by David Weber
“That’s settled, then,” Allison said. “I’ll screen M— I mean, I’ll have Mac screen the staff to warn them we’re coming home.”
It was such a brief pause, and so quickly corrected, that only Honor and Nimitz caught the way she’d almost slipped and said “Miranda.”
“Well, it would appear it’s a good thing the two of you have finished settling my fate,” Jacques said with a smile. “I see we’re about to be descended upon by what I believe is technically called a thundering herd.”
He pointed to the small group of people (or perhaps not so small as all that, actually) spilling out of the house’s French doors, and Honor tasted the way the alertness of the posse of armsmen (and one armswoman) scattered around the terrace spiked, as they, too, noticed the newcomers.
They were more focused than ever, those guardians, after the Yawata strike and Anton Zilwicki’s briefings about nano-programmed assassins, and she tasted her uncle’s cold, grim approval of their alertness.
Once, she knew, he’d found watching her learn to put up with her personal armsmen amusing, even though he’d understood (better than her parents, really) why that sort of security was necessary. Yet today she sensed no amusement in Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s mind-glow as he gazed at that protective, green-uniformed cordon.
And Mother and Daddy have changed their attitudes, too, she thought sadly.
There’d been a time when her parents had put up with the twins’ personal armsmen only because Grayson law required them to. They’d realized Jeremiah Tennard and Luke Blackett kept a watchful eye on them, as well, but they’d regarded it as a necessary (if rather touching) nuisance in their own case. One to be evaded whenever possible.
Not since the Yawata strike. Not since Allison Harrington and her grandson had lived only because two of those armsmen had died for them.
They hadn’t raised even a token objection when Honor informed them, firmly, that from now on they had their own personal armsmen. And despite an initial standoffishness—a defensive reaction born of the hurt of LaFollet’s and Tennard’s deaths—they’d adjusted better than she’d been afraid they might. Not that she hadn’t put some careful consideration into picking the proper guardians.
First, she’d decided, any candidates had to be prolong recipients. None of her own original armsmen had received the antiaging therapies. She knew how that felt, and she wasn’t about to have her parents watch someone that close to them grow old and die before their eyes. Yet that had been only the first (and least difficult) of the qualifications she’d considered when she and Spencer Hawke started reviewing dossiers.
Sergeant Isaiah Matlock, her father’s armsman, was a very rare bird: the son of a forestry ranger on a planet whose wilderness didn’t precisely welcome human intruders. The hearty souls who ventured out into it anyway were regarded as dangerous crackpots by their stay-at-home friends and neighbors, but Matlock’s family had been involved in managing Grayson’s forests for three hundred T-years. They had a love for those forests which was possibly even deeper than that of a Sphinxian like Alfred Harrington, probably precisely because their homeworld’s wilderness did its level best to kill them every day. Honor expected Isaiah to embrace Sphinx joyfully, despite its gravity, and she was pleased with the compatibility already apparent between him and Dr. Harrington. If anyone was likely to understand her father’s need for an occasional fishing or hunting foray, it was going to be Isaiah … who would undoubtedly help browbeat the rest of the security detail into submission.
She’d expected choosing her mother’s guardian to be more difficult, however. Allison’s Beowulf upbringing made it still harder for her to accept the notion that she needed to be protected against people she’d never even met. She could grasp it intellectually, but even after multiple attempts to assassinate her elder daughter, she found it emotionally incomprehensible that complete strangers might wish her harm. Besides, any Beowulfer was bound to have a few problems with the notion of a personal retainer prepared to die in her defense. On top of which, and also as a product of that Beowulf upbringing, she … took a little getting used to for even the most liberal-minded Grayson armsman imaginable.
Honor had been painfully aware of the Herculean task she faced finding some way to deal with all of that, which was why she’d been so delighted by how quickly she’d discovered Corporal Anastasia Yanakov, the very first Grayson woman to complete the harsh, demanding armsman’s training course.
