Crown of Slaves

She made an airy, dismissive gesture, then frowned at Berry, who obviously wasn't getting out of her own clothes and into the waiting gown rapidly enough to suit her. Berry took the hint, and the doctor nodded in obvious satisfaction as she quickened her pace.

"In this instance, we had all the information we needed, of course," Schwartz continued. "It's the time factor that's the problem. As soon as we've completed the final workups on both of you, we'll fine-tune the na

She shrugged.

"As I said, I expect you'll both spend quite a bit of time sleeping over the next few days. A na

She smiled again, with that same maddening lack of sympathy, and Berry sighed glumly. This had all seemed so much simpler when she blithely volunteered for it.

She finished buttoning the gown, then paused. It wasn't really hesitation. She told herself that quite firmly. But it was something uncomfortably akin to it, and an amazing number of butterflies seemed to be hovering in the vicinity of her midsection.

"Ah, you're ready, I see! Good!" Dr. Schwartz approved, smiling more cheerfully than ever, and Berry's butterfly population expanded exponentially. "In that case, let's get started, shall we?"

The next few days were considerably more miserable than the doctor's breezy assurances would have led an unsuspecting soul to believe. But it wasn't really that bad—nowhere near as bad as some of Berry's experiences had been. Besides, that same life experience had made Berry about as suspecting a soul, in a friendly and benign sort of way, as anyone she knew.

Well... except Princess Ruth.

Berry got to know the Manticoran royal fairly well during those days, since they'd nothing else to do but talk whenever they weren't sleeping. And while Berry soon came to the conclusion that Ruth was a woman she was going to like—a lot, in fact—she also found the contrast between their two personalities more than a little amusing.

Some of the differences were obvious—Berry tended to be quiet, Ruth exuberant. But an even deeper difference, if not an immediately obvious one, was their different outlook on life. True, Berry's life had left precious little in the way of childlike i

"Paranoid" was not the right term, Berry finally decided. The co

"How in the world did the Queen manage to keep a lid on you for twenty-three years?" Berry finally asked.

Ruth gri

"Is that why all the details of your mother's escape were kept out of the public eye for so long?"

"Oh, no." Ruth shook her head firmly. Ruth's gestures were usually done firmly—when they weren't done vehemently. "Don't blame me for that idiocy! If they'd asked my opinion—they didn't, I was only a few years old, but they should have—I would have told them to shout it from the rooftops. As it was, the truth didn't become public knowledge until after Yeltsin's Star had joined the Manticoran Alliance, at which point the Manticoran public reacted by making my mother a national hero. Ha! The same thing would have happened right from the start, even before the treaty was signed! You can be damn sure that releasing the naked, unvarnished truth about the brutality with which Masada treated its women would have made the choice of an alliance with Grayson rather than Masada a no-brainer."

She scowled fiercely. "Which, of course, is exactly why the cretins didn't do it. 'Reasons of state.' Ha! The truth is that until the Foreign Office made up its mind once and for all to pursue the relationship with Grayson, the bureaucrats had to 'keep their options open'—there's another weasel phrase for you—with the benighted barbarians who ran Masada! So of course the entire episode had to be swept under the rug."

Berry chuckled. "My father says that 'reasons of state' has been used to cover more sheer stupidity than any other pious phrase in existence. And whenever Mommy—uh, that's Cathy Montaigne—tries to get him to do something he doesn't want to, he immediately says he wants to keep his options open."

"And what does she say?"

"Oh, she tells him he's being a weasel again. And always tries to get me and—if she's home from the Academy—Helen to agree with her."

Berry added piously: "I always do, of course. Daddy can weasel with the best of 'em. Helen usually tries to claim the Academy Code of Honor prevents her from taking a stance, whereupon Mommy immediately accuses her of being a weasel."

Now, Berry looked positively saintly. "And, of course, I always agree with her again."

Ruth was eyeing her oddly. "Hey, look," Berry said defensively, "the truth's the truth."

She realized, then, that she'd misunderstood the meaning of the Princess' scrutiny.

"We're going to be friends," Ruth said abruptly. "Close friends."

It was said firmly, even vehemently. But Berry didn't miss the depths of loneliness and uncertainty that lurked beneath the words. Ruth, she was now certain, was not a woman who'd known very much in the way of close friendship in her life.

Berry smiled. "Of course we are."

She meant it, too. Berry was good at making friends. Especially close ones.

"Sir, please tell me you're pulling my leg," Platoon Sergeant Laura Hofschulte, Queen's Own Regiment, begged plaintively.

"I wish I were, Laura," Lieutenant Ahmed Griggs sighed, and leaned back in his chair to run his fingers through his thick, reddish hair. It was his platoon Sergeant Hofschulte managed, and the two of them had served together for almost two T-years. During that time, they'd come to know one another well, and a powerful sense of mutual respect had deepened between them. Which probably helped explain the pained, disbelieving look of—well, betrayal wasn't quite the right word, but it was close— Hofschulte gave him now.

"I'm not sure whose idea it was," Griggs went on after a moment. "My impression from Colonel Reynolds is that it was Her Majesty herself, but it sounds to me more like something the Princess would have come up with."

"Her, or maybe Zilwicki," Hofschulte said darkly. "The man's a professional spook, Sir. God only knows how twisty his mind's gotten over the years!"

"No, I don't think it was him," Griggs disagreed. "As you say, he's a professional spook. And a father. I don't see a man as protective as he's supposed to be exposing his daughter to risk this way. Not if it was his own idea, that is.

"Not that it matters who thought it up," he continued more briskly. "What matters is that it's up to us to make it work."

"Let me get this straight, Sir," Hofschulte said. "We're haring off to Erewhon as the Princess' protective detail, but we're supposed to look like we're protecting Berry Zilwicki, who everyone else is going to think is the Princess?"

"Yep." Griggs smiled crookedly at her expression. "And don't forget how sensitive relations with Erewhon are at the moment. I'm sure they'll cooperate with our needs, but they're so pissed off with the Government at the moment that that cooperation's likely to be pretty grudging. And they aren't going to be impressed by our concerns about our proximity to Haven, either. Not after the way half of their voters figure the Star Kingdom was willing to throw away the entire Alliance for purely domestic political advantages."

Hofschulte nodded, but her expression was a bit uncomfortable. True, the Queen's Own's loyalty was to the Crown and the Constitution, not to the office of the Prime Minister or to the current government of the Star Kingdom. The regiment's perso

"Do you seriously expect them to drag their feet, Sir?" she asked more seriously, and Griggs shrugged.

"Not really," he said. "What I do expect, though, is that they're not going to go out of their way to extend additional cooperation the way they did when Princess Ruth's father visited Erewhon during the war." He shrugged again. "Hard to blame them, really. Even leaving aside the way we've stomped all over their toes in the last three or four T-years, the Princess is a lot less likely a target than the Duke was, and the threat environment should be a lot less extreme than it was then."

He and Hofschulte looked at one another grimly, remembering the many friends and colleagues who'd died aboard the royal yacht during the attempt to assassinate the Queen on her state visit to Grayson.