Ashes Of Victory

to smile vanished, and her eyes were suddenly cold and hard. It was said Elizabeth III held grudges until they died of old age and then sent them to a taxidermist, and at that moment, Honor believed every story she'd ever heard about her Queen's implacable, sometimes volcanic, temper. Then Elizabeth gave her head a little shake and relaxed in her chair once more.

'The decision to exclude you from the Lords after your duel with Young upset me on several levels,' she said. 'One, of course, was the slap in the face to you. I understood, possibly better than you can imagine, exactly what you felt when you went after Young.'

She and Henke exchanged a brief look. Honor had no idea what lay behind it, but she shivered inwardly at the shared sudden, icy stab of old, bitter anger and grief that went with it.

'I might have wished you'd chosen a less public forum in which to issue your challenge,' Elizabeth went on after a moment, 'but I certainly understood what forced you to choose the one you did. And while the Crown's official position, and my own, is that dueling is a custom we could very well do without, it was your legal right to challenge him, just as his life was both legally and morally forfeit when he turned early and shot you in the back. For the Opposition to make the fact that you `shot a man whose gun was empty'—because he'd just finished emptying his magazine into you —a pretext for excluding you infuriated me both as a woman and as Queen. Particularly when everyone knew they were doing it, at least in part, as a way to strike back at Duke Cromarty's Government and myself, as Queen, for forcing the declaration of war through Parliament.

'In all fairness, I suppose I ought to confess that that last point weighed rather more heavily with me than I'd really like to admit,' she confessed. 'I'd prefer to be able to say that it was all outrage over the wrong they'd done you, but as you yourself have undoubtedly discovered as Steadholder Harrington, allowing them to get away with baiting either myself or my Prime Minister is never a good idea. Each time they do it, they chip away, however slightly, at my prerogatives and my ministers' moral authority. Very few people realize that, even now, our Constitution exists as a balance between dynamic tensions. What the public perceives as laws and procedures set in ceramacrete are, in fact, always subject to change through shifts in precedent and custom... which, come to think of it, is how the Wintons managed to hijack the original Star Kingdom from the Lords in the first place.' She gave a wolfish smile. 'The original drafters intended to set up a nice, tight little system which would be completely dominated by the House of Lords so as to protect the power and authority of the original colonizers and their descendants. They never counted on Elizabeth the First's sneaking in and creating a real, powerful, centralized executive authority for the Crown... or enlisting the aid of the Commons to do it!

'My family, however, is fully aware of how the present system came to be, and we have no intention of allowing anyone to hijack our authority. The Peep threat has lent added point to that determination for seventy T-years now, and I see no sign of that changing any time soon. Which is one major reason I never had any intention of allowing your exclusion to stand. Unfortunately, you'd been killed — or so we all believed — before I got around to correcting the problem. So I decided to make certain your proper heir—' she nodded to Devon '—was confirmed as Earl Harrington, and provided the lands commensurate with his title, and seated in the Lords as soon as possible. What was more, I made certain the leaders of the Opposition knew what I was doing, and why, at a time when they no longer dared express their true feelings for you because of what public opinion would have done to them.' She gave another of those wolfish smiles. 'I trust you won't be offended to learn that I had such an ignoble motive, Dame Honor.'

'On the contrary, Your Majesty. The thought of your whacking certain august members of the House of Lords gives me a rather warm feeling, actually.'

'I thought it might.' For a moment, the two women smiled at one another in perfect accord, but then Elizabeth drew a deep breath.

'Now that you've returned from the dead, as it were, the situation has changed rather radically, however. If they want to see it that way, I've actually outmaneuvered myself by having Devon confirmed as Earl Harrington, since I now have no choice but to allow him to remain earl, thus neatly depriving you of any legitimate claim to his seat in the Lords, or else initiate steps to deprive him of the title in your favor. Legally, of course,' she gave Devon a brief, almost apologetic smile, 'there would be no problem with the latter. You aren't dead, after all, and there are plenty of legal precedents to cover the return of your property, including your peerage. But there would be a certain amount of embarrassment for the Crown in jumping through all the legal hoops, particularly after how, um, quietly but... forcefully Duke Cromarty and I made the case for confirming him in the first place.'

