Worlds of Honor

lives. I know of no more than five triple-hands of hands of People who are presently bonded to humans. That is not many against all the numbers of humans on this world . . . and so far, allof the People to bond have done so here, on this world. Less than a single hand of us have been to any of the other worlds the humans own, and there are so manyhumans. Those of the People who have bonded tell tales of world upon world, hands of hands of hands of them. And of all those worlds, ourhumans claim only three. We do not understand how their clans and those of all those other worlds meet and communicate, or how they resolve differences, but we know there is much contact between their worlds . . . and that not all humans regard us as ourhumans do. 

<No, Seeker of Dreams. There is too much we do not yet know or understand. Bright Water's elders were wrong to oppose Climbs Quickly's bond with Death Fang's Bane, yet there was also wisdom in their caution. We have begun the task of building our bridge to the humans, and the work goes well, if slowly. Yet the bridge remains fragile still, and will for many more turnings. Let us not race out onto the branch only to discover it will not yet bear our weight, kitten. Do you agree, or—> a devilish gleam of humor flickered in her mind glow <—must I . . . convince you to see this as I see it?> 

<Ah, no, Memory Singer,> Seeker of Dreams said very carefully.

<Good. In that case, let us consider instead how best to convince your elders to agree gracefully to that which you desire.> 

THREE

Princess Adrienne sat with her feet tucked up under her in the armchair in her suite aboard HMS King Roger I while she gazed sightlessly out the armorplast view port. The suite's dimmed lights made the star-spangled view still more glorious, yet she scarcely even noticed it as her mind drifted through channels which had become far too well worn.

She'd always disliked the names tradition insisted upon hanging on each new royal yacht. This one, for example. It sounded . . . arrogant to name a ship after her own great-great-great-grandfather. Of course, the choice hadn't been made by the royal family—the Navy had picked the name when the Admiralty built the Roger as its predecessor's replacement—and no one else seemed to object. But she couldn't help it.

Maybe it's just because he was King, and Daddy is King, and I don't wantto be Queen, but they're going to make me. I ought to just let them crown me, then abdicate. That'd fix them all! 

She toyed with the notion, visualizing the consternation. The fact that she was an only child and that her widower father had steadfastly refused to remarry had always made the political establishment nervous about the succession. It wasn't as if she didn't have a dozen cousins in varying degrees who could step into the breach, but the Star Kingdom's population had developed an almost frightening veneration for the House of Winton . . . and she was the last member of the family's senior branch.

Of course, I've read great-great-grandmother's personal journals, she thought. That has to make a difference in how much veneration Ifeel for the monarchy. I wonder how many people realize the Crown was supposed to be mostly a figurehead? A puppet for the House of Lords? Well, they got more than they figured on with Grandma Beth! 

She grinned, but then the grin faded as she remembered what her ancestress' successful Constitution building had dumped on her own plate. Damn it! She was sure there were thousands of people simply dying to be King or Queen! Why couldn't she just pick one of them and pass the job to someone who actually wanted it?

She sighed and picked a bit of fluff off her bathrobe. She held it up on her opened palm, then puffed a breath of air at it and watched it sail off into the unknown. She lost sight of it almost instantly in the dimly lit cabin, and a sudden spasm of hurt lashed her as it brought back another day when a ten-year-old Adrienne had watched her mother's ship depart HMS Hephaestus for Gryphon. She'd been supposed to accompany the Queen Consort, but something had come up. Some minor detail which had derailed her own schedule. And so she'd simply accompanied her mother up to the space station to wave goodbye and then watched the yacht—that one had been named Queen Elizabeth I–until it vanished into the immensity of space, just as the bit of fluff had vanished.

And like the bit of fluff, she had never seen it—or her mother—again.

She bit her lip hard, as much in anger for letting memory ambush her as in anguish at reliving it, and forced it down, down into the deep places in her mind. It subsided sullenly, like a hungry neoshark, sinking back into the shadows but never truly gone. She felt it there, circling at the core of her, waiting for another opportunity to erupt from the depths and rend her afresh. And it would attack again. She knew it would.

She drew a deep breath and shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe, and then, slowly, she forced herself to relax and draw happier memories to the surface. Memories of her mother before her death . . . of her father before her mother's death.

A great many people had been astonished when Crown Prince Roger wedded Solange Chabala. Not by the fact that she wasn't a noblewoman, for the Constitution specifically required the Heir to marry a commoner, but rather because she was so . . . well, plain. With all the Crown's subjects to choose from, surely Prince Roger (who possessed the Winton handsomeness in full measure) could have picked someone who stood more than a hundred and fifty-one centimeters and had a face that was more than merely . . . comfortable looking. Oh, in the proper lighting little Princess Solange could pass for pretty, but she'd been undeniably plump, and she'd never managed to cultivate the air of boredom which was any proper aristocrat's birthright. Instead, she'd bustled, and she'd smiled incessantly, and she'd always been doing something, and somehow, without anyone's realizing it was happening, she had gathered the entire Star Kingdom to her heart and it had discovered that, without quite knowing how, it had learned to love her.

As Adrienne had. And her father. Indeed, King Roger had adored his Queen, and she had exercised a profound impact upon him. In his youth, Prince Roger had been the darling of the Liberals and the despair of his parents, for he'd been strongly attracted to the assertion that monarchies were obsolete. That argument had been around almost since the beginning of the Star Kingdom, of course, but in the last thirty or forty T-years the Liberal 'faxes had begun pointing to the growing Republic of Haven and its daughter colonies as the way of the future. Not even the discovery of the Manticore Wormhole Junction forty-five T-years before Adrienne's birth seemed likely to allow the Star Kingdom to close the vast gap in wealth and power between it and the Republic, and 'the dead hand of monarchy' had been a favorite Liberal explanation for why that was so. For herself, Adrienne had been impressed by the fact that none of the Liberal Party's aristocratic members had ever been heard to comment on 'the dead hand of the nobility' or to offer up their own privilege and wealth upon the altar of economic equality, universal suffrage, and democracy. But Roger had found much of the Liberal platform very appealing, although he hadn't quite known what to do about the Liberal notion that the monarchy, as the first, most fundamental barrier to the implementation of their sweeping changes, must be removed.

Until Princess Solange arrived, that was. Even now, with all the hurt and all the pain since, Adrienne had to smile whenever she thought of how her mother's impact had shaken Manticoran political circles. She was energetic, kind, caring, cheerful . . . and implacable as a Sphinx glacier. Her Gryphon yeoman background had gifted her with a sturdy sense of independence, a fundamental distrust of aristocrats who kept talking about how much they wanted to 'help the common man,' and a deep sense of trust in the monarchy. It never occurred to her that the Crown might be anything but the commoners' natural ally against the wealth and power of the aristocracy—