The Season

A spy comedy of manners — with Byerly Vorrutyer and Rish

I. The Relic

Byerly Vorrutyer understood that he had grown old at the moment when, at the Vorsmythe reception, a twenty-three-year-old lord with a hairstyle resembling a crash landing introduced him to his friends with the words “and this is By Vorrutyer — a legend, man, he was gossiping about our fathers.”

“About your grandfathers, actually,” Byerly corrected him with his sweetest smile. “About your fathers, gossip was superfluous. They managed by themselves.”

The young men laughed and moved on, and Byerly remained by the column with a glass of undrunk wine — prop number one of the trade for thirty-five years — and with the unpleasant sensation that the column was supporting him more than he it. Fifty-three. Three and a half decades as the most despised idler of Vorbarr Sultana, professional parasite, society mocker — and all that time, under the covers of the most useless life in the capital, a domestic informer for ImpSec with a file whose classification would have whitened the hair of everyone who had ever looked down on him. Nobody suspected. That was the whole art of it: in thirty-five years, nobody suspected that to be so consistently useless, one must work without rest.

The summons came the next morning, by the channel used three times a decade, and the office to which he was taken belonged to the chief of ImpSec himself.

“Vorrutyer.” General Galeni indicated the chair and the tablet simultaneously. “Five betrothals. One law. Look.”

Byerly looked. Five betrothals announced for the current season — five heirs of Counts’ houses, all houses with old names and empty coffers, engaged within seven weeks to five brides with enormous dowries of an origin marked on the tablet with the delicate phrase “being clarified.” And below: a list of the Counts holding key votes on the Orbital Shipyards Act — the vote that would decide which district received the Imperial contract of the decade. The houses of the five bridegrooms. Five out of five.

“Someone is buying the Council of Counts,” said Byerly. “Through the marriage market. Elegant. Bribery is a crime; a dowry is sacred custom; no prosecutor in the Imperium can touch a bride-gift without half the Council dying of apoplexy in its defense.” He set down the tablet. “And I presume you’re calling me because your departments can trace money through eight banks, but not through one ballroom.”

“I am calling you,” said Galeni, “because this is an investigation that must not exist: zero documents, zero arrests before the full picture, and zero — I underline — zero wounded Vor pride until we know who holds the purse. I need the man for whom the ballroom is native terrain.” A pause, of the kind with which Galeni delivered the unpleasant parts. “And one thing more, Vorrutyer. You are fifty-three. I am obliged to think about succession. You will take a trainee.”

“A trainee.” Byerly pronounced the word the way one pronounces a diagnosis. “General, my trade is not taught. It is lived badly over decades.”

“Which is why I am giving you the best analyst of the last intake.” Galeni pressed the intercom with an expression in which Byerly belatedly recognized revenge for all the reports submitted by him over the years in the form of gossip. “Lieutenant, come in.”

Lieutenant Sofia Vorkaner was twenty-five, with distinction in cryptanalysis, with a straight back, with a uniform pressed to the point of menace, and with the expression of a person who had never in her life been late, lied, or laughed without cause.

“Lieutenant Vorkaner reporting as ordered,” she said. “I am ready to master frivolity, sir.”

Byerly Vorrutyer looked at the general. The general did not blink.

“Good God,” said Byerly. “She just called frivolity ‘it.’ Galeni, this will take the entire season.”

II. The Debutante

The training began in Rish’s atelier — the most fashionable establishment in Vorbarr Sultana for eight years running: a movement studio where the wives and daughters of the flower of the Vor stretched, danced, and — under the direction of a blue-skinned galactic legend with the grace of river water — confessed, without knowing it, everything their husbands considered secret. Rish had long ago discovered the thing ImpSec never did enter in its manuals: a person holding a difficult pose does not know how to lie.

