Tug of Vor

by Bracketyjack

In which the Council of Counts faces a quandary, Salic Law is more honoured in the breach than the observance, and Gregor gets an unexpected present. Part 5 of The Peaceful Vorkosiverse.

Tug-of-Vor

A Session of the Council of Counts, Autumn 2809

Emperor Gregor Vorbarra, 'the Great', tried discreetly to ease his numb bottom on the ceremonial campstool full Council Sessions demanded—a piece of imperial furniture as uncomfortable as it was symbolic. He had had the wretched antique ergonomically repadded at least three times by the finest craftsmen-upholsterers Vorbarr Sultana offered, and it could still give him aching kidneys in less than a morning. After three days of full Council he was beginning to wonder if he'd be passing blood by evening. At least the session had to end today : tomorrow was his birthday, and not even the thrice-damned sinews of his Imperium could oblige him to forgo it for other business—which was half the trouble. Boriz Vormoncrief's strategy (though hardly deserving the name) was to shuffle everything into procedural limbo by blocking a vote he just might now lose out of sheer irritation with his bluster, while repeatedly proclaiming dismay at the principled longueurs of his fellow-Counts.

At least the current longueurs actually did have some principle involved. Count Vorkalloner had been Count Vorhalas's closest political ally for almost sixty years, and the problem he faced in squaring his friend's mortified deathbed request with his own bone-deep conservatism was for him an agony. Given how stiff an old stick he was and his pride in being so, watching him tie himself in angular knots ought to have been amusing but was only distressing, a distinct, personal pain in an altogether painful matter.

As the whole Imperium knew—having been endlessly reminded by the 'vids as the case dragged to this debacle—both Vorhalas's sons had come to bad ends during the Regency, Carl at the hands of the Vor executioner after a drunken mock-duel turned fatally real, and Evon while refusing to surrender in the last hours of the Pretender's War (and reputedly from behind, at the hands of his own men). But Evon had left an infant daughter, now an upright spinster of nearly forty, and the old Count, an only surviving child of an only surviving child for four generations, had no other living relation anyone could discover closer than a supposed fifth cousin twice removed and in any case a childless widow in her seventies. The thought of his title becoming extinct was anathema to all Counts ; but so was female inheritance to the conservatives, even when so strangely backed by Vorhalas's deathbed stipulation of his granddaughter as Count's Choice—an act about which Gregor had sharply mixed feelings.

And so the Council had argued itself into the ground, out of the window, and back around the mountain, before starting over, several times by now, until his imperial head was even number than his imperial butt. Damn Vormoncrief! Miles, he suspected, eyeing his foster-brother, was also restraining homicidal impulses, though few would have seen anything but polite attention to Vorkalloner in the small figure seated at the Vorkosigan's desk. And what Gladaria Vorhalas was making of it all from the gallery Gregor didn't dare suppose. She had sat attentively through the long days, wearing a traditional mourning dress and bolero beautifully adapted as full blacks with the fittings of a designated heir, and enjoying rotating support from Alys and Ekaterin, as well as Olivia Vorrutyer and latterly Cordelia, newly arrived for the festivities tomorrow. Remaining in the gallery was a good tactic, and her political fashion statement had gone down well although retaining full mourning beyond the traditional year-and-a-day implicitly rebuked the Council's absurd delay in settling the case. But if his counts approved her uniform courtesy, Gregor was not at all sure what those who had spoken so feelingly of the difficulty that (should she inherit) would necessarily arise about the terms of her marriage were going to make of the fact, communicated privately to him with her formal plea, that she would soon, regardless of the Council's decision, have children by replicator with her lover of fifteen years, a schoolteacher in Vorhalas Corona ; the woman sitting beside her today. A mildly surprised Gregor had found he didn't personally care a jot, but his inner emperor was extremely grateful that very few Counts had any idea—not least because legalising same-sex marriage had not yet made it anywhere near the Council's agenda. Miles, he discovered in cautious conversation, knew all about what he had primly called Gladaria's orientation, and was not only strongly supportive of legalisation but half-wanted to fight the whole thing out in the open ; only half, though, fortunately.

