"Ummm-hummm. And doesn't he just know it?" O'Casey wrinkled her brow. "Towards the end of your grandfather's reign, it became apparent even to him that the Saints were becoming very expansionist. That caught him by surprise, since he'd felt that the Saints were... well, saints. Once he realized he was wrong, and possibly because he recognized that he had been and felt somehow 'betrayed' by them, he began giving a great deal of weight to the more militant factions in the House of Lords."
"And Jackson was one of those." Roger nodded. "He's always been one of the more, um, hawkish members."
"Indeed. However, your grandfather began making most of his appointments on the basis of Jackson's advice. Many of them weren't appointments, whether to the House of Lords or to the imperial ministries, which Alexandra thought were wise. She had long argued against the military drawdown, but when it became apparent even to her father that the Empire was in trouble, he turned not to her, but to Prince Jackson.
"It might have appeared on the surface that there was little difference, since both she and Jackson supported many of the same policies. But even then, Alexandra was more interested in loyalty to the concept of the Empire of Man than in a specific cant. Worse, all of Jackson's choices for appointments were people he could depend upon to follow his lead.
"So when Alexandra found New Madrid spouting the Jackson line, after having been handed that damning report, she saw the situation with amazing clarity. One of the few things she managed to convince her father of in his waning years was to have New Madrid banished from Court."
"However..." The former tutor gave her former student a winsome smile.
"That left me," Roger said, his eyes wide. "I'm surprised she didn't..."
"Oh, it was contemplated. She'd already had the fetus, you," she pointed out with another smile, "transferred to a uterine replicator, so it would have been a simple matter of—"
"Turning a tap," Roger said woodenly.
"Sort of." O'Casey nodded. "For whatever reason, though, she didn't." She began twisting another lock of hair. "I understand that she spent quite a bit of time with you when you were an infant, Roger. It was only as you matured that she started spending more and more time away."
"As I began looking more like my father," he said in a deathly tone. It wasn't a question.
"And acting more like him, frankly," O'Casey confirmed. "There were other reasons. Things were getting very tense at Court as your grandfather began to fail, and Alexandra was desperately trying to line up partisans against the coup she could see in the offing. In the end, of course, she was able to. But even so she's spent the last decade trying to repair the damage to the Empire."
The chief of staff shook her head again.
"To be honest, I don't know if she ever will be able to truly repair all of it. Things were getting tense again before we left. Most of the Fleet has been pulled away from home systems towards the Saint sector, which is Jackson's sphere of influence, and she doesn't trust the Imperial Inspector's Corps. At least she can trust the chief of the Fleet and the IBI, but those are thin reeds with the Saints pressing the border and the House of Lords deadlocked most of the time.
"So," she finished, "that's the tale. Both the one that I used as a case study of blown political conspiracies, and the additional data I was made privy to as your tutor." She looked at the prince, who was staring at the far wall. "Questions?"
"A million," Roger said. "But one simple one first. Is this why no one has ever trusted me with anything important? Because of my blood?" he ended angrily.
"Partially," she admitted with a nod. "But more of it was, well... you, Roger. I certainly didn't realize you'd never been 'briefed,' so I'm guessing that, just like me, everyone else around you must have assumed that someone else had told you. They thought you knew. So if you knew the problems that had been associated with your father, and yet chose to emulate him in every way, then one logical conclusion was that you'd chosen him as your role model rather than your mother."
"Oh, shit," Roger said, shaking his head. "So all this time..."
"Captain Pahner asked me, early in the voyage, if you were a threat to the throne," Eleanora said quietly. "I had to tell him that, frankly, I didn't know." She looked the prince in the eye. "For that, I'm sorry, Roger. But I didn't know. And I doubt that anyone, except probably Kostas, was sure about you."
"Is that why we're here?" Roger asked, with a hand over his eyes. "Is that why we're stuck in this rathole?" he grated in an iron tone. "Because everyone thought I was in a conspiracy with Prince Jackson? To overthrow my own mother?"
"I prefer to believe you were being protected," the chief of staff said. "That your mother saw a gathering storm and chose to put you out of harm's way."
"On Leviathan." Roger dropped his hand and looked at her with tight eyes. "Where I'd be safe if it 'dropped in the pot,' as Julian likes to put it."
"Um," O'Casey said, thinking about the company's incredible battle to have reached even as far as Marshad. "Well, yes."
"Oh!" Roger began to laugh even as tears welled up in his eyes. "Thank God she didn't let me stick around for something dangerous! I'd hate to think what Mother might find dangerous! Maybe facing the Kranolta with a knife?!"
"Roger."
"Aaaahhhhh!" he screamed as the door burst open to admit a worried Marine sentry. Kyrou panned his bead rifle around the room, looking for the threat, as the prince slammed both fists down on the table. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! Pock, pock it, and pock you, Mother! Fuck you and your fucking paranoia, you secretive, Machiavellian, untrusting, coldhearted bitch!"
Kyrou stepped aside as Pahner slid through the door, pistol in a two-handed grip.
"What the hell is going on here?" the captain barked.
"Out!" Roger screamed. He picked O'Casey up by one biceps, and shoved her towards the door. "Out! All of you, out!" He pushed Kyrou so hard the heavyset private skittered backwards on his butt through the doorway. "If you're not out of here in one fucking second, I will fucking kill every fucking one of you!"
The solid door of the suite slammed shut with an ear-shattering boom, followed almost instantly by the sounds of complicated destruction.
"I think I could have handled that better," Eleanora said judiciously. "I'm not sure how, but I'm almost certain I could have."
"What just happened?" Kyrou said, lurching upright and looking around the main room of the suite, where the Marines were all staring at the door.
"Did he just say what I think he said?" Corporal Damdin asked, his eyes wide. "About the Empress?"
"Yes," Eleanora said calmly, "he did. But," she continued, raising her voice, "he just found out something very personal and unpleasant. He's very upset with the Empress, not as the Empress, but as his mother. I think that once he calms down," she suggested as the sound of breaking wood came through the door, "he'll be less—"
"Treasonous?" Pahner suggested lightly.
"He's angry at his mother, Captain—very angry, I might add, and not completely without reason—and, not at the Empress," the chief of staff said coldly. "There is, in this instance, a distinct difference. One you and I need to discuss."