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Miles stumped down the hill to the creche, shooting a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one had followed him. The last thing he wanted was for Ivan to come along to see the egg and put his hands all over it, talking about how lucky Miles was, how he wanted a dragon but Count Vorpatril wouldn't hear of it. "A Red Viper," he'd said just that morning, when they'd been skipping stones by the lake, "like Henri Vorvolk's. You seen that thing?"
Miles had, in fact, seen Henri's Red Viper. Her name was Jacqueline and her wings were edged with gold. They flashed like fire even in the smoggy air of Vorbarr Sultana. She certainly wasn't a thing. Ivan always talked about dragons as though they were lightflyers, Miles thought grumpily, like you could pick and choose your colors and get just the one you wanted.
He hadn't been followed. He paused outside the creche, nodded to the armsman on duty, and reached down, bracing himself against the side of the building to remove his leg braces. He'd learned the hard way that if he got too close to the egg with them, the metal heated up and left red welts.
He left them in a heap on the ground, exactly how he wasn't supposed to, and went inside, wobbling a little on his unsteady, fragile legs. He hated them, the way they wouldn't move the way everyone else's did. Hated how they made him look like a stupid little bug - a stupid little bug with a couple legs missing. Ivan had said that once. Miles hadn't been meant to hear, but then, he never was. That one had stuck with him. Most of them did, but that one more than most.
It was extremely warm inside the creche. In the Time of Isolation, there would have been a servant in here all the time with the egg, shoveling coal, making sure the fire didn't go out. There'd have been more eggs, too. The Vorkosigans had had a huge breeding program two hundred years ago. Now it was just one egg every other generation or so, and they kept it heated through the same system as the main house. The grates around the massive, blue-speckled egg glowed faintly, and the egg was wrapped in a large, insulated blanket just in case any crisp fall air managed to creep in. It wasn't winter yet, but it was getting there. They hadn't been able to swim at all this trip.
Miles wobbled over to the crate in front of the egg. He'd hauled it down here yesterday and almost broken his wrist in the process, so he was glad no one had decided to move it. He sat down - almost fell down - and looked at the egg. He wiped sweat off his brow. "Um," he said, "hello. It's me again. Miles."
He'd felt stupid the first time he'd done this, almost a year ago now. The count had brought him in here and shown him the egg. Miles had been dumb with amazement, and when the count had said, gruffly, "Go on, boy, talk to it," he hadn't had the foggiest idea what to say.
Since then, he'd discovered that eggs were very good listeners. He started out telling it all about Barrayar, so it would know where it was when it cracked the shell. He'd told it stories about the first colonists and their dragons on the new world that had tried to eat them all, dragons and human colonists alike, and about Lord Vorthalia the Bold, Legendary Hero from the Time of Isolation, and his dragon Taurus, who had faithfully served the Emperor together during one of the bloodiest centuries in Barrayar's history.
"'Course," he'd had to admit once he ran out of those stories after about eight months of sporadic trips to Vorkosigan Surleau, "it's not really like that anymore. Not since the wormhole re-opened. I mean, dragons were really important in the Cetagandan War because the Cetas didn't have any - couldn't bring them on their ships. I don't know if we would've won if they had. But now . . ." Miles paused for a long time, looking at the egg, which waited with characteristic patience. "It's different now," he'd finished at last, lamely.
It was different. They had lightflyers and aircars now that went ten times the speed of a dragon, not to mention ships that went into deep space where dragons could never follow. Some people said dragons were an anachronism, just like the Vor. They were a drain on resources and a tax burden on ordinary citizens, just like the Vor. They should let dragons die out naturally and not breed any more.
Just like the Vor.
"Only people who talk that rubbish are people who've never met a dragon," the count had told Miles once, scowling. "Your mother said those things to me when she first came here. I must give her credit, though. She met Kashchei and never said anything like it again."