It was, Gregor thought gloomily, all a perfect Barrayaran mess in which each of the conservative counts who followed Vormoncrief and several independents had found something to view with utmost alarm. Vorhalas's Choice had rocked them all when it became known, but Vormoncrief had managed in his first, poisonous speech to make the deathbed on which Vorhalas had finally made that choice a liability rather than the endorsement it might have been, and the old man's unyielding moral austerity over more than 30 years had made him as secretly resented as he was openly admired. The progressives, moreover, had said little, at first because their own argument in favour of Gladaria was simple—she was clearly competent, loyal, her Count's Choice and only living descendant, full stop—and latterly because all sides were staying away from one of the elephants in the room, the putative Countess Vorhalas's probable political identity as a Progressive, or perhaps an Independent. Miles was also forcing Vormoncrief to make all the running while becoming steadily muddier in the process. And the tactic was working, after a fashion, exposing both Salic law as the dubious anachronism it was and the rank prejudices that made it so speciously popular in this context—but the exposure of his usual cant had reduced Vormoncrief to this grinding filibuster that promised only continued, increasingly burdensome uncertainty for all and had already made Gregor's lower back into a banded, evil ache.

At length Vorkalloner finished parading his unhappy indecision, mumbling his way to a dispirited stop and turning to leave the Speaker's Circle. Gregor wondered acidly whom Vormoncrief, glaring at Vorhalas for his unwillingness to denounce the very idea of a female Count, would put up next, then felt hope flutter as Miles came to his feet.

"My Lord Count."

"Eh?" Vorkalloner paused, looking around. "Lord Vorkosigan?"

"I have heard you, sir, with great sympathy for the impossible position in which you have found yourself placed. And I respect your refusal to indicate how you will yourself vote. But am I correct, sir, to understand that your only real concern about Lady Vorhalas's succession as Count is that she is legally female?"

Vorkalloner thought about this for a moment before nodding cautiously. "I had not thought of it quite thus, Vorkosigan, but that is right. I have known Lady Gladaria since she was born, and no-one can doubt her mental and physical capacities, nor her loyalty and fitness for office. I would also honour her grandfather's choice if I could, and I understand why he made it. But I believe Barrayar has Salic Law for good reason, and I find I am viscerally loath to set it aside." He grimaced, looking tired. "And you do me too much credit, Vorkosigan, to say I have concealed my decision. It remains most painfully unmade."

Miles's hands made a little gesture of negation. "No conflict of honour can be painless, sir. But I have listened to the arguments against Lady Gladaria's succession with some bemusement, not at their confusions but at the way they assume the power of this Council to be circumscribed by the consequences of the third Count Vorlakial's succession. And I note, sir, that while alluding to the difficulties of an unhappy precedent you have not made that argument yourself."

There was a deep silence while foreheads wrinkled and minds raced. Vorhalas slowly rubbed his forehead in his characteristic way when thinking, not apparently noticing that many of his fellow counts were holding their breaths. Even Gregor sat a little straighter, forgetting his discomfort, for the fallout from the long-ago decision to declare a Vorlakial daughter legally male and the rightful Count, bizarre even by Barrayaran standards, had been a major stumbling-block for some of the swing votes, largely because Vormoncrief and his dry, legalistic ally Vortashpula had framed the precedent as a warning of the failure inherent in overreaching one's powers by oversetting the 'natural order'.

"I take your point, Vorkosigan, and I agree that the Council has the power to redesignate gender if it so decides." Vormoncrief spluttered annoyance and Vorkalloner shot him an irritated look. "A power that cannot be alienated by any fear of consequence. But the Vorlakial precedent remains a dire warning to us, for that decision prolonged a civil war by at least two years."

"Prolonged, yes, not that much excuse was needed." Vorkalloner smiled drily at that, nodding once at the plain Barrayaran truth. "But it did not start one." Miles's voice sharpened. "And there is, frankly, no reason whatever for any loyal subject to suppose any decision of ours would start armed conflict now—a felicity for which we all owe the late Count Vorhalas."

Vorkalloner's smile became winter-deep. "Indeed. And your point would be, Vorkosigan?"

"I have been wondering about another, rather more recent precedent that I don't believe any of us regret in the slightest." Miles paused with a touch of theatre that had Gregor's political antennae quivering. Here it comes at last. "After Count Vormoncrief's references in opening this debate to the case of Lord Midnight"—references Vormoncrief had made insistently while slyly denying any intention to compare the rather long-faced Lady Gladaria with a horse—"I re-read the whole record last night, including the codicil, which clearly designates the newly ennobled Lord Midnight as human, and I quote, for all relevant purposes." He grinned suddenly and despite everything the atmosphere lightened, because Miles was right—they did all love the Midnight case with a perverse pride in its utter lunacy. "Specifically, they accepted his hoofprint in blood as a signature and his neigh as the required loyalty oath, while Dorca unilaterally exempted him by Imperial Decree from the requirements to take oath kneeling and to place his hoof between anyone's hands except the farrier's. And if a sub-committee of the Council can in law and time of peace redetermine a Count's species, without any serious consequence whatever, I cannot see one's gender as beyond us tout court, whatever the supposed lessons of an isolated precedent."

