House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (15 page)

She smiled hugely, and he smiled back, looking across her head at Angelique and seeing the resignation—and the gratitude that at least the moment had been deferred—in those gray, beloved eyes.

And let’s face it, Beth really
is
only twelve,
he told himself.
Twelve-year-olds have notions, and she’s no different from any other twelve-year-old in
that
respect! In two weeks she’s more likely than not to have forgotten all about this and be more worried about Sergeant Proctor or her next soccer game. So maybe it’s not just “deferred,” Angel. I’ll do my damnedest to keep her out of the mess as long as I can, but I know that look in her eyes. I see one a lot like it in my eyes when I look in the mirror . . . and I see one just like it when I look into
your
eyes when you really, really want something, too.

“Deal?” he asked his daughter.

“Deal!” she said firmly.

August 1883 PD

“
SO, IS MIKEY—I MEAN,
MICHAEL
—still pissed off with me?” Roger Winton asked as the armored air limo, accompanied by the sting ships in the blue and silver livery of the House of Winton, descended sedately towards Admiralty House’s rooftop pad.

“I wouldn’t say he was
‘pissed’
at you, Dad,” Elizabeth replied, wrinkling her nose in thought. “I’d say he was more . . . intensely irritated by circumstances beyond his control.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Allen and Elisa. Or with your Uncle Ed, at least.” Her father grinned at her, and the treecats sprawled across their laps bleeked in their species’ equivalent of laughter. “No, I detect Allen’s fell hand. He’s the diplomat spinmeister—comes with being Prime Minister, I suppose. Ed’s still a staff weenie; he hasn’t learned how to weasel-word his way around unpleasant issues yet. And Elisa can’t quite forget she used to be a Marine, so she just swings straight from the shoulder. Usually with a lead-loaded clue stick, now that I come to think of it.”

“I guess that’s at least a
little
fair.” Elizabeth held up her right hand, thumb and forefinger perhaps a half-centimeter apart. “I stand by my original diagnosis, though. It’s not so much you personally he’s mad at, Dad. He’s mad at the fact that he’s not in control, not in a position to make his own decisions.”

Roger crooked a thoughtful eyebrow, one hand stroking smoothly and reflexively down Monroe’s silky spine. She was probably right, he decided, although it was a bit hard for a harassed parent—especially a harassed
male
parent—to remember that when teenaged angst reared its ugly head in all its passionate glory.

“I have to say I wish the two of you wouldn’t keep . . . locking horns this way, though,” Elizabeth continued. “I know there’ve been times I was just as upset as he is about how little choice either of us have in our lives, but I really don’t remember having had this kind of . . . of—what is it Mom calls it? War in the camp?—with either of you when I was his age.”

“All of four whole T-years ago! Gosh!” Roger shook his head in astonishment. “You know, sometimes I forget what an ancient and decrepit sort you are, Beth.”

His daughter stuck out her tongue at him, and the treecat in her lap—over twenty T-years younger than Monroe, with four fewer age bands around his tail—bared needle fangs in a long, laughing yawn.

“That doesn’t make it untrue,” she pointed out after a moment, and he nodded.

“No, it doesn’t. But you and Mikey have always been different, honey. That’s not a slam at him, either, but there’s no point pretending you weren’t pretty darned . . . precocious, even for a Winton. Probably your mom’s genetic contribution, now that I think about it.” Her eyes twinkled at him, and he shrugged. “Even so, though, you were only a year or so younger than he is now when you decided you wanted to get involved in the ‘family business.’ He’s got time to make up his mind about what he wants to do—or, at least, how graciously he wants to do it.” Roger grimaced. “I won’t lie about it and say I don’t wish both of you had more options, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. Except for your mom and me never to have had either of you, and, frankly, I’m too selfish a man to’ve put up with a world without the two of you in it.”

Elizabeth’s eyes softened, and he snorted.

