vor | First Cream Cake: [Action/Voice]

His Imperial Majesty wakes up face-down in a patch of Earth-descended grass and wonders where the hangover went.

…No. Forget the hangover. Where did the ship go?

He had a berth on a jumpship out of Komarr. He wasn’t supposed to wake up in a patch of grass after falling asleep. Maybe in ImpMil as his personal surgeons stitched him back together after a harried kidnapping, or maybe even in his quarters on the jumpship, but marooned on a planet? He should remember that.

Groaning slightly and raising his head gives him a view of his surroundings (the groaning is too necessary). A cursory scan suggests that this isn’t Barrayar, and his blood goes cold.

Barrayaran vegetation is as distinctively brown and sometimes red as Earth vegetation is distinctively green. It also tends to be short, squat, and rather ugly. Entire groves of Earth-based vegetation have supplanted and mingled with many native growths, but it’s hard to have a view of a few miles and not see some of the scraggly brown plants. Especially in the mountains, which loom ominously to the north. Those aren’t the Dendarii Mountains, no matter what. He sits up to get a better look.

To the south is a village or settlement with buildings too tall to exist in the backcountry. Vorkosigan Vashnoi? Better not be. No, the place should be rubble and radiation, twisting his already-troublesome DNA. This can’t be Barrayar. At the same time, it can’t be Komarr, or he’d be dead within minutes in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere. But it can’t be anything besides Komarr, because it takes days or weeks to reach anywhere else.

Unless he was drugged. His memory selectively wiped, what some Barrayaran doctors call therapy. He glances down at his hands, then touches them to his face. Other than a distinct lack of clothing apart from white trousers, he seems fine. Nothing hurts except his back. No. Outside his back.

He glances over one shoulder and sees the wings, pitch black with narrow silver stripes on the insides like a falcon’s. His house colors. Someone knows who he is. Someone who could construct prosthetic wings?

He shudders. At the same time, the wings ruffle, flap, then fold behind his back. They’re not prosthetics.

Cetagandans.

They’re not a mutation. They can’t be, unless he’s a clone somehow conditioned to have Emperor Gregor’s memories. He’d have to ask Cordelia if that’s even possible. Or they could be a surgical construct. Or he could be dreaming. The last of those sounds like the most viable, and comforting, option.

Experimentally, he flaps the wings. The pain that shoots through them is not very dreamlike. Done with that. The point is that he can control these wings, and if he can, they are a very intelligently-done surgical construct. Not that that’s going to matter to anyone back home. No, this sort of design has to be Cetagandan. Kidnap the Barrayaran Emperor—he certainly made it easy for them—give him an obvious “mutation,” and what? Send him back? Assassinating him would cause both war and chaos, and waste the effort and money it took to deform him. But sending him back would mean simple chaos. Barrayar wouldn’t accept a genetically or physically defect Emperor—not that they hadn’t before, without knowing it, with the behavioral problems of Mad Yuri and Prince Serg, and Gregor, carrying those same genes. No one worthy of the Imperium would want to rule, so those in his theoretical line of inheritance (the Vorkosigans and That-Idiot-Ivan) are ruled out. Everyone else would war for it. All the Cetagandans would have to do would be to swoop in and pick up the pieces. Why wings, specifically? So he could be the most memorable laughingstock possible? Winged Emperor Gregor?

Running away was a bad idea.

Lying in the grass is a book. His hands are unsteady, but he doesn’t notice the shaking till he picks up the book. He has to get himself under control. He clutches the book tightly till the shaking is well-hidden. The cover has his name tooled on it, bold as brass.

GREGOR VORBARRA.

No titles, no initials. Maybe if it has his name, it has answers. Or poisoned pages. At this point, though, his death would be a disservice to his enemies and a service to the Imperium, so he opens it, face still as water.

He doesn’t expect what he gets. Communications between hundreds of people in the village. People talking about other people going back to their own worlds, an organization called the Malnosso—from Jackson’s Whole, probably—and Gregor swallows as three hundred other political prisoners swim before his eyes. Soldiers and sailors, criminals and civilians, children and adults. Tense as a bowstring, he closes the book and stares at the grass. The grass has no answers.

Folding his wings tightly behind his back to keep the silver streaks from showing, he rises unsteadily to his feet and heads for the village. Someone has to have some answers. Someone has to know who the Malnosso work for, and if not, maybe they have enough clues for him to hazard a good guess, although it would take a lot to convince him this isn’t Cetagandan work. Still, getting out of here could depend on finding out otherwise. That’s assuming Simon Illyan isn’t a step behind him.

