"Oh goodness. Luck, certainly - what's the convalescence supposed to be like?"

"Depending on complications - I could be a few days flat on my back in the hospital and then a week or so at home strongly disinclined to walk; or a week of the one and up to a couple months of the other. I'm guessing somewhere in between."

"Are you going to get a float-chair or shall I anticipate carrying you from place to place?"

"You're welcome to carry me around the house as much as you like. I confess I was anticipating shuffling around grumpily on my own unhappy feet—stomping being strictly off-limits, you see. "

"But you are highly portable. You should not have to shuffle on unhappy feet."

"I guess I'm still not used to having a... porter." Braid braid braid. "Have I mentioned recently that I love your hair?"

"Yes, you have."

"Well, I'm mentioning it again."

"I love you," she sighs fondly.

"...I love you too," says Miles, unutterably pleased. "I will hug you in a few minutes when I reach my next stopping point."

Linya giggles.

"Well, I'm not going to just drop the braid," he says, and then he also giggles.

"You've been known to," she points out archly.

"Truuuue. Don't tempt me, this one's going perfectly so far and I want to finish it."

"Tempting you is tempting." But she doesn't budge.

"I love you," sighs Miles.

"I love you too. It occurred to me last night that you were probably doing that 'waiting indefinitely for me to bring it up' thing."

"Er - it was more a case of waiting until later, but 'later' was imprecisely defined."

"Similar enough," declares Linya.

"If you say so." Braid braid braaaaaaaaid.

"What is visitation going to be like when you're in the hospital for whatever amount of time?"

"Um - I'm not really sure what the deal is from your end. Talk to Mother," he advises. "She has practice."

"Will do. I imagine it's very dull there."

"Oh, yes. Extremely."

"And I can work on pen software and French just as well there as anywhere. Maybe bring in my keyboard, if there's a good way to transport it."

"Mother will know, or be able to find out."

Linya makes a note of this. "On an unrelated note, my estimate is that I'll know whether or not I'm ever going to be able to figure out your complicated nib in a couple of months - maybe sooner, but that's when I'll give up on it if it looks terribly unpromising."

Linya holds her pen over her shoulder, takes a holo of her hair, and then brings it around to have a look. "Lovely," she pronounces.

"I know," he says, somewhat smugly. "And almost done, too."

"You have become extremely vain about my braids. It's really cute."

"It's a legitimate demonstration of skill! And it means I get to contribute to making you even prettier than your astronomical baseline!"

"And it's really cute," she repeats.

He giggles.

So does she.

Hug! Yay. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Kiss.

Snuggle-kiss!

And later on, Linya asks Cordelia about what she'll need to know about visiting Miles and possibly transporting her keyboard there to entertain him with while he is bored and flat.

"Bored and flat. What an excellent description," says Cordelia. "Visiting hours usually correspond roughly to daylight, minus a four-hour block in the morning. I don't know offhand about the keyboard, but I feel confident we can get it in somehow."

"All right then. I suppose it's not too bulky to just literally carry, if they'll let me leave it in his room and I only have to do it twice. I think I'll call them and ask."

"Good plan."

So Linya calls the hospital and asks. They say they will let her leave the keyboard in the room as long as she brings something with which to lock it to an immobile furnishing, since they don't have the insurance to replace it for her if somebody walks off with it. She buys a lock.

The scheduled day arrives. The surgery goes well, according to the informational updates sent to Miles's family - no surprises. The day after, family members are permitted to visit.

"Hi," he says, producing a slightly strained smile. "Painkillers are my second favourite thing."

Linya locks her keyboard to a decorative bar near the windowsill and then sits on the edge of his bed and smooths his hair. "I believe I shall take that directly as a compliment rather than attempting modesty."

"I adore your perceptiveness."

Linya kisses his forehead. "Are they keeping you reasonably comfortable?"

"As comfortable as it gets, which isn't very. Ugh. Have I mentioned I hate surgery? I hate surgery, Linya."

She pets him. "Well, hopefully I can distract you. Preferences?"

"The hair-petting is very nice," he admits. "And you managed to bring your keyboard... it'd be a bit much to ask you to do both at the same time, I suppose."

