War Of Honor

Chapter Nine

"No."

Queen Elizabeth III looked into Honor's eyes and shook her head fiercely.

"Please, Elizabeth," Honor began. "Right now my presence is doing more harm than good. If I go home to—"

"You are home," Elizabeth interrupted sharply, her warm mahogany face hard, and the treecat on her shoulder flattened his ears in reaction to his person's anger. That anger wasn't directed at Honor, but that made it no weaker. Worse, Honor could taste it almost as clearly as Ariel could, and for just an instant she wished she had matching ears that she could flatten in response. The whimsical thought flickered briefly through her brain, then vanished, and she drew a lung-stretching breath before she spoke again, as calmly as she could.

"That wasn't what I meant," she said, then closed her mouth once more as Elizabeth waved one hand in a chopping-off gesture.

"I know it wasn't." The Queen grimaced and shook her head. "I didn't mean for it to sound that way, either," she went on a bit contritely. "But I don't apologize for the thought behind it. You're a Manticoran, Honor, and a peer of the realm, and you deserve one hell of a lot better than this!"

She gestured at the wall-mounted HD, and against her will, Honor followed the gesture to where Patrick DuCain and Minerva Prince, hosts of the weekly syndicated political talk show "Into the Fire" were grilling a panel of journalists in front of huge holograms of Honor's face . . . and White Haven's.

The sound was switched off, a small mercy for which Honor was profoundly grateful, but she didn't really have to hear it. She tried to remember who it was back on Old Terra who was supposed to have said that something was "déjа vu all over again." She couldn't, but that didn't matter either. She didn't have to recall names to know precisely how whoever had rendered that masterpiece of redundancy must have felt, because watching DuCain and Prince brought back agonizing memories of the vicious partisan confrontations which had followed the First Battle of Hancock. She'd been one of the focuses for those bruising exchanges, too, so she supposed she should be used to it by now. But she wasn't. No one could grow accustomed to it, she thought bitterly.

"What I may or may not deserve has very little bearing on what's actually happening, Elizabeth," she said, her voice still calm and level even as she felt the stiff tension in Nimitz's long, wiry body on her own shoulder. "Nor does it have any bearing on the damage being done while this goes on."

"Perhaps not," Elizabeth conceded. "But if you retire to Grayson now, they win. Worse, everyone will know they won. And besides," her voice dropped and her ramrod-straight spine seemed to sag ever so slightly, "it probably wouldn't make any difference, anyway."

Honor opened her mouth again, then closed it. Not because she was prepared to give up the argument, but because she was afraid Elizabeth was right.

Every insider in Parliament, Lords and Commons alike, recognized exactly what had been done to her, and it didn't matter at all. Hayes' initial column had been followed quickly by the first op-ed piece, and that first "respectable" commentary had been the polished, meticulously crafted opening salvo in a carefully planned campaign. It was the first picador's dart, placed with impeccable skill, and the fact that the High Ridge Government was an alliance of so many parties gave a disastrously broad base to the orchestrated attack. The Manticoran public was accustomed to vociferous exchanges between party organs and spokespeople, but this time the party lines were blurred. No, not blurred. The real problem was that the divisions were even clearer than usual . . . and that this time every single major party except the Centrists and Crown Loyalists was on the other side. The condemnation came from across the entire traditional political spectrum, and that gave it a dangerous degree of legitimacy in all too much of the public's eyes. Surely so many people of such diverse views would never agree on anything which wasn't self-evidently true!

That first column had appeared in the Landing Guardian, the flagship newsfax of the Manticoran Liberal Party, under the byline of Regina Clausel. Clausel had been a newsy for almost fifty T-years . . . and an operative of the Liberal Party for over thirty-five. She maintained her credentials as a reporter and ostensibly independent-minded political commentator, but she was recognized in professional media circles as one of the Liberals' primary front people. She was also widely respected in those same circles for her ability, despite the way she'd subordinated it to the requirements of her ideology. Effectiveness was far more important than intellectual integrity, after all, Honor thought bitterly.

What mattered in this case, however, was her sheer visibility. She was a regular on four different issue-oriented HD programs, her column appeared in eighteen major and scores of lesser 'faxes, and her informal, comfortable prose and calm affability before the cameras had captured a broad readership and viewership. Many of her readers weren't Liberals—indeed, a fair percentage were actually Centrists, who read her columns or watched her on HD because she seemed reassuring evidence that even someone one disagreed with politically could have a brain. Her well-crafted and presented arguments made even readers who disagreed with her think, and if one was inclined to agree with her already, they often seemed to sparkle with their own brand of brilliance.

She was also one of the very few political columnists outside the Centrist party who had not savaged Honor over her duels with Denver Summervale and Pavel Young. Honor wasn't certain why, since the Liberal Party was officially dedicated to stamping out the custom of dueling. That was one of the few planks of their formal platform with which she found herself in agreement, whatever her bloodthirsty reputation might be. The suppression of the genetic slave trade was another, but she felt even more strongly—on a personal level—about the Code Duello. If duels had never been legal, Paul would never have been killed . . . and Honor wouldn't have been forced to use the same custom as the only way she could punish the men who'd planned his death. The fact that she knew a predator part of her personality might find the code all too apt to her needs under certain circumstances was another reason she would have preferred to see it stamped out. She didn't like wondering if she could trust herself in that regard.

According to William Alexander's sources, the most probable reason for Clausel's silence on that occasion was actually quite simple: she'd hated the Young clan for decades. Much of that hatred apparently sprang from ideological antipathy, but there also seemed to be an intensely personal element to it. That must make her present alliance with the Conservative Association even more awkward for her than for most Liberals, but no one could have guessed it from how skillfully she'd played her assigned role.

