The admiral paused for a moment, head raised as if she were scenting the breezy coolness of the early autumn night, and her right hand reached up to stroke the treecat riding her shoulder. Pritchart was no expert on treecats—as far as she knew, there were no Havenite experts on the telempathic arboreals—but she'd read everything she could get her hands on about them. Even if she hadn't, she thought, she would have recognized the protectiveness in the way the 'cat's tail wrapped around the front of his person's throat.
And if she'd happened to miss Nimitz's attitude, no one could ever have missed the wary watchfulness of the trio of green-uniformed men following at Alexander-Harrington's heels. Pritchart had read about them , too, and she could feel Sheila Thiessen's disapproving tension at her back as her own bodyguard glared at their holstered pulsers.
Thiessen had pitched three kinds of fits when she found out President Pritchart proposed to allow armed retainers of an admiral in the service of a star nation with which the Republic of Haven happened to be at war into her presence. In fact, she'd flatly refused to allow it—refused so adamantly Pritchart had more than half-feared she and the rest of her detachment would place their own head of state under protective arrest to prevent it. In the end, it had taken a direct order from the Attorney General and Kevin Usher, the Director of the Federal Investigation Agency, to overcome her resistance.
Pritchart understood Thiessen's reluctance. On the other hand, Alexander-Harrington had to be just as aware of how disastrous it would be for something to happen to Pritchart as Pritchart was of how disastrous it would be to allow something to happen to her.
What was it Thomas told me they used to call that back on Old Earth? 'Mutually assured destruction,' wasn't it? Well, however stupid it may've sounded—hell, however stupid it may actually have been!—at least it worked well enough for us to last until we managed to get off the planet. Besides, Harrington's got a pulser built into her left hand, for God's sake! Is Sheila planning to make her check her prosthesis at the door? Leave it in the umbrella stand?
She snorted softly, amused by her own thoughts, and Alexander-Harrington's head turned in her direction, almost as if the Manticoran had sensed that amusement from clear across the landing pad. For the first time, their eyes met directly in the floodlit night, and Pritchart inhaled deeply. She wondered if she would have had the courage to come all alone to the capital planet of a star nation whose fleet she'd shattered in combat barely six T-months in the past. Especially when she had very good reason to feel confident the star nation in question had done its level best to assassinate her a T-year before she'd added that particular log to the fire of its reasons to . . . dislike her. Pritchart liked to think she would have found the nerve, under the right circumstances, yet she knew she could never really know the answer to that question.
But whether she would have had the courage or not, Alexander-Harrington obviously did, and at a time when the Star Kingdom's military advantage over the Republic was so devastating there was absolutely no need for her to do anything of the sort. Pritchart's amusement faded into something very different, and she stepped forward, extending her hand, as Alexander-Harrington led her trio of bodyguards down the boarding stairs.
"This is an unexpected meeting, Admiral Alexander-Harrington."
"I'm sure it is, Madam President." Alexander-Harrington's accent was crisp, her soprano surprisingly sweet for a woman of her size and formidable reputation, and Pritchart had the distinct impression that the hand gripping hers was being very careful about the way it did so.
Of course it is , she thought. It wouldn't do for her to absentmindedly crush a few bones at a moment like this!
"I understand you have a message for me," the president continued out loud. "Given the dramatic fashion in which you've come to deliver it, I'm prepared to assume it's an important one."
"Dramatic, Madam President?"
Despite herself, Pritchart's eyebrows rose as she heard Alexander-Harrington's unmistakable amusement. It wasn't the most diplomatic possible reaction to the admiral's innocent tone, but under the circumstances, Pritchart couldn't reprimand herself for it too seriously. After all, the Manticorans were just as capable of calculating the local time of day here in Nouveau Paris as her own staffers would have been of calculating the local time in the City of Landing.
"Let's just say, then, Admiral, that your timing's gotten my attention," she said dryly after a moment. "As, I feel certain, it was supposed to."
"To be honest, I suppose it was, Madam President." There might actually have been a hint of apology in Alexander-Harrington's voice, although Pritchart wasn't prepared to bet anything particularly valuable on that possibility. "And you're right, of course. It is important."
"Well, in that case, Admiral, why don't you—and your armsmen, of course—accompany me to my office so you can tell me just what it is."
Chapter Seven
"So, would you prefer we address you as 'Admiral Alexander-Harrington,' 'Admiral Harrington,' 'Duchess Harrington,' or 'Steadholder Harrington'?" Pritchart asked with a slight smile as she, Honor, Nimitz, and a passel of bodyguards—most of whom seemed to be watching each other with unbounded distrust—rode the lift car from the landing pad down towards the president's official office. There'd been too little room, even in a car that size, for any of the other Havenite officials to accompany them, since neither Honor's armsmen nor Sheila Thiessen's Presidential Security agents had been remotely willing to give up their places to mere cabinet secretaries.
"It does get a bit complicated at times to be so many different people at once," Honor acknowledged Pritchart's question with an answering smile which was a bit more crooked than the president's. And not just because of the artificial nerves at the corner of her mouth. "Which would you be most comfortable with, Madam President?"
"Well, I have to admit we in the Republic have developed a certain aversion to aristocracies, whether they're acknowledged, like the one in your own Star Kingdom, or simply de facto , like the Legislaturalists here at home. So there'd be at least some . . . mixed emotions, let's say, in using one of your titles of nobility. At the same time, however, we're well aware of your record, for a lot of reasons."
For a moment, Pritchart's topaz-colored eyes—which, Honor had discovered, were much more spectacular and expressive in person than they'd appeared in any of the imagery she'd seen—darkened and her mouth tightened. Honor tasted the bleak stab of grief and regret behind that darkness, and her own mouth tightened ever so slightly. When she'd discussed the Republic's leadership with Lester Tourville, he'd confirmed that Eighth Fleet had killed Javier Giscard, Pritchart's longtime lover, at the Battle of Lovat.
That, in effect, Honor Alexander-Harrington had killed him.
Her eyes met the president's, and she didn't need her empathic sense to realize both of them saw the knowledge in the other's gaze. Yet there were other things wrapped up in that knowledge, as well. Yes, she'd killed Javier Giscard, and she regretted that, but he'd been only one of thousands of Havenites who'd died in combat against Honor or ships under her command over the past two decades, and there'd been nothing personal in his death. That was a distinction both she and Pritchart understood, because both of them—unlike the vast majority of Honor's fellow naval officers—had taken lives with their own hands. Had killed enemies at close range, when they'd been able to see those enemies eyes and when it most definitely was personal. Both of them understood that difference, and the silence hovering between them carried that mutual awareness with it, as well as the undertow of pain and loss no understanding could ever dispel.