"A bit. I could pet you and sing at the same time."

"Ooh."

She kisses his forehead again and starts singing.

It is definitely an improvement on being bored and flat all by himself.

Linya sings to him until she needs to nip out for lunch, and then she comes back and goes on petting him with one hand while she programs with the other. She behaves roughly the same on the remaining three days, and then Miles is discharged; she brings an Armsman with her to the hospital to haul her keyboard so she can carry her husband out herself. (There is also a car involved, but both Miles and the keyboard need to be brought to the car.)

Miles is, under the circumstances, completely willing to let his wife carry him in semi-public. It sure beats walking out by himself.

She kisses his head. "Our rooms it is." And she ports her portable little Barrayaran there.

"You are definitely my favourite porter. Ooh, bed." He snuggles into the blankets. "Disappointingly unmagical, but still better than what I just left."

"You'd think for all the little reminder sheets about turning patients to avoid bedsores that I saw posted around the place, they'd save themselves a little work with nicer sheets."

"Eh. The bedsheets and the reminder sheets are probably procured by different departments. Bureaucracy, you know."

"Oh? No single 'sheet department'? How inefficient."

He giggles. "Department of Sheets. Amazing."

"For all your reminder notice, bedclothes, and printed musical notation needs."

"And, and... what else comes in sheets? Loose flimsies... metal..."

"Complex planes. Financial summaries."

"Parchment!" giggles Miles. "To-be-assembled plastic models!"

Linya giggles and gives him a careful hug that does not interfere with his recuperating legs.

He hugs back. "I love you. This is much better than grouching around the house by myself."

"Are you usually a terrible grouch when convalescent?"

"Yes. Awful. Be glad you've been spared so far. I apologize in advance if I get moody."

"Why, are you likely to snap at me or just - brood, be somewhat less effusive in your appreciation for all things Linya-related, what?"

"I'm not actually sure. I've never been simultaneously in the dumps and married before. I do snap occasionally, and brood, and moan, and sleep a lot, and have a general difficulty bestirring myself to enjoy things - these are all symptoms of a bad mood, of which convalescence is but one cause. Sometimes they happen by themselves."

"Noted. What's the prescribed treatment if I should observe this to befall you?"

"Er... I don't know, I've never had to deal with me. Ask Mother? Ask Ivan? On second thought, save Ivan for a last resort; I'm not sure I'd be pleased with his suggestions."

"Why, what would he do?"

"Dump a bucket of water over my head, on one memorable occasion."

"...I would think that would tend to make a bad mood worse."

"Yes, I'd think that too. It did at least briefly redirect my attention away from mopery. Opinions may vary on whether or not the cure was worse than the disease."

"Do you tend to come out of these moods on your own if left to your own devices? I have no desire to dump water on your head, but if it proves that civil methods don't render you palatable company..."

"I'm not in one now, so they are demonstrably impermanent. They last a while sometimes, but not for months or anything."

"For all I knew your cousin has been taking other suggestions from the same inspiration that led to excessively hydrating you, once annually for your entire life," she points out.

He laughs. "Thankfully, no."

"Good." She kisses his forehead.

He snuggles up contentedly.

Linya finds a snuggling position that leaves one of her arms free, and does some programming.

They can. Linya mostly loiters around their suite in case he wants to go somewhere and to keep him company, though she gets plenty of her own work done too, and does ask when it's time for her econ lesson if he'd rather she took the call in another room.

"Nah, 'sfine," yawns Miles. "Just as long as you don't get your convalescent husband on the vid, I'm sure I look absolutely pathetic, nobody wants to see that."

"You look tired, mostly," she tells him, kissing the end of his nose. "Which is striking compared to your usual. But all right." And she goes and turns the comcomsole so it doesn't include the bed and calls Tsipis, and they talk about fungibility and the parable of the broken window and the estimated production date for the physical casing of Cordelia's pen, by which time Linya optimistically hopes to have a serviceable software package set up. (There will, of course, be updates later.)

Miles cuddles a pillow and listens and reflects that he is absolutely the luckiest man alive.

