Title: Winterfair Adventure
Rating: G/PG (references to two naked Armsmen, mild horniness in
a teenage boy)
Pairing: N/A
Disclaimer: Not mine! Characters and settings courtesy of
and copyrighted by Lois McMaster Bujold
Summary: Gregor handles a Miles-initiated near-disaster with
adolescent aplomb.
Written for mummimamma as a very late submission to the 2nd Annual Bujold
Ficathon
~~~~**~~~~
"Yes, Count Vorsmythe," Gregor said, "my Lord Regent has informed me of
the new lightflyer
manufacturing facility in your district..." He stifled a
yawn,
keeping in mind what his Lord Regent had told him about Count
Vorsmythe's ability "to buy anything he wants, including political
favors." Luckily, at that moment a servitor appeared with the
fish
course -- real fish, caught at Vorkosigan Surleau and quick-frozen the
previous summer. The fish now swam in butter -- appealing to
Gregor's
ever-increasing food capacity -- rather than in the cold
lake.
Conversation stopped as everyone waited for him to take the first
bite;
no
one would
think of
beginning to eat before their Emperor did. He heard a slight
scuffling
noise, and froze for a moment when he realized that it came from the
"heating grate" behind the Lord Regent. It was not a heating
grate
at all, but a secret entrance to the maze of passageways that would
allow him to escape the Residence, even from this, its most formal
"small" dining room -- small meaning seating less than 100
people.
When no armed invaders burst through, Gregor took a bite of the fish,
and
smiled to himself as his guests murmured appreciation of the
high-quality cuisine. He assumed the scuffling had been a
mouse. The Residence was plagued
with
mice every winter, come in from the cold streets of Vorbarr Sultana to
gather, mate, chew things, and generally annoy the human inhabitants.
He wondered what his young friends, Miles, Ivan, and Elena, were
up to. He'd been able to stop in at the Residence's childrens'
quarters for a
few
minutes before this banquet, where Miles had flattened him at Tacti-Go,
Ivan had teased him about it, because since when was The Emperor
beatable by a little kid, and Elena had just looked fiercely
protective of him. Gregor had promised them -- so odd, now, to be
the pseudo-adult promiser, rather than
the promisee -- places on the Residence's highest tower to watch
tonight's fireworks, and this brought on nervous excitement and vows
that none of them would allow the others to fall asleep before
the sky lit up at midnight.
When the fish was just a buttery memory, there was more
conversation, none
of it of particular interest to Gregor, especially since he knew that,
unlike the spontaneity he got from Miles or Ivan, every word was
measured and constructed for his consumption. No
other fourteen year old boy on Barrayar -- or anywhere in the Nexus for
that matter
-- received such deference from adults. He snuck a grin at Lady
Vorkosigan, who was stuck in an interminable conversation between the
tedious Count Vorsmythe and
the High Minister for Trade, a man interesting only to those who
appreciated long discourses on economic modeling.
A salad course interrupted the chatter once again. The Lord
Regent Aral Vorkosigan seemed to approve of Gregor's performance
tonight, and Lady Alys apparently found no fault with his table
manners, as she hadn't even arched an eyebrow at him.
Just a few months before, when Gregor was about to start upper-level
boarding school, the
Lord Regent had informed him that his school breaks would no longer be
quiet vacations spent with his extended foster family. Now was
the time for him to circulate
more amongst the High Vor, to accustom them to thinking of him as the
Emperor, rather than the Boy Emperor. Gregor had not comprehended
the
difference until he had been subject to several of his Aral's
tart lectures on strategy, focusing especially on those points that had
proven underdeveloped in his charge. But every time, Lady
Cordelia Vorkosigan,
the Regent Consort, had found time to spend with Gregor afterwards,
reassuring him
that he would grow into the role, and grow into it better so long as he
thought of it as just that -- a role.
"You should cut a swath
through
this milieu, keeping a bit of your humanity off display, a treasure to
be shared with those you love as well as serve." That
was, in
fact, exactly what she herself did, effortlessly remaining ever so
slightly apart in public, turning lively and completely engaged in
private. If he could just learn to do it half as well as she
did....
There was a sudden commotion just outside the dining room, and the
"servitors"
dropped their pretence, instantly transforming into the Residence
Guards and ImpSec agents they really were. Several of them
clustered around their Emperor, their keen duty to
protect him from harm just making him feel more claustrophobic.
