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One summer day, a baby appears on the literal doorstep of the Imperial Residence's west servants' entrance. She is in a basket. She doesn't look Barrayaran; while Barrayar is not uniformly Caucasian, it has very few people of east Asian extraction, and that is where this baby appears to have been toted from by more or less circuitous routes of migration and inheritance.
It is not terribly difficult for ImpSec to find the person who put her there - recent hire to the kitchen staff, competent but not overwhelmingly concerned with security when it was literally just a baby and not an explosive and he was offered a large chunk of change. Tracing back this chunk of change leads through a long meandering trail of people, variously shady, none of whom acted with particular malice beyond greed and the sort of vague dishonorableness of putting packages on the doorstep of the Imperial Residence.
The trail ends at someone who - under fast-penta - has no memory whatever of having interacted with the baby, the cash, the shady person who druggedly identified her, or anything else about the affair. She doesn't even have a similar-looking sister to explain the mixup. She has nothing in her background to explain how she would come by an offplanet baby or why she would convey it by such a circuitous method to the Imperial Residence. It's definitely not her baby - the lady's six months pregnant and the baby isn't that old.
In the meantime, the baby is parked with Droushnakovi, who found her in the first place; Cordelia, who was the first person she went to; and Gregor, as Drou is his personal bodyguard.
The baby and her basket are searched and found to be: a baby, and a basket. There is no note, it's the middle of summer and the child wasn't even in a blanket, the basket itself and the baby's onesie turn out to be local products that a Vorbarr Sultana thrift shop didn't even bother reporting stolen.
The baby babbles in her sleep. She's very cute.
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hatchedplan
"Best!"
Nika gives Miles a careful hug and goes off to play.
A couple of weeks later she spots an unattended comconsole.
She goes on it and pokes around at the interface until she has figured out how to call her grandda.
A couple of weeks later she spots an unattended comconsole.
She goes on it and pokes around at the interface until she has figured out how to call her grandda.
And there is her grandda.
"...Hello, Nika," he says, looking slightly puzzled.
"...Hello, Nika," he says, looking slightly puzzled.
"Hi grandda! How are you?"
"I'm fine," he says. "How are you?"
"I'm goooood. I want to come over and ride Gumdrop again and Miles wants to ride a horse too and it is mostly sitting and he can sit, he does it all the time, can he come please too? I'll share Gumdrop."
Piotr looks... complicatedly unhappy.
"We want to both have horses when we grow up and dance them and if I am very much better at horses than him it's not fair," Nika wheedles.
"...I'll think about it," he says.
"Okay good," says Nika. "Does Gumdrop miss me, do horses miss people?"
"I don't think Gumdrop knows you well enough to miss you yet," says Piotr.
"So you should have me and Miles over soon and then he will know me more."
"...Do your parents know you're talking to me, Nika?"
"No. There's nobody here."
"I... see. I think I'll have to talk to your parents about inviting Miles to visit."
"That makes sense," says Nika.
"I'll do that, then."
"Do you need me to go so you can call them?"
"I rather think they're going to call me," he murmurs wryly.
"Do you need me to tell them so they will call you?"
"You certainly can," he says.
"Okay. Tell all the horses I said hi!" And then she hunts for the button to end the call, and does that, and goes searching for parental units.
Nika cannot immediately find parental units, but she can find Elena and Ivan, who successfully distract her from her quest. Elena being older than Nika and possessed of stronger opinions about things than Ivan, they wind up playing what Elena wants to play (space pirates), but Nika being well aware that space pirates is more interesting with three than with two she is able to bargain Elena up to "wizard space pirates". Nika and Ivan merrily wizard-space-pirate at Elena the heroic space captain. They have to pause briefly to adjudicate about whether certain mispronounced shipboard weapons ought to be able to penetrate a magical shield (Nika is of the opinion that they should not and that Elena will have to think of something cleverer to do to beat the pirates than just shoot at them).
They prove unable to settle this amongst themselves - Ivan tends to be all too eager to agree with whichever girl presented her case most recently - so they go looking for adult arbitration. The Vorkosigan parentals having proven difficult to find last Nika checked, and Bothari off with Miles at the doctor's office, they find Ivan's ma. Aunt Alys digests the dilemma, suggests that perhaps Elena will have to shoot several times at the wizard shield to break it, and then sends them off to play while she gets back to her obscure Aunt-Alys-type work. Off scurry pirates and heroic space captain. Elena successfully unshields Ivan and while about to capture his ship is vulnerable to sneak attack by Nika, who demonstrates this by jumping on her; the game presently devolves into giggly wrestling.
They prove unable to settle this amongst themselves - Ivan tends to be all too eager to agree with whichever girl presented her case most recently - so they go looking for adult arbitration. The Vorkosigan parentals having proven difficult to find last Nika checked, and Bothari off with Miles at the doctor's office, they find Ivan's ma. Aunt Alys digests the dilemma, suggests that perhaps Elena will have to shoot several times at the wizard shield to break it, and then sends them off to play while she gets back to her obscure Aunt-Alys-type work. Off scurry pirates and heroic space captain. Elena successfully unshields Ivan and while about to capture his ship is vulnerable to sneak attack by Nika, who demonstrates this by jumping on her; the game presently devolves into giggly wrestling.
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