Honor found herself holding her breath, knew that despite her best efforts she was crushing Hamish's hand-she'd engaged the governor on her left hand to protect Emily-as she saw their unborn son floating in the amniotic fluid. The child stirred, kicking, drifting, and she felt the thread of his own sleepy, unformed wonder, as if he sensed the impending moment, even through the corona of joy rising about her. The emotions of her family and friends were like some enormous sea, deep, intense, and powerful, yet focused. Not precisely peaceful, yet equally not tempestuous. They were vibrant, quivering with anticipation like a strummed guitar string, and so brightly, warmly supportive-so happy for her-that tears blurred Honor's vision.
Illescue tapped buttons on a console, and the top of the inner chamber slid open. A fibrous-looking mat floated on the fluid, and he used a vibro scalpel to slice it open. The umbilical cord had been attached to the mat, and it coiled lazily as his gloved, sterile hands reached down and lifted the tiny, fragile, infinitely precious body.
Honor's lungs insisted that she breathe. She ignored them, her entire being focused on Illescue's gentle, competent hands as he and his team severed the umbilical and cleaned the air passages, and the baby's emotions shifted abruptly.
She closed her eyes, reaching out with mental hands, trying to touch the infant mind-glow as drowsy contentment turned into fear and confusion, shock as he left the soft, warm safety of the womb for the cold and frightening unknown. She felt him protesting, squirming, fighting to return, and then, in a fashion she knew she would never be able to explain to another human being, Nimitz and Samantha were with her. And so was Farragut, and behind him came Ariel and Monroe.
The treecats reached out with her as the first, thin squall of protest sounded, and suddenly, as easily as slipping her hand into a glove, she touched him. Touched him as she had never touched another human being, even Hamish. It was as if her hand had reached out into the dark, and a smaller, warmer, utterly trusting hand had found it with unerring accuracy.
The squalling complaint stopped. The infant eyes moved, unable to focus and yet sensing the direction of the warm, comforting welcome, the love and the eagerness flowing from Honor into him. His was an unformed presence, and yet he knew her. He recognized her, and she felt the unhappiness and fear flowing out of him as he nestled close to her.
Her outer vision wavered, vanishing into the blur of tears, and she felt Hamish's arms around her. She tasted his love for her, for their son, for Emily, rising to engulf her. She clung to him, without ever releasing Emily's hand, and in that moment, she knew her entire life had been worthwhile.
The baby squirmed, protesting the intrusion of other hands, of instruments, as he was weighed, examined, evaluated. But even as he squirmed, face wrinkled in newborn concentration, tiny mouth moving, eyes squeezed indignantly shut, she cuddled him in immaterial, steel-strong hands of love. And then he was a tiny, red-faced, neatly wrapped bundle in Illescue's hands as the doctor carried him out of the delivery room to his waiting parents.
Illescue stepped into the gallery, his face one huge smile, and for once Honor tasted no trace of his prickly personality, his innate sense of superiority. There was only the pleasure, the sense of wonder and renewal, which had drawn an arrogant aristocrat into the world of medicine's most joyous specialization in the first place, and she smiled back at him, holding out her hands eagerly, as he crossed to her.
'Your Grace,' he said softly, 'meet your son.'
Honor's lips trembled as she gathered the tiny, tiny weight carefully to her. She could have held him stretched along one forearm, his head cupped in the palm of her hand, and she stared down at the ancient, eternally new miracle in her arms. His eyes slipped open once again, moving, unfocused and yet seeking the loving presence wrapped about him like another blanket, and she lifted him to her breast. She held him close, inhaling the indescribable newborn smell of him, feeling the incredibly smooth, fragile skin against her own cheek. She crooned softly, and his lips moved, nuzzling her. Perhaps he was only searching for a nipple with newborn hunger, but fresh tears of joy spilled down her cheeks.