A double handful of additional women had followed her since, and more than half of them had ended up in the Harrington Steadholder’s Guard. About half the others had been snapped up by the Mayhew Guard and Palace Security, and the remainder were scattered about in the guards of some of Grayson’s more progressive steadholders.
The real dinosaurs were going to resist such a bizarre notion to the last ditch, but their loss (and stupidity) was Honor’s gain, and Anastasia (a fourth cousin of High Admiral Judah Yanakov) was the perfect example of why. Her deplorably radical father had sent her off-world to Manticore for her schooling, where she’d completed a master’s degree in criminology and law enforcement (and captained her college pistol team) before going home and fighting her way into the armsman’s program. She’d graduated third in her class as well, and there was no question she was headed for officer’s rank. All armsman officers rose from the ranks, however. Every one of them started as a simple armsman, and while any woman intruding into that traditionally male preserve was likely to find the climb more difficult than her X-chromosome-challenged fellows, Anastasia clearly had a head for heights.
In the meantime, she was very much the product of two worlds. She was the perfect interface for someone like Allison Harrington, and while she possessed a sly sense of mischief, she was enough unlike Miranda LaFollet to avoid reminding Allison (or Honor) of another Grayson woman who’d learned to straddle both of her steadholder’s worlds.
At the moment, Matlock and Yanakov were stationed with her own trio of personal armsmen. The five of them had spread out far enough to allow Honor and her family an island of privacy, but they formed an alert ring around the terrace’s perimeter as they watched the newcomers finish trooping out the doors.
Emily’s life-support chair led the parade, accompanied by her personal armsman, Jefferson McClure. Faith and James Harrington walked on either side of her chair, and Honor felt a fresh pang as she gazed at her sister.
Jeremiah Tennard’s death had devastated Faith. Death was always hard to understand when you weren’t quite nine, and it wasn’t as if Faith hadn’t lost enough family—enough uncles and aunts and cousins—on that same dreadful day to darken any childhood. But Jeremiah had watched over her literally since birth as protector, guardian, friend, and big brother, all in one. It hadn’t really penetrated that he was there specifically to die, if that was what it took to keep her safe, yet she’d recognized his fierce devotion, the love that went beyond mere duty, and she’d given him the uncomplicated, uncompromising love of childhood in return.
She and James had both clung to Luke Blackett since the Yawata strike, and Honor had realized it would be the next thing to impossible to find someone to replace Jeremiah. Someone the twins would allow close to them after the brutal amputation of so many others they’d loved. They were smart, sensitive kids; they weren’t going to expose themselves to that sort of loss again if they could help it.
Honor understood that, and because she did, she’d known she’d have to cheat. Which she had, and she allowed herself a sense of sorrow-tinged triumph as she considered the tall—quite tall, for a Grayson—auburn-haired armsman behind Faith. Corporal Micah LaFollet had finished his training less than two T-years ago, and some sticklers might consider him a bit junior for his new position, but Faith had known Andrew and Miranda LaFollet’s younger brother for her entire life. Micah was already inside her defensive shell. In fact, she’d spent most of the day after the Yawata strike weeping into his shoulder over his brother’s and sister’s deaths.
And it’s what Micah needed, too, Honor thought now. He loves Faith and James to pieces, and I don’t think I could have found an assignment that would’ve meant more to him.
Except one, perhaps, she reflected, looking at the young woman guiding the counter-grav double stroller.
Quick-heal had repaired Lindsey Phillips’ broken collarbone, but she was no more immune than any other member of Honor’s family to the devastating losses they’d all suffered. The same shadow had touched her, and she’d dealt with it by investing herself even more deeply in Raoul and Katherine. Honor was grateful for that, yet it was the towering young armsman behind the nanny who drew her eye.
