Bujold, Lois McMaster - Winter Gifts

VIP免费

2024-12-18 0 0 294.6KB 91 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Science Fiction

By Lois McMaster Bujold

Winterfai

Gifts

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fictionwise

www.Fictionwise.com

NOTICE: This ebook is licensed to the original purchaser

only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email,

floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a

violation of International copyright law and subjects the

violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice

overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are

erroneous. This book cannot be legally lent or given to

others.

This ebook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.

Distributed by Fictionwise.com

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

From Armsman Roic's wrist com the gate guard's voice

reported laconically, "They're in. Gate's locked."

"Right," Roic returned. "Dropping the house shields." He

turned to the discreet security control panel beside the carved

double doors of Vorkosigan House's main entry hall, pressed

his palm to the read-pad, and entered a short code. The faint

hum of the force shield protecting the great house faded.

Roic stared anxiously out one of the tall narrow windows

flanking the portal, ready to throw the doors wide when

m'lord's groundcar pulled into the porte-cochère. He glanced

no less anxiously down the considerable length of his athletic

body, checking his House uniform: half-boots polished to

mirrors, trousers knife-creased, silver embroidery gleaming,

dark brown fabric spotless.

His face heated in mortified memory of a less expected

arrival in this very hall—also of Lord Vorkosigan with honored

company in tow—and the unholy tableau they'd surprised

with the Escobaran bounty hunters and the gooey debacle of

the bug butter. Roic had looked an utter fool in that moment,

nearly naked except for a liberal coating of sticky slime. He

could still hear Lord Vorkosigan's austere, amused voice, as

cutting as a razor-slash across his ears—Armsman Roic,

you're out of uniform.

He thinks I'm an idiot. Worse, the Escobarans' invasion

had been a security breach, and while he'd not, technically,

been on duty—he'd been asleep, dammit—he'd been present

in the house and therefore on call for emergencies. The mess

had been in his lap, literally. M'lord had dismissed him from

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

the scene with no more than an exasperated, Roic ... get a

bath, somehow more keenly excoriating than any bellowed

dressing-down.

Roic checked his uniform again.

The long silvery groundcar pulled up and sighed to the

pavement. The front canopy rose on the driver, the senior

and dauntingly competent Armsman Pym. He released the

rear canopy and hurried around the car to assist m'lord and

his party. The senior armsman spared a glance through the

narrow window as he strode by, his eye passing coolly over

Roic and scanning the hall beyond to make sure it contained

no unforeseen drama this time. These were Very Important

Off-world Wedding Guests, Pym had impressed upon Roic.

Which Roic might have been left to deduce by m'lord going

personally to the shuttleport to greet their descent from

orbit—but then, Pym had walked in on the bug butter

disaster, too. Since that day, his directives to Roic had tended

to be couched in words of one syllable, with no contingency

left to chance.

A short figure in a well-tailored gray tunic and trousers

hopped out of the car first: Lord Vorkosigan, gesturing

expansively at the great stone mansion, talking non-stop over

his shoulder, smiling in proud welcome. As the carved doors

swung wide, admitting a blast of Vorbarr Sultana winter night

air and a few glittering snow crystals, Roic stood to attention

and mentally matched the other people exiting the groundcar

with the security list he'd been given. A tall woman held a

baby bundled in blankets; a lean, smiling fellow hovered by

her side. They had to be the Bothari-Jeseks. Madame Elena

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bothari-Jesek was the daughter of the late, legendary

Armsman Bothari; her right of entrée into Vorkosigan House,

where she had grown up with m'lord, was absolute, Pym had

made sure Roic understood. It scarcely needed the silver

circles of a jump pilot's neural leads on mid-forehead and

temples to identify the shorter middle-aged fellow as the

Betan jump pilot, Arde Mayhew—should a jump pilot look so

jump-lagged? Well, m'lord's mother Countess Vorkosigan was

Betan, too; and the pilot's blinking, shivering stance was

among the most physically unthreatening Roic had ever seen.

Not so the final guest. Roic's eyes widened.