Appreciative laughter animated the weary Counts, including conservative ones ; not least at the neatness with which Miles had turned the infamous case against Vormoncrief in payment of his crude jibing. Rapier against bludgeon, Gregor thought, wondering where Miles was going with this.

"Moreover, my Lord, despite the apparent belief of some among us that the, um, old-fashioned way remains the only way of conceiving children, you will recall that we have in Council lately passed a very lengthy and most carefully worded law that says otherwise. So the consequences of the Vorlakial precedent need not detain us in that respect either."

Abruptly Gregor realised that Vorkalloner must know of Lady Gladaria's sexuality and intended children, and presumably accepted it though no hint of it had surfaced in his speech—but he had not, Gregor thought, known that Miles knew ; he did now, and his face was a mask as he digested the fact. And Vorkalloner is her friend-father, committed by oath and honour to protecting and promoting her happiness. No wonder he had been writhing in his arguments.

"So I was wondering, my Lord, if you would consider joining me to sponsor a binding resolution, that for all legal purposes of inheritance, and for those only, Lady Gladaria Vorhalas be designated male?"

Hearing Miles's subtle secondary stress on 'all', aimed directly at Vorkalloner, as well as the primary stresses on 'legal' and 'only' audible to all, Gregor realised that absurd as such a resolution would be it would not break Salic Law, and might even get everyone out of the corners Vormoncrief had painted them into, though from the congestion on his face he wasn't considering that.

Vorkalloner himself was staring at Miles with something that might be hope, or even relief. "It's an interesting idea, Vorkosigan. And your qualifications certainly help a great deal. I do believe—"

With an angry grunt Vormoncrief puffed himself to his feet, thrusting out his belly as his voice blared. "That is as foully specious as it is utterly absurd, Vorkosigan, and you—"

Frowning at the interruption the Lord Guardian raised his pennoned spear to thump for order, but there was no need. Miles must indeed be feeling as homicidal as Gregor supposed and swung to freeze Vormoncrief with a stare from eyes Gregor knew would have gone that curious, terrifying gunmetal grey. The bloated, bellowing count faltered and paled, abruptly resembling an obese rabbit. Miles's voice remained perfectly polite but Gregor felt the hairs on his neck bristle at its undertones and remembered Ivan once plaintively asking him if he understood how a man of 4'9" could radiate such palpable menace. Practice, belike, he had replied, grinning. Around the chamber spines involuntarily stiffened.

"We are all aware of your views, Count Vormoncrief, and require no further repetition of them. Especially in breach of order."

It could have been Aral speaking, twenty years ago in the full power of his Regency, and Vormoncrief's face sheened with sweat as he sank back into his seat, swallowing audibly. Gregor, feeling his own adrenaline kick, had to fight to contain a very improper laugh. It was probably the first time most Counts had actually seen and heard in person what Miles could be, momently unmasked, and amid the surprise on many faces he saw thoughtful looks. Believe it, my sinews. Heh. A Lord Auditor's job, as he sometimes pointed out, came down to intimidation often enough. Miles bowed slightly to the Lord Guardian and returned a normal gaze to Vorkalloner.

"You were saying, sir?"

Vorkalloner stared at him intently, then glanced at Vormoncrief with a twitch of distaste, before suddenly smiling more easily. "Actually, Vorkosigan, I believe you were saying, and to interesting purpose. Your proposal is a practical and just answer that meets conservative concerns as far as is possible while honouring the late Count's wishes as we ought—so yes, I think I will be glad to join you as a sponsor of that resolution."

Breaths hissed at the future determinative and Vormoncrief looked sick, as well he might.

Miles nodded formally. "Thank you, Lord Count. Then the only question remaining is whether Lady Vorhalas will accept this resolution. As you occupy the Speaker's Circle, sir, and may properly do so, will you ask her?"

