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  "Sorry." Her soprano was rusty, and she cleared her throat. "I guess I was wool-gathering," she said more briskly, her voice determinedly normal. "But be that as it may, Andrew, it doesn't change facts. As long as they don't break any laws, people have a right to say whatever they want."

  "But they're not even from the steading, My Lady," LaFollet began stubbornly, "and..."

  She laughed softly and interrupted him with a gentle poke in the ribs.

  "Don't worry so much! My skin's thick enough to put up with honestly expressed opinions, even from outsiders, however little I may care for them. And if I started using my security people to break heads or quash dissent, I'd only prove I was exactly what they say I am, now wouldn't I?"

  The major looked mulish, but he closed his mouth, unable to dispute her argument. It was just that it was so cursed unfair. He wasn't supposed to know the Steadholder’s treecat let her sense the emotions of others. He hadn't quite figured out why she was so intent on hiding that from everyone, though he had more than sufficient reasons of his own to agree with her. Even on Grayson, whose people had reason to know better, humans persistently underestimated Nimitz's intelligence. They thought of him as some exceptionally clever pet, not as a person, and his ability to warn the Steadholder of hostile intent had already proved a life-saving secret weapon.

  As far as Andrew LaFollet was concerned, that was ample reason to keep it secret, yet no one could serve her as closely as he did without realizing the truth. But he'd also realized she could sense only emotions... and that she thought no one knew how badly she'd been hurt. That none of her armsmen, or even MacGuiness, knew about the nights she wept with quiet desperation. But all Harrington Houses security systems reported to Andrew LaFollet, and he knew. He was sworn to protect her—to die for her—if that was what it took, yet there were things no one could protect her from, unless that someone was Nimitz, and to hear bigoted pigs, deliberately shipped into Harrington Steading to harass her, rail at her and denounce her when she'd given so much, lost so much, filled him with rage.

  Yet she was not only his Steadholder, she was right. And even if she hadn't been those things, he refused to add disputes with her own armsmen to all the things already weighing down upon her, so he closed his mouth on counter-arguments and simply nodded.

  Her small smile thanked him, and he smiled back, grateful once again that Nimitz wasn't a telepath. After all, what the Steadholder didn't know wouldn't upset her, and Colonel Hill's intelligence net had identified the agitators most likely to inveigh against her for the "lechery" of her unmarried affair with Paul Tankersley. They were the truly dangerous ones, he thought, for the sanctity of marriage, and the sinfulness of unmarried sex, were part of Grayson's religious bedrock. Most (though certainly not all) Graysons reserved their contempt for the man when such things occurred, for female births outnumbered male on Grayson by three to one, and Grayson was a hard world, where survival and religion alike had evolved an iron code of responsibility. A man who engaged in casual dalliance violated his overriding obligation to provide for and protect a woman who gave him her love and might bear his children. But it wasn't entirely one-sided, and even the Graysons who most respected the Steadholder were often uncomfortable over her relationship with Tankersley. The majority of them seemed to accept the self-evident fact that Manticorans had different standards and that, by those standards, neither she nor Tankersley had done wrong, but LaFollet suspected most of them did their best not to think about it at all. And he more than suspected that the handful of fanatics who hated her for simply being what she was knew it, too. Sooner or later one of them would use it against her where she could hear it, and the major knew how cruelly that would wound her. Not just politically, but inside, where the loss of the man she loved had cut so deep into her soul.

  And so he didn't argue with her. Instead, he made a mental note to double-check the agitator files with Hill for the names of the true scumbags. No doubt Lady Harrington would be furious with him for ... reasoning with those individuals, but he was prepared to risk much more than that to shut the mouths of the only filth who might truly hurt her.

  Honor's eyebrows lowered for just a moment as her chief armsman met her gaze. There was something going on behind those innocent gray eyes, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She made a mental note to keep an eye on him, then put the thought aside and set Nimitz back in his own chair so she could return her attention to her lunch.

