A Rising Thunder-ARC (24 page)

“You know perfectly well that you haven’t been imposing on anyone Mother. But if you want the house, of course you’re welcome to it. For that matter, I’ve told you before; it’s yours and Daddy’s now. I spend every minute I can here at White Haven, anyway, and it makes a lot more sense for you and the twins to use the house than for it to just stand empty.”

She shrugged, although “stand empty” was a highly inaccurate description of her Jason Bay mansion’s normal state. It was fully staffed at all times, whether she herself was in residence or not. For that matter, it was Harrington Steading’s embassy on Manticore, and its official functions never shut down. But the true reason
she’d
avoided the cliff-top mansion since coming home from Haven were all the memories it held of Andrew and Miranda LaFollet, of Farragut, and of Sergeant Jeremiah Tennard. Eventually she’d have to return, she knew, but she wasn’t prepared to confront all those reminders just yet.

And Mother knows that, too
, she thought.
But if she thinks
Daddy’s
healed enough to go home—as far as Landing, at least, even if he’s not ready for the freehold yet—that’s got to be a good sign. And she’s right, having Uncle Jacques along will help a lot. Besides, it really
is
more home for them than it is for me. That’d be true even if I hadn’t married Hamish and Emily, given how much time I spend completely off-world
.

“That’s settled, then,” Allison said. “I’ll screen M— I mean, I’ll have
Mac
screen the staff to warn them we’re coming home.”

It was such a brief pause, and so quickly corrected, that only Honor and Nimitz caught the way she’d almost slipped and said “Miranda.”

“Well, it would appear it’s a good thing the two of you have finished settling my fate,” Jacques said with a smile. “I see we’re about to be descended upon by what I believe is technically called a thundering herd.”

He pointed to the small group (or perhaps not so small as all that, actually) spilling out of the house’s French doors, and Honor tasted the way the alertness of the posse of armsmen (and one arms
woman
) scattered around the terrace spiked, as they, too, noticed the newcomers.

They were more focused than ever, those guardians, after the Yawata Strike and Anton Zilwicki’s briefings about nano-programed assassins, and she tasted her uncle’s cold, grim approval of their alertness.

Once, she knew, he’d found watching her learn to put up with her personal armsmen amusing, even though he’d understood (better than her parents, really) why that sort of security was necessary. Yet today she sensed no amusement in Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s mind-glow as he gazed at that protective, green-uniformed cordon.

And Mother and Daddy have changed
their
attitudes, too
, she thought sadly.

There’d been a time when her parents had put up with the twins’ personal armsmen only because Grayson law required them to. They’d realized Jeremiah Tennard and Luke Blackett kept a watchful eye on
them
, as well, but they’d regarded it as a necessary (if rather touching) nuisance in their own case. One to be evaded whenever possible.

Not since the Yawata Strike. Not since Allison Harrington and her grandson had lived only because two of those armsmen had died for them.

They hadn’t raised even a token objection when Honor informed them, firmly, that from now on, they had their own personal armsmen. And despite an initial standoffishness—a defensive reaction born of the hurt of LaFollet’s and Tennard’s deaths—they’d adjusted better than she’d been afraid they might. Not that she hadn’t put some careful consideration into picking the proper guardians.

First, she’d decided, any candidates had to be prolong recipients. None of her own original armsmen had received the antiaging therapies. She
knew
how that felt, and she wasn’t about to have her parents watch someone that close to them grow old and die before their eyes. Yet that had been only the first (and least difficult) of the qualifications she’d considered when she and Spencer Hawke started reviewing dossiers.

Sergeant Isaiah Matlock, her father’s armsman, was a very rare bird: the son of a forestry ranger on a planet whose wilderness didn’t precisely welcome human intruders. The hearty souls who ventured out into it anyway were regarded as dangerous crackpots by their stay-at-home friends and neighbors, but Matlock’s family, had been involved in managing Grayson’s forests for three hundred T-years. They had a love for those forests which was possibly even deeper than that of a Sphinxian like Alfred Harrington, probably precisely because their homeworld’s wilderness did its level best to kill them every day. Honor expected Isaiah to embrace Sphinx joyfully, despite its gravity, and she was pleased with the compatibility already apparent between him and Dr. Harrington. If anyone was likely to understand her father’s need for an occasional fishing or hunting foray, it was going to be Isaiah…who would undoubtedly help browbeat the rest of the security detail into submission.