“So this is the girl.” Rish circled Lieutenant Vorkaner once, the way a sculptor circles marble. “Parade-ground posture. A gunsight gaze. Hands ready to file a report. My dear, you are perfectly legible — everyone in every hall will know what you are within three seconds.”

“Meaning failure,” said the lieutenant, and noted something in her notebook.

“Meaning material,” said Rish. “Byerly was worse. Byerly is by nature an honest man — can you imagine what he had to overcome?”

The plan, approved by Galeni with a sigh, was called in the working notes “the Debutante”: into society is launched a new heiress — Miss Sofia Vorkaner, step-niece of a Komarran shipping magnate, with an upbringing “regrettably galactic,” and with a dowry of whose size the three most irrepressible gossips of the capital were confidentially informed, each with a different figure, for verisimilitude. If someone was buying Counts’ votes through betrothals, the five would not be the end of the list. An heiress with money and no lineage was exactly the commodity for which the network would come of its own accord.

There remained the small detail of making the lieutenant resemble an heiress.

“Lesson one,” said Byerly, pacing along the atelier mirrors while Rish adjusted the trainee’s shoulders with two fingers. “Gossip is a cipher with a public key. Everyone hears the same thing; the initiated reads another. When Lady Vorfoni tells you ‘darling, that gown is so daring,’ she is transmitting to the hall a message in three layers, not one of which concerns the gown. Your task is not to speak truth or falsehood. Your task is to radiate noise, in which only I read the signal. Lesson two: the best cover is not to appear harmless. It is to appear occupied with yourself. Vain people arouse no suspicion — they arouse condescension, and condescension is a cloak of invisibility. Lesson three, the most important—”

“Recording.”

“Do not record; that is the lesson: nothing is recorded. Lesson three: laugh. Not per regulation — genuinely. Find one thing at every reception that genuinely amuses you — material, I promise, there will be — and laugh at it. People forgive a woman who mocks them everything except the notebook.”

Three weeks later, at the Vorgarin ball, Miss Vorkaner made her debut — in a gown of Rish’s, with a fan, with a smile mastered before a mirror over eighty hours, and with a single line released in exactly the right place (“they say my uncle counts his ships more often than his relations — no doubt because ships grow”). By midnight the three gossips had tripled her dowry. By week’s end the invitations were pouring. And on the eleventh day arrived the one they had been waiting for: afternoon tea with Lady Danaya Vorsonel — widow, hostess of the most refined salon in the capital and, per the data of four informers, the woman who had arranged all five betrothals of the season.

“She bites,” said Byerly to Rish that evening, over a glass of genuine, drunk wine. “The matchmaker in person. Now the season begins, my dear. The real one.”

III. The Matchmaker

Lady Vorsonel’s salon worked like a clockwork mechanism disguised as a garden: tea, music, informality choreographed to the last pause — and at its core Lady Danaya herself, sixty, with a jeweler’s eyes and a card-index in her head before which, Byerly was ready to swear, the archive of ImpSec looked untidy.

Miss Vorkaner was received, appraised, weighed — and on the third visit, over the teacup, the machinery showed itself: “a wonderful boy, my dear, of the very best family; their house has… temporary difficulties, but the name, ah, the name; and in your circumstances — you have everything except a name, he has everything except everything — one meeting obliges no one.” The candidate proved to be the heir of House Vorlesco: a sixth Count’s house, whose vote on the Shipyards Act had until recently been listed as “wavering.”

“A sixth betrothal on the conveyor,” Byerly reported to Galeni. “The scheme is confirmed: Vorsonel arranges, the dowries finance, the votes line up. But Vorsonel is not the purse — she is too visible and too proud of her work; she believes she does good deeds at a commission. The money comes from above, through her, and here is the beautiful part: we traced all five dowries. Five different banks, five different trustees — and one common thread which your accountants missed, because they do not frequent florists.”

“Florists,” repeated Galeni, with the patience of a man accustomed to Vorrutyer’s reports passing through botany, fashion, or opera.

