Crown of Slaves

Chapter 1

"I'm really nervous, Daddy," whispered Berry, glancing almost furtively at the resplendently uniformed soldiers who seemed to line the entire length of the hallway leading to Queen Elizabeth's private audience chamber.

"No reason to be," gruffed Anton Zilwicki, continuing to advance stolidly toward the great double doors at the end of the hallway. The doors, like much of the furniture in Mount Royal Palace, were made of ferran. Even at the still-considerable distance, Anton could easily recognize the distinctive grain of the wood, as well as the traditional designs which had been carved into it. Ferran was native to the highlands of his home planet of Gryphon, and he'd done quite a bit of work with the stuff in his youth. Most Gryphon highlanders did, at one time or another.

Part of him—the rational, calculating side which was so prominent a feature of his personality—was pleased to see the wood. The wooden doors, and the carvings on them even more so, were a subtle reminder to everyone by the Winton dynasty that they valued their Gryphon highlander subjects as much as Manticorans proper. But Anton couldn't help remembering how much he'd hated working with the stuff as a boy. The root of the word "ferran" was a none-too-subtle indicator of its most outstanding property other than the attractive grain and rich color.

The enormous muscles in Anton's forearms were the product of his weight-lifting regimen as an adult; but, already as a boy, those muscles had been hard and powerful. Ferran could not be worked by weaklings. The stuff was almost as hard as iron, and just as easy to shape with hand tools.

Anton's lips twitched. The same accusation—or its kin, at any rate—had been leveled at him, and quite a bit more often than once. Damn you, Zilwicki! Hard as a rock and just as easy to move!

That very morning, in fact, and by his lover Cathy Montaigne.

"I think Mommy was right," whispered Berry. "You should have worn your uniform."

"They put me on half-pay," he growled. "I'm supposed to wear that silly dress uniform—most uncomfortable thing I own—afterward? Like a poodle sitting up to beg forgiveness?"

Berry's nervous glances at the guards in the hallway were now definitely furtive, especially the glance she cast at the four soldiers following them a few steps behind. Clearly enough, the teenage girl was half-expecting the Queen's Own Regiment to arrest them on the spot for...

Whatever fancy legal phrase covered: charged with being the stubborn disrespectful lout Anton Zilwicki and his adopted daughter.

"The Queen didn't put you on the beach," she hissed hastily, as if that disclaimer might possibly establish her own i

The thing that flashed immediately through Anton's mind was a soft pleasure at Berry's use of the term Mommy to refer to Cathy Montaigne. Technically, of course, she wasn't. Berry and her brother Lars had been adopted by Anton, and since he and Cathy were not married the most that Cathy could officially be called was...

Again, his lips twitched. Daddy's girlfriend , maybe. Paramour , if you wanted to be fancy about it. "Anton's squeeze" was the term Cathy herself enjoyed using in proper company. The former Countess of the Tor took a childish pleasure in seeing pained expressions on the faces of polite society.

For Berry and Lars, born and raised in the hellhole of the Old Quarter on Earth's capital city of Chicago, the legalities were meaningless. Since Anton's daughter Helen had found and rescued them from the catacombs, Berry and Lars had found the first real family they'd ever had. And Anton was glad to see the ease with which that knowledge now came to them.

But pleasure was for a later time. This was a moment for a father's stern instructions. So Anton removed the smile, came to an abrupt halt, and half-glowered at his daughter. He ignored the four soldiers who abruptly found themselves coming to an unexpected halt, almost stumbling into their charges.

"And so what?" he demanded. He made no attempt to keep his basso voice from rumbling down the hallway, although the thickening Gryphon highlander accent probably made the words unrecognizable by the time they reached the ears of the majordomo standing by the far doorway.

"The monarch stands at the center of things, girl. For that, the Crown gets my allegiance. Unconditional allegiance, too, so long as the dynasty respects the rights of their subjects. But the reverse stands true as well. I do not condemn Her Majesty for the actions of 'her' government, mind. It's a constitutional monarchy, and as things stand at the moment, that would be silly. But she gets no praise for it, either."

He almost laughed, seeing Berry swallowing. To the former urchin of Chicago's underworld, power was power and "the laws" be damned. No laws nor lawmen had prevented her from suffering the horrors she'd lived through. Nor would they have, ever, in the world she'd come from. All that had ended it was the naked violence of Anton's daughter Helen, a young Havenite intelligence officer named Victor Cachat, and a dozen ex-slave killers from the Audubon Ballroom led by Jeremy X.

