Mirror Dance

Another Dendarii brought, and shoved through the door, a selection of Miles’s clean clothing from the stores on the Ariel. This time all the insignia were carefully removed. On the third day he gave up even attempting to fasten Naismith’s uniform trousers, and switched to loose ship knits. At this point the inspiration struck him.

They can’t make me play Miles if I don’t look like Miles.

After that, things grew a little foggy, in his head. One of the Dendarii became so irritated by his repeated requests for extra rations that he lugged in a whole case, dumped it in a corner, and told Mark roughly not to pester him again. Mark was left alone with his self-rescue and cu

Still, loony as it was, and on some level he knew that it was, it gave his life a focus. From too much time, endless hours on the multi-jump boost through to Komarr, suddenly there seemed to be not enough. He read the nutrition labels. If he maintained maximum inactivity, a single tray provided all the daily fuel he required. Everything he consumed after that must be converted directly into Not-Miles. Every four trays ought to produce a kilo of extra body mass, if he had the numbers right. Too bad they were all the same menu… .

There were scarcely enough days to make the project work. Still, on his body, any extra kilos had no place to hide. Toward the end, panicked at the thought of time ru

Qui

“Agh.” Mark recoiled, and held his hands over his eyes. Ripped from his uncomfortable doze, he rolled over in bed. He blinked at the chrono on the wall. Qui

“Get up,” said Qui

“I’ll get up,” said Mark. “And I’ll get washed. But I won’t put on the uniform, or any uniform.”

“You’ll do as you’re told, mister.”

“That’s a Barrayaran officer’s uniform. It represents real power, and they guard it accordingly. They hang people who wear fake uniforms.” He tossed off the covers and sat up. He was a little dizzy.

“My gods,” said Qui

“I suppose,” he allowed, “you can still try to stuff me into the uniform. But you might want to consider the effect.” He staggered to the washroom.

While washing and depiliating, he inventoried the results of his escape attempt. There just hadn’t been enough time. True, he’d regained the kilos he’d had to lose to play Admiral Naismith at Escobar, plus maybe a slight bonus, and in a mere fourteen days instead of the year it had taken them to creep on in the first place. A hint of a double chin. His torso was notably thickened, though, his abdomen—he moved carefully—achingly distended. Not enough, not enough to be safe yet.

Qui

She sensed his fey mood. “Enjoying yourself?” she inquired sarcastically.

“It’s the last fun I’ll get today. Isn’t it?”

Her hand opened in dry acquiescence.

“Where are you taking me? For that matter, where are we?”

“Komarr orbit. We are about to pod over, secretly, to one of the Barrayaran military space stations. There we are going to have a very private meeting with Chief of Imperial Security Captain Simon Illyan. He came by fast courier all the way from ImpSec headquarters on Barrayar on the basis of a rather ambiguous coded message I sent him, and he’s going to be extremely hot to know why I’ve interrupted his routine. He’s going to demand to know what the hell was so important. And,” her voice wavered in a sigh, “I’m going to have to tell him.”

She led him out of his cabin-cell through the Peregrine. She had evidently dismissed his door guard when she’d first come in, but in fact all the corridors seemed deserted. No, not deserted. Cleared.

They came to a perso

Bothari-Jesek’s usual coolness seemed particularly frigid today. When she glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes widened, and her dark winged brows drew down in startled disapproval of his pasty, bloated appearance.

“Hell, Mark. You look like a drowned corpse that’s floated to the surface after a week.”

I feel like one. “Thank you,” he intoned blandly.

She snorted, whether with amusement, disgust, or derision he was not sure, and turned her attention back to the pod control interface. Hatches sealed, clamps retracted, and they sped silently away from the side of the Peregrine. Between the zero-gee and the accelerations, he found his attention centered on his stretched stomach again, and he swallowed against the nausea.

“Why is the ImpSec head man only ranked as captain?” Mark inquired, to take his mind off his queasiness. “It can’t be for secrecy, everybody knows who he is.”

“Another Barrayaran tradition,” Bothari-Jesek said. Her tone put a slightly bitter spin on the term tradition. At least she was speaking to him. “Illyan’s predecessor in the post, the late great Captain Negri, never took a promotion beyond captain. That kind of ambition was apparently irrelevant to Emperor Ezar’s Familiar. Everybody knew Negri spoke with the Emperor’s Voice, and his orders cut across all ranks. Illyan … was always a little shy of promoting himself over the rank of his former boss, I guess. He’s paid a vice-admiral’s salary, though. Whatever poor sucker heads ImpSec next after Illyan retires is probably going to be stuck with the rank of captain forever.”

They approached a mid-sized high orbital space station. Mark finally glimpsed Komarr, turning far below, shrunken by the distance to a half-moon. Bothari-Jesek kept strictly to the flight path assigned to her by an extremely laconic station traffic control. After a nervous pause while they exchanged codes and countersigns, they locked onto a docking hatch.

They were met by two silent, expressionless armed guards, very neat and trim in Barrayaran green, who ushered them through the station and into a small windowless chamber set up as an office, with a comconsole desk, three chairs, and no other decoration.

“Thank you. Leave us,” said the man behind the desk. The guards exited as silently as they had done everything else.

Alone, the man seemed to relax slightly. He nodded to Bothari-Jesek. “Hullo, Elena. It’s good to see you.” His light voice had an unexpected warm timbre, like an uncle greeting a favorite niece.