She never once openly condemned either Honor or White Haven. Indeed, she spent over a third of her total word count castigating Hayes for the customary sleaziness of his regular "Tattler's Tidbits" column and another third pleading with their fellows of the press not to leap to judgment on the basis of such a suspect source. And then, having established her own professionalism, integrity, skepticism, and total sympathy for the sacrificial victims, she spent the final third of the column giving Hayes' sleaze the deadly tang of legitimacy.

Honor could remember the closing paragraphs of that dagger-edged column word for word, even now.

"It goes without saying that the private lives of any of this Kingdom's citizens, however prominent, ought to be just that: private. What transpires between two consenting adults is their business, and no one else's, and it would be well for all of us of the press to remember that as this story unfolds. Just as it is incumbent upon all of us to remember the highly questionable source of these initial, completely unconfirmed allegations.

"Yet at the same time, distasteful as any of us must find it, there are questions which must be asked. Unpleasant conjectures which must be examined, if only to refute them. We have made icons of our heroes. We have elevated them to the highest levels of our respect and admiration for their amply demonstrated courage and skill in the crucible of combat against the enemies of all we believe in and value. Whatever the final outcome of this story, it cannot in any way diminish the tremendous contributions made to the war against Havenite aggression by the man who commanded Eighth Fleet and brought the People's Navy to its knees, or by the woman whose superb courage and tactical skill have won her the nickname of 'the Salamander.'

"Yet true though that is, are courage and skill enough? What demands is it appropriate for us to place upon heroes whom we have also made political leaders and statesmen? Does the ability to excel in one arena transfer to excellence in another, completely different type of struggle? And when it comes to matters as fundamental as character, fidelity to one's sworn word, and loyalty to the important people in one's life, does heroism in war transfer to heroic stature as a human being?

"Most troubling, of course, will be those who insist that we may see the greater in the lesser. That in the personal choices and decisions of our lives, we see the true reflection of our public choices and positions. That as we succeed—or fail—against the measure of our inner, personal codes and values, so we reveal our ability to successfully bear—or falter under—the weight of our public responsibilities.

"And what of the question of judgment? What of the charges, which will inevitably be made, that any public figure, any statesman, who might have placed himself or herself in such a false position by such indiscretions has demonstrated a woeful lack of judgment which cannot be overlooked in one responsible for charting the policies and future of the Star Kingdom of Manticore? It is very early—far too early—for us to rush to decision on any of those troubling questions. Indeed, one is tempted to point out that it is really far too early even to ask such questions, for there is as yet no confirmation that the ugly rumors contain any shred of truth.

"And yet those questions are being asked, however quietly, however discreetly, in the backs of our minds. And at the end of the day, fair or not, reasonable or not, we must find some answer for them, if only the conclusion that they should never have been asked in the first place. For we are speaking of our leaders, of a man and woman venerated by all of us in time of war, whose judgment and whose ability to lead us in time of peace we have made critical to the prosperity and security of our Kingdom.

"Perhaps there is a lesson here. None of us is perfect, all of us have made mistakes, and even our heroes are but human. It is neither fair nor just to insist that anyone excel in all areas of human endeavor. That anyone be as capable in matters of state as he or she is in the harsh furnace of war. In the end, perhaps we have elevated our heroes too high, raised them to a pinnacle no mere mortal should be expected to scale. And if, in the end, they have fallen from the heights like the Icarus of ancient legend, is the fault theirs, or is it ours?"

Clausel's column had been devastating less for what it said than for the ground it had prepared, and the columns which followed—written by Conservatives, by Progressives, by other Liberals, and by Independents personally committed to the Government for whatever reason—drove their roots deep into that well-tilled soil with a damning nonpartisan aura that was as convincing as it was false.

Honor had released her own statement, of course, and she knew William Alexander had used his own press contacts to do as much preemptive spadework as he could before the story broke, as well. She'd done some of her own, for that matter, and even appeared, not without a certain carefully concealed trepidation, on "Into the Fire" herself. The experience had not been one of the most enjoyable of her life.

Neither Prince, a lifelong Liberal, nor DuCain, a card-carrying Crown Loyalist, had ever attempted to conceal their own political affiliations. That was one of the things which made their program so widely watched. But for all their political differences, they respected one another, and they made a conscientious effort to extend that same respect to their guests and reserve their own polemics for their closing segment. But that didn't mean they refrained from hardhitting questions.

"I read your statement of the fifteenth with considerable interest, Your Grace," Prince had observed on camera. "I noted that you acknowledge a 'close personal and professional relationship' with Earl White Haven."

"Actually," Honor had corrected calmly, fingers stroking Nimitz' ears as he lay in her lap and looked far calmer than he was, "I didn't 'acknowledge' anything, Minerva. I explained that I have a close personal and professional relationship with both Earl White Haven and his brother, Lord Alexander."

"Yes, you did." Prince had accepted the correction gracefully. "Would you care to take this opportunity to explain that a bit more fully for our viewers?"

"Of course, Minerva." Honor had looked directly at the live camera and smiled with the ease she had learned to project. "Both the Earl and I support the Centrist Party, and Lord Alexander, since Duke Cromarty's death, has been the leader of that party. Given the Centrists' majority in the Commons and the dominance of the current Government's parties in the Lords, it was inevitable that the three of us should become close political allies. In fact, that relationship has been the subject of speeches and debates in the Lords for almost three T-years now ... as has the strength of our opposition to the High Ridge Government's policies."

"But the thrust of the present controversy, Your Grace," DuCain had observed, "is that your relationship with Earl White Haven goes beyond a purely political alliance."

