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Derelict
The tableaux is disturbing, but he comes quietly.
When the advance team finally cuts through the unknown materials of the little craft's hull and float through the umbilical, instead of the two people promised by the first distress call, there's one person, and one corpse. The man who spoke with a soft, lilting accent and neatly diplomatic phrases has had his skull opened against the floor, and his brain scooped out. They aren't sure what the other passenger did with it. He looks odd, in the helmets' cameras: his black and gold uniform is immaculate, but his cheek his finely misted with blood, and he has darkness under his fingernails. They find him kneeling by the body. For a moment, when the door first opens, the cameras catch a glimpse of something that might be grief on his face, but when he looks up, there's only blank acquiescence.
The computers seem to be wiped, but it's hard to be sure with such unfamiliar systems. The craft has no weapons, and no apparent physical booby traps. Aside from small, neat living spaces, appointed with a tastefully restrained sort of luxury, most of the space is devoted to life support, hydroponics and aquaculture. The fish tanks are woven through the gardens; every piece of vital machinery is also elegant. Jewel-toned fish watch with flickering interest as the team makes its way to and from the bridge.
There is a bustle of confusion about how actually to deal with him; they were sent at least partly as a humanitarian rescue. Their orders were to secure the ship and retrieve the passengers with all reasonable courtesy. They knew something had likely gone wrong, when the man who named himself Nirai Kujen stopped answering any communications, and further when the drifting ship failed to open its hatch. But what to do with the man who remains? Killing his companion on the very verge of rescue is shocking, but he offers no violence to the Barrayaran soldiers.
Nor does he answer any of the questions put to him in the first shocked encounter. When the squad sergeant says, You need to come with us, sir, he rises and follows. The room they put him in isn't specifically intended as a cell, but it's cramped ship quarters, and they do lock him in.
He's not non-responsive - he looks at the people who speak to him, never takes his eyes off them. But he's silent when they ask his name, when they ask where they come from, when they ask why he killed Nirai Kujen. When they ask if he is mute, if he can understand them, he blinks.
"I understand. We deciphered your language together," he says, and his accent is a little broader than Nirai Kujen's, his voice smooth and low. "I'd like to talk to the person in charge."
He doesn't, it eventually becomes clear, mean the commanding officer of the vessel.
He knows the word Emperor, and eventually clarifies, although it sounds particularly stilted in his mouth, more foreign than the rest.
"Or," he adds, with a quirk of his mouth that is almost a smile, a flash of his eyes away from his interlocutor to the concealed camera. "Perhaps his secretary."
The Emperor, he is told, is not available to mysterious, murderous foreigners. Perhaps, if he would be willing to testify to his benign intentions under a truth drug they provide...?
No. He is not willing.
It is at this point that an executive decision is made to dose him anyway.
They don't ever manage to inform him: the first moment a soldier enters his room with the kit, he produces a shank, slim as a knitting needle, slightly curved, precisely the density of human bone, missed by every surreptitious scan. The recording has to be slowed to quarter-speed to follow the speed and exact sequence of events. Blank-faced, straight-backed, the man makes an unflinching attempt to bury the weapon into his own eye, and - presumably, given it's length - his brain.
(Nirai Kujen's brain, a separate report notes, was likely fed to the largest tank of fish, leaving only a greasy residue in their filter and very broken fragments of human DNA.)
The guard accompanying the soldier with the kit immediately draws his stunner at the rapid motion the man drawing the ersatz blade; the man throws himself to the side before he can aim it. The wide beam gets him all down the side, and he scrabbles for the weapon with his other hand, shaking on the floor, before the second burst.
He comes to thoroughly restrained. He begs, with a quiet solemn dignity, to be killed. He tells them they don't want to know what they think they want to know. He does not have a fastpenta allergy.
When the stoic blankness of his expression turns to a hazy, distant blankness, the interrogator quietly reiterates that they would like to be allies, that they rescued him from a derelict. Explains that they just need to know a few things. Per the usual script, the first question is for his name.
"I am the immolation fox," he answers, a soft smile slowly settling on his face.
"Alright. What does that mean?"
"I am the immolation fox," he repeats, as though this were obvious. The interrogator moves on.
"Why did you kill Nirai Kujen?"
The smile disappears.
"I am the immolation fox."
Every time, the emphasis is just slightly different. He truly seems to hear and understand the questions, to even be responding to them. But every question has the same answer. After fifteen minutes, he starts to laugh, an awful raw hysterical sound. After twenty minutes, the commanding officer calls a halt, and he is given the antagonist. He's still laughing when it fades, and he slumps exhausted in his bonds.
