"No," she said firmly. Her arm tightened around his shoulders. "I won't let them." God help her, this baseless assurance actually seemed to console him.

I'll look after your boy, Kareen, Cordelia thought as the flames rose up. The oath was more costly than any gift being burned, for it bound her life unbreakably to Barrayar. But the heat on her face eased the pain in her head, a little.

Cordelia's own soul felt like an exhausted snail, shelled in a glassy numbness. She crept like an automaton through the rest of the ceremony, though there were flashes when her surroundings made no sense at all. The assorted Barrayaran Vor reacted to her with a frozen, deep formality. They doubtless figure me for crazy-dangerous, a madwoman let out of the attic by overindulgent relations. It finally dawned on her that their exaggerated courtesies signified respect.

It made her furious. All Kareen's courage of endurance had bought her nothing, Lady Vorpatril's brave and bloody birth-giving was taken for granted, but whack off some idiot's head and you were really somebody, by God—!

It took Aral an hour, when they returned to his quarters, to calm her down, and then she had a crying jag. He stuck it out.

"Are you going to use this?" she asked him, when sheer weariness returned her to a semblance of coherence. "This, this . . . amazing new status of mine?" How she loathed the word, acid in her mouth.

"I'll use anything," he vowed quietly, "if it will help me put Gregor on the throne in fifteen years a sane and competent man, heading a stable government. Use you, me, whatever it takes. To pay this much, then fail, would not be tolerable."

She sighed, and put her hand in his. "In case of accident, donate my remaining body parts, too. It's the Betan way. Waste not."

His lip curled up helplessly. Face-to-face, they rested their foreheads together for a moment, bracing each other. "Want not."

Her silent promise to Kareen was made policy when she and Aral, as a couple, were officially appointed Gregor's guardians by the Council of Counts. This was legally distinct somehow from Aral's guardianship of the Imperium as Regent. Prime Minister Vortala took time to lecture her and make it clear her new duties involved no political powers. She did have economic functions, including trusteeship of certain Vorbarra holdings that were separate from Imperial properties, appending strictly to Gregor's title as Count Vorbarra. And by Aral's delegation, she was given oversight of the Emperor's household. And education.

"But, Aral," said Cordelia, stunned. "Vortala emphasized I was to have no power."

"Vortala . . . is not all-wise. Let's just say, he has a little trouble recognizing as such some forms of power which are not synonymous with force. Your window of opportunity is narrow, though; at age twelve Gregor will enter a pre-Academy preparatory school."

"But do they realize . . . ?"

"I do. And you do. It's enough."

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty