Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online Page A

the unreachable stars wheel overhead.
    Vorkosigan had asked to be waked before dawn, but she let him sleep until full light. She didn't like the way he looked, alternately pale and flushed, or his shallow rapid breathing.
    "Think you'd better take one of your painkillers?" she asked him when he rose, for he seemed barely able to put weight on the leg, which was much more swollen.
    "Not yet. I have to save some for the end." He cut a long stick instead, and the three of them began the day's task of walking down their shadows.
    "How far to the end?" Cordelia asked.
    "I estimate a day, day and a half, depending on what kind of time we can make." He grimaced. "Don't worry. You're not going to have to carry me. I'm one of the fittest men in my command." He limped on. "Over forty."
    "How many men over forty are there in your command?"
    "Four."
    Cordelia snorted.
    "Anyway, if it becomes necessary, I have a stimulant in my medkit that would animate a corpse. But I want to save it for the end too."
    "What kind of trouble are you anticipating?"
    "It all depends on who picks up my call. I know Radnov—my Political Officer—has at least two agents in my communications section." He pursed his lips, measuring her again. "You see, I don't think it was a general mutiny. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment assassination attempt on the part of Radnov and a very few others. Using you Betans, they thought they could get rid of me without implicating themselves. If I'm right, everyone aboard ship thinks I'm dead. All but one."
    "Which one?"
    "Wouldn't I like to know. The one who hit me on the head and hid me in the bracken, instead of cutting my throat and dumping me in the nearest hole. Lieutenant Radnov seems to have a ringer in his group. And yet—if this ringer were loyal to me, all he'd have to do is tell Gottyan, my first officer, and he'd have had a loyal patrol down to pick me up before now. Now who in my command is so confused in his thinking as to betray both sides at once? Or am I missing something?"
    "Maybe they're all still chasing my ship," suggested Cordelia.
    "Where is your ship?"
    Honesty should be safely academic by now, Cordelia calculated. "Well on its way back to Beta Colony."
    "Unless they've been captured."
    "No. They were out of your range when I talked to them. They may not be armed, but they can run rings around your battle cruiser."
    "Hm. Well, it's possible."
    He doesn't sound surprised, Cordelia noted. I'd bet his secret reports on our stuff would give our counterintelligence people colonic spasms. "How far will they pursue?"
    "That's up to Gottyan. If he judges he can't possibly catch them, he'll return to the picket station. If he thinks he can, he's bound to make maximum effort."
    "Why?"
    He glanced sidelong at her. "I can't discuss that."
    "I don't see why not. I'm not going anywhere but a Barrayaran prison cell, for a while. Funny how one's standards change. After this trek, it will seem like the lap of luxury."
    "I'll try to see it doesn't come to that," he smiled.
    His eyes bothered her, and his smile. His curtness she could meet and match with her own flippancy, guarding herself as with a fencer's foil. His kindness was like fencing with the sea, her strokes going soft and losing all volition. She flinched from the smile, and his face fell, then became closed and grave again.
     

Chapter Three
    They walked in silence for a time after breakfast. Vorkosigan broke it first. His fever seemed to be eating away at his original taciturnity.
    "Converse with me. It will take my mind off my leg."
    "What about?"
    "Anything."
    She considered, walking. "Do you find commanding a warship very different from ordinary vessels?"
    He thought it over. "It's not the ship that's different. It's the men. Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work. Don't you find it so even