The hulking figure unfolded from the groundcar and stood

up, and up. Pym, who was almost as tall as Roic, did not

come quite up to its shoulder. It shook out the swirling folds

of a gray and white greatcoat of military cut, and threw back

its head. The light from overhead caught the face and

gleamed off ... were those fangs, hooked over the out-slung

lower jaw?

Sergeant Taura was the name that went with it, by process

of elimination. One of m'lord's old military buddies, Pym had

given Roic to understand, and—don't be fooled by the rank—

of some particular importance (if rather mysterious, as was

everything connected with Lord Miles Vorkosigan's late career

in Imperial Security.) Pym was former ImpSec himself. Roic

was not, as he was reminded, oh, three times a day on

average.

At Lord Vorkosigan's urging, the whole party poured into

the entry hall, shaking off snow-spotted garments, talking,

laughing. The greatcoat was swung from those high shoulders

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

like a billowing sail, its owner turning neatly on one foot,

folding the garment ready to hand over. Roic jerked back to

avoid being clipped by a heavy, mahogany-colored braid of

hair as it swept past, and rocked forward to find himself face

to ... nose to ... staring directly into an entirely unexpected

cleavage. It was framed by pink silk in a plunging vee. He

glanced up. The outslung jaw was smooth and beardless. The

curious pale amber eyes, irises circled with a sleek black line,

looked back down at him with, he instantly feared, some

amusement. Her fang-framed smile was deeply alarming.

Pym was efficiently organizing servants and luggage. Lord

Vorkosigan's voice jerked Roic back to focus. "Roic, did the

Count and Countess get back in from their dinner

engagement yet?"

"About twenty minutes ago, m'lord. They went upstairs to

their suite to change."

Lord Vorkosigan addressed the woman with the baby, who

was attracting cooing maids. "My parents would skin me if I

didn't take you up to them instantly. Come on. Mother's

pretty eager to meet her namesake. I predict Baby Cordelia

will have Countess Cordelia wrapped around her pudgy little

fingers in about, oh, three and a half seconds. At the

outside."

He turned and started up the curve of the great staircase,

shepherding the Bothari-Jeseks and calling over his shoulder,

"Roic, show Arde and Taura to their assigned rooms, make

sure they have everything they want. We'll meet back in the

library when you all are freshened up or whatever. Drinks and

snacks will be laid on there."

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

So, it was a lady sergeant. Galactics had those; m'lord's

mother had been a famous Betan officer in her day. But this

one's a bloody giant mutant lady sergeant was a thought Roic

suppressed more firmly. Such backcountry prejudices had no

place in this household. Though she was clearly

bioengineered, had to be. He recovered himself enough to

say, "May I take your bag, um ... Sergeant?"

"Oh ... all right." With a dubious look down at him, she

handed over the satchel she'd had slung over one arm. The

pink enamel on her fingernails did not quite camouflage their

shape as claws, heavy and efficient as a leopard's. The bag's

descending weight nearly jerked Roic's arm out of its socket.

He managed a desperate smile and began lugging it two-

handed up the staircase in m'lord's wake.

He deposited the tired-looking pilot first. Sergeant Taura's

second floor guest room was one of the modernized ones,

with its own bath, around the corridor's corner from m'lord's

own suite. She reached up and trailed a claw along the

ceiling, and smiled in evident approval of Vorkosigan House's

three-meter headspace.

"So," she said, turning to him, "is a Winterfair wedding

considered especially auspicious, in Barrayaran custom?"

"They're not so common as in summer. Mostly I think it's

now because m'lord's fiancée is between semesters at

University."

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."

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

"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.

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

"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.

Winterfair Gifts

by Lois McMaster Bujold

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

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

ScienceFictionByLoisMcMasterBujoldWinterfairGiftsWinterfairGiftsbyLoisMcMasterBujold2Fictionwisewww.Fictionwise.comCopyright©2004byLoisMcMasterBujoldNOTICE:Thisebookislicensedtotheoriginalpurchaseronly.Duplicationordistributiontoanypersonviaemail,floppydisk,network,printout,oranyothermeansisaviolati...

展开>> 收起<<

Bujold, Lois McMaster - Winter Gifts.pdf

共91页,预览19页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Bujold, Lois McMaster - Winter Gifts

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: