War of Honor

by David Weber

  Almost everyone else in the Prime Minister's paneled office turned to look at Lady North Hollow, but she returned their half-accusing glares with calm composure. Then she waved one graceful hand at the Second Lord of Admiralty, the single person who wasn't glowering at her at the moment, and smiled at High Ridge.

  "As a matter of fact, Prime Minister, I believe Reginald and I may actually have come up with a solution of sorts. It's not a perfect one, but then so few things in this world are truly perfect."

  "Solution? What kind of solution?" Janacek demanded. He got the questions in before anyone else could ask, but it was a close run thing.

  "I've been doing some additional . . . research on Harrington and White Haven," the countess replied. "It hasn't been easy. In fact, it's been impossible to get anyone inside Harrington's household or inner circle. Her security is provided entirely by her Steadholder's Guard, with backup from the Palace Guard Service, and it's the next best thing to impenetrable. Not to mention the fact that she herself seems to have a damnable ability to 'read' the people around her. I've never seen anything like it.

  "Fortunately, White Haven isn't quite that tough a nut. He maintains excellent security on the sensitive materials he receives as a member of the Naval Affairs Committee, and his people are almost as loyal as Harrington's. But they're not as security conscious about, ah . . . household matters as hers are. I wasn't able to put anyone actually inside his or his wife's quarters, but I did manage to get a few listening devices into the servant's quarters. And some of his people let much more slip than they thought they did when someone asked them the right questions."

  High Ridge and Janacek looked uncomfortable at her deliberate reminder of precisely what it was she did for them. The calm, matter-of-fact way she discussed spying on their political opponents made both of them uneasy, if only because of their awareness of the consequences if they were caught at it. Such privacy violations were illegal for anyone, but the fines and even jail time violators could draw would have been minor considerations beside the devastating public opinion damage awaiting any politician who got caught actually bugging his opponents. And what would have been bad enough for any political figure would be even worse for one of the leaders of the current Government, which was supposed to be in charge of stopping anyone from committing such acts.

  However uncomfortable the two Conservatives might have been, Houseman seemed unconcerned, almost as if he were oblivious to any reason why the countess' actions could be considered the least bit improper. Perhaps, High Ridge thought sardonically, because of the way the towering nobility of his intentions justified any act he might choose to commit in order to further them. As for Descroix, she actually smiled as if she thought the entire thing was some huge, slightly off-color joke.

  Lady North Hollow let the silence linger just long enough to make her point. Then, having reminded them of the importance of ensuring the competence of whoever did their dirty work for them, she continued.

  "The really ironic thing about it all," she told her audience, "is how close we came to telling the truth about both of them."

  High Ridge and Janacek looked at each other in obvious surprise, and she smiled.

  "Oh, there's absolutely no evidence that they were ever actually lovers," she assured them. "But apparently it's not for lack of temptation. According to some of the White Haven retainers, Harrington and White Haven are pining over each other like a pair of love-sick teenagers. They may be hiding it from the public—so far—but they're suffering in truly appallingly noble silence."

  "Really?" Descroix cocked her head, her eyes calculating. "Are you sure about that, Georgia? I mean, they do spend an inordinate amount of time together. That was what made our original strategy workable. But are you seriously suggesting that there's truly something there?"

  "That's what the evidence seems to indicate," the countess replied. "Some of the White Haven servants are quite bitter about it, actually. Apparently their loyalty to Lady White Haven is outraged by the thought that Harrington might be scheming to supplant her. To be honest, that outrage was probably enhanced by our media campaign, and it seems to have faded back somewhat in the last few weeks. But what gave it its original legs was the fact that most of them had already come to the conclusion that whatever Harrington thought, White Haven had been busy falling in love with her for months, if not years. I realize that anything they may have said to my investigators constitutes hearsay evidence, at best, but when it comes right down to it, the servants usually know more about what's going on in any household than their masters do. Besides, the handful of . . . technical assets I managed to get inside White Haven's household pretty much confirm their testimony."

  "Well, well, well," Descroix murmured. "Who would ever have thought a stodgy old stick like White Haven would fall so hard after so long? His puppy dog devotion to Saint Emily always made me faintly queasy, you know. So maudlin and lower class. But this new itch of his rather restores one's faith in human nature, doesn't it?"

  "I suppose so," High Ridge said. Descroix seemed oblivious to the distasteful glance he gave her, and he moved his attention back to Lady North Hollow.

  "Interesting as all this is, I fail to see precisely how it addresses our current problems, Georgia."

  "It doesn't, directly," the countess replied serenely. "But it suggests that we ought to bear it in mind as we examine several other considerations. For example, it's obvious that Harrington is quite concerned at the moment over the domestic Grayson response to all of this. Then there's the fact that her treecat's mate has seen fit to adopt White Haven. The White Haven servants who were already disposed to resent her had an earful to tell my investigators about that—until they dried up completely, that is. It seems that the bond between the 'cats is forcing White Haven and Harrington even closer together. At least some of the servants were convinced that the female's adoption of the Earl had been deliberately contrived by Harrington to let her worm her way into Lady White Haven's position. I don't personally think there was anything to that theory, given how hard the two of them seem to be working at pretending, even to one another, there's nothing between them. Not to mention the fact that Lady White Haven seems to be reacting to all of this extraordinarily calmly, to judge by what my monitors have managed to pick up. But however it happened, that adoption is one more source of tension and unhappiness for both of them. All three of them, really, I suppose.