Lieutenant Vincent Clinkscales had drawn the impossible duty of filling Andrew LaFollet’s place as Raoul Alfred Alistair Alexander-Harrington’s personal armsman. No one could ever truly replace Andrew. Honor knew it was unfair to feel that way, yet she also knew it was true. Inevitable. Andrew LaFollet had been with her through too much, given too much, for it to be any other way. In many ways, she would have preferred to allow Micah to step into his older brother’s place, but Micah was simply too young, too inexperienced. The Conclave of Steadholders would have pitched a collective tantrum at the very notion. They wouldn’t have been able to stop her, but that wouldn’t have kept them from trying. And little though she cared to admit it, they probably would have had a point.
That was why she’d stolen Clinkscales from Protector’s Palace Security. A nephew of Howard Clinkscales and the older brother of Commander Carson Clinkscales, he was several years older than Micah. In fact, he was old enough to have been restricted to first-generation prolong, which would make him look reassuringly mature to Honor’s fellow steadholders in another few T-years. And the Clinkscales Clan was officially sept to the Harrington Clan, which made Vincent legally Honor’s nephew. Not even the stodgiest steadholder could argue with that qualification, and he’d amply demonstrated both his ability and his loyalty.
And if I still don’t know him as well as I knew Andrew, that’s true of every other member of the Guard, she thought sadly. They’re all gone, now. Every one of my original armsmen.
Oh, don’t be so maudlin, Honor! she scolded herself a moment later. Vincent’s a perfectly wonderful young man, or you wouldn’t have picked him in the first place. And if he’s not Andrew, neither is anyone else. So isn’t it about time you stopped dwelling on that and let him be whoever he has to be to take care of Raoul?
Nimitz made a soft sound of mingled sympathy and scolding from his perch beside her, and she smiled at him.
“I’m working on it, Stinker,” she said softly, touching the tip of his nose with her index finger. “I’m working on it.”
He caught her finger in one true-hand and squeezed, and she tasted his approval. Then she looked back at the approaching group and found herself smiling in amusement as she counted noses.
It really is like watching an army, she thought. It’s a pity Mac didn’t come along with them; Emily would’ve had an even dozen if he had! And it’s a good thing the terrace is as big as it is, too.
“Hi, Emily,” she called as the cavalcade came closer. “Did Mac send you to fetch us for supper?”
“Not yet,” Emily replied wryly. “In fact, I decided it was time to demonstrate my independence by coming to get you on my own. I figure I beat his summons by a clear two minutes. Maybe even three.”
“Always mistress of your own fate, I see,” Honor observed.
“Huh! You’re a fine one to talk! You think I haven’t figured out whose whim of steel really rules your menagerie?”
“Nonsense.” Honor elevated her nose. “He’s simply developed a keen appreciation for what I want to be doing anyway. It just happens that what I choose is what Mac thinks I ought to be doing at any given moment. I’m always perfectly free to change my mind or refuse to go along with him.”
“Sure you are.” Emily’s chair reached them, and Faith and James swarmed forward. They were too big now to climb into their uncle’s lap, but he wrapped his arms around them, and Emily smiled at him. “Was Honor this mendacious as a child?”
“Mendacious?” Benton-Ramirez y Chou repeated thoughtfully after depositing welcoming kisses on his niece and nephew. He cocked his head, considering the word, then shrugged. “I wouldn’t say mendacious so much as able to … creatively reconstruct her world at need, let’s say.”
“Yes, and she got it from her uncle,” Allison Harrington interjected.
“Well, from someone with the same genetic package, at least.” Benton-Ramirez y Chou smiled sweetly at his twin. “For that matter, Alley, you’re the geneticist. You know nurture trumps nature in cases like this. So, much as I’d like to, I don’t really think I can honestly claim the credit.”
“Oh, stop it, both of you.” Honor shook her head. “Whatever my faults may be—and I’m sure they’re legion—I don’t think either of you is brave enough to let Mac’s dinner get cold, either. So why don’t we all just head back and let the two of you finish threshing out who’s to blame for the dreadful way I turned out over supper?”
“My goodness, you really are a superior strategist, aren’t you?” her uncle replied. “Who would’ve thought it?”
