Ashes Of Victory

informing me — and her security people — that Andrew and Simon were to keep their guns.

The elevator sighed to a stop, and she and Henke followed their guide down a short hall to the same sitting room in which Elizabeth had received the two of them once before. Mattingly peeled off at the carved and polished wood of the sitting-room door, standing to the left of the doorway while the Army captain took up his own post to its right, but LaFollet entered the room at her heels.

Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette Winton, Queen of Manticore, sat in an overstuffed armchair across the same thick, rust-colored carpet, and she was not alone. Her own treecat, Ariel, lay across the back of the chair, and his head came up as he gazed intently at Nimitz and Samantha. Honor felt the familiar surge as he reached out to the two newcomers... and his quick concern as only Samantha answered. He rose to regard Nimitz even more intently, and Honor tasted his sudden shocked understanding and the sympathy and welcome he projected to her companion on its heels.

There were two other humans in the room. One was completely familiar to Honor, and her living eye twinkled as she saw her cousin Devon, Second Earl Harrington. He looked — and was; she could taste his emotions as well as anyone else's — extremely uncomfortable. It was a sensation she remembered only too well from her own first visit here, and she supposed it must be still worse for Devon. At least Honor had been a naval officer, and one who'd met her Queen before, at that, before the visit. From the flavor of his emotions and the expression on his face, Devon was still coming to grips with the fact that he was now a peer of the realm, and she felt him wondering if she secretly wanted to snatch her title back from him.

She smiled at him as reassuringly as the crippled left side of her mouth allowed, but the second man in the sitting room drew her attention from her cousin. He was slightly built and silver-haired, with a worn and weary- looking face which, in person, was disconcertingly similar to a face she'd once seen across forty meters of grass on the Landing City dueling grounds. That face, too, had belonged to a man named Summervale. But Denver Summervale had been a disgraced ex-Marine turned professional assassin; Allen Summervale was the Duke of Cromarty... and Prime Minister of the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

'Dame Honor!' Elizabeth III pushed up out of her chair with a huge smile. Honor was immensely relieved to taste the genuine welcome behind that smile, but, Steadholder Harrington or no, she was not sufficiently far removed from her yeoman origins not to feel a quick spasm of uncertainty when Elizabeth held out her hand. Yet she was Steadholder Harrington, and so she took the Queen's hand in a firm clasp and made herself meet Elizabeth's dark brown eyes levelly. It was hard. Far harder than she'd expected, and a tiny corner of her brain marveled at just how much her world had changed in the nine T-years since she'd last stood in this room. She wasn't at all certain she liked all those changes, but she found, as she stood face-to-face with her monarch, that it was impossible to deny them any longer, even to herself.

'Your Majesty,' she said quietly, and inclined her head in a small, respectful bow.

'Thank you for coming so promptly,' Elizabeth went on, waving Honor towards the armchair which faced her own across the coffee table. She nodded a far more casual greeting to her cousin, and Henke parked herself comfortably in another chair, leaving the couch to Devon Harrington and Duke Cromarty.

'I know you must still have a million things to deal with on Grayson,' Elizabeth went on, waiting for Honor to seat herself before she sank back into her own chair, 'and I deeply appreciate your putting them on hold for me.'

'Your Majesty, I was your subject long before I became Steadholder Harrington,' Honor replied, unlatching Nimitz's carrier and moving it around in front of her. Nimitz flowed out into her lap, and Samantha hopped down from Henke's chair to patter across the carpet and join her mate.

'I'm aware of that,' Elizabeth said. Then her voice darkened for just a moment. 'But I am also aware of the Crown's failure to protect your career, as you so amply deserved, in the face of your shameful treatment following your duel with Pavel Young.'

Honor winced at the name of the man who'd hated her for so long and hurt her so cruelly before she finally faced him one rainy morning with a pistol in her hand. But that, too, had been nine T-years ago, and she shook her head.

