"Her competence? Good God, Bernard! The woman holds the Manticore Cross!" Yanakov looked at him in some confusion, and Mayhew sighed. "You'd better bone up on foreign decorations, cousin mine. For your information, the Manticore Cross is about one notch lower than the Star of Grayson—and it can only be earned for heroism under fire."

"The Star of Grayson?" Yanakov blinked as he digested that thought. It didn't seem possible someone as good looking and young—

He stopped himself with a mental curse. Damn it, the woman wasn't as "young" as he kept thinking! In fact, she was forty-three T-years old, barely twelve years younger than Yanakov himself, but still ...

"All right, so she's got guts," he growled. "But I'll bet she won that medal in Basilisk, didn't she?" The Protector nodded, and Yanakov shrugged. "Then it's only going to make the officers who don't trust her more suspicious, not less." He flushed at his cousin's expression but plowed on stubbornly. "You know I'm right, Ben. They're going to think exactly what the Havenites are going to say out loud: decorating her was part of a deliberate propaganda effort to cover up what really happened when she lost it—probably because it was her time of month!—and blew away an unarmed merchantman." His teeth grated in fresh frustration. "Damn it, if they had to send us a woman, couldn't they at least have sent us one who isn't rumored to be a murderer?!"

"Oh, that's bullshit, Bernard!" Mayhew led the way across the domed terrace into the palace, followed by his blank-faced personal Security man. "You've heard Manticore's version of Basilisk, and you know as well as I do what Haven wants in this region. Who do you think is telling us the truth?"

"Manticore, of course. But what you or I believe isn't the issue. Most of my people are only too ready to see any woman as potentially dangerous in a command slot. Those who don't automatically assume they must be loose warheads are horrified by the thought of exposing women to combat, and real conservatives, like Garret and his crowd, are reacting on pure emotion, not reason. They see her as a calculated insult to our way of life—and if you think I'm making that up, you should have heard a little conversation I had with my ops officer! Under the circumstances, Haven's version of what happened only validates all three groups' concerns. And don't come down too heavily on my people, either! Some of your civilian types are even worse than anybody in the military, and you know it. Hell, what about Jared?"

"Dear, sweet cousin Jared." Mayhew sounded as disgusted as he looked, then waved his hands in the air. "Oh, you're right—you're right! And old Clinkscales is even worse, though at least he's not second in line for the protectorship." The Protector sank into an overstuffed armchair. "But we can't afford to see this thing go down the tubes over something as stupid as cultural prejudice, Bernie. Manticore can do a lot more for us than Haven can: they're closer, their technology's better, and they're a hell of a lot less likely to absentmindedly gobble us up one fine day."

"Then I suggest you tell your negotiators that," Yanakov sighed.

"I have, but you're the historian. You know how the Council's cut back the Protector's constitutional authority over the last century. Prestwick is a decent sort as Chancellor, but he doesn't really want to open the door to resumption of direct rule by Yours Truly. I happen to think we need a stronger executive to deal with all that's about to come down on us, but I may be a bit biased by who I am, and whatever I'd like to have, the fact is that I'm pretty much reduced to the power of prestige. Admittedly, the Mayhew Clan still boasts a fair amount of that, but a disproportionate share of it's with the conservatives—and the conservatives, as you yourself just pointed out, think accepting any outside help `will threaten the Grayson way of life'! I've got the Council in line so far, and I think I've got a majority in the Chamber, but it's slim—very slim—and if the military doesn't sign on, I'll lose it. You've got to get your people to see reason about this."

"Ben," Yanakov said slowly, "I'll try, but I don't know that you fully grasp just what you're asking for." Mayhew straightened in his chair, but the Admiral went on speaking. "I've known you since you were a kid, but I've always known you were smarter than I am. If you say we need the Manticoran alliance, I believe you. But sometimes I think your grandfather made a mistake having you and your father educated off-world. Oh, I know all about the advantages, but somewhere along the way you sort of lost touch with how most of our people feel about some issues, and that's dangerous. You talk about the conservatives in the Chamber, but, Ben, most of them are less conservative than the population as a whole!"

"I realize that," Mayhew said quietly. "Contrary to what you may think, having a different perspective actually makes it easier to see some things—like how difficult it really is to change entrenched attitudes—and the Mayhews have no more desire to be Grayson's Pahlavis than its Romanovs. I'm not proposing to overturn society overnight, but what we're talking about is the survival of our planet, Bernie. We're talking about an alliance that can bring us modern industry and a permanent Manticoran fleet presence Simonds and his fanatics won't dare screw around with. And whether we sign up with Manticore or not, we're not going to be able to sit this one out. I give the Havenites another T-year at the outside before they move openly against Manticore, and when they do, they'll come straight through us unless there's something here to stop them. We're in the way, Bernie, and you know that even better than I do."

"Yes," Yanakov sighed. "Yes, I do. And I'll try, Ben. I really will. But I wish to hell Manticore had been smart enough not to stick us with a situation like this, because I will be damned if I think I can pull it off."

Sergeant Major Babcock smiled as Honor stepped onto the mat.

Babcock was from Gryphon, Manticore-B V. Gryphon's gravity was only five percent above Terran Standard, less than eighty percent that of Honor's native Sphinx, and Babcock was a good twenty centimeters shorter, with a much shorter reach, to boot. She was also just over twice Honor's age, and like Admiral Courvosier, she was first-generation prolong. The original treatment had stopped the aging process at a much later point than current techniques, and there were strands of gray in her red hair and crows-feet around her eyes.

None of which had kept her from throwing Honor around the salle with embarrassing ease.

Honor was taller and stronger, with better reaction speed and hand-eye coordination, but that, as Ms. Midshipman Harrington had learned long ago on Saganami Island, didn't necessarily mean a thing. Babcock was in at least as good a shape as she was, and she'd been doing this forty T-years longer. She knew moves her CO hadn't even thought of yet, and Honor suspected the sergeant major was delighted by the opportunity (one couldn't exactly call it an excuse ) to kick the stuffing out of a senior Navy officer.

On the other hand, Honor was getting back into the groove herself, and she wasn't in the mood to be humiliated today.

They met at the center of the mat and fell into guard positions, and there was no smile on Honor's lips. Her face was still and calm, her background anger and frustration—not at Babcock, but nonetheless real—leashed and channeled, and only those who knew her very well would have noted the hardness in her eyes.

They circled slowly, hands weaving in deceptively gentle, graceful patterns. Both were black belt in coup de vitesse, the martial art developed to combine Oriental and Western forms on Nouveau Dijon eight centuries before, and a hush enveloped the gym as other exercisers turned to watch them.