Ashes Of Victory

escape a rather simple decision.'

'Dame Honor—!' Cromarty began, but she shook her head again.

'If you want to reward people who truly demonstrated valor above and beyond the call of duty, you ought to be giving any medals to Horace Harkness,' she said flatly. 'Unlike myself, he faced only incarceration, not execution, when we reached Hell, and he knew it. But he also chose, entirely without orders, to pretend to defect. He knowingly risked virtually certain execution if he was caught in order to break into the central computers of Cordelia Ransom's flagship, arrange all the critical details of our escape to the planetary surface, and completely destroy Tepes to cover our escape. I submit to you, Your Grace, that if you and Her Majesty want to award a PMV to anyone, Harkness is the most deserving individual you could possibly find.'

'But—' Cromarty began again, and she shook her head once more, more firmly than before.

'No, Your Grace,' she said, and there was no give in her voice at all. 'I will not accept the PMV for this.'

'Honor!' Henke burst out, unable to restrain herself any longer. 'You never mentioned anything like this on the trip from Grayson!'

'Because it wasn't important.'

'The hell it wasn't! They're talking about the Medal of Valor, for God's sake! You don't just tell Parliament `Thanks but no thanks' when they offer you the Star Kingdom's highest award for valor!'

'I'm afraid Dame Honor doesn't agree with you, Mike,' Elizabeth said. Her tone was on the tart side, but there was respect in it, as well, and she gazed at Honor with measuring eyes even as she spoke to her cousin. 'In point of fact, when we first sent her word that Allen was planning to move the award, she was quite firm about rejecting it.'

'Firm?' Henke echoed. 'What d'you mean, firm?'

'I mean she offered to resign from my Navy if I persisted,' Elizabeth said in a dust-dry voice. Honor felt Henke's shock, and her own cheekbones heated just a bit as she met her Queen's eyes, but Elizabeth chuckled after a moment. 'They do say Sphinxians are stubborn,' she murmured, 'and I've heard the same about Graysons. I suppose I should have known what would happen if anyone was crazy enough to combine the two in one package!'

'Your Majesty, I mean no disrespect,' Honor said. 'And I'm deeply honored to know that you and Duke Cromarty truly believe I deserve the PMV. The fact that you do is something I'll always treasure, truly. But I don't deserve it. Not for this. And the PMV is too important to me for me to do anything that might, well... cheapen it, if you'll forgive my choice of words. It... wouldn't be right.'

'Dame Honor, you are an unnatural woman,' Elizabeth III said severely, unaware her cousin had used exactly the same words. 'Or perhaps you're not. Perhaps I've simply spent too much time surrounded by politicians and power mongers. But I doubt very much that there are two women in the Star Kingdom who would turn down the PMV when both her Queen and her Prime Minister insist she take it.' She snorted. 'Of course, it might be wiser for me not to bet any money on that belief. After all, up until last month, I would've said there wasn't one woman who'd turn it down!'

'Your Maj—'

'It's all right, Dame Honor.' Elizabeth sighed, waving a hand. 'You win. We can hardly march you out into the Crown Chancellery at pulser point and make you accept it. Think of what a PR disaster that would be! But you do realize that if you persist in turning down the PMV we're not going to let you overturn our other plans, don't you?'

'Other plans?' Honor repeated cautiously, and Elizabeth grinned like a treecat in a celery patch.

'Nothing too complicated,' she reassured her guest. 'It's just that, as I explained, my slap on the Opposition's wrist over your exclusion from the Lords lost much of its point when you turned up alive. So since I was the one who took your title away, I thought I should be the one to replace it... and—' her eyes glittered '—give those self-serving cretins a kick in the ass they'll be years recovering from!'

'I don't understand, Your Majesty,' Honor said, and her tone showed true alarm for the first time. There was too much glee in the Queen's emotions, too great a sense of having found a way to simultaneously drub the Opposition and mousetrap Honor into accepting what Elizabeth clearly considered to be her 'due.'

