Vorkosigan Fic: And They Think It's Hell
This is not a part of my ongoing exploration of Aral Vorkosigan's bisexuality through crossovers and minor characters, which you can tell because the title is from Harry Truman, not Jeff Mangum by way of John Darnielle getting a lot of the words wrong.
Many, many thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oliviacirce and iuliamentis for beta, and everyone else I told this idea to who said "ooh, yes."
Gregor, Cordelia, Aral. post-The Vor Game. Adult themes. 3,000 words.
"Miles suggested that you were the one I should ask, if I wanted to know the truth about my father. Will you tell me?"
And They Think It's Hell
"Cordelia," Gregor said when the conversation had come to a natural end, and then hesitated when she gave him an attentive look. She waited a moment, then tilted her head, her gaze sharpening.
Gregor didn't permit himself to look away, but confessed, "I don't know whether I want to call you Tante Cordelia or Captain Naismith, for this next thing."
Cordelia's brows lifted. "That's an unusual decision to have to make."
Gregor nodded shallowly, conceding, and spoke the words he had rehearsed. "Miles suggested that you were the one I should ask, if I wanted to know the truth about my father. Will you tell me?"
Cordelia did what Gregor had never imagined, in all his mental rehearsals of this moment. She looked away, jaw clenched tight. Her hand raised high enough to enter the vid pickup for an instant, then dropped as she looked back at him, nearly perfectly composed. "That was what happened on Komarr, was it? You heard stories about Prince Serg?"
Gregor nodded again, but forced himself to keep focused. "Will you tell me the truth about him?"
Cordelia dropped her gaze again, then met his eyes. "Gregor--you must realize I never even met your father to speak to, only glimpsed him once across a room. I know a good deal about him which I believe to be fact, but I cannot bear true witness to any of his life."
"I am asking you," Gregor said. "Please."
Cordelia gave him a short nod that mirrored his own. "If you're ready to ask, then yes, I agree. You're ready to know the truth. But this isn't a conversation to have over the comconsole. Tomorrow, somewhere private."
"My apartment," Gregor said. "In the morning, please. My man will arrange the time with yours."
"As you wish," Cordelia said, and then at least the asking was over. Gregor only had to brace himself for the finding out, now, and he had less than a day to wait.
***
Gregor was in his private sitting room, having given up on breakfast and forbidden himself any more coffee, when an armsman put his head through the door to say, "Your appointment, sire. We'll clear out now."
Gregor nodded, standing to greet Cordelia, but it was Aral who stepped through the door, wearing not his usual workday undress greens but the brown-and-silver uniform of his House.
"Count Vorkosigan," Gregor said, automatically responding to the uniform, and then Cordelia, dressed in echoing brown and silver, took her place at Aral's shoulder.
"Countess Vorkosigan," Gregor added, feeling already at sea. He'd been prepared for a personal, private conversation--a difficult one, of course, but--"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I know, sire," Aral said gently. "That's why I'm here, to explain."
Gregor was still trying to interpret their clothing as he waved them toward seats across from him and sank back into his own. He couldn't remember when he'd seen them both so pointedly dressed as Vorkosigans outside of the formalities of the--his--Birthday.
"Gregor," Cordelia said, "I told you yesterday that I couldn't tell you much, firsthand, about your father. Aral knows much more. I'm happy to mediate this discussion, but Aral is the one you need to speak to."
And yesterday, he thought, replaying that brief conversation, she hadn't said I will tell you. She'd said, you're ready to know.
"I see," Gregor said, though it was obvious that he didn't yet.
"Gregor," Aral began, and the sound of his first name loosened a knot in Gregor's chest. "I don't think I've ever asked you before. What do you, yourself, remember about your father? Not what people have told you about him, but your own memories."
He had a ready answer, because he'd been reviewing those scant memories all night while he couldn't sleep, as well as this morning at breakfast, wondering what inferences he could draw from them, how they had looked to everyone else involved.
"Two things, really," Gregor said, looking down at his own hands, which lay at rest on his thighs, pale against the darkness of his trousers. "One was a review of the troops, some sort of parade. I was with Father and Grandfather on the Emperor's Stand. I was too small to see over the rail, so Father picked me up and held me to see the troops--and let them see me, I suppose. He told me I mustn't wave to them, just watch. After a while he set me down again, but when he did he set me at his other side, between him and Grandfather, and Grandfather put his hand on my shoulder. I remember remembering it, because I stood between Mother and Grandfather that way at the state funeral, with his hand on my shoulder. I don't think I knew the word prophetic then, but it struck me."
