War Of Honor

"Hear that, Nimitz?" the attorney said over his shoulder, to the cream and gray 'cat sprawled comfortably on the custom-made perch beside his smaller, dappled brown and cream mate. Nimitz pricked up his ears, and Maxwell chuckled. "I expect you to keep an eye on her and see to it that she really does pay attention to my memos," he said.

Nimitz considered him for a moment, then rose to a half-sitting position on the perch, and raised his true-hands. He placed the right true-hand, fingers together and palm facing to the left, on the upturned palm of his left true-hand, which pointed away from his body. The right true-hand slid out along the left palm, over the left fingers, and stopped with its heel resting on the left fingertips.

"Traitor," Honor muttered darkly as she read the sign for "Okay," and Nimitz bleeked a laugh and started signing again.

the flashing fingers said.

"To think your loyalty can be bought so cheaply," Honor told him, shaking her head sorrowfully.

Nimitz's true-hands replied.

"Right," Honor snorted. Then she looked back at Maxwell. "Well, now that you've recruited your furry minion, I suppose I really don't have any choice but to read your memo. Although, exactly where you expect me to fit it into my schedule is beyond me."

"I'm sure that between them Mac and Miranda can find somewhere to steal an hour or two for you to spend reading. I promise I'll make it as concise as I can, too. But before you approve any plans, you really do need to read more than just the digest and the section heads, Your Grace. I'm flattered that you trust me, but the ultimate decisions and the consequences they may have are up to you."

"I know," she said more seriously, and tapped a command into the terminal at her desk. She studied the display for a few seconds, and then entered a brief note.

"I just picked Wednesday out of a hat," she admitted, "but it looks like it will actually work anyway. And it's a good thing, too, because I've got an exam at Saganami Island that afternoon. I'm going to be swamped grading papers in my copious free time at least through the weekend. So if you can get it to me by Wednesday morning, or even better, by Tuesday evening, I'll fit it in somehow before I get buried under papers."

"I'm glad to hear it, Your Grace," Maxwell told her, "but don't you have a session in the Lords Wednesday, as well? I thought I saw a notice that the Government intended to move its new budget this week, and even though this is important, I wouldn't want it to interfere with any preparations for that."

"No," Honor said with another, more heartfelt grimace. "It's been moved to next Wednesday. I'm not sure why, but the Government notified us day before yesterday that they were moving the debate back a week. And there won't be a lot of preparation to do, either. High Ridge will say exactly the same things he's been saying for the last three T-years, and Earl White Haven and I will say exactly the same things we've been saying for the last three years. Then the House will vote—narrowly, of course—to draft the budget the Government wants, the Commons will move amendments to change it, the Lords will strip them back out again, and absolutely nothing will change."

Maxwell looked at her, wondering if she realized just how bitter (and exhausted) she sounded at that instant. Not that he was surprised to hear it.

The House of Lord's power to initiate finance bills was only part of its advantage in controlling the power of the purse in the Star Kingdom. In addition, any bill which actually passed had to pass in the final form approved by the Lords. That meant that, as Honor had just complained, the Lords could effectively strip out any Commons-sponsored amendment of which it disapproved and require a straight up-or-down vote on its own version of any financial bill. Under normal circumstances, the Commons still had quite a lot of say-so, since it could always refuse to approve the Lords' final version and—especially—refuse approval for any extraordinary funding measures required to support the Lords' budgets. But these circumstances weren't normal. The "extraordinary funding measures" were already in place, and the authority the Lords also enjoyed to pass special financial enabling authority for core government services on an emergency basis even without the Commons' approval in the event of a budgetary standoff was the icing on the cake.

Of course, prudent prime ministers were usually careful not to overstrain their weapons. For the Lords to ride roughshod over the Commons required a situation in which a sufficiently sizable piece of the electorate would be prepared to blame the Commons for failure to achieve compromise. Under those circumstances, the house which had to stand for reelection faced a fatal disadvantage, but if the Lords had been foolish enough to court situations in which they would be blamed for the ensuing shutdown of most government services, the long-term resentment might have allowed the Crown to strip the senior house of the power of the purse long ago.

That was precisely why the High Ridge Government had been so assiduously attempting to buy public support ... and what had made Duchess Harrington and Earl White Haven so valuable as the Opposition's spokespeople in the House of Lords. Where the naval budgets, in particular, were concerned, their voices carried a great deal of weight with the electorate.

And it was also why High Ridge and his allies wanted so desperately to reduce their effectiveness by any means possible,

The members of the Government themselves had to be extremely careful about seeming to pick personal quarrels with the two most famous heroes of the war against the Peeps. But that only required them to be more inventive and delegate attacks to suitably distanced henchmen. Nor did it do a thing to restrain the Government-sponsored "commentators" and 'faxes or the idiots who actually believed them, and Lady Harrington's cumulative exhaustion was begi

Of course, it wasn't as if she hadn't had more than her fair share of experience with partisan press coverage, both in the Star Kingdom and on Grayson, and she handled it with a degree of outward calm Maxwell was privately certain was mostly mask. He'd come to know her well enough over the past few T-years to recognize that for all her ability to project serenity and calm, her temper was probably at least as dangerous as that of the Queen herself. It seemed to be more difficult to make her lose it, but he would have been very hesitant to suggest that anything at all was beyond her once she did ... as the ghosts of Pavel Young and Denver Summervale could have attested.

In a way, it was even worse for her than for either of the Alexander brothers, Maxwell reflected. At least High Ridge and his cronies regarded them as representing only a single dangerous opponent, whereas it was no secret at all that Lady Harrington's contributions to debates in the Lords represented the views of Protector Benjamin, as well as those of Elizabeth III.

Neither of whom gave a thimble of spit in a blast furnace for Baron High Ridge and his ministerial colleagues.

The attorney started to say something, then changed his mind. He could hardly tell her anything she didn't already know. And even if he could have, it really wasn't his place to offer her unsolicited political advice or confidences, whatever rumors he might have been picking up.

Besides, he reflected, there's a better way to do it ... assuming I decide I have any business sticking my oar into her private life, that is. I won't have to tell her a thing; I'll just have to have a word with Miranda or Mac. Let them figure out how to bring it up with her.