  Her afternoon's schedule was crowded, and she'd wasted enough time feeling sorry for herself. The sooner she finished eating, the sooner she could be about it, she told herself firmly, and picked up her fork.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Honor stopped dead on the path as Nimitz catapulted abruptly from her shoulder. She watched him vanish into the Formal garden's shrubbery like a streak of cream-and-gray smoke, then closed her eyes and twitched a smile as she followed him through flowering masses of Terran azalea and Sphinxian spike-blossom via their link.

  Andrew LaFollet stopped when his Steadholder did, and his eyebrows rose as he noted Nimitz's absence. Then he shook his head in wry understanding, gave their peaceful surroundings a careful scan out of sheer, instinct-level habit, and folded his arms in patient silence.

  On most worlds, a garden such as this would have included at least some local flora, but no native plants, however beautiful, were allowed on Harrington House's grounds. Graysons vegetation was dangerous to humans, especially to those who'd grown up on safer worlds, and none of the Manticore Binary System’s three habitable worlds had toxic-level concentrations of heavy metals. That meant Honor lacked even the limited tolerance for them which adaptive evolution had given Grayson's natives, and the people who'd planned Harrington House had declined to expose her, or Nimitz, to them. Instead, they'd gone to the expensive (and clandestine) effort of discovering which of her home world's flowering plants she most loved and imported them, but most of the garden's contents were pure Old Earth species.

  As with flora, so with fauna. The grounds were a botanical and zoological garden of Terran and Sphinxian species, crafted specifically for her pleasure, and she'd been both touched by the gesture and shocked by its cost. If she'd known what was planned, she would have fought the entire project, but she'd found out too late and Protector Benjamin himself had ordered its construction. Under the circumstances, she could only be grateful, and not just for her own sake. Nimitz was smarter than most two-footed people, and, despite his inability to utter anything like human speech, he understood more Standard English than the majority of Manticoran adolescents, but concepts like "arsenic poisoning" and "cadmium" were a bit much to expect him to grasp. She was confident she'd convinced him danger lurked beyond Harrington Houses dome, yet whether or not he truly understood the nature of the risk was far more problematical, and the garden was his playground even more than hers.

  Now she located a bench by touch and sank down onto it. LaFollet moved to stand beside her, but she hardly noticed as she sat, eyes still closed, and tracked Nimitz through the undergrowth. Treecats were deadly hunters, the top of Sphinx's arboreal food chain, and she felt his happy sparkle of predatory pleasure. He had no need to catch his own food, yet he liked to keep his skills sharp, and she shared his zest as he slunk silently through the shadows.

  The mental image of a Sphinxian chipmunk (which looked nothing at all like the Old Earth animal of the same name) came to her suddenly. The cat projected it with astonishing clarity, obviously by intent, and she watched as if through his eyes as the chipmunk sat near its hole, gnawing at a near-pine pod's heavy husk. A gentle, artificially induced breeze stirred the foliage, but the chipmunk was upwind, and Nimitz slithered noiselessly closer. He crept right up to it and hovered, sixty centimeters of needle-fanged predator perched at the small, oblivious animal's shoulder, and Honor felt his uncomplicated delight at his own success. Then he stretched out a wiry forelimb, extended one true-hands long, delicate finger, and jabbed the chipmunk with a lancet claw.<
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  The near-pine pod went flying as the little beast leapt straight up into the air. It whirled in astonishment, then squeaked, paralyzed by terror as it found itself face-to-face with its most terrible natural enemy. It quivered, trembling in every muscle, and then Nimitz bleeked cheerfully and batted it nose-over-tail with the same true-hand. The blow was far gentler than it seemed, but the chipmunk wailed as shock broke the spell of terror. It rolled madly to its feet, and all six limbs blurred as it darted for its hole. It vanished down its burrow with another wailing squeak, and Nimitz sat up on his haunches with a chitter of amused satisfaction.

  He padded over to the hole and sniffed at it, but he had no more intention of digging his quivering victim out than he'd ever had of killing it. The object, this time, had been to make sure he still could, not to deplete the garden's livestock, and he flirted his prehensile tail as he sauntered back to rejoin his person.

  "You're a pretty terrible person, aren't you, Stinker?" Honor greeted him as he emerged.

