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Lady Vorkosigan was supposed to come read him a story. She had told him, "You can call me Cordelia, now that I'm going to be staying with you," but Gregor still couldn't think of her that way. He said it, but it was the same way people said Emperor when they looked at him. They didn't really think it, not yet. But Lady Vorkosigan wasn't here, now, and Nan was trying to put him to bed.
"It's not time to sleep yet," he had explained to her. "It's not time to sleep until I get my story."
"Lady Vorkosigan is very busy tonight, sire," Nan had told him. "She can read to you tomorrow."
"No," Gregor had said. "Lady Vorkosigan doesn't do that." He didn't know how to explain to this woman that Lady Vorkosigan wasn't a normal grown-up. When she said something, she meant it, and she wouldn't let herself get busy, not when she'd promised a story. Lady Vorkosigan would never fail him. She had promised.
"Sometimes," Nan said gently, stroking his hair, "things happen that we don't expect, and we have to change our plans."
"Lady Vorkosigan is coming," Gregor insisted. "I'll wait for her."
"You are a very tired boy, and will have a busy day tomorrow. You can sit up until you fall asleep."
"I'll wait for Lady Vorkosigan," Gregor repeated.
Nan just smiled down at him, kissed the top of his head, and turned out the light. Gregor sat in the dark. He waited. Lady Vorkosigan did not come.
Gregor did not feel at all tired. Where was Lady Vorkosigan. As if a switch had been thrown, panic suddenly flooded his heart, replacing the cool, dark patience. Lady Vorkosigan was dead! Like his father, like his grandfather, like Mama. She was dead, and no one was telling him! He flung himself out of bed and ran to the door, where he stopped, one hand on the latch.
They watched for him, outside; there were guards whose job it was to make sure he stayed where he was supposed to be. They didn't listen when he said he was the Emperor; they just laughed and put him back to bed. Gregor didn't like it when they laughed. Lady Vorkosigan never laughed at him.
Gregor had learned how to listen at the door for the footsteps that said the guards were walking down the hall for a patrol. He could dart across the hallway to hide in the playroom for a minute, and then, when the guard came back, he could sneak through the bathroom that connected the playroom and schoolroom, and the out of there and into the main wing. He did.
It was later than he had thought; even the grown-ups were mostly in bed. But he knew where Lord and Lady Vorkosigan slept, and padded down the hallway. His pajamas had little rubber-soled feet on them, which he thought were babyish, but right now they kept his feet warm against the cold stone floor.
The stairs to the regent's wing were padded, and he slipped up them quietly. At the top, he found, to his dismay, another guard. This one wore the Vorkosigan livery, though, so he stared uncertainly at the man, who looked back at him with one eyebrow lifted. Gregor decided to bluff it out. He climbed the rest of the way up the stairs and announced, "I am here to speak with My regent on an 'portit matter of states."
The armsman opened his mouth, then closed it again. Gregor set his jaw and tried to look regal. The armsman dipped his head and said, "Of course, sire. One moment, please."
He went up the hall a few yards, leaving Gregor standing stiffly at the head of the stairs. Light leaked from underneath the door at which the armsman knocked. The Lord Regent's voice came through it, muffled. "Emperor Gregor to see you, my lord," the armsman announced. A second later the door opened, and Lord Vorkosigan looked out at him. He had a confused look on his face, and his eyes were tired-looking. Gregor wondered if he'd been crying.
"Sire," Lord Vorkosigan said. "Please, come in."
Gregor padded on down the hall and past the Lord Regent into his study. He could feel the grown-ups exchanging looks over the top of his head.
Lord Vorkosigan closed the door behind them. "Hello, Gregor," he said, his voice low and comfortable. "It's rather late. Is everything all right?"
Gregor wasn't entirely sure whether he liked Lord Vorkosigan. His grandfather had made Lord Vorkosigan Gregor's regent, which meant Lord Vorkosigan was making Gregor's decisions for him, as far as Gregor could see. Lord Vorkosigan was why no one really meant it when they called Gregor Emperor. And Lord Vorkosigan was distant and distracted, not soft and comfortable like Lady Vorkosigan. But Gregor thought Lord Vorkosigan would tell him the truth, even when it wasn't something a little boy should know. So he asked.
"Is Lady Vorkosigan dead?"
Lord Vorkosigan was surprised. He sat down, looking at Gregor carefully. "No," he said at last. He didn't say, "What a silly idea," or "Have you been letting your imagination run away with you." He did say, "Why do you ask?"
"She was supposed to read me a story," Gregor answered. "She promised. But she didn't come."
"Ah." Lord Vorkosigan paused, studying Gregor. "Did you nurses tell you why?"
"Nan said she was busy," Gregor said.
"I see." Lord Vorkosigan straightened in his chair and patted one knee. "Come here, Gregor," he invited.
Uncertainly, Gregor came closer, and let Lord Vorkosigan lift him up and settle him in his lap. It felt strange. Gregor wasn't used to sitting on a man's lap, but Lord Vorkosigan's arm around him was comfortable and firm.
"Cordelia is fine," Lord Vorkosigan told him firmly. "If anything happens to her, I will tell you as soon as we know. I give you my word as Vorkosigan on that. You do not need to fear that something will happen to her without your knowing it."