Aral nodded slowly. "And the other?"
"My fourth birthday, I think it was," Gregor said. These were the memories he'd been worrying at all night, trying to see beyond his limited child's perspective. "Father took me away with him to some hunting lodge as a treat, without Mother or Drou. He said I should begin spending time with the men--he even gave me a little air rifle, and spent some time teaching me to fire it. My shoulder was bruised for weeks, afterward."
Gregor glanced up, and Aral was looking down, now. Cordelia was looking back and forth quickly from one of them to the other.
"Drou came and got me after a couple of days," Gregor said. "Father had left me alone with some servants by then--he was going off to hunt big game, they told me, and my pony wouldn't be able to keep up. When Drou came, there were men with her, but not footmen. ImpSec. She told me it was because Father's hunting lodge was so hard to find, she needed ImpSec to guide her there. But Mother was waiting for us at the landing pad for the lightflyer, as if I'd been gone a year. As if she thought she'd never see me again. And when she saw the bruise on my shoulder, later, she cried."
When Gregor looked up this time, Aral was watching him steadily. There was a terrible, total silence for a moment, and then Aral nodded.
"You're right," he said. "She was afraid she would never see you again. Your father had attempted to divorce her on the grounds of abandonment--on the grounds of her refusal to grant his conjugal rights. A divorce would have given him total custody of you, and his taking you away at your birthday was an exercise of that right. Your grandfather quashed the whole thing, of course. The ImpSec men were there to enforce his private ruling that Princess Kareen should have full and sole custody of you so long as she continued to reside in the Imperial Residence."
"He hurt her, didn't he," Gregor blurted, because that was the thing he had to know, had been dying to know and not daring to ask for weeks. "They said--on Komarr, they said he was a sadist, a rapist, torturer--he hurt my mother, didn't he?"
Aral looked down at his folded hands. "Probably, yes."
Gregor clenched his fists, years too late, remembering with a sick sinking feeling how delighted he had been by the gift of the air rifle, by the far rarer gift of his father's attention. He had thought that that might be something pure, those few days with his father. He had thought--he had hoped that his father's kindness to him was something separate from his father's cruelty to others.
"I was never told precisely what your mother feared from your father, or in what manner he might have harmed her. When they married, before you were born, he was... he was not yet at his worst, though the signs were there. After she became pregnant your grandfather protected your mother."
Gregor looked up, startled, and then understood. "Grandfather wouldn't risk her miscarrying, you mean. I was worth protecting, but she wasn't."
Aral spread his hands. "We didn't have replicators then. Kareen had agreed to marry Prince Serg. If he treated her roughly, that was no more than many Vor husbands did to their wives."
Gregor looked over at Cordelia. "The decree--that clause, about allowing wives to testify against their husbands in any matter of direct harm to themselves or their children--that--"
"Yes," Cordelia said quietly. "Every other woman in a marriage like your mother's has the right to prosecute her husband, now. You did that, even if you didn't quite know why."
Gregor shook his head, deflecting any notion that his inclusion of a few sentences to please Cordelia had been praiseworthy. His father had not been like many Vor husbands. There was something more here, something that Aral felt compelled to tell him as Count Vorkosigan, not the Admiral, not the Prime Minister. "He was worse than that, wasn't he," Gregor said. "It wasn't just...."
Aral took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.
"He was worse than any man of his generation, by the time he died," Aral said calmly. Gregor thought, distantly, that he wasn't the only one who'd been practicing his words. "Prince Serg was a rapist, for certain, and much more. He was not only dangerous to your mother, Gregor, or to you. Serg attempted twice to bring about the assassination of the Emperor your grandfather."
Gregor froze. He had feared to find out how cruel his father had been, how heartless--a sadist, a sociopath, a man who would have been a criminal if he were not a prince. But his father had been a war hero, with a whole world for a namesake. Gregor had never imagined that Prince Serg could have been a traitor.
"I don’t understand," he said, but his voice emerged as small as a child's. Aral gave him a thoughtful look. Gregor dared not even look at Cordelia, who must know this already, if Aral said it in front of her. How could she know? Who else knew?