She’d expected choosing her mother’s guardian to be more difficult, however. Allison’s Beowulf upbringing made it still harder for her to accept the notion that she needed to be protected against people she’d never even met. She could grasp it intellectually, but even after multiple attempts to assassinate her elder daughter, she found it emotionally incomprehensible that complete strangers might wish
her
harm. Besides, any Beowulfer was bound to have a few problems with the notion of a personal retainer prepared to die in her defense. On top of which, and also as a product of that Beowulf upbringing, she…took a little getting used to for even the most liberal minded Grayson armsman imaginable.

Honor had been painfully aware of the Herculean task she faced finding some way to deal with all of
that
, which was why she’d been so delighted by how quickly she’d discovered Corporal Anastasia Yanakov, the very first Grayson woman to complete the harsh, demanding armsman’s training course.

A double handful of additional women had followed her since, and more than half of them had ended up in the Harrington Steadholder’s Guard. About half the others had been snapped up by the Mayhew Guard and Palace Security, and the remainder were scattered about in the guards of some of Grayson’s more progressive steadholders.

The real dinosaurs were going to resist such a bizarre notion to the last ditch, but their loss (and stupidity) was Honor’s gain, and Anastasia (a fourth cousin of High Admiral Judah Yanakov) was the perfect example of why. Her deplorably radical father had sent her off-world to Manticore for her schooling, where she’d completed a master’s degree in criminology and law enforcement (and captained her college pistol team) before going home and fighting her way into the armsman’s program. She’d graduated third in her class, as well, and there was no question she was headed for officer’s rank. All
armsman officers rose from the ranks, however. Every one of them started as a simple armsman, and while any woman intruding into that traditionally male preserve was likely to find the climb more difficult than her X-chromosome-challenged fellows, Anastasia clearly had a head for heights.

In the meantime, she was very much the product of two worlds. She was the perfect interface for someone like Allison Harrington, and while she possessed a sly sense of mischief, she was enough
unlike
Miranda LaFollet to avoid reminding Allison (or Honor) of another Grayson woman who’d learned to straddle both of her steadholder’s worlds.

At the moment, Matlock and Yanakov were stationed with her own trio of personal armsmen. The five of them had spread out far enough to allow Honor and her family an island of privacy, but they formed an alert, ring around the terrace’s perimeter as they watched the newcomers finish trooping out the doors.

Emily’s life-support chair led the parade, accompanied by
her
personal armsman, Jefferson McClure. Faith and James Harrington walked on either side of her chair, and Honor felt a fresh pang as she gazed at her sister.

Jeremiah Tennard’s death had devastated Faith. Death was always hard to understand when you weren’t quite nine, and it wasn’t as if Faith hadn’t lost enough family—enough uncles and aunts and cousins—on that same dreadful day to darken any childhood. But Jeremiah had watched over her literally since birth as protector, guardian, friend, and big brother, all in one. It hadn’t really penetrated that he was there specifically to die, if that was what it took to keep her safe, yet she’d recognized his fierce devotion, the love that went beyond mere duty, and she’d given him the uncomplicated, uncompromising love of childhood in return.

She and James had both clung to Luke Blackett since the Yawata Strike, and Honor had realized it would be the next thing to impossible to find someone to replace Jeremiah. Someone the twins would allow close to them after the brutal amputation of so many others they’d loved. They were smart, sensitive kids; they weren’t going to expose themselves to that sort of loss again if they could help it.

Honor understood that, and because she did, she’d known she’d have to cheat. Which she had, and she allowed herself a sense of sorrow-tinged triumph as she considered the tall—quite tall, for a Grayson—auburn-haired armsman behind Faith. Corporal Micah LaFollet had finished his training less than two T-years ago, and some sticklers might consider him a bit junior for his new position, but Faith had known Andrew and Miranda LaFollet’s younger brother for her entire life. Micah was already inside her defensive shell. In fact, she’d spent most of the day after the Yawata Strike weeping into his shoulder over his brother’s and sister’s deaths.