The lesson cum status update lasts about an hour, and then Linya hangs up and goes back over to Miles to pet him because he is cute and pettable. "Really," she remarks, "the only thing stopping me from suggesting that we get married over again next week is that I can't ask him to be my Second. I like Cordelia but we don't have nearly as much to talk about, you see, so I've been dithering - and if my Second can't be related to you or something and this wasn't mentioned in the book, I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Technically the Seconds aren't strictly necessary - but it would be nice. Symmetrical. I'd pick Ivan for mine. The origin of the custom does suggest that the bride's Second shouldn't be the groom's mother, but fear not, the practice of the Second serving as substitute spouse in case the principal drops dead before the ceremony has been abandoned for at least a hundred years if I remember right. Um - perhaps you can find an excitable female optics engineer to have regular chats with?"

"The person from the holos company who answered my letter is named 'Jocelyn', which in dialects I have more experience with is unisex, and their gender didn't come up in the discussion of how your complicated nib might be made to work. Does it strongly suggest a gender here?"

"Um - offhand I think it can be optionally gendered with spelling. Does it have a double N at the end or a double S in the middle? Those are girl-markers."

"Neither, alas."

"Well, then, it remains a mystery."

"Perhaps I will go visit their office and see. It's reasonably likely there are some female-type people on this planet who are not related to you who would be friends with me. Why, I haven't even been to any Vorish social functions yet to distinguish between who runs screaming at my approach and who is reasonably well-convinced that I don't bite, let alone identify those with interesting areas of expertise and limited prejudices."

"Maybe we should host one," Miles says whimsically. "A Vorish social function, that is. Come Meet The New Lady Vorkosigan, We Promise She's Harmless?"

"Come one, come all, behold as Lady Vorkosigan eats twice her share of hors d'oeuvres and does not at any time prove to be venomous?"

"Yes. Perfect. Just as soon as I can wobble along on my own two feet without the intervention of heavy painkillers. I'm sure having you carry me would be adorable, but I'm not sure my dignity could bear the strain."

"Your dignity seems very fragile. Perhaps that should be replaced next," she teases.

Miles giggles. "Alas, medical science has not yet learned how to synthesize them."

"Perhaps that will have to be my next project. Synthetic dignity. On second thought, overdoses would be a disaster."

"And the potential for addiction has got to be vast."

"Yes. Dignity abuse, the scourge of our age. I will not invent it in consumable form. You will have to make do."

"But my need is so great! I demand reparations for your failure to act. A hug should do." He holds out his arms.

"I am glad that your needs are so easily filled." Huggle.

Snuggle-huggle. "It's not that my needs are especially easy to fill, it's that your hugs are especially restorative."

"Perhaps I should have traipsed about hugging every patient in the hospital, just in case it was the key ingredient to recovery."

"Damn! Well, too late now. You're needed here." Huggle-snuggle.

"Yes, it would be very callous of me to abandon you." Snugs.

Miles stifles a yawn, and considers possible responses, and settles on a sleepy, "I love you."

"Napping. Reportedly, less surly than he normally is when convalescing."

"Good for Miles."

"Yes. ...Earlier, in discussing the quandary of finding a feasible Second for me who is neither related to my husband nor of an inappropriate gender, we came up with the only mostly facetious idea of some kind of social event to demonstrate that I don't bite; I don't know how feasible that would be."

"I think it's perfectly reasonable," says Cordelia. "It could be very helpful for sorting people into categories like 'openly hostile', 'tacitly approving', and 'undecided', and maybe even reaching a few of that last group."

"It should wait until he can comfortably walk, at least, and possibly also until I've had a crash course in wooing the uncertain."

"Sensible. We'll see how fast he's recovering, then, so we know how to schedule things. As for your crash course... I'm all for it, but did you have an instructor in mind?"

"Not especially. You? Alys, maybe, although I'm less sure she'll be able to produce comprehensible instructions, I can barely understand her when she's explaining how bolero jackets ought to interact with necklaces."

"Well, I'll do the best I can."

