Worlds of Honor woh-2

by David Weber

  He gazed down at her for one more brief, endless moment, and then he released his grip on the head of the bed and pounced upon her, growling and capturing her hand and arm like a kitten, and the happy music of laughter, human and treecat alike, burned like a beacon against the darkness.

  Queen's Gambit

  Jane Lindskold

  Coming out of a perfect double spiral flip high over the blue sands of the Indigo Salt Flats, Roger glanced over to see what Angelique thought of his performance. Gracefully poised on her own grav ski, dark hair whipping behind her in the wind, his wife and queen raised her hand in salute before executing the maneuver herself.

  Her time was a trifle slower, but her control even better. Roger chuckled to himself. The judges—if there had been any—would have given the round to her.

  "Ready for a quad, Angel?" he asked her over their com link.

  "Why not?" she replied, her laughter rich. "I can't recall when the conditions have been so perfect."

  "You go first," he answered.

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

  Her quadruple spiral flip ended with a little flirt that could almost have been counted as another half turn.

  King Roger III of Manticore hand signaled his appreciation for her technique, then checked his readouts. If he was to win this round in their private competition, he needed every advantage to be taken from the slight wind and the thermal updrafts.

  When he judged conditions to be as close to ideal as possible, he glided up into the first spiral. Perfect!

  The second went as smoothly, the third without a hitch. He was moving into the fourth, concentrating on gaining the velocity to imitate Angelique's flourish at the end, when he felt the ski jump under his feet.

  He was far too experienced in the vagaries of the grav ski to believe that he had imagined the sensation. Temptation to ride the jolts out arose—although he had never competed publicly, he knew that he was among the best grav skiers in the Star Kingdom. But he also knew too well that his kingdom would be thrust into turmoil if anything happened to him.

  Almost as swiftly as temptation rose and was rejected, his left hand was reaching for the tab that would release him from the grav ski and onto the stand-by grav pack. Another jolt, this one a buck that must be visible from the ground, shook his hand from the tab.

  Over the com Angelique said, "I'm closing to help, Roger."

  "I'm holding, love," he responded, continuing to fumble for the release.

  Then, impossibly, the grav ski failed completely. The velocity he had brought into his last spiral now turned against him, ripping his hands away from the release tab.

  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 from grief.

  Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore, stood with her fiance, Justin Zyrr, in the small antechamber into which they had retreated after viewing the holo-video of Roger III's death.

  After the first play through thirteen-year-old Prince Michael had bolted from the room, sobbing wildly. His relationship with his father had been affectionate enough, but recently acrimony over Roger's insistence that the boy enter the Navy had colored their meetings. Now those disagreements would never be resolved.

  Normally, Justin would have worried about the boy, but he had no attention to spare from the tall, slim young woman who stood like a statue carved of mahogany, her features eloquently displaying her grief. Physically, they were not much alike.

  She was dark of skin, hair, and eyes. Blond and blue-eyed, he was day to her night—a fact that the news services had happily seized upon and turned into iconography. At twenty-eight, he was the elder by a decade, taller, broad of shoulder and chest, but with a long, lean build. His posture was vaguely military, a remnant of his single term in the Army.

  Gradually, Elizabeth's expression changed, resolution sculpting the grief into something firm and purposeful.

  "I just don't believe it was an accident," she said, her first words since they had entered the room.

  Justin gathered her into his arms, felt some relief as she relaxed within his embrace. It would have been almost too much if she had rejected the small comfort he could give her.

  "Accidents do happen . . ." he began.

  "I know they do," Elizabeth interrupted, "even to members of the House of Winton. Edward the First died in a boating accident. His sister succeeded him. Her name was Elizabeth, just like mine."

  Her laughter held a ragged, almost hysterical note.

  "Maybe it's bad luck to have an heir named Elizabeth," she continued. "Make a note of that, would you, my dear?"

  Her treecat, Ariel, who had been sitting on a tabletop observing the conversation, gave a reproving "bleek." The Queen glanced at the 'cat, then pulled back within the circle of Justin's arms to look up at him.

