Ashes Of Victory

suggested such a thing would be laughed out of public life.'

'And the timing is superb, Your Majesty,' Prestwick put in. 'Your arrival is associated in the public mind with the sudden turn in the course of the war. No one is foolish enough to attribute that turn to your visit. Not on an intellectual basis, at least. But the emotional impact has linked you and those victories indelibly in the impressions of our steaders. And quite a few of our steadholders, I suspect.'

'And it's another nail in the coffin of the notion that women have no business getting involved in `serious' affairs,' Benjamin added, and smiled. 'Katherine and Elaine made that point to me — again — over breakfast. Sometimes I suspect they wish I were an old-fashioned chauvinist so they could gloat over my discomfiture. Fortunately, they can always gloat over everyone else's discomfiture in front of me, and that's almost as good.'

'I can imagine,' Elizabeth agreed with a laugh.

She and the Protector's wives had taken to one another instantly, and Rachel Mayhew had been deeply impressed to discover that the Queen of Manticore's 'cat companion was considerably younger than her own Hipper. And a better signer. Like Honor, the Mayhews were still adjusting to the sudden emergence of treecat conversation at the dinner table. But at least there was only one 'cat in Protector's Palace, she thought enviously. Well, two, now that Elizabeth and Ariel had arrived as houseguests. With Nimitz and Samantha home, there were thirteen at Harrington House, and every one of them, including the 'kittens, was signing away like mad. She doubted she would ever get over the sheer joy of experiencing true, two-way conversations with her six-limbed friends, but watching that many 'cats signing simultaneously (and with widely varying proficiency) was like being trapped inside an old-fashioned piston engine!

Nimitz bleeked a soft laugh from the back of her chair as he picked up her emotions, and she tasted his loving mental caress.

'I'm sure you can visualize it all perfectly,' Benjamin said. 'Still, Henry's right. You've got the conservatives in full retreat.' He smiled with intense satisfaction. 'Even Mueller's `media blitz' hasn't kept them from taking a beating in the polls. And his expression when he presented you and the Duke with those memory stones was priceless!'

'I know.' Elizabeth's smile was less satisfied than Benjamin's, and he looked a question at her. She looked back for a moment, then shrugged. 'There's just... something about him that bothers me. And Ariel,' she added, and all eyes swiveled to the treecat in her lap. Ariel raised his prick-eared head and gazed back with grass-green eyes, and Shemais cleared her throat.

'Excuse me, Your Majesty, but what do you mean `bothers' you and Ariel?' The Queen looked at the head of her security team, and the colonel frowned. 'The Queen's Own learned to take 'cats' `feelings' seriously a long time ago, Your Majesty. If there's something we should be bothered about, I'd like to know.'

'I don't know that you should be,' Elizabeth said slowly. 'If I'd felt certain one way or the other, I would have told you before this. There's just... something. Ariel and I discussed it while Benjamin was changing, and he can't nail it down any better than that. Of course, we're still learning to sign, but I don't think that was the problem. According to him—' she ran one hand gently down the 'cat's spine '—Mueller has a lot on his mind right now. He's nervous and angry, and more than a little scared about something, and he doesn't care for me at all. But whatever he's angry or scared about isn't associated with me. Or, rather, it isn't directly associated with me. I'm mixed up in it somewhere, but more as an additional thing for him to be scared about than because of any threat he poses to me.' She shrugged and grinned crookedly. 'It's just a little humbling to discover that the 'cats aren't quite as all-knowing as some of us had imagined. Ariel can pick up a lot from other people's emotions, but he can't establish direct links between those emotions and specific individuals or thoughts unless those links are very strong... and in the forefront of the other person's mind, at that.'

She looked at Honor, and it was Honor's turn to shrug.

'It's pretty much that way with me and Nimitz,' she agreed, but she frowned as she said it. She hadn't really noticed it before, but now that she thought back, it struck her that Mueller had gone to some lengths to avoid her. It was almost as if he were deliberately staying away from her and Nimitz, and she wondered, suddenly, just how well briefed he truly was on 'cats in general... and on her and Nimitz in particular.

'It's a bit sharper and more specific in our case, I think,' she went on, and heads nodded. Everyone in this room had been cleared for the truth about her bond with Nimitz. 'But you're right. Unless it's a very strong link and one the other person is thinking about at that particular moment, specific connections are hard to make.'

'Um.' Benjamin sat back in his chair and rubbed his upper lip while he thought, then shrugged. 'I can think of quite a few reasons Mueller would feel... uneasy in your presence, Elizabeth. Or yours, Honor. I'm not sure about this `scared' business, though. Unless it's the threat to his plans your visit has proven? You have brought down a lot of scheming and set a huge financial investment pretty much at naught in less than a week.'

'I don't know.' Elizabeth sighed. 'I suppose that could be it, but Ariel says he felt scared, not just uneasy or frustrated or upset.'

'Excuse me, Your Majesty,' Major Rice put in diffidently, 'but it may be that he's managed to piss off—' Rice stopped abruptly, glanced apologetically at Elizabeth, Honor, and Shemais, and went beet red.

'Excuse me, please,' he repeated, with a rather different emphasis, then drew a deep breath as Shemais hid a smile behind a raised hand. 'What I meant to suggest,' he went on doggedly, 'is that we—' a wave at the uniform he wore indicated who 'we' was '—have been keeping an eye on him for a lot of reasons, and it could be that certain associates are turning out to be a little nastier than he thought.' He glanced at the Protector, then looked back at Elizabeth as Benjamin gave an almost imperceptible nod.

'I'd planned to brief the Prime Minister and Colonel Shemais about this later this evening, Your Majesty, but since you've brought Mueller up, it might be better to go ahead and tell you, as well. We have several domestic concerns about Mueller, and there's an ongoing investigation into some of his activities.'

Honor's eyes widened. Unlike any of the visiting Manticorans, she knew what was involved in investigating one of Grayson's Keys. It was hardly something the Sword would undertake lightly, both because of the evidentiary standards required to initiate such a move and the risk of political damage if it became known. But if Benjamin had issued a Sword finding of the probability that a Key was guilty of high treason, the only legal basis for a 'black' investigation of a steadholder, then perhaps there was a very good reason for those bleak spikes of hatred she'd felt coming from him whenever Mueller's name was mentioned.

'One of the things we've been looking into is the huge amount of money he's spending,' Rice went on. 'We have strong evidence that he's funneling illegal campaign contributions to Opposition candidates in the upcoming elections. That's a serious offense, but it falls short of the Constitutional definition of treason. The Sword can preemptively remove a steadholder for treason, unless a two-thirds vote of the Keys overrides him. But for the misdemeanors and malfeasance we can actually prove, a full impeachment hearing, where it would take a two- thirds vote to remove him before he could face criminal charges, would be required. We'd like to avoid that, so we've been digging along several other lines, as well, though I feel confident we'll settle for impeachment in the end if we have to.

'But despite the progress we've made, we still haven't been able to ID some of the people who've been passing funds to him in the first place. Obviously, they represent a large, well-funded organization of some sort, though, and I suspect the Steadholder has just discovered that he doesn't control them as completely as he'd thought. We don't have any hard evidence to that effect, and our best information channel was shut down rather permanently a few months ago, but I've felt from the beginning that they were a lot more dangerous than he thought they were. And if they're unhappy about the effect your visit is having, they may just have decided to turn the heat up on him. He might well even see them as a physical threat. I'd like to think he might, anyway. Do you think that could explain what your friend's been picking up from him?'

Elizabeth looked down at Ariel, and the 'cat sat upright in her lap to sign briefly but energetically at her. She laughed and nodded, then looked back at Rice.

'Ariel says, `He's scared as a treehopper on hunting day,' Major.'