Chapter Thirteen
______________________________
The bedside com’s rippling attention signal was quiet and discreet, almost apologetic, yet Honor’s eyes opened instantly.
It was still dark outside the bedroom windows, but just the faintest edge of dawn gilded the horizon. It brought back memories, that knife-edge of light. Memories of sleepy Sphinxian dawns, before the Queen’s Navy had gifted her with that instantaneous transition between sleep and awareness. Memories of a younger Honor Harrington who now seemed incredibly far away … and far more innocent than the woman looking out those windows this predawn morning. For just an instant, as she saw that glow kiss the eastern sky, she wished she were still that teenaged girl looking out her bedroom window at the four-hundred-year-old greenhouse and the ancient, ninety-meter crown oak, its bark carved with Stephanie Harrington’s initials and the name “Lionheart.” The girl who’d never worn the uniform, who had no blood upon her hands, no burden of beloved dead, and for whom the universe was a new, unstained promise on the horizon.
That edge of grief, that flare of loss, flashed through her, sharper than a razor and crueler than winter, in the instant the chimes roused her. It struck her in that first moment, before her defenses were back in place, and she clenched internally. But then, almost before the razor had cut, she felt another presence. Two more presences: the loving glow from the sleeping ’cat on his bedside perch, and the warm, deeply breathing presence at her back, arms wrapped protectively about her even in sleep.
They were there with her, Nimitz and Hamish. They were there for her, just as they always would be, reminders that the universe was filled with even more love than loss.
Then the chimes sang again, and she patted the hand on her ribs.
“Um?” a voice uttered indistinctly.
Unlike Honor, Hamish Alexander-Harrington seldom woke without a struggle. Or, rather, he had an ability (which Honor frequently envied but had never managed to acquire) to turn the Navy’s hardwired “Wake Up Now” switch off and then on again as needed. At the moment, he clearly had it in the “off” position, and she patted his hand again, harder.
“Wh’ zat?”
He didn’t sound any clearer, so she jabbed with a reasonably gentle elbow.
“Urruuff!”
That got his attention, and she smothered a giggle as he twitched awake.
“One of us has to take that call,” she observed, still gazing out the windows as the com chimed yet again.
“So?” His voice was still soft-edged with sleep, but she tasted his amusement an instant before his lips nuzzled under her braid to nibble the nape of her neck with slow, teasing thoroughness. “And you’re telling me this exactly why?” he inquired between gentle nips.
“B
ecause the com is on your side of the bed,” she told him severely. “And because—stop that!”
“Stop what?” he asked innocently, and she sighed as the hand she’d patted earlier cupped her breast. “Oh. You mean stop this?”
“No … I mean, yes!”
She laughed and twisted in his arms, turning to face him and putting her own arms around him. She kissed him thoroughly while the com continued patiently (and with steadily rising volume) to chime for their attention.
“I don’t think you really do mean that,” he told her.
“That’s because you’re a wicked, evil fellow who knows me entirely too well.” The severity of her tone was somewhat undermined when she paused in mid-sentence to kiss him again, and she felt Nimitz’s and Samantha’s silent laughter as they roused on their perches.
“And it’s also because I’m a weak, easily distracted person who hasn’t had nearly enough time to do this sort of thing in the last few months,” she continued. “But Mac or Spencer wouldn’t let calls through at this ungodly hour—especially not since they both know I’m a weak, easily distracted person who hasn’t had nearly enough time to do this sort of thing in the last few months—if it weren’t important. So”—she drew back languorously, then poked suddenly with a rigid forefinger—“answer the com!”
“You realize you’re going to pay for that later,” Hamish said as he sat up, rubbing his rib cage.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she told him with a smile, then reached out to touch the side of his face. “And thank you,” she said softly.
“Thank me?” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Thank me for what?”
“For being you … and for being here.”
His blue eyes softened, and he cupped a palm over the hand still on his cheek.