Shattered Honor

"Reputation is what others know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."--Aral Vorksosigan, A Civil Campaign.

Chapter One

Unfaithful, unfaithful. The vile little refrain bounced around inside his head, and he gritted his teeth. Dishonor.

He gripped his sword even as blood spilled over his hand, making the hilt slippery and red. It dug in deep. The other man sank to his knees when he pulled away, one hand going toward the hole in his stomach. The other held his own sword as tightly as his shaking hand was able too.

"Always wanted to be killed by a jealous husband," he said with a gasp of breath, his self-mocking smile fading as he looked up. "Only at age eighty."

His opponent merely stared down at him, and did not offer false words of comfort, and the light in the fallen man's eyes went dim. He had played his part with all due flair, but Aral had no interest in playing his. No artistic phrases to reveal his rage came forth, nor angry wishes for the god of the next world to forgive his treachery.

He left him and turned to see another man coming towards him, his sword still encased in its sheath.

"Aral," he said quietly. "Please forgive me. I did not mean for this to happen."

"We will begin on the count of three," Aral said in stiff formality, ignoring his words.

"I cannot fight you, I deserve to die."

"One."

His hands were still at his side. "Please, I beg of you!"

"Two."

"I will not fight you. Please, just kill me. I want to die. I have nothing left in this world to live for."

He felt unreasonably cheated. He'd come here as the one dishonored. It was he who had to right to feel shamed, angry, and empty. Yet this man before him had the gall to beg to be killed? To not fight, to not give him the cathartic release of well-deserved revenge? How dare he!

"Fight, damn you!" he yelled, hitting him. The older man crumpled and did not get up.

"Ever since I lost my wife, I've had nothing left. But I had no right to go after yours. And so I am alone and dishonored. I deserve to die."

Aral pulled him to his feet and hit him again, but still he would not fight. Finally he killed him in the middle of his begging, feeling even more at a loss than before. He left the two men where they had fallen, coincidently close together, and covered himself again with his jacket to hide the spill of blood on his shirt.

He traveled quickly by foot to his wife's apartment in the capital. She'd never given up her former housing to live with him in Vorkosigan House when he was home on leave, and he'd ended up moving much of his belongings over there just to spend time with her without taking her away from her active social life. She might not even be there at this time of afternoon, but he could wait for a while.

Reaching the guardless door, he tapped in the entry code and went inside. He strode into the entry room, which she called the receiving room, and saw the jacket-hanger and shoe basket neatly set up against the wall. With a brief, sardonic smile at the normalcy of it, he took off his jacket and hung it on a peg. In doing so he once again revealed his bloodied shirt and as he turned back he heard a gasp.

"Stasya," he said.

The short dark curls at the side her face were entwined with small jeweled ribbons, the rest done up in a bun, and they sparkled in the sunlight coming through the window. He wished he'd had time to close the curtains.

"What happened?" She didn't move, her eyes wide, beautiful in a long rose colored dress.

"Tell me," he said. "How long have you been having those affairs behind my back?"

Her dark eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. "Tell me what you have done."

She didn't seem ashamed at all, or in the least bit worried about him. Betrayal hit him in the stomach, nauseating pain that almost keeled him over. It was her doing as much as theirs. And it appeared she had no regrets. "What I have done?" he repeated, his voice low and soft. "I have corrected the problem of your infidelity, at least so far as your lovers are concerned."

After a moment the meaning of his words registered and she gasped. "You killed them! You...you bastard!" Tears welled up in her eyes, but her expression was full of anger. "You leave me alone in this God-forsaken city and then have the nerve to kill my companions?"

"Ah!" He gave a bark of a laugh. "Your companions, I see. How very lady-like to use a euphemism. They were not your companions, they were the men you slept with while I was away. And you...are an adulterous, lying little Vor brat like all the women in this city."

I loved you.