  "To make a long story short, My Lord, both White Haven and Harrington, but especially Harrington, appear to be under enormous emotional and, to some extent at least, political pressure, regardless of the current turnaround in the poll numbers. And I've analyzed both of their records. You can't produce enough pressure to make Harrington flinch from what she believes her duty requires of her under any conceivable set of circumstances . . . except one. You can shoot at her, blow her up, threaten her with assassination, or tell her her principles are political suicide, and she'll spit in your eye. But if you can convince her that something she wants or needs threatens to undermine what she believes her duty requires of her, that's something else entirely. She'll back away from whatever it is, even shut down completely, rather than 'selfishly' pursue her own interests. And once her emotions are fully engaged, once it's become personal for her, all of the 'Salamander's' decisiveness tends to disappear.

  "What do you mean?" Descroix asked intently, and the countess shrugged.

  "I mean she's not very good at putting herself first," she said bluntly. "In fact, it actually seems to . . . frighten her when her personal needs appear to threaten the things she believes in."

  "Frighten?" High Ridge repeated, one eyebrow raised, and Lady North Hollow shrugged.

  " 'Frighten' probably isn't the best word for it, but I don't know one that would be a better fit. Her record is really remarkably clear in that regard, beginning while she was still a midshipwoman. It's common knowledge that she refused to file charges for attempted rape after a certain incident there." She paused very
briefly until her audience nodded understanding of the point they knew she probably wouldn't have made had her husband been present.

  Probably.

  "There might be some argument over why she kept silent in that particular case," the countess went on. "My own belief is that at least part of it was that she was still too young to have developed enough self-confidence to believe her charges would be believed. But it's also highly probable that she believed any scandal would hurt the Navy, and she wasn't prepared to put what had happened to her personally above the good of the Service. That's certainly been the sort of attitude she's displayed repeatedly since, at any rate. If she can find a way to remove herself from a situation in which what she needs conflicts with her duty or with what someone else needs without transgressing her personal code, she'll take it. She did that before the First Battle of Yeltsin, when she pulled her squadron out of Yeltsin's Star because she thought her presence was undermining Courvoisier's efforts to bring Grayson into the Alliance."

  Her tone remained conversational, her expression bland, as she ignored Houseman's sudden grimace. The Second Lord's ugly look of remembered hatred (leavened with more than a little fear) was probably so involuntary he didn't even realize he'd let it show, High Ridge reflected.

  "If the bigots who'd been giving her grief had done the same thing to anyone else under her command," the countess continued, "she would have come down on them like the wrath of God. She isn't exactly noted for moderation, you know. But their bigotry and resentment were directed at her, and she wasn't prepared to risk blowing Courvoisier's mission by insisting they treat her with the same respect she would have demanded for someone else. So instead, she backed away and took herself out of the equation."

  "It sounds almost as if you admire her, Georgia," Descroix observed, and the countess shrugged.

  "Admiration doesn't really come into it. But belittling an opponent out of spite when you're trying to formulate a strategy against her is stupid."

  This time Houseman actually stirred physically beside her, like a man on the brink of bursting out in protest, but she ignored that, too, and went on speaking directly to Descroix.

  "Besides, if you want to look at it from the right angle, what she did in Grayson was to run away from a problem rather than confront it squarely, which is arguably a sign of weakness, not strength. And apparently she did the same thing the first time she realized she and White Haven were straying into forbidden territory. She ran away from the situation—and him—by assuming her squadron command early, which was how the Peeps came to capture her, of course. And she quite clearly did it again on Hades, when she refused to send a courier ship back to the Alliance as soon as she captured one."

  "Excuse me?" Janacek blinked at her in surprise. "You're saying she 'ran away' from Hades?"

  "Not from Hades, Edward," the countess said patiently. "Away from a profoundly painful personal choice she wasn't prepared to make. As Steadholder Harrington, it was clearly and unambiguously her responsibility to return to Grayson and her duties there as soon as humanly possible. What's more, she had to have realized that whether or not the Admiralty could have scraped up the shipping for a mass prisoner evacuation from the Cerberus System, the Graysons damned well would have sent at least one ship. For that matter, they would have dragged her aboard it at gunpoint, if necessary, if they'd known she was alive and where to find her! But if they'd done that, her public duty as Steadholder Harrington would have pulled her away from a personal duty to all of the prisoners on the planet. She was not only unprepared to turn her back on that responsibility but literally couldn't force herself to 'abandon' them, whatever she knew she ought to have done. So whether she realized it or not, her decision not to inform anyone in the Alliance of what was happening on Hades while she tried to somehow capture or steal enough personnel lift to pull everyone out was a deliberate evasion of something which was too painful for her even to contemplate."

  "I never thought of it that way," Janacek said slowly, and Lady North Hollow shrugged.