  Her eyes, dark brown behind velvety black lashes, were wet with the tears she would not shed in public—not when her bravery was needed to reassure both her little brother and her many subjects.

  There had been little enough time for tears in the scant hours since King Roger's death. Directly following the verification that the King's accident had been fatal, she had been summoned from her Introductory Manticoran History class at the University and taken to a small student lounge. There, amid much-used furniture and vending machines, she had learned of her father's death, taken the Monarch's Oath, and accepted the loyalty oaths of the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament.

  From the student lounge she had been whisked into a press conference where—pushing away the prepared statement—she had spoken of the King eloquently and from her heart.

  Roger III had been a popular monarch; his sudden death hit his people hard. As the first monarch to receive the prolong treatments, his people's unspoken expectation had been that he would rule for decades to come, his wisdom guiding the Star Kingdom of Manticore into the increasingly complex politics of its fifth century.

  "Ariel seems to think I'm being too rough on you," Elizabeth said, softly, through her tears. "I'm sorry, Justin."

  "Apology accepted," he said. "You've been through too much recently. I don't expect you not to snap."

  "But I do," she said firmly. "I am the Queen. I'm afraid I'm not permitted to snap. Not even at my fiance—perhaps especially not at my fiance. You shouldn't be the whipping boy for the rest of the Star Kingdom."

  Justin laughed. "I'd like to say something gracious like: `Yet if your Majesty needs me as her whipping boy, I would be pleased to serve her in that fashion.' Honesty forces me to admit that I wouldn't like that role very much."

  "But will you serve me?" Elizabeth asked seriously.

  "Either you personally or as my Queen," he replied promptly.

  He might not be as empathic as a treecat, but he could sense that Elizabeth's mood had shifted. When she pulled from his arms, it was not in rejection, but because she needed to pace. Sitting in a chair near Ariel's table, he watched her slim form cross and recross the room, waiting while she composed her thoughts.

  "Justin, I don't believe my father's death was an accident." She paused, held up a hand for silence. "Most of us prefer to think otherwise, but assassination hasn't been a stranger to the House of Winton. Remember, there was an attempt on Queen Adrienne's life while she was still Heir, and William the First was actually assassinated by a psychotic."

  "But by apsychotic," Justin protested. "Your father died in a grav-skiing accident. We both saw the tapes. Grav units can go bad. Not often, but it does happen."

  Elizabeth began pacing again. "Maybe so, but aside from the fact that my father's security guards always carefully inspected any vehicle he used, I have another reason to believe his `accident' was anything but an accident."

  "What reason?"

  "I gave him a brand new ski for his birthday. When I went into his suite to chat with him before he and Mother left for thi
s jaunt, he made a point of mentioning that he was taking my gift with him. I even saw that his valet had laid the gear out to be packed."

  "Yes?"

  "Now, I only saw the accident on holo-video," Elizabeth said slowly, "but I'm almost certain the ski he was wearing in that accident was not the one I gave him."

  "He could have changed his mind," Justin protested. "His security staff might not have passed the ski for use. Or you might not have seen clearly when you were watching the holo. The speeds involved were rather fast."

  Justin forbore from adding that her eyes had been misty as she watched the replay of her father's last moments.

  "I know all that," Elizabeth answered regally, "but I still have my doubts. That's why I asked you if you'd serve me. I need you to investigate my father's last hours. If he wore a different ski, I want to know why. If he didn't, I want to know if the one he wore was properly inspected. I want to know everything."

  There was no trace of tears in the dark eyes now. She was every inch a queen. Even if Justin hadn't loved her, he would have been commanded by her royal aura. When he nodded his assent, she took both his hands in hers.

  "Thank you, Justin. I can't do this myself. I'm going to have too many eyes on me, too many issues to face. I can't even trust my own security staff. If the ski was somehow tampered with, one of them may have had a hand in it. You, I can trust."

  "Always."

