In Enemy Hands

He understood the silent armsman's unspoken message. The corporal's presence was no mere formality; it was an everyday duty. And the Steadholder wasn't gone; she was merely absent, and when she returned, she would find her liegemen doing their duty. However long it took, however long he had to wait, Simon Mattingly would stand watch for her, and in so doing he would somehow keep her from being gone.

The captain came to a halt, and Mattingly snapped to attention.

'May I help you, Captain?' he asked crisply.

'Yes, Corporal. I wanted to speak to Steward MacGuiness.'

'Just a moment, Sir.'

Mattingly pressed the com button and waited. Several seconds ticked past, a far longer wait than normal, before a voice Greentree almost didn't recognize responded.

'Yes?' The one-word response came heavy and dull, dropping from the intercom like a stone, and Mattingly’s eyes flicked briefly to the captain.

'Captain Greentree would like to speak to you, Mac,' he said quietly. There was another moment of silence, and then the hatch slid open.

Mattingly said nothing more. He simply braced back to attention, and Greentree stepped past him into Lady Harrington's quarters. MacGuiness stood just inside the hatch opening into his pantry, and if his eyes were suspiciously swollen, Thomas Greentree was not about to comment on the fact. Unlike Mattingly, the stewards shoulders slumped, and for the first time in Greentree’s experience, he looked his chronological age. His arms hung awkwardly at his sides, as if the capable hands at their ends had somehow forgotten their utility; the lines prolong had kept age from etching into his face showed now, drawn deep by grief and worry; and the captain could actually feel the strength with which he made himself hope, made himself cling to the belief that there was some sort of news, as if by hoping hard enough he could make it so.

'Good morning, Sir,' he said huskily, trying to smile a welcome. 'Would you care for some refreshment? I'm...' His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. 'I'm sure the Commodore would want...'

His hands clenched and his voice died, and Greentree felt a deep, irrational flare of guilt. It was his expression which had cut MacGuiness off, and he knew it. He saw it in the way the steward's face tightened, the way his shoulders hunched as if to fend off some dreaded blow. But there was no way to spare him, and the captain inhaled sharply.

'Admiral Sorbanne has made it official,' he said, trying to find kindness by being brutally brief. 'As of this afternoon, Prince Adrian is officially overdue and presumed lost.' MacGuiness' face went white, and Greentree reached out to rest his right hand on the older man's shoulder. 'I'm sorry, MacGuiness,' he said much more softly. 'At the moment Lady Harrington is only missing. Until we get some report from the Peeps or from the League inspectors, that's all we know. I...' He paused and squeezed the steward's shoulder. 'I wanted you to hear it from me, not the rumor mill.'

'Thank you, Sir.' It came out in a whisper, and MacGuiness blinked hard as he looked around the empty cabin. 'It doesn't seem...' he began, then stopped, clenched his jaw, and turned his head away, concealing his face from the captain. 'Thank you for telling me, Sir,' he said in a strangely breathless voice. 'If you'll excuse me, I... I've got some things I have to take care...'

He pulled away from the hand on his shoulder and walked quickly into Lady Harrington's sleeping cabin. The hatch closed behind him, and Greentree gazed at it for several silent seconds, then sighed and turned back to the hatch. He was certain Mattingly must have guessed the reason for his visit to MacGuiness, but that wasn't going to spare Greentree the task of telling him, as well. Of being the official spokesman for the news none of Lady Harrington's people wanted to hear.

Behind him, in Honor Harrington's sleeping cabin, James MacGuiness sat in a chair, staring up at the gemmed scabbard of the Harrington Sword above the crystal cabinet which held the Star of Grayson and the Harrington Key.

He made no sound, and his body never moved, and the tears sliding down his face fell as silently as rain.

Honor sighed, looked up from the book she'd been pretending to read for the last hour or so, and rubbed her eyes wearily. She sat for a moment longer, then laid the book aside, swung her long legs off the narrow bunk, crossed to the center of the single large compartment she shared with Marcia McGinley, Geraldine Metcalf, and Sarah DuChene, and began a series of stretching exercises.

