Indeed yay.

Aral is ensconced in an armchair in the library, with a handheld reader and a glass of wine, presumably reading one of the library's modern book-disks - the case is lying open on a nearby table. He doesn't notice Linya immediately.

Hmmm. She doesn't have a great sense of how interruptible he is. She makes a point of generating audible footsteps as she continues into the library, vaguely angled in his direction.

"She has. Is this a good time to take you up on your offer to go over it with me ahead of time?"

"As good as any." He puts down his book, looks around for a seat Linya might take that would be conducive to such a discussion, finds one, and gestures invitingly to it.

Into this seat goeth Linya. Woggle goeth Linya's pen, and here is the guest list.

"Damned convenient, that thing," he observes in passing. "All right, let's see... Gregor you've met. Lord Vorbohn runs the Vorbarr Sultana municipal guard. I'd guess his reaction to you will fall into the 'hostile but polite about it' category. I can at least promise that he's much too fair-minded to do anything petty about you with the municipal guard. Faint praise, I know."

"It's still good to know... Do reasons for hostility among people on this list get any more specific and perhaps addressable than 'she is a haut-lady, there was that war a while before she was born'? I can neither adjust my ancestry nor travel through time, but if there are other things I can do..."

"Some do, some don't. For variety, there's Rulf Vorhalas, who's going to be hostile to you because you're a Vorkosigan, not because you're Cetagandan. But I doubt his feelings will be any more tractable than, say - " He scans down the list from Vorbohn. " - The Vorbrettens, who I doubt will show up at all, for the standard reasons." His eye skips a few lines and he adds, "Oh, and Vorfolse isn't going to come because he has an allergy to conflict; the Vorfolses have a history of ending up on the wrong side, to the point where he's superstitiously afraid to engage in anything resembling politics, let alone get involved when people are disagreeing about hot-button issues. He's one of the courtesy invitations Cordelia and I have been debating."

"What are the pros and cons of extending him an invitation?" wonders Linya.

He half-shrugs. "Not much to be said either way, which is part of why it's hard to decide. If we invite him, he won't show up but he'll notice you exist, which he otherwise might not - it would be an understatement to call him a recluse. If we don't invite him, he's unlikely to notice or care that the party happened at all. Either way, he's not going to get involved."

"I do not mind being known to exist, but it seems academic in this case."

"Eh. I'll let Cordelia have final say..." He keeps going. "I've already mentioned Vorhalas, but to expand on that: I'm not sure if he'll come out of spite or stay home out of spite, but either way, I recommend avoiding him wherever you have the opportunity to do so. I can say nothing against his moral character, but he's conservative and there is a complicated history between our families that has left him with considerable ill will towards me."

"Should I know the details, or just - learn what he looks like and arrange to be elsewhere in the room?"

"I'm not sure the details would do you any good," he says. "And it's not a subject I'm eager to discuss... Let's leave it alone for now." He scans the list some more. "Vorkalloner and Vormoncrief are both conservatives - Vormoncrief leads the party. More courtesy invitations. I'd be surprised to see either of them show up. Vorparadijs is a desiccated old stick who's likely to look at you with the same contempt he bestows on anything else that wouldn't have happened in Ezar's day, but you might be able to soothe him by letting him bore you for a while. I leave it up to you whether you judge it worth the trouble. He's also rude to most people, if that helps you not to take it personally when he interrupts you and criticizes your manners."

"I take it retorting with similar criticism would accomplish nothing."

"You are correct."

"I'll probably skip it, then. Is there anyone at this party who I should interact with, or ought I arrange to be in the corner making pretty piano music and demonstrating my harmlessness that way, the whole time...?"

"Well, there's the Vorpatrils," he says, amused - they are in fact the very next set of entries. "And, let's see... Byerly Vorrutyer is a mildly infamous town clown; if he shows up it'll be to get drunk on our wine, so he should be a likewise safe option. I'm not so sure about the other Vorrutyers on the list." He looks over the names that remain. "Doubt Vortaine is going to come... Vortala I'd expect to express open support, and even believe himself when he does it, but he's not as open-minded as he might like to think. I remember he founded that progressive party of his, trying to work for equality between the classes, and he never thought to include anyone who wasn't a Vor. Bit of a gap in his logic there."

"How charming. Is it the sort of logic gap that's amenable to people being agreeable and acting as though they assumed all along that of course he meant to do it in thus and such a way, how nice of him?" She makes little symbolic notes next to various names as the Count goes over them.

"Eh. I've never had the patience to try a similar strategy, but if you think you can pull it off, I don't object to you trying it. I'd just expect managing him that way to be more frustrating and less useful than just about any other conceivable avenue of getting things done... ah, Lord Auditor Vorthys. Now there's someone I can wholeheartedly recommend to you. He's one of Gregor's additions, and I don't know him very well on a social level, but he's good at what he does and refreshingly sensible by all accounts. I'm told he plans to bring his niece and her husband - I can't tell you the first thing about either of them, but I at least expect that they won't be odious enough to ruin a conversation with Georg Vorthys about engineering, if you're inclined to have one. Before his appointment as Auditor, he was an exquisitely good failure analyst."

"I don't think I'm familiar with the specialty. Is it what it sounds like?"

"If it sounds like he analyzes failures, then yes."