"Your Grace, I present to you and to this Conclave Honor Stephanie Harrington, daughter of Alfred Harrington, who comes claiming a place among your steadholders."
Benjamin Mayhew nodded gravely and gazed down upon Honor for a long, silent moment, then raised his eyes to sweep the rows of seats.
"Steadholders," his voice was crisp and clear in the chamber's splendid acoustics, "this woman claims right to a seat among you. Would any challenge her fitness so to do?"
Static crackled up and down Honors nerves, for Mayhews question was not the formality it would normally have been. Grayson reactionaries were more reactionary than most, and the upheavals rending their social fabric had all begun with her. A majority of Graysons supported the changes which had come upon them, if with varying degrees of enthusiasm; the minority who didn't, opposed them with militant fervor. She'd read and heard their bitter rhetoric since her arrival, and the opportunity to challenge a mere woman as unfit echoed in the silence, waiting for someone to take it up.
But no one did, and Mayhew nodded once more.
"Would any speak in her favor?" he asked quietly, and a vast, rumbling response of "Aye," came back to him. Not all of the Conclave's members joined it, but none opposed it, and Mayhew smiled down at her.
"Your claim is freely granted by your peers, Lady Harrington. Come now and take your place among them."
Cloth rustled as the other steadholders stood, and Honor climbed the broad, shallow steps of stone to the second tier of seats to stand directly before the Protector. Two small velvet cushions had been placed before his throne, and she set Nimitz carefully on one and went to her knees on the other. It wasn't as easy as one might have thought, given her encumbering skirts, but she could never have managed a proper curtsy. One or two pairs of feet shuffled as she knelt as a man would have, but no voice spoke as the Door Warden stepped past her and surrendered the Sword of State to Mayhew.
The Protector reversed it and extended its hilt to Honor, and she laid her hands upon it. She was startled, despite her nervousness, to see the quiver in her fingers and looked up at Mayhew, and the Protector's encouraging smile stilled their tremble.
"Honor Stephanie Harrington," Mayhew said quietly, "are you prepared, in the presence of the assembled Steadholders of Grayson, to swear fealty to the Protector and People of Grayson under the eyes of God and His Holy Church?"
"I am, Your Grace, yet I may do so only with two reservations." Honor withdrew her hands from the sword hilt, but there was no refusal in her clear soprano, and Mayhew nodded. He knew what was coming, of course. There'd been quite a bit of discussion over ways to deal with this point.
"It is your ancient and lawful right to state reservations to your oath," he said. "Yet it is also the right of this Conclave to reject those reservations and deny your place, should it find them offensive to it. Do you acknowledge that right?"
"I do, Your Grace."
"Then state your first reservation."
"As Your Grace knows, I am also a subject of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, a member of its peerage, and an officer in the Queens Navy. As such, I am under obligations I cannot honorably disregard. Nor may I abandon the nation to which I was born or my oaths to my Queen to accept even a steadholder's high office, or swear fealty to Grayson without reserving to myself the right and responsibility to meet and perform my duties to her."
Mayhew nodded once more, then looked over her head at the Conclave.
"My Lords, this seems to me a right and honorable declaration, but the judgment in such matters must be yours. Does any man here dispute this woman's right to hold steading on Grayson with this limitation?"
Silence answered, and the Protector turned back to Honor.
"And your second reservation is?"
"Your Grace, I am not a communicant of the Church of Humanity Unchained. I respect its doctrines and teachings," which, Honor was relieved to reflect, was true, despite a certain lingering sexism on their part, now that she'd had a chance to read them, "but I am not of your faith."
"I see." Mayhew sounded graver—with reason. The Church had learned by horrible example to stay out of politics, but Grayson remained an essentially theocratic world. The Act of Toleration legalizing other faiths was barely a century old, and no steadholder not of the Church had ever held office.
The Protector looked at the white-haired man standing at his right. The Reverend Julius Hanks, spiritual head of the Church of Humanity Unchained, was growing frail with age, but his simple black garments and antique clerical collar stood out starkly against the glitter and richness of the other costumes in the chamber.
"Reverend," Mayhew said, "this reservation touches upon the Church and so falls within your province. How say you?"
Hanks laid one hand on Honor's head, and she felt no patronization in the gesture. She was no member of his Church, yet neither was she immune to the obvious sincerity of his personal faith as he smiled down at her.
"Lady Harrington, you say you are not of our Faith, but there are many ways to God." Someone hissed as if at the voice of heresy, but no one spoke. "Do you believe in God, my child?"
"I do, Reverend," Honor replied, quietly but firmly.
"And do you serve Him to the best of your ability as your heart gives you to understand His will for you?"
"I do."
"Will you, as steadholder, guard and protect the right of your people to worship God as their own hearts call their so to do?"
"I will."
"Will you respect and guard the sanctity of our Faith as you would your own?"
"I will."
Hanks nodded and turned to Mayhew.
"Your Grace, this woman is not of our Faith, yet she has so declared before us all, making no effort to pretend otherwise. More, she stands proven a good and godly woman, one who hazarded her own life and suffered grievous wounds to protect not only our Church but our world when we had no claim upon her. I say to you, and to the Conclave," he turned to face the steadholders, and his resonant voice rose higher and stronger, "that God knows His own. The Church accepts this woman as its champion and defender, whatever the faith through which she may serve God's will in her own life."
Another, deeper silence answered. Hanks stood; moment longer, meeting all eyes, then stepped back beside the throne, and Mayhew looked down at Honor.
"Your reservations have been noted and accepted by the lords secular and temporal of Grayson, Honor Stephanie Harrington. Do you swear now, before us all, that they constitute your sole reservations of heart and soul and mind?"
"I do so swear, Your Grace."
"Then I call upon you to swear fealty before your peers," the Protector said, and Honor replaced her hands upon the sword hilt.
"Do you, Honor Stephanie Harrington, daughter of Alfred Harrington, with the afore noted reservations, swear fealty to the Protector and People of Grayson?"
"I do."
"Will you bear true service to the Protector and People of Grayson?'
"I will."
"Do you swear, before God and this Conclave, to honor, preserve, and protect the Constitution of Grayson, and to protect and guide your people, guarding them as your own children? Will you swear to nurture them in time of peace, lead them in time of war, and govern them always with justice tempered by mercy, as God shall give you the wisdom so to do?"
"I do so swear," Honor said softly, and Mayhew nodded.
"I accept your oath, Honor Stephanie Harrington. And as Protector of Grayson, I will answer fealty with fealty, protection with protection, justice with justice, and oath-breaking with vengeance, so help me God."
The Protectors right hand slid down to cover both of hers, squeezing hard for an instant. Then he returned the sword to the Warden, and Reverend Hanks handed him a gleaming double-handful of golden glory. He shook it out reverently, and Honor bent her head for him to hang the massive chain about her neck. The patriarch's key of a steadholder glittered below the Star of Grayson, and the Protector stood to take her hand in his own.
"Rise, then, Lady Harrington, Steadholder Harrington!" he said loudly, and she obeyed, remembering at the last moment not to tread upon the hem of her gown. She turned to face the Conclave at Mayhew's gesture, and a roar of acclaim rolled up against the crowded chamber's walls.
She stared out into the sea of sound, cheeks flushed, head high, and knew reservations still lingered behind some of those cheers. But she also knew those cheering men had risen above a thousand years of tradition and bone-deep prejudice to admit a woman to their ranks. They might have done it only under the pressure of onrushing events and the unrelenting insistence of their ruler. Many of them must resent her, not merely as a woman but as the out-worlder who was the very agent and symbol of terrifying change. Yet they'd done it, and despite her own fears, she had meant every word of her formal oaths.
Nimitz rose high on his own cushion, patting her thigh. She looked down and bent to gather him up once more, and a louder, more spontaneous acclamation greeted the gesture. The 'cat raised his head, preening before the ovation, and a tension release of laughter and applause answered as Honor held him higher with a huge smile of her own.
The Warden stepped forward and touched her elbow. She turned toward him, and he extended the Sword of State on his opened palms and bowed to her across it. It wasn't easy to take the weapon gracefully with an armful of treecat, but Nimitz surprised her with his cooperation. He climbed onto her unpadded shoulder on velveted true-feet and hand-feet, without the claws he would normally have used, and braced himself with exquisite care, one true-hand on the crown of her head, as she accepted the sword from the Warden.
That, too, was unprecedented. The Steading of Harrington was the newest on Grayson; as such, she would normally have retired to the horseshoe's far end and uppermost tier after giving her oath, as befitted her steadings' lack of seniority. But she also wore the Star of Grayson, and that, though she hadn't known it when the medal was presented, made her Protector's Champion.
She held the sword carefully, praying Nimitz's clawless restraint would last, and walked to the carved wooden desk beside the throne. It bore both her Grayson coat of arms and the crossed swords of the Protectors Champion, and she sighed in relief as Nimitz leapt lightly down onto it. He drew himself up to his full height and sat on his rearmost pairs of limbs, curling his fluffy, prehensile tail about his clawed hand-feet and true-feet with regal grace while she laid the Sword of State in the padded brackets prepared to receive it.