Miles supposed the count was right - people just didn't know much about dragons anymore. City people didn't, anyway. Miles didn't know how to tell the egg that they wouldn't be having adventures like Vorthalia the Bold. Probably not, anyway. Miles's dragon would live here, at the long lake, because the Vorkosigans didn't have an estate in Vorbarr Sultana like the Vorvolks did, with land enough for a dragon to be comfortable - especially since Miles's dragon would be bigger than Henri's lithe, serpentine Jacqueline. Miles's dragon was a cross between the count's Imperial Crescent, Kashchei, and a female Russian Blue. Miles had a holocube that showed him what it'd look like: a heavy-weight dragon, hugely muscled through the shoulders and chest, and midnight blue shading into black at the wingtips. A dragon fit for Vorthalia himself.
Except . . . it wouldn't get Vorthalia. It'd get Miles.
That was the other thing Miles hadn't been able to tell the egg.
It was pretty much the only thing left to say, and he couldn't say it. Because maybe, he thought, if he was the only one there when it hatched, it wouldn't know the difference between tiny Miles, with his hunched back and his crooked legs and his too-big head, and tall, handsome, perfectly-proportioned Ivan. Maybe it'd accept him after all, if only it didn't know any better.
But of course, that wasn't how it worked. A dragon hatching was an important event for any Vor lord, accompanied by all pomp and circumstance, and for Miles it meant a dozen other things besides. It meant he was one of them and no one could say differently. It meant his grandfather had finally admitted he was a Vorkosigan, even if he hadn't let Miles have his name. It meant Miles would never have to be shorter than anyone else ever again. He'd be soaring high above them all.
Miles realized he'd been quiet for a long time. He supposed it wasn't as though the egg could complain. Still, he cleared his throat and said, "It must be pretty boring in there. Not that it's really exciting out here either. We're just up for the week - Mother and Aunt Alys and Ivan and Elena and me. And Grand'da - the count, I mean. Da couldn't come."
Someone cleared their throat over by the door. Miles jumped and spun, almost guiltily, though of course he had every right to be here. Had a duty to be here, in fact, because who would teach the dragon to speak if not him? It was the first of a Vor lord's responsibilities towards his dragon, because if it came out of the shell not knowing how to speak, it would never make a companion. They would be forced to sell it to a prole breeder, and because it was Miles, there would be a huge scandal.
It was the count, of course. No one else ever came down here - well, Elena sometimes, or Ivan. Miles straightened as well as he could. "Hello, sir."
"Glad to see you down here, boy," the count said, closing the door and limping slowly toward Miles, leaning on his cane. He'd begun walking with it the year before, and taking the lift tube rather than the stairs.
Miles nodded. "Did you go flying this morning with Kashchei?"
The count sighed and lowered himself creakily to the crate beside Miles. "No. Not today." He thumped the cane against the floor. "Bodies, eh? Traitors."
Miles glanced at him out the corner of his eye, not sure what he should say to that. Especially in front of the egg. "Yeah," he said at last, and wondered, not for the first time, what Kashchei would do when the count died. An Imperial Crescent might easily live two hundred years. He should have passed to Miles along with the count's name, grandfather to grandson, in the Vor tradition, but Miles had been presented with an egg instead. Kashchei's egg, true, but not Kashchei himself. Miles had always wondered who had made that decision, the count or his dragon. Perhaps both. They seemed to agree on almost everything. "Grown equally crotchety and stubborn in their old age," Miles's mother often sighed.
Maybe, Miles thought with little hope, Kashchei would bond to his father over their shared loss. Miles thought his father would like that; he'd been without a dragon for almost twenty years now, ever since his own, inherited from his grandfather as tradition dictated, had died of old age while Miles's father had been off-planet during the invasion of Escobar. But he didn't think Kashchei would hear of it. Miles thought he was more likely to live out the long remainder of his days here, on the estate, or even exile himself to the Dendarii mountains. He supposed that if that was the dragon's choice, no one could stop him, but it made Miles sad to think of it.