'As I said, it's not complicated.' Elizabeth's 'catlike grin intensified. 'You're no longer Countess Harrington, and now that I've become more familiar with Grayson, I realize that creating you that in the first place was really a bit inappropriate, considering the difference in the precedence of a countess and a steadholder. Protector Benjamin has never complained about the unintentional insult we offered one of his great nobles by equating the two titles, but I'd be surprised if he doesn't harbor at least a little resentment over it, and it's never a good idea to risk potential friction with one's allies in the middle of a war. So I've decided to correct my original error.'

'Correct—?' Honor gazed at her Queen in horror.

'Absolutely. The Crown has seen fit to urge the House of Commons, and the House of Commons has seen fit to approve, your creation as Duchess Harrington.'

'Duchess?!' Honor gurgled.

'Correct,' Elizabeth assured her. 'We've carved a rather nice little duchy out of the Westmount Crown Reserve on Gryphon for you. There aren't any people living there right now — it was part of the Reserve, after all — but there are extensive timber and mineral rights. There are also several sites which would be suitable for the creation of luxury ski resorts. In fact, we've had numerous inquiries about those sites from the big ski consortiums for years, and I imagine several of them will be quite eager to negotiate leases from you, especially when they remember the role you played in the Attica Avalanche rescue operations. And I understand you enjoy sailing, so we drew your borders to include a moderately spectacular stretch of coast quite similar to your Copper Walls back on Sphinx. I'm sure you could put in a nice little marina. Of course, the weather on Gryphon can be a bit extreme, but I don't suppose you can have everything.'

'But... but Your Majesty, I can't— That is, I don't have the time or the experience to—'

'Now that, Your Grace, will be quite enough,' Elizabeth said, and for the first time, her voice was stern, the voice of a monarch. Honor closed her mouth with a click, and Elizabeth nodded.

'Better,' she said. 'Much better. Because this time, you're wrong. You do have the experience for the job. My God, Honor,' it was the first time she'd ever addressed Honor solely by her given name, but Honor was too stunned even to notice, 'you've got more experience than most of the people who are already dukes or duchesses! There's not a single Manticoran noble who's ever enjoyed the sort of authority and power a steadholder wields — Elizabeth the First saw to that four hundred years ago!— and you've been handling that job for ten T-years now. After that, this should be a piece of cake!'

'Perhaps so, but you know I'm right when I say I won't have time to see to my responsibilities properly,' Honor rejoined. 'I've been more fortunate than any woman deserves to have Howard Clinkscales to rely on back on Grayson, but now you're talking about piling a second set of responsibilities on top of my duties as Steadholder Harrington! No serving officer has the time to handle responsibilities like this the way they should be handled!'

'Ah?' Elizabeth cocked her head. 'Should I take that up with Earl White Haven?'

'No! I didn't mean—' Honor chopped herself off and inhaled deeply. Elizabeth had no right resorting to that particular argument, she thought, but there was no way she cared to explain why that was to her Queen.

'I know what you meant, Honor,' Elizabeth said quietly. 'And, frankly, I'm not at all surprised you feel that way. It's one of the things I like about you. And it is customary for the great peers to devote their full attention to overseeing their lands. But there have always been exceptions, just as there have been in Earl White Haven's case. Hamish Alexander is far too valuable to the Navy for us to have him sitting around gathering dust running his earldom, and that's why he has a steward — like your Clinkscales — to execute his policies in his absence. The same arrangement can certainly be made for you. Indeed, I thought your friend Willard Neufsteiler might do nicely, if you can spare him from Sky Domes.'

Honor blinked, surprised that Elizabeth was sufficiently well informed to know about her relationship with Neufsteiler, but the Queen continued with calm assurance.

'Whatever it takes, we'll work it out. Of course, it will probably help that you're going to be stuck here in the Star Kingdom for at least a T-year for medical treatment. That should keep you close enough to oversee the