The craggy-faced old man seated in the steadholder's chair behind the desk rose, bowed, and extended a slender, silver-headed staff to her.
"As you take your rightful place, Lady, I surrender my badge of office and my actions to your judgment," Howard Clinkscales said.
Honor took the staff of regency from him and held it in both hands, and her smile was warmer than protocol demanded. Benjamin Mayhew had made an inspired choice when he named Clinkscales as her regent. The old warhorse was one of the most honest men on Grayson; perhaps even more important, he was also one of the most conservative, with deep reservations about the changes his Protector demanded, and everyone knew it. Which meant his willingness to serve as her regent had probably done more to consolidate her position than anything else could have.
"Your service requires no judgment." She held the rod back out to him, and their gazes met as he grasped it. "Nor could I—or anyone else—praise you as your actions deserve," she added, and the old mans eyes widened, for her last sentence had stepped beyond the bounds of formal usage.
"Thank you, My Lady," he murmured, and bowed more deeply than before as he accepted his staff of office once more. Honor took her place before the steadholder's chair he'd vacated, and he moved to the second chair at its right. They turned back to face the Conclave together, and Julius Hanks stepped forward beside the Protector's throne.
"And now, My Lords—and Lady—" the Reverend turned to bestow a sparkling smile upon Grayson's newest steadholder "—let us ask God's blessing upon our deliberations this day."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Benjamin Mayhew nodded gravely and gazed down upon Honor for a long, silent moment, then raised his eyes to sweep the rows of seats.
"Steadholders," his voice was crisp and clear in the chamber's splendid acoustics, "this woman claims right to a seat among you. Would any challenge her fitness so to do?"
Static crackled up and down Honors nerves, for Mayhews question was not the formality it would normally have been. Grayson reactionaries were more reactionary than most, and the upheavals rending their social fabric had all begun with her. A majority of Graysons supported the changes which had come upon them, if with varying degrees of enthusiasm; the minority who didn't, opposed them with militant fervor. She'd read and heard their bitter rhetoric since her arrival, and the opportunity to challenge a mere woman as unfit echoed in the silence, waiting for someone to take it up.
But no one did, and Mayhew nodded once more.
"Would any speak in her favor?" he asked quietly, and a vast, rumbling response of "Aye," came back to him. Not all of the Conclave's members joined it, but none opposed it, and Mayhew smiled down at her.
"Your claim is freely granted by your peers, Lady Harrington. Come now and take your place among them."
Cloth rustled as the other steadholders stood, and Honor climbed the broad, shallow steps of stone to the second tier of seats to stand directly before the Protector. Two small velvet cushions had been placed before his throne, and she set Nimitz carefully on one and went to her knees on the other. It wasn't as easy as one might have thought, given her encumbering skirts, but she could never have managed a proper curtsy. One or two pairs of feet shuffled as she knelt as a man would have, but no voice spoke as the Door Warden stepped past her and surrendered the Sword of State to Mayhew.
The Protector reversed it and extended its hilt to Honor, and she laid her hands upon it. She was startled, despite her nervousness, to see the quiver in her fingers and looked up at Mayhew, and the Protector's encouraging smile stilled their tremble.
"Honor Stephanie Harrington," Mayhew said quietly, "are you prepared, in the presence of the assembled Steadholders of Grayson, to swear fealty to the Protector and People of Grayson under the eyes of God and His Holy Church?"
"I am, Your Grace, yet I may do so only with two reservations." Honor withdrew her hands from the sword hilt, but there was no refusal in her clear soprano, and Mayhew nodded. He knew what was coming, of course. There'd been quite a bit of discussion over ways to deal with this point.
"It is your ancient and lawful right to state reservations to your oath," he said. "Yet it is also the right of this Conclave to reject those reservations and deny your place, should it find them offensive to it. Do you acknowledge that right?"
"I do, Your Grace."
"Then state your first reservation."
"As Your Grace knows, I am also a subject of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, a member of its peerage, and an officer in the Queens Navy. As such, I am under obligations I cannot honorably disregard. Nor may I abandon the nation to which I was born or my oaths to my Queen to accept even a steadholder's high office, or swear fealty to Grayson without reserving to myself the right and responsibility to meet and perform my duties to her."
Mayhew nodded once more, then looked over her head at the Conclave.
"My Lords, this seems to me a right and honorable declaration, but the judgment in such matters must be yours. Does any man here dispute this woman's right to hold steading on Grayson with this limitation?"
Silence answered, and the Protector turned back to Honor.
"And your second reservation is?"
"Your Grace, I am not a communicant of the Church of Humanity Unchained. I respect its doctrines and teachings," which, Honor was relieved to reflect, was true, despite a certain lingering sexism on their part, now that she'd had a chance to read them, "but I am not of your faith."
"I see." Mayhew sounded graver—with reason. The Church had learned by horrible example to stay out of politics, but Grayson remained an essentially theocratic world. The Act of Toleration legalizing other faiths was barely a century old, and no steadholder not of the Church had ever held office.
The Protector looked at the white-haired man standing at his right. The Reverend Julius Hanks, spiritual head of the Church of Humanity Unchained, was growing frail with age, but his simple black garments and antique clerical collar stood out starkly against the glitter and richness of the other costumes in the chamber.
"Reverend," Mayhew said, "this reservation touches upon the Church and so falls within your province. How say you?"
Hanks laid one hand on Honor's head, and she felt no patronization in the gesture. She was no member of his Church, yet neither was she immune to the obvious sincerity of his personal faith as he smiled down at her.
"Lady Harrington, you say you are not of our Faith, but there are many ways to God." Someone hissed as if at the voice of heresy, but no one spoke. "Do you believe in God, my child?"
"I do, Reverend," Honor replied, quietly but firmly.
"And do you serve Him to the best of your ability as your heart gives you to understand His will for you?"
"I do."
"Will you, as steadholder, guard and protect the right of your people to worship God as their own hearts call their so to do?"
"I will."
"Will you respect and guard the sanctity of our Faith as you would your own?"
"I will."
Hanks nodded and turned to Mayhew.
"Your Grace, this woman is not of our Faith, yet she has so declared before us all, making no effort to pretend otherwise. More, she stands proven a good and godly woman, one who hazarded her own life and suffered grievous wounds to protect not only our Church but our world when we had no claim upon her. I say to you, and to the Conclave," he turned to face the steadholders, and his resonant voice rose higher and stronger, "that God knows His own. The Church accepts this woman as its champion and defender, whatever the faith through which she may serve God's will in her own life."
Another, deeper silence answered. Hanks stood; moment longer, meeting all eyes, then stepped back beside the throne, and Mayhew looked down at Honor.
"Your reservations have been noted and accepted by the lords secular and temporal of Grayson, Honor Stephanie Harrington. Do you swear now, before us all, that they constitute your sole reservations of heart and soul and mind?"
"I do so swear, Your Grace."
"Then I call upon you to swear fealty before your peers," the Protector said, and Honor replaced her hands upon the sword hilt.
"Do you, Honor Stephanie Harrington, daughter of Alfred Harrington, with the afore noted reservations, swear fealty to the Protector and People of Grayson?"
"I do."
"Will you bear true service to the Protector and People of Grayson?'
"I will."
"Do you swear, before God and this Conclave, to honor, preserve, and protect the Constitution of Grayson, and to protect and guide your people, guarding them as your own children? Will you swear to nurture them in time of peace, lead them in time of war, and govern them always with justice tempered by mercy, as God shall give you the wisdom so to do?"
"I do so swear," Honor said softly, and Mayhew nodded.
"I accept your oath, Honor Stephanie Harrington. And as Protector of Grayson, I will answer fealty with fealty, protection with protection, justice with justice, and oath-breaking with vengeance, so help me God."
The Protectors right hand slid down to cover both of hers, squeezing hard for an instant. Then he returned the sword to the Warden, and Reverend Hanks handed him a gleaming double-handful of golden glory. He shook it out reverently, and Honor bent her head for him to hang the massive chain about her neck. The patriarch's key of a steadholder glittered below the Star of Grayson, and the Protector stood to take her hand in his own.
"Rise, then, Lady Harrington, Steadholder Harrington!" he said loudly, and she obeyed, remembering at the last moment not to tread upon the hem of her gown. She turned to face the Conclave at Mayhew's gesture, and a roar of acclaim rolled up against the crowded chamber's walls.
She stared out into the sea of sound, cheeks flushed, head high, and knew reservations still lingered behind some of those cheers. But she also knew those cheering men had risen above a thousand years of tradition and bone-deep prejudice to admit a woman to their ranks. They might have done it only under the pressure of onrushing events and the unrelenting insistence of their ruler. Many of them must resent her, not merely as a woman but as the out-worlder who was the very agent and symbol of terrifying change. Yet they'd done it, and despite her own fears, she had meant every word of her formal oaths.
Nimitz rose high on his own cushion, patting her thigh. She looked down and bent to gather him up once more, and a louder, more spontaneous acclamation greeted the gesture. The 'cat raised his head, preening before the ovation, and a tension release of laughter and applause answered as Honor held him higher with a huge smile of her own.
