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little flat - which, incidentally, had no staff underfoot, only a discreet
cleaning service. Then Miles could fire the staff... that is, discharge them
again, with suitably glowing recommendations and a bonus. Yeah. That would
work.
"Have you communicated to your parents about this yet?" Ivan asked.
"No. Not yet."
"You ought to. Before they get some garbled version through some other
source."
"So I ought. It s... not easy." He glanced up at Ivan. "I don t suppose you
could... ?"
"Absolutely not!" cried Ivan in a tone of horror. After a moment of silence,
he relented to the measure of a, "Well... if you really can t. But I d rather
not."
"I ll... think about it."
Miles slopped the last of the greenish coffee into his cup, trudged back
upstairs, and dressed in a loose, embroidered backcountry-style shirt and dark
trousers, which he found in the back of his closet. He d last worn them three
years ago. At least they weren t tight. While Ivan wasn t around, he pulled
all his Barrayaran uniforms and boots out of his closet and bundled them into
storage in an unused guest room down the hall, so he wouldn t have to look at
them every time he opened his closet door.
After a long hesitation, he exiled his Dendarii mercenary uniforms likewise.
The few clothes left hanging seemed lonely and forlorn.
He settled himself at his comconsole in his bedroom. A message to his parents,
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ah God. And he ought to send one to Elli
Quinn, too. Would he ever get the chance to make it right again with her?
Face-to-face, body to body? It was a horribly complex thing to attempt via a
comconsole message: just his thin electronic ghost, mouthing words ill-chosen
or misunderstood, weeks out of synchrony. And all his messages to the Dendarii
were monitored by ImpSec censors.
I can t face this now. I ll do it later. Soon. I promise
.
He turned his thoughts instead to the less daunting problem of Vorkosigan
House staffing. So what was the budget for this project? His lieutenant s
medical-discharge half-pay would barely cover the salary and board of one
full-time servant, even with a free room thrown in, at least of the sorts of
superior folk normally employed by the aristocracy in the capital - he would
be competing with sixty other District Counts households in that labor market
here, a host of lesser lordlings, and the sort of new industrial wealthy
non-Vor who were presently carrying off such a distressing percentage of
eligible Vor maidens to preside over their homes in the style to which they
aspired.
Miles tapped in a comconsole code. The pleasant, smiling face of the
Vorkosigans business manager, Tsipis, appeared with startling promptness over
the vid plate upon Miles s call reaching his office in Hassadar. "Good
morning, Lord Vorkosigan! I was not aware you had returned from your
off-planet duty. How may I serve you?"
He was not yet aware of Miles s medical discharge, either, apparently. Miles
felt too weary to explain even the edited-for-
public-consumption version of events, so only said, "Yes. I got in a few weeks
ago. It... looks like I m going to be downside longer than I d anticipated.
What funds can I draw upon? Did Father leave you any instructions?"
"All of it," said Tsipis.
"Excuse me? I don t understand."
"All of the accounts and funds were made joint with you, just before the Count
and Countess departed for Sergyar. Just in case. You are your fathers
executor, you know."
"Yes, but..." He hadn t thought Sergyar was that wild a frontier. "Um... what
can I do?"
"It s much easier to say what you can t do. You can t sell the entailed
properties, namely the residence at Hassadar and
Vorkosigan House. You can buy whatever you wish, of course, or sell anything
your grandfather left you solely in your own name."
"So... can I afford to hire a full-time driver?"
"Oh, my, yes, you could afford to staff Vorkosigan house in full. The funds
are there, piling up."
"Aren t they needed for the Viceroy s Palace on Sergyar?"
"Countess Vorkosigan has tapped a certain amount of her private moneys,
apparently for some redecorating project, but your father is only maintaining
his twenty Armsmen at present. Everything else on Sergyar comes out of the
Imperial budget."
"Oh."
Tsipis brightened. "Are you thinking of reopening Vorkosigan House, my lord?
That would be splendid. It was such a fine sight, last year at Winterfair,
when I dined there."
"Not... at present."
Tsipis drooped. "Ah," he murmured, in a tone of disappointment. Then a look of
belated enlightenment came over his face.
"My lord... do you need money
?"
"Er... yes. That was what I had in mind. To, like, pay a driver, maybe a cook,
pay bills, buy things... a suitable living allowance, you know." His ImpSec
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pay, accumulating in his lengthy absences on duty, had always been more than
enough. He wondered how much to ask Tsipis for.
"But of course. How would you like it? A weekly deposit into your Service
account, perhaps?"
"No... I d like a new account. Separate. Just... to me as Lord Vorkosigan."
"Excellent thinking. Your father is always very careful to keep his personal
and Imperial funds identifiably separated. It s a good habit to start. Not
that the most foolhardy Imperial Auditor would ever have dared to take him on,
of course. Nor have looked anything but a fool afterwards, when the numbers
were laid out." Tsipis tapped on his comconsole, and glanced aside at some
data readout. "Suppose I transfer the entire accumulated unused Household fund
over into your new account, for seed money. And then just send the usual
weekly allotment to follow."
"Fine."
"Now, if you need any more, do call me right away."
"Sure."
"I ll send you your new account chit by courier within the hour."
"Thank you." Miles reached to cut the com, then added as an afterthought, "How
much is it?"
"Five thousand marks."
"Oh, good."
"And eighty thousand marks to start," Tsipis added.
Miles did a quick mental reversal, and calculation, "This place was sucking
down five thousand marks a week
?"
"Oh, much more than that, with the Armsmen, and the Countess s personal
account. And this does not include major repairs, which are budgeted
separately."
"I... see."
"Now, should you take an interest, I should be happy to go over all your
financial affairs with you in much more detail," Tsipis added eagerly.
"There s so much that could be done with a somewhat more aggressive,
entrepreneurial, and, dare I say, less conservative and more inventive
approach."
"If... I ever have the time. Thank you, Tsipis." Miles quit the com much less
casually.
Good God. He could buy... damn near anything he wanted. He tried to think of
something he wanted.
The Dendarii
.
Yeah. We know [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]