“The bouquets, General. Every courtship in this society runs on protocol: flowers from the suitor, flowers for the viewing, flowers for the signing. All six courtships — the five accomplished and my current one — are serviced by one and the same florist’s: the Winter Rose, Vorhartung Street. And the orders placed with it — look at the timeline — precede the events. A bouquet ‘for a betrothal’ is ordered for House Vorlesco before Lady Vorsonel so much as mentions the wonderful boy to me. The florist’s does not fill orders, General. The florist’s is a letter-box: someone communicates the next move to Vorsonel in a language no audit reads, because on Barrayar a bouquet is innocent by presumption. The language of flowers. Antique, drawing-room, a perfect one-time pad — the key is in the old handbooks of good breeding, which no one in ImpSec has opened in three generations.”

Galeni studied the timeline for a long moment.

“And who orders the bouquets?”

“Paid in cash, ordered by note. But the hand of the notes—” Byerly smiled the smile for which half the capital thought him malicious and the other half charming, both with cause, “—the hand is trained, old-fashioned, with a pen pressure given only by the governesses of sixty years ago. The purse, General, is a lady. A lady of years, with a classical education, with money enough to buy five dowries, and with a motive to rearrange the largest Imperial contract of the decade. Give me two weeks and one boring archival search: who lost the shipyards tender at its previous letting. Forty-one years ago.”

IV. The Fifth Bride

The search came back in three days and contained one name that silenced even Galeni: the dowager Countess Vorlesco. Eighty-eight years old. Grandmother of the “wonderful boy” being offered to Miss Vorkaner. Forty-one years ago her late husband had lost the same tender — under circumstances which the press of the day called “a lobbying triumph of the northern districts,” and which the Countess, according to contemporaries, had called in words unrecorded out of decency. Since then House Vorlesco had grown poor with dignity, and the Countess had waited. Forty-one years. And when the tender returned to the agenda, the old lady went to market — not with the house’s money, of which there was none, but with someone else’s: the trail of the five dowries, unwound to its end, terminated in a Komarran trusteeship, and behind the trusteeship, through three layers, stood a Jacksonian investment consortium that had bought up, in advance, land and subcontracts in the district that would win if the five votes fell where they should.

“The Jacksonians think they are using an old provincial countess as a side door into the Council,” Byerly summarized for Rish and the lieutenant in the atelier, after closing. “The Countess thinks she is using Jacksonian money for her forty-year revenge. A beautiful symmetry: each holds the other for an instrument. And between the two millstones — five girls and five boys, exchanged like proxies.” He turned the glass. “Four of the couples, let us admit, are indistinguishable from ordinary Vor marriages — that is, from transactions with bridesmaids. But the fifth…”

The fifth bride was called Elena Vorkeres, was twenty years old, loved — this Lieutenant Vorkaner had established across three conversations in the ladies’ retiring room, because the trainee was learning fast — a poor cousin in the cadet corps, and at every reception stood beside her betrothed with the straight back and dead eyes of a person to whom it has been explained what she owes her house. Her betrothal sealed the fifth vote.

“We are getting her out,” said Byerly.

“The operation does not provide for—” Lieutenant Vorkaner began, and stopped, because she was learning fast. “How?”

“The way one extracts a piece from another player’s game, Lieutenant: with a move the opponent is obliged to accept as his own.” Byerly set down the glass. “Galeni wants zero arrests and zero documents, and he is right: convict dowries today, and tomorrow half the Council is in the dock. This game is not won with a prosecutor. It is won where it was begun — in the hall. At the ball of the season, at the Vorbarras’, in nine days, where all five couples will be present, and the matchmaker, and — at my invitation, which she will accept, because her sixth betrothal is there — the dowager Countess herself.” He smiled slowly. “Do you know the one thing Vor society does not forgive, Lieutenant? Not deceit — deceit is a sport. Not greed — greed is a tradition. It does not forgive the ridiculous. A bought bridegroom is a scandal for one winter. A ridiculous bridegroom is a sentence unto the grave. I am going to detonate the oldest weapon of this civilization: the arranged truth, released in the right second, into the right ear, with the right smile.”