"Prince Serg was heir to the throne. His personal perversions were extreme, but that might have been merely scandalous. The truly dangerous thing about him was his thirst for power, and his refusal to accept any limit upon it. He would have been another Emperor Yuri, if he had lived to rule."
His blood is in me, Gregor thought in blank and absolute horror. Another Yuri, if he had not fallen in battle, and he was my father.
"Sire," Aral said quietly, and Gregor snapped back into sharp, adrenaline-heightened focus. Aral looked grim. Cordelia's face was a mask. The worst is not yet said.
"I know all of this because Emperor Ezar and Captain Negri apprised me of it. I know this because they sought to use me, personally and directly, to solve the problem of Prince Serg. He was a danger to the Imperium. He could not be allowed to rule."
"No," Gregor said, scarcely conscious of speaking. "No." Not you, not you, not Aral Vorkosigan, never.
Aral bowed his head. "Sire. I confess to you now, of my own free will, without duress and because it is your right as my Emperor, my liege lord, and my commander, to know it: I alone among men now living engineered the death of Prince Serg at the invasion of Escobar. The war was a weapon. I engineered it, and pushed your father into its path. Five thousand Barrayarans died to kill him and his party, along with hundreds of Escobarans and dozens of Betans."
Gregor shook his head silently. I alone among men now living. "Grandfa--"
He choked on the word. All my life I hoped I would be like him. All my life I hoped to be my grandfather's grandson and not my father's son. But half of Prince Serg's blood was his. He manufactured a war to murder his son.
"The Emperor," Gregor said, "and Captain Negri. You said they told you what Prince Serg was, how dangerous he was."
Aral nodded slightly. "They wanted the thing done, and persuaded me of the necessity. Much of the strategy and the execution was mine--I offered to simply assassinate him myself, but that wouldn't have been enough. Grishnov, Vorrutyer--if their party survived they would have succeeded where Vordarian failed."
Vordarian had succeeded well enough to kill Gregor's mother and send Gregor himself into hiding for weeks, to say nothing of killing nearly as many men in the fighting as had been lost in the Escobar War.
"Did you," Gregor whispered, his mouth gone dry. He had to ask, and couldn't wait weeks to get up his nerve, this time. "Was it a bargain? The regency for the war?"
Aral's head snapped back as if Gregor had struck him, his face draining pale for the first time. "Gregor, no. Not that. I served your grandfather blood and bone, and the regency was no reward. I tried to retire, after the war. Ezar just wasn't finished with me."
But you were my father, Gregor didn't say. But I believed in you.
"I was the only man he trusted to step down when you came of age," Aral said softly. "If nothing else, I knew the price of overreaching down to the last drop of blood."
Gregor's hands were shaking. "Aral, why--why are you telling me this?"
"Because you asked," Aral said evenly. "Because you are my Emperor, and you have a right to know what manner of man serves you."
Gregor folded forward, letting his elbows rest on his knees and his face in his hands. He felt off-balance, almost literally dizzy. What manner of man could conjure up a bloody, brutal defeat for his own people--a mass murder on an unimaginable scale--and then turn around and kneel to a five-year-old boy, in what had proven to be all sincerity?
Aral said quietly, "Cordelia, would you excuse us?"
Gregor flinched. He'd nearly forgotten she was there. He looked up to find that both Vorkosigans were on their feet. Cordelia's hands were on Aral's face as she kissed him--kissed him goodbye? His hands remained at his sides, and his eyes were closed. Gregor stared, nonplussed.
Cordelia released her husband, and turned to cross the space to Gregor, though the door was in the opposite direction. Her hand brushed gently over his hair, and she said, "Remember that you are both your mothers' sons."
Then she turned and walked out, leaving him alone with the man his grandfather had used to kill his father.
Aral did not sit again. He walked over to Gregor as Cordelia had done, but sank down to his knees before him. Gregor sat back automatically, straightening his spine and trying to force himself to breathe.
"Sire," Aral said, with his hands still at his sides and his head bowed, exposing the nape of his neck to Gregor's horrified gaze. "I wish to be very clearly understood. Although the order originated from the Emperor, it was--I knew it to be--a criminal order. It was a hundred times more deadly than the one issued at Solstice, spawning dozens of other atrocities within it."
Gregor's stomach turned, and he plastered one hand over his mouth. It had been more than six years since he sat in an auditorium with the other cadets for Admiral Vorkosigan's seminar on criminal orders, but Gregor remembered it, and then, too, he knew the one essential truth.