"I volunteer as strategic consultant," says Aral. "I daresay I can go down the guest list - once we have one - and guess which way some of 'em are going to jump, and how their trajectory might be altered."

"For that matter, you can help me assemble the guest list," says Cordelia. "I might ask Gregor for some input there, too."

"This has become much less facetious all of a sudden. What are parties here like, what happens at them?"

"Rampant ethanol consumption," says Cordelia. "Food. Dancing. Or did you mean at Vorkosigan House specifically? We don't tend to host this sort of thing."

"Perhaps given this freeing lack of precedent we could omit the ethanol. I have historically tried to avoid dancing, too, for that matter, although I suppose I could revise the habit in different company."

"The ethanol is a longstanding cultural tradition. You don't have to partake, but hosting a large Vor social gathering without it would be sort of like - I don't know a good Cetagandan example. Ask Miles for one, maybe; he's been to Cetagandan social gatherings. It would be extremely off-putting to the guests. You don't have to dance, either, but again - abstaining for yourself is one thing; denying everyone else the opportunity is another."

"Fair enough. I don't have as much information about ghem and prole parties, but haut parties invariably have music and food and elaborate decorations," she supplies. "Dancing is not invariable, but when it occurred, I avoided it by supplying the music portion with an instrument played sitting down. I don't actually know if I'd be embarrassing at it relative to the heirloom population."

"If you want to play the piano at this one, I'm sure that can be arranged," says Cordelia. "And if you want to evaluate your dancing ability relative to the population of this planet, we can find an instructor to teach you a few of the standard Barrayaran dances."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"I'll get right on that, then."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Eventually dinner is all eaten up. Linya notifies the kitchen that they may be prevailed upon to send a tray up to Miles later, if he wakes up before morning, and goes up to their suite.

Miles is still napping. He looks terribly cozy.

He does indeed get up earlyish and hobble the short distance to the bathroom, where he pees and showers and takes painkillers, all very important aspects of starting the day. Then he dons clean pajamas and hobbles back to bed.

"Morning." Snuggle. Cozy, only somewhat pained snuggle.

"How're you feeling? You slept right through dinner."

"Hungry," he admits. "Sleepy. And very cuddled."

"We can get breakfast sent up." She gets her pen and sends the kitchen a note; it took a little doing to make the comm system accept the pen as one of its nodes but that's long handled. "At dinner the 'Lady Vorkosigan Doesn't Bite' party became somewhat less hypothetical. Although apparently ethanol is not optional at Barrayaran parties."

"Optional to drink, sure. Optional to serve? God, no, of course not - at least not the big social-elite kind of party. It'd be like hosting a Cetagandan party with a strict dress code telling your guests to show up in clothing made exclusively from potato sacks. Do you even have potato sacks?"

"Well, we have potatoes, although their transport containers tended to be secreted away in the servitors' areas, so whether they come in sacks specifically I could not say. Would it really? How is it so essential?"

"Tradition. There's a whole cultural thing about wine, it almost is like a parallel to fashion in its way - people judge your wealth and your aesthetics by what drinks you serve with what at what occasions. And there's a cultural language surrounding other alcoholic beverages, too, wine is just the most complicated subcategory. Like, Vorkosigan District maple mead is famously a poor rural beverage, you'd never serve it at a high-class gathering like the Linya Doesn't Bite Party, but in the poor rural areas of Vorkosigan District - which is most of Vorkosigan District - they serve it at their parties. If I took it into my head to bring you to Silvy Vale and introduce you to the Csuriks, you can bet there'd be maple mead involved. Providing socially appropriate forms of ethanol to your guests is a standard aspect of hospitality."

"What a lot of fuss over the mix-ins for one's intoxicants."

"Yes, well, no one ever said tradition had to make sense."

"It's true. Am I sacrificing a lot of opportunity to favorably impress people if I don't take the occasional sip of wine? At least in theory my liver should be able to handle it."

"If you can learn all the aesthetic ins and outs, which I have every faith you can do, that certainly will be an opportunity to favourably impress people. Up to you if it's worth the amount of wine you'd have to sip and the amount of expert advice you'd have to seek out from God knows who - my grandfather could've set you right up, assuming he didn't shoot you on sight, but unfortunately my grandfather is dead and I have no taste in wine whatsoever. I don't think Father does either, and Mother avoids ethanol where possible."