She trembled with rage, nails digging into her palms and letting loose little droplets of blood that seeped between her fingers. She whirled away in a flowing cloud of material and went around the corner towards their room. He did not follow her. Instead he took up his jacket once again and returned to his ship to await arrest in his quarters.

A drunken daze followed that, and he slept until a chime at his door woke him. Ah, so they were here to take him away. He sat up and dragged himself to the door, opening it.

Piotr stood on the other side, and Aral almost fell over.

Shit. I could've handled being taken away by anyone else but to send my own father...So no one else had been brave enough to face him.

"Aral," Piotr said, looking up and down his rumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes. "I gather you've heard the...rumors going around about Stasya." His eyes were concerned but he did not do his son the disservice of continuing in the hallway. He motioned inwards. "Can I come in?"

Confused, Aral stepped back and shut the door behind his father, who sat on the edge of a chair. "Son...unfortunately, I've brought you worse news than that."

He wanted to laugh, and indeed, some of his control broke; a strangled laugh slipped past his lips. Piotr looked up uneasily before continuing.

"Two of her lovers," yes, Piotr would not mince words, "killed themselves in a duel this afternoon, and Stasya found out. She killed herself, son."

The room spun dizzily, and he almost fell over. "What?"

"She used your service plasma arc. It burned away her face. You should've left it at the apartment." His father rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the floor, frowning, as if catching himself blaming his son and regretting it. "I'm sorry. You can make the funeral arrangements yourself, or I can do that for you. Or we can leave it up to some professionals. Anyway, I...didn't want you to find out on the street when you came home."

This was hardly better.

His father guided him through packing, out the door and to Vorkosigan House, all the while barking at the sympathizers who popped up--interested gossipers, as they really were--all around him who questioned him, eyes alight with fascination while their lips formed sorry frowns.

Once at home the first thing he did was find his way to the wine cellar to find something suitably vile to down him to unconsciousness once again. He couldn't stand any more of this false sympathy, or his false innocence. He carried some brandy up to his room (his father saw him but said nothing) and had more than half the bottle in his stomach when Ges Vorrutyer opened his bedroom door.

"Ah. As I expected you to be." He sat down on the floor beside Aral, leaning against the bed. "So you've taken it hard."

He tried to glare at his old friend, but his eyes weren't working properly, nearly crossing. "She was my wife."

"You'd been married less than a year, and you were away more than half of the duration of your marriage," Ges said logically. "I gather you're more upset about the scandal than any lost love."

Aral let him think what he wanted. It didn't bother him so much, but the rest of the world...He pulled himself more upright. "Tell me. What are they saying? About...everything."

"They are saying," Ges said easily, in a documentary-narrator tone, "that the lovely Stasya Vorkosigan married too young to a man whom she hardly knew, who was away too often on duty. She had affairs she thought her husband would never find out about, but when her lovers found out about each other, they dueled. And because she knew and loved them better than her husband, she killed herself." Ges lifted the brandy bottle, examining it. "Unless, of course, he killed her himself after he discovered the cause of her distress--the deaths of her dueling lovers." He sniffed the brandy experimentally, and frowned in distaste, setting it back down.

If he wasn't already sick to his stomach, he'd had become so now. "Am I not to be questioned?"

"You were reported in your quarters for almost an hour before the estimated time of her death. Why would they question you?"

He didn't really know what to say to that, in the state he was in, so he slid back down and found himself titling sideways, to fall against Ges's shoulder.

Ges left him there. The only re-arranging he did of his friend was to straighten him out a bit by putting an arm around him. "Well, now. Whatever shall you do next?"

"I don't know. Whatever I do will only make them talk more."

"Don't you know the only way to shut them up is to shock them into silence?" his friend said.

He peered at him. "And how do I do that?"

"Funny you should ask," Ges answered, finally taking a tiny sip of the brandy.

Aral watched him, but couldn't, in his fuzzy brain, figure out what he meant, and gave up. "Okay," he said, though he didn't know why.

Ges smiled faintly, and let Aral take the bottle back and down the rest of the brandy.

"Okay," he echoed.