All the High Vor chatter had come to a standstill, all eyes were on the
door, and a few Counts were reaching for the ceremonial daggers
they kept in their boots.
Armsman Bothari, Miles' bodyguard, burst into the
room, a flimsy crumpled in his hand. His wail of
"Elena..."
sent Cordelia springing out of
her seat and running towards him.
She grabbed the flimsy, scanned it... and
laughed. Her father-in-law, Count Vorkosigan, scowled at her
impropriety from across the room. Her husband the Lord Regent
went to her side,
and the contents of the flimsy shot the corners of his mouth and his
eyebrows up, and he spluttered a bit before regaining his usual
sternness. Gregor was intrigued enough to go see for himself.
When Aral handed him the flimsy, he read, in Elena Bothari's childish
but neat handwriting,
Dear Father,
Miles and Ivan and I
are in the secret tunnels looking for where Father Frost stores our
presents. I am sorry.
Elena
P.S. I also took two of Miles' casts from your
drawer for if he gets hurt.
"I want to help look for them," Gregor said. "If nothing else,
they're obviously having quite an adventure." He hoped that his
boredom with the dinner party wasn't too obvious, and wondered if he
ought to feel bad for preferring the company of children over a feast
with the High Vor.
The Lord Regent frowned as he replied, "Sire, your duties as host
preclude that. And the note may have
been forced out of the girl... there could be kidnappers just waiting
for you to be drawn in by your friends' peril."
In a low but furious whisper, Lady Vorkosigan said, "That's
ridiculous! We would know if the Residence had been
breached. This is his house. Gregor's
home. And, Aral..." It was a bad sign when she
addressed her husband by his first
name in public, not to mention dropping all pretenses of protocol over
the proper name for her foster son. "I insisted it be treated as such
when he was five, and
just because he's now fourteen and you've hyped up his indoctrination
doesn't change that!"
Alys Vorpatril was not the only person, reading the body langiuage of
this argument even
though they could not hear it, with hand over mouth. The two
Vorkosigans were eye to eye,
Lady and Lord equal in height and
force, matching breath for breath. Gregor wondered if anyone else
watching this scene was still breathing; he certainly wasn't.
After a few moments, the slight slump appearing in
Aral's shoulders told Gregor who would prevail.
As he and his entourage moved down a corridor -- rather noisily, Gregor
thought, if their goal was to catch naughty children -- he was just
relieved to not be the focus of the High Vor, at least
temporarily. Aral Vorkosigan and Lady Vorpatril would keep the
dinner party running in his absense, while Cordelia comforted the
panicked Bothari in a side salon. Gregor recalled that the
Sergeant had been in the tunnels before,
on the rescue mission for Miles' replicator during the war.
Whatever the Sergeant remembered, it must have been horrible, so it was
no wonder that he was panicking over where his daughter was. He
saw my mother die.... Gregor had tried to banish all his memories
of her, but had found that the slightest reminder brough them all
flooding back. Quiet, now... that's all gone. Stay here.
He was, however, getting better at talking himself down from the
distress this caused.
He heard an ImpSec guard behind him say, "A scullery maid?" They
stopped
for a moment while the man listened to the details transmitted through
his earbug, and confirmed them out loud. "In her room.
Colbert was stark naked? Lord Miles, Lord Ivan, and Miss Elena
all were there? I
see. The presents are undamaged but the maid's modesty is
not. Oh, not the children's presents, the staff presents. A
relief, yes, that they have not been kidnapped. Well, thank
you." The guard sounded bemused, and had to collect himself for a
moment before turning to them and said, "The below-stairs guard
suggests that the
children are likely below-stairs themselves, though no one has seen
them except that maid and, um..." The man stopped
short. "The maid and Colbert, um, yes, um Sire, a
situation..."
The guard was stumbling over his words, no doubt because he wasn't sure
that his Emperor should be listening. Not that
Gregor didn't know exactly what the situation entailed.
He definitely
envied the guard Colbert, well, up until the interruption of three
unwanted small guests.
"The children might be hungry by now," one of Gregor's Armsmen
interrupted,
rescuing
the guard from saying any more. The Armsman was a father of
seven, so his nose for the motivations and
mischief of children were well-respected, so the group descended
towards the Residence kitchens.