"So perhaps at this party I'll refrain, but if I make friends with a wine expert and don't find the stuff totally unpalatable I'll keep it in mind, I suppose, put my metabolism through its paces. Shot me on sight, really? I didn't think that was standard for unarmed noncombatant females even while actively at war."

"I'm exaggerating. But I wouldn't consider it one hundred percent impossible, the way I did with Da. Grandfather was, um... complicated."

"Is 'complicated' here a word for 'opposed to a Cetagandan marrying his grandchild' or did he have traits besides that and knowing wine?"

"Plenty of them. He was all kinds of a hero. The way I think of it... he lived through so many huge cultural shifts, carried the planet through so many huge cultural shifts, by the time I was born he was just too old to change one last time. He gave it an effort - I won him over by falling in love with his horses when I was five, I think - but he just couldn't deal with a mutie grandson, not completely. If he'd lived long enough to see me marry you, I think the shrivelled remnants of his mental flexibility wouldn't have been up to handling a haut Lady Vorkosigan, and he would've defaulted back to the military mindset."

Miles sighs. "Yeah."

"Lord Auditors are the sort of people who ominously appear at parties when you have gotten up to shenanigans?" inquires Linya.

"I really do not understand how coming under his alternative title means that he is not making an Imperial appearance, but if you say that's how it works I suppose I'll believe you."

"He's not making an official Imperial appearance. He's still the Emperor, but he's not - actively empering. So people can address him as 'Count Vorbarra' instead of 'Sire', and he drops some of the more ostentatious security arrangements, and it's generally understood that he is present in a low-key social capacity."

"I suppose it's nice to have the option if people will cooperate with the associated polite fictions."

"Yes."

"Ooh. Shiny toy," says Cordelia, gazing delightedly into the box. "Thank you, Linyabel."

Aral leans sideways a little to peer into the box and see the shiny toy for himself.

"Will you let me know if there's anything that needs tweaking about the tutorial software? Most of the rest of it is imported directly from my pen, but the tutorial is new; I didn't need one."

"Definitely," Cordelia assures her. "I'll go play with it right after dinner."

"Have you told Miles? Was he absurdly excited?"

"I don't know about 'absurdly'. But yes."

"I really hope these things prove to be as useful as they are charming. For once Barrayar could be technologically ahead of the rest of the galaxy on something."

"One nice thing about them is that they will network with each other even if there isn't an underlying infrastructure. So if you distribute them to people who don't have comconsoles they will still be able to write each other notes - or send each other drawings, for that matter, though the current tutorial edition does presume literacy in English I could probably develop or contract out the development of a pictorial version. And they do have to have electricity, I didn't have a way around that part."

"Interesting. That direction might have a lot of potential."

"They are currently kind of expensive per unit, but the price point should drop over the next year or so as the supplies of relevant materials readjust to the demand."

"It would sure be convenient if they could be made cheaply."

"Yes. I might be able to simplify it further, the casing especially, but that would probably come at a cost of reduced performance - the casing is pressure-sensitive and will be able to learn how you hold your hand when you're making specific gestures, which lets you be a lot sloppier and faster," she explains.

"Makes sense. Well, we'll see."

One particular morning, Miles is unusually chipper and fast-moving on his way back from the bathroom - less of a shuffle and more of an actual walk. He climbs into bed and snuggles up happily.

"Thankfully yes. I would not have been pleased if the aching turned out to be a permanent feature. It's still there, but it has noticeably decreased."

"I would hope the surgeons would be more competent than to leave you with permanent aches and pains," says Linya, "yes." Nuzzle.

"Demonstrably, even the cutting edge of the cutting edge can't get it perfect every time," says Miles with a wry gesture at his own body. "For all I know maybe I have one of my weird reactions to the plastic they use in the synthetics, and I'd have to wait around for somebody to hunt up a different formulation and synthesize me a whole new set of leg bones and replace them all again. I'm not saying I actually thought that was happening, and happily it doesn't seem to be, but competence and effectiveness can sometimes be separated by a wide margin."

