The Service of the Sword

She paused again, this time obviously inviting a response, and Abigail cleared her throat.

'I'm not precisely a 'foreign princess,' Ma'am,' she said.

'Oh, yes, you are, Ms. Hearns,' Watson disagreed. 'I checked the official position of both the Foreign Office and the Navy. Your father is a head of state in his own right, despite his subordination to the Protector's overriding authority. That makes him a king, or at least a prince, and that makes you a princess.'

'I suppose, technically, it does,' Abigail admitted. 'But that's on Grayson, Ma'am. Not in the Star Kingdom.'

'That's a refreshing attitude.' Watson's tone added the unspoken rider 'if that's the way you really feel about it,' but she continued briskly. 'Unfortunately, not everyone is going to share it. So I thought I'd just take this opportunity to make certain that you didn't, in fact, expect any special treatment because of your birth. And to point out to you that you may find yourself laboring under some additional burdens if other members of the ship's company decide that getting on your good side could be a . . . career enhancing maneuver.'

The exec was carefully not, Abigail noticed, suggesting that those 'other members' might be found among her fellow middies. Nor, she realized a moment later, had Watson suggested that some of Gauntlet's more senior officers might share the same attitude, and she wondered if that was because the commander thought that some of them would.

'As long as you don't expect special treatment, and as long as we don't have anyone else trying to extend it to you anyway,' Watson continued, 'then I don't expect us to have any problems. Which would be a very good thing, Ms. Hearns. I realize you're actually in the Grayson Navy, not the Queen's Navy, but that makes your midshipwoman's cruise no less important to your career. I trust you fully understand that, as well?'

'Yes, Ma'am. I do.'

'Good!' Watson smiled briefly, then unfolded her arms and straightened. 'In that case, Chief Posner will see to it that you and your gear get safely stowed away in Snotty Row and you can report to Commander Abbott.'

' . . . so we told the Chief that no one had told us Engineering was off-limits.' Karl Aitschuler grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He sat at the table in the center of 'Snotty Row's' commons area, looking, Abigail thought, remarkably like her younger brother had looked at age twelve after putting something over on one of his nannies.

'And he actually believed that?' Shobhana Korrami shook her head in disbelief.

Shobhana was the other midshipwoman assigned to Gauntlet for this deployment, and Abigail had been delighted to see her. Although she never would have admitted it to anyone, Abigail had been more than a little nervous about the RMN's normal shipboard accommodations, especially for 'snotties.' Each midshipman or midshipwoman had his or her own private, screened-off sleeping area, but they shared all of their other facilities.

The degree to which male and female students had been thrown together at the Academy had come as a distinct shock to a Grayson girl, especially one of noble birth. Intellectually, though, at least Abigail had known it was coming, which had helped some. Still, she very much doubted she would ever possess the easy acceptance of such proximity which seemed to be part of the cultural baggage of her Manticoran and Erewhonese classmates. And even at its most . . . coeducational, the Academy had offered at least a little more privacy than was going to be possible here. Having at least one other female middy along would have been an enormous relief under any circumstances, but the fact that it was Shobhana made it even more of one. Abigail and the slightly taller, blond- haired, green-eyed Korrami had become close friends during the many extra hours they'd spent together under the tutelage of Senior Chief Madison, the senior Saganami Island unarmed combat instructor.

'Of course he believed it,' Karl said virtuously. 'After all, who has a more honest and trustworthy face than me?'

'Oh, I don't know,' Shobhana replied in thoughtful tones. 'Oscar Saint-Just?' she suggested after a moment with artful innocence.

Abigail giggled, then colored as Shobhana looked up at her with a triumphant grin. Shobhana knew how much it embarrassed Abigail whenever she giggled. It wasn't something a steadholder's daughter was supposed to do. Besides, she thought it made her sound like a twelve-year-old herself.

'I'll have you know,' the fourth person in the compartment said, 'that Oscar Saint-Just looked much more honest and trustworthy than our Aitschuler ever did.'

Abigail's temptation to giggle died abruptly. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was about Arpad Grigovakis' tone, but what should have been another jab of friendly harassment came out with an unpleasant, cutting edge in his well modulated, upperclass Manticoran accent.

Father Church had always taught that God offered good things to offset the bad in any person's life, if she only remained open to recognizing them when they came along. Abigail was willing to take that on faith, but she'd come to suspect that the reverse was also true. And Grigovakis' presence aboard Gauntlet as a counterbalance for Shobhana's seemed further evidence that her suspicions were well founded.

Midshipman Grigovakis was tall, well built, so handsome she felt certain biosculpt had played a major part in his regularity of feature, and unreasonably wealthy even by Manticoran standards. He was also an excellent student, judging by his grades and where he'd stood in their final class standings. Which, unfortunately, did not make him a pleasant human being.

'I'm sure that if Saint-Just did look more honest than me,' Karl said in a deliberately light tone, 'it was purely the result of sophisticated imagery management by Public Information.'

'Yeah, sure it was,' Shobhana agreed, throwing her weight into the effort to keep the banter flowing.

'Do you think it was, Abigail?' Grigovakis asked, flashing improbably perfect teeth at Abigail in a smile which, as always, carried that overtone of patronization.

'I wouldn't know,' she said as naturally as she could. 'I'm sure PubIn could have done it, if they'd wanted to. On the other hand, I imagine looking innocent and virtuous would have been almost as much of an advantage for a secret policeman on his way up as for a middy who got caught where he wasn't supposed to be. So maybe it was all natural protective coloration he'd acquired early.'

'I hadn't thought of that,' Grigovakis said with a chuckle, and gave her a nod that seemed to say 'My, how cleverfor a little neobarb girl like you!'

'I thought you probably hadn't,' she responded easily, and it was her tone's turn to say 'Because, of course, you weren't smartenough to.' A flicker of anger showed somewhere at the backs of his brown eyes, and she smiled sweetly at him.

'Yeah, well,' Karl said in the voice of someone searching diligently for a change of subject, 'innocent and virtuous or not, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to dinner tonight!' He shook his head.

'At least you won't have to face the Captain alone,' Shobhana pointed out. 'You'll have Abigail along. Just do what you always did at Duchess Harrington's dinners.'

'Like what?' Karl asked suspiciously.

'Hide behind her,' Shobhana said dryly.

'I did not!' Karl swelled with theatrical indignation. 'She just happened to be sitting between me and Her Grace!'

'Three different times?' Shobhana asked skeptically.

'You were invited to Harrington House three times?' Grigovakis asked, looking at Aitschuler in obvious surprise leavened by something suspiciously like respect.

'Well, yes,' Karl acknowledged with insufferable modesty.

'I'm impressed,' Grigovakis admitted, then shrugged. 'Of course, I wasn't in any of her sections, so nobody in my Tactical classes got invited. I hear the food was always good, though.'

'Oh, it was a lot better than just good,' Karl assured him. 'In fact, Mistress Thorne, her cook, makes a triple-fudge cake to die for!' He rolled his eyes in the epicurean bliss of memory.

'Yeah, but then she worked your ass off in the simulators,' Shobhana told Grigovakis with considerably less