  "Bleek!" he replied cheerfully, and hopped up into her lap. LaFollet snorted, but the cat ignored the armsman's amusement as unworthy of notice. He examined his claws and flicked away a stray clot of earth, then sat up and groomed his whiskers at Honor with insufferable smugness.

  "That chipmunk never did anything to you," she pointed out, and he shrugged. Treecats killed only out of necessity, but they were hunters who took an undeniable pleasure in the stalk, and Honor often wondered if that was why they got along so well with humans. But however that might have been, Nimitz clearly cataloged his hapless prey as "edible, chipmunk, one," and any trauma it might have suffered was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

  Honor shook her head at him, then grimaced as her chrono beeped. She glanced at it and grimaced again, harder, before she picked Nimitz up and set him back on her shoulder. He rested one strong, delicate true-hand on her head for balance and chittered a question at her, and she shrugged.

  "We're late, and Howard will kill me if I miss this meeting."

  "Oh, I doubt the Regent would do anything quite that extreme, My Lady." Honor chuckled at LaFollet's reassurance, but Nimitz only sniffed his disdain for the importance humanity in general, and his person in particular, attached to the concepts of "time" and "punctuality." He recognized the futility of protest, however, and settled down, sinking the claws of his true-feet and hand-paws securely into her vest as she moved off.

  Honor wore reasonably traditional Grayson costume, and her long-legged stride swirled her skirts as she strode towards the East Portico. LaFollet, like most Graysons, was shorter than she, and he had to trot to keep up. She supposed it made him look undignified and spared him a silent apology for making him scurry, but she didn't slow down. She truly was running late, and they had a long way to go.

  Harrington House was entirely too large, luxurious, and expensive for her own taste, but she hadn't been consulted when it was built. The Graysons had intended it as a gift to the woman who'd saved their planet, which meant she couldn't complain, and she'd come to a slightly guilty acceptance of its magnificence. Besides, as Howard Clinkscales was fond of pointing out, it hadn't been built solely for her. Indeed, most of its imposing space was given up to the administrative facilities of Harrington Steading, and she had to admit that there seemed to be precious little room to spare.

  They emerged from the garden, and she dropped to a more decorous pace as the permanent sentry at the East Portico, Harrington House's main public entrance, snapped to attention and saluted. Honor suppressed a naval officer's automatic reflex to return the salute and settled for a nodded reply, then swept up the steps with LaFollet just as a fierce-faced, white-haired man emerged from the guarded door and gave his own chrono a harassed glance. He looked up at the sound of her foot on the steps of native stone, and his scowl vanished into a smile as he came down them to meet her.

  "I'm sorry I'm late, Howard," she said contritely. "We were on our way when Nimitz spotted a chipmunk."

  Howard Clinkscales' smile turned into a grin any urchin might have envied, and he shook a finger at the cat. Nimitz flicked his ears in impudent reply, and the Regent chuckled. Once upon a time Clinkscales would have been far less at ease with an alien creature, not to mention horrified by the very notion of a woman's wearing the steadholder's key, but those days were gone, and his eyes gleamed as he looked at Honor.

  "Well, of course, My Lady, if it was important no apologies are necessary. On the other hand, we are supposed to have the paperwork ready when Chancellor Prestwick comes to confirm Council's approval."

  "But it's also supposed to be a 'surprise announcement,'" Honor said plaintively. "Doesn't that mean you can cut me some slack?"

  "It's supposed to be a surprise to your steaders and the other Keys, My Lady, not to you. So don't try to wiggle out of it by wheedling me. You haven't acquired the proper knack for it, anyway."

  "But you keep telling me to learn to compromise. How am I supposed to do that if you won't compromise with me?"

  "Hah!" Clinkscales snorted, yet they both knew her whimsical plaint had its serious side. She was uncomfortable with the autocratic power she exercised as a steadholder, yet she'd often thought it was fortunate things were set up as they were. It might be alien to the traditions under which she'd been reared, but, then, she would have been supremely unsuited to a government career back in the Star Kingdom, even without the unpleasant experiences the rough and tumble of Manticore's partisan strife had inflicted upon her.