"And it does," Honor had admitted calmly. "Earl White Haven and I have known one another for over fifteen T-years now, ever since the Battle of Yeltsin. I've always had the deepest professional respect for him. As, I believe, just about anyone not blinded by petty jealousy and personal animosity must."

DuCain's eyes had flickered with amusement at her none-too-veiled reference to Sir Edward Janacek, and she'd continued in the same calm tone.

"I'm pleased to say that after our initial meeting at Yeltsin's Star, and particularly in the three or four years preceding my capture by the People's Navy, professional respect had the opportunity to turn into personal friendship, as well. A friendship which has only been deepened by how closely we've worked on a political basis in the Lords since my return from Hades. I regard him not simply as a colleague but as a close personal friend, and neither of us has ever attempted to suggest otherwise. Nor will we."

"I see." DuCain had glanced at Prince, handing the focus smoothly back to her, and she'd nodded understanding of her own.

"Your statement also denied that you were anything more than friends and colleagues, Your Grace. Would you care to expand on that?"

"There isn't a great deal to expand upon, Minerva." Honor had shrugged. "The entire present furor amounts to no more than the repetition and endless analysis of unsubstantiated allegations from a completely unreliable source. A man, not to put too fine a point upon it, who makes his living from sensationalism and is none too shy about creating it out of whole cloth when reality doesn't offer him a sufficient supply. And who refuses—out of 'journalistic ethics'—to 'compromise his integrity' by naming his sources, since, of course, they spoke to him only on conditions of confidentiality."

Her soprano voice had been completely level. The fingers caressing Nimitz's ears had never strayed from their gentle rhythm. But her eyes had been very, very cold, and Prince had seemed to recoil ever so slightly.

"That may be the case, Your Grace," she'd said after a moment, "but the strength of the controversy seems to be growing, not ebbing. Why do you think that is?"

"I suspect that it's partly human nature," Honor had replied. What she'd wanted to say was: Because the High Ridge Government—with your precious New Kiev's connivance—is deliberately orchestrating it as a smear campaign, you idiot! But, of course, she couldn't. Charges of deliberately falsified smear campaigns had been the first refuge of the guilty for so long that resorting to them now would only have convinced a huge chunk of the public that the accusations must, in fact, be true. After all, if they weren't, the accused would simply have produced the proof instead of resorting to that tired old tactic, wouldn't they?

"There's an inevitable, and probably healthy, tendency to continuously test the character of those in positions of political power or influence," Honor had said instead. "A tendency to assume the worst because it's so important that we not allow ourselves to be taken in by manipulators and cretins who deceive us into believing they're better than they are.

"That, unfortunately, can have its downside when reckless, unsubstantiated charges are flung about, because no one can prove a negative. I've made my own position as clear as I possibly can. I have no intention of belaboring the point, nor do I feel that endless protestations of innocence on my part—or Earl White Haven's, for that matter—would be appropriate or serve any useful purpose. We can both insist endlessly that there's no shred of truth to the allegations that we've ever been physically intimate, but we can't prove it. At the same time, however, I would point out that my statement also invited anyone who has evidence to prove anything to the contrary to bring that evidence forward. No one has."

"But according to Mr. Hayes," DuCain had pointed out in return, "that's because Earl White Haven's security and—especially—your own is too efficient at . . . suppressing unpleasant evidence."

"My armsmen are extremely efficient at protecting me from physical threats, as they demonstrated right here in Landing, at Regiano's, several years ago," Honor had replied. "And they do serve my security functions as Steadholder Harrington, both on Grayson and here on Manticore, as well. I suppose that if I really wanted them to, they could be quite effective in suppressing or concealing evidence. But Mr. Hayes claims to have spoken to people who say they have firsthand knowledge of the alleged improprieties. Unless he's prepared to accuse me of resorting to threats of physical violence to silence those witnesses, I fail to see how my armsmen could prevent him from bringing them forward. And if I were prepared to resort to threats or violence, why in the world wouldn't I have started with him instead of these supposed witnesses of his?"

Her smile had been thin, but no one had been likely to miss its implications . . . or forget the ghosts of Denver Summervale and Pavel Young.

"The fact is, of course, that there have been no threats," she had continued with another shrug. "Nor will there be, although Mr. Hayes will undoubtedly continue to use the 'threat' of my armsmen to explain his failure to produce witnesses. In the meantime, however, I believe we've dealt with the matter as thoroughly as it deserves, and, as I say, I have no intention of belaboring my denial of the allegations."

"Of course, Your Grace," Prince had murmured. "In that case, I wonder if you'd care to comment on the proposed naval budgets? For example ..."

The rest of the interview had dealt exclusively with legitimate questions of politics and policy, and Honor felt confident she'd handled that portion of it well. She was less confident that anyone had bothered to notice. All of the post-interview analysis—including, unfortunately, the "Point-Counterpoint" commentary with which DuCain and Prince always closed their program—had completely ignored it to concentrate once again on the far more interesting scandal. According to William Alexander's pollsters and analysts, she'd scored a few points with the interview—even won a slight opinion swing in her favor. But it hadn't been enough to stem the tide in the long run, and the other side had attacked with redoubled fury.

They didn't have it all their own way, of course. Indeed, Honor was surprised to find half a dozen prominent Liberals and even one or two Conservative commentators who genuinely sought to disassociate themselves from the witch hunt. A part of her was ashamed when she recognized her surprise for what it was. Realized she'd become so cynical about the supporters of the High Ridge Government that the very thought that any of them might possess true integrity was astonishing to her. But only a part of her felt that, and as the tempo increased those voices of reason simply disappeared—not silenced, but drowned out and pounded under by the carefully conducted orchestra of innuendo and accusation.

