The bed in their new suite is much bigger and cozier than the one in their cabin on the courier ship. Miles approves. It makes waking up in the morning even more of a delightfully cuddly event than it already was.

Cuddles and delight! What a combination. They go very well with kisses.

Yes. All those things. Together. What an excellent combination.

"Breakfast!" agrees Miles. And off they go to breakfast. (Groats are once again available, although Miles does not choose to avail himself of them.)

Linya has a small quantity of groats, although she also has other things alongside them, since the novelty has worn off.

"You're really fond of groats," Miles observes. "It's cute."

"They're good. And they make an excellent maple syrup delivery mechanism."

"Very true."

"And maple is just as nice as I remember it, so."

"Hopefully your enjoyment of maple won't be ruined by sheer abundance."

"I don't think so. I have a tremendous sweet tooth."

"Ooh," says Miles, peering at it. "A print book in the Latin alphabet. Rare beastie."

"Very," agrees Linya, taking the book carefully. "I own two paper hardbounds and only one in this alphabet. A Shakespeare omnibus and an electrical engineering reference so I can get the power back on." She opens up the book and pages through it.

"There's tons of them lying around Barrayar, but mostly in the native alphabet. We rediscovered galactic English and galactic information technology at around the same time, you see. But evidently we didn't immediately burn all the old printing presses..."

"I imagine there's less wasteful kindling to be had," chuckles Linya. "Thank you, Cordelia."

"You're welcome. Gregor should be coming by around noon. We can have a nice quiet lunch."

"Is there a specific agenda for that conversation besides 'meet and greet'?"

"'Meet and greet' about covers it. Were you expecting something else?"

"I don't know what to expect," says Linya. "That's why I asked."

Cordelia shrugs.

"Anyway, I'll arrange not to be occupied with anything distracting around noon."

"You do that," she says, and drifts off.

Back to Linya's breakfast. Ah, not-ship-food, so much an improvement.

Miles is all breakfasted out by this point, but he sees no reason not to continue admiring his wife while she eats.

That will earn him a mapley kiss when she has finished eating!

"Ooh. Maple-y," he comments.

"I'm delicious," she agrees.

"You are!" Kiss!

Scoop! Kiss.

Eeeeeeeee. Scoopular kisses.

How kind of the ImpSec men to warn her so she has time to put her Greek exercises away and her pen back on the necklace. And this personage she does have protocol lessons for. "Sir," she replies, getting up.

"Your marriage to Miles presents several... interesting complications for me on a political level," he says. "But on the personal, I'm glad he's found someone, and I hope the two of you suit each other. I'd like you to know that I don't intend to hold you to account for any trouble you cause here by the mere fact of your existence."

"That's good to know - we seem to suit each other, so far. Ought I know about the political complications?"

"I plan to discuss them over lunch."

"Likewise. Should we send someone to fetch Miles, or just proceed as planned and let him show up of his own accord?"

"Hm. Linyabel, do you happen to know where he is?"

"Not as of right now, no."

Linya sits at one.

Gregor sits opposite. (Gregor's guards once again stand by the door, one in, one out.)

Cordelia steps out for a few seconds, then returns and sits next to Gregor, leaving the seat next to Linya for Miles.

Linya appreciates the kitchen's quickness on the uptake. Om nom.

"No, just an opportunistic malcontent," says Linya, blinking. "But if there's some kind of security measure that would make you sleep better at night I'm not necessarily opposed."

"In your judgment, is it possible that you are and don't know you are?"

"I have no marks that would be associated with someone physically introducing anything dangerous or spylike to my person, my personal electronics are all custom-programmed to paranoid security standards and therefore highly unlikely to harbor malicious software placed there without my knowledge, I am not missing any time - and I would notice a gap in my journal notes - to account for what would be unusually difficult attempts to psychologically or psychiatrically manipulate me, the strategem would be completely unprecedented on several levels, and I have no particular objection to ImpSec reading my every offplanet communiqué, double-checking any designs for products I intend to distribute, or, in the one case, sleeping in my bed - so no, I really don't think so."

Miles, having now finished his last bite (what impeccable timing, Gregor), cracks up.

Even Gregor chuckes, somewhat to his own surprise.

"But, again, if my word on the matter doesn't suffice, I did not exactly land on Barrayar expecting minimal suspicion or the ability to coast without any attempts to assuage it, so you will not ruin my weekend plans if I need to have another chat with Captain Illyan or something."

"Noted. But I don't think ImpSec is going to need to watch you much more closely than they'd watch any Lady Vorkosigan. As explanations for your presence go, 'Miles did it' is an extremely compelling alternative to 'the Cetagandan Empire decided to package some subtle disaster in the form of a haut-wife awarded to a low-level intelligence agent with good political connections'."

I'll low-level intelligence agent you, Gregor, you ass—no, no he won't, not with his decidedly un-cleared wife at the table. Miles subsides from his nascent tirade.

"I have gathered that I am not the first stunt he's pulled, although I seem to be the only one that has added to the family tree."

"You are my favourite stunt," Miles assures her.

"Awww," says Linya. "Anyway - are a lot of people convinced that I'm some sort of menace? Are there people I should not accept beverages from?"