"Why haven't you asked us for anything?" asks a soft-spoken captain, after the man accepts a sip of water held to his mouth.
"I've asked to speak to the - Emperor," he replies evenly, if slightly raspy.
"But nothing else, no comforts, no questions? We could go one for one."
After a long pause, he says, "I'd like to check on the fish." When the captain raises his eyebrows, he frowns, protests. "They're good stock, they deserve better than wary neglect. They shouldn't starve or be poisoned by their own waste just because they were mine."
A generous arrangement is offered. The man will not be allowed back on his vessel, but a marine with a helmet cam and comm link will tend the aquariums under his direction. One feeding for one answer.
He has no tells in his face, but one of his hands goes just a little bit tense. The Captain volunteers the amount of time it's been since the ship was boarded, though the prisoner has no way of confirming the information. He resists. He wavers.
"What question?"
The same protocol at one hundredth the speed: an easy question, to initiate the habit of answering.
"What's your name?"
"Jedao," says Jedao, after one long beat.
"Nothing else?" The original agreement specified an allowance for clarifications.
His eyes fall to his hands.
"Nothing else I still have the right to. Please show me my fish, now."
He makes no attempt at trickery or sabotage during the aquarium tending. He's close-mouthed about the state of the main filter (samples already taken), except to indicate which bottle in a small kit contains lipidase enzymes and the number of spritzes to apply. The fish are fed; the water is tested for pH and nitrate levels. He actually smiles, as he watches and guides the marine through the small tasks of aquaculture. He coos a few times at the more inquisitive fish. Some of them have names, too. He slumps in his seat afterward, as if deeply relieved.
He eats. He sleeps. He does not protest his constant guard. He sleeps better, in fact, than he did before.
But when the fish are due for another feeding - he still refuses to say why he killed Nirai Kujen, or where they came from, or how their ship works, or what his uniform is for. "Please ask me something else," he says, but again and again, he refuses to answer. "Please, it's not their fault." Eventually, he swallows and turns his face away - the only substantive movement possible, the way his wrists and ankles are chained. He closes his eyes.
"Let me speak to your Emperor, or kill me and stop wasting your time."
He doesn't sound angry. He sounds sad, and very, very tired.
When the advance team finally cuts through the unknown materials of the little craft's hull and float through the umbilical, instead of the two people promised by the first distress call, there's one person, and one corpse. The man who spoke with a soft, lilting accent and neatly diplomatic phrases has had his skull opened against the floor, and his brain scooped out. They aren't sure what the other passenger did with it. He looks odd, in the helmets' cameras: his black and gold uniform is immaculate, but his cheek his finely misted with blood, and he has darkness under his fingernails. They find him kneeling by the body. For a moment, when the door first opens, the cameras catch a glimpse of something that might be grief on his face, but when he looks up, there's only blank acquiescence.
The computers seem to be wiped, but it's hard to be sure with such unfamiliar systems. The craft has no weapons, and no apparent physical booby traps. Aside from small, neat living spaces, appointed with a tastefully restrained sort of luxury, most of the space is devoted to life support, hydroponics and aquaculture. The fish tanks are woven through the gardens; every piece of vital machinery is also elegant. Jewel-toned fish watch with flickering interest as the team makes its way to and from the bridge.
There is a bustle of confusion about how actually to deal with him; they were sent at least partly as a humanitarian rescue. Their orders were to secure the ship and retrieve the passengers with all reasonable courtesy. They knew something had likely gone wrong, when the man who named himself Nirai Kujen stopped answering any communications, and further when the drifting ship failed to open its hatch. But what to do with the man who remains? Killing his companion on the very verge of rescue is shocking, but he offers no violence to the Barrayaran soldiers.
Nor does he answer any of the questions put to him in the first shocked encounter. When the squad sergeant says, You need to come with us, sir, he rises and follows. The room they put him in isn't specifically intended as a cell, but it's cramped ship quarters, and they do lock him in.
He's not non-responsive - he looks at the people who speak to him, never takes his eyes off them. But he's silent when they ask his name, when they ask where they come from, when they ask why he killed Nirai Kujen. When they ask if he is mute, if he can understand them, he blinks.
"I understand. We deciphered your language together," he says, and his accent is a little broader than Nirai Kujen's, his voice smooth and low. "I'd like to talk to the person in charge."