And it’s what
Micah
needed, too
, Honor thought now.
He loves Faith and James to pieces, and I don’t think I could have found an assignment that would’ve meant more to him
.

Except one, perhaps, she reflected, looking at the young woman guiding the counter-grav double stroller.

Quick-heal had repaired Lindsey Phillips’ broken collarbone, but she was no more immune than any other member of Honor’s family to the devastating losses they’d all suffered. The same shadow had touched her, and she’d dealt with it by investing herself even more deeply in Raoul and Katherine. Honor was grateful for that, yet it was the towering young armsman behind the nanny who drew her eye.

Lieutenant Vincent Clinkscales had drawn the impossible duty of filling Andrew LaFollet’s place as Raoul Alfred Alistair Alexander-Harrington’s personal armsman. No one could ever truly
replace
Andrew. Honor knew it was unfair to feel that way, yet she also knew it was true. Inevitable. Andrew LaFollet had been with her through too much, given too much, for it to be any other way. In many ways, she would have preferred to allow Micah to step into his older brother’s place, but Micah was simply too young, too inexperienced. The Conclave of Steadholders would have pitched a collective tantrum at the very notion. They wouldn’t have been able to stop her, but that wouldn’t have kept them from trying. And little though she cared to admit it, they probably would have had a point.

That was why she’d stolen Clinkscales from Protector’s Palace Security. A nephew of Howard Clinkscales and the older brother of Commander Carson Clinkscales, he was several years older than Micah. In fact, he was old enough to have been restricted to first-generation prolong, which would make him look reassuringly mature to Honor’s fellow steadholders in another few T-years. And the Clinckscales Clan was officially sept to the Harrington Clan, which made Vincent legally Honor’s nephew. Not even the stodgiest steadholder could argue with
that
qualification, and he’d amply demonstrated both his ability and his loyalty.

And if I still don’t know him as well as I knew Andrew, that’s true of every other member of the Guard
, she thought sadly.
They’re all gone, now. Every one of my original armsmen
.

Oh, don’t be so
maudlin
, Honor!
she scolded herself a moment later.
Vincent’s a perfectly wonderful young man, or you wouldn’t have picked him in the first place. And if he’s not Andrew, neither is anyone else. So isn’t it about time you stopped dwelling on that and let him be whoever
he
has to be to take care of Raoul?

Nimitz made a soft sound of mingled sympathy and scolding from his perch beside her, and she smiled at him.

“I’m working on it, Stinker,” she said softly, touching the tip of his nose with her index finger. “I’m working on it.”

He caught her finger in one true-hand and squeezed, and she tasted his approval. Then she looked back at the approaching group and found herself smiling in amusement as she counted noses.

It really is like watching an army
, she thought.
It’s a pity Mac didn’t come along with them; Emily would’ve had an even dozen if he had! And it’s a good thing the terrace is as big as it is, too
.

“Hi, Emily,” she called as the cavalcade came closer. “Did Mac send you to fetch us for supper?”

“Not yet,” Emily replied wryly. “In fact, I decided it was time to demonstrate my independence by coming to get you on my own. I figure I beat
his
summons by a clear two minutes. Maybe even three.”

“Always mistress of your own fate, I see,” Honor observed.

“Huh!
You’re
a fine one to talk! You think I haven’t figured out whose whim of steel
really
rules your menagerie?”

“Nonsense.” Honor elevated her nose. “He’s simply developed a keen appreciation for what I want to be doing anyway. It just
happens
that what I choose is what Mac thinks I ought to be doing at any given moment. I’m always perfectly free to change my mind or refuse to go along with him.”

“
Sure
you are.” Emily’s chair reached them, and Faith and James swarmed forward. They were too big now to climb into their uncle’s lap, but he wrapped his arms around them, and Emily smiled at him. “Was Honor this mendacious as a child?”

“Mendacious?” Benton-Ramirez y Chou repeated thoughtfully after depositing welcoming kisses on his niece and nephew. He cocked his head, considering the word, then shrugged. “I wouldn’t say
mendacious
so much as able to…creatively reconstruct her world at need, let’s say.”