Nor had she been devoid of other defenders. Catherine Montaigne, in the midst of a campaign which pitted her against her own party's leadership, had come out swinging. Her scathing denunciation of the tactics being employed had been downright vicious, nor had she shrunk from identifying New Kiev and other senior members of the Liberal Party as accomplices in what she openly defined as a smear campaign. Ironically, even as the party leadership turned on her in fury for her temerity, it was actually helping her with the voters of High Threadmore. But that was one isolated borough, where people were actually listening to what was said in the course of a fiercely contested election, and not simply the sound and fury frothing on the surface.

Klaus and Stacey Hauptman had also come out strongly in her support, although there'd been little they could actually do. Stacey had made it clear the Hauptman resources were prepared to stand behind her, but to be honest, the Hauptman fortune, vast as it was, would not have added materially to the political war chest Honor could produce out of her own resources. Their private investigators (and also, though she had no intention of mentioning it to anyone, including William Alexander, Anton Zilwicki), however, had delved as deeply as the law permitted—and perhaps even a little deeper, in some instances—into Hayes' background and his files. That was one way they could help, because it allowed Honor to keep her own security people scrupulously away from the scandalmonger. But whoever was orchestrating Hayes' security was obviously very good at her job and had money to burn. Zilwicki's theory, which Elijah Sennett, the Hauptman Cartel's chief of security, shared was that the person doing that job was Countess North Hollow. Somehow, that didn't surprise Honor a bit.

Unfortunately, Manticoran slander and libel laws, while harder hitting than many, had their own loopholes. The most important one was that the law recognized a journalist's right to maintain the confidentiality of her sources and set a very high hurdle for plaintiff demands that those sources' identities be revealed. As long as Hayes restricted himself to reporting that his "sources" suggested that Honor and Hamish were lovers and never once said that he himself claimed they were, he stayed one thin millimeter on the safe side of the libel laws. Honor had done her dead level best to goad him into making that fatal assertion, but he'd refused to be drawn into that error. She could still sue for slander and, probably, win, but the trial would stretch out for years (at least), and however monumental the damages awarded might be in the end, it would have no impact on the current political situation . . . except to convince people that she was desperate to shut his mouth any way she could.

Fortunately, perhaps, the Code Duello also specifically exempted journalists from being challenged on the basis of published reporting or commentary. It would have been possible to contrive some other basis for a duel, perhaps, but she had to agree with William; in the end, it would only make the damage even worse. Besides, Hayes had obviously taken careful note of what had happened to Pavel Young. There was no way in the universe he was going to place himself in any position where Honor might possibly challenge him.

So there was simply no practical way to staunch the flow of rumors which fueled the corrosive speculation of the Government commentators and their supporters.

The Centrist columnists, many of them just as fiercely partisan as any Liberal or Conservative, fired back desperately. But the assaults came from too many directions, were conducted with too much skill, and here and there individual defenders began to fall silent. One or two who'd been expected to defend her and White Haven never really seemed to make a serious attempt, and she knew William was noting who those silent voices belonged to. Not simply to punish them for their lack of support later, but because he wondered why they were silent. Over the decades, there had been persistent rumors about the Earls of North Hollow and their ability to manipulate allies and opponents alike by judicious use of the secrets contained within their files. Which was why Alexander wondered if perhaps there was something he should know about those who were silent so conveniently to Stefan Young's advantage.

Yet in the end, all of the Centrist efforts, and even the direct support of the Queen herself, had proved insufficient. The crippling darts had been placed too skillfully. Honor knew she and White Haven continued to enjoy a solid core of support among Manticoran voters, but she also knew that support had eroded heavily. It couldn't affect their seats in the Lords, but the storm of public criticism over their alleged infidelities was reflected in a significant drop in voter support for their party allies in the Commons. They had been transformed from assets in both houses into liabilities in the house where it really mattered, the one High Ridge and his allies didn't already control.

Bad as it was for White Haven, it was even worse for Honor. For all his continuing vigor, Hamish Alexander was one hundred and three T-years old, almost fifty T-years older than she was. In a society with prolong, where life spans would be as much as three T-centuries, that gap meant very little. But Hamish was from the very first generation of Manticoran prolong recipients. Most first— and second-generation prolong recipients had grown to at least young adulthood surrounded by pre-prolong parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts. Their fundamental attitudes towards what age meant, and particularly towards the significance of differences in age, had been formed in a society which had not yet developed a true acceptance for how long people, themselves included, were now likely to live.

Worse, perhaps, the earlier, less advanced generations of the prolong therapies stopped the physical aging process at a later stage, cosmetically, at least. So, as a first-generation recipient, Hamish's black hair was liberally threaded with silver, his face more deeply graven by character lines and crows feet. In a pre-prolong society, he might have been taken for a vigorous man in his mid-forties or very early fifties. But Honor was a third-generation recipient. Physically, she was no more than into her late twenties, and so for many of those following the story, she was the "younger woman." The Jezebel. In their eyes, his "betrayal" of Lady White Haven after so many years of unwavering fidelity could only have resulted from the way she had tempted and systematically pursued him.

The one thing for which she was truly grateful at the moment was that she'd managed to convince both her parents to stay safely on Grayson. It would have been bad enough if her father had been in the Star Kingdom, because as gentle and compassionate a man as Alfred Harrington was, Honor knew perfectly well from whom she had inherited her own temper. Very few people had ever seen her father actually lose his temper; of those who had, not all had survived the experience, although that had been in his own days of naval service, and he seldom discussed it even with her.