He doesn't, it eventually becomes clear, mean the commanding officer of the vessel.
He knows the word Emperor, and eventually clarifies, although it sounds particularly stilted in his mouth, more foreign than the rest.
"Or," he adds, with a quirk of his mouth that is almost a smile, a flash of his eyes away from his interlocutor to the concealed camera. "Perhaps his secretary."
The Emperor, he is told, is not available to mysterious, murderous foreigners. Perhaps, if he would be willing to testify to his benign intentions under a truth drug they provide...?
No. He is not willing.
It is at this point that an executive decision is made to dose him anyway.
They don't ever manage to inform him: the first moment a soldier enters his room with the kit, he produces a shank, slim as a knitting needle, slightly curved, precisely the density of human bone, missed by every surreptitious scan. The recording has to be slowed to quarter-speed to follow the speed and exact sequence of events. Blank-faced, straight-backed, the man makes an unflinching attempt to bury the weapon into his own eye, and - presumably, given it's length - his brain.
(Nirai Kujen's brain, a separate report notes, was likely fed to the largest tank of fish, leaving only a greasy residue in their filter and very broken fragments of human DNA.)
The guard accompanying the soldier with the kit immediately draws his stunner at the rapid motion the man drawing the ersatz blade; the man throws himself to the side before he can aim it. The wide beam gets him all down the side, and he scrabbles for the weapon with his other hand, shaking on the floor, before the second burst.
He comes to thoroughly restrained. He begs, with a quiet solemn dignity, to be killed. He tells them they don't want to know what they think they want to know. He does not have a fastpenta allergy.
When the stoic blankness of his expression turns to a hazy, distant blankness, the interrogator quietly reiterates that they would like to be allies, that they rescued him from a derelict. Explains that they just need to know a few things. Per the usual script, the first question is for his name.
"I am the immolation fox," he answers, a soft smile slowly settling on his face.
"Alright. What does that mean?"
"I am the immolation fox," he repeats, as though this were obvious. The interrogator moves on.
"Why did you kill Nirai Kujen?"
The smile disappears.
"I am the immolation fox."
Every time, the emphasis is just slightly different. He truly seems to hear and understand the questions, to even be responding to them. But every question has the same answer. After fifteen minutes, he starts to laugh, an awful raw hysterical sound. After twenty minutes, the commanding officer calls a halt, and he is given the antagonist. He's still laughing when it fades, and he slumps exhausted in his bonds.
"Why haven't you asked us for anything?" asks a soft-spoken captain, after the man accepts a sip of water held to his mouth.
"I've asked to speak to the - Emperor," he replies evenly, if slightly raspy.
"But nothing else, no comforts, no questions? We could go one for one."
After a long pause, he says, "I'd like to check on the fish." When the captain raises his eyebrows, he frowns, protests. "They're good stock, they deserve better than wary neglect. They shouldn't starve or be poisoned by their own waste just because they were mine."
A generous arrangement is offered. The man will not be allowed back on his vessel, but a marine with a helmet cam and comm link will tend the aquariums under his direction. One feeding for one answer.
He has no tells in his face, but one of his hands goes just a little bit tense. The Captain volunteers the amount of time it's been since the ship was boarded, though the prisoner has no way of confirming the information. He resists. He wavers.
"What question?"
The same protocol at one hundredth the speed: an easy question, to initiate the habit of answering.
"What's your name?"
"Jedao," says Jedao, after one long beat.
"Nothing else?" The original agreement specified an allowance for clarifications.
His eyes fall to his hands.
"Nothing else I still have the right to. Please show me my fish, now."
He makes no attempt at trickery or sabotage during the aquarium tending. He's close-mouthed about the state of the main filter (samples already taken), except to indicate which bottle in a small kit contains lipidase enzymes and the number of spritzes to apply. The fish are fed; the water is tested for pH and nitrate levels. He actually smiles, as he watches and guides the marine through the small tasks of aquaculture. He coos a few times at the more inquisitive fish. Some of them have names, too. He slumps in his seat afterward, as if deeply relieved.
He eats. He sleeps. He does not protest his constant guard. He sleeps better, in fact, than he did before.
But when the fish are due for another feeding - he still refuses to say why he killed Nirai Kujen, or where they came from, or how their ship works, or what his uniform is for. "Please ask me something else," he says, but again and again, he refuses to answer. "Please, it's not their fault." Eventually, he swallows and turns his face away - the only substantive movement possible, the way his wrists and ankles are chained. He closes his eyes.