Yet a father's job is to educate his children, and Anton would no more shirk that duty than any other.

He heard one of the soldiers standing behind him clear his throat in a none-too-polite reminder. The Queen is waiting, you fool!

A splendid opportunity to continue the lesson, he decided. Anton gave the soldier—the sergeant commanding their little four-man escort—his most intimidating stare.

And quite intimidating it was, too. Anton was a short man, but so wide and extravagantly muscled that he looked like something out of a legend of dwarven kings. The blocky head and dark eyes—hard as agates, at times like these—only heightened the effect. The soldiers staring at him would no doubt be wondering if Anton could bend steel bars with his bare hands.

He could, in fact. And the soldiers were probably also suddenly remembering that the grotesquely built man glowering at them had, in younger days, been the Star Kingdom's champion wrestler in his weight class.

All four of them took a half-step back. The sergeant's right hand even twitched ever so slightly toward the sidearm holstered at his side.

Good enough. Anton wasn't actually seekingan incident, after all. He let his eyes slide away from the soldiery and come back to his daughter.

"I'm no damn nobleman, girl. Neither are you. So we ask no courtier favors—nor do we bend our knees. They put me on the beach, and the Queen said nothing. So she can live with it as well as they or I can. That's why that uniform is in the closet and will stay there. Understand?"

Berry was still nervous. "Shouldn't I, maybe, bow or something?"

Anton rumbled a laugh. "Do you even know how to 'bow'?"

Berry nodded. "Mommy showed me."

Anton's glower was coming back in full force. Hastily, Berry added: "But not the way she does it—or used to do it, anyway, before she became a commoner."

Anton shook his head. "Bowing is for formal occasions, girl. This is an informal audience. Just stand quietly and be polite, that's good enough." He turned and resumed his progress toward the doors leading to the Royal Presence. "Besides, I wouldn't trust you to do it right anyway. Sure as certain not if Cathy showed you how, with all of a noblewoman's flourish and twirls."

His lips twitched again, his good humor returning. "When she's in the mood—not often, I admit—she can make any duchess turn green with envy with that fancy bow of hers."

If nothing else, by the time they reached the doors and a glaring majordomo began swinging them open, Anton's display of highlander contrariness seemed to have relaxed Berry a bit. No doubt she'd reached the conclusion that the Royal Displeasure soon to descend on her father would be so thoroughly focused on him that she might emerge unscathed.

In the event, however, the Queen of the Star Kingdom greeted them with a smile so wide it might almost be called a grin. Against Elizabeth's mahogany skin, the white teeth gleamed brightly. From what Anton could determine, the sharp-toothed gape on the face of the Queen's companion Ariel seemed even more cheerful. Anton was no expert on treecats, but he knew they usually reflected the emotions of the human to whom they were bonded. And if that vaguely feline shape lounging casually across the thickly upholstered backrest of the Queen's chair was offended or angry, there was no sign of it.

Despite his contrariness of the moment, Anton could not keep himself from warming toward the Queen. He was still a Crown Loyalist, when all was said and done, even if that once-simple political philosophy had developed a lot of curlicues and embroidery in the years since he'd met Catherine Montaigne. And he approved of this particular monarch, from all that he'd been able to see of her since she came to the throne.

The knowledge was all from a distance, however. He'd never actually met Queen Elizabeth, other than seeing her at a handful of large official gatherings.

He caught a glimpse of the young woman seated next to the Queen making an almost-furtive motion at the small console attached to her own chair. Glancing quickly to the side, Anton spotted a discreetly recessed viewscreen in the near wall of the small chamber. The display was dark now, but he suspected that the Queen and her companion had been observing him as he approached down the hallway—in which case, they would have heard his little exchange with Berry. Every word of it, unless the audio pickups were a lot worse than you'd expect in the palace of the galaxy's most electronically advanced realm.

He was not offended by the notion. In his days as a Navy yard dog, he might have been. But Anton's many years since as an intelligence officer—which he still basically was, even if in private practice—had given him a blasé attitude toward surveillance. So long as people respected his privacy, which he defined as his home and hearth, he didn't much care who snooped on him in public places. Whatever his other faults, Anton Zilwicki was not a hypocrite, and it wasn't as if he didn't do the same himself.

Besides, it was obvious from her smile the Queen wasn't offended. If anything, she seemed amused. He could sense Berry's relaxation as that knowledge came to her also.

But Anton wasn't paying much attention to Berry. As they continued to advance slowly toward the elaborate chairs which served Elizabeth and her companion as informal thrones, Anton's attention was given to the young woman seated next to the Queen.