But her mother would have been worse. Far worse. On Allison Chou Harrington's birth world of Beowulf, public opinion would have laughed itself silly at the hysterical thought that matters of the heart were the business of anyone except the individuals actually involved. The nature of the Alexanders' marriage vows would have weighed heavily in the scale of Beowulf opinion, but the Beowulfers would have concluded, with healthy rationality, that if the individuals in question—all the individuals in question—were prepared to modify those vows, that was their own affair. In any case, the notion that any of it could have any impact on Honor's public responsibilities would have been ludicrous.

Allison Harrington, despite almost a T-century as a citizen of the Star Kingdom, remained very much a Beowulfer in that respect. And Honor's mother. Her recent letters to Honor radiated a bare-clawed ferocity which was almost frightening, and Honor shuddered every time she thought of Allison loose on something like "Into the Fire." Or, even worse, in the same room as Regina Clausel. Her mother might be tiny, but so were treecats.

That thought brought her back to the present, and she looked up at her Queen and sighed.

"I don't know, Elizabeth," she said, and her own voice sounded flat and defeated to her. Her shoulders sagged, and she scrubbed her eyes wearily with her right hand. "I just don't know what might help anymore. Maybe going to Grayson would be a mistake, but all I know for certain is that every day I stay here and appear in the House of Lords seems to make it worse."

"It's my fault," Elizabeth told her sadly. "I should have managed this whole thing better. Willie tried to tell me, but I was too angry, too badly hurt to listen. I needed Allen Summervale to shake some sense into me, and he was dead."

"Elizabeth—" Honor began, but the Queen shook her head.

"I should have held onto my temper," she said. "Should have tried sweet reason until I could find the issue to split them up instead of declaring war against them and driving them together!"

"Whatever you should or shouldn't have done is beside the point now," Honor said gently. "Personally, I don't think there ever was any 'wedge issue' you could have used to break them up. Not with the threat of the San Martino peers hanging over them."

"Then I should have gone the whole nine meters," Elizabeth said bitterly. "I should have said damn the constitutional crisis and refused to accept High Ridge as my Prime Minister. Let them try to govern without the Crown's support!"

"That would have flown in the face of every constitutional precedent we have," Honor shot back in her defense.

"So what? Precedents can be modified or replaced!"

"In the middle of a war?" Honor challenged.

"A war we were winning . . . until I let those unmitigated bastards accept Saint-Just's 'truce'!" Elizabeth snapped.

"Stop it, Elizabeth!" Honor half-glared at her monarch. "You can second-guess yourself forever, and it won't change a thing. You were like a captain in the middle of a battle. She has to decide what to do now, while the missiles and the beams are still flying. Anyone can sit down after the fact and see exactly what she ought to have done. But she had to make her choices then, with what she knew and felt at the time, and you didn't know how the war was going to end. And you certainly didn't know a High Ridge Government would use the truce talks to avoid a general election!

"Of course you could have provoked a showdown. But you can't foretell the future and you're not a mind reader. So you chose not to risk completely paralyzing our government when you didn't know how the war would end, and then High Ridge mousetrapped us all with these unending truce talks of his. No one's ever said he and Descroix and New Kiev don't understand how domestic politics work, especially the dirty variety."

"No. No, they haven't," Elizabeth agreed finally, and sighed. "I wish the Constitution gave me the authority to dissolve Parliament and call new elections myself."

"So do I," Honor said. "But it doesn't, so you can't. Which brings us back to me. Because unlike you, High Ridge can call for new elections whenever he decides to, and if he can use Hamish and me to keep this bloodfest alive long enough, he may be able to push the public opinion polls far enough in his favor to decide the time is right."

"Maybe you're right," Elizabeth conceded, obviously against her will. "But even if you are, I don't think going 'home' to Grayson is the answer, either, Honor. Bad enough that it would look like they'd run you out of town, but domestic politics aren't all we have to worry about here, are they?"

"No." Honor shook her head, because this time, the Queen had a point.

The Star Kingdom's mores were essentially liberal, and Honor and Hamish's "crime" in Manticoran eyes was that any affair between them would have violated the sanctity of a personal oath White Haven had chosen to swear in a particular sacrament of marriage. Other religions and denominations accepted other, less restrictive versions of marriage, and each of them was just as legally binding and just as morally acceptable in the eyes of society as a whole. In many ways, that made his alleged offense even worse, because he had voluntarily bound himself to a particular, intensely personal union with his wife when there'd been no social or legal requirement that he do so. If he'd now chosen to offer his love to another woman, then he had evaded a personal responsibility he'd chosen freely to accept. That was bad enough, but on Grayson, where there actually was—or had until very recently been—a universal religious and social code and a single institution of marriage, the damage was even worse.

What surprised Honor about the Graysons' reaction wasn't its strength, but the fact that such a small percentage of them put any stock at all in the allegations. She'd thought, especially after her relationship with Paul, that most of the population would be ready to believe the worst and to condemn her for it. But the reverse was true, and it had taken her a while to realize why that was.

White Haven enjoyed immense public respect on Grayson in his own right, yet that was almost beside the point. It was Honor who mattered, and they knew her. It was really that simple. They actually knew her there, and they remembered that she'd never denied she and Paul had been lovers, never tried to pretend she was anyone but who she was. Even those who continued to hate her for who she was knew she would have refused to deny the truth, and because of that, they recognized the lie when they heard it.

Which was precisely why the damage was even worse. The Graysons weren't angry at her over any allegations of impropriety which they knew were false; they were furious at Manticore for allowing those allegations to be made. They saw the entire agonizing ordeal as a public insult and humiliation to the woman who had twice saved their world from conquest, and at least once from nuclear bombardment by religious fanatics. Honor had always felt horribly embarrassed by the Graysons' unabashed hero worship of her, not least because she felt it denigrated the sacrifices made by so many others in the battles she'd fought at Yeltsin's Star. But her worst nightmares had never envisioned anything like this.