"Did they not test you for allergies to the plastic first? Assuming it's not sufficiently hypoallergenic for that to be a guaranteed nonissue."

"Oh, sure they did, and sure it is. But I've had plenty of bizarre and apparently unprecedented drug reactions before; it wouldn't surprise me that much if my body took two days of constant exposure to decide it hated the things. I can be very pessimistic about medical matters."

"Huh. Is there a known reason for that idiosyncrasy?"

"Not known to me, anyway."

"...Mm?"

"...I don't think that question has a 'delicate' setting," he says. "Um. You could certainly ask my mother about her family history on the subject without offending her."

"Well, when people asked me if my tendency to trip if I change direction at speed was figured out they didn't have to be delicate, it was just a background assumption... I may do."

"The background assumption being... that you're haut and you have an entirely different psychological relationship to your genes than the average Barrayaran?" He sighs. "Yes, quite."

"Not so much that - I mean, if someone wanted to start a fight with me about it they could have just gone straight from watching me trip to calling me a botch job or claiming that I was designed by lemurs or similar. But there was definitely the assumption that tripping is not a desirable trait, and that the project everyone present was cooperating with involved making sure it didn't happen again, and - it's different."

"Right. Whereas on Barrayar, there are relatively few ways to discuss somebody's genes without starting a fight, especially if there is the slightest implication that they might be carrying undesirable traits. Happily, I am harder to piss off than that."

"I don't want to upset you," she murmurs, snuggling him.

"I know. Thank you. I love you. I'm... mostly just fine. But it might be a good idea to route genetic queries through my mother wherever feasible; she lacks the relevant inner demons."

"Okay." She kisses his temple.

He snuggles up.

"I love you too."

Ooh! Not-very-ginger snuggles! Miles approves of those.

Does he! That's good.

"Um. Yes. Sorry," he says. "I just - feel even less attractive than usual."

"I'm sure I'll get used to the new scars eventually," he sighs.

"I'd hope so. I mean in the short term."

"Not so much, then, no."

"All right. But I still think you're cute, you know."

"Thank you." He hugs her.

Yay!

Indeed yay.

Aral is ensconced in an armchair in the library, with a handheld reader and a glass of wine, presumably reading one of the library's modern book-disks - the case is lying open on a nearby table. He doesn't notice Linya immediately.

Hmmm. She doesn't have a great sense of how interruptible he is. She makes a point of generating audible footsteps as she continues into the library, vaguely angled in his direction.

"She has. Is this a good time to take you up on your offer to go over it with me ahead of time?"

"As good as any." He puts down his book, looks around for a seat Linya might take that would be conducive to such a discussion, finds one, and gestures invitingly to it.

Into this seat goeth Linya. Woggle goeth Linya's pen, and here is the guest list.

"Damned convenient, that thing," he observes in passing. "All right, let's see... Gregor you've met. Lord Vorbohn runs the Vorbarr Sultana municipal guard. I'd guess his reaction to you will fall into the 'hostile but polite about it' category. I can at least promise that he's much too fair-minded to do anything petty about you with the municipal guard. Faint praise, I know."

"It's still good to know... Do reasons for hostility among people on this list get any more specific and perhaps addressable than 'she is a haut-lady, there was that war a while before she was born'? I can neither adjust my ancestry nor travel through time, but if there are other things I can do..."

"Some do, some don't. For variety, there's Rulf Vorhalas, who's going to be hostile to you because you're a Vorkosigan, not because you're Cetagandan. But I doubt his feelings will be any more tractable than, say - " He scans down the list from Vorbohn. " - The Vorbrettens, who I doubt will show up at all, for the standard reasons." His eye skips a few lines and he adds, "Oh, and Vorfolse isn't going to come because he has an allergy to conflict; the Vorfolses have a history of ending up on the wrong side, to the point where he's superstitiously afraid to engage in anything resembling politics, let alone get involved when people are disagreeing about hot-button issues. He's one of the courtesy invitations Cordelia and I have been debating."