'I see.' Honor ran her hand gently down Nimitz's spine, then nodded. 'I see,' she said in a rather firmer tone. 'And I also suspect that you're working your way up to something with all this explanation, Your Majesty.'

'I told you she was a sharp one, Beth!' Henke chuckled.

'I hardly needed to be told, Mike,' the Queen replied dryly, but her eyes remained on Honor, who felt a sudden tingle as she realized Elizabeth wasn't quite ready to give up her initial idea after all. 'Unfortunately, she's also a stubborn one,' Elizabeth went on, confirming her fear. 'May I ask if you've reconsidered your position on the Medal of Valor, Dame Honor?'

From the corner of her eye, Honor saw Henke snap upright in her chair, but she kept her own gaze fixed on Elizabeth's face.

'No, Your Majesty, I haven't.' Her soprano voice was tinged with a hint of respectful regret but also unwavering, and Elizabeth sighed.

'I'd like you to think about that very carefully,' she said persuasively. 'In light of all you've accomplished, it—'

'Excuse me, Your Majesty,' Honor interrupted, courteously but firmly, 'but with all due respect, every reason you and His Grace have given me has been a bad one.'

'Dame Honor,' Cromarty spoke up in his deep, whiskey-smooth baritone, 'I won't pretend to deny that there are political considerations involved here. You wouldn't believe me if I did, and, frankly, I'm not particularly ashamed that they exist. The Peeps attempted to use your execution as a political and morale weapon against the Alliance. That was the sole reason for the dramatic way in which Ransom and Boardman went about announcing it to their own people, to us, and to the Solarian League. The fact that they'd utterly misread the reaction it would provoke throughout the Alliance doesn't change their intent, and they actually did score some points with certain segments of the Solarian League by portraying you as a convicted, out-of-control mass murderess without bothering to explain the details. Of course, it had already blown up in their faces to some extent, here in the Star Kingdom and in the Alliance, at least, even before you returned so inconveniently from the dead. Now it has all the earmarks of a first-class diplomatic catastrophe for them everywhere, and as the Prime Minister of Manticore, it's my job to see to it that their catastrophe is as complete as I can possibly make it. Awarding you the Parliamentary Medal of Valor and just incidentally rehearsing the details of your escape in the citation for public consumption is one sure way to help accomplish that goal.'

Honor started to speak, but his raised hand stopped her.

'Let me finish, please,' he said courteously, and she nodded a bit unwillingly. 'Thank you. Now, as I was saying, the political considerations are, in my opinion, completely valid and appropriate. But they're also beside the point. Whether you care to admit it or not, you've already earned the PMV several times over, as the Graysons clearly recognize.' He flicked a graceful gesture at the Star of Grayson glittering on her breast. 'Had it not been for the aversion in which the Opposition holds you, you probably would have received it after First Hancock... or after Fourth Yeltsin. And whether you earned it in the past or not, you certainly did when you organized, planned, and executed the escape of almost half a million prisoners from the Peeps' most secure prison!'

'I'm afraid I can't agree with you, Your Grace,' Honor said firmly. Henke squirmed in her chair, holding herself in it by main force of will, but Honor ignored her to concentrate on the Prime Minister.

'The PMV is awarded for valor above and beyond the call of duty,' she continued, 'and nothing I did was beyond the call of duty.' Cromarty's eyes widened in disbelief, but she went on calmly. 'It's the duty of any Queen's Officer to escape, if possible. It's the duty of any officer to encourage, coordinate, and lead the efforts of any of her subordinates to escape from the enemy in time of war. And it's the duty of any commanding officer to lead her personnel in combat. More than that, I should also point out that I, personally, had very little to lose in attempting to escape from Hell. I'd been sentenced to death. For me, that made whether or not to risk my life in an attempt to