Vorkosigan had killed the man who issued the order at Solstice.
"I submit myself to your justice, or to your revenge, if you wish it. That is your right, for your father and for the five thousand men of your military whose lives were squandered. I think you may not choose make it a public matter, but if you wish to wake in the morning to find I have suffered a fatal accident in the night, it shall be done."
Gregor bit down hard on his finger, willing himself to wake up, wake up, wake up.
"I only ask that you permit Cordelia to go into exile," Aral said, without looking up. "She was an enemy combatant then, and knew nothing before it happened. Likewise my son is innocent of his father's sins, and you know the measure of his loyalty. If you only wish me in exile, or out of your government--"
"Stop," Gregor finally demanded, dropping his hand to Aral's shoulder.
Aral looked up, meeting his eyes with a calm, searching look.
"You are Aral Vorkosigan," Gregor said, holding Aral's gaze and trying his best for ringing, official tones. If his voice shook, it was nonetheless the Emperor's Voice, and what he decreed this man, of all men, would uphold. "You served my grandfather blood and bone, and you have served me the same. What the Emperor required of you is the Emperor's responsibility, and for my part I refuse to be deprived of the best father I was ever granted."
Aral blinked quickly, and bowed his head. "Thank you," he said, his voice tear-roughened, and Gregor slid out of his own chair to kneel beside Aral, embracing him fiercely.
"Thank you," Aral repeated, and then laughed a little. "Cordelia was right, of course. You are your mother's son."
Both of them, Gregor thought. Aloud he said only, "I won't give my sons reason to wish they did not share my blood."
"And so we all keep finding our way forward," Aral said, getting to his feet and drawing Gregor up with him. "I'd better go and tell Cordelia she doesn't have to kidnap me for my own safety."
It wasn't funny, but Gregor laughed anyway, and couldn't stop. Of course Cordelia would have kidnapped Aral; of course she wouldn't have let him come to harm, no matter what Gregor demanded of him. Vordarian had killed Princess Kareen, but Cordelia had killed Vordarian.
She came in just then, and Gregor kept on laughing helplessly as she came over to where he stood leaning against Aral.
"I take it that went all right, then," she said. "Except--Gregor, why in the world is your hand bleeding?"
Many, many thanks to
oliviacirce and iuliamentis for beta, and everyone else I told this idea to who said "ooh, yes."Gregor, Cordelia, Aral. post-The Vor Game. Adult themes. 3,000 words.
"Miles suggested that you were the one I should ask, if I wanted to know the truth about my father. Will you tell me?"
And They Think It's Hell
"Cordelia," Gregor said when the conversation had come to a natural end, and then hesitated when she gave him an attentive look. She waited a moment, then tilted her head, her gaze sharpening.
Gregor didn't permit himself to look away, but confessed, "I don't know whether I want to call you Tante Cordelia or Captain Naismith, for this next thing."
Cordelia's brows lifted. "That's an unusual decision to have to make."
Gregor nodded shallowly, conceding, and spoke the words he had rehearsed. "Miles suggested that you were the one I should ask, if I wanted to know the truth about my father. Will you tell me?"
Cordelia did what Gregor had never imagined, in all his mental rehearsals of this moment. She looked away, jaw clenched tight. Her hand raised high enough to enter the vid pickup for an instant, then dropped as she looked back at him, nearly perfectly composed. "That was what happened on Komarr, was it? You heard stories about Prince Serg?"
Gregor nodded again, but forced himself to keep focused. "Will you tell me the truth about him?"
Cordelia dropped her gaze again, then met his eyes. "Gregor--you must realize I never even met your father to speak to, only glimpsed him once across a room. I know a good deal about him which I believe to be fact, but I cannot bear true witness to any of his life."
"I am asking you," Gregor said. "Please."
Cordelia gave him a short nod that mirrored his own. "If you're ready to ask, then yes, I agree. You're ready to know the truth. But this isn't a conversation to have over the comconsole. Tomorrow, somewhere private."
"My apartment," Gregor said. "In the morning, please. My man will arrange the time with yours."
"As you wish," Cordelia said, and then at least the asking was over. Gregor only had to brace himself for the finding out, now, and he had less than a day to wait.