“Don’t worry! I’m not going all gooey on you. But it’s true. And I think he’s having a harder time with adolescence than you did. In fact, I’m sure he is. Your mom and I discussed it with Doctor Sugiyama earlier this year, and Mikey’s having heavier sledding with the prolong therapies than you did. Frankly, I was a little surprised by some of what Sugiyama had to say about it, to be honest. Your mom and I are both first-generation prolong, and we didn’t have to go through the hormone adjustment and monitoring you and Mikey have—we were both pretty much through that phase before we got the initial treatments in the first place, and I don’t think either of us really understood just how different it was going to be for someone like you, with the third-gen therapies. They
explained
it to us, but there’s a big difference between having it explained and actually experiencing it, and, unfortunately, Mikey’s experiencing it right along with us. Sugiyama’s working on balancing dosages, but he doesn’t want to medicate Mikey’s mood swings if he doesn’t have to. And, so far, it’s nothing we can’t cope with . . . even if it does seem to Mikey sometimes that I’ve turned into a slave driver instead of a father!”

“Dad, he doesn’t—”

“Oh, yes he does, honey.” Roger’s chuckle carried only the thinnest trace of sourness, and he reached out to touch the tip of his daughter’s nose the way he had when she’d been far younger. “But he’ll get over it. And there are times when parents can’t be their children’s friends. It comes with the responsibility of raising them, and one of these days Mikey’s going to realize no one was really deliberately trying to make his life miserable. Best of all, your mom and I both have prolong, which means we may actually live long enough to
see
it!”

Elizabeth smiled, but she also shook her head. In a way, she was most frustrated with Michael because the very thing he was rebelling against was something
she’d
very much wanted. She’d
wanted
to go into the Navy, but she’d had to choose between that and learning her responsibilities and duties as Heir in the face of a situation radically different from the one her father had faced when he’d been her age. As Heir, she wasn’t going to be allowed a combat assignment if war came, and she’d known it, which had also factored into the choice she had to make. Did she commit to a naval career under those restrictions, knowing she could never really be more than a glorified staff officer, or did she accept that she’d have to leave physically defending her people to someone else and concentrate on preparing herself to help her father as effectively as possible
outside
the Navy? It had been her own decision in the end, but she’d chosen Landing University of Manticore over Saganami Island because LUM had the best—and toughest—political science curriculum in the Star Kingdom.

And I’m glad I did . . . for a
lot
of reasons,
she admitted, her smile softening.
I wouldn’t have met Justin if I hadn’t!

Justin Zyrr was four years older than she was. That wasn’t very much in a prolong society, but it meant he was old enough to have completed his graduate degree in chemistry before she enrolled at LUM. Given who she was and the security considerations involved, LUM had been more than willing to provide freshwoman Elizabeth Winton with a private orientation tour, rather than sending her along with the rest of the thundering herd. And—also given who she was, she thought with an inner chuckle—she’d strayed from the assigned path and somehow ended up in Trantham Hall, the main chemistry building, and wandered into one of the research labs associated with the school. Where she had interrupted a very intense young man fully focused on his current research project. She had, in fact, distracted him at a most inopportune moment, which had resulted in the loss of over three hours of painstaking work, and he’d responded by ripping her head off and handing it to her. He’d just been revving up for the second round when the bodyguard she’d eluded had caught up with her, hurried into the lab, and addressed her as “Your Highness.”

Elizabeth Winton had her father’s—and her mother’s—temper. She’d been trying very hard to put up with the incredibly rude young man’s tirade with good grace, acknowledging her trespass, but that temper had been about to slip its steadily fraying leash when Sergeant Bradley turned up. Fortunately, the expression on Justin’s face when he heard her title, realized who he’d just been ripping up on side and down the other
was
, had been priceless. He’d looked so
stricken
—not afraid of the consequences, but horrified by his own disrespect—that she’d burst out laughing. And then, after a moment,
he’d
started laughing, as well.

Probably as a result of how they’d met, Justin had become one of the few people remotely her own age who’d managed to conceal any awe he might feel in her royal presence. She’d liked that. Besides, he’d been so
cute
. Even better looking than her preadolescent memories of Sergeant Proctor! And there
had
been that constitutional requirement that she marry a commoner.