McGinley looked up from the chess problem she was currently working through. She watched Honor for a moment without speaking, then glanced at DuChene and raised an eyebrow. The astrogator nodded in answer to the unvoiced question, and the two of them rose to join Honor. She moved aside to give them a little more space, and the three of them circled about one another in the strangely graceful almost-dance the limited deck space enforced upon their exercises while Metcalf watched them from her own bed. There was no room for her to join them until one of them sat down, and she waited patiently, but Nimitz was unprepared to see a perfectly good, and stationary lap, go to waste. He launched himself from the foot of Honors bed to Metcalf's, and the tac officer chuckled as he sprawled across her legs and turned his belly fur up to be petted.

Honor watched the others from the comers of her eyes as she exercised and wished longingly for even a little more space. There wasn't really enough room for her to have gone through her training katas properly even if she'd been alone. With the others crowding in on her, she probably would have inflicted serious bodily injury on someone if she'd tried. Yet for all the inconvenience of being squeezed so tightly together, the part of her which eroded a little further every day under the dead weight of her helplessness was grateful the others were present. Not that any of them wanted to be here, but at least she and Nimitz didn't have to face the added burden of isolation which proper military courtesy would have imposed upon them in a larger vessel.

Despite the vast gulf between Honor's rank and theirs, McGinley, Metcalf, and DuChene were the next most senior female POWs, and it was impossible for the Peeps to offer any of their prisoners, even Honor, private quarters. Citizen Captain Bogdanovich had apologized on Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville's behalf for crowding the four of them together, but Count Tilly was only a battlecruiser. There was only so much space to go around, and however spartan, the compartment, intended by the ship's designers to provide berthing space for six junior officers, was preferable to a cell in the brig.

At first, Metcalf and DuChene had been more than a little uncomfortable at being thrown in with Honor... and Nimitz, of course. They'd seemed to feel it was somehow their fault that she'd been denied the privacy they were convinced she deserved, and the difference in their ranks had only made things worse. She'd done her best to disabuse them of the notion that they were to blame for anything that had happened, and McGinley’s presence had helped. Neither Metcalf nor DuChene had ever served with Honor before. Aside from the brief contacts they'd had during her visits aboard Prince Adrian, they'd been total strangers, but McGinley, as Honors operations officer, offered a sort of bridge. She held the same rank as the other two, yet she was also comfortable with her role as the second most important member of Honor's staff, and her existing working relationship with Honor had gradually extended itself to Metcalf and DuChene. Nothing could make their situation anything other than irregular and awkward, but the others had settled down after the first few days.

The difference in their ranks remained, of course, even in their new and strained circumstances. Honor was not simply their superior but their CO, the senior officer of all the Allied POWs, which required her to remain aloof from the others. She could never hope to be 'one of the girls,' but they'd fallen into an almost comfortable relationship, and Honor was glad, for she was self-honest enough to admit that in her current situation she needed any sense of stability she could get. Her contact with the other POWs was virtually nonexistent, and a sense of being disconnected, of never knowing exactly what was happening to people for whom she still felt responsible, added to the gnawing fear of the future which continued to eat at her.

Nimitz, on the other hand, seemed almost content... but appearances were deceiving. He couldn't hide his sense of being trapped from Honor, although his cheerful opportunism would have fooled anyone who lacked her link to his emotions. He'd gotten to know McGinley well aboard Alvarez; now he imposed shamelessly upon her for petting and grooming. In fact, he'd deigned to accept the ministrations of all three of Honors junior officers. She might almost have felt abandoned if she hadn't realized how he'd turned petting or playing with him into a sort of occupational therapy for them... and if his willingness to luxuriate unabashedly in their attentions hadn't been such a major factor in overcoming Metcalf's and DuChene's original discomfort.