They sat in silence for a bit, both looking at the egg. The count leaned forward and smoothed his hand over the shell. "I think . . . midwinter," he said. He stroked it again. "Yes. Before, perhaps, but not much later. You have a name picked out?"
Miles shook his head. "Mother thinks I should let it pick its own name."
The count barked a laugh. "Your mother and her notions. A hatchling wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin picking a suitable name."
Miles shrugged. "Maybe not."
"Surely you must have something in mind."
"I like Alicha for a female," Miles admitted. He'd only thought of female names, actually. They would know by now whether it was male or female, of course, if the egg were housed in one of the professional creches in Vorbarr Sultana like many of the Vor did these days. But the count had insisted on the old ways, and because it offered little risk to the hatchling, Miles's father had given in. But now Miles had to think up not just one name that would make him, the hatchling, and the count happy, but two.
Miles had done the calculations and realized he was the least important variable in that equation. But somehow he didn't mind. Or at least, not very much.
The count grimaced, as Miles had expected. "Common."
Alicha was, in fact, a very common dragon's name among the Russian Vor. Alicha, or its male counterpart Arakho, after a legendary old Earth dragon who had tried to eat the sun and moon and been torn asunder by the gods. The French Vor tended to give their dragons elegant but human-sounding names, like Jacqueline. The Greek named their dragons after the old Earth gods - Apollo, Artemis and the like.
"It's traditional," Miles said, in a weak effort to defend his choice. The count harumphed, and Miles wondered if it'd be better to just throw tradition to the wind and pick something to match the rest of him. Something unique. Something that stood out.
Something . . . short.
"Alicha," the count grumbled. "Why don't you just name it Zmey? Or Dragon?"
Miles thought that was a bit unfair. If Alicha and Arakho were popular names, Kashchei wasn't far behind. Not that he could say that to the count. "I'll think of something," he said, managing not to bristle. "By midwinter, I'll think of it something." He certainly spent enough time thinking about it. Some days it felt like he thought about nothing else.
"I'm sure you will," the count said. Miles looked at him, almost startled; was that praise? Or at least something similar? The tone was gruff, but the note of pride was almost unmistakeable.
"Thank you, sir," he breathed.
"We should arrange for you to be here next semester," the count went on, as though Miles hadn't spoken. "We'll hire a tutor so you don't fall behind, but some things take precedence. The first six months are important."
"Yes, sir," Miles said, nodding.
The count was silent, once more looking at the egg. Miles was getting very warm, but he didn't want to leave until the count did. He pulled his damp shirt away from his chest and tried not to slump.
"Have you told it yet, boy?" the count asked abruptly.
Miles thought about playing stupid and decided the count wouldn't believe him. He wasn't any good at it anyway. "No," he said, very quietly.
"You should. You should prepare it so it isn't . . . shocked."
Miles swallowed. "It won't care," he said, though his lips felt numb. "It won't. That's not what matters. With Ninny -"
"Ninny's a horse," the count said sharply, surprising Miles into silence. "Don't you ever let me hear you make that comparison again."
"I didn't mean it like that!" Miles protested, shaking his head. "I didn't, sir, I just meant -" He broke off, wondering if he dared say what his mother had said to him, months ago now. He'd never said a word to her, but she'd sat down beside him one evening when he had the holocube out, put her arm around his shoulders, and said it, just as though she'd read his mind: Dragons don't share Barrayaran prejudices. Not out of the egg.
He paused too long. The count frowned at him deeply and nodded towards the egg. "Tell it." He gripped his cane and levered himself up, thumping across the the room and out of the door without a backwards glance.
"I . . ." Miles began. The egg stared back at him impassively, huge, blue, speckled. Patient. "I have to go," he managed. "I'll come again before we leave."
He fled, out of the creche and down to the lake. There he stood, skipping stones and thinking of names, until long after the sun had gone down.
Fin.