  "I'm not surprised, Edward. For that matter, I doubt very much that Harrington ever thought of it that way. If she had, she probably wouldn't have been able to do it. Which is the reason she didn't think about it. But the reason this particular character flaw is important to us at this particular moment is that it gives us a possible handle to maneuver her in the way we want."

  "How?" High Ridge asked, frowning intensely.

  "The key here is that she won't evade anything unless there's an 'honorable' way to do it," the countess said. "She may be able to rationalize her way into choosing a way out from among several possible courses of action, but not simply to save herself. There has to be a reason. There has to be something that needs doing, and that she can be convinced—or that she can convince herself—is also her responsibility. Give her an honorable task, a responsibility, especially one that's likely to demand some sacrifice on her part, and the odds are considerably better than even that she'll take it."

  "What sort of 'responsibility' did you have in mind?" Descroix arched an eyebrow. "Personally, I can't think of a single thing Harrington would feel compelled to do for any of us—except, perhaps, to pump a little more hydrogen into the furnaces in Hell while we roasted over them!"

  "Actually," Reginald Houseman said, speaking up for the first time, "I believe we may have just the job for her. In fact, it's rather like one she was offered once before. She accepted that one, and it almost killed her."

  He smiled with an ugly vengefulness he would never have allowed any other audience, and especially not his fellow Liberals, to see.

  "Who knows? Maybe this time we'll be luckier."

  Chapter Fifteen

  "I can't believe you're serious!"

  Hamish Alexander shook his head sharply and glared at Honor. They sat in the study of his Landing mansion, with Samantha stretched across the back of his chair, resting her chin on the backs of her true-hands. Nimitz lay across Honor's chair back, and she could taste the cats' unhappiness, their grief at the prospect of a lengthy separation. But she also tasted their acceptance.

  There was no trace of that emotion in the Earl of White Haven.

  "I'm completely serious, Hamish," she said, far more calmly than she felt. "And before you say it, of course I realize that at the very least this is a political Trojan Horse from High Ridge's perspective. But you and Willie have the situation as well in hand in Parliament as anyone could expect to, under the circumstances, and whatever we may think of Janacek, this is a job that needs doing. And given Sidemore's involvement in it, I feel a certain personal responsibility to do whatever I can to keep Marsh from getting run over in the scrimmage."

  "Damn it, Honor, of course you do! And they know exactly how your head works when somebody punches the responsibility button. They're manipulating you into taking this on, and you know it as well as I do!"

  "Maybe they are," she agreed evenly. "And certainly I can see a lot of advantages for them in getting me out of the Star Kingdom. But let's be honest, Hamish. There could be some advantages for us in getting me off of Manticore, as well."

  "Somehow I don't expect Willie to think that," White Haven said tartly. "And even if he did, I—"

  "Willie might surprise you," Honor interrupted. "And I asked you to be honest. When I said 'advantages for us' I wasn't thinking about Parliament."

  He closed his mouth abruptly, biting off whatever he'd been about to say, and something inside her flinched from the sudden pain, almost betrayal, that flickered in his ice-blue eyes. But she couldn't afford to show that, and so she made herself return his gaze levelly. Silence crackled between them for several seconds, and then she smiled sadly.

  "We need some space between us, Hamish," she said gently. He started to speak again, but her raised hand stopped him. "No. Don't say anything. I didn't come here to argue with you, or even to debate my decision. I came because I've already decided to accept the command, and I needed to tell you that myself. It wasn't an easy
decision, and I'm fully aware that Janacek didn't offer it to me out of the goodness of his heart. But that doesn't keep it from being a godsend."

  "But—"

  "No, I said," she cut him off quietly. "Hamish, we've danced around this for years now, and it's killing both of us. You know it, Nimitz and Samantha know it. So do I . . . and so does Emily."

  His face went bone-white, and she felt his instant need to deny her words, to back away, to somehow pretend it wasn't so. But his own honesty was too deep for that, and so he said nothing, and she tasted his shame that it had been left to her to finally openly face the truth for them both.

  "I love you," she said very, very softly. "And you love me, and you love Emily. I know that. But I also know that especially after what High Ridge and his cronies tried to do to us, we don't dare do anything about the way we feel. We can't, Hamish, whatever we want, or however desperately we want it. Only I'm not strong enough to stop wanting it." Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to let them spill over. "I don't think I'll ever be that strong. But that doesn't change anything, so I have to find another way. And this is the only one I see that doesn't carry an unacceptable political cost for everyone."

  "But they're only offering you the job in the hope that it will blow up in your face," he said.

  "I don't know if I'd put it exactly that way myself," she replied. "They've got a genuine problem. They need someone to solve it for them, and whoever that someone is, a solution short of total disaster still has to be their ultimate objective. But you're right that they also need someone to scapegoat if it does turn into a disaster, of course. And to be honest, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be thinking that way if they didn't expect it to do just that. They may be right about that, too. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a job someone has to do . . . and that it will let me put some space between us. Please, Hamish. It's important to me for you to understand. I can't be this close to you, not knowing exactly what you feel, and not knowing what I feel. I just can't. It's not your fault; it's not my fault. It's just the way it is."