The Warden stepped forward and touched her elbow. She turned toward him, and he extended the Sword of State on his opened palms and bowed to her across it. It wasn't easy to take the weapon gracefully with an armful of treecat, but Nimitz surprised her with his cooperation. He climbed onto her unpadded shoulder on velveted true-feet and hand-feet, without the claws he would normally have used, and braced himself with exquisite care, one true-hand on the crown of her head, as she accepted the sword from the Warden.
That, too, was unprecedented. The Steading of Harrington was the newest on Grayson; as such, she would normally have retired to the horseshoe's far end and uppermost tier after giving her oath, as befitted her steadings' lack of seniority. But she also wore the Star of Grayson, and that, though she hadn't known it when the medal was presented, made her Protector's Champion.
She held the sword carefully, praying Nimitz's clawless restraint would last, and walked to the carved wooden desk beside the throne. It bore both her Grayson coat of arms and the crossed swords of the Protectors Champion, and she sighed in relief as Nimitz leapt lightly down onto it. He drew himself up to his full height and sat on his rearmost pairs of limbs, curling his fluffy, prehensile tail about his clawed hand-feet and true-feet with regal grace while she laid the Sword of State in the padded brackets prepared to receive it.
The craggy-faced old man seated in the steadholder's chair behind the desk rose, bowed, and extended a slender, silver-headed staff to her.
"As you take your rightful place, Lady, I surrender my badge of office and my actions to your judgment," Howard Clinkscales said.
Honor took the staff of regency from him and held it in both hands, and her smile was warmer than protocol demanded. Benjamin Mayhew had made an inspired choice when he named Clinkscales as her regent. The old warhorse was one of the most honest men on Grayson; perhaps even more important, he was also one of the most conservative, with deep reservations about the changes his Protector demanded, and everyone knew it. Which meant his willingness to serve as her regent had probably done more to consolidate her position than anything else could have.
"Your service requires no judgment." She held the rod back out to him, and their gazes met as he grasped it. "Nor could I—or anyone else—praise you as your actions deserve," she added, and the old mans eyes widened, for her last sentence had stepped beyond the bounds of formal usage.
"Thank you, My Lady," he murmured, and bowed more deeply than before as he accepted his staff of office once more. Honor took her place before the steadholder's chair he'd vacated, and he moved to the second chair at its right. They turned back to face the Conclave together, and Julius Hanks stepped forward beside the Protector's throne.
"And now, My Lords—and Lady—" the Reverend turned to bestow a sparkling smile upon Grayson's newest steadholder "—let us ask God's blessing upon our deliberations this day."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paul Tankersley finished the day's final report and tossed the backup record chip into his out-basket with a groan of relief. Life seemed much duller with Honor off in Yeltsin, but Admiral Cheviot was clearly determined to keep HMSS Hephaestus's newest deputy constructor from mooning over his lady love.
Paul grinned at the thought and made one more pass through his work files, double-checking to confirm that he'd caught everything. As the executive officer of Hancock Base, he'd been charged with managing all the details so smoothly his CO never noticed anyone had to manage them, and, in his own mind, he'd believed that would prove more than adequate preparation for his present duties.
He'd been wrong. He was only one of nineteen deputy constructors, yet his workload dwarfed the one he'd carried as Hancock Station's exec. He had direct supervisory responsibility for the construction of no less than three dreadnoughts and a superdreadnought—which didn't even count the host of refits underway in "his" quadrant of the mammoth space station. For the first time in his career, he was really aware, not just intellectually conscious, of the sheer scale of the Royal Navy's building and maintenance programs.
His terminal beeped confirmation that he'd dealt with every "Immediate Attention" flag, and he sighed in satisfaction as he shut it down. He logged his schedule for the evening in case something his own exec couldn't handle came up, then rose, stretched, and consulted his chrono. He'd run forty minutes over his watch, but that was less than he'd expected when he arranged to meet Tomas Ramirez for beer and darts at Dempsey's, and he had a good hour to kill before the colonel turned up. He rubbed an eyebrow, then shrugged and grinned. He might as well spend it getting a head start on the beer part of the evening; it wasn't as if abstaining would help against Ramirez's deadly accuracy.
It was a Wednesday which put Dempsey's "on" Gryphon for the day. And since it was winter in Gryphon's southern hemisphere, a howling blizzard raged beyond the closed windows. The exterior temperature controls had been adjusted to match, edging the windowpanes with frost, and an impressively realistic holographic fire crackled and seethed in the bar's central fireplace.
Conversation murmured in the background, hushed and companionable with the sense of people sharing an oasis against the storm, whether it was real or not, and Paul felt relaxation creep through him as he ordered his second beer. He was drinking Old Tilman, a Sphinxian brew Honor had introduced him to, and he savored its rich, clean taste. If he nursed this stein just right, he should be just finishing it when the colonel walked in.
He took another sip, then turned his head in mild surprise as a stranger slid up onto the barstool beside him. Most of Dempsey's patrons were scattered about the booths and tables, which left the gleaming hardwood bar lightly tenanted. There were enough unoccupied stools to provide privacy, or at least solitude, and he wondered idly why the newcomer hadn't taken one of them.
"Double T-whiskey sour," the stranger told the barkeep, and Paul's eyebrow quirked. Most Manticorans preferred one of the native whiskeys from the viewpoint of familiarity and cost alike. Terran whiskey was expensive enough, even in the Star Kingdom, to make it an affectation of the very rich, and if the slim, fair-haired man beside him was well-dressed, neither the cut nor the fabric of his clothing suggested the kind of money that went with T-whiskey.
The bartender produced the required drink, and the stranger took a sip, then turned his stool to survey his surroundings. He rested one elbow on the polished bar, holding his drink with a sort of negligent grace, and there was an almost arrogant confidence in the way he scanned his fellow patrons.
Something about him bothered Paul. There was nothing concrete or overt, yet invisible hackles tried to rise on the back of his neck. He wanted to get up and move away, but the gesture would have been too pointed, too rude, and he concentrated on his beer, scolding himself for the hyper-sensitivity that made him wish he could do it without offending.
A minute passed, then two, before the stranger abruptly drained his glass and set the empty on the bar. His movements had a curious deliberation, almost a finality, and Paul expected him to leave. But he didn't.
"Captain Tankersley, isn't it?" The voice was cool, with an aristocratic accent which certainly matched a taste for Terran whiskey. It was also courteous, yet there was something else under the courtesy.
"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me," Paul said slowly, and the stranger smiled.
"I'm not surprised, Sir. After all, you've been turning up on HD and in the 'faxes since Hancock Station, while I—" He shrugged, as if to emphasize his own lack of importance, and Paul frowned. He'd been trapped into interviews a couple of times, especially after the newsies learned of his relationship with Honor, but he wouldn't have thought he'd gotten enough coverage for strangers to recognize him in bars.
"In fact," the other man went on, "I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the job you did in Hancock."
"You don't want to believe all you read in the 'faxes," Paul replied. "All I did was sit on the repair base and hope Admiral Sarnow and Captain Harrington could keep the Peeps from blowing it out from under me."
"Ah, yes. Of course." The stranger nodded and raised his glass at the bartender to signal for a refill. Then he looked back at Paul.
"Your modesty is commendable, Captain Tankersley. And, of course, we've all read of Lady Harrington's exploits."
The way he said "exploits" brought Paul's eyebrows down in a quick frown. The word carried a slight but unmistakable derision, and he felt his temper stir. He called it sternly to heel and took a deeper pull at his beer, suddenly eager to finish the stein and be off. He was beginning to suspect the stranger was another newsie—and not one friendly to Honor—which lent added urgency to escaping without running away too obviously.
"To tell the truth," the man said, "I was surprised—awed, even—when I heard about the odds against her. It must've taken guts to stand and fight against that much opposition instead of pulling out to save her command."
"I'm just as glad she did. If she hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here," Paul said shortly, and instantly bit his tongue. Surely he should know by now that the only way (short of homicide) to deal with a newsie, especially a hostile one, was to keep your mouth shut and ignore him! Anything else only encouraged him—and what you actually said mattered considerably less than what he could make it seem you'd meant to say.
"I suppose that's true," the stranger said. "Of course, quite a few of her own people aren't here, are they? Perhaps if she'd scattered sooner more of them would have survived. Still, I suppose no officer can do his duty—or earn the medals Lady Harrington has—without sacrificing a few lives along the way."
Paul's temper surged again, and he felt himself flush. The other's tone was losing its pretense of disinterested urbanity. There was an edge to it, too pointed to be an accident, and he gave the stranger a repressive frown.
"I've never known Captain Harrington to 'sacrifice' a single life she could save," he said coldly. "If you're suggesting she risked her people's lives to go glory-hunting, I find the idea as ridiculous as it is offensive."
"Really?" The other man's eyes glinted with a strange satisfaction, and he shrugged. "I didn't intend to offend you, Captain Tankersley. And, actually, I don't believe I ever thought Lady Harrington might have sacrificed anyone for glory." He shook his head. "No, no. I never meant to imply that. But it still seems a... curious... decision to risk an entire task group's destruction to defend a single repair base. One might almost call it questionable, whatever the outcome, and I can't help wondering if perhaps she didn't have some other reason—besides her sense of duty, of course—for matching her command against such a heavy weight of metal. She pulled it off, of course, but why did she try it—and get so many people killed—when she already knew Admiral Danislav had arrived in-system to relieve her?"