  She'd never really considered it before she was pitchforked into the steadholdership, but once she'd come face-to-face with her role as one of Grayson's autocratic Keys she'd recognized the true reason she'd always disliked politics. She'd been trained all her life to seek decision, to identify objectives and do whatever it took to attain them, knowing that any hesitation would only cost more lives in the end. The politicians constant need to rethink positions and seek compromise was foreign to her, and she suspected it would be to most military officers. Politicos were trained to think in those terms, to cultivate less-than-perfect consensuses and accept partial victories, and it was more than mere pragmatism. It also precluded despotism, but people who fought wars preferred direct, decisive solutions to problems, and a Queen’s officer dared settle only for victory. Gray issues made warriors uncomfortable, and half-victories usually meant they'd let people die for too little, which undoubtedly explained their taste for autocratic systems under which people did what they were told to do without argument.

  And, she thought wryly, it also explained why military people, however noble their motives, made such a botch of things when they seized political power in a society with nonautocratic traditions. They didn't know how to make the machine work properly, which meant, all too often, that they wound up smashing it in pure frustration.

  She shook free of her own thoughts and gave Clinkscales a smile.

  "All right, be that way. But watch yourself, Howard! Someone has to make that speech to the Ladies' Gardening Guild next week."

  Clinkscales blanched, and his expression was so horrified Honor surprised herself with a gurgle of laughter. Even LaFollet chuckled, though his face went instantly blank when Clinkscales glanced at him.

  "I'll, ah, bear that in mind, My Lady," the Regent said after a moment. "In the meantime, however...?" He waved at the steps, and Honor nodded. They climbed the last few meters to the portico together, with LaFollet at their heels, and she started to say something else to Clinkscales, then froze. Her eyes narrowed and took on the hardness of brown flint, and Nimitz gave an ear-flattened, sibilant hiss. The Regent blinked in surprise, then grunted like an irate boar as he followed the direction of her gaze.

  "I'm sorry, My Lady. I'll have them removed immediately," he said harshly, but Honor shook her head. It was a sharp, angry gesture, and her nostrils flared, but her fists unclenched. She reached up to stroke Nimitz, her gaze never moving from the fifty or so men gathered just beyond the East Gate, and her soprano
was toneless when she spoke.

  "No, Howard. Leave them alone."

  "But, My Lady...!" Clinkscales exclaimed.

  "No," she repeated more naturally. She glared at the demonstrators a moment longer, then shook herself and managed a crooked smile. "At least their artwork's improving," she observed almost lightly.

  Andrew LaFollet's teeth ground as he glowered at the demonstrators marching stolidly back and forth beyond the dome gate. Most of their placards bore biblical quotations or passages from The Book of the New Way, the collected teachings of Austin Grayson, founder of the Church of Humanity Unchained, who'd led the Church from Old Earth to the world which bore his name. Those were bad enough, for the sign-makers had dredged up every citation they could think of to denounce the notion that any woman could be a man's equal, but half the other posters were crude political caricatures that turned Lady Harrington into some sort of leering gargoyle intent on leading society to ruin. The least offensive of them would have been a deadly insult to any Grayson woman, but even they were less infuriating to the major than the signs which bore only two words: "infidel harlot."

  "Please, My Lady!" His voice was far harsher than Clinkscales. "You can't just let them...!"

  "I can't do anything else," Honor said. He made an inarticulate sound of fury, and she laid a hand on his shoulder. "You know I can't, Andrew. They're not on the grounds, and they're not breaking any of our laws. We can't touch law-abiding demonstrators without breaking the law ourselves."

  "Law-abiding scum, you mean, My Lady." The cold venom in Clinkscales' voice was frightening, but he shrugged unhappily when she looked at him. "Oh, you're right. We can't touch them."

  "But none of them are our people! They're all outsiders!" LaFollet protested, and Honor knew he was right. Those men had come to Harrington, been sent, really, from outside, the expense of their journey and their support here paid by contributions from others who felt as they did. It was a crude effort beside what the professional opinion-shapers of Manticore might have managed, but, then, they were handicapped by their sincerity.