The Flowers of Vashnoi

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Ekaterin studied Vadim’s profile. He’d been working with Enrique on the outdoor test plot for some weeks, but today was the first she had met him. The rangy ranger was not quite thirty, above middle height, close-shaved and hair shorn short. His face seemed carved from some mineral that cleaved in blocky angles and planes, but his brown eyes were warmer, if a bit uncertain in the alarming presence of Lord and Lady Vorkosigan.

But the old man would have had to be blind indeed not to have seen, even then, his birth-damaged only grandson’s growing powers of mind. And heart. Incandescent, someone had once described Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. Maybe, love, Piotr chose to pass his wounded lands into hands that he thought could hold them. Maybe he didn’t underestimate you after all.

The radbugs should be even easier to spot in the dimness, Ekaterin thought, gleaming in the gloaming, but she glimpsed none.

Playful alliteration, Lois

“You and Miles seem very good at it. I mean, you two never seem to panic.” “In Miles’s train, one learns to set a rather high bar for that.” She was not, for example, panicking here, now, yet. Chokingly uneasy wasn’t panic, was it?

chelation

“Are you a princess?” “No.” Thankfully. And, Were you expecting one? They couldn’t get many princesses passing through these parts. Or maybe it was some skewed fairy-tale logic—if all princesses were beautiful females, then all beautiful females must be princesses? “So what is your name?”

“There is a great deal of natural beauty here in the zone. The plants, the trees, the little streams…” “The ponies!” Ekaterin considered the surly animals they’d viewed from the air, and tried to come up with a positive remark. Positive seemed to be working, here. “Ponies have fuzzy ears. And velvety noses.” “And big yellow teeth!” Jadwiga giggled. “They bite!”

Whatever else this day wanted from her, she had nothing more to give it.