Alarms jangled in Paul's brain, for the stranger's tone had shifted yet again. The earlier edge of scorn was no longer veiled; it glittered with scalpel sharpness, a cold cat-and-mouse cruelty. Paul had never heard a voice that could imply so much, put such a sneer of contempt into such outwardly dispassionate words, and the cultured undertone of nastiness was too open for most of the newsies who'd dogged Honor's every move. This man had a personal axe to grind, and common sense shouted for Paul to break off the conversation quickly. But he'd heard too much veiled innuendo about Honor from too many others, and his frown grew cold-eyed and dangerous as he gazed at the stranger.
"Captain Harrington," he said icily, "acted in accordance with her understanding of the situation and her own duty, and her actions led to the capture or destruction of the entire Peep force engaged against her. Given that outcome, I fail to see anything 'curious' or 'questionable' about her conduct."
"Ah, but you wouldn't, would you?" the other man murmured. Paul stiffened, and the stranger smiled with an air of false apology. "I mean, you're right about the outcome, of course. And she did save the repair base and its personnel. Including you."
"What exactly are you implying?" Paul snapped. He felt a wave of stillness rippling out from them, lapping at Dempsey's other patrons. He could hardly believe the effortless speed with which the confrontation had sprung up, the ease and skill with which the other man had provoked him. It couldn't have been an accident. He knew that, but he no longer cared.
"Why, only that her feelings for you—well known feelings, I might add, for anyone who can read a 'fax—may have influenced her." The stranger's voice was an ice-cold sneer. "No doubt it was all dreadfully romantic, but, still, one can't help wondering if the willingness to sacrifice several thousand lives simply to save someone she cared about is really a desirable quality in a military officer. Do you think it is, Captain?"
Paul Tankersley went white. He rose from his barstool with the slow, over-controlled movements of a man hovering on the brink of violence. The stranger was taller than he was, and he looked fit, despite his slim, wiry build, but Paul never doubted he could smash the other into pulp, and he wanted nothing more than to do just that. But the alarm bells were louder and more insistent, even through the red haze of his fury. It had happened too quickly, come at him with too little warning, for him to think clearly, yet not too quickly for him to realize it was deliberate. He had no idea why this man had set out to provoke him, but he sensed the danger in allowing him to succeed.
He drew a deep breath, longing to erase the smiling sneer from that handsome face and leave it far less handsome in the process. He stood for one tense moment, and then, deliberately, turned his back to walk away. But the stranger wasn't done yet. He only stood himself, laughing at Paul's back, and his raised voice carried clearly through the hushed bar.
"Tell me, Captain Tankersley—are you really that good a fuck? Are you so good she was willing to throw away her entire command to save you? Or was it just that she was that desperate to have someone—anyone—between her legs?"
The sudden crudity was too much. It snapped Paul's control, and he whipped back around with death in his face. The other man's sneer slipped for just an instant, and two iron-hard fists caught him before he could even move.
Paul Tankersley held a black belt in coup de vitesse. He managed to pull the lethality of those blows, but only by a hair's breadth and just barely in time. The first fist sank deep into the stranger's belly. He doubled up with a whoop of agony, and the second fist came up from below and snapped his head back like a cracking whip.
The stranger hurtled away from Paul. Barstools flew in all directions as he bounced back, arms flailing, and somehow, without really knowing how, Tankersley stopped himself from following through and finishing him off.
He stood back, breathing heavily, shocked by his own actions and quivering with the need to smash that hateful face yet again, as the other man slid down the front of the bar with a sobbing scream. His hands cupped his face, and blood from pulped lips and a smashed nose oozed between his fingers as he rocked on his knees. The entire restaurant was frozen, shocked into utter immobility by the explosion of violence, and then, slowly, the kneeling man lowered his hands and glared up at his assailant.
He spat a broken tooth onto the floor in a gob of blood and phlegm, then dragged the back of his hand across his gory chin, and his eyes, no longer polished and mocking, glittered with madness.
"You struck me." His voice was thick, slurred with the pain of his smashed mouth and choked with hatred. "You struck me!"
Paul took a half-step towards him, eyes hot, before he could stop himself, but the other man never even flinched. He only stared up from his knees, his face a mask of blood and hate that bordered on outright insanity.
"How dare you lay hands on me?!" he breathed. Paul snarled in contempt and turned away, but that thick, hating voice wasn't finished.
"No one lays hands on me, Tankersley! You'll meet me for this—I demand satisfaction!"
Paul stopped dead. The silence was no longer shocked; it was deadly, and he suddenly realized what he'd done. He should have seen it sooner—would have seen it if he'd been even the tiniest bit less enraged. He hadn't, but now he knew. The man hadn't anticipated that Paul would actually attack him, yet he'd set out from the beginning to goad him into a rage for just one purpose: to provoke the challenge he'd just issued.
And Paul Tankersley, who'd never fought a duel in his life, knew he had no choice but to accept it.
"Very well," he grated, glaring down at his unknown enemy. "If you insist, I'll give you satisfaction."
Another man blended magically out of the crowd and assisted the stranger to his feet.
"This is Mr. Livitnikov," the bloody-faced man snarled, leaning on the other for support. "I'm sure he'll be happy to act for me."
Livitnikov nodded curtly and reached into a tunic pocket with his left hand, supporting the other man with his right, and extended something to Paul.
"My card, Captain Tankersley." The correct, chilly outrage in his hard voice was just a little too practiced, a bit too rehearsed. "I shall expect your friends to call upon me within twenty-four hours."
"Certainly," Paul said in an equally frozen voice. Livitnikov's sudden appearance was all the confirmation he'd needed that he'd been set up, and he gave the other man a contemptuous look as he took the card. He shoved it in his pocket, turned his back, and started for the door, then stopped.
Tomas Ramirez stood just inside the entrance, his face frozen, but he wasn't even looking at Paul. His eyes were locked in shocked understanding on the man his friend had assaulted—the man he'd never thought to mention to Paul—and he watched in numb horror as Livitnikov assisted a stumbling, bloody-faced Denver Summervale away through the crowd.
Paul grinned at the thought and made one more pass through his work files, double-checking to confirm that he'd caught everything. As the executive officer of Hancock Base, he'd been charged with managing all the details so smoothly his CO never noticed anyone had to manage them, and, in his own mind, he'd believed that would prove more than adequate preparation for his present duties.
He'd been wrong. He was only one of nineteen deputy constructors, yet his workload dwarfed the one he'd carried as Hancock Station's exec. He had direct supervisory responsibility for the construction of no less than three dreadnoughts and a superdreadnought—which didn't even count the host of refits underway in "his" quadrant of the mammoth space station. For the first time in his career, he was really aware, not just intellectually conscious, of the sheer scale of the Royal Navy's building and maintenance programs.
His terminal beeped confirmation that he'd dealt with every "Immediate Attention" flag, and he sighed in satisfaction as he shut it down. He logged his schedule for the evening in case something his own exec couldn't handle came up, then rose, stretched, and consulted his chrono. He'd run forty minutes over his watch, but that was less than he'd expected when he arranged to meet Tomas Ramirez for beer and darts at Dempsey's, and he had a good hour to kill before the colonel turned up. He rubbed an eyebrow, then shrugged and grinned. He might as well spend it getting a head start on the beer part of the evening; it wasn't as if abstaining would help against Ramirez's deadly accuracy.
It was a Wednesday which put Dempsey's "on" Gryphon for the day. And since it was winter in Gryphon's southern hemisphere, a howling blizzard raged beyond the closed windows. The exterior temperature controls had been adjusted to match, edging the windowpanes with frost, and an impressively realistic holographic fire crackled and seethed in the bar's central fireplace.
Conversation murmured in the background, hushed and companionable with the sense of people sharing an oasis against the storm, whether it was real or not, and Paul felt relaxation creep through him as he ordered his second beer. He was drinking Old Tilman, a Sphinxian brew Honor had introduced him to, and he savored its rich, clean taste. If he nursed this stein just right, he should be just finishing it when the colonel walked in.
He took another sip, then turned his head in mild surprise as a stranger slid up onto the barstool beside him. Most of Dempsey's patrons were scattered about the booths and tables, which left the gleaming hardwood bar lightly tenanted. There were enough unoccupied stools to provide privacy, or at least solitude, and he wondered idly why the newcomer hadn't taken one of them.
"Double T-whiskey sour," the stranger told the barkeep, and Paul's eyebrow quirked. Most Manticorans preferred one of the native whiskeys from the viewpoint of familiarity and cost alike. Terran whiskey was expensive enough, even in the Star Kingdom, to make it an affectation of the very rich, and if the slim, fair-haired man beside him was well-dressed, neither the cut nor the fabric of his clothing suggested the kind of money that went with T-whiskey.