[The village isn’t hard to navigate. He has no credit chit with which to buy clothes, which causes problems until he learns everything is free for the taking. Definitely prisoners. Much here is of a fashion he’s not used to, but he picks out a black button-up shirt, a pair of blue cotton twill trousers someone calls “jeans,” and a pair of sandals that snap at his heels as he walks. It seems to be the sort of fare most people wear around here, far more relaxed than the military-inspired tunics of Barrayaran fashion. Still, since none of it was inspected by ImpSec, he feels oddly liberated even as he feels wary. There are holes in the shirt to thread his wings through, and he does so very carefully. On the other hand, maybe he should flaunt the colors. No one outside Barrayar is likely to know the Vorbarra house colors, but they might alert an ImpSec agent--if Simon Illyan indeed has any plants here, which Gregor wouldn’t put beyond him. Illyan and Aral, like two parentheses surrounding him.

Illyan is going to have a stroke.

Eventually he sits at the bakery with a cream horn on a plate in front of him, as well as a cup of tea with three sugars and half-and-half. He slumps in the chair like he’s trying to become invisible, feet and knees wide apart, a neurasthenic expression on his narrow face, long hands flipping through his journal with the cover flat on the table, hiding the name on it. It would be best if no one knew his identity just yet.

The worst part is how little he really cares, now that his options have been made a little clearer. Yes, he cares very deeply, but not enough. Giving him a pair of wings, whether or not they count as a mutation, and sending him back to his own people? Would free him of the Imperium, whatever else it would do. He’s not sure if that’s what he wants. He’s not sure what he wants at all. But what he wants doesn’t matter, as long as he has the wings. They’re a handy excuse for now, but what about when Illyan catches up with him in a frantic but well-executed rescue? What about when civil war breaks out back home as various power-greedy Vor lords attempt to lay claim to the Imperium? What about when Aral Vorkosigan is assassinated? What about when the Counts too clever to try to take the Imperium for themselves rally behind Ivan Vorpatril and make him their puppet?

…Okay, that last one just made him stop taking the entire disaster scenario seriously. Emperor Ivan. A smile tugs briefly at his lips.

He stops suddenly as he comes to a particular entry. After a moment, he finds his voice and the button to start transmission.]

Someone asked some time ago about surgically removing the wings. I’m curious. What did he find out?

[There’s a certain cool authority to it, but it’s still polite and respectful, not patronizing or clipped at all. A formal request for information, not a demand. Then, hesitation.]

My name is Greg Bleakman. I’ve just arrived.

[There. That alias should alert any ImpSec agents in the enclosure. It also reveals his emergency alias to any kidnappers listening in, but Illyan can provide him with another.

He spends the rest of the day scouting out places to stay. Eventually he chooses Community Building 7, because it’s close to the stables. He’ll have to go riding tomorrow, once he has settled in a bit better. The third floor satisfies his inner Simon Illyan, and a room at the end of the hall satisfies his desire to keep to himself for now.

Catch up with him at any point during the day.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A-actually? Sorta. If you count the kerfuffle with the Third Party as a political matter.

That's not what I mean. [But he's thinking about backing off. Revealing himself too soon, even if she is another VIP, might not be dangerous in a way he can see, but he can only imagine the conniptions Illyan would go into.]

What? It's not like they wouldn't love to get their hands on me. I know I would, if I was in their wings.

[ she flips her notebook closed and shoves it into her pocket. this guy must think he's a political prisoner. why else would he ask? hmm. ]

What did you mean, then?

[seeing her book reminds him his journal is horribly exposed on his bedroll, with his real name on it. This woman is weird, but if she didn't know what he meant the first time, he should back off before she gets too curious.]

Never mind.

Got a name, Mister Cagey?

Greg Bleakman.

["Bleak" is about right.]

[ ...bleakman. ]

Well -- Greg? May I call you Greg? Welcome to Luceti.

Thank you. [A courteous nod.] Where do you come from?

...California via Scotland. [ ... ] If those words mean anything to you?

[It takes him a second.]

On Earth?

That's me. Miss Earth 2005.

[...He's going to look at you blankly. It's his "you're completely nuts, aren't you?" look, but it looks like most of his other looks.]

...What?

[Does everyone here think they come from a thousand years in the past? What kind of conditioning have the Malnosso done besides that?]

It's a long time ago.

...Future-guy, huh?

Present-guy, if you please. [Spoken with some wry humor.]

[ she meets his wryness with wryness of her own: ] You started it.

I did?

Accusing me of being from so long ago! Well -- you're the one who's from...so far ahead.

[A shrug.] Among the things one could be accused of, it's not so bad.

...Been accused of worse, have we?

Not to my face. Explicitly. [But that hadn't been what he'd meant to imply. He stares at the empty living room, wishing Lady Alys here to oversee furnishings. He has no clue where to start.]

Sounds intriguing, but...[ and she stares at the door. ] Look -- I've kinda been around here for a while so -- I know you're new and if you need anything? Just say it.