'Your Majesty, I knew going in what was going to happen. That you and His Grace—' she nodded courteously to Cromarty '—would have no choice but to act as you did. I never blamed either of you. If I blamed anyone — besides Young himself — it was the Opposition leaders.'

'That's very generous of you, Milady,' Cromarty said quietly.

'Not generous,' Honor disagreed. 'Only realistic. And in all fairness, I can hardly claim that packing me off to Grayson in disgrace was the end of my life, Your Grace!' She smiled ironically and touched the golden Harrington Key where it gleamed on her chest beside the glittering glory of the Star of Grayson.

'But not because certain people didn't try to make it that,' Elizabeth observed. 'You've attracted the hatred of far too many fanatics over the years, Dame Honor. As your Queen, I'd like to request that you try to cut down on that in years to come.'

'I'll certainly bear that in mind, Your Majesty,' Honor murmured.

'Good.' Elizabeth leaned back and studied her guest for a moment. Elizabeth would feel better when Bassingford Medical Center had confirmed that, other than the loss of her arm, Honor had indeed survived her ordeal intact. But she looked better than the Queen had feared she might, and Elizabeth felt her own worry easing just a bit.

She gave Honor one more searching glance, then turned to her cousin.

'And good morning to you, too, Captain Henke. Thank you for delivering Dame Honor in one piece.'

'We strive to please, Your Majesty,' Henke replied with a certain unctuousness.

'And with such deep and heartfelt respect, too,' Elizabeth observed.

'Always,' Henke agreed, and the cousins grinned at one another. They really did look remarkably alike, although Henke showed the outward signs of the original, modified Winton genotype far more strongly. Elizabeth's rich mahogany skin was considerably lighter than her cousin's, yet Honor rather suspected Elizabeth had even more of the less obvious advantages Roger Winton's parents had had designed into their progeny. The exact nature of those modifications, while not precisely classified, was unknown to the general public, as was the very fact that any Winton had ever been a genie. In fact, the Star Kingdom's security people took considerable pains to keep it that way, and Honor knew only because Mike had been her Academy roommate and closest friend for just under forty T-years... and because Mike had known she was a fellow genie for almost all that time. But whichever of them had more of the original modifications, both had the same, distinctive Winton features, and there were barely three years between their ages.

'I believe you know Earl Harrington,' Elizabeth went on, turning back to Honor, and it was Honor's turn to grin.

'We have met, Your Majesty, although it's been some time. Hello, Devon.'

'Honor.' Devon was ten T-years older than Honor, although his mother was Alfred Harrington's younger sister, and he looked even more uncomfortable than before as all eyes turned to him. 'I hope you realize I never expected—' he began, but she shook her head quickly.

'I'm perfectly well aware that you never wanted to be an earl, Dev,' she said reassuringly. 'In fact, that's something of a family trait, because I never wanted to be a countess, either.' She smiled briefly at Elizabeth, then looked back at her cousin. 'Her Majesty didn't give me a great deal of choice, and I doubt she gave you any more than she let me have.'

'Rather less, in fact,' Elizabeth affirmed before Devon could respond. 'There were several reasons. One, I'm a little ashamed to admit, was to revitalize general support for the war by cashing in on the public fury over the Peeps' decision to execute you, Dame Honor. By very publically supporting your cousin's right to replace you, I managed to refocus attention on your `death' quite effectively. Of course, I did have some motives which were less reprehensible than that, though I'm not sure they were very much less calculating.'

'Ah?' Honor's single word invited further explanation, and she was too focused on Elizabeth to notice the grins Michelle Henke and Allen Summervale exchanged. Elizabeth's lips quivered ever so briefly, but she managed to suppress her own smile. There were — perhaps — twenty people in the Star Kingdom, outside her immediate family, who would have felt comfortable enough with her to cock an interrogative eyebrow in her direction with such composure.

'Indeed,' the Queen said. 'One was that I had a certain bone to pick with the Opposition.' Her temptation