***
Gregor was in his private sitting room, having given up on breakfast and forbidden himself any more coffee, when an armsman put his head through the door to say, "Your appointment, sire. We'll clear out now."
Gregor nodded, standing to greet Cordelia, but it was Aral who stepped through the door, wearing not his usual workday undress greens but the brown-and-silver uniform of his House.
"Count Vorkosigan," Gregor said, automatically responding to the uniform, and then Cordelia, dressed in echoing brown and silver, took her place at Aral's shoulder.
"Countess Vorkosigan," Gregor added, feeling already at sea. He'd been prepared for a personal, private conversation--a difficult one, of course, but--"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I know, sire," Aral said gently. "That's why I'm here, to explain."
Gregor was still trying to interpret their clothing as he waved them toward seats across from him and sank back into his own. He couldn't remember when he'd seen them both so pointedly dressed as Vorkosigans outside of the formalities of the--his--Birthday.
"Gregor," Cordelia said, "I told you yesterday that I couldn't tell you much, firsthand, about your father. Aral knows much more. I'm happy to mediate this discussion, but Aral is the one you need to speak to."
And yesterday, he thought, replaying that brief conversation, she hadn't said I will tell you. She'd said, you're ready to know.
"I see," Gregor said, though it was obvious that he didn't yet.
"Gregor," Aral began, and the sound of his first name loosened a knot in Gregor's chest. "I don't think I've ever asked you before. What do you, yourself, remember about your father? Not what people have told you about him, but your own memories."
He had a ready answer, because he'd been reviewing those scant memories all night while he couldn't sleep, as well as this morning at breakfast, wondering what inferences he could draw from them, how they had looked to everyone else involved.
"Two things, really," Gregor said, looking down at his own hands, which lay at rest on his thighs, pale against the darkness of his trousers. "One was a review of the troops, some sort of parade. I was with Father and Grandfather on the Emperor's Stand. I was too small to see over the rail, so Father picked me up and held me to see the troops--and let them see me, I suppose. He told me I mustn't wave to them, just watch. After a while he set me down again, but when he did he set me at his other side, between him and Grandfather, and Grandfather put his hand on my shoulder. I remember remembering it, because I stood between Mother and Grandfather that way at the state funeral, with his hand on my shoulder. I don't think I knew the word prophetic then, but it struck me."
Aral nodded slowly. "And the other?"
"My fourth birthday, I think it was," Gregor said. These were the memories he'd been worrying at all night, trying to see beyond his limited child's perspective. "Father took me away with him to some hunting lodge as a treat, without Mother or Drou. He said I should begin spending time with the men--he even gave me a little air rifle, and spent some time teaching me to fire it. My shoulder was bruised for weeks, afterward."
Gregor glanced up, and Aral was looking down, now. Cordelia was looking back and forth quickly from one of them to the other.
"Drou came and got me after a couple of days," Gregor said. "Father had left me alone with some servants by then--he was going off to hunt big game, they told me, and my pony wouldn't be able to keep up. When Drou came, there were men with her, but not footmen. ImpSec. She told me it was because Father's hunting lodge was so hard to find, she needed ImpSec to guide her there. But Mother was waiting for us at the landing pad for the lightflyer, as if I'd been gone a year. As if she thought she'd never see me again. And when she saw the bruise on my shoulder, later, she cried."
When Gregor looked up this time, Aral was watching him steadily. There was a terrible, total silence for a moment, and then Aral nodded.
"You're right," he said. "She was afraid she would never see you again. Your father had attempted to divorce her on the grounds of abandonment--on the grounds of her refusal to grant his conjugal rights. A divorce would have given him total custody of you, and his taking you away at your birthday was an exercise of that right. Your grandfather quashed the whole thing, of course. The ImpSec men were there to enforce his private ruling that Princess Kareen should have full and sole custody of you so long as she continued to reside in the Imperial Residence."
"He hurt her, didn't he," Gregor blurted, because that was the thing he had to know, had been dying to know and not daring to ask for weeks. "They said--on Komarr, they said he was a sadist, a rapist, torturer--he hurt my mother, didn't he?"
Aral looked down at his folded hands. "Probably, yes."
Gregor clenched his fists, years too late, remembering with a sick sinking feeling how delighted he had been by the gift of the air rifle, by the far rarer gift of his father's attention. He had thought that that might be something pure, those few days with his father. He had thought--he had hoped that his father's kindness to him was something separate from his father's cruelty to others.
