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his family-I think he was eleven, or something. I'd just as soon pass on that
sort of initiation, thanks. It's not something anybody in their right mind
would choose."
"Mm." Gregor subsided glumly. As oppressed tonight, Miles guessed, by his
legendary father Prince Serg as Miles was by his live one Count Vorkosigan.
Miles reflected briefly on what he had come to think of as "The Two Sergs."
One-maybe the only version Gregor knew?-was the dead hero, bravely sacrificed
on the field of battle or at least cleanly disintegrated in orbit. The other,
the Suppressed Serg: the hysteriac commander and sadistic sodomite whose early
death in the ill-fated Escobar invasion might have been the greatest stroke of
political good fortune ever to befall Barrayar... had even a hint of this
multi-faceted personality ever been permitted to filter back to Gregor? Nobody
who knew Serg talked about him, Count Vorkosigan least of all.
Miles had once met one of Serg's victims. Miles hoped Gregor never would.
Miles decided to change the subject. "So we all know what happened to me, what
have you been up to for the last three months? I was sorry to miss your last
birthday party. Up at Kyril Island they celebrated it by getting drunk, which
made it virtually indistinguishable from any other day."
Gregor grinned, then sighed. "Too many ceremonies. Too much time standing up-I
think I could be replaced at half my functions by a life-sized plastic model,
and no one would notice. A lot of time spent ducking the broad marital hints
of my assorted counsellors."
"Actually, they have a point," Miles had to allow. "If you got... run over by
a teacart tomorrow, the succession question goes up for grabs in a big way. I
can think offhand of at least six candidates with arguable stakes in the
Imperium, and more would come out of the woodwork. Some without personal
ambition would nevertheless kill to see that some of the others didn't get it,
which is precisely why you still don't have a named heir."
Gregor cocked his head. "You're in that crowd yourself, you know."
"With this body?" Miles snorted. "They'd have to... really hate somebody, to
tag me. At that point it really would be time to run away from home. Far and
fast. Do me a favor. Get married, settle down, and have six little Vorbarras
real quick."
Gregor looked even more depressed. "Now there's an idea. Running away from
home. I wonder how far I'd get before Illyan caught up with me?"
They both glanced involuntarily upward, though in fact Miles was still not
certain where the room's bugs were located.
"Better hope Illyan caught up with you before anybody else did." God, this
conversation was getting morbid.
"I don't know, wasn't there an emperor of China who ended up pushing a broom
somewhere? And a thousand lesser emigrees-
countesses running restaurants-escape is possible."
"From being Vor? More like... trying to run away from your own shadow." There
would be moments, in the dark, when success would seem achieved, but
then-Miles shook his head, and checked out the still-lumpy bag. "Ah! You
brought a tacti-go set." He didn't foil the least want to play tacti-go, it
had bored him by age fourteen, but anything was better than this. He pulled it
out and set it up between them with determined good cheer. "Brings back old
times." Hideous thought.
Gregor bestirred himself, and made an opening move. Pretending to be
interested to amuse Miles, who was simulating interest to cheer Gregor, who
was feigning... Miles, distracted, beat Gregor too fast on the first round,
and began to pay more attention.
On the next round he kept it closer, and was rewarded by a spark of genuine
interest-blessed self-forgetfulness-on Gregor's part.
They opened the second bottle of wine. At that point Miles began to feel the
effects, going tongue-thick and sleepy and stupid; it took hardly any effort
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to let Gregor almost win the next round.
"I don't think I've beaten you at this since you were fourteen," sighed
Gregor, concealing secret satisfaction at the low point-
spread of that last round. "You should be an officer, dammit."
"This isn't a good war game, Dad says," commented Miles. "Not enough random
factors and uncontrolled surprises to simulate reality. I like it that way."
It was almost soothing, a mindless routine of logic, check and counter,
multiple chained moves with, always, perfectly objective options.
"You should know." Gregor glanced up. "I still don't understand why they sent
you to Kyril Island. You've already commanded a real space fleet. Even if they
were only a pack of grubby mercenaries."
"Shh. That episode is officially non-existent, in my military files.
Fortunately. It wouldn't charm my superiors. I'd commanded, I hadn't obeyed.
Anyway, I didn't so much command the Dendarii Mercenaries as hypnotize 'em.
Without Captain Tung, who decided to prop up my pretensions for his own
purposes, it would have all ended very unpleasantly. And much sooner."
"I always thought Illyan would do more with them, after," said Gregor.
"However inadvertently, you brought a whole military organization secretly
into the service of Barrayar."
"Yes, without them even knowing it themselves. Now, that's secret. Come on.
Assigning them to Illyan's section was a legal fiction, everybody knew it."
And would his own assignment to Illyan's section turn out to be a legal
fiction too? "Illyan's too careful to get drawn into intergalactic military
adventuring as a hobby. I'm afraid his main interest in the Dendarii
Mercenaries is to keep them as far away from Barrayar as possible. Mercenaries
thrive on other people's chaos.
"Plus, they're a funny size-less than a dozen ships, three or four thousand
personnel-not your basic invisible six-man covert ops team, though they can
field such, and yet they're too little to take on Planetary situations.
Space-based, not ground troops.
Wormhole blockades were their specialty. Safe, easy on the equipment, mostly
bullying unarmed civilians-which is how I first ran into them, when our
freighter was stopped by their blockade, and the bullying went too far. I
cringe to think of the risks I ran.
Though I've often wondered if, knowing what I know now, I could have..." Miles
stopped, shook his head.
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