They found the kitchen staff in a frenzy of food preparation, trying to
keep
the as-yet unserved food presentable, but no children. Finally
they reached the last kitchen in the hallway, the dessert kitchen
normally ruled with a fierce hand by a very grouchy
and talented chef, and it was
obvious they had found their target, as gleeful laughter could be heard
within. There was a damp thwop against the other side of
the door,
followed by
a boyish, teasing, "Missed me, missed me, now you gotta kiss me!"
Ivan. Two ImpSec guards approached the door from either
side,
while a third stepped forward to open it.
"Stop," said Gregor, putting a hand on the man's shoulder. "I
want to be the first in..." The guard opened his mouth as if to
argue, and closed it at Gregor's glare. He could hear in the
background someone saying, "He's growing up, our boy..."
Along with Lady Vorkosigan's earlier reminder, "Gregor's home,"
this was a statement Gregor could cherish for a long time.
He threw open the door, which sent Ivan crashing into one of the
corners. And was hit in the chest -- which let him know that the
target was Ivan's face -- by a cream torte. A high-pitched "Urk,
Sire!"
came from the other end of the kitchen island. There was a moment
of stunned silence.
Gregor surveyed the room, its inhabitants, and the damages. There
was an Ivan-shaped depression crushed into the cream tortes on the
kitchen
island before him. In fact, the remnants of what should have been
the Winterfair Ball's most traditional dessert offering were plastered
all over the room -- floors, countertops, and walls, and there were
even a few splats of cream filling on the ceilings. To Gregor's
left,
Lord Ivan Vorpatril was stifling his laughter. Only his face was
not covered with ruined pastries, though the filth of the tunnels had
turned it brown. To his right, wide-eyed Elena Bothari, not
quite as bedraggled as Ivan, held a hand over her mouth.
And then there was Miles, even more filthy and torte-covered, the only
one
who'd tried to dignify the situation by addressing Gregor in proper
Imperial etiquette, minus the "Urk" of course. In his most formal
voice -- which did not crack, for once -- Gregor
addressed him. "I commend you for your most excellent aim,
Lord
Vorkosigan."
There was really only one thing to do, he realized. He reached
for one of the few intact tortes remaining, took aim....
...and was stopped short by a tremendous roar from a side
entrance.
"What! What have you done, you little monsters? I'll
strangle you all...." It was the dessert chef, of course.
"I'm, I'm.... aaaauggh!" She rushed towards Ivan, holding her hands out
as if to strangle him, until Gregor coughed
softly.
The chef stopped dead, the red in her face now a mix of anger and
shame. She wrung her hands in her apron, as if expecting
punishment. She'd been dessert chef since Emperor Ezar's time, so
no doubt she had seen what the hand of an enraged Emperor could
do. "S....sss...sire...." she finally managed to stutter out.
"Yes, I am," Gregor said quietly. The chef began to weep, and
Ivan and Miles took advantage of this distraction to make a run for
it out the side entrance. Gregor quickly dispatched a few guards
to help clean up the
mess, then beckoned Elena, took her arm, and said, "We should go find
them before this gets any worse." She nodded gravely.
"So you went looking for Father Frost's gifts?" he asked Elena as they
made their way upstairs. He'd sent several guards -- the younger,
kinder ones -- on ahead to the childrens' quarters to corral Miles and
Ivan.
"Yes, S..ss... Gregor. It was Ivan's idea..."
"You'd think he would have learned after last year." Yes, last
year, when
Miles and Ivan had found the Armsmen's dressing room, where the
presents were stored,
started opening them, and been interrupted by a furious
Vorbarra
Armsman -- as it turns out, the one who'd played Father Frost for years
-- emerging from the shower. He'd been so offended that he'd
resigned his position as Father Frost, and another Armsman had been
pressed into service at the last minute. After consulting with
Lady Alys, Aral Vorkosigan had decided that the only appropriate
punishment was for Miles and Ivan to send all their Winterfair presents
to the needy children of one of the poorest villages in the Dendarii
mountains.
"I thought it was pretty stupid. But when they asked me..."
Elena's voice shook, and her eyes brimmed with tears. "I
thought maybe if I saw my presents ahead of time, I wouldn't get Father
and Aunt Alys mad at me like last year."