"I was never told precisely what your mother feared from your father, or in what manner he might have harmed her. When they married, before you were born, he was... he was not yet at his worst, though the signs were there. After she became pregnant your grandfather protected your mother."
Gregor looked up, startled, and then understood. "Grandfather wouldn't risk her miscarrying, you mean. I was worth protecting, but she wasn't."
Aral spread his hands. "We didn't have replicators then. Kareen had agreed to marry Prince Serg. If he treated her roughly, that was no more than many Vor husbands did to their wives."
Gregor looked over at Cordelia. "The decree--that clause, about allowing wives to testify against their husbands in any matter of direct harm to themselves or their children--that--"
"Yes," Cordelia said quietly. "Every other woman in a marriage like your mother's has the right to prosecute her husband, now. You did that, even if you didn't quite know why."
Gregor shook his head, deflecting any notion that his inclusion of a few sentences to please Cordelia had been praiseworthy. His father had not been like many Vor husbands. There was something more here, something that Aral felt compelled to tell him as Count Vorkosigan, not the Admiral, not the Prime Minister. "He was worse than that, wasn't he," Gregor said. "It wasn't just...."
Aral took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.
"He was worse than any man of his generation, by the time he died," Aral said calmly. Gregor thought, distantly, that he wasn't the only one who'd been practicing his words. "Prince Serg was a rapist, for certain, and much more. He was not only dangerous to your mother, Gregor, or to you. Serg attempted twice to bring about the assassination of the Emperor your grandfather."
Gregor froze. He had feared to find out how cruel his father had been, how heartless--a sadist, a sociopath, a man who would have been a criminal if he were not a prince. But his father had been a war hero, with a whole world for a namesake. Gregor had never imagined that Prince Serg could have been a traitor.
"I don’t understand," he said, but his voice emerged as small as a child's. Aral gave him a thoughtful look. Gregor dared not even look at Cordelia, who must know this already, if Aral said it in front of her. How could she know? Who else knew?
"Prince Serg was heir to the throne. His personal perversions were extreme, but that might have been merely scandalous. The truly dangerous thing about him was his thirst for power, and his refusal to accept any limit upon it. He would have been another Emperor Yuri, if he had lived to rule."
His blood is in me, Gregor thought in blank and absolute horror. Another Yuri, if he had not fallen in battle, and he was my father.
"Sire," Aral said quietly, and Gregor snapped back into sharp, adrenaline-heightened focus. Aral looked grim. Cordelia's face was a mask. The worst is not yet said.
"I know all of this because Emperor Ezar and Captain Negri apprised me of it. I know this because they sought to use me, personally and directly, to solve the problem of Prince Serg. He was a danger to the Imperium. He could not be allowed to rule."
"No," Gregor said, scarcely conscious of speaking. "No." Not you, not you, not Aral Vorkosigan, never.
Aral bowed his head. "Sire. I confess to you now, of my own free will, without duress and because it is your right as my Emperor, my liege lord, and my commander, to know it: I alone among men now living engineered the death of Prince Serg at the invasion of Escobar. The war was a weapon. I engineered it, and pushed your father into its path. Five thousand Barrayarans died to kill him and his party, along with hundreds of Escobarans and dozens of Betans."
Gregor shook his head silently. I alone among men now living. "Grandfa--"
He choked on the word. All my life I hoped I would be like him. All my life I hoped to be my grandfather's grandson and not my father's son. But half of Prince Serg's blood was his. He manufactured a war to murder his son.
"The Emperor," Gregor said, "and Captain Negri. You said they told you what Prince Serg was, how dangerous he was."
Aral nodded slightly. "They wanted the thing done, and persuaded me of the necessity. Much of the strategy and the execution was mine--I offered to simply assassinate him myself, but that wouldn't have been enough. Grishnov, Vorrutyer--if their party survived they would have succeeded where Vordarian failed."
Vordarian had succeeded well enough to kill Gregor's mother and send Gregor himself into hiding for weeks, to say nothing of killing nearly as many men in the fighting as had been lost in the Escobar War.
"Did you," Gregor whispered, his mouth gone dry. He had to ask, and couldn't wait weeks to get up his nerve, this time. "Was it a bargain? The regency for the war?"
Aral's head snapped back as if Gregor had struck him, his face draining pale for the first time. "Gregor, no. Not that. I served your grandfather blood and bone, and the regency was no reward. I tried to retire, after the war. Ezar just wasn't finished with me."
