Crown of Slaves

Anton rumbled a laugh. 'Do you even know how to 'bow'?'

Berry nodded. 'Mommy showed me.'

Anton's glower was coming back in full force. Hastily, Berry added: 'But not the way she does it-or used to do it, anyway, before she became a commoner.'

Anton shook his head. 'Bowing is for formal occasions, girl. This is an informal audience. Just stand quietly and be polite, that's good enough.' He turned and resumed his progress toward the doors leading to the Royal Presence. 'Besides, I wouldn't trust you to do it right anyway. Sure as certain not if Cathy showed you how, with all of a noblewoman's flourish and twirls.'

His lips twitched again, his good humor returning. 'When she's in the mood-not often, I admit-she can make any duchess turn green with envy with that fancy bow of hers.'

If nothing else, by the time they reached the doors and a glaring majordomo began swinging them open, Anton's display of highlander contrariness seemed to have relaxed Berry a bit. No doubt she'd reached the conclusion that the Royal Displeasure soon to descend on her father would be so thoroughly focused on him that she might emerge unscathed.

* * *

In the event, however, the Queen of the Star Kingdom greeted them with a smile so wide it might almost be called a grin. Against Elizabeth's mahogany skin, the white teeth gleamed brightly. From what Anton could determine, the sharp-toothed gape on the face of the Queen's companion Ariel seemed even more cheerful. Anton was no expert on treecats, but he knew they usually reflected the emotions of the human to whom they were bonded. And if that vaguely feline shape lounging casually across the thickly upholstered backrest of the Queen's chair was offended or angry, there was no sign of it.

Despite his contrariness of the moment, Anton could not keep himself from warming toward the Queen. He was still a Crown Loyalist, when all was said and done, even if that once-simple political philosophy had developed a lot of curlicues and embroidery in the years since he'd met Catherine Montaigne. And he approved of this particular monarch, from all that he'd been able to see of her since she came to the throne.

The knowledge was all from a distance, however. He'd never actually met Queen Elizabeth, other than seeing her at a handful of large official gatherings.

He caught a glimpse of the young woman seated next to the Queen making an almost-furtive motion at the small console attached to her own chair. Glancing quickly to the side, Anton spotted a discreetly recessed viewscreen in the near wall of the small chamber. The display was dark now, but he suspected that the Queen and her companion had been observing him as he approached down the hallway-in which case, they would have heard his little exchange with Berry. Every word of it, unless the audio pickups were a lot worse than you'd expect in the palace of the galaxy's most electronically advanced realm.

He was not offended by the notion. In his days as a Navy yard dog, he might have been. But Anton's many years since as an intelligence officer-which he still basically was, even if in private practice-had given him a blase attitude toward surveillance. So long as people respected his privacy, which he defined as his home and hearth, he didn't much care who snooped on him in public places. Whatever his other faults, Anton Zilwicki was not a hypocrite, and it wasn't as if he didn't do the same himself.

Besides, it was obvious from her smile the Queen wasn't offended. If anything, she seemed amused. He could sense Berry's relaxation as that knowledge came to her also.

But Anton wasn't paying much attention to Berry. As they continued to advance slowly toward the elaborate chairs which served Elizabeth and her companion as informal thrones, Anton's attention was given to the young woman seated next to the Queen.

At first, he thought he'd never seen the woman before, not even in file imagery or a holograph. As he drew nearer, however, he began connecting her features with those he'd seen in a few images taken when the girl was considerably younger. Soon enough, Anton had deduced her identity.

The age was the final giveaway. Anton was no expert on couture, but it was obvious even to him that the young woman's apparel was extremely expensive. The kind of clothing that would be worn by a noblewoman serving as the Queen's adviser. But this woman was much too young for that. Granted, prolong made gauging age rather difficult, but Anton was sure this woman was almost as young as the teenager she looked to be.

That meant a member of the royal family itself, or close kin, and there was only one such who fit the bill. The fact that the girl's complexion was so much paler than the standard Winton skin color just added the icing to the cake.

Ruth Winton, then, the daughter of the Queen's sister-in-law Judith Winton. Ruth had been sired by a Masadan privateer but adopted by the Queen's younger brother Michael when he married Judith after her escape from captivity. If Anton remembered correctly-and his memory was phenomenal-the girl had been born after Judith's escape, so Michael was the only father Ruth had ever known. She'd be about twenty-three years old now.

Because of the awkwardness of the girl's paternity she was officially not part of the line of succession to the throne. Other than that, however, she was in effect Queen Elizabeth's niece. Anton wondered what she was doing here, but he gave the matter no more than a fleeting thought. He had no idea what he was doing here, after all, since the Queen's summons had come as a surprise to him. He was quite sure he would discover the answer soon enough.

He and Berry reached a point on the floor which Anton decided marked a proper distance from The Royal Person. He stopped and bowed politely. Next to him, Berry did a hasty and nervous version of the same.

Hasty, yes-but still far too elaborate for Anton's taste. However much of his rustic background Anton might have abandoned when he left Gryphon many years earlier, he still retained in full measure a highlander's belligerent plebeianism. Kneeling and scraping and kowtowing and fancy flourishes before royalty were aristocratic vices. Anton would give the Crown his loyalty and respect, and that was damn well all.

He must have scowled a bit. The Queen laughed and exclaimed: 'Oh, please, Captain Zilwicki! The girl has a splendid bow. Still a bit awkward, perhaps, but I recognize Cathy's touch in it. Can't miss that style, as much trouble as Cathy got me into about it, the time she and I infuriated our trainer by doing what amounted to a ballet instead of an exercise. It was all her idea, of course. Not that I wasn't willing to go along.'

Anton had heard about the incident, as it happened. Cathy had mentioned it to him once. Although Cathy rarely spoke of the matter, as girls she and the Queen had been very close friends before their developing political differences ruptured the relationship. But, even then, there'd been no personal animosity involved. And Anton had not been the only one who'd noticed that, after Cathy's return from exile, there was always an undertone of warmth on those occasions when she and Queen Elizabeth encountered each other.

True, the encounters were still relatively few and far between, because the Queen faced an awkward political situation. While Elizabeth herself shared Cathy's hostility to genetic slavery-as did, for that matter, the government of Manticore itself, on the official record-Cathy's multitude of political enemies never missed an opportunity to hammer at Cathy's well-known if formally denied ties with the Audubon Ballroom. Despite Manticore's position on slavery, the Ballroom remained proscribed in the Star Kingdom as a 'terrorist' organization, and its leader Jeremy X was routinely reviled as the galaxy's most ruthless assassin.

That was not how either Cathy or Anton looked at the matter-nor the Queen herself, Anton was pretty sure- but private opinions were one thing, public policy another. Whether or not Elizabeth agreed with the stance taken toward the Ballroom by her government, that was the official stance. So, however friendly might be the personal relations between her and Cathy whenever they 'accidentally' encountered each other at social gatherings, the Queen was careful not to give Cathy any formal political recognition. Even though-of this, Anton was positive-no one would be more delighted than Queen Elizabeth to see Cathy displace New Kiev as the leader of the Liberal Party.

Elizabeth laughed again. 'The things she got me into! One scrape after another. My favorite escapade-the one that got her banned from the Palace for months, my mother was so furious-was the time-'

She broke off abruptly. The grin faded, becoming almost strained, but didn't vanish entirely.

'Yes, I know, Captain Zilwicki. And now she's banned from the Palace again-politically, if not personally-and by my order, not the Queen Mother's. Which, as it happens, is why I asked you here. In a complicated sort of way.'