"Let me speak to your Emperor, or kill me and stop wasting your time."
He doesn't sound angry. He sounds sad, and very, very tired.
no subject
"It's not safe, Sire."
"Thank you, Simon," comes a calm, even voice. There is no overt force in it; it's a voice that knows force isn't necessary. Power wielded like breathing. "That will be all."
A figure steps into the room. The clothes are in the style of Barrayar's uniforms, but without insignia, without color. Casual, not dress. He pauses, just inside the threshold, and, at his glance, the two officers promptly evacuate.
Gregor's thoughts on the alien visitor are... complex. At first, he hadn't been willing to play a game with him, not personally; refusing, in a way, to let the inmates run the asylum. The staggering lack of cooperation had left him reconsidering -- but not enough. This man was dangerous, and he has people who are experts in this. The fish exchange left him a bit relieved, but now the man seems to have shut down entirely.
And, well... Cordelia would be quite angry at him if he let this man suffer longer than this. And Gregor still uses her as his moral compass, sometimes, when there's not much else to guide him.
He steps inside; the door closes behind him. His read of the situation is that physical contact might help, might be grounding and reassuring, but he isn't comfortable with it, so he takes a seat in the chair by the bed where Jedao is bound.
"The fish are fine," Gregor tells him. "A marine biologist studied the video of their feeding, and has been monitoring them since. They'll be moved to a tank in the building within the week. Now, I want you to calm, and breathe, and stay silent for a time. Accept that no one is going to let them die, and that no one is going to kill you. Just breathe."
no subject
Now he has presence to go with the face, and it's - interesting. Reserved, which is sensible enough, but the Barrayaran standard motion has enough in common with the Kel that Jedao doesn't feel totally adrift interpreting it. He doesn't think this is an agent with cosmetic surgical adjustment. He doesn't think he's lying about the fish, either.
It's more of a relief than Jedao wants it to be. It was a chain and a kindness, in the beginning of their drifting, you're the farmboy, Jedao, you take care of them - Kujen knows his weakness for color. But it kept him occupied, kept him from having no living creature in the universe but Kujen to love. He loved them and killed them, like he always does. He sustained them, and then they sustained him, soul and stomach. Every primal attachment all in one place. The need to feed them at the proper times is - embarrassingly well-conditioned, given that he did it to himself. But they were never supposed to be found.
(Still poor contingency planning. Like he didn't have enough handles to grab.)
He nods, in crisp acknowledgment and gratitude, then breathes out, trying not to let too much relief show.
"I'm sure I could provoke you into killing me if I were sufficiently inventive," he murmurs. Insignificant disobedience is the simplest test of power.
no subject
There are so many ways to respond. To push back; to repeat; to crack down; to ignore. He could respond to the statement in kind -- no, you couldn't provoke me, or it's never happened before. Any one of those could potentially say a great deal about who Gregor is and what kind of regime he runs.
Gregor lets a few full, even breaths pass while he regards Jedao. He doesn't need the time to think of his response. He means to set a slow pace, not a snappy conversation. No demanded responses, here. -- And, anyway, Gregor knows well that the most powerful response to unimportant defiance is simply, quietly, untheatrically, to allow it.
"Then I'd rather you didn't," he says, mildly. He doesn't follow that up with anything; no explanation, no further questions. After a brief pause, he leans in. "Pardon my liberty," he says, polite and even, and proceeds to check the places where restraints are against Jedao's bare skin. They are medical restraints, the type difficult to injure oneself on, but not impossible, and Gregor would hardly rule out someone overenthusiastic or a hint careless tightening it too much. He checks for injury, not for security, brief and dispassionate, and then he leans back again, apparently at ease, his eyes on Jedao.
no subject
The point - beyond having anything vaguely obdurate to say, instead of the requested silence - isn't that Jedao wants to die, now that he knows they can't force him to explain calendrical mechanics. He just doesn't want to accept any promises that he won't.
"Pardon granted," he says dryly, when Gregor sits back, a hint of a crooked smile to his mouth.
The bonds are nervously but not carelessly tight, within acceptable ranges. Jedao hasn't fought them since the confused minute between regaining consciousness and the administration of the fast-penta; he isn't even a little chafed. Jedao manages through sheer will not to overreact to the moments of closeness.
no subject
He's comfortable with silence. It's a friend, an ally -- silence has saved him from intemperate decisions, bad situations. Seeing what people read into it, now, that's the most important.