Unlike interruptions from the floor, answers to direct questions from the Circle to the gallery were permitted, as all had excellent reason to remember, so Vorkalloner nodded, smiling a little at Miles's continued rebuke to Vormoncrief. "I will." He turned and looked up, bowing slightly. "My Lady? After all our agonisings, will you be content to be legally a man, and so Count rather than Countess Vorhalas?"

Face still, eyes guarded, Lady Gladaria rose and curtsied. "Barrayar has known stranger fictions than this, my Lord Count, so yes, I shall be content if the Council and His Majesty are content."

"Thank you, my Lady." Suddenly lighter in his movement and with a new clarity in his voice Vorkalloner swung to the Lord Guardian. "My Lord, with the support of Lord Vorkosigan I move a binding resolution of this matter, that Lady Gladaria Vorhalas be henceforth deemed for all legal purposes of inheritance a man, and so the proper inheritor without further ado of the Vorhalas's Countship and District, by direct descent and Count's Choice, noting also that precedent is followed and none set."

"Seconded." Miles's voice was sweet and immediate and Gregor leaned forward, sternly suppressing his relief and delight.

"Call the vote, my Lord Guardian." And let me out of here!

"Sire."

The roll-call began. Gregor used Count Vorbarra's prerogative to vote Pass, reserving his right to cast the Emperor's vote as a tie-breaker if needed, but by the time the Vorhalas and Vorkosigan votes were cast in favour it was clear the resolution would be handsomely carried. All the Progressives were supporting it with most of the Independents, which would give a bare majority in itself, and quite a few of the older Conservatives either supported as well or abstained with slight bows to Vorkalloner. The final tally was 34 to 19, and as the Lord Guardian announced it Gregor stood, luxuriating in the ability at last to stretch his back, and looked up to the gallery where excitement was barely being contained.

"My Counts have spoken." Eventually. "Congratulations, my … Lord. Count Vorhalas, will you now take your rightful place among us?"

Standing again, the new Count Vorhalas nodded, her face flushed. "Gladly, Sire. But if I am now legally a man for all purposes concerning inheritance, and so in respect of any children I may have … ?"—she looked the question and Gregor nodded, suddenly holding his breath—"there is one thing I must do first, that may relieve some of the worries so eloquently expressed by my fellow Counts." Despite growing alarm Gregor still had to suppress a smile at the correct provocation of the formula, and saw Miles acquire a suspiciously still look before glee blossomed in his face as the new Count turned with a radiant look to the grinning woman beside her—or him—and took something from her pocket. Despite her skirts she went gracefully to one knee ; behind her, the looks on Ekaterin's and Cordelia's faces were priceless.

"Alessa, will you marry me?"

The silence in the chamber was absolute.

"I will, Gladaria. With all my heart,"

Count Vorhalas took Alessa's hand, slipping a ring on her finger, rose, kissed her fiancée with admirable restraint, and turned to the Lord Guardian.

"May I speak briefly, my Lord, before I descend?"

The stunned Lord Guardian nodded.

"Thank you. First, my Lords, allow me to present to you all my fiancée and future Countess, Ms Alessandra Elytis." The lady curtsied and the Counts of necessity and ingrained habit gave seated bows back. "For your better understanding, my Lords, Alessa and I have been life partners for fifteen years. As a loyal Vor, and my grandfather's granddaughter, I would neither flout our law nor outrage our sensibilities, but now that by your consent I am for all relevant legal purposes a man we will be thrilled to marry with all proper tradition. And our firstborn, a daughter by replicator, may now be legally conceived, and before long have brothers and sisters to support her in the fullness of her time. In recent times the house of my fathers has dwindled, through no man's fault but our own. Now it will grow again, and I am honoured to take my place among you in striving for that future."

Fierce and triumphant, she turned up the stairs towards the gallery door and the passage to the chamber-floor, Vorhalas armsmen falling in behind her. Vormoncrief's purple face momently gave Gregor hope that he'd finally succumbed to the heart-attack his splutterings often promised but the man's wheezing breath was audible in a vastly entertaining silence. Miles, no longer bothering to conceal a grin melding the feral and the downright loony, stood, nodded politely to the Lord Speaker, bowed to Count Vorrutyer, and gestured to the guards to throw open the doors before turning with a straight face to Vorkalloner.

"My Lord, will you help me welcome the future we have so happily sponsored? The Imperium has a new sinew."

