House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (20 page)

Roger smiled in delight, feeling the wind whip across his tightly curled hair as he rode the grav ski high above the blue sands which gave the Indigo Salt Flats their name. It really had been too long since he and Angel had taken the time to be just the two of them, treasuring one another properly, and the glorious afternoon offered them at least another three or four hours of daylight before they’d have to call it quits. He rather regretted the fact that the new ski Elizabeth had given him for his birthday had been downchecked by Planetary Security. The problem was minor enough he might have used it anyway, but as Major Dover had pointed out, there was no point taking chances with a brand new, possibly temperamental ski. They could always have it serviced for a later excursion, and the backup ski he kept here at the Flats was an old and trusted friend.

He came out of a perfect double spiral flip and looked over to see Angelique’s reaction. She looked back at him, raising her hand in salute while her dark hair whipped behind her in the wind of her passage, then banked gracefully and swooped upward, executing exactly the same maneuver. She was a little slower, but her control was better, and Roger chuckled. If there’d been any judges watching them, they’d have given the round to her on points.

“Ready for a quad, Angel?” he asked over the com.

“Why not?” She laughed. “I can’t remember when conditions’ve been more perfect.”

“You go first.”

“So you can study my technique?” She laughed again. “As Your Majesty commands.”

Her quadruple spiral flip was perfect, of course. It always was, and Roger hand-signaled his appreciation, then checked his readouts. If he was going to win
this
round, he needed every advantage he could get from the light wind and the thermal updrafts. He waited, until conditions were as close to ideal as they were going to get, then glided up into the first spiral.

Perfect!

The second went just as smoothly, and the third without a hitch. He was slightly ahead of her time, and he frowned in concentration, focused on the perfection of his technique, as he moved into the fourth spiral. He was just gathering velocity to imitate the flourish with which Angelique had ended her own flip, when the ski jumped under his feet.

It wasn’t much of a jump, but he was far too experienced a grav skier to think he’d imagined it. Another light jolt kicked at the soles of his feet. Again, it wasn’t particularly violent, and he was tempted to ride it out. He’d never competed professionally, but he knew he was among the Star Kingdom’s best grav skiers, and he was still firmly in control of the ski. He could put it down safely rather than baling and simply letting it crash.

Don’t be stupid, Roger.
The thought flashed through his brain.
You can get a new ski a hell of a lot easier than you can get a new
neck
, and the last thing you need is to bang yourself up at a moment like this! Ramirez is expecting you in less than three T-weeks now, you dummy!

He grimaced at the thought, but it was pure reflex and his left hand was already reaching for the tab to release him from the grav ski and onto the standby counter-grav pack. Then there was another jolt—this one a buck that must have been visible from the ground—and the shock shook his hand from the tab.

“I’m closing to help, Roger!” Angelique called over the com.

“I’m holding, love,” he responded, continuing to fumble for the release.

And then, impossibly, the ski failed completely. The velocity he’d brought into his last spiral turned against him, ripping his hands away from the release tab. The wind howled around his ears, no longer a joy but a demon, bent on his destruction. Fear burned through him, but he didn’t panic. He fought the slipstream, pulling his arms in close, sliding his hand down to the release tab even as he plummeted. His fingers found the tab once more, relief blossomed through the fear, and he pulled.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

Below him, the salt sands glittered bright, hard, and utterly unforgiving. He died with the sound of his wife’s scream in his ears and the sensation of a distant heart breaking.

October 1883 PD

THE MEN AND WOMEN
seated around the table rose as Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette Winton—no longer Crown Princess or Heir, but Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore—walked into the cabinet room.

She moved with a regal, somber grace, a stateliness, few of the members of what had been her father’s Cabinet and now was hers had ever seen from her, and the treecat on her shoulder sat very tall and still, his tail hanging down her back like the banner of an army in mourning. The members of her Cabinet rose as one and bowed deeply as she crossed to her place at the head of the table with her aunt and regent, Caitrin Winton-Henke, Countess of Gold Peak, at her side.

Elizabeth lifted Ariel from her shoulder and set him on the back of her chair, then seated herself, followed a moment later by Countess Gold Peak. The cabinet officers waited courteously, then took their own seats at the youthful Queen’s gesture. It was the first time since her father’s death, three days before, that they’d all been gathered in one place, and they would be going from this cabinet room to King Michael’s Cathedral for Roger III’s state funeral and burial.

Silence hovered for several seconds, and then Elizabeth drew a deep breath.

“I won’t keep you long, My Lords and Ladies,” she said with unwonted formality, and more than one of those cabinet officers winced in sympathy, recognizing the way she used that courtesy as a shield for the wound gaping within her. “All of us have a great many things to do, and my—”

Her voice quivered, hovering for a moment on the edge of breaking, and she cleared her throat.

