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Ivan is asleep when it happens, but the captain knocking on his door gets him up quick enough. "What? Where's the fire?" Ivan asks. This was supposed to be a quiet posting. Well, the posting on Earth was supposed to be quiet too, cultural, etcetera, but Xerxes is supposed to be downright boring. Ivan is not supposed to be awakened from his eight hours unexpectedly.
"Murder, not a fire. You're cousin to Lord Mark Vorkosigan, aren't you?" says the captain.
Ivan has to think for a second. "...Yes?"
"Security vid picked him up within radius of a murder. This is the first we knew of him being on the planet, but the locals want us to bring him in so they don't have to it themselves and risk mishandling a Vor lord. Seemed worth consulting you on him - the file on him's really something."
Ivan blinks. "You need to arrest Mark."
"Yes."
"...Sir. Uh, give me a while to try doing it myself. He's... I'm not positive I can succeed but I am pretty sure I can survive trying, and unless he's in a cooperative mood I'm very uncertain anybody else can say the same thing."
"He may have just killed a man."
"I'm aware. He likes me. He doesn't know you from a hole in the ground, or anybody else within fetching distance, sir. Give me his last location and a few hours? Please?"
"By yourself?"
"He wouldn't know anybody you could send with me from a hole in the ground."
The captain chews his lip. "None of your shenanigans, all right?"
"Sir, I'm not the shenanigans one, it's just contagious when m'co- my other cousin's around. I'll see if I can find him, if I find him I'll try to bring him back."
The captain eventually acquiesces. And that is why Ivan is tromping around downtown, debating whether or not to call "Mark? Mark?" like he's looking for a lost dog.
Ivan has to arrest Mark
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middlingalong
middlingalong
"Maybe at some point in the grooming process I could be made non-awful at it. What do I know of ambassadorial grooming habits. 'S weird, though."
middlingalong
"I don't think I have, like, a calling to anything. Emily wants to be a holographer and has known this since she was six, I have no idea what that's like."
unmarred
"I'm not sure I can articulate any of them, but they exist. And are not especially ambassadorial. Well, maybe for a very special definition of 'ambassador'..."
middlingalong
"I make friends with the locals mostly by the expedient of dating them. I think ambassadors are supposed to be married."
unmarred
"Who? No, ah, let me see—ambassador to Eta Ceta, you met him on that funeral trip whose details are so thoroughly obscured."
middlingalong
"That's the one. Suppose the part where Miles got engaged rather upstaged the part where the ambassador did."
unmarred
"He fell in love with her and then did something sufficiently spectacular to get the attention of the relevant authorities, is just about as much as I know. Probably as much as I'm meant to."
middlingalong
"Because there appeared to me to be something just a little bit totally insane about Lord Vorkosigan carrying off a haut-lady he barely knew? I didn't know her either, at the time, or probably I'd have, you know... noticed. The themness of them."
middlingalong
"Well, yes, part of my mistake was thinking 'Lord Vorkosigan is carrying off a haut-lady' instead of 'Miles has made himself useful to a haut-lady'."
middlingalong
"I guess you would've been - hell, sixteen, it's hard to remember you're so much younger than him."