"What are the pros and cons of extending him an invitation?" wonders Linya.

He half-shrugs. "Not much to be said either way, which is part of why it's hard to decide. If we invite him, he won't show up but he'll notice you exist, which he otherwise might not - it would be an understatement to call him a recluse. If we don't invite him, he's unlikely to notice or care that the party happened at all. Either way, he's not going to get involved."

"I do not mind being known to exist, but it seems academic in this case."

"Eh. I'll let Cordelia have final say..." He keeps going. "I've already mentioned Vorhalas, but to expand on that: I'm not sure if he'll come out of spite or stay home out of spite, but either way, I recommend avoiding him wherever you have the opportunity to do so. I can say nothing against his moral character, but he's conservative and there is a complicated history between our families that has left him with considerable ill will towards me."

"Should I know the details, or just - learn what he looks like and arrange to be elsewhere in the room?"

"I'm not sure the details would do you any good," he says. "And it's not a subject I'm eager to discuss... Let's leave it alone for now." He scans the list some more. "Vorkalloner and Vormoncrief are both conservatives - Vormoncrief leads the party. More courtesy invitations. I'd be surprised to see either of them show up. Vorparadijs is a desiccated old stick who's likely to look at you with the same contempt he bestows on anything else that wouldn't have happened in Ezar's day, but you might be able to soothe him by letting him bore you for a while. I leave it up to you whether you judge it worth the trouble. He's also rude to most people, if that helps you not to take it personally when he interrupts you and criticizes your manners."

"I take it retorting with similar criticism would accomplish nothing."

"You are correct."

"I'll probably skip it, then. Is there anyone at this party who I should interact with, or ought I arrange to be in the corner making pretty piano music and demonstrating my harmlessness that way, the whole time...?"

"Well, there's the Vorpatrils," he says, amused - they are in fact the very next set of entries. "And, let's see... Byerly Vorrutyer is a mildly infamous town clown; if he shows up it'll be to get drunk on our wine, so he should be a likewise safe option. I'm not so sure about the other Vorrutyers on the list." He looks over the names that remain. "Doubt Vortaine is going to come... Vortala I'd expect to express open support, and even believe himself when he does it, but he's not as open-minded as he might like to think. I remember he founded that progressive party of his, trying to work for equality between the classes, and he never thought to include anyone who wasn't a Vor. Bit of a gap in his logic there."

"How charming. Is it the sort of logic gap that's amenable to people being agreeable and acting as though they assumed all along that of course he meant to do it in thus and such a way, how nice of him?" She makes little symbolic notes next to various names as the Count goes over them.

"Eh. I've never had the patience to try a similar strategy, but if you think you can pull it off, I don't object to you trying it. I'd just expect managing him that way to be more frustrating and less useful than just about any other conceivable avenue of getting things done... ah, Lord Auditor Vorthys. Now there's someone I can wholeheartedly recommend to you. He's one of Gregor's additions, and I don't know him very well on a social level, but he's good at what he does and refreshingly sensible by all accounts. I'm told he plans to bring his niece and her husband - I can't tell you the first thing about either of them, but I at least expect that they won't be odious enough to ruin a conversation with Georg Vorthys about engineering, if you're inclined to have one. Before his appointment as Auditor, he was an exquisitely good failure analyst."

"I don't think I'm familiar with the specialty. Is it what it sounds like?"

"If it sounds like he analyzes failures, then yes."

"That sounds very interesting indeed."

"Good. Have fun." Aral looks over the remainder of the list - there isn't very much left. "And Henri Vorvolk is Gregor's friend. A bit wishy-washy politically. I'd expect you to be able to win him over with a little humanizing small talk as long as no one else has poisoned the well first, and since Gregor invited him, I judge the well likely unpoisoned. There, that's everyone I can give you significant information about. If you want the insignificant information, I can go back and appraise some of the unknowns by their families' voting habits, but you can do that too; the electronic records of public votes in the Council of Counts are, well, public."

"I'll be sure to look them up. And to attach faces where possible. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome."

With a woggle, the file and Linya's notes wink out. "I'll leave you to your reading, then."

He nods agreeably.