"What if something happens to you?" Gregor asked reasonably.
"Ah." Lord Vorkosigan smiled a little bitterly, but Gregor thought it wasn't a smile meant to laugh at him. "A valid question. I don't have an answer for it right now, but I will think on it and give you an answer soon."
Gregor thought this one over with a healthy degree of skepticism, but finally nodded. "Where is Lady Vorkosigan?" he asked.
"Lady Vorkosigan is at the hospital," Lord Vorkosigan answered simply. "Lord Miles was hurt just after dinner, and she had to go with him. They will probably stay until morning."
"Oh." Gregor digested this. "How did he get hurt?"
"He banged his arm on the edge of his changing table and broke it."
Gregor leaned in to Lord Vorkosigan, putting his head on the regent's shoulder. Now that he was certain Lady Vorkosigan was all right, he was feeling tired. He hadn't noticed it before. "Lord Miles is funny-looking," he said. "What's the matter with him?"
Lord Vorkosigan rested his chin on the top of Gregor's head for a minute. It was a comfortable sort of embrace. "When Cordelia was pregnant with him, some enemies of mine poisoned her in an attack on me. The poison crossed into Miles, and made it so that his bones don't grow right. Some of his damage is from the bones, and some from the treatment to fix the bones."
"Oh," Gregor said blankly. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
Lord Vorkosigan paused. "Did you understand that?" he asked.
"Not really?" Gregor admitted in a small voice.
"Never be afraid to say so, not to me," Lord Vorkosigan told him. "Part of my job is to make sure you learn to understand things. If you don't understand me, I need to know so that I can do a better job of explaining. I can't learn to talk to you clearly if you won't tell me when I've failed."
He seemed to be waiting for something from Gregor. Gregor tried, uncomfortably, "I… don't really understand, about the poison. What's poison?"
"Oh." Lord Vorkosigan looked somewhat flummoxed by this. "My apologies. I will… be more clear. My enemies gave Cordelia something that was supposed to make her sick. It made the baby sick, too, since she was pregnant. Cordelia got better, but the baby was still growing his bones. Do you know what bones are?"
"A skeleton?" Gregor answered uncertainly.
"Yes," Lord Vorkosigan replied. "That's exactly right. Bones make up our skeleton, which is what gives our bodies shape, so we can stand and walk and act. Miles's bones didn't get hard the way they should have. When they gave him treatments to make his bones hard, they helped, but they also made his joints stick together in places – that's why his legs are all drawn up the way they are. We have something called joints in our hips, placed where two bones touch, but can move around. Miles's can't move."
"And… he gets hurt because his bones are all funny," Gregor reasoned.
"Yes. Doing normal things that we take for granted can break his bones, which are not meant to break. They will grow a little stronger as he gets older, we think: he's only six months old now. But he will always be more likely to get hurt than other boys. He will need more care and more caution, and will probably never be able to do some things that other boys take for granted."
"I'm never going to be able to do some things, too," Gregor predicted glumly. "Because I'm Emperor and everyone's scared about me."
"That… is probably very true," Lord Vorkosigan agreed after a minute.
"Is Miles my brother?" Gregor asked next.
"Ah… not exactly," Lord Vorkosigan had said cautiously. "It's a little more complicated than that?"
"But is he?" Gregor persisted.
"He is… your foster-brother, I suppose. Cordelia and I are your guardians, not your parents. As Emperor, it would be very politically dangerous to try and arrange a formalized adoption to actually bring you into another family, even ours."
"I don't understand," Gregor said plaintively.
Lord Vorkosigan smiled down at him. "No, I don't suppose you would. I think I was talking more to myself than you, there, and I'm sorry. Cordelia and I will… look after you, and make the kinds of decisions for you that your parents would have, but we can never really be your parents. In the same way, Miles cannot really be your brother."
"Would you, if you could?" Gregor wanted to know.
Lord Vorkosigan took a minute before answering. "Would you want us to?" he asked at last. "You had a mother and father who loved you very much. Would you want a new mother and father, or would it be enough to have guardians who love you?"
"I don't know," Gregor said.
"Well, it you wanted it, I think we would want to, as well," Lord Vorkosigan said. "But we couldn't."
"Because I'm the Emperor."
"Because you're the Emperor."
Gregor considered this for a minute, then said, "Is it all right if I pretend Miles is my brother?" His tone was a bit wistful.
"With us?" Lord Vorkosigan asked. "Of course. It might be better as a private pretending, though."
"Okay," Gregor said simply. "I'll take care of him though. I won't let him get hurt."
"Oh, son," Lord Vorkosigan said. "If only that were in any of our power." And he kissed Gregor on the top of his head. Neither of them said anything else for a very long time.
#
The next morning, Lord Vorkosigan brought him a secured wristcom. "Any time you need to know that I am there," he told Gregor, "you may call me on this, and no one will tell you no."
Gregor called him six times that day, and one time the next day. He called him four times in the month that followed, and twice the year after that. When he returned it, ceremoniously, to Lord Vorkosigan on the day he turned twenty-one, Lord Vorkosigan had smiled and clasped his hand warmly. "I am always only a call away, sire," he had said. And it was enough.