preferred to act more discreetly, brokering deals as the power behind the throne, but it seemed the new earl was cut from different cloth.
Different cloth, perhaps, but with the same secrets in his vault and the same organization behind him, and narrow eyes began to gleam with ambition of their own as they visualized the ways those secrets could be used to ease other contenders aside. North Hollow let them contemplate the possibilities, then pointed at Elliott once more.
'Does that give you a feel for the sort of speech I need?'
'Uh, yes. Yes, My Lord. I think I understand.'
'How soon can you have a draft for me?'
'By tomorrow afternoon, My Lord?'
'Not soon enough. I'm due to take my seat in three days. Give it to me before you go home tonight.'
Elliott swallowed, then nodded.
'In that case, you'd probably better get on it. Osmond, I want you to draw up a list of reliable newsies. Set up an exclusive interview with someone we can trust to ask the right questions, then get to work on the answers. I want to go over the preliminary list with you, with dossiers on each possibility, by tomorrow morning.'
'Of course, My Lord.'
North Hollow nodded dismissal but waved Sakristos back into her chair when she rose with the two men. Osmond and Elliott filed out of the office without seeming to notice, and Sakristos crossed her legs once more.
The door closed, and North Hollow smiled at his fathers chief dirty tricks specialist.
'Yes, My Lord?' she said politely.
'Pavel. It's still Pavel to you... Elaine.'
'Of course, Pavel.' Sakristos smiled back, but it was hard, even for her, for she knew the new earl's reputation. His father had promised to remove her name from his vault before he passed it on—that had been part of the quid pro quo that ensured her loyalty—but Pavel's use of the name 'Elaine' proved he hadn't. She'd been afraid of that, given the suddenness of the old earl's death, and a shiver ran through her at the confirmation of her worst fear. Dimitri Young had been too wrecked by dissipation to do more than ogle her, but Pavel's smile told her he wanted more of her than the last earl had... and he had the weapons to demand it. He could do far worse than ruin her career; he could send her to prison for so long not even prolong would preserve her looks until she was released.
'Good.' North Hollows smile turned ugly for just a moment, touched with a greasy hunger that revolted her, then vanished. 'At the moment, however, I have another job for you. I've got some... unfinished business with the Navy, and you're going to help me take care of it.'
'If you wish, Pavel.' she said as coolly as she could. 'From a political viewpoint, however, Mr. Osmond would—'
'I'm not thinking about politics,' he interrupted. 'You're my direct action specialist, aren't you, 'Georgia?'' She could almost taste the gloating pleasure with which he used her assumed name, but she forced her expression to remain politely attentive.
'Yes, My Lord, I am,' she said calmly.
'Well, that's what I want. Direct—very direct—action. Now, here's what I have in mind. First—'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Honor's gravity booties shuffled on the deck, and she wore a huge smile as she turned in place with the anchor end of Nimitz's tether. The 'cat had always loved zero gee; now he circled her on buzzing suit thrusters, chittering with delight over his helmet com. Her earbug carried his comments to her, but she didn't really need it. The sheer exuberance echoing through their link was far more eloquent.
His headlong progress slowed abruptly as he snapped his long, sinuous body end-for-end and shot up in a perfect loop. Paul's 'Uncle Henri' must be a genius, she thought, listening to the spatter of applause from their audience. He'd configured the thrusters' computers to react to every range of movement possible to a 'cat; all she'd had to do was watch Nimitz and figure out how to coordinate his normal zero-gee aerobatics with the suit's greater capacity.
He flowed through a slow roll and altered direction, and she ducked as he buzzed her head. She felt the wash of his thrusters as he passed and sent a flash of warning disapproval over their link. He hadn't quite grasped the need to respect his thruster safety zone, but she felt his repentance and moderated the strength of her scold. And, she reminded herself, at least the thrusters' minuscule size gave them a much smaller danger zone than a full-size suit's.
He executed another loop, then launched himself straight toward her, and the thrusters died as his four rearmost limbs reached for her padded shoulder. She staggered under the impact—even in free fall, he retained the momentum and inertia of his nine-plus standard kilos, plus the suit's mass—but, over all, she was impressed by now gently he'd landed. He was a natural, which probably shouldn't have been a surprise, given his species' treetop environment on Sphinx. Not that she intended to trust him without a tether outside the safe confines of a ship any time soon.
She toggled the remote hand unit to lock the thrusters on safe and reached up to unseal his helmet, but he rose high enough to evade her hand and bleeked reprovingly at her. His gauntleted true-hands found the pressure releases, and she heard the soft 'shussh' of an opening seal. He let the armorplast bowl hang down his spine and groomed his whiskers fastidiously.
'Good job, Stinker.' She drew a celery stalk from her belt purse, and he stopped grooming and seized it greedily, happier than even his aerobatics had made him. It wasn't a case of response-reward training—Nimitz had no need for that sort of thing—but he'd certainly earned his treat.
Gravity returned suddenly. Not the 1.35g of her home-world, but the much lighter gravity of Grayson, and she looked over her unencumbered shoulder. Captain Brentworth stood beside the gym's control panel, grinning at her.
'Agile little devil, isn't he?'
'He is that,' Honor agreed. She reached up and ran a fingertip over one tufted ear, and Nimitz paused— briefly—in his chewing to push back against her touch. Then he got back to important matters with a juicy crunch.
Honor laughed and lifted him down into her arms. Skin-suits might be far lighter than older styles of vac gear, but their internalized storage vacuoles made them much more massive than they looked, and Nimitz's suited weight was too much for comfort even in this gravity. The 'cat didn't care about the change; he only curled comfortably in her embrace and clutched his celery tight, and her smile turned into a grin. Nimitz was comfortable enough with the suit now, but he'd bristled indignantly when she first introduced him to the plumbing connections Paul had warned her of.
She started to bend over to remove the gravity booties, but one of Brentworth's crew was already there. The barely postadolescent electronics tech went down on one knee, offering the other knee as a raised platform, and she smiled as she lifted one foot to the proffered support. He unsealed the booty and laid it aside, then repeated the process on her other foot.
'Thank you,' she said, and the youngster—he couldn't have been over twenty T-years old—blushed.
'My pleasure, My Lady,' he got out, and she managed not to chuckle at the near-awe in his tone. Not that she'd been particularly amused when she first encountered the reverence in which Brentworth's crew held her. They watched her almost worshipfully, with a deference they normally would have offered only to the Protector himself. It had annoyed her immensely—not least because she hadn't had a clue how she should react. But there was nothing sycophantic about it, so she'd settled for just being herself, however they cared to treat her, and it seemed to have been the right tack. Awe had turned into something much more like respect, and they no longer looked as if they wanted to genuflect whenever they met her in a passage.
Still, she thought, it might have been easier all around if she weren't the only woman in
