Diplomatic Immunity Read Free Page B

soldiers, in their heyday. No horse within God knew how many light-years now, that was certain.
    He touched his wrist com, mate in function to the one she wore, though hers was made Vor-lady-like with a decorative silver bracelet. "I'll give you a heads-up when I'm ready to come back and change." He nodded toward the plain gray suit she'd already laid out on the bunk. A uniform for the military-minded, civvies for the civilians. And let the weight of Barrayaran history, eleven generations of Counts Vorkosigan at his back, make up for his lack of height, his faintly hunched stance. His less visible defects, he didn't need to mention.
    "What should I wear?"
    "Since you'll have to play the whole entourage, something effective." He smiled crookedly. "That red silk thing ought to be distractingly civilian enough for our Stationer hosts."
    "Only the male half, love," she pointed out. "Suppose their security chief is a female quaddie? Are quaddies even attracted to downsiders?"
    "One was, apparently," he sighed. "Hence this mess. . . . Parts of Graf Station are null-gee, so you'll likely want trousers or leggings instead of Barrayaran-style skirts. Something you can move in."
    "Oh. Yes, I see."
    A knock sounded at the cabin door, and Armsman Roic's diffident voice, "My lord?"
    "On my way, Roic." Miles and Ekaterin exchanged places—finding himself at her chest height, he stole a pleasantly resilient hug in passing—and he exited to the courier ship's narrow corridor.
    Roic wore a slightly plainer version of Miles's Vorkosigan House uniform, as befitted his liege-sworn armsman's status. "Do you want me to pack up your things now for transfer to the Barrayaran flagship, m'lord?" he asked.
    "No. We're going to stay aboard the courier."
    Roic almost managed to conceal his wince. He was a young man of imposing height and intimidating breadth of shoulder, and had described his bunk above the courier ship's engineer as Sort of like sleeping in a coffin, m'lord, except for the snoring.  
    Miles added, "I don't care to hand off control of my movements, not to mention my air supply, to either side in this squabble just yet. The flagship's bunks aren't much bigger anyway, I assure you, Armsman."
    Roic smiled ruefully, and shrugged. "I'm afraid you should've brought Jankowski, sir."
    "What, because he's shorter?"
    "No, m'lord!" Roic looked faintly indignant. "Because he's a real veteran."
    A Count of Barrayar was limited by law to a bodyguard of a score of sworn men; the Vorkosigans had by tradition recruited most of their armsmen from retiring twenty-year veterans of the Imperial Service. By political need, in the last decades they'd mostly been former ImpSec men. They were a keen but graying bunch. Roic was an interesting new exception.
    "When did that become a concern?" Miles's father's cadre of armsmen treated Roic as a junior because he was, but if they were treating him as a second-class citizen . . . 
    "Eh . . ." Roic waved somewhat inarticulately around the courier ship, by which Miles construed that the problem lay in more recent encounters.
    Miles, about to lead off down the short corridor, instead leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "Look, Roic—there's scarcely a man in the Imperial Service your age or younger who's faced as much live fire in the Emperor's employ as you have in the Hassadar Municipal Guard. Don't let the damned green uniforms spook you. It's empty swagger. Half of 'em would fall over in a faint if they were asked to take down someone like that murderous lunatic who shot up Hassadar Square."
    "I was already halfway across the plaza, m'lord. It would've been like swimming halfway across a river, deciding you couldn't make it, and turning around to swim back. It was safer to jump him than to turn and run. He'd 'a had the same amount of time to take aim at me either way."
    "But not the time to take out another dozen or so bystanders. Auto-needler's a filthy weapon." Miles brooded briefly.
    "That it