up-"
Footsteps thudded in the corridor, and shouts. The chirping buzz of stunner
fire. Swearing, Bothari flung himself backward through the door. "That's done
it. They've spotted us."
When the alarm goes up, it's all over, Cordelia's thought completed itself, in
a vertigo of loss. No window, one door, and they'd just lost control of their
only exit. Vordarian's trap had worked after all. May Vidal Vordarian rot in
hell ...
Droushnakovi clutched her stunner. "We won't surrender you, Milady. We'll
fight to the end."
"Rubbish," snapped Cordelia. "There's nothing our deaths would buy here but
the deaths of a few more of Vordarian's goons.
Meaningless."
"You mean we should just quit?"
"Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're
waiting for a better opportunity to win. Which we can't take if we're stunned
or nerve-fried." Of course, if that had been the real replicator on the
table... she was insane enough by now to sacrifice these people's lives for
her son's, Cordelia reflected ruefully, but not yet mad enough to trade them
for nothing.
She hadn't grown that Barrayaran yet.
"You give yourself to Vordarian as a hostage," Bothari warned.
"Vordarian has held me hostage since the day he took Miles," Cordelia said
sadly. "This changes nothing."
A few minutes of shouted negotiations through the door accomplished their
surrender, despite the hair-trigger nerves of the security guards. They tossed
out their weapons. The guards ran a scan for power packs to be sure, then four
of them piled into the little room to frisk their new prisoners. Two more
waited outside as backup. Cordelia made no sudden moves to startle them. A
guard frowned puzzlement when the interesting lump in Cordelia's vest turned
out to be only a child's shoe. He laid it on the table next to the tray.
The commander, a man in the maroon and gold
Vordarian livery, spoke into his wrist comm. "Yes. We're secured here. Tell
m'lord. No, he said to wake him. You want to explain why you didn't? Thank
you."
The guards did not prod them into the corridor, but waited. The
still-unconscious man Bothari had clipped was dragged out.
The guards placed Cordelia, arms outstretched to the wall and legs straddled,
in a row with Bothari and Droushnakovi. She was dizzy with despair. But Kareen
would come to her sometime, even as a prisoner. Must come to her. All she
needed was thirty seconds with Kareen, maybe less. When I see Kareen, you are
a dead man, Vordarian. You may walk and talk and give orders, unconscious of
your demise for weeks, but I'll seal your fate as surely as you've sealed my
son's.
The reason for the wait materialized at last; Vordarian himself, in green
uniform trousers and slippers, bare-chested, shouldered his way through the
doorway. He was followed by Princess Kareen, clutching a dark red velvet robe
around her.
Cordelia's heart hammered at a doubled rate. Now?
"So. The trap worked," Vordarian began complacently, but added a genuinely
shocked "Huh!" as Cordelia pushed away from the wall and turned to face him. A
hand signal stopped a guard from shoving her back into position. The shock on
Vordarian's face gave way to a wolfish grin. "My God, did it work! Excellent!"
Kareen, hovering behind him, stared at Cordelia in bewildered astonishment.
My trap worked, Cordelia thought, stunned with her opportunity. Watch me. ...
"That's the thing, my lord," said the liveried man, not at all happily. "It
didn't work. We didn't pick this party up at the outer perimeter of the
Residence and clear their way, they just bloody turned up-without triggering
anything. That shouldn't have happened. If I hadn't come along looking for
Roget, we might not have spotted 'em."
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Vordarian shrugged, too delighted by the magnitude of his prey to issue some
trifling censure. "Fast-penta that frill," he pointed at Droushnakovi, "and I
imagine you'll find out how. She used to work in Residence Security."
Droushnakovi glowered over her shoulder at Princess Kareen in hurt accusation;
Kareen unconsciously pulled her robe up more closely about her neck, her dark
eyes full of equally hurt question.
"Well," said Vordarian, still smiling at Cordelia, "is my Lord Vorkosigan so
thin of troops he sends his wife to do their work?
We cannot lose." He smiled at his guards, who smiled back.
Damn, I wish I'd shot this lout in his sleep. "What have you done with my son,
Vordarian?"
Vordarian said through his teeth, "An outworlder frill will never gain power
on Barrayar by scheming to give a mutant the
Imperium. That, I guarantee."
"Is that the official line, now? I don't want power. I just object to idiots
having power over me."
Behind Vordarian, Kareen's lips quirked sadly. Yes, listen to me, Kareen!
"Where's my son, Vordarian?" Cordelia repeated doggedly.
"He's Emperor Vidal now," Kareen remarked, her glance going back and forth
between them, "if he can keep it."
"I will," Vordarian promised. "Aral Vorkosigan has no better a blood-claim
than my own. And I will protect where
Vorkosigan's party has failed. Protect and preserve the real Barrayar." His
head shifted; apparently this assertion was directed over his shoulder to
Kareen.
"We have not failed," Cordelia whispered, meeting Kareen's eyes. Now. She
lifted the shoe from the table, and stretched out her arm with it; Kareen's
eyes widened. She darted forward and grabbed it. Cordelia's hand spasmed like
a dying runner's giving up the baton in some mortal relay race. Fierce
certainty bloomed like fire in her soul. I have you now, Vordarian. The sudden
movement sent a ripple through the armed guards. Kareen examined the shoe with
passionate intensity, turning it in her hands.
Vordarian's brows rose in bafflement, then he dismissed Kareen from his
attention and turned to his liveried guard commander.
"We'll keep all three of these prisoners here in the Residence. I'll
personally attend the fast-penta interrogations. This is a spectacular
opportunity-" . Kareen's face, when she lifted it again to Cordelia, was
terrible with hope.
Yes, thought Cordelia. You were betrayed. Lied to. Your son lives; you must
move and think and feel again, no more the walking numbness of a dead spirit
beyond pain. This is no gift I've brought you. It is a curse.
"Kareen," said Cordelia softly, "where is my son?"
"The replicator is on a shelf in the oak wardrobe, in the old Emperor's
bedchamber," Kareen replied steadily, locking her eyes to Cordelia's. "Where
is mine?"
Cordelia's heart melted in gratitude for her curse, live pain. "Safe and well,
when I last saw him, as long as this pretender," she jerked her head at
Vordarian, "doesn't find out where. Gregor misses you. He sends his love." Her
words might have been spikes, pounded into Kareen's body.
That got Vordarian's attention. "Gregor is at the bottom of a lake, killed in
the flyer crash with that traitor Negri," he said roughly. "The most insidious
lie is the one you want to hear. Guard yourself, my lady Kareen. I could not
save him, but I will avenge him. I promise you that."
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