V. The Ball

The Vorbarras’ ball gathered eight hundred people, fourteen gossip orbits, and five betrothals in various phases of decomposition, of which only the faces of the initiated bore witness: Byerly Vorrutyer had spent the preceding nine days in a series of visits, each of which looked empty, and at the end of which the capital’s information field was charged like a thundercloud — with a single lightning bolt awaiting the command.

The bolt was simple. No documents, no accusations: only arithmetic, served as a curiosity. “Darling, have you heard a more amusing coincidence — the five dowries of the season, converted into Imperial marks at the rate of the day of signing, stand to one another in exactly the proportion of the voting weights of the five districts on the shipyards committee? To the third decimal. Now tell me God is not an accountant.” The sentence, released at a quarter past ten to three ladies and one colonel, circled the hall in forty minutes, because it was true, checkable with a pocket calculator, and murderously funny. By eleven o’clock the bridegrooms of the five couples were being called, in the corners, “the tariff boys.” By half past eleven two of the five Count-fathers, white with fury at the thought that all Vorbarr Sultana was laughing at the price of their sons, announced — loudly, with dignity, irreparably — that “no betrothal has been finally discussed.” The third followed by midnight on the inertia of panic. The fourth waited until morning, so as to appear independent.

And the fifth betrothal was dissolved by Elena Vorkeres herself — on the dance floor, before witnesses, with a sentence delivered to her that afternoon in an unsigned envelope and which she pronounced with suddenly living eyes: “My lord, I return you your word: I learned today that my dowry is another’s stake, and I do not gamble with other people’s money — I am a Vorkeres.” (The draft was Byerly’s. The ending — “I am a Vorkeres” — was her own, and he said afterward that it was by that correction he knew: the girl would be all right.)

At ten to twelve Byerly Vorrutyer bowed before the dowager Countess Vorlesco and invited her to the slow quadrille — the only dance that permits a private conversation in the middle of eight hundred witnesses.

“Young man,” said the Countess, laying on his sleeve a palm light as a dried leaf and firm as a Count’s seal, “you have cost me forty-one years of patience and an indecent quantity of Jacksonian money. Congratulations. For thirty years nobody in this hall has played against me, and I, fool that I am, thought it was because I was good.”

“You are good, my lady,” said Byerly sincerely. “Five betrothals, not one law broken, a motive buried four decades deep. I found you by your governess’s penmanship and a botanical timetable. That is not a defeat, my lady; that is bad postal service.”

The old lady laughed — dryly, genuinely, in public for the first time in an era no one present could remember.

“The Jacksonians will want their money,” she said then, in a businesslike tone. “They will not get it: the contracts with the trusteeship were drafted by me, and I have been drafting contracts since your instructors were cadets. They will burn to the last mark and swallow it, because the court in which they might sue me has not been built.” She examined him sidelong, appraisingly. “My district is dying, young man. That is what all of it was for. The shipyards were the last train.”

“I know,” said Byerly. “Which is why tomorrow your grandson — who is, incidentally, a decent boy and deserves a bride purchased by himself — will receive an offer from the consortium for the repair docks: the second contract under the Act, smaller, duller, and perfectly sufficient for one district. The offer is genuine. I merely… arranged certain people’s priorities.”

The Countess stopped in mid-figure, whereupon half the quadrille stopped too.

“Why?”

“Because you played forty-one years without spilling a drop of blood, my lady, and in my trade that is a rarity bordering on elegance. And because—” Byerly bowed with all his old, useless, perfect polish, “—the season was magnificent, and I have always held that a good partner is owed a flower.”

VI. The Successor

The debrief with Galeni lasted eleven minutes and entered the oral folklore of ImpSec by its closing line.

