Echoes Of Honor

must have taken some doing, since the ground car had brought her and her family straight here from the shuttle pad. Funny. I thought Honor was the only child who could teleport dirt into otherwise sterile environments!

Jeanette and Theresa—ten and nine and the biological daughters of Elaine and Katherine, respectively— followed just a bit more sedately. Jeanette had the same dark eyes as Rachel, but her hair was a bright chestnut, whereas Theresa’s resemblance to their oldest sister was almost eerie. Except that Theresa was neat as a new pin and obviously hadn’t made the acquaintance of Rachel’s secret dirt patch.

And finally, Benjamin reached back into the car and lifted out his youngest daughter. The baby of the family—for the moment; that status tended to be transitory in families the size people were raising on Grayson these days—she was only four years old and clearly another of Elaine’s. She was tall for her age, with hair much the same auburn as Miranda LaFollet’s, and huge sea-gray eyes, and a promise of elegant beauty already showed through her immature child’s bone structure. She buried her face shyly against her father when she saw all the strangers, but then she straightened up and demanded to be put down. Benjamin complied, and she reached out and grabbed one of Katherine’s hands tightly while she stared curiously at Allison.

'Our youngest,' Katherine said quietly, touching the child’s curly mop of hair with her free hand. 'Your daughter’s goddaughter.'

Allison had known who the little girl was, but her eyes misted for just a moment anyway. She stooped gracefully, making herself the same height as the child, cleared her throat, and held out her own hand.

'My name is Allison,' she said. 'What’s your name?'

The girl looked gravely at the offered hand for several seconds, then back at Allison’s face.

'Honor,' she said after a moment. Her Grayson accent softened the name, but she spoke clearly and distinctly. 'Honor Mayhew.'

'Honor,' Allison repeated, keeping the pain from her own voice, and smiled. 'That’s a very good name for someone, don’t you think?' Honor nodded wordlessly. Then she reached out and laid her hand in the one Allison still held extended. She looked up at Katherine and Elaine as if for approval, and Katherine smiled at her. She smiled back, then looked up at Allison.

'I’m four,' she announced.

'Four years old?' Allison asked.

'Uh-huh. And number four, too,' Honor told her with a grin.

'I see.' Allison nodded in grave approval and stood back fully erect, still holding Honor’s hand. Each of the adult Mayhews had corralled one of the older girls, and Allison dimpled as the major sighed in profound relief when MacGuiness, with the able assistance of Miranda and Farragut, began chivvying people up the steps.

* * *

'—so we were delighted by the invitation,' Benjamin said, leaning back in the comfortable armchair in the Harrington House library while he nursed a glass of Alfred Harrington’s prized Delacourt. Allison had decided to use the library instead of one of the grander, more formal sitting rooms the architects had provided. Aside from the huge Harrington seal inlaid into the polished hardwood floor, the library managed not to shout that it was part of a consciously designed 'great house,' and the titles on its shelves and the relatively simple but comfortable furnishings and efficient data retrieval systems made her think of Honor. Given her determination to keep the night informal, Clinkscales had withdrawn with a gracious smile to join his wives while the Harringtons entertained their guests. Now she and Alfred and the adult Mayhews sat in a comfortably arranged conversational group near the main data terminal, and Benjamin waved his wineglass gently.

'I won’t say we never get out—there’s always some damned state occasion or another—but just to visit someone?' He shook his head.

'Actually,' Katherine said with a wicked smile, 'we’re all rather hoping some of the other Keys decide to follow your example, Allison. Tester knows half the wives out there are hovering on the brink of death from pure envy over your ‘social coup’ right now!' Allison’s eyebrows rose, and Katherine chuckled warmly. 'Of course they are! You’re the first hostess outside the immediate Mayhew Clan or one of its core septs who’s had the sheer nerve to simply invite the Protector and his family over for a friendly family dinner in over two hundred T-years!'

'You’re joking... aren’t you?'

'Oh, no she isn’t,' Benjamin said. 'She checked the records. What was the last time, Cat?'

