Her thick brows rose in surprise. "She's a student?"

"Yes, ma'am." He had a notion one addressed female sergeants as ma'am. Pym would have known.

"I didn't realize she was such a young lady."

"No, ma'am. Madame Vorsoisson's a widow—she has a little boy, Nikki—nine years old. Mad about jumpships. Do you happen t' know—does that pilot fellow like children?" Mayhew was bound to be a magnet for Nikki.

"Why ... I don't know. I don't think Arde knows either. He hardly ever meets any in a free mercenary fleet."

He would have to watch, then, to be sure little Nikki didn't set himself up for a painful rebuff. M'lord and m'lady-to-be might not be paying their usual attention to him, under the circumstances.

Sergeant Taura circled the room, gazing with what Roic hoped was approval at its comfortable appointments, and glanced out the window at the back garden, shrouded in winter white, the snow luminous in the security lighting. "I suppose it makes sense that he'd have to wed one of his own Vor kind, in the end." Her nose wrinkled. "So, are the Vor a social class, a warrior caste, or what? I never could quite figure it out from Miles. They way he talks about them you'd half think they were a religion. Or at any rate, his religion."

Roic blinked in bafflement. "Well, no. And yes. All of that. The Vor are ... well, Vor."

"Now that Barrayar has modernized, isn't a hereditary aristocracy resented by the rest of your classes?"

"But they're our Vor."

"Says the Barrayaran. Hm. So, you can criticize them, but heaven help any outsider who dares to?"

"Yes," he said, relieved that she seemed to have grasped it despite his stumbling tongue.

"A family matter. I see." Her grin faded into a frown that was actually less alarming—not so much fang. Her fingers clenching the curtain inadvertently poked claws through the expensive fabric; wincing, she shook her hand free and tucked it behind her back. Her voice lowered. "So she's Vor, well and good. But does she love him?"

Roic heard the odd emphasis in her voice, but was unclear how to interpret it. "I'm very sure of it, ma'am," he avowed loyally. M'lady-to-be's frowns, her darkening mood, were surely just pre-wedding nerves piled atop examination stress, on the substrate of her not-so-distant bereavement.

"Of course." Her smile flicked back in a perfunctory sort of way. "Have you served Lord Vorkosigan long, Armsman Roic?"

"Since last winter, ma'am, when a space fell vacant in the Vorkosigans' armsmen's score. I was sent up on recommendation from the Hassadar Municipal Guard," he added a bit truculently, challenging her to sneer at his humble, non-military origins. "A count's twenty armsmen are always from his own District, y'see."

She did not react; the Hassadar Municipal Guard evidently meant nothing to her.

He asked in return, "Did you ... serve him very long? Out there?" In the galactic backbeyond where m'lord had acquired such exotic friends.

Her face softened, the fanged smile reappearing. "In a sense, all my life. Since my real life began, ten years ago, anyway. He is a great man." This last was delivered with unselfconscious conviction.

Well, he was a great man's son, certainly. Count Aral Vorkosigan was a colossus bestriding the last half-century of Barrayaran history. Lord Miles had led a less public career. Which no one would tell Roic anything about, the most junior armsman not being ex-ImpSec like m'lord and most of the rest of the armsmen, eh.

Still, Roic liked the little lord. What with the birth injuries and all—Roic shied away from the pejorative, mutations—he'd had a rough ride all his life despite his high blood. Hard enough for him to just achieve normal things, like ... like getting married. Although m'lord had brains enough, belike, in compensation for his stunted body. Roic just wished he didn't think his newest armsman a dolt.

"The library is to the right of the stairs as you go down, through the first room." He touched his hand to his forehead in a farewell salute, by way of paving his escape from this unnerving giant female. "The dining's to be casual tonight; you don't need t' dress." He added, as she glanced down in bewilderment at her travel-rumpled loose pink jacket and trousers, "Dress up, that is. Fancy. What you're wearing is fine."

"Oh," she replied, with evident relief. "That makes more sense. Thank you."

Having made his routine security circuit of the house, Roic arrived back at the antechamber just outside the library to find the huge woman and the pilot fellow examining the array of wedding presents temporarily staged there. The growing assortment of objects had been arriving for weeks. Each had been handed in to Pym to be unwrapped and undergo its security check, re-wrapped, and as the affianced couple's time permitted, unwrapped again and displayed with its card.

"Look, here's yours, Arde," said Sergeant Taura. "And here's Elli's."

"Oh, what did she finally decide on?" asked the pilot. "At one point she told me she was thinking of sending the bride a barbed-wire choke chain for Miles, but was afraid it might be misinterpreted."

"No..." Taura held up a thick fall of shimmering black stuff as long as she was tall. "It's seems to be some sort of fur coat—no, wait—it's a blanket. Beautiful! You should feel this, Arde. It's incredibly soft. And warm." She held a supple fold up to the side of her head, and a delighted laugh broke from her long lips. "It's purring!"

Mayhew's eyebrows climbed halfway to his receding hairline. "Good God! Did she...? Now, that's a bit edgy."

Taura stared down at him in puzzled inquiry. "Edgy? Why?"

Mayhew made an uncertain gesture. "It's a live fur—a genetic construct. It looks just like one Miles once gave to Elli. If she's recycling his gifts, that's a pretty pointed message." He hesitated. "Though I suppose if she bought a fresh new one for the happy couple, that's a different message."

"Ouch." Taura tilted her head to one side and frowned at the fur. "My life's too short for arcane mind-games, Arde. Which is it?"

"Search me. In the dark all cat blankets are ... well, black, in this case. I wonder if it's intended as an editorial?"

"Well, if it is, don't you dare let on to the poor bride, or I swear I'll turn both your ears into doilies." She held up her clawed fingers, and wriggled them. "By hand."

Judging by the pilot's brief grin, the threat was a jest, but by his little bow of compliance, not an entirely empty one. Taura observed Roic, just then, refolded the live fur into its box, and tucked her hands discreetly behind her back.

The door to the library swung open, and Lord Vorkosigan stuck his head out. "Ah, there you two are." He strolled into the antechamber. "Elena and Baz will be down in a little—she's feeding Baby Cordelia. You must be starving by now, Taura. Come on in and try the hors d'oeuvres. My cook has outdone herself."

He smiled up affectionately at the enormous sergeant. While the top of Roic's head barely came up to her shoulder, m'lord just about faced her belt buckle. It occurred to Roic that Taura towered over him in almost exactly the same proportions that ladies of average height towered over Lord Vorkosigan. This must be what women looked like to him all the time.

Oh.

M'lord waved his guests through to the library, but instead of following them, shut the door and motioned Roic to his side. He looked thoughtfully up at his tallest armsman, and lowered his voice.

"Tomorrow morning, I want you to drive Sergeant Taura to the Old Town. I've prevailed upon Aunt Alys to present Taura to her modiste and fix her up with a Barrayaran lady's wardrobe suitable for the upcoming bash. Figure to hold yourself at their disposal for the day."