singing open the great gates

[middlingalong]

The following day, very little happens, except for Vorreedi mentioning that Yenaro has been arrested (by the civil police, for theft, on charges from a ghem-lord Miles has never heard of, as opposed to by Cetagandan security for treason).

Also, Ivan gets bored - with all the bodyguards Vorreedi now requires for them after the incident at the bioestheties exhibition, the possible spontaneity of going out with his ghem girlfriends is much reduced.

But the next day they get to attend the Singing Open of the Great Gates.

And oh, is there ever singing.

Comments

[isthisart]

"That's most of it; what about the Emperor?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"A somewhat more difficult question. 'Sir' is a safe bet. 'Gregor' if and only if invited. Avoid 'sire' at least at first - it's reserved for Barrayaran Imperial subjects, of which you can technically be said to be one, but it denotes an oath relationship and you haven't taken any. Avoid Your Adjectiveness-type addresses, too - Barrayar doesn't use 'em. See, Barrayaran formal address for Gregor is 'sire' the way Barrayaran formal address for one's own Count or his heir is 'my lord', but we spent six hundred years having lots of Counts and only one Emperor - there was never a reason to have a tradition for how to talk to the Emperor when you're not his subject. And we've only had eighty years to deal with the new situation, so nothing's really stuck yet. You can also get away with addressing him as appropriate for Count Vorbarra, which he also is, if you see him in his House uniform - black and silver as opposed to the Imperial red and blue. 'Emperor Gregor' by analogy to Lord or Count Firstname has sort of been tried now and then and hasn't caught on hugely, but it's technically acceptable if you get tired of sir-ing him all the time but still aren't on friendly terms."

[isthisart]

"Understood." (Pen wobble.) "And I assume I call you Miles now."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes," he agrees, beaming.

[isthisart]

"You could call me Linya, if you like," she offers, after a pause. "I've always liked the concept of nicknames, but it's sort of - not done."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Linya," he repeats. "I would be delighted to call you Linya."

[isthisart]

Linya giggles again.

Maz is quietly having some kind of protocolgasm over on the other sofa.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles is... fairly oblivious to Maz, at this point. (He made her laugh! Again! That's a thing he can do! And he can call her Linya!)

[middlingalong]

Ivan and an embassy staffperson thump down the stairs with his luggage. "Time to go?" he asks.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles blinks. "Right. Yes," he says. "That. Let's get all our stuff hauled to the shuttleport."

[middlingalong]

Stuff gets loaded into a vehicle. The vehicle gets driven to the shuttleport. Stuff gets removed from the vehicle and loaded onto the shuttle.

[isthisart]

Some joker, or possibly well-intentioned individual, or maybe just somebody concerned about available berths, has assigned Miles and Linya to the same cabin. This will be obvious to Miles before it is to Linya; she is staring down various people who are gaping at her rather than investigating their room assignments at the moment.

[thisvorlunatic]

...Miles... takes a deep breath and resolves not to be weird.

"Our, er, cabin is this way."

[isthisart]

"Okay," says Linya evenly. "How does this work, should I take the most important boxes with us and the rest are locked up in a cargo hold or will they be accessible regardless?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"They'll be accessible, but less conveniently. Anything you expect to be opening up regularly should come with us to the cabin, but probably you'll have to tuck at least half your stuff away in storage, and it won't be much of a hassle if you misfile something and need to go get it halfway through the trip."

[isthisart]

"Okay." Linya pulls out about a third of her boxes and puts them on a separate luggage cart and follows Miles to their cabin.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles hauls both his luggage cases along.

It's... a cabin. It contains sufficient storage space for all their things, and a disposal unit for miscellaneous garbage, and a small but reasonably comfortable bathroom/sanitary facility, and a bed.

[isthisart]

Linya puts down her stuff, and investigates how she's holding up to all this travel in the mirror (hair up in a relatively simple coil contained in a bejeweled cage-for-hair-coils, various layers of shades of green with some yellow and black accents) and then sits on the edge of the bed and resumes pen-ing. "Now I wonder if this ship has a decent library; if so I can get started on Russian."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I don't know what you consider decent, but it has a library," says Miles.

[isthisart]

"Well, in this case, decency means 'contains introductory Russian material." She switches her pen's mode; is is now in full color again. She starts looking. "Here we go... yes, excellent."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh good."

[isthisart]

"Mm-hm." She peers at the bed. "I have never tried to sleep in a bed with another person before. I don't think I toss and turn, but I have no way of knowing - you aren't, I hope, fragile enough that it's a safety concern?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um... I also haven't tried to sleep in a bed with another person before," Miles confesses. "You could certainly break my bones if you tried - I have no idea if you're likely to do it in your sleep by accident."

[isthisart]

"I'm not going to try, I'm just wondering what constitutes reasonable precautions. I probably need a lot less sleep than you do, so if necessary I suppose there could be shifts, but that seems inconvenient."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, it does, doesn't it? Um. I really don't know," he says. "I suspect 'try it and see what happens' is the best information-gathering method we're going to come up with. I at least don't think you're going to break anything that can't be fixed."