“To summarize,” said the general, regarding a folder that contained almost nothing, because such was the agreement. “Five betrothals dissolved. One Jacksonian consortium with burned investments and no legal standing to squeak. A law passed in the Council on its merits, with the votes falling where they would. One dowager countess — neutralized by means of…” he peered closer, “…repair docks. One Vorkeres girl, betrothed last week to some cadet, if I believe the society pages, and I do believe them, because half your agents write them. Zero arrests. Zero documents. Zero wounded Vor pride, except five bridegrooms’, which does not count.” Galeni closed the folder. “Vorrutyer, accounting asks under which heading to enter this season for you. I proposed ‘natural disasters.’”

“I am flattered. And the trainee?”

“The trainee,” said Galeni, and into his voice for the first time crept something resembling pleasure, “was heard last week to say, at the Vorgarin reception, I quote from the report: ‘Darling, that gown is so daring it deserves counsel of its own.’ The subject laughed for a quarter of an hour and told her everything about her husband’s shipping shares. The mentor’s assessment?”

“Excellent,” said Byerly Vorrutyer, and added nothing, because there were moments when even his tongue knew how to be silent.

VII. A Quadrille for Two

He came home to the apartment above the atelier at dawn, by the habit of thirty-five years, and found Rish awake, by the habit of eighteen: she sat on the windowsill in her blue skin and his old dressing gown, watching Vorbarr Sultana change its guard — the night windows going dark, the kitchen ones lighting up.

“Well?” she asked.

“Five betrothals dead, one alive, one consortium bankrupt, one countess with docks, and one lieutenant with a future.” Byerly sank onto the sill beside her and for a moment permitted himself his entire fifty-three-year-old back. “Do you know what old Vorlesco said to me at parting? ‘Young man, you are the last person in this capital who plays the game for the game’s sake. Take care — the likes of us end up in museums.’”

“She’s right,” said Rish. “I’ve watched you for eighteen years, By. You dissolve other people’s betrothals with grace, you arrange other people’s marriages with unsigned notes, you marry whole districts to shipyards.” She turned to him, and in her yellow eyes was that gleam which, in the old days on Jackson’s Whole, had bankrupted negotiators. “And for yourself — nothing. Eighteen years, the sharpest tongue on the planet, and not one sentence on the subject.”

Byerly Vorrutyer, the man who had a ready line for every hall in the Imperium, was silent a moment. Then he reached into the inner pocket of his evening coat and produced a small box which he had been carrying — this he admitted only later, under pressure — for eleven days.

“The sentence I have had for a long time,” he said. “I was waiting for the end of the season. It is indecent to become betrothed during working hours.” He opened the box. The ring was antique, a Vorrutyer piece, with a stone of dubious reputation, exactly like the family. “Rish. Of all the games I have ever played, you are the only one in which I have not lied once, which by my standards is the marriage of the century. Marry me. Fair warning: I have no dowry, my name comes with stains, and the society pages will print nonsense about us to the end of our days.”

Rish took the box, examined the ring in the sunrise light with the eye of a woman raised among jewels and hostages, and smiled the smile of river water.

“Nonsense to the end of our days,” she repeated. “By, that is the most honest proposal ever made on this planet. Yes. On one condition: the wedding will be small, secret, and perfect.”

“My dear,” said Byerly Vorrutyer, “whom do you take me for. By noon, exactly three people will know of it.” A pause. “By evening, of course, the entire city — but in five contradictory versions, not one of them true. One must protect one’s reputation.”

The society pages of Vorbarr Sultana reported the news a month later, having confused the date, the venue, and the number of witnesses, and were correct in only one particular: that at the ceremony the bride wore blue. The ImpSec report on the matter — a single card, submitted by an anonymous source and filed by the duty officer with a smile — was more accurate, and consisted of one line, in a hand the archive had by now learned to recognize:

The Season is closed. The next opens in spring. — B.