The bartender produced the required drink, and the stranger took a sip, then turned his stool to survey his surroundings. He rested one elbow on the polished bar, holding his drink with a sort of negligent grace, and there was an almost arrogant confidence in the way he scanned his fellow patrons.
Something about him bothered Paul. There was nothing concrete or overt, yet invisible hackles tried to rise on the back of his neck. He wanted to get up and move away, but the gesture would have been too pointed, too rude, and he concentrated on his beer, scolding himself for the hyper-sensitivity that made him wish he could do it without offending.
A minute passed, then two, before the stranger abruptly drained his glass and set the empty on the bar. His movements had a curious deliberation, almost a finality, and Paul expected him to leave. But he didn't.
"Captain Tankersley, isn't it?" The voice was cool, with an aristocratic accent which certainly matched a taste for Terran whiskey. It was also courteous, yet there was something else under the courtesy.
"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me," Paul said slowly, and the stranger smiled.
"I'm not surprised, Sir. After all, you've been turning up on HD and in the 'faxes since Hancock Station, while I—" He shrugged, as if to emphasize his own lack of importance, and Paul frowned. He'd been trapped into interviews a couple of times, especially after the newsies learned of his relationship with Honor, but he wouldn't have thought he'd gotten enough coverage for strangers to recognize him in bars.
"In fact," the other man went on, "I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the job you did in Hancock."
"You don't want to believe all you read in the 'faxes," Paul replied. "All I did was sit on the repair base and hope Admiral Sarnow and Captain Harrington could keep the Peeps from blowing it out from under me."
"Ah, yes. Of course." The stranger nodded and raised his glass at the bartender to signal for a refill. Then he looked back at Paul.
"Your modesty is commendable, Captain Tankersley. And, of course, we've all read of Lady Harrington's exploits."
The way he said "exploits" brought Paul's eyebrows down in a quick frown. The word carried a slight but unmistakable derision, and he felt his temper stir. He called it sternly to heel and took a deeper pull at his beer, suddenly eager to finish the stein and be off. He was beginning to suspect the stranger was another newsie—and not one friendly to Honor—which lent added urgency to escaping without running away too obviously.
"To tell the truth," the man said, "I was surprised—awed, even—when I heard about the odds against her. It must've taken guts to stand and fight against that much opposition instead of pulling out to save her command."
"I'm just as glad she did. If she hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here," Paul said shortly, and instantly bit his tongue. Surely he should know by now that the only way (short of homicide) to deal with a newsie, especially a hostile one, was to keep your mouth shut and ignore him! Anything else only encouraged him—and what you actually said mattered considerably less than what he could make it seem you'd meant to say.
"I suppose that's true," the stranger said. "Of course, quite a few of her own people aren't here, are they? Perhaps if she'd scattered sooner more of them would have survived. Still, I suppose no officer can do his duty—or earn the medals Lady Harrington has—without sacrificing a few lives along the way."
Paul's temper surged again, and he felt himself flush. The other's tone was losing its pretense of disinterested urbanity. There was an edge to it, too pointed to be an accident, and he gave the stranger a repressive frown.
"I've never known Captain Harrington to 'sacrifice' a single life she could save," he said coldly. "If you're suggesting she risked her people's lives to go glory-hunting, I find the idea as ridiculous as it is offensive."
"Really?" The other man's eyes glinted with a strange satisfaction, and he shrugged. "I didn't intend to offend you, Captain Tankersley. And, actually, I don't believe I ever thought Lady Harrington might have sacrificed anyone for glory." He shook his head. "No, no. I never meant to imply that. But it still seems a... curious... decision to risk an entire task group's destruction to defend a single repair base. One might almost call it questionable, whatever the outcome, and I can't help wondering if perhaps she didn't have some other reason—besides her sense of duty, of course—for matching her command against such a heavy weight of metal. She pulled it off, of course, but why did she try it—and get so many people killed—when she already knew Admiral Danislav had arrived in-system to relieve her?"
Alarms jangled in Paul's brain, for the stranger's tone had shifted yet again. The earlier edge of scorn was no longer veiled; it glittered with scalpel sharpness, a cold cat-and-mouse cruelty. Paul had never heard a voice that could imply so much, put such a sneer of contempt into such outwardly dispassionate words, and the cultured undertone of nastiness was too open for most of the newsies who'd dogged Honor's every move. This man had a personal axe to grind, and common sense shouted for Paul to break off the conversation quickly. But he'd heard too much veiled innuendo about Honor from too many others, and his frown grew cold-eyed and dangerous as he gazed at the stranger.
"Captain Harrington," he said icily, "acted in accordance with her understanding of the situation and her own duty, and her actions led to the capture or destruction of the entire Peep force engaged against her. Given that outcome, I fail to see anything 'curious' or 'questionable' about her conduct."
"Ah, but you wouldn't, would you?" the other man murmured. Paul stiffened, and the stranger smiled with an air of false apology. "I mean, you're right about the outcome, of course. And she did save the repair base and its personnel. Including you."
"What exactly are you implying?" Paul snapped. He felt a wave of stillness rippling out from them, lapping at Dempsey's other patrons. He could hardly believe the effortless speed with which the confrontation had sprung up, the ease and skill with which the other man had provoked him. It couldn't have been an accident. He knew that, but he no longer cared.
"Why, only that her feelings for you—well known feelings, I might add, for anyone who can read a 'fax—may have influenced her." The stranger's voice was an ice-cold sneer. "No doubt it was all dreadfully romantic, but, still, one can't help wondering if the willingness to sacrifice several thousand lives simply to save someone she cared about is really a desirable quality in a military officer. Do you think it is, Captain?"
Paul Tankersley went white. He rose from his barstool with the slow, over-controlled movements of a man hovering on the brink of violence. The stranger was taller than he was, and he looked fit, despite his slim, wiry build, but Paul never doubted he could smash the other into pulp, and he wanted nothing more than to do just that. But the alarm bells were louder and more insistent, even through the red haze of his fury. It had happened too quickly, come at him with too little warning, for him to think clearly, yet not too quickly for him to realize it was deliberate. He had no idea why this man had set out to provoke him, but he sensed the danger in allowing him to succeed.
He drew a deep breath, longing to erase the smiling sneer from that handsome face and leave it far less handsome in the process. He stood for one tense moment, and then, deliberately, turned his back to walk away. But the stranger wasn't done yet. He only stood himself, laughing at Paul's back, and his raised voice carried clearly through the hushed bar.
"Tell me, Captain Tankersley—are you really that good a fuck? Are you so good she was willing to throw away her entire command to save you? Or was it just that she was that desperate to have someone—anyone—between her legs?"
The sudden crudity was too much. It snapped Paul's control, and he whipped back around with death in his face. The other man's sneer slipped for just an instant, and two iron-hard fists caught him before he could even move.
Paul Tankersley held a black belt in coup de vitesse. He managed to pull the lethality of those blows, but only by a hair's breadth and just barely in time. The first fist sank deep into the stranger's belly. He doubled up with a whoop of agony, and the second fist came up from below and snapped his head back like a cracking whip.
The stranger hurtled away from Paul. Barstools flew in all directions as he bounced back, arms flailing, and somehow, without really knowing how, Tankersley stopped himself from following through and finishing him off.
He stood back, breathing heavily, shocked by his own actions and quivering with the need to smash that hateful face yet again, as the other man slid down the front of the bar with a sobbing scream. His hands cupped his face, and blood from pulped lips and a smashed nose oozed between his fingers as he rocked on his knees. The entire restaurant was frozen, shocked into utter immobility by the explosion of violence, and then, slowly, the kneeling man lowered his hands and glared up at his assailant.
He spat a broken tooth onto the floor in a gob of blood and phlegm, then dragged the back of his hand across his gory chin, and his eyes, no longer polished and mocking, glittered with madness.
"You struck me." His voice was thick, slurred with the pain of his smashed mouth and choked with hatred. "You struck me!"
Paul took a half-step towards him, eyes hot, before he could stop himself, but the other man never even flinched. He only stared up from his knees, his face a mask of blood and hate that bordered on outright insanity.
"How dare you lay hands on me?!" he breathed. Paul snarled in contempt and turned away, but that thick, hating voice wasn't finished.
"No one lays hands on me, Tankersley! You'll meet me for this—I demand satisfaction!"
Paul stopped dead. The silence was no longer shocked; it was deadly, and he suddenly realized what he'd done. He should have seen it sooner—would have seen it if he'd been even the tiniest bit less enraged. He hadn't, but now he knew. The man hadn't anticipated that Paul would actually attack him, yet he'd set out from the beginning to goad him into a rage for just one purpose: to provoke the challenge he'd just issued.
And Paul Tankersley, who'd never fought a duel in his life, knew he had no choice but to accept it.
"Very well," he grated, glaring down at his unknown enemy. "If you insist, I'll give you satisfaction."
Another man blended magically out of the crowd and assisted the stranger to his feet.
"This is Mr. Livitnikov," the bloody-faced man snarled, leaning on the other for support. "I'm sure he'll be happy to act for me."
Livitnikov nodded curtly and reached into a tunic pocket with his left hand, supporting the other man with his right, and extended something to Paul.