Grayson's attitude towards the Star Kingdom had shifted dangerously over the last three T-years. There were still immense reservoirs of gratitude, admiration, and respect for the Royal Navy, for the Centrists, and—especially—for Queen Elizabeth, herself. But there was also a deep, seething rage directed at the Kingdom's current government and the arrogant fashion in which it had arbitrarily and unilaterally accepted Oscar Saint-Just's truce offer when unequivocal victory had been within the Alliance's grasp. That decision was widely regarded as a betrayal of all of the Star Kingdom's allies, and especially of Grayson, which had made by far the greatest contribution—and sacrifices—of all those allies.

Nor had High Ridge's subsequent policy mitigated that outrage in any way. It was as obvious to Grayson as it was to the Havenites themselves that High Ridge and Descroix had no intention of negotiating in good faith. There might be different interpretations of the reasons for that, but recognition of their duplicity was virtually universal. High Ridge hadn't made things any better by continuing as he had begun, simply announcing his decisions to those who were supposed to be his treaty partners rather than consulting with them and acting in concert. Partly, Honor suspected, that insensitivity resulted from his intense focus on his purely domestic concerns, but it was also an inescapable reflection of his own personality. He considered Manticoran yeomen and commoners his infinite inferiors, and foreign commoners, by definition, were even less worthy of the expenditure of his precious time.

Benjamin IX and his Council, as well as a working majority of the Grayson Keys, recognized the unique and dangerous balance of political power within the Star Kingdom. They knew what was happening, and they were no strangers to complex internal political battles of their own. Yet even with that knowledge, it was difficult for them to restrain their anger and to remember to direct it against High Ridge and his cronies, rather than at the Star Kingdom as a whole. For the elected members of the Conclave of Steaders—and especially for the vast bulk of the Grayson population, who were not only less "sophisticated" but also less fully informed about the ramifications of which Benjamin was only too well aware—it was even more difficult.

And now the same people who'd already infuriated Grayson public opinion had falsely and publicly attacked their greatest planetary hero, who was also the second ranking officer of their navy, the Protector's Champion, only the second person in history to have received the Star of Grayson not merely once, but twice, and one of their eighty-two steadholders.

And a woman. Even now, the surviving strictures of Grayson's pre-Alliance social code absolutely precluded public insult to a woman. Any woman. And especially this woman.

Which meant that the very tactics which had so thoroughly neutralized Honor in the domestic Manticoran political calculus had produced exactly the opposite effect on Grayson. Public opinion and support there had rallied about her even more fiercely than before, but it was an angry public opinion. A rising sea of infuriated outrage which had turned her into a symbol which threatened the outright disruption of an alliance Benjamin was already holding together by his fingernails.

She had nowhere to go. She could accomplish nothing on Manticore, and her very presence here, combined with the High Ridge Government's determination to keep her neutralized, only kept the scandal alive and fanned the furnace of Grayson anger. Yet if she fled to Grayson, she would only make it worse, because the Graysons would undoubtedly decide (with justification) that she'd been hounded out of the Star Kingdom. The damage which had already been done would be multiplied, and her presence on Grayson would keep the planet's rage alive by keeping her very much in the public eye, and so she drew a deep, unhappy breath, and shook her head.

"No," she repeated to her monarch, "domestic politics aren't all we have to worry about."

"I don't like what we're hearing about Silesia." Sir Edward Janacek tilted back in his chair while he regarded the two men sitting on the far side of the magnificent desk he'd had moved into his office to replace the smaller, plainer one which had served Baroness Mourncreek.

Admiral Francis Jurgensen, Second Space Lord of Admiralty, was a small, neat man. His uniform, as always, was impeccable, and his brown eyes were open and guileless. Admiral Sir Simon Chakrabarti was much taller and broad shouldered. His complexion was almost as dark as Elizabeth Winton's, but aside from that he actually reminded people a great deal of Sir Thomas Caparelli—physically, at least, and at first glance. Any similarity was illusory, however. Chakrabarti had managed to attain his present very senior rank without ever commanding in combat. He'd last seen action as Lieutenant Commander Chakrabarti, executive officer in the heavy cruiser Invincible, against Silesian pirates, over thirty-five T-years before. Since that time, his career had been devoted primarily to administration, with a detour for a brief stint at BuWeaps.

Some might have questioned how that sort of career qualified a man to be First Space Lord, but as Janacek saw it, at this moment the Navy had less need of some grizzled veteran of a warrior than it did of a superior administrator. Anyone could win battles when his wall of battle held such a decisive qualitative edge, but it required someone who understood the ins and outs of administrative decisions and budgetary realities to balance the requirements of the Service against the need to downsize the Fleet. Chakrabarti had that understanding, not to mention exemplary political connections. His brother-in-law was Adam Damakos, the Liberal MP who was the ranking member of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, but he was also the cousin of Akahito Fitzpatrick, the Duke of Gray Water, one of Baron High Ridge's closest allies in the Conservative Association. That would have made him the perfect choice for such an important position even without any other recommendations. And at least Janacek had been able to pick the man himself, instead of having someone foisted off on him the way that idiot Houseman had been chosen as Second Lord!

"I don't like it at all," he went on. "What the hell do the Andies think they're doing?" He looked pointedly at Jurgensen, and the admiral shrugged.

"The information we've been able to put together so far is still pretty self-contradictory," he said. "In the absence of any official explanations—or demands—from their foreign minister, all we can do is guess about their final intentions."

"I realize that, Francis." Janacek spoke mildly, but his eyes narrowed. "On the other hand, you are the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Doesn't that mean you're sort of in charge of guessing about these things?"

