The stranger crossed to stand before the Speaker's desk, then turned to face the House. Her hands went up, drawing back the blood-red cowl of the Knights of the Order of King Roger, and Pavel Young lunged up out of his seat with a strangled cry of horror as Honor Harrington smiled coldly up at him.
Honor's hands trembled in the concealing folds of her robes as she let them fall back to her sides, but she hardly noticed. Her eyes were locked on Pavel Young as he jerked to his feet, his face white with sudden understanding. His head whipped about, like a trapped animal searching desperately for escape, but there was none. This time he couldn't run away, not without everyone in this chamber knowing that he'd run. And, perhaps even more terrifying to a man like him, his only exit route would have brought him within arm's reach of her.
Hate boiled within her, battering her with the need to attack him physically, but she simply folded her hands before her and let her eyes move across the rest of the seated peers. Some of them looked as horrified as Young; others simply seemed confused, and a very few were watching her with narrow, alert eyes. The House's judicial air had shattered like so much fragile glass, and the Sergeant-At-Arms moved closer to her, as if he feared he might have to restrain her forcibly. She felt the uncertainty shudder about her, as if they sensed the hunger of the predator who had suddenly appeared among them.
"My Lords and Ladies," she said finally, her soprano rising clearly amid the quivering tension, "I apologize to this House for the unseemly fashion in which I have interrupted its proceedings. But, as the Speaker has said, my ship is under orders to depart Manticore as soon as her repairs and working up period are completed. The demands of restoring a Queen's ship to full efficiency will be a heavy burden on my time, and, of course, my departure from the system will make it impossible for me to appear before you after my ship is once more ready for deployment."
She paused, tasting the silence and savoring the terror that hovered almost visibly above Pavel Young, and drew a deep breath.
"I cannot in good conscience leave Manticore, however, without discharging one of the gravest duties any peer owes to Her Majesty, this House, and the Realm as a whole. Specifically, My Lords and Ladies, it is my duty to inform you that one of your members has, by his own actions, not only demonstrated that he is unfit to sit among you but made himself a reproach to and a slur upon the very honor of the Kingdom."
Someone blurted a chopped-off exclamation of disbelief, as if unable to credit her sheer effrontery, but her calm, clear voice was like a wizards spell. They knew what she was going to say, yet no one could move. They could only sit there, staring at her, and she felt the power of the moment like fire in her veins.
"My Lords and Ladies, there is among you a man who has conspired at murder rather than face his enemies himself. A would-be rapist, a coward, and a man who hired a paid duelist to kill another. A man who sent armed thugs into a public restaurant only two days ago to murder someone else and failed in his purpose by the narrowest margin." The spell was beginning to fray. Peers began to rise, their voices starting to sound in protest, but her soprano cut through the stir like a knife, and her eyes were fixed on Pavel Young.
"My Lords and Ladies, I accuse Pavel Young, Earl North Hollow, of murder and attempted murder. I accuse him of the callous and unforgivable abuse of power, of cowardice in the face of the enemy, of attempted rape, and of being unfit not simply for the high office he holds but for life itself. I call him coward and scum, beneath the contempt of honest and upright subjects of this Kingdom, whose honor is profaned by his mere presence among them, and I challenge him, before you all, to meet me upon the field of honor, there to pay once and for all for his acts!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"Well, she doesn't do anything by halves, does she?" Bitter amusement colored William Alexander's voice, and the Duke of Cromarty fought an urge to snarl at him.
"You might put it that way, I suppose," he said instead. He shook his head angrily, then opened the balcony's sliding doors. Alexander followed him out into the breezy dark, and the two of them stood three hundred stories above the streets of Landing. Air car running lights drifted like rainbow bubbles beneath a huge moon, and black-barred banks of moon-silvered cloud gathered on the damp breath of approaching rain. Distant lightning flickered somewhere along the eastern rim of the world, and the capital's lights glittered below them. More rivers of light swept up the flanks of other towers, like the carelessly spilled jewels of some elvish queen, and the Prime Minister stared at them as if an answer hid among their beauty.
But there was no answer. Honor Harrington had snatched events totally out of his hands. Queen Elizabeth might have forbidden anyone to pressure Harrington, but Cromarty had known the fix was in. The civilian government and Navy alike had conspired to save her by keeping her from North Hollows throat, yet she'd found her way to him despite the odds against her.
"Do you know," Alexander murmured in the darkness, "I still can't believe she had the sheer gall."
"I doubt North Hollow believed it, either." Cromarty leaned on the railing, filling his lungs with cool night air while breeze ruffled his hair.
"He wouldn't have been there if he had," Alexander agreed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stood beside his political leader and mentor, peering down at the rivers of light, and shook his head. "Just between the two of us, Allen, she's right, you know," he said very quietly.
"Right and wrong don't come into it." Cromarty turned eyes spangled with reflected glitter upon Alexander. "She's found the one way to positively guarantee the alienation of every member of the House of Lords."
"Oh, no, Allen. Not all of us."
"All right, then," Cromarty snorted, "you and Hamish vote to support her. Hell, I'll even join you. That'll give her three votes; if you can find three more to go with them, then you should be the goddamned prime minister!"
Alexander bit his lip but said nothing. What, after all, could he say? There was no doubt in his mind that Lady Harrington's hand had been forced by the attempt on her life—just as he'd never doubted who'd been responsible for that attempt. He'd never met her, but he'd discussed her enough with his brother to feel certain she would never have used the House of Lords or her own membership in it in such fashion if there'd been any other way to get to North Hollow. And he'd watched the House recordings of her short, impassioned speech and seen no theatrics, no false drama. She hadn't played the assembled peerage of the Kingdom for fools; she'd come before them as her court of last resort, and the sincerity—and truth—of her charges had echoed in her every word.
But the House didn't see it that way. The House was affronted by her assault upon its dignity. The House was furious at the cynical manner in which she'd twisted its rules and procedures to suit her own ends. The House knew a rules mechanic when it saw one, and it was determined to punish her for daring to pervert its magisterial dignity.
"How bad is it, really?" he asked after a moment, and Cromarty sighed, more in sorrow than in anger this time.
"High Ridge has already entered a motion to exclude her. He wanted to strip her of her title outright, but a solid majority of the Commons—including almost half the Liberal MPs, if you can believe it!—is lined up with Her Majesty. That will protect her title and quash any move to trump up some sort of criminal charge against her, but not even the Queen can force the Lords to seat a peer they've voted to exclude. She's gone, Willie. I'll be surprised if five percent of the House opposes the vote."
"And after?" There was a core of anger and frustration under the quiet in Alexander's voice, and Cromarty's shoulders slumped.