It was a short flight, the last leg of the journey home from Sidemore which had begun two weeks earlier when the Protectors' Own was finally recalled to Grayson by way of Manticore, and she sat very still, feeling the emptiness and the tension within her as the pinnace banked gracefully onto its final heading and settled towards the private landing pad behind Mount Royal Palace.
Queen Elizabeth had wanted to welcome Honor home in the manner in which she insisted Honor deserved to be welcomed, but Honor had managed to avoid that ordeal, at least. It was already obvious to her that there would be other ordeals, just as public and just as exhausting, which she would not be able to avoid. She'd seen the HD of the cheering crowds, celebrating wildly in the capital's streets when news of the Second Battle of Sidemore was announced, and she dreaded what would happen when those same crowds learned "the Salamander" was home. But in this instance, her monarch—well, one of her monarchs, she supposed—had agreed to relent, and so there was no huge honor guard, no crowd of newsies, to observe her arrival once again upon the soil of her birth-kingdom's capital planet.
There was a greeting party, however. One that consisted of four humans and three treecats. Queen Elizabeth herself and her consort, Prince Justin, headed the small group of two-footed people awaiting her. Ariel rode on Elizabeth's left shoulder, while Monroe rode on Justin's right shoulder. Behind them stood Lord William Alexander and his brother, the Earl of White Haven, with Samantha standing high and proud on his shoulder, eyes glowing as she tasted the mind-glow of her mate for the first time in far too long. Colonel Ellen Shemais stood alertly to one side, overseeing the small squad of Palace Security and Queen's Own personnel guarding the perimeter of the landing pad, but that was their only function here. There were no bands, no flourishes and salutes. There were only seven people, friends all of them, waiting for her as she came home once more.
"Honor." Elizabeth held out a hand to her, and Honor took it, only to find herself enveloped in a fierce hug. Five or six T-years before, she wouldn't have had a clue how to respond to her Queen's embrace. Now she simply returned it, tasting the equally fierce welcome which came with it.
Other emotions washed over her, flooding through her as she, too, sampled the mind-glows of those about her. Samantha's spiraling joy and delight as she rose still higher on White Haven's shoulder and began signing to Nimitz in joyous welcome. Prince Justin, as glad to see her, in his own way, as Elizabeth, and William Alexander, her friend, political mentor, and ally.
And then there was Hamish. Hamish, standing there, looking at her with his soul in those ice-blue eyes from the heart of a firestorm of welcome and joy that turned even Elizabeth's into a candle's glow by comparison. She felt herself reaching out to him—not physically, not moving as much as a centimeter in his direction, yet with all of the irresistible power of a stellar gravity well. And as she looked into his eyes over the Queen of Manticore's shoulder, she saw the echo of that same reaching out. Not with the same sharpness or acuity as her own empathy. Not even with any conscious recognition of what it was he felt. It was . . . blinder than that, and she suddenly realized it must be what treecats saw when they looked at their mind-blind people. A sense of a presence that was asleep. Unaware yet immensely powerful and somehow linked to them. Yet not totally unaware. He had no idea what he was feeling, yet he felt it anyway, and a part of him knew he did. She tasted that confused, groping sensitivity in the sudden flare of his mind-glow, and saw Samantha stop signing to Nimitz and turn to stare in wonder at her person.
Honor had never felt anything quite like it. In some ways, it was like her link to Nimitz, but weaker, without the strength anchored by a treecat's full-blown empathic sense. And yet, it was also far stronger, for its other end was not a treecat, but another human mind. One that matched her own. That . . . fitted on levels that hers and Nimitz's would never be able to fully share. There was no "telepathy," no sharing of thoughts. Yet she felt him there, in the back of her brain as he had already been in her heart. The other part of her. The welcoming fire ready to warm her on the coldest night.
And with it the knowledge that whatever else might have happened, the impassable barriers which held them apart still stood.
"It's good to see you home," Elizabeth told her, her voice slightly husky, as she stood back, still holding Honor's upper arms, and looked up into her face. "It's very good."
"It's good to be here," Honor replied simply, still tasting Hamish, still feeling his amazement as the echo of her awareness flowed through him, however faintly, as well.
"Come inside," Elizabeth urged. "We have a lot to talk about."
"—so as soon as word came in about Grendelsbane, High Ridge had no choice but to resign," Elizabeth said grimly.
Honor nodded, her own expression equally grim. She, her hostess, and Elizabeth's other guests all sat in deep, old-fashioned, comfortable chairs in Elizabeth's's private retreat in King Michael's Tower. It was a welcoming, cheerful room, but Honor could taste the tangled flow of conflicting emotions deep inside Elizabeth. Emotions which stood in stark contrast to their surroundings.
Horror and dismay over the disastrous defeat the Navy had suffered at Grendelsbane. An awareness of how brutally the Fleet's strength had been wounded that terrified even the woman treecats called "Soul of Steel," especially in light of what the new Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence had reported about the probable strength of the Republican Navy. And mingled with all of that, the savage, vengeful joy she'd felt when the merciless requirements of formal protocol ground High Ridge's face into the totality of his ruin and disgrace as he surrendered his office.
"Is it true about Janacek?" she asked quietly, and it was White Haven's turn to nod.
"According to the Landing Police, there's no question but that it was suicide," he confirmed.
"Not that very many people were prepared to accept that in the immediate aftermath," his brother added with a harsh snort. "He knew where an awful lot of the bodies were buried, and quite a few people found it suspiciously . . . convenient that he should decide to blow his own brains out."
"Descroix?" Honor asked.
"We're not sure," Elizabeth admitted. "She tendered her resignation along with High Ridge, of course. And then, a couple of days later, she headed out to Beowulf on one of the day excursion ships . . . and didn't come back. From the looks of things, there was no foul play involved, unless it was her own. I think she planned on not coming back, although at this point no one has the least idea where she may have headed. All we know for sure it is that she transferred about twenty million dollars through a numbered DNA account on Beowulf to another account in the Stotterman System." The Queen grimaced. "You know what the Stotterman banking laws are like. It's going to take us at least ten or twelve T-years to get access to their records."
"Where did the money come from?" Honor wondered.
"We're working on that one from our end, Your Grace," Colonel Shemais put in diffidently. "So far, we don't have any definite leads, but there are a couple of at least slightly promising avenues for us to follow up. If we find what I expect to, we may be able to break Stotterman open a little sooner. They are part of the Solarian League, after all, and Sollie banking regulations are pretty specific about cooperating with embezzlement and malfeasance investigations."