"Yes, it does," Jurgensen replied calmly. "I simply wanted it on the record that our analysts are scarcely in possession of the sort of hard information which would allow us to make definite projections of the Andermani's intentions."

He regarded the First Lord levelly, with the confidence of decades of experience in seeing to it that his posterior was safely covered before sticking his neck out. He waited until Janacek nodded understanding of the qualification, then shrugged again.

"Bearing that proviso in mind," he said then, "it does appear that the Andies are engaged in a systematic redeployment intended to encircle Sidemore Station from the north and northeast, interposing between the station and the rest of the Confederacy. We have no indications as yet that Emperor Gustav is contemplating any sort of operations against us, although that possibility can never be completely discounted. It seems more likely, however, that what he has in mind—so far, at least—is basically to put on a show of force."

"A show of force to accomplish what?" Chakrabarti asked.

"There's a lot of debate about that," Jurgensen told him. "The majority opinion at the moment is that the Andies will probably be approaching us sometime soon through diplomatic channels to put forward territorial claims in Silesia."

"Bastards," Janacek said conversationally, and grimaced. "Still, I suppose it makes sense. They've had their eye on Silesia for as long as I can remember. I can't say I'm surprised to hear that the opportunistic sons-of-bitches think the time has come to start carving off the choicer bits."

"We've made our position on that quite clear, historically speaking," Chakrabarti observed, and cocked his head at the First Lord.

"And that position hasn't changed—yet," Janacek replied.

"Will it?" Chakrabarti asked with atypical bluntness, and it was Janacek's turn to shrug.

"I don't know," he admitted. "That decision would have to be made at the Cabinet level. At this point, however, and absent any instructions to the contrary, our policy remains unchanged. Her Majesty's Government—" he used the phrase without even a flicker of irony "—is not prepared to accept any acquisition of territory, by the Andermani Empire or anyone else, at the expense of the present government of the Silesian Confederacy."

"In that case," Chakrabarti said pragmatically, "we probably ought to reinforce Sidemore to offset this 'show of force' of Francis's."

"It's not my show of force, Simon," Jurgensen calmly corrected.

"Whatever." Chakrabarti waved a dismissive hand. "We still ought to consider deploying at least a couple of more battle squadrons to Sidemore, whoever's show of force it is."

"Um." Janacek rubbed an index finger in slow circles on his desktop and frowned down at it. "I can follow your thinking, Simon, but coming up with that much tonnage isn't going to be easy."

Chakrabarti looked at him for a moment, but decided against pointing out that finding the necessary ships of the wall might have been easier if the Government hadn't just decided to scrap so many of them. For all his bureaucratic career track, he'd spent too many decades as a naval officer not to recognize the bitter irony of the situation. He was also too experienced as a uniformed politician to make the point.

"Easy or not, Sir Edward," he said instead, his voice just a tiny bit more formal, "if we're going to stand by our current policy to discourage Andie adventurism, then we need to beef up Sidemore. We don't have to use the new pod superdreadnoughts, but we have to deploy something that would at least be more than purely symbolic. If we don't, we're effectively telling them we're not prepared to go to the mat."

Janacek looked up, and the First Space Lord met his gaze levelly. Then Jurgensen cleared his throat.

"Actually," he said carefully, "it might be wiser to send some of the SD(P)s, after all."

"Oh?" Chakrabarti looked at the Second Space Lord and frowned.

"Yes," Jurgensen said. "I've been conducting a general review of our intelligence on the Andermani over the last week or two, and I've come across a few . . . disturbing reports."

"Disturbing reports about what, Francis?" Janacek asked, joining Chakrabarti in frowning at him.

"They're not very specific," Jurgensen replied. "That's the main reason they haven't already been passed along to you, Edward. I know you prefer hard data to vague speculation, so we've been trying to confirm them first. Under the circumstances, however, even though they're still unconfirmed, I think we have to take them into account when we consider what sort of reinforcements Sidemore might require."

"Which would be much easier to do if you'd tell us what they say," Chakrabarti pointed out.

"I'll have a precis to you by the end of the day," Jurgensen promised. "Essentially, though, we've had some indications—none of them, as I say, confirmed—that the Andies may recently have begun deploying some new weapons systems of their own. Unfortunately, we don't have very many details about just what sort of hardware we may be talking about."

"And you didn't see fit to bring this information to our attention?" Janacek inquired ominously.

"I wasn't even aware of its existence until two weeks ago," Jurgensen said. "And prior to this meeting, the possibility of deploying additional forces to deter the Andies hadn't even been discussed. Under the previously existing circumstances, I felt that it would be advisable to attempt to confirm the information one way or another before bringing it to your attention."

Janacek frowned at him for several seconds, then shrugged.

"Either way, there wouldn't have been much we could have done until you did confirm it," he conceded, and Jurgensen nodded calmly. "But I can't say I'm happy to hear about it, whether it's confirmed or not," the First Lord continued. "The Andies' hardware was almost as good as ours before the war; if they've improved theirs since, we may have to seriously reconsider force levels in Silesia. The Prime Minister isn't going to like hearing about that less than four months after we finished telling Parliament we're making further reductions in our wall."

Jurgensen and Chakrabarti nodded solemnly, secure in the knowledge that they had proposed nothing of the sort, whatever the civilian lords of Admiralty might have had to say about it. Of course, neither of them had protested the reductions, but that was entirely different from bearing responsibility for them.

"What sort of details do you have?" Chakrabarti asked after a moment.

"Almost none, actually," Jurgensen admitted. "A Sidemorian analyst claims that visual imagery of one of the IAN's new Thor —class battlecruisers shows fewer missile ports than the class is supposed to have. Exactly what that might mean, we currently have no idea, and we haven't yet confirmed his claim with an independent analysis of the imagery. The raw visual take is on its way here, but we won't see it for another week or two.

