Flag In Exile

But the true master of the sword, he'd said that quiