Ashes Of Victory

they keep playing musical offices. Whenever I try to pin one of them down, he simply refers me — with exquisite courtesy, you understand — to one of the others. And I know they're all laughing in their beers over it!'

Henke's grin seemed to split her face, and her throaty chuckle rippled with delight. She was one of the people who'd figured out the truth about Honor's link to Nimitz long ago, which lent a certain added entertainment to Honor's certainty about how much the highest Grayson leaders were enjoying themselves.

'Well, at least the Admiralty agreed to back off from calling them the Harrington —class,' she pointed out after a moment, and Honor nodded.

'That's because the Star Kingdom has a slightly less low so-called sense of humor,' she growled. 'And,' she added, 'Caparelli and Cortez know I'd've resigned my commission if they hadn't gone back to designating them the Medusa —class. I only wish I thought I could get away with making the same threat stick against Matthews.'

She glowered, and Nimitz and Samantha bleeked in shared amusement as they tasted her emotions. She raised her head to shake a fist at them, but the living corner of her mouth twitched again, this time with true humor at the absurdity of her situation.

'I think it's a sign of how much they care about you that a reactionary old batch of sticks is willing to give you such a hard time, actually,' Henke observed. Honor shot her a sharp glance, and the other woman shook her head. 'Oh, I know Benjamin is the cutting edge of what passes for liberalism on Grayson, Honor, and I respect him enormously, but let's face it. By Manticoran standards, the most liberal soul on the entire planet is a hopeless reactionary! And with all due respect, I don't think I could legitimately call either Reverend Sullivan or High Admiral Matthews liberals, even for Grayson. Mind you, I like them a bunch, and I admire them, and I don't feel particularly uncomfortable around them. In fact, I'll even admit they're both doing their level best to support Benjamin's reforms, but they grew up on pre-Alliance Grayson. Matthews has done an excellent job of adjusting to the notion of allowing foreign women into Grayson service, and an even better one of treating them with equality once they're there. But deep down inside, he and Sullivan — and even Benjamin, I suspect — are never really going to get over the notion that women need to be coddled and protected, and you know it. So if they're willing to give you a hard time, they must really, really like you a lot.'

She shrugged, and Honor blinked at her.

'Do you even begin to realize how ridiculous that sounds? They respect women, and want to protect them, so the fact that they're all willing to drive me totally insane means they like me?'

'Of course it does,' Henke replied comfortably, 'and you know it as well as I do.'

Honor gave her a very direct look, and she gazed back with an expression the perfect picture of innocence until Honor finally grinned in ironic acknowledgment.

'I suppose I do,' she admitted, but then her smile faded just a bit. 'But that doesn't reduce the embarrassment quotient one bit. You know some Manticorans are going to think I signed off on keeping the name. And even if they weren't going to, I think it's about as pretentious as anything could possibly get. Oh—' she waved her hand as if brushing away gnats '—I suppose it made sense, in an embarrassing sort of way, to name a ship after a naval officer who was safely dead, but I'm not dead, darn it!'

'Thank God,' Henke said quietly, and all the laughter had gone out of her face. Honor turned quickly to face her as she felt the sudden darkness of her emotions, but then Henke shook herself and leaned back in her chair.

'By the way,' she said in a conversational tone, 'there's something I've been meaning to say to you. Have you seen the HD of your funeral on Manticore?'

'I've skimmed it,' Honor said uncomfortably. 'I can't stand to watch too much of that kind of thing, though. It's like seeing a really bad historical holodrama. You know, one of the `cast of thousands' things. And that doesn't even consider the crypt at King Michael's! I mean, I realize it was a state funeral, that the Alliance thought the Peeps had murdered me and that that had turned me into some sort of symbol, but still —'

She shook her head, and Henke snorted.

'There was some of that kind of calculation involved, I suppose,' she allowed, 'if not nearly as much as you probably think. But what I had in mind was my own humble participation in your cortege. You knew about that?'

'Yes,' Honor said softly, remembering the images of an iron-faced Michelle Henke, following the anachronistic caisson down King Roger I Boulevard at a slow march through the measured tap-tap-tap of a single drum with the naked blade of the Harrington Sword upright in her gloved hands and unshed tears shining in her eyes. 'Yes, I knew about it,' she said.

'Well I just wanted to say this, Honor,' Henke said quietly. 'And I'll only say it once. But don't you ever do that to me again! Do you read me on that, Lady Harrington? I never want to go to your funeral again!'

'I'll try to make a note of it,' Honor said, striving almost successfully for levity. Henke held her gaze for a long, still moment, then nodded.

'I suppose that will have to do, then,' she said much more briskly, and leaned back in her own armchair. 'But you were saying your friends back on Grayson have done something else to offend your fine, humble sensibilities?'

'Darn right they have!' Honor took another turn about Henke's day cabin, the hem of her Grayson-style gown swirling about her ankles with the energy of her stride.

'Stop stomping around my quarters, sit down, and tell me what it is, then,' Henke commanded, pointing to the chair Honor had previously occupied.

'Yes, Ma'am,' Honor said meekly. She sat very precisely in the chair, chin high, feet planted close together, hand resting primly in her lap, leaned forward ever so slightly, and looked at her friend soulfully. 'Is this better, Ma'am?' she asked earnestly.

'Only if you want to be thumped,' Henke growled. 'And in your present condition, I might even be able to take you.'

'Ha!' Honor snorted with lordly disdain, then leaned back and crossed her legs.

'Better. Now tell!'

'Oh, all right,' Honor sighed. 'It's the statue.'

'The statue?' Henke repeated blankly.

'Yes, the statue. Or maybe I should call it `The Statue'—you know, capital letters. Maybe with a little italics and an exclamation point or two.'

'You do realize I don't have even a clue what you're babbling about, don't you?'

'Oh? Then I take it you haven't been down to Austin City since my recent untimely demise was reported?'

'Except to ride the pinnace down to pick you up from the Palace, no,' Henke replied in a mystified tone.

'Ah, then you haven't been to Steadholders' Hall! That explains it.'

'Explains what, damn it?!'

'Explains how you could have missed the modest little four-meter bronze statue of me, standing on top of an eight—meter — polished! — obsidian column, in the square at the very foot of the main stairs to the North Portico so that every single soul who ever walks through any of the Hall's public entrances will have to walk right past it at eye level.'

Even the ebullient Henke stared at her, stunned into silence, and Honor returned her goggle-eyed gaze calmly. Not that she'd felt the least bit calm when she first saw the thing. It had been another of Benjamin's little 'surprises,' although she believed him when he insisted the idea had been the Conclave of Steadholders', not his. He was simply the one who hadn't bothered to mention its existence to her before she found herself face-to-face — well, face-to-column, anyway — with the looming monstrosity.

No, she made herself admit judiciously, calling it a 'monstrosity' wasn't really fair. Her own taste had never run to heroic-scale bronzes, but she had to agree, in the intervals when she could stop gnashing her teeth, that the sculptor had actually done an excellent job. The moment he'd chosen to immortalize was the one in which she'd