"I'd like to know why you don't answer the questions," he says, after a long while. He has some theories. First and foremost: that Kujen was a captor and a leader, that Jedao killed him as a form of escape or revenge. "I'd also like to be able to accept you as a citizen of Barrayar. This is done at my word. I'd like to know about your ship, but, to be honest, there's no one in particular I want to conquer or fight, and our defenses are sufficient to repel any known enemy, so as far as I'm concerned, the need isn't very pressing." He studies Jedao. "I'd like to have you released from bonds, without worrying that you'll attempt suicide." A worry that he didn't really have until a few minutes ago.
He settles, with good posture, yet somehow conveying 'sprawl' with his body language.
"So, to start with, we can sit here in silence, we can talk about fish, whatever you like." He pauses. "Is it fish in general, or just those particular fish?"
no subject
"I don't know you well enough to guess confidently how much is safe to tell you," he says simply, with a small shift of one shoulder that would probably be a shrug if he were unrestrained. "And I wasn't really going to find out from anyone else."
And now, at what he hopes may be the long end of his trials, he doesn't want to gamble with another galaxy's future if he doesn't have to. His gaze drifts to the ceiling.
"I'm not currently desperate to die. I just prefer to have an accurate count of my escape routes."
However reassuring that may or may not be. "And it's just those. I took care of them for a long while." He has no idea how long. Even if he could have kept track of the numbers, Kujen kept changing measures of time on the yacht, trying to find a two-soul scheme that could propel them out of the abyss.
no subject
He does hope that Jedao isn't stupid enough to think that Gregor can give enough assurances -- the simple fact is that change isn't safe.
And that for people like Gregor, safety is an illusion.
"Ah," he says. "Dr. Vornovan will be disappointed." The marine biologist aforementioned. He may, if given the chance, relate the story of finding someone adequately qualified who could obtain the correct security credentials at a moment's notice. It was not easy.
no subject
Gregor still can't give assurances. But he is a fulcrum worth observing.
He grins crookedly; when Gregor lifts his eyebrow, Jedao winks.
"What was he hoping for?"
no subject
Well, Jedao is calm -- in fact, the man before him is different enough from the one begging for different questions that Gregor is left more than a little cautious -- and Gregor is here, fulfilling Jedao's request. Time to get to the point, perhaps? Or for Jedao to ask whatever it is he wanted to find out by speaking personally to the Emperor.
Gregor isn't impatient. He isn't likely to get that way. But (as Jedao is quite perceptive) he conveys, in the slight tilt of his head, the possibility of future impatience, should Jedao waste his time completely.
no subject
He says it with the almost-gentle quiet very old grief. She did not die well, but it's more scar than wound.
"What are the obligations of a citizen?" he asks, still sounding pensive. It's faintly galling in its directness, but he was very deliberately given the opening.
no subject
"It depends on physical location, to a certain extent," he settles on, finally. "Citizens owe loyalty to their liege lord, the Count of their district and his heir. The Counts impose different burdens on their constituents. In ages past, people were in a sense owned by the Count of their district. Now, it more or less boils down to taxes."
He fixes Jedao with a serious look. No games on this one: "It is quite a different matter to personally swear into the service of a Count -- or of Our service." The Imperial 'we'. "Your life would be Ours. And, in turn, We would owe you the keeping of it -- and the proper use of it." Use meaning -- all too often -- end. That being the bloody essence of the oath, stripped of all the elaborate formalities and provisions.
no subject
"Is that on the table?" He certainly hadn't expected that.
no subject
"Yes," he says, finally. "You would be an asset to the Imperial Service, I'm sure." He holds up a hand, as though halting someone considering interrupting him. It is, again, a casual gesture, but one with unmistakable weight of authority. The gesture isn't for Jedao; it's for Simon, whom Gregor has no doubt given an instant aneurysm with the last sentence he spoke. He will speak with Simon, at length, later. It's a stop-panicking sort of gesture, no doubt failing to put his ImpInt chief's mind at ease, but at least putting on hold the storm.
His eyes don't waver from Jedao's. The next statement is mostly serious, perhaps one-part-per-thousand wry, which is Official Gregor's version of a joke. "Do you often ask to die for people you've only just met?"
He adds a clarification: "In the sense of my," my, not Our, "personal service, the answer is no. My sense is that you may be the most desperate man I have ever met, and I will accept an oath of this magnitude only when I am satisfied that you know you have a choice."
no subject
Well. It depends on one's criterion for best. He licks his lips.