'Welcome to the world, baby,' she whispered into his ear, then lowered him and brushed a kiss across his forehead. She turned to Hamish and Emily, stooping beside Emily's life support chair, holding him out to them, and Emily brushed aside her own tears so that they could see their son together.
Honor looked up as her father and mother stepped close behind her, and her mother rested both hands on her shoulders.
'He's beautiful,' Allison Harrington said, and smiled tenderly as she reached past her daughter to touch her first grandchild's cheek. 'You may not believe that, right this minute,' she continued, brushing the tip of her finger across the screwed-up, still somehow indignant face, 'but give him a little while. He'll knock your socks off.'
'He already has,' Emily said, and looked up at Honor and Hamish. 'My God, he already has.'
Honor smiled at her, blinking on her own tears, and then she straightened and turned. She stepped past Emily and Hamish, past a beaming Elizabeth Winton and Justin Zyrr-Winton, past a crooning Nimitz and Samantha, and faced Andrew LaFollet.
'This is my son,' she said to them all, her eyes locked with the man who had been her personal armsman for so many years, 'Raoul Alfred Alistair Alexander-Harrington. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, heir of heart and life, of power and title. I declare him before you all, as my witnesses and God's.'
'He is your son,' Austen Clinckscales replied, bowing deeply. 'So witness we all.'
'This is my son,' she repeated more softly, speaking only to LaFollet, 'and I name you guardian and protector. I give his life into your keeping. Fail not in this trust.'
LaFollet looked back at her, then dropped to one knee, resting his hand lightly on the blanket-wrapped baby, and met her eyes unflinchingly.
'I recognize him,' he said, his voice soft yet clear as he spoke the ancient formula, 'and I know him. I take his life into my keeping, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. Before God, Maker and Tester of us all; before His Son, Who died to intercede for us all; and before the Holy Comforter, I will stand before him in the Test of life and at his back in battle. I will protect and guard his life with my own. His honor is my honor, his heritage is mine to guard, and I will fail not in this trust, though it cost me my life.'
His voice fogged on the final sentence, and his eyes were suspiciously bright as he rose from his knee. Honor smiled at him, and worked one tiny, preposterously delicate hand free of the swaddling blanket. LaFollet extended his own hand, fingers opened, and she placed her son's palm against his.
'I accept your oath in his name. You are my son's sword and his shield. His steps are yours to watch and guard, to ward and instruct.'
LaFollet said nothing more, only bent his head in a slight yet profound bow, and then stepped back. Honor bent her own head to him, tasting and sharing both his joy and his deep, bittersweet regret, and then she turned back to the others.
'Faith, James,' she said to her brother and sister, going down on one knee, 'come meet your nephew.'
'This is still going to take some getting used to,' Hamish murmured into Honor's ear as they walked slowly down the central aisle of King Michael's Cathedral on either side of Emily's life-support chair.
'What?' Honor murmured back, looking down at the sleeping infant clasped carefully in his arms. 'Fatherhood?'
'That, too,' he said from the corner of his mouth, and then somehow managed to flick his head without actually moving it to indicate the four green-uniformed men walking behind them.
Honor didn't have to look. Andrew LaFollet was there, of course, as Raoul's personal armsman. Spencer Hawke walked directly behind her, and she tasted the combination of his pride and apprehensive sense of responsibility at his promotion to her personal armsman. But she knew it was Tobias Stimson and Jefferson McClure to whom Hamish actually referred.
'I warned you and Emily both,' she whispered to him as they approached the baptismal font. 'And at least you each got off with only one armsman.'
Emily snorted quietly between them, and Hamish glanced across at both of them eyes twinkling, then smoothed his expression into solemnity as they reached the font and Archbishop Telmachi turned to face them. Father O'Donnell stood beside the archbishop, prepared to assist, and Telmachi smiled and opened his arms in an inviting gesture.
There was a stir behind them as Raoul's godparents assembled.
'Beloved,' Telmachi said, 'we have gathered here to baptize this child. As he is the child of two planets, so