'Bernard VII and his wives were invited to a surprise birthday party by John Mackenzie XI on June 10, 3807—um, 1704 P.D.,' Katherine replied promptly. 'And the experience clearly made a profound impression on Bernard, because I found the actual menu, including the ice cream flavors, in his personal diary.'

'Two hundred and eight years?' Allison shook her head, unable to believe it. 'That long without an invitation for anything but a state occasion?'

'I wouldn’t imagine many people just screen Queen Elizabeth and ask her if she’d like to drop by for a beer, Alley,' Alfred observed dryly.

'No, but she has to get invitations at least a bit more frequently than once every two centuries!' Allison protested.

'Perhaps so,' Benjamin agreed. 'But here on Grayson, any informal or personal invitations traditionally go from the Protector to the steadholders, not the other way around.'

'Oh, dear. Have we violated protocol that grossly?' Allison sighed.

'You certainly have,' Benjamin replied. 'And a darned good thing, too.' Allison still looked a little concerned, but Elaine nodded in vigorous agreement with her husband even as she removed an old-fashioned printed book from Honor’s clutches before it could suffer serious damage.

'Benjamin warned Katherine and me both about protocol before he proposed,' Elaine said over her shoulder, leading an indignant Honor firmly back towards where the older Mayhew girls were engaged in a board game with Miranda LaFollet. Rachel had expressed some rather pointed reservations about her younger siblings’ level of skill, but she had a basically sunny disposition, and she’d let herself be talked into playing. By now, she’d forgotten to maintain her air of exaggerated patience and entered as fully into the play as Jeanette or Theresa while Farragut watched over them all from the back of Miranda’s chair.

The game was one Allison had never heard of before coming to Grayson, but like their peculiar sport of 'baseball,' it seemed ingrained into Graysons at an almost genetic level. At the moment, Miranda had just thrown the dice and finished moving her token—a scuffed and worn-out-looking antique shoe of cast silver—around the perimeter of the polished, inlaid wood board to a square labeled 'Ventnor Avenue,' and Theresa squealed in triumph.

'I’ve got a hotel! I’ve got a hotel!' she announced. 'Pay me, ’Randa!'

'I can see taxes are going up if you ever become Minister of Finance,' Miranda muttered, making all three sisters laugh, and began counting gaily-colored plaspaper strips of play money. Elaine parked Honor on a stool beside her, and Miranda looked up and then smiled at Honor. 'I think I’m in trouble here,' she confided. 'Want to help me and Farragut count all the money I owe your sister?'

Honor nodded vigorously, indignation suddenly forgotten, as Farragut flowed down to sit beside her stool and lean against her, and Elaine returned to join Katherine on the couch facing Allison across a coffee table of beaten copper.

'He warned us about all the protocol,' she went on, recapturing the thread of her earlier conversation, 'but I don’t think either of us really believed him. I know I didn’t, anyway! Did you, Cat?'

'Oh, intellectually, maybe,' Katherine said. 'But emotionally?' She shook her head and leaned back, putting an arm around her sister wife’s shoulders, and Elaine leaned comfortably against her. 'We both grew up on Grayson, of course, but I don’t think anyone who hasn’t experienced it from the inside can really understand just how... entrenched the protocol at Protector’s Palace really is. Not deep down inside.'

'We’ve had a thousand years to make it ironclad,' Benjamin said with a shrug. 'It’s like an unwritten constitution no one would dream of violating... except, thank God, for foreigners who don’t know any better. That’s one reason Honor was such a breath of fresh-filtered air.' He smiled a crooked smile of warm memory. 'She started out standing protocol on its head during the Masadan War, and she never really stopped. I think she was trying to learn to ‘be good’ about it, but she never quite got the knack, thank the Tester.'

Allison nodded, squeezing Alfred’s hand at the mention of her daughter’s name, then deliberately changed the subject.

'Given what you’ve just said, I really hate to mention anything which could be remotely construed as