He strains, suddenly, against his bonds, pulling hard for just a few seconds, then relaxes back into them, with a gentle, easy sort of sigh. "I haven't felt this free in a long time," he murmurs, eyes dragging lazily around the room, wondering how many observers he can meet the gazes of with a casual enough grid survey.
no subject
"Then the man you killed must have really deserved it," says Gregor, bluntly. He sighs. "You aren't free. And you'll remain that way until I'm satisfied, and I won't be satisfied until my people are satisfied. So you might as well cooperate, for now."
He has the unfortunate feeling that Jedao needs more attention than Gregor can spare. Hence his strong inclination to leave the preliminaries to his foster-mother.
no subject
"It wasn't about deserving it. We were far past that," he says, because it doesn't matter to anyone but him, and Gregor wants more handles on him. Oh, Kujen. His beautiful pale eyes and his hard delicate hands. Jedao's sleek heartless voice in the dark.
"We were supposed to be lost forever. That would have been - right. But I had to protect you."
no subject
He holds up a hand. "Stop."
Jedao isn't ready to tell Gregor everything that Gregor wants to know, certainly not ready to give it in any kind of coherent order, and if he's subjected to Imperial Security for the entire intervening time, he won't ever be.
His eyes stay on Jedao's face. Damn it all, but he likes the vulnerability he senses there. It has the flavor of the devotion of those truly loyal to Barrayar, but with a personal edge to it.
He's afraid of it. Jedao might've been thinking about protecting Barrayar's people -- and Gregor won't take that for granted, not yet -- but right now Gregor's worried, in an imprecise and ignorant way, about impressing his own desires too hard on Jedao. And he doesn't know why he's worried.
"Welcome to your first free choice on Barrayar," says Gregor. "You may stay in this cell with such information access as is granted to you. Or you may leave and go to a house in the country for two weeks, where you will stay within close proximity to one of Our best people, at all times. Either way, this interrogation is on hold until such time as We decide it will be resumed. Clear?"
no subject
When Gregor asks for his acknowledgement, he smiles. It's a slanted, playful smile, small but bright, flickering onto his face like a candle flame, reflected in his eyes.
"I promise to be entirely unforthcoming, your majesty," he says, in a tone to match the smile.
He shifts in his bonds as he considers the proposed terms, because it's a tell likely as not to be radically misinterpreted. There's a reassuringly professional sturdiness to them.
There's a time for redefining any game presented to you. And there are games inside games, and sometimes offering a victory is just another move, whispers his training, uselessly relentless. He knows which one Gregor wants him to pick, it's hardly subtle. But there aren't any damn stakes left, except making sure he doesn't inadvertently make Kujen's pitch for him, which he could do perfectly well gagged or dead in a box.
But since it doesn't matter what he does or how he's positioned anymore - he thinks it would be nice to see a sky again. He might have murmured this reasoning aloud, except he just promised to guard himself.
"The country, then. Do I get any further briefing?"
no subject
Doesn't hide his pleasure over this one, though -- doesn't broadcast it, but in the lift of his chin, tilt of his eyebrow, spark in his eye, he conveys it.
"No," he says, simply, and he moves to his feet. "I hope to enjoy getting to know you." He can't say this was enjoyable, exactly, but it opens up future possibilities. He steps over and rests his hand, briefly, on Jedao's shoulder. Cemented with physical contact, which Gregor hardly ever employs.
"I know you're afraid," he says. "It's going to be all right." And there's no way Jedao's going to believe that, admittedly; Gregor says it because he's really damn good at saying it and selling it, because he wants to remind Jedao that he has the power to make things better. Because he's making a promise, and it's a promise he won't forget.
With that, he leaves.
--
His instructions to Lady Alys are... hazy.
"He's slippery," says Gregor; "don't let him wander far. Don't let him hurt anyone or sabotage anything. Ideally, the outcome of this would be a growing trust in Barrayar, but I'll settle for taking the edge off his paranoia. Make sure he eats and sleeps."
Alys takes this with poise, and just the slightest hint of exasperation. It's a strange whim of Gregor's, that she must indulge -- not the first time, and not the last time. She understands that this man with a star drive that doesn't depend on wormholes is a broken person, and that Gregor feels the best route towards that technology is repairing him first.
His methods, she thinks, could use a little fine-tuning. At least he's picked the right people for it.
--
With Cordelia, Gregor does not instruct.
"He's wounded and dangerous," he tells her. "The moment he realized he could -- how did he say it -- be a gun for me, he wanted it. Like he didn't know how to be anything else."