"In addition, we have two reports from merchant skippers suggesting that the Andies may have managed at least some improvement in their inertial compensators. The evidence is extremely sketchy, but both of the captains involved report observing Andermani ships pulling accelerations considerably higher than they should have been."

"Merchant skippers!" Chakrabarti snorted, but Jurgensen shook his head.

"That was my own initial reaction, Simon, which is one reason I wanted to get confirmation before reporting it. But one of the merchant captains involved is a half-pay admiral."

"What?" Janacek eyes sharpened. "Which half-pay admiral?"

"An Admiral Bachfisch," Jurgensen replied.

"Oh, him!" Janacek snorted. "I remember now. A fuck-up who almost got his ship blown out of space!"

"Not, perhaps, the best possible reference for someone's resume," Jurgensen agreed. "But he is an experienced man, with over thirty T-years on active duty before he, um, left active naval service."

Janacek snorted again, although with a bit less panache this time. Chakrabarti, on the other hand, suddenly looked more thoughtful, and Jurgensen twitched one shoulder.

"There are a half dozen other reports, most of them from independent stringers run by our naval attaches in the Empire, that indicate the Andies have at least been experimenting with longer ranged missiles, and we've known for years now that they've been developing their own pods. What we don't know, and what I haven't found a way to confirm one way or the other yet, is whether or not they've begun laying down SD(P)s of their own."

"Find a way to confirm it, one way or the other." There was an edge in Janacek's voice. His estimates of necessary force levels had been predicated upon maintaining the RMN's monopoly on the new superdreadnought types. His reports to the Cabinet hadn't even considered the possibility that the Andermani might already be beginning construction of their own SD(P)s.

There wasn't any reason to bring it up, he told himself defensively. It's the Peeps we have to worry about; not the Andies. If we had to, we could survive letting them have the entire Confederacy, in the short term, at least. Besides, Francis hadn't said a word to me about it then.

"In the meantime," he continued, turning back to Chakrabarti, "I need firm proposals from you on the exact strength we need to transfer to Sidemore."

"Do you want me to use worst-case assumptions?" the First Space Lord asked, and Janacek shook his head.

"Not worse-case. We don't need to frighten ourselves into overreacting when none of this has even been confirmed by Intelligence. Assume some improvements in their capabilities, but let's not get carried away."

"That still leaves a lot of uncertainty, Ed," Chakrabarti pointed out, and Janacek frowned. "I just want to be certain I base my proposals on what you want them based on," the admiral said.

"All right," Janacek said, "assume their present capabilities are approximately equal to what ours were, say, six T-years ago. No SD(P)s, no Ghost Rider, and no CLACs, but otherwise assume that they have everything we had, including the new compensators."

"Fine," Chakrabarti agreed with a satisfied nod. Then he cocked his head. "On the basis of those assumptions, though, I can already tell you that 'a couple of battle squadrons' isn't going to be enough. Not playing so close to the Andies' backyard."

"There are limits to our resources," Janacek told him.

"I understand. But we may be looking at a situation where we have no choice but to rob Peter if we're going to pay Paul."

"It's highly probable that the Government will be able to control the situation through diplomatic measures," Janacek said. "If it turns out that we're going to require a more concrete proof of our commitment, we'll just have to do whatever is necessary to come up with it."

"Yes, Sir. But if we're going to reinforce Sidemore on the scale I think the threat levels we'll be assuming are going to require, then we'll also have to pick somebody to command those reinforcements. Rear Admiral Hewitt, the station's present commander, is actually on the junior side for what's already assigned to it. He's much too junior to command what's about to become one of our three largest fleet commands, whether we call it a 'fleet' formally or not."

"Um," Janacek said again, frowning down at his desk in thought. Chakrabarti had a point, but picking a new station CO wasn't going to be easy. Sidemore had proved fairly useful, but scarcely essential or vital even during the war. Now that the war had been effectively won, Sidemore would become increasingly less relevant to the Star Kingdom's strategic needs, which meant no ambitious officer was going to appreciate being shuffled off to command it. And that didn't even consider the potential mousetraps built into the assignment.

Despite his words to Jurgensen and Chakrabarti, Janacek was privately certain the Government would much prefer to avoid any distracting confrontation with the Andermani, and rightly so. The First Lord had never been in favor of the expansionist pressures he'd often sensed in both the Navy and Parliament, anyway. That was why he'd done his best to disengage from Basilisk during his first tenure at the Admiralty, before that maniac Harrington almost got them into a shooting war with the Peeps five T-years early.

If it came down to it, he would certainly recommend to the Cabinet that reasonable territorial concessions be made to the Andermani. It wasn't as if the territories in question belonged to the Star Kingdom, anyway, and nothing inside Silesia struck him as being worth the risk of a shooting incident, much less an actual war. But that meant whoever was sent out to Sidemore would find himself in the unenviable position of attempting to deter the Andermani in the full knowledge that no additional reinforcements would be forthcoming. And if the Andermani declined to be deterred and there was an incident of any sort, the Government would almost certainly disavow the station commander's actions. Even in a best case situation, whoever wound up in command would be remembered as the officer on whose watch the Empire had moved in on Silesia. It wouldn't have been his fault, of course, but that wouldn't prevent his peers—and his superiors—from associating it with his assumption of command.

So where did he find someone who could make bricks without straw if he had to, convince the Andermani he would fight to the death before he let them have Silesia (until, at least, he got the inevitable order to hand it over to them), and be expendable if it became necessary for the Government to disavow him? Right off the top of his head, he couldn't think of anyone, but he was sure something would come to him.