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CHAPTER TWO
The old man was out of bed, shaved and crisply dressed for the day.
He sat up in a chair, gazing pensively out the window overlooking his back garden. He glanced up with a frown at the interrupter of his
meditations, saw that it was Miles, and smiled broadly.
"Ah, come, boy . . ." He gestured at the chair Miles guessed Elena had recently vacated. The old man's smile became tinged with
puzzlement. "By God, have I lost a day somewhere? I thought this was the day you were out on that one-hundred-kilometer trot up and
down Mt. Sencele."
"No, sir, you haven't lost a day." Miles eased into the chair. Bothari set another before him and pointed at his feet. Miles started to lift them, but the effort was sabotaged by a particularly savage twinge of pain. "Yeah, put 'em up, Sergeant," Miles acquiesced wearily. Bothari helped him place the offending feet at the medically correct angle and withdrew, strategically, Miles thought, to stand at attention by the door. The old Count watched this pantomime, understanding
dawning painfully in his face.
"What have you done, boy?" he sighed.
Let's make it quick and painless, like a beheading . . . "Jumped off a wall in the obstacle course yesterday and broke both my legs. Washed myself out of the physical tests completely. The others—well, they
don't matter now."
"So you came home."
"So I came home."
"Ah." The old man drummed his long gnarled fingers once on the arm of the chair. "Ah." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and thinned his lips, staring out the window, not looking at Miles. His fingers drummed again. "It's all the fault of this damned creeping democratism," he burst out querulously. "A lot of imported off-planet nonsense. Your father did not do Barrayar a service to encourage it.
He had a fine opportunity to stamp it out when he was Regent—which
he wasted totally, as far as I can see . . ." he trailed off. "In love with
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off-planet notions, off-planet women," he echoed himself more
faintly. "I blame your mother, you know. Always pushing that
egalitarian tripe . . ."
"Oh, come on," Miles was stirred to object. "Mother's as apolitical as you can get and still be conscious and walking around."
"Thank God, or she'd be running Barrayar today. I've never seen your father cross her yet. Well, well, it could have been worse . . ." The old man shifted again, twisting in his pain of spirit as Miles had in his pain of body.