Cordelia is proud, in that moment; Gregor, her foster-son, is handed a prisoner with unbelievable technology, and his first impulse is not to torture, but to heal. And he wants her to help.
Of course she will.
--
So they'll ship Jedao out to Vorkosigan house -- with his fish -- and, well, just see how things go from there.
no subject
Despite the spaciousness of the transport, he ends up draped over at least two laps, and if he doesn't sleep, he fakes it very well.
--
When they open the door, he starts crying. Shocked, silent tears that start streaming down his face and don't stop for over an hour. He stumbles out of the car and then falls to his knees, fingers digging to the grass. He stares at the trees, at the sky, at the lake with an expression too raw to name, open as a bombed-out building with one wall blown off.
Someone tries to take his elbow, to lift him up, to gently steer him inside, and Jedao breaks his wrist without looking, barely seems to hear the ensuing clamor. He tips slowly sideways, stretches out to lie on the grass, cries and stares and cries.
Cordelia had come out to meet them, of course, and she handles the situation, prevents it from escalating, sends the man with the wrist into the house with an armsman. Then she just sits down beside Jedao on the grass. They stay there for a long time.
--
He arranges, deftly and with a subtlety that she herself praises, never to be alone with Lady Alys, or even the security-exempt appearance of alone. He is unfailingly polite to her. He eats with a soldierly efficiency; he spends far more emotion feeding the fish, which he does with clockwork precision.
He never sleeps in his room. He sleeps on the lakeshore, in the barn, up trees. He does use his room, mostly for temporary storage, books from the library and fresh fruit and jars of pickles, and weapons he picks off his own security team. The room is also home to the scoreboard he starts keeping for said security team, although he never explains the rules.
In a deeply aggravated, slightly disbelieving tone, one of the reports Gregor receives details everything so-far deciphered or suspected about Jedao's point system. The first person who finds him each time he slips the perimeter gets points; anyone whose weapon he picks up loses points, although less if he doesn't actually manage to get it back to his room before he is relieved of it. They think talking to him gains points, but not always. Often people lose points for reasons they cannot pinpoint. Gained, less often. A supplementary report by the current winner includes the running totals.
Jedao likes games, learns any board game or card game or dice game anyone will teach him, armsmen's children included. He's taught several of them to juggle in exchange. He hasn't lost a pure strategy game yet, and dice games only rarely.
--
He likes to be outside and he likes the lake especially. He managed to climb to the top of the house during a thunderstorm, situated among the eaves in the one spot it was impossible to get a decent stunner angle on. On calm days, he can sit in the shade for hours to coax a songbird into his hand. On oppressive days, he eels into the barn, watches the ostlers with sharp eyes and quietly joins their work. He doesn't balk at shoveling the dung, so they let him, and he's gentle with the horses, so they let him brush them, too.
--
He reads nonfiction, but is otherwise indiscriminate. He uses his terminal mostly to access language learning materials for Barrayar's other three languages, and works through them at a brisk pace. He does not seek out current events.
He does not answer questions. Most of them he ignores; anything too direct receives either a blank-faced or an impish repetition, verbatim, that "My interrogation is over." Cordelia finds this hilarious, and sets about finding ways to ask questions without actually using the interrogative - mostly by leaving things out and informing him that he can pick what he likes, and similar constructions. She says your perspective must be interesting rather than asking his opinion. It makes Jedao grin; he usually obliges her.
Among the tidbits this strategy turns up: he ends up choosing to mostly eat Cordelia's vat-grown protein. "If you didn't love it or kill it yourself, you don't really have much right to flesh," he remarks, contemplatively. "Ideally, both."
For his own sake he never asks for anything, at least not in terms of requests; he makes proposals, but not requests. Some days are like the first day: he goes outside and lays down, in the grass or on the lakeshore, and does nothing for hours and hours, until it's time to feed the fish. Some nights he stares instead of sleeps; sometimes he sobs in his sleep, silently, or babbles in an incomprehensible language, in an unmistakable tone of begging.
--
After a few weeks, he starts sparring with the armsmen. He's a decent wrestler with a terrible stock of dirty tricks, but he doesn't hurt anyone as badly as the first day. With more space to move in, he's terrifically fast, vicious, with a keen eye for anticipating his opponents' moves. The best of them both challenge and delight him; the first time any of them hear him laugh, he's pinned to the ground. He kisses the armsman on the tip of his nose, and takes advantage of the shock to regain the upper hand, although he doesn't keep it long.
