Work Text:
When Piotr was a little kid, he kept asking Mama when he was going to get taller. Mama would hug him and say that he was growing all the time. Sometimes, if he'd got into more trouble than usual with the Esterhazy boys or his Vorrutyer cousins, he wouldn't get the hug and Mama would say tartly that he seemed to be growing up quite fast enough. Now he is eleven and old enough to be a big boy, Piotr doesn't ask out loud any more but he still thinks about it a lot .
* * *
Piotr is to get a commconsole and a tutor all of his own at Winterfair. The district is not sure whether to be impressed or scandalised by this expensive galactic innovation . Rumours spread that Piotr must be a genius like his famous ancestor Selig or half mad like the Glass Countess - or maybe both. Even Martin, who is Piotr's particular friend among the Esterhazy boys, begins to wonder. Sure Piotr is clever- after all that's what Vorkosigans are for, but how can people know if you're a genius when you're only a kid ?
* * *
Da says that Piotr has to learn how to be Count Vorkosigan when he grows up . Piotr says that he would rather ride horses. Da laughs and says he can do both and they go to see Bracken's new foal together.
* * *
Countess Natalya Vormuir Vorkosigan isn't laughing. All her Vorkeres and Vormuir aunts descend upon her to complain about her husband's extravagance and point out that their own grandchildren are much cleverer than little Piotr and the village schools are good enough for them . Count Selig discovers urgent business on the estates and leaves her to deal with the dragon aunts on her own. At least he won't be there to see the aunts strip away her illusions of adulthood and competence and turn her back into an inarticulate , sulky child again. Each time she promises herself it will be different and knows that it will be exactly the same.
* * *
Svetlana Johnson doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Her graduate thesis adviser has wangled her an all expenses paid off world trip on the newly discovered planet of Barrayar. It's the opportunity of a lifetime for a historian.
Or it would be if she hadn't just hooked up with the cutest herm at the faculty summer party . Or if she wasn't being expected to tutor an eleven year old boy who's never seen a commconsole before. And tutor him in a dialect which split off from the mainstream hundreds of years ago and is stuffed full of random loan words .
She sighs and loads up the Barrayaran Russian language disk again . Just as well it's a long voyage.