  Elizabeth smiled at him, glanced over to where Ariel was purring rather smugly. "I know."

  "Shall I leave now?" he said, pretending to take offense at her reliance on the treecat's opinion.

  "Stay a bit." Elizabeth sighed. "I expect that soon enough someone is going to come along wanting to discuss the politics of the succession."

  Justin pulled Elizabeth into his lap. Ariel, deciding that this was a good thing, piled into Elizabeth's lap and began purring noisily, kneading with his true-hands.

  "Politics?" Justin said. "What politics? You're Queen. Michael will be your heir. Right?"

  "Only to a point." Elizabeth rubbed her hands over her eyes. "By Manticoran law, I must have a regent until I'm twenty-one T-years. Since I'm past my sixteenth birthday, they can't foist just anyone on me. I nominate my regent; Parliament confirms or rejects my choice. We do this until we're both happy. I suspect it could be an ugly time."

  She sat in thoughtful silence for a moment, then, twisting in his lap to face him, she twinkled.

  "Then there will be the question of our marriage."

  Justin felt a sudden, cold fear that somehow Elizabeth would be taken from him. They had been engaged with King Roger and Queen Angelique's full approval since soon after Elizabeth's seventeenth birthday. Could Parliament force Elizabeth to break the engagement, choose another spouse?

  "Question?" he squeaked.

  This time Ariel's reproving bleek was for both of them—Justin for doubting Elizabeth, and Elizabeth for her choice of a joke. The treecat rose and patted Justin on the side of his face, his other true-hand resting on Elizabeth's shoulder.

  "I shouldn't tease," Elizabeth admitted ruefully. "Justin, no one can make me break my engagement with you. I don't even expect it to be questioned. However, the line of succession has just grown shorter by one. Originally, we planned to marry after I turned twenty-one, right?"

  "Right," he answered, his voice back to normal.

  "Now I expect there will be some pressure for us to marry sooner."

  "I don't have a problem with that."

  "Nor I, particularly," she said, "but there will be those who do. Some will think a proper mourning period should be observed. Others will worry that the distractions of a wedding, a husband, pressure to produce an heir, will distract me from my duties as Queen."

  "So they'll want you to wait."

  "Exactly. After all, there are the cadet branches of the House. My Aunt Caitrin and her children can carry on if something happens both to me and to Michael before I have children of my own. . . ."

  Her voice trailed off. Small and forlorn, she leaned her head back against his shoulder, tears trailing down her face.

  "Justin, I don't want to think about it!"

  "Then don't," Justin suggested, "for right now. Don't think about anything at all."

  When he hugged her, he wasn't at all certain that the purring was coming only from the treecat.

  A tentative rap at the door to the antechamber interrupted their cuddling. Elizabeth rose from Justin's lap, brushed a hand over her hair, and spoke in a calm, level voice:

  "Come."

  The door opened and a member of the uniformed Palace Guard Service entered and saluted.

  "Your Majesty, Crown Prince Michael wonders if you would grant him a moment of your time."

  Justin raised an eyebrow. Already things were changing. Yesterday . . . this morning even, the guard would have simply smiled, given minimal warning, and let Michael charge in. Today . . . now . . . until new protocols were established, Elizabeth must be treated with all the deference and protection due to her august rank.

  Not seeming to notice the change in procedure, Elizabeth nodded. "Thank you, Taki. Ask him to come in."

  Crown Prince Michael, Heir to the House of Winton, was widely acknowledged as a handsome boy. Despite the beginning growth spurts that were adding inches to his height, he seemed to be escaping the weedy stage of adolescence. Even at thirteen, he resembled his athletic father.

  At this moment, however, not even his own mother would have called him handsome. His eyes were red and his brown skin grubby with tear streaks. He looked at his sister.

  "Do I have to bow or something now?"

  "Did you to Dad?" she asked calmly.

  "Only on court occasions."

  "Well then, what do you think?" Elizabeth said reasonably. "Don't be pig-headed, Mikey."

