"In his rooms. Although he actually took a walk in the garden this morning, I'm glad to say."
"Mm." Miles started working his way upstairs.
"Lift tube," said Bothari.
"Oh, hell, it's only one flight."
"Surgeon said you're to stay off them as much as possible."
Miles's mother awarded Bothari an approving smile, which he
acknowledged blandly with a murmured, "Milady." Miles shrugged grudgingly and headed for the back of the house instead.
"Miles," said his mother as he passed, "don't, ah . . . He's very old, he's not too well, and he hasn't had to be polite to anybody in years—
just take him on his own terms, all right?"
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"You know I do." He grinned ironically, to prove how unaffected he proposed to be. Her lips curved in return, but her eyes remained
grave.
He met Elena Bothari, coming out of his grandfather's chambers.
His bodyguard greeted his daughter with a silent nod, and won for
himself one of her rather shy smiles.
For the thousandth time Miles wondered how such an ugly man
could have produced such a beautiful daughter. Every one of his
features was echoed in her face, but richly transmuted. At eighteen she was tall, like her father, fully six feet to his six-and-a-half; but while he was whipcord lean and tense, she was slim and vibrant. His nose a beak, hers an elegant aquiline profile; his face too narrow, hers with the air of some perfectly-bred aristocratic sight-hound, a borzoi or a greyhound. Perhaps it was the eyes that made the difference;
hers were dark and lustrous, alert, but without his constantly shifting, unsmiling watchfulness. Or the hair; his greying, clipped in his
habitual military burr, hers long, dark, straight-shining. A gargoyle and a saint, by the same sculptor, facing each other across some
ancient cathedral portal.
Miles shook himself from his trance. Her eyes met his briefly, and
her smile faded. He straightened up from his tired slouch and
produced a false smile for her, hoping to lure her real one back. Not too soon, Sergeant . . .
"Oh, good, I'm so glad you're here," she greeted him. "It's been gruesome this morning."
"Has he been crotchety?"
"No, cheerful. Playing Strat-O with me and paying no attention—do you know, I almost beat him? Telling his war stories and wondering
about you—if he'd had a map of your course, he'd have been sticking pins in it to mark your imaginary progress . . . I don't have to stay, do I?"
"No, of course not."
Elena twitched a relieved smile at him, and trailed off down the
corridor, casting one disquieted look back over her shoulder.
Miles took a breath, and stepped across General Count Piotr
Vorkosigan's inner threshold.