"Almost certainly, but they're not the ones I worry about," he says. "Would-be assassins are a problem for security people. My problems are a little less direct. I can foresee three obvious categories of trouble, once your presence is widely known: quibbles about your immigration status, quibbles about the validity of your marriage, and spite-motivated voting shifts in the Council of Counts. The last problem is not really something you can affect, but the first two... well. You do exist in something of an ambiguous state, at the moment. Taking an oath of fealty as Lady Vorkosigan would go a long way toward shutting up the dissenters. It isn't strictly a prerequisite to remaining on the planet and married to Miles, but it would clarify some of those ambiguities, and it would be something to point to when people complain about your planet of origin."

"Sparing you a few hundred years of complicated legal history, the most appropriate for your situation would be one that has you swear no prior claim binds your loyalty - meaning, any other citizenship you may hold does not conflict with this oath - and then take oath as my vassal, which is another few hundred years of complicated legal history all by itself, but in summary it means that you agree I am not just the Emperor of Barrayar but your Emperor in particular, and will obey my laws and my orders. And in accepting your oath, I promise you the protection of a liege lord and Emperor, which means that if anyone threatens your safety or well-being it is my job to make them stop. Again, summarizing over the intricate details."

"The only ongoing interest Cetaganda has in me is that my constellation geneticists would probably like to continue to receive copies of my medical records, in case I turn up with an obscure allergy or something that they can rescue the next generation from. But I think I would want to better know both you and the intricate details in question before making an oath - if I am being asked to consider it any more personally involved than 'these are the magic words that make irritating political opponents less irritating and oppositional'. Not that I plan to make mischief or be particularly uncooperative, but in a context where oaths are taken with such deadly seriousness I'd like to be especially mindful."

"Take your time, certainly," he says. "Do all the legal and historical research you feel you need. I'm never going to object to someone taking their oaths seriously."

"Thank you. And I assume complainants about the marriage would need brightly colored groats thrown at them by a similar token?"

"Yes."

"That one's already under consideration. I admit it seems paradoxical to me that anyone inclined to complain about my having married Miles would be placated by having me do it twice."

"There is," says Gregor, "a world of difference between 'placated' and 'shut up', but when you can't get the former, the latter is a good substitute."

"Aha. Well, Cordelia found me an interesting book on the subject that answered most of my background questions about Barrayaran weddings, so remaining figuring on that subject should be relatively straightforward."

What a perfect cue for Miles to gaze adoringly at her some more!

Linya giggles when she catches him at it, and leans over and kisses him on the forehead.

Eeeeee.

"I like the composition of the Barrayaran ceremony very much, actually, unless there are marked differences between book and practice of which I am unaware. The way the couple marry themselves and the - sentiment in the vows, in contrast to what amounts to - 'here, have some genes; the phenotype, let alone any personal relationship, is more or less irrelevant beyond a wink and a nod'."

"I'm sure your genes are very lovely, but they are not what I married you for."

"The book is accurate to my recollections," says Cordelia.

"They are not what you married me for, but they are technically what Lisbet offered you. Those and, by custom more than interpretation of the text of the offering, my genetics expertise. To be fair to our irritating political opponents, they may have a point about marital validity in the sense that the two customs share a name principally by historical accident. We should certainly at least discuss incorporating colorful groats."

"I'm all in favour of colourful groats!"

"The one line that gave me much pause was the bit about guarding each other's honor. It seems like a very Barrayaran notion, and consequently not one I have a non-academic understanding of. What does that constitute?"

"It's open to a certain degree of interpretation," she says. "I'm sure the book mentioned that it used to be a coded way of saying that the wife wasn't going to cheat on the husband and the husband wasn't going to tolerate adultery in the wife, but modern readings tend to be rather more open-ended... for me personally, I would say it means supporting each other in difficult decisions and helping each other find the right choices. But I'm Betan, so perhaps I'm missing something."

"The book did mention that, but since 'forsaking all others' is also in the text it seemed redundant if that was the entire point - unless, as is perhaps plausible, those composing these vows were rather obsessed with adultery. There was a footnote about someone attempting to use it as an excuse to arguably abuse his political power to protect his wife from what was either slander or substantiated rumor, the book did not opine on the veracity of the unkind words in question..."

"I think part of it might be - trying to be worthy of each other," says Miles. "Because when you're married, you're not quite entirely separate people anymore. Things one spouse does reflect on the other one. So you guard each other's honour by acting honourably. Which leads right back to 'what is honour', I suppose."

"It really does," agrees Linyabel. "Is it easier to answer in more concrete form? Do I currently have some status with respect to honor, and what things would change that status?"

"Um... no, that's not very much easier," he says. "I mean, I suppose you could say honour is just not breaking your word. But I feel like that doesn't quite cover it, somehow."

"It does sound like that would be some sort of oversimplification..."

"It's certainly arguable that being forsworn is at the root of all dishonor. But there are more complex cases," says Gregor. "If I had to boil the concept down to two oversimplified rules, it would be 'behave ethically and don't break your word'. Which, if not exactly a complete explanation, does have the advantage of putting things in more galactically accessible terms."

"That... may be enough of a description to be getting on with," acknowledges Linya.

Gregor smiles.

"I do think I want to meet Count Vorkosigan before doing anything dramatic like setting a date, though. It seems both prudent and polite."

"Sensible," agrees Cordelia.

"He's expected - tomorrow? The day after?"

"Either one, depending how long it takes him to finish his business in Hassadar. I'll let you know as soon as we have an arrival time."

"Right. Hopefully this meeting will be as pleasantly anticlimactic as all my others so far."

"Hopefully," agrees Miles.