He adds the armsmen to the scoreboard, although they seem to get points primarily by dint of telling the best dirty jokes or showing him good hiking trails. He falls into an easy camaraderie with them, loses at arm wrestling and wins at darts. He invents bawdy jokes of his own - uncomfortably incisive ones, sometimes, filleting Barrayaran sexual mores, although he mostly only tells those to Cordelia, who appreciates them. Somehow - rapidly - despite his mercuriality and strangeness, he is beloved by the whole household.
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He also takes personal reports from Alys, over video. She is more able to quantify threats and real dangers, while breezily describing Jedao's sillier moments with a perfectly apt tone of slight disdain.
Jedao is afraid of her, Gregor thinks, reading in between the lines. He asks Alys about this, when she makes a pertinent remark, with a slight rise of his eyebrows, and she nods, once, and continues on with her narrative.
Cordelia also speaks with Gregor -- more than once a day, at first, especially after the incident with the broken wrist, which causes Gregor great and immediate concern. Then every day, then every few days.
It takes up a lot of Gregor's time, but the gain from it could be immeasurable. That sort of technology... but still, none of it seems to work at all, not the way it's supposed to, even when the people poking through it are exquisitely careful. Turns out it pays to be polite to the servitors, too, which were mostly just hiding at first. Gregor does take one trip up to the ship to have a polite conversation with one, who seems starry-eyed (if a small mechanical snake could be starry-eyed) at the Emperor's presence. He gathers that it (she?) has been watching a lot of broadcast videos from Barrayar, including some rather romantic ideas about the Emperor's marriageable status.
He originally planned on arriving in two weeks at Vorkosigan Surleau, but the progress Jedao makes encourages him, and so he holds off for some time. It helps that he has to calm down some of the ambassadors to Barrayar -- they mostly just want to be sure that the people who arrived in the spacecraft weren't citizens of their planets.
He does charge Lady Alys with having Jedao provided with an appropriate wardrobe, things that fit, and he makes a couple remarks about pseudo-military cuts and structured jackets, without being particularly fancy. His instinct, upon seeing the ornate interior of that vessel, is to provide comfort emphatically without that sort of ostentation.
But, between three weeks and a month in, he shows up, fairly quietly (for an Emperor), and steps inside the house while his security team does a sweep over the immediate area. Colleagues assigned to Jedao confer with Gregor's ImpSec team and his personal Armsmen.
Gregor considers waiting for Jedao in Jedao's own room, but decides not to violate that boundary. He takes tea in a sitting room on the same floor, and catches up with Cordelia. Jedao, it seems, is on one of the hiking trails.
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One particular scar is large, simple, and striking when matched with the asymmetry of structure beneath: the bone shank he had in his cell was obviously made from his own floating rib. Gregor may have had reports on all of that already, if ImpSec gave him a physical when he was unconscious - but it's another thing to see it.
"Majesty," he murmurs, barely glancing at Gregor; he sits and settles the bird more steadily in his lap. Then he immediately tips cream out into a saucer, starts crumbling up a scone to pick out the raisins and start soaking the breading, carefully feeding bits to the bird.
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Of course there was a physical done when Jedao was unconscious. A thorough examination, if only just to determine that he hadn't actually succeeded in hurting himself. That their intervention hadn't pushed a fragile anatomical situation out of control. Even the most healthy-seeming people, with statistically center-of-the-curve physiology, can have unexpected heart defects that react poorly with stunners.
He doesn't look at Cordelia, but evidently she perceives what he wants -- makes him uncomfortable, thinking what else she might have perceived -- and she makes her excuses and her exit.
The Armsmen are still close by, of course, but Gregor is accustomed to considering them invisible.
"How are you?"
He speaks with soft deliberation, the kind of soft that carries -- and he knows exactly what he's doing in asking a question, rather than making a statement. Signaling the end of his previous instruction to stop.
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"I'm happy," he says simply, without looking up - he can't help the reflexive fear, admitting a thing like that, although he doesn't have to show it. But it doesn't matter: firstly because it's obvious, the numerous things Gregor could take away again, if he wanted ways to pressure Jedao that didn't break his earlier promises. And secondly because he's willing, as he's always been willing, to sacrifice happiness.
"I didn't think I'd get to see a sun again. Thank you for that." If he dies now - or goes into another black pit, finally unravels completely - this month will have been a kindness undeserved and unexpected.
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He fixes Jedao with slightly narrowed eyes. "And those systems on that ship of yours should be able to mimic a sun. Given everything else they can do."
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