Gregor stopped and turned Elena to face him. She was tall for her
age, and quiet, and tried so hard to keep her father's good
graces. "I know hair ribbons
and dolls weren't what you wanted," Gregor said. "This year, we
have a
Mother Frost, a cetain Betan Vor in fact," he said with a wink, "who is
making sure you get some, um, less girly gifts too." What had
happened with Elena last Winterfair was even worse than Ivan and Miles
getting into the presents early. She'd cried at her haul, the
"pretties" that had satisfied her when she was younger now representing
the restraints put on her future. He'd nearly wept with her,
because it was just what
he had experienced when he was younger,
when he'd realized Emperors could never become jump pilots (his mania
at the time).
As they continued, Gregor found out from Elena that the explorers had,
in fact,
been responsible for the noises he'd heard while waiting for the fish
course. That they'd nearly been discovered when they
climbed up the inside of one of the Residence turrets, and an
unknowing ImpSec guard had kicked a shower of dirty snow through the
grate onto their
heads. And that they'd gone "down and down and down" as Elena put
it, and found a secret stash of commoner's clothing and false
IDs. It was only through Elena's insistence that they had left
these undisturbed. Simon Illyan would be very displeased at
hearing the "secure" hiding place had been
discovered. Elena blushed furiously while she described their
encounter with Colbert and the hapless maid, worrying that Colbert
would be mean to her because she'd seen him naked.
Gregor let
that lie, even though he knew that his quartermaster would certainly
fire Colbert -- and the maid -- before the stench of the powder from
the Winterfair
fireworks disappeared from the air. He would miss the guard, one
of the few who was within the upper reaches of Gregor's generation, and
felt badly for his companion. He was slightly embarrassed
to have no idea which maid she might be, one of perhaps a hundred girls
working in the Residence. He realized that he wanted to know the
servants better, to squeeze in some time to talk with them, maybe two
or three at a time. In between the boarding school, and the Lord
Regent's politicking, and Lady Alys's social instructions... Oh,
she'll just die over this, he thought. He could already see,
in her careful shepherding, that she intended to be his matchmaker, his
baba, when the time came. "Meeting the servants" would not be on
her agenda. But maybe Lady Vorkosigan, from servant-less Beta,
maybe she would understand.
As they reached a junction in the hallway, an Armsman came up to
escort Elena back to the children's rooms, but she tugged on Gregor's
sleeve, and asked, "Could I go see if my father is OK?"
"Oh, of course!" he answered. "Last I saw, Lady Vorkosigan was
comforting him in a side room by the banquet. I am sure he would
be relieved to see you."
"I think he'll just be mad at me..."
"But you still want to go, right?"
"Yes."
The Armsman jumped into the conversation. "Sire, Miss Elena is
not... presentable,
don't you think?"
Well, Elena was filthy and bedraggled, and had added tear-streaks
running down through the grime on her face, but Gregor just firmly
said, "It won't
matter to Armsman Bothari," and they went on.
At about ten meters distance from the banquet room, the guards swept
the doors open. The chatter within immediately changed to
a low murmur as the attendees anticipated their Emperor's return, never
mind that their Emperor, given a choice, would have hauled off to the
children's quarters himself, at the very least to prove to Miles that
he would not always win at Tacti-Go.
But before they got any futher, a grate just beside the door clanged to
the floor, and Gregor found
himself momentarily surrounded by guards, many of whom were drawing
weapons. Two small figures appeared -- Miles, as if Gregor's
thought had summoned him, and Ivan, clearly having escaped their
escorts. "Wait, they can't go in there! The Count! The Lord
Regent!" one of the guards
shouted, as Miles and Ivan rushed away from them right into the
banquet.
Gregor pushed forward, just in time to see Miles trip on the carpet in
the entryway and fall to the floor with
an
audible crack of bone. Gregor smiled, just
barely, as Elena pulled an inflatable cast from her
skirt pockets and ran to help her friend.
~~~~**~~~~
They waited in the salon just off the "small" dining room at the
Imperial Residence. "I don't see, kiddo," Cordelia said, "how you
could expect anything else. They are your sons, after all..."
Miles hated it when his mother called him "kiddo." He was in his
forties, married, had three children of his own... two of whom had gone
missing from the childrens' quarters during the Emperor's Winterfair
banquet. They'd been detected in the secret passageways disguised
as a heating system, and at last report seemed to be headed towards the
dessert kitchen. Gregor, for some reason, had insisted on leaving
the banquet to aid his staff.
"Did you have to remind me?" Miles groaned.
"Do I need to answer that question?"
Miles sighed.