"My card, Captain Tankersley." The correct, chilly outrage in his hard voice was just a little too practiced, a bit too rehearsed. "I shall expect your friends to call upon me within twenty-four hours."
"Certainly," Paul said in an equally frozen voice. Livitnikov's sudden appearance was all the confirmation he'd needed that he'd been set up, and he gave the other man a contemptuous look as he took the card. He shoved it in his pocket, turned his back, and started for the door, then stopped.
Tomas Ramirez stood just inside the entrance, his face frozen, but he wasn't even looking at Paul. His eyes were locked in shocked understanding on the man his friend had assaulted—the man he'd never thought to mention to Paul—and he watched in numb horror as Livitnikov assisted a stumbling, bloody-faced Denver Summervale away through the crowd.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At least the chair was comfortable.
That was more important than one might think, for Honor had spent at least eight hours a day in it for the last month, and the fatigue was building up. Grayson's twenty-six-plus-standard hour day was a bit long, even for her. The Sphinx day she'd been born to might be barely an hour shorter, but she'd spent the last three decades using Navy clocks matched to the twenty-three-hour day of the Star Kingdom's capital world. Not that she could honestly blame her present weariness on the length of the day.
She looked to her left, narrowing her eyes against the brilliant morning sun spilling in through the windows as the door closed behind her latest visitor. Her steadholder's mansion was overly luxurious for her tastes, especially in a new steading with a strained budget, but her own quarters occupied only a tiny portion of Harrington Houses total space. The rest was given up to bureaucratic offices, electronic and hardcopy files, communications centers, and all the other paraphernalia of government.
James MacGuiness, on the other hand, clearly regarded the magnificence as no more than her due, and, unlike her, he seemed delighted with the pomp and circumstance which had come her way. The Grayson servants accepted him as their mistress's official majordomo, and he'd shown an unanticipated talent for managing a staff which seemed entirely too large to Honor. He'd also seen to it Nimitz had a proper perch in her office, arranged to catch the maximum amount of sunlight. At the moment, the 'cat was sprawled comfortably along that perch, all six limbs dangling in utter contentment while he basked in the golden warmth.
She gazed at him in frank envy, then tipped her huge, thronelike armchair back, resting one foot on the hassock hidden under her enormous desk, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and a soft chuckle from her right made her turn her head in the other direction.
Howard Clinkscales sat behind a smaller desk with an even larger data terminal. His desk was turned at right angles to hers so that they both faced the center of the vast, paneled room, and she hadn't been too sure about the arrangement in the beginning. She wasn't used to having her exec in the same office with her, but it worked far better than she'd feared, and his presence had been invaluable. He knew every detail of her steading, and, like any skilled exec, he was always ready with the facts his CO required.
"Tired so soon, My Lady?" he asked now, shaking his head in half-mocking reproval. "It's barely ten o'clock!"
"At least I don't yawn in front of them," she said with a grin.
"True, My Lady. At least, you haven't done so yet."
Honor stuck out her tongue, and Clinkscales laughed. She wouldn't have bet a Manticoran cent on the chance of her regent's actually becoming a friend. Mutual respect, yes; she would have expected that, and been content with it, as well. But their intense cooperation over the past weeks had produced something much closer and warmer.
If it surprised her, it must have been even more surprising for him. He'd resigned command of the entire Planetary Security Force to assume the regency of Harrington Steading, which he might easily have seen as a demotion. Nor should his opposition to at least half Protector Benjamin's social initiatives have made him any happier to work with—and for—the woman who'd provoked those changes. On top of which, he didn't really seem to have changed his own attitudes towards women in general by one iota.
None of which seemed to have any bearing where Honor was concerned. He never forgot she was a woman, and he treated her with all the exaggerated courtesy the Grayson code demanded, but he gave her the deference due any steadholder, as well. At first, she'd thought there might be a bit of irony in that, but she'd been wrong. So far as she could tell, he accepted her right to her position without even hidden reservations. More than that, he seemed to approve of her performance, and he'd even loosened up with her in private. He was unfailingly courteous, yes, but he'd come to treat her with a comfortable give and take that seemed decidedly odd in a man of such traditional leanings.
She checked her desk chrono. They had a few minutes before her next appointment, and she turned her chair to face him fully.
"Howard, would you mind if I asked you something a bit personal?"
"Personal, My Lady?" Clinkscales tugged at an earlobe. "Certainly you can ask. Of course," he smiled wryly, "if it's too personal, I can always choose not to answer."
"I suppose you can, at that," Honor agreed. She paused a moment, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase it, then decided there was no point. Clinkscales was as blunt and direct as she was, which probably meant it would be best simply to plunge right in and ask.
"I was just wondering how we work so well together," she said. His eyebrows rose, and she shrugged. "You know as well as I do how heavily I depend on your advice. I think I'm learning, but all of this is totally new to me. Without your guidance, I'd probably make a complete hash out of it; as it is, I think things are going quite well. I appreciate your help tremendously, but I also know you're going a lot further than the letter of your regent's oath requires, and sometimes that seems a little odd to me. I know you don't really approve of a lot of what's happening on Grayson, and I'm—well, I suppose Protector Benjamin was right when he called me a symbol of those changes. You could have made things a lot harder on me by just doing the job you promised to do and letting me learn things the hard way, and no one could have faulted you for it. I can't help wondering why you haven't."
"Because you're my Steadholder, My Lady," Clinkscales said.
"Is that the only reason?"
"It's enough of one." Clinkscales pursed his lips, fingers toying with the smaller, silver steadholder's key he wore around his neck, then gave his head a little toss. "In all honesty, however, the way you've tackled your responsibilities has something to do with it, as well. You could have settled for a figurehead role, My Lady; instead, you're working ten and twelve-hour days learning to be a real steadholder. I respect that."
"Even in a woman?" Honor asked softly.
He met her eyes and raised one hand in a small warding gesture.
"I shudder to think what you might do if I were to say 'especially in a woman,' My Lady." His tone was so droll Honor chuckled, and he smiled briefly, then sobered.
"On the other hand, My Lady, I understand what you're really asking." He tipped his own chair back with a sigh, resting his elbows on its arms and folding his hands across his middle. "I've never hidden my convictions from the Protector or from you, Lady Harrington," he said slowly. "I think the Protector is pushing his changes too rapidly, and they make me... uncomfortable. Our traditions have served us well, over the centuries. They may not be perfect, but at least we survived following them, and that's quite an accomplishment on a world like this. More than that, I believe most of our people—including our women—were content with the old ways. I certainly was. Of course, I'm also a man, which may affect my perceptions a bit."
Honor's right eyebrow curved at the admission, and he chuckled sourly.
"I'm not blind to the privileged position I held, My Lady, but I don't think that necessarily invalidates my judgment, nor do I see any reason why every world in the galaxy has to ape social patterns which may or may not suit it. And, to be perfectly frank, I don't think Grayson women are ready for the demands the Protector is placing upon them. Leaving aside the question of innate capability—which, I'm surprised to say, is easier to do since I began working with you than I once expected it to be—they don't have the training for it. I suspect many of them will be desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the changes. I shudder whenever I think about the consequences for our traditional family life, and it's not easy for the Church to make the transition, either. Besides, deep down inside I can't put aside an entire lifetime of thinking one way and start thinking another way just because someone tells me to."
Honor nodded slowly. The first time she'd met Howard Clinkscales, she'd thought he was a dinosaur, and perhaps he was. But there was nothing apologetic or even particularly defensive in his tone or manner. He didn't like the changes about him, yet he hadn't responded to them as the unthinking reactionary she'd once thought him, either.
"But whether or not I agree with everything Protector Benjamin does, he is my Protector," Clinkscales went on, "and a majority of the steadholders support him, as well." He shrugged. "Perhaps my doubts will prove unfounded if the new system works. Perhaps they'll even make it work better, by making me a little more aware of the sensibilities we're treading upon—cushioning the blows, as it were. Either way, I have a responsibility to do the best I can. If I can preserve worthwhile parts of our tradition along the way, I will, but I take my oath to Protector Benjamin—and to you, My Lady—seriously."
He fell silent for a moment, but Honor felt something more waiting to be said and let the stillness rest unbroken until he said it. Several seconds passed, and then he cleared his throat.
"In the meantime, My Lady, I may as well add that you aren't a Grayson by birth. By adoption, yes. You're one of our own now; even many of those who most resent the changes around them think of you that way. But you weren't born one. You don't act like a Grayson woman, and the Protector was right in more ways than one when he called you a symbol. You're proof that women can be—and, on other worlds, are—fully as capable as men. There was a time when I was ready to hate you for what's happened to Grayson, but that would be like hating water for being wet. You are what you are, My Lady. Someday—perhaps far sooner than an old reactionary like me believes possible—Grayson may produce women like you. In the meantime, I've never met a man with a stronger sense of duty, nor have I met one more capable or hardworking. Which means no old-fashioned chauvinist like me can let you prove that you're more capable or hardworking than I am. Besides," he shrugged again, and this time his smile was completely natural, if just a bit sheepish, "I like you, My Lady."
Honor's eyes softened. He sounded as if the admission had surprised even him, and she shook her head.