Vorkalloner's eyes glinted, somehow softening his bony features. "I will, my Lord." Then he looked at Vormoncrief, catching him with a fierce stare. "And Boriz shall join us, naturally, acknowledging this matter closed in our best traditions." Gregor held his breath but the speed of events and what must be a really horrible sense of déja vu seemed quite to have overcome Vormoncrief, and he acquiesced limply, joining Miles and Vorkalloner to escort the new Count in from the door to the Vorhalas bench, vacant these long months and days. As the new Count sat her sponsors started an ovation that was still somewhat muted on the Council floor but certainly wasn't in the predominantly female gallery.

Then the Lord Speaker could at last call the session closed, and Gregor ignored the various Counts trying to collar him, stepping down from the dais with its thrice-damned stool to offer his own congratulations to his new peer.

"My Lord Count, My congratulations on your confirmation. And on your engagement."

"Thank you, Sire."

"Also, while We rejoice that you have so strangely managed not to set an Imperial precedent, I am delighted by the personal precedent you follow."

Count Vorhalas dimpled very prettily and in his peripheral vision Gregor saw Miles grin cheerfully.

"I find Lady Vorkosigan worth emulating in many ways, Sire, and she has been kind enough to offer to decorate the gardens at Vorhalas House for our wedding next month. May I hope that you and Her Majesty will be able to attend in witness?"

With an automatic demur rising in his throat Gregor paused, realising that Miles had provided his emperor with at least two unanswerable excuses for doing what he wanted to do anyway but under any other circumstances probably could not have done. And saved me converations with Laisa and Cordelia I really would not have enjoyed. The Countish babble around him had fallen away into uneasy silence, the gallery was again rapt on events below, and he knew that, as in a tug-of-war, the losing side might be jerked clean over their own legs and pulled far beyond the line they had wanted to hold. He also thought of the stool on which Vormoncrief's bigoted blethering had forced him to perch for three long days.

"Indeed, my Lord, it will be Our pleasure to attend, and Our Empress's, especially given how decisively Our Counts have spoken after so extended and soul-searching a debate. The road ahead could not be clearer, and it will be a joy to see you and your Countess begin it."

He nodded imperially to all and sundry as he turned, noted that Vormoncrief seemed to have recovered what passed for his wits and was moving on an intercept course past Miles, and made his way the more swiftly back past the damnable stool, hoping finally to escape by keeping his eyes firmly on the door Gerard was holding open. Behind him he heard Vormoncrief's heavy tread on the steps of the dais and the beginnings of a summoning 'Your Majesty', then, astonishingly, a grunt and clatter followed by a heavy impact and the wonderful sound of cracking timber. Before him Gerard, whose face never showed anything he didn't want, was struggling to remain impassive, and Gregor slowly turned, schooling his own face to its most remote blankness.

Yes! Vormoncrief had indeed fallen squarely onto the stool, with predictable results. He was struggling to get to his knees and extricate one fat arm from the stuffing and canvas through which it had plunged, while behind him the gawping crowd of counts were stilled, mouths all round Os of shock and dismay. Miles, in the forefront and suspiciously close to where Vormoncrief must have tripped, ghosted him a wink and mouthed a quick 'happy birthday'. Had he really—? No matter ; opportunity beckoned.

"Oh dear."

Gregor stepped forward, and used the physical strength he earned in the gym under ImpSec's eagle eye but was rarely able to display to haul Vormoncrief's bulk back upright one-handed, then used the other to remove the remnants of the stool from his arm. Forcing a mournful look onto his face he briefly considered its ripped seat, torn bindings, and broken timbers—quite irreparable, alas—before giving a blander scrutiny to Vormoncrief, who quailed though still clearly a little dazed.

"Ah well. Accidents will happen, and doubtless something may be contrived to remedy your unfortunate misstep, my Lord, though I fear Chamber rules will require Us to refer to you for payment of the bill. And the fines for breakage and ravage, of course. Are you able to stand unassisted?" An aghast Vormoncrief mumbled some crimson-faced combination of assent and apology and Gregor let him go. "We shall take it as a timely warning, my Lord, of what may happen if traditions are preserved too long, and say no more of the matter."

This time he did make it off the daïs to the little conference chamber beyond, mournfully bearing the shattered remnants of a Vor tradition and leaving Vormoncrief to the shocked justice of his peers. Only Gerard, closing the door swiftly behind him, saw the sudden lightness in his step as he passed from view.