“All of us have a great many things to do,” she repeated huskily, “and my mother needs me.” She inhaled deeply. “However there are certain things which need saying, and I want all of you to hear them before . . . before my father’s funeral.”

She looked around the table once more, and her brown eyes were dark—wounded and shadowed with grief, yes, but touched with something else, as well. Something cold and hard. Something . . . dangerous.

“It’s obvious,” she continued after a moment, “that my father’s plan for a mutual defense treaty with San Martin is no longer possible. Its success would have depended on carrying the proposal in one, bold sweep, and whatever President Ramirez might want, he could never convince his legislature to approve an action which would necessarily infuriate the People’s Republic of Haven”—her mouth seemed to tighten and Ariel’s ears flattened—“at the invitation of a minor Queen who’s worn her crown for less than a week. That means we’re not going to find ourselves in a position to prevent the fall of Trevor’s Star.”

She made the admission bleakly, but for all the grief, all the anger, in that youthful voice, there was no despair, no hint of surrender, and those oddly hard brown eyes swept the members of her Cabinet once more.

“My father’s plans, all he committed himself to for over forty T-years, twenty-five of them as King, will
not
perish with his death,” she told them flatly. “His loss wounds us all—wounds the entire Star Kingdom, not just those of us who knew and loved him so very much—but I, My Lords and Ladies, I am his daughter, and I will not—I
will not—
let his life’s work go for naught.”

She shook her head once, sharply, and Ariel showed bone-white fangs for just a moment.

“I realize that at this moment the entire Manticoran Alliance is in a state of disarray, or will be, when all its members learn of Father’s death. It will take time to restore order and confidence, for the other members of the Alliance to realize the Star Kingdom’s policy hasn’t changed, and for them to gain confidence in my own capability as head of state. I believe it’s unlikely the People’s Republic”—again, that tightness around the lips—“will move against the Alliance or any of its members in the immediate future.” She smiled thinly. “The Peeps will be too busy digesting Trevor’s Star, once they take it, and I suspect they’ll find the San Martinos less than docile when they make the attempt. But in the end, the conflict my father saw
is
coming. Let no one delude herself over that point, because
I
most assuredly will not.”

Those wounded eyes were flint now, overlaid with an edge of steel, and her nostrils flared.

“The day will come when we find ourselves at war with the People’s Republic of Haven,” she told them softly, almost terribly, “and when it does, the Navy
my
father built, the Star Kingdom
he
prepared, will meet the Peoples Navy anywhere in space it can be found, and . . . we . . . will . . .
destroy
. . . it.”

Her forefinger tapped the table, in time with her last five words, and no one around that table breathed as the Queen sat back slowly in her chair.

“Over the next few days,” she continued after a moment, “Aunt Caitrin and I will be meeting individually with each of you. I want to review all of our preparations, our policies, but understand me. The House of Winton does not forget its duties, or its responsibilities . . . or its enemies. And in the fullness of time, I intend to demonstrate that to any who wish this Star Kingdom ill in terms the galaxy will never forget.”

She sat for a moment longer, regarding the men and women who knew now that they would never think of her as a teenager again. And then, once more, she inhaled deeply.

“And now, My Lords and Ladies, your King requires your services one final time.”

“Beth.”

Jonas Adcock turned quickly from the window towards the tall, slender young woman with the treecat on her shoulder. He still wore the dress uniform he’d worn to King Michael’s Cathedral for Roger’s funeral, but Elizabeth had shed her formal attire. She wore a simple white blouse and dark, tailored trousers.

And one more thing, Jonas thought. She wore the invisible weight of her crown, and those square young shoulders were unbowed by the burden.

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her, and she let her cheek rest against his shoulder for a moment. Then she straightened.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Mom’s waiting for you, and Michael. But I wanted to see you for a minute, first. There’s something I need to tell you. Something I don’t want to discuss in front of them, especially Mikey.”

Jonas stiffened at the somber note in her voice. He’d heard about the Cabinet meeting, and there was something . . . perilous about his niece’s face. Something that actually frightened him, more than a little.

“Tell me what?” he asked.

“It wasn’t an accident,” she said, and that note in her voice had turned into edged steel. He frowned at her for a moment, trying to understand, and she showed her teeth. “It wasn’t a grav skiing accident, Uncle Jonas—Dad was murdered.”

“Beth!” He shook his head, trying to process what she’d just said. The words didn’t make sense. If Roger’s death hadn’t been an accident, then surely—!