"I only wish I didn't feel like a fish out of water so much of the time. I have to keep reminding myself I'm not in the Star Kingdom anymore. Grayson etiquette baffles me. I don't think I'll ever really get used to the idea of being a steadholder, and figuring out how to avoid stepping on people's sensibilities while I do it is even harder."
She was as surprised to hear herself admit that as Clinkscales might have been to admit his liking to her, but he only smiled again.
"You seem to be doing well enough to me, My Lady. You have the habit of command, but I've never seen you act without thinking or give a capricious order to anyone."
"Oh, that." Honor waved a hand, mildly embarrassed and highly pleased by his comment. "I just fall back on my Navy experience. I like to think I'm a pretty fair starship commander, and I guess it shows." Clinkscales nodded, and she shrugged. "But that's the easy part. Learning to be a Grayson is hard, Howard. There's more to it than just putting on a dress—" she indicated the gown she wore "—and making the right command decisions."
Clinkscales cocked his head and regarded her thoughtfully.
"May I give you a word of advice, My Lady?" Honor nodded, and he tugged at his ear once more. "Then I'd advise you not to try. Just be yourself. No one could fault the job you're doing, and trying to make yourself over into a 'proper' Grayson while we're all busy trying to redefine 'proper' anyway would be pointless. Besides, your holders like you just the way you are."
Both of Honor's eyebrows flew up in surprise, and he laughed.
"Before you took your seat in the Conclave, some of your people were worried about what would happen with 'that foreign woman' holding steading over them. Now that they're getting to know you, they're rather proud of your, um, eccentricities. This steading's been attracting people who were more eager than most for change from the beginning, My Lady; now a lot of them seem to hope some of your attitudes will rub off on them."
"Are you serious?" Honor demanded.
"Quite. In fact—"
Honor's chrono beeped, announcing the imminent arrival of her next caller, and Clinkscales cut himself off. He glanced down at his own data screen, then shook his head wryly.
"This should be interesting, My Lady. Your next appointment is with the engineer I mentioned to you."
Honor nodded and straightened her own chair as the quiet knock on the door came-exactly on schedule.
"Enter," she called, and an armsmen in the green-on-green colors she'd chosen for her steading opened the door to admit the engineer in question.
He was a young man, and there was something vaguely untidy about him. Not slovenly, and no one could have been more painfully clean, but he seemed uncomfortable in his formal clothing. He would, she thought, have looked far more natural in coveralls, festooned with micro-comps and the other tools of his trade, and his nervousness was palpable as he hesitated in the doorway.
"Come in, Mr. Gerrick." She put as much reassurance into her voice as she could and stood behind her desk, extending a hand in welcome. Protocol called for her to remain seated throughout, as befitted her high office, but she couldn't—not when the youthful engineer looked so unsure of himself.
Gerrick blushed scarlet and scurried across the office, covered with all too obvious confusion, and it occurred to her that he'd probably boned up on the way things ought to go. Well, it was too late for that, and she smiled and left her hand out as he came to a halt before her desk.
He paused a moment, then reached out hesitantly, as if unsure whether to shake her hand or kiss it. She solved his quandary by grasping his firmly, and some of his uncertainty seemed to flow away. He smiled back—shyly—and returned her grip with something like assurance.
"Sit down, Mr. Gerrick." She pointed at the chair before his desk, and he obeyed the gesture quickly, clutching his briefcase in his lap with a residue of his original nervousness. "Lord Clinkscales tells me you're one of my senior engineers," she went on, "and that you have some special project you wish to discuss with me?"
Gerrick blushed again, as if he felt calling him a senior engineer might be a veiled irony, given his obvious youth, but she only waited, hands folded on her blotter. Her attentive expression must have reassured him, because he drew a deep breath and nodded.
"Yes, My Lady, I do." He spoke quickly, but his voice was deeper than his undeniable scrawniness might have suggested.
"Then, tell me about it," Honor invited, leaning back in her chair, and he cleared his throat.
"Well, My Lady, I've been studying applications of the new materials the Alliance has made available to us here." He ended on a slight upward note, as if asking a question, and she nodded in understanding. "Some of them are quite remarkable," Gerrick went on with greater confidence. "In fact, I've been particularly impressed by the possibilities of the new crystoplast."
He paused, and Honor rubbed the tip of her nose. Crystoplast wasn't really all that new, though it might be to a Grayson engineer. The armorplast routinely used in spacecraft was far more advanced; in fact, it had relegated the cheaper crystoplast almost exclusively to civilian industry, where design tolerances could be traded off against cost savings, and it took her a moment to fix the differences between the two of them in her mind.
"All right, Mr. Gerrick," she said. "I'm with you. May I assume this project of yours employs crystoplast?"
"Yes, My Lady." Gerrick leaned forward, the last of his nervousness fading as eagerness took over. "We've never had anything with that much tensile strength—not on Grayson. It offers a whole new range of possibilities for enviro engineering. Why, we could dome whole towns and cities with it!"
That was more important than one might think, for Honor had spent at least eight hours a day in it for the last month, and the fatigue was building up. Grayson's twenty-six-plus-standard hour day was a bit long, even for her. The Sphinx day she'd been born to might be barely an hour shorter, but she'd spent the last three decades using Navy clocks matched to the twenty-three-hour day of the Star Kingdom's capital world. Not that she could honestly blame her present weariness on the length of the day.
She looked to her left, narrowing her eyes against the brilliant morning sun spilling in through the windows as the door closed behind her latest visitor. Her steadholder's mansion was overly luxurious for her tastes, especially in a new steading with a strained budget, but her own quarters occupied only a tiny portion of Harrington Houses total space. The rest was given up to bureaucratic offices, electronic and hardcopy files, communications centers, and all the other paraphernalia of government.
James MacGuiness, on the other hand, clearly regarded the magnificence as no more than her due, and, unlike her, he seemed delighted with the pomp and circumstance which had come her way. The Grayson servants accepted him as their mistress's official majordomo, and he'd shown an unanticipated talent for managing a staff which seemed entirely too large to Honor. He'd also seen to it Nimitz had a proper perch in her office, arranged to catch the maximum amount of sunlight. At the moment, the 'cat was sprawled comfortably along that perch, all six limbs dangling in utter contentment while he basked in the golden warmth.
She gazed at him in frank envy, then tipped her huge, thronelike armchair back, resting one foot on the hassock hidden under her enormous desk, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and a soft chuckle from her right made her turn her head in the other direction.
Howard Clinkscales sat behind a smaller desk with an even larger data terminal. His desk was turned at right angles to hers so that they both faced the center of the vast, paneled room, and she hadn't been too sure about the arrangement in the beginning. She wasn't used to having her exec in the same office with her, but it worked far better than she'd feared, and his presence had been invaluable. He knew every detail of her steading, and, like any skilled exec, he was always ready with the facts his CO required.
"Tired so soon, My Lady?" he asked now, shaking his head in half-mocking reproval. "It's barely ten o'clock!"
"At least I don't yawn in front of them," she said with a grin.
"True, My Lady. At least, you haven't done so yet."
Honor stuck out her tongue, and Clinkscales laughed. She wouldn't have bet a Manticoran cent on the chance of her regent's actually becoming a friend. Mutual respect, yes; she would have expected that, and been content with it, as well. But their intense cooperation over the past weeks had produced something much closer and warmer.
If it surprised her, it must have been even more surprising for him. He'd resigned command of the entire Planetary Security Force to assume the regency of Harrington Steading, which he might easily have seen as a demotion. Nor should his opposition to at least half Protector Benjamin's social initiatives have made him any happier to work with—and for—the woman who'd provoked those changes. On top of which, he didn't really seem to have changed his own attitudes towards women in general by one iota.
None of which seemed to have any bearing where Honor was concerned. He never forgot she was a woman, and he treated her with all the exaggerated courtesy the Grayson code demanded, but he gave her the deference due any steadholder, as well. At first, she'd thought there might be a bit of irony in that, but she'd been wrong. So far as she could tell, he accepted her right to her position without even hidden reservations. More than that, he seemed to approve of her performance, and he'd even loosened up with her in private. He was unfailingly courteous, yes, but he'd come to treat her with a comfortable give and take that seemed decidedly odd in a man of such traditional leanings.
She checked her desk chrono. They had a few minutes before her next appointment, and she turned her chair to face him fully.
"Howard, would you mind if I asked you something a bit personal?"
"Personal, My Lady?" Clinkscales tugged at an earlobe. "Certainly you can ask. Of course," he smiled wryly, "if it's too personal, I can always choose not to answer."
"I suppose you can, at that," Honor agreed. She paused a moment, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase it, then decided there was no point. Clinkscales was as blunt and direct as she was, which probably meant it would be best simply to plunge right in and ask.
"I was just wondering how we work so well together," she said. His eyebrows rose, and she shrugged. "You know as well as I do how heavily I depend on your advice. I think I'm learning, but all of this is totally new to me. Without your guidance, I'd probably make a complete hash out of it; as it is, I think things are going quite well. I appreciate your help tremendously, but I also know you're going a lot further than the letter of your regent's oath requires, and sometimes that seems a little odd to me. I know you don't really approve of a lot of what's happening on Grayson, and I'm—well, I suppose Protector Benjamin was right when he called me a symbol of those changes. You could have made things a lot harder on me by just doing the job you promised to do and letting me learn things the hard way, and no one could have faulted you for it. I can't help wondering why you haven't."
