The warrior's apprentice Read Online Free PDF Page A

generation. Anyway, they’d just rent a hero to rescue her. Some tall piece of meat—Kostolitz, maybe. And you know how those fights always come out— “
    He slid to his feet and pantomimed across the room, Kostolitz’s swords against—say—Miles’s morningstar. A morningstar was a proper villainous weapon. It gave the concept of one’s personal space some real authority. Stabbed, he died in Elena’s arms as she swooned in grief—no, she’d be in Kostolitz’s arms, celebrating.
    Miles’s eye fell on an antique mirror, clasped in a carven stand. “Capering dwarf,” he growled. He had a sudden urge to smash it with his naked fists, shattered glass and blood flying—but the sound would bring the hall guard, and packs of relatives, and demands for explanation. He jerked the mirror around to face the wall instead, and flopped onto the bed.
    Lying back, he gave the problem more serious attention. He tried to imagine himself, rightly and properly, asking his father to be his go-between to Sergeant Bothari. Horrific. He sighed, and writhed vainly for a more comfortable position. Only seventeen, too young to marry even by Barrayaran standards, and quite unemployed, now—it would be years, probably, before he would be in a sufficiently independent position to offer for Elena against parental backing. Surely she would be snapped up long before then.
    And Elena herself... What was in it for her? What pleasure, to be climbed all over by an ugly, twisted shrimp—to be stared at in public, in a world where native custom and imported medicine combined ruthlessly to eliminate even the mildest physical deformity— doubly stared at, because of their ludicrous contrast? Could the dubious privileges of an obsolete rank more drained of meaning with each passing year make up for that? A rank totally without meaning off Barrayar, he knew—in eighteen years of residence here, his own mother had never come to regard the Vor system as anything other than a planet-wide mass hallucination.
    There came a double rap upon his door. Authoritalively firm; courteously brief. Miles smiled ironically, sighed, and sat up.
    “Come in, Father.”
    Lord Vorkosigan poked his head around the carved doorframe. “Still dressed? It’s late. You should be getting some rest.” Somewhat inconsistently, he let himself in and pulled up a desk chair, turning it around and sitting astride it, arms comfortably athwart its back. He was still dressed himself, Miles noted, in the dress greens he wore every working day. Now that he was but Prime Minister, and not Regent and therefore titular commander of the armed forces, Miles wondered if the old Admiral’s uniform was still correct. Or had it simply grown to him?
    “I, ah,” his father began, and paused. He cleared his throat, delicately. “I was wondering what your thinking was now, for your next step. Your alternate plans.”
    Miles’s lips tightened, and he shrugged. “There never were any alternate plans. I’d planned to succeed. More fool I.”
    Lord Vorkosigan tilted his head in negation. “If it’s any consolation, you were very close. I talked to the selection board commander today. Do you—want to know your score on the writtens?”
    “I thought they never released those. Just an alphabetical list: in or out.”
    Lord Vorkosigan spread his hand, offering. Miles shook his head. “Let it go. It doesn’t matter. It was hopeless from the beginning. I was just too stiff-necked to admit it.”
    “Not so. We all knew it would be difficult. But I would never have let you put that much effort on something I thought impossible.”
    “I must have inherited the neck from you.”
    They exchanged a brief, ironic nod. “Well, you couldn’t have had it from your mother,” Lord Vorkosigan admitted.
    “She’s not—disappointed, is she?”
    “Hardly. You know her lack of enthusiasm for the military. Hired killers, she called us once. Almost the first thing she ever said to me.” He looked