  The Prince winced at the nickname, which recently he had decided he'd out-grown. Since "Mike" was already taken by one of their cousins, he'd started insisting on "Michael."

  Elizabeth knew her brother perfectly well and grinned. "You don't need to remind me what to call you, Michael."

  Justin rose from his chair.

  "I think you two need some time alone." He kissed Elizabeth lightly on one cheek and patted Michael on the shoulder. "I'll be in my quarters if you need me. Otherwise, I'll see you at dinner."

  The soon-to-be Prince Consort left without further pause. Michael watched the tall, blond man go.

  "He's nice," he said, almost grudgingly. "Are you still going to marry him?"

  Elizabeth looked surprised. "Of course. No one could stop me. Why do you ask?"

  Michael walked to the table, patted Ariel, and flung himself onto the chair Justin had just vacated. Wrapping his arms around the back, his chin pillowed on the headrest, he looked vastly uncomfortable. Only years of watching him choose similarly contorted poses reassured his sister that he was not purposefully tormenting himself.

  "I guess," he said, finally answering her question, "I wondered because Dad liked him so much. I thought he might have pushed him at you."

  "Like he was pushing you into the Navy?" Elizabeth asked, easily following her brother's train of thought.

  "Yeah."

  "No, marrying Justin was all my idea. From the time I first met him, I realized he was special. Fortunately, Mom and Dad agreed. All they asked was that I finish college and reach my majority before we married."

  Michael swiveled the seat of the chair and looked up at her.

  "Are you going to have to go back to the University now that you're Queen?"

  Elizabeth squarely met brown eyes so like her father's that her heart caught in her chest and her own eyes were hot with sudden tears.

  "Don't you really mean `Am I going to have to go back to military school now that I'm Crown Prince?' "

  "Yeah."

  Elizabeth shrugged. "That's up to Mom, isn't it? I'm certain I'll be consulted, as will the new Regent's Council, but I'd guess that Mom's word will win out. Crown Prince
or not, you're still her son and the Navy is a very acceptable profession for a prince. If you want to do something else, you should start by talking with her."

  Michael didn't so much get up from his seat, as erupt, leaving the chair rocking on its heavy base. Fists clenched, eyes suddenly streaming tears, he faced an adversary neither of them could see.

  "I . . . I don't know what I want!"

  He bent his head, too proud in his young manhood to ask for the hug he so obviously wanted. Elizabeth embraced him.

  "Oh, Mikey, Mikey. . . ."

  This time the Prince didn't correct her, just gripped his arms around her waist and bawled into the shelter of her body.

  "Beth . . . Beth . . . We . . ." He sniffed, brought the words out more clearly. "We fought before he went away. Dad wasn't happy with my quarter report—said that I wouldn't get into the Academy with those grades, Prince or not. I told him I didn't care. . . ."

  Sobbing engulfed him. Elizabeth squeezed her little brother, wishing she could radiate comfort to him as Ariel did to her. The treecat caught her distress at the boy's unhappiness.

  Elizabeth might be Ariel's human, but he was fond of her brother. Jumping from the table, the 'cat set his true-hands against Michael's leg and purred loudly.

  Eventually, Michael's tears stopped. Releasing him, Elizabeth wiped away tears of her own.

  "I . . . I'm going to miss Dad, Beth," the boy managed. "How can you be so brave? Aren't you scared about being Queen?"

  "Yes," she admitted, "but I have you and Ariel and Justin and Mom and lots of other people to help me. I only wish I didn't need to be Queen quite yet. I wish Dad . . ."

  A sob rose hot and thick in her throat. She felt Ariel's soothing mental caress, although the 'cat's true-hands still rested against Michael's leg. With the 'cat's support, she managed to choke back the sob.

  "I wish things were different. I wish that we could follow the plan we designed—college first, then some on-the-job training. Now I don't have a choice."

  "And I still do." Michael looked at her, the beginnings of a mature resolve forming beneath the tear streaks. "Thanks, Beth. You've been a lot of help."