But you were my father, Gregor didn't say. But I believed in you.
"I was the only man he trusted to step down when you came of age," Aral said softly. "If nothing else, I knew the price of overreaching down to the last drop of blood."
Gregor's hands were shaking. "Aral, why--why are you telling me this?"
"Because you asked," Aral said evenly. "Because you are my Emperor, and you have a right to know what manner of man serves you."
Gregor folded forward, letting his elbows rest on his knees and his face in his hands. He felt off-balance, almost literally dizzy. What manner of man could conjure up a bloody, brutal defeat for his own people--a mass murder on an unimaginable scale--and then turn around and kneel to a five-year-old boy, in what had proven to be all sincerity?
Aral said quietly, "Cordelia, would you excuse us?"
Gregor flinched. He'd nearly forgotten she was there. He looked up to find that both Vorkosigans were on their feet. Cordelia's hands were on Aral's face as she kissed him--kissed him goodbye? His hands remained at his sides, and his eyes were closed. Gregor stared, nonplussed.
Cordelia released her husband, and turned to cross the space to Gregor, though the door was in the opposite direction. Her hand brushed gently over his hair, and she said, "Remember that you are both your mothers' sons."
Then she turned and walked out, leaving him alone with the man his grandfather had used to kill his father.
Aral did not sit again. He walked over to Gregor as Cordelia had done, but sank down to his knees before him. Gregor sat back automatically, straightening his spine and trying to force himself to breathe.
"Sire," Aral said, with his hands still at his sides and his head bowed, exposing the nape of his neck to Gregor's horrified gaze. "I wish to be very clearly understood. Although the order originated from the Emperor, it was--I knew it to be--a criminal order. It was a hundred times more deadly than the one issued at Solstice, spawning dozens of other atrocities within it."
Gregor's stomach turned, and he plastered one hand over his mouth. It had been more than six years since he sat in an auditorium with the other cadets for Admiral Vorkosigan's seminar on criminal orders, but Gregor remembered it, and then, too, he knew the one essential truth.
Vorkosigan had killed the man who issued the order at Solstice.
"I submit myself to your justice, or to your revenge, if you wish it. That is your right, for your father and for the five thousand men of your military whose lives were squandered. I think you may not choose make it a public matter, but if you wish to wake in the morning to find I have suffered a fatal accident in the night, it shall be done."
Gregor bit down hard on his finger, willing himself to wake up, wake up, wake up.
"I only ask that you permit Cordelia to go into exile," Aral said, without looking up. "She was an enemy combatant then, and knew nothing before it happened. Likewise my son is innocent of his father's sins, and you know the measure of his loyalty. If you only wish me in exile, or out of your government--"
"Stop," Gregor finally demanded, dropping his hand to Aral's shoulder.
Aral looked up, meeting his eyes with a calm, searching look.
"You are Aral Vorkosigan," Gregor said, holding Aral's gaze and trying his best for ringing, official tones. If his voice shook, it was nonetheless the Emperor's Voice, and what he decreed this man, of all men, would uphold. "You served my grandfather blood and bone, and you have served me the same. What the Emperor required of you is the Emperor's responsibility, and for my part I refuse to be deprived of the best father I was ever granted."
Aral blinked quickly, and bowed his head. "Thank you," he said, his voice tear-roughened, and Gregor slid out of his own chair to kneel beside Aral, embracing him fiercely.
"Thank you," Aral repeated, and then laughed a little. "Cordelia was right, of course. You are your mother's son."
Both of them, Gregor thought. Aloud he said only, "I won't give my sons reason to wish they did not share my blood."
"And so we all keep finding our way forward," Aral said, getting to his feet and drawing Gregor up with him. "I'd better go and tell Cordelia she doesn't have to kidnap me for my own safety."
It wasn't funny, but Gregor laughed anyway, and couldn't stop. Of course Cordelia would have kidnapped Aral; of course she wouldn't have let him come to harm, no matter what Gregor demanded of him. Vordarian had killed Princess Kareen, but Cordelia had killed Vordarian.
She came in just then, and Gregor kept on laughing helplessly as she came over to where he stood leaning against Aral.
"I take it that went all right, then," she said. "Except--Gregor, why in the world is your hand bleeding?"
no subject
no subject