"Because you're my Steadholder, My Lady," Clinkscales said.
"Is that the only reason?"
"It's enough of one." Clinkscales pursed his lips, fingers toying with the smaller, silver steadholder's key he wore around his neck, then gave his head a little toss. "In all honesty, however, the way you've tackled your responsibilities has something to do with it, as well. You could have settled for a figurehead role, My Lady; instead, you're working ten and twelve-hour days learning to be a real steadholder. I respect that."
"Even in a woman?" Honor asked softly.
He met her eyes and raised one hand in a small warding gesture.
"I shudder to think what you might do if I were to say 'especially in a woman,' My Lady." His tone was so droll Honor chuckled, and he smiled briefly, then sobered.
"On the other hand, My Lady, I understand what you're really asking." He tipped his own chair back with a sigh, resting his elbows on its arms and folding his hands across his middle. "I've never hidden my convictions from the Protector or from you, Lady Harrington," he said slowly. "I think the Protector is pushing his changes too rapidly, and they make me... uncomfortable. Our traditions have served us well, over the centuries. They may not be perfect, but at least we survived following them, and that's quite an accomplishment on a world like this. More than that, I believe most of our people—including our women—were content with the old ways. I certainly was. Of course, I'm also a man, which may affect my perceptions a bit."
Honor's right eyebrow curved at the admission, and he chuckled sourly.
"I'm not blind to the privileged position I held, My Lady, but I don't think that necessarily invalidates my judgment, nor do I see any reason why every world in the galaxy has to ape social patterns which may or may not suit it. And, to be perfectly frank, I don't think Grayson women are ready for the demands the Protector is placing upon them. Leaving aside the question of innate capability—which, I'm surprised to say, is easier to do since I began working with you than I once expected it to be—they don't have the training for it. I suspect many of them will be desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the changes. I shudder whenever I think about the consequences for our traditional family life, and it's not easy for the Church to make the transition, either. Besides, deep down inside I can't put aside an entire lifetime of thinking one way and start thinking another way just because someone tells me to."
Honor nodded slowly. The first time she'd met Howard Clinkscales, she'd thought he was a dinosaur, and perhaps he was. But there was nothing apologetic or even particularly defensive in his tone or manner. He didn't like the changes about him, yet he hadn't responded to them as the unthinking reactionary she'd once thought him, either.
"But whether or not I agree with everything Protector Benjamin does, he is my Protector," Clinkscales went on, "and a majority of the steadholders support him, as well." He shrugged. "Perhaps my doubts will prove unfounded if the new system works. Perhaps they'll even make it work better, by making me a little more aware of the sensibilities we're treading upon—cushioning the blows, as it were. Either way, I have a responsibility to do the best I can. If I can preserve worthwhile parts of our tradition along the way, I will, but I take my oath to Protector Benjamin—and to you, My Lady—seriously."
He fell silent for a moment, but Honor felt something more waiting to be said and let the stillness rest unbroken until he said it. Several seconds passed, and then he cleared his throat.
"In the meantime, My Lady, I may as well add that you aren't a Grayson by birth. By adoption, yes. You're one of our own now; even many of those who most resent the changes around them think of you that way. But you weren't born one. You don't act like a Grayson woman, and the Protector was right in more ways than one when he called you a symbol. You're proof that women can be—and, on other worlds, are—fully as capable as men. There was a time when I was ready to hate you for what's happened to Grayson, but that would be like hating water for being wet. You are what you are, My Lady. Someday—perhaps far sooner than an old reactionary like me believes possible—Grayson may produce women like you. In the meantime, I've never met a man with a stronger sense of duty, nor have I met one more capable or hardworking. Which means no old-fashioned chauvinist like me can let you prove that you're more capable or hardworking than I am. Besides," he shrugged again, and this time his smile was completely natural, if just a bit sheepish, "I like you, My Lady."
Honor's eyes softened. He sounded as if the admission had surprised even him, and she shook her head.
"I only wish I didn't feel like a fish out of water so much of the time. I have to keep reminding myself I'm not in the Star Kingdom anymore. Grayson etiquette baffles me. I don't think I'll ever really get used to the idea of being a steadholder, and figuring out how to avoid stepping on people's sensibilities while I do it is even harder."
She was as surprised to hear herself admit that as Clinkscales might have been to admit his liking to her, but he only smiled again.
"You seem to be doing well enough to me, My Lady. You have the habit of command, but I've never seen you act without thinking or give a capricious order to anyone."
"Oh, that." Honor waved a hand, mildly embarrassed and highly pleased by his comment. "I just fall back on my Navy experience. I like to think I'm a pretty fair starship commander, and I guess it shows." Clinkscales nodded, and she shrugged. "But that's the easy part. Learning to be a Grayson is hard, Howard. There's more to it than just putting on a dress—" she indicated the gown she wore "—and making the right command decisions."
Clinkscales cocked his head and regarded her thoughtfully.
"May I give you a word of advice, My Lady?" Honor nodded, and he tugged at his ear once more. "Then I'd advise you not to try. Just be yourself. No one could fault the job you're doing, and trying to make yourself over into a 'proper' Grayson while we're all busy trying to redefine 'proper' anyway would be pointless. Besides, your holders like you just the way you are."
Both of Honor's eyebrows flew up in surprise, and he laughed.
"Before you took your seat in the Conclave, some of your people were worried about what would happen with 'that foreign woman' holding steading over them. Now that they're getting to know you, they're rather proud of your, um, eccentricities. This steading's been attracting people who were more eager than most for change from the beginning, My Lady; now a lot of them seem to hope some of your attitudes will rub off on them."
"Are you serious?" Honor demanded.
"Quite. In fact—"
Honor's chrono beeped, announcing the imminent arrival of her next caller, and Clinkscales cut himself off. He glanced down at his own data screen, then shook his head wryly.
"This should be interesting, My Lady. Your next appointment is with the engineer I mentioned to you."
Honor nodded and straightened her own chair as the quiet knock on the door came-exactly on schedule.
"Enter," she called, and an armsmen in the green-on-green colors she'd chosen for her steading opened the door to admit the engineer in question.
He was a young man, and there was something vaguely untidy about him. Not slovenly, and no one could have been more painfully clean, but he seemed uncomfortable in his formal clothing. He would, she thought, have looked far more natural in coveralls, festooned with micro-comps and the other tools of his trade, and his nervousness was palpable as he hesitated in the doorway.
"Come in, Mr. Gerrick." She put as much reassurance into her voice as she could and stood behind her desk, extending a hand in welcome. Protocol called for her to remain seated throughout, as befitted her high office, but she couldn't—not when the youthful engineer looked so unsure of himself.
Gerrick blushed scarlet and scurried across the office, covered with all too obvious confusion, and it occurred to her that he'd probably boned up on the way things ought to go. Well, it was too late for that, and she smiled and left her hand out as he came to a halt before her desk.
He paused a moment, then reached out hesitantly, as if unsure whether to shake her hand or kiss it. She solved his quandary by grasping his firmly, and some of his uncertainty seemed to flow away. He smiled back—shyly—and returned her grip with something like assurance.
"Sit down, Mr. Gerrick." She pointed at the chair before his desk, and he obeyed the gesture quickly, clutching his briefcase in his lap with a residue of his original nervousness. "Lord Clinkscales tells me you're one of my senior engineers," she went on, "and that you have some special project you wish to discuss with me?"
Gerrick blushed again, as if he felt calling him a senior engineer might be a veiled irony, given his obvious youth, but she only waited, hands folded on her blotter. Her attentive expression must have reassured him, because he drew a deep breath and nodded.
"Yes, My Lady, I do." He spoke quickly, but his voice was deeper than his undeniable scrawniness might have suggested.
"Then, tell me about it," Honor invited, leaning back in her chair, and he cleared his throat.
"Well, My Lady, I've been studying applications of the new materials the Alliance has made available to us here." He ended on a slight upward note, as if asking a question, and she nodded in understanding. "Some of them are quite remarkable," Gerrick went on with greater confidence. "In fact, I've been particularly impressed by the possibilities of the new crystoplast."
He paused, and Honor rubbed the tip of her nose. Crystoplast wasn't really all that new, though it might be to a Grayson engineer. The armorplast routinely used in spacecraft was far more advanced; in fact, it had relegated the cheaper crystoplast almost exclusively to civilian industry, where design tolerances could be traded off against cost savings, and it took her a moment to fix the differences between the two of them in her mind.
"All right, Mr. Gerrick," she said. "I'm with you. May I assume this project of yours employs crystoplast?"
"Yes, My Lady." Gerrick leaned forward, the last of his nervousness fading as eagerness took over. "We've never had anything with that much tensile strength—not on Grayson. It offers a whole new range of possibilities for enviro engineering. Why, we could dome whole towns and cities with it!"