ngernails did not quite camouflage their shape as claws, heavy and efficient as a leopard's. The bag's descending weight nearly jerked Roic's arm out of its socket. He managed a desperate smile and began lugging it two-handed up the staircase in m'lord's wake.He deposited the tired-looking pilot first. Sergeant Taura's second floor guest room was one of the modernized ones, with its own bath, around the corridor's corner from m'lord's own suite. She reached up and trailed a claw along the ceiling, and smiled in evident approval of Vorkosigan House's three-meter headspace."So," she said, turning to him, "is a Winterfair wedding considered especially auspicious, in Barrayaran custom?""They're not so common as in summer. Mostly I think it's now because m'lord's fiancée is between semesters at University."Her thick brows rose in surprise. "She's a student?""Yes, ma'am." He had a notion one addressed female sergeants as ma'am. Pym would have known."I didn't realize she was such a young lady.""No, ma'am. Madame Vorsoisson's a widow—she has a little boy, Nikki—nine years old. Mad about jumpships. Do you happen t' know—does that pilot fellow like children?" Mayhew was bound to be a magnet for Nikki."Why ... I don't know. I don't think Arde knows either. He hardly ever meets any in a free mercenary fleet."He would have to watch, then, to be sure little Nikki didn't set himself up for a painful rebuff. M'lord and m'lady-to-be might not be paying their usual attention to him, under the circumstances.Sergeant Taura circled the room, gazing with what Roic hoped was approval at its comfortable appointments, and glanced out the window at the back garden, shrouded in winter white, the snow luminous in the security lighting. "I suppose i
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