“I know,” she said in that same, steely voice, as if she’d read his mind. “You’re afraid I’m imagining things. After all, if there were any evidence, any proof, we’d already have acted, wouldn’t we? We’d have someone under arrest. Unfortunately, there
is
evidence. In fact, there’s
proof
. And the man who sabotaged Dad’s grav ski, Padraic Dover—a major in Palace Security, Uncle Jonas; one of our
own
—tried to kill Justin, as well.” Her lips twisted, and he saw a soul-deep revulsion flash through her eyes. “Apparently he thought he could convince me to marry
him
, instead, if Justin was gone, so he took it upon himself to murder him, too. Unfortunately for him, that was enough to bring Monroe out of his withdrawal to save Justin’s life.”

She looked at her uncle squarely, and her eyes glittered with a cold, hard light he’d never seen in them before.

“He didn’t stop there, either,” she said harshly. “Justin and Inspector Chu had been putting things together already, and Dover actually
confessed
when Justin confronted him. Which was the last and worst mistake he ever made in his miserable life, because when Monroe realized what he’d done, he ripped his fucking throat out.”

Her voice was harsh, dark with hate and satisfaction. Her expression actually frightened him, and Ariel’s ears were flat to his skull on her shoulder. The treecat’s entire body bristled with vengeful hatred, and the soft, high snarl of his rage hung in the air like an echo of Elizabeth’s own hatred.

For a moment, Jonas found it a difficult to breathe, but then her eyes softened and she reached up to touch Ariel’s head gently.

“We were going to lose Monroe, too, Uncle Jonas. He was grieving himself to death, and none of us could convince him to eat or drink. But now . . . now he’s going to make it. I think he’s bonded with Justin, in fact. I could wish we’d taken Dover alive for interrogation and trial, but there’s no question about his guilt, and I’ll gladly give up his formal execution if that gives us back Monroe. Besides, even without his testimony, we know who else he was working with.”

Jonas stared at her, and that soft, fierce snarl echoed from Ariel once more.

“‘Working with’?” he repeated after a moment. “You mean he wasn’t acting alone? It was some . . . some kind of plot against the Crown?”

“Oh, I think you could call it that,” Elizabeth agreed icily. “Dover was too stupid—or too full of himself, at any rate—to come up with something like this all by himself, Uncle Jonas! Oh, no. Someone else recruited him and gave him the tech support he needed to make it work, and that ‘someone else’ was Marvin Seltman and Baroness Stallman, along with the Earl of Howell and Jean Marrou.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jonas shook himself, trying to understand. Those four names read like a Who’s Who of the inner power circles of the Liberal and Progressive Parties! And
Howell
? The man was a
Crown Loyalist
! He’d been one of the leading candidates to serve as Elizabeth’s regent before she chose her aunt!

“There’s no question,” Elizabeth said flatly. “Marrou’s turned Crown’s Evidence—she was . . . unaware of all of the ramifications of the plot—and when she realized how she’d been used, she brought us recordings of Stallman and Seltman
admitting
their guilt, and their motivations, which would be admissible in any court. No, Uncle Jonas. We have absolute, conclusive evidence of their guilt.

“And I can’t do a thing about it.”

“What?”
Jonas stared at her. “But . . . but—” He sucked in a deep breath, feeling the sudden burn of tears in his eyes. “Damn it, Bethie—they killed
Roger
! They killed your father—my friend and my
King
! What do you mean you can’t do anything about it?” He shook his head savagely, vaguely stunned by the fury he felt—fury directed at the grieving young woman in front of him because there was no one else
to
direct it at—and showed his teeth. “Maybe
you
can’t, but
I
sure as hell can! I’ll kill the bastards with my own two hands!”

“No, you won’t,” she told him in that same, flat voice of hammered iron. “And you won’t for the same reasons Aunt Caitrin and Jacob convinced me
I
couldn’t challenge them to duels and shoot them. There are . . . factors involved that you don’t know about yet. Reasons we can’t take any official cognizance of Marrou’s evidence, whatever we want.”

“‘
Official
cognizance’?” He pounced on the qualifier like a wounded hexapuma, and she nodded.

“They won’t get off scot-free, I promise,” she told him. “They know I know
exactly
what happened, and all of them are going ‘into retirement’ starting tomorrow. They can give whatever reasons they damn well want, but if they ever so much as give another speech, far less ever try to enter politics again, it’ll be the last mistake they ever make. I may not be able to move officially against them at this moment, but that won’t be true forever, and they know it. If they ever give me the slightest excuse I’ll have them
crushed
, and they know
that
, too. But the reason I can’t take any open action against any of them now, Uncle Jonas, is because the whole thing was set up by the Peeps. Marrou and Howell didn’t know that, but Seltman and Stallman most certainly did know they were being paid off by Peep agents. Finding that out was what pushed Marrou into turning the others in, and we’ve got times, dates, and amounts on their payments. Chu and the Ministry of Justice got complete copies of their bank records. I’ve ordered them sealed under the Defense of the Realm Act, but those bastards know I’ll
un
seal them and use them to hang the lot of them if they push me.