Not that Justin had entertained any such notion the first time they met. That was one thing Elizabeth had been able to be absolutely certain of, thanks to Ariel, she thought, stroking her treecat companion affectionately.

She’d been adopted by Ariel when she was only fifteen, which was on the young side, even for the House of Winton. No one pretended to understand even now how the treecats who bonded with humans made their selections, but the fact that all but two Manticoran monarchs since Queen Adrienne had been adopted before they ever took the throne certainly suggested the process wasn’t quite as random as it might otherwise appear. Indeed, that pattern had caused some alarm over the centuries, and at least some people believed it wasn’t really the treecats’ decision at all.

Wintons knew better than that, although they didn’t go out of their way to make the point. By this time, the situation was so well-established that no one was likely to raise any concerns, but more than one of the security personnel responsible for the dynasty’s safety had worried about it in earlier days. Anyone who’d ever been adopted knew that people who argued treecats were no more than clever animals were completely and totally wrong, and the notion that an intelligent, empathic, and at least potentially
telepathic
alien species was deliberately attaching itself to the human monarchs of the Star Kingdom in what could only be described as a bond of emotional dependency was enough to make any good conspiracy theorist paranoid. No one in the House of Winton was concerned about that—which the aforementioned conspiracy theorist would simply have pointed out meant the conspiracy was working, she guessed—and the ’cats had saved the lives of members of her family at least three times, starting with then-Crown Princess Adrienne. Under the circumstances, if anyone wanted to believe the ’cats were somehow being influenced by humans using the well-worn paths of wealth, patronage, and political power to push the Sphinx Forestry Service into “encouraging” the bonds with the royal house, the Wintons were entirely in favor. And so was Palace Security, given the anti-assassin early warning system the ’cats provided. Not that Security went out of its way to mention the instances when that had happened. Having potential
assassins
regard treecats as little more than cute, adorable, exotic pets no self-respecting killer had to worry his head over was all to the good, as far as the royal family’s bodyguards were concerned.

They also provided other, less readily apparent advantages, however. Like everyone who’d ever been adopted, Elizabeth was convinced Ariel helped her balance her own anxieties and worries, and she was virtually certain the ’cat had saved her on more than one occasion from what her cousin Michelle irreverently referred to as her “temper from hell.” And ’cats were infallible barometers of the emotions of people around their human companions. It took a while for those companions to learn to read the ’cats’ responses, but even if Ariel was physically incapable of human speech, he understood Elizabeth just fine. He was fully capable of responding to “yes/no” queries by nodding or shaking his head, too, and she’d become almost as adroit as a good customer service AI when it came to asking questions to refine whatever he was trying to tell her.

And what he’d told her about Justin Zyrr was that she’d have to be very cautious about how she approached him if she didn’t want him to immediately back off and run lest someone think he was attempting to “take advantage” of her. That would’ve been enough all by itself to convince her to look at him very, very closely, given how many theoretically eligible males she’d run into who’d done everything in their power to convince her they were the perfect answer to any nubile maiden’s prayers. So she’d specifically requested him as her chemistry mentor for the required basic course. It had been, she cheerfully admitted, at least a tiny case of abuse of power, since she’d known perfectly well that the university would never dream of
not
giving her the mentor she’d requested. She hadn’t much cared about that, either, because it had given her the opportunity for that closer look, and what she’d found when she took it had been even better than she’d expected . . . even if he had been skittish as an Old Earth rabbit downwind of a treecat when he realized she was taking it.

He’s coming along quite nicely at the moment, though,
she reflected.
And Mom and Dad both approve of him immensely.
She quirked a smile.
I always knew they had excellent judgment.

But the smile faded as the armored limo drifted towards touchdown and her thoughts returned to her younger brother.

I don’t want Mikey to be unhappy, and I know it bothers Dad more than he’s willing to admit. Mom, too, but this one’s between him and Dad a lot more than between him and her.