Ashes Of Victory

He gazed at nothing for endless seconds, and there was a great stillness at his core. For the first time since Rob Pierre's death, he felt hope growing somewhere deep inside, and he sucked in a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled noisily.

He'd never really expected Hassan to work. He admitted that to himself now, although he hadn't been able to earlier. Not when it had been so essential that the plan must work. The decapitation of the Alliance had been his only hope as the military situation crumbled, and so he'd made himself believe Hassan would succeed, that he only had to hang on just a little longer.

And it truly had worked in the end. Not as fully as he'd hoped it might, true, but it had worked.

He'd been bitterly disappointed when the preliminary reports indicated that Benjamin Mayhew and Elizabeth III had both escaped, and he'd ground his teeth when he discovered who'd made that possible. There were very few points upon which Oscar Saint-Just and the late, unlamented Cordelia Ransom had ever been in perfect agreement, but Honor Harrington was one of them. The only difference between Saint-Just and Ransom was that Saint-Just would simply have had her quietly shot and stuffed in an unmarked grave without ever admitting he'd even seen her.

But as the first, fragmentary reports about the domestic Manty reaction to Hassan came in, Saint-Just had begun to realize it might actually be better this way. If he'd gotten Elizabeth and Benjamin but not Cromarty, Elizabeth's son would simply have assumed the throne with the same Government in place. At best, the result would have been only to delay the inevitable, not stop it. But by killing Cromarty and leaving Elizabeth alive, Saint-Just had inadvertently created a totally different situation. When the Manty Opposition's leadership announced its decision to form a government which excluded Cromarty's Centrists and the Crown Loyalists, a dazzling opportunity had landed squarely in Oscar Saint-Just's lap, and he had no intention of letting it slip away.

He pressed a button on his intercom.

'Yes, Citizen Chairman?' his secretary replied instantly.

'Get me Citizen Secretary Kersaint and Citizen Secretary Mosley,' Saint-Just directed. 'Tell them I need to see them immediately.'

'At once, Citizen Chairman!'

Saint-Just leaned back in his chair once more, folding his hands and gazing up at the ceiling while he waited for the PRH's new foreign minister and the woman who'd replaced Leonard Boardman at Public Information. Both of their predecessors had been in the Octagon — hostages or traitors, no one really knew — when Saint-Just ordered the button pushed, and they were undeniably inexperienced in their new positions. On the other hand, both of them were terrified of Oscar Saint-Just, and he felt confident that they'd manage to do exactly what he wanted of them.

* * *

'All right, Allyson,' White Haven said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. 'I'm awake.'

He looked at the bedside chrono and winced. Benjamin the Great ran on standard twenty-four-hour days rather than the twenty-two-plus-hour days of Manticore, and it was just after 03:00. He'd been in bed barely three hours, and he was due to attend the final admirals' briefing before kicking off against Lovat in only five more hours.

This had better be important, he told himself, and punched buttons on his com.

The terminal blinked to life with Captain Granston-Henley's face. It was a one-ended visual link — White Haven had no intention of letting anyone see him draggle-edged with sleep — but he hardly even thought about that as her expression registered.

'What is it?' His voice was rather less caustic than he'd planned, and Granston-Henley gathered her wits with a visible effort.

'We just received a dispatch boat, My Lord. From the Peeps.'

'From the Peeps?' White Haven repeated very carefully, and she nodded.

'Yes, Sir. She came over the hyper-wall twenty-six minutes ago. We just picked up her transmission five minutes and—' she glanced at a chrono of her own '—thirty seconds ago. It was in the clear, Sir.'

'And it said?' he prompted as she paused as if uncertain how to proceed.

'It's a direct message from Saint-Just to Her Majesty, My Lord,' Granston-Henley said. 'He wants— Sir, he says he wants to convene peace talks!'

* * *

'No!'

Elizabeth III came to her feet in one supple motion, and her fist slammed down on the conference-room table like a hammer. More than one person in the room flinched, but Prime Minister High Ridge and Foreign Secretary Descroix seemed totally unperturbed.

'Your Majesty, this offer must be given deep and serious consideration,' High Ridge said into the ringing silence.

'No,' Elizabeth repeated, her voice lower but even more intense, and her brown eyes locked on the Prime Minister like a ship of the wall's main battery. 'It's a trick. A desperation move.'

'Whatever it is, and whatever Citizen Chairman Saint-Just's motives,' Descroix said in the tone of sweet reason Elizabeth had come to loathe passionately, 'the fact remains that it offers a chance to stop the fighting. And the dying, Your Majesty. Not just on the PRH's side, but on our own, as well.'

'If we let Saint-Just squirm out now, when we have the power to crush him and his regime, it will be a betrayal of every man and woman who died to get us to this point,' Elizabeth said flatly. 'And it will also be a betrayal of our partners in the Alliance, who count on our leadership and support for their very survival! There's only one way to insure peace with the People's Republic, and that is to defeat it, destroy its military capabilities, and make certain they stay destroyed!'

'Your Majesty, violence never settled anything,' Home Secretary New Kiev said. The countess looked uncomfortable under the scornful glance the Queen turned upon her, but she shook her own head stubbornly. 'My opposition to this war has always been based on the belief that peaceful resolution of conflicts is vastly preferable to a resort to violence. If the previous government had realized that and given peace a chance following the Harris Assassination, we might have ended the fighting ten years ago! I realize you don't believe that was possible, but I and many of the others in this room do. Perhaps you were right at the time and we were wrong, but we'll never know either way, because the opportunity was rejected. But this time we have a definite offer from the other side, a specific proposal to end the killing, and I feel we have an imperative moral responsibility to seriously consider anything which can do that.'

' `Specific proposal'?' Elizabeth repeated, and jabbed a contemptuous index finger at the memo pad before her. 'All he proposes is a cease-fire in place — which neatly saves him from the loss of Lovat and his capital system — to provide a `breathing space' for negotiations! And as for this sanctimonious crap about `sharing your pain at the loss of your assassinated leaders' because the same thing happened to them—!'

Her lips worked as if she wanted to spit.

'The situations certainly aren't precise parallels, but both of us have experienced major changes in government,' High Ridge pointed out with oily calm. 'While everyone, of course, deeply regrets the deaths of Duke Cromarty and Earl Gold Peak, it's possible that the shift in political realities and perceptions resulting from that tragedy may actually have some beneficial results. I can hardly conceive of Pierre having sent us an offer like this one, but Saint-Just is obviously a more pragmatic man. No doubt it was the change in governments which led him to believe we might seriously entertain the notion of a negotiated settlement. And if that's true, then the final peace settlement would, in a way, become a monument to Duke Cromarty and your uncle, Your Majesty.'

'If you ever mention my uncle to me again, I will personally push your face through the top of this table,' Elizabeth told him in a flat, deadly tone, and the baron recoiled physically from her. He started to speak quickly, then stopped as an even more deadly hiss came from the treecat on her shoulder. High Ridge licked his lips, eyes locked on Ariel as the 'cat bared bone-white fangs, then swallowed heavily.

'I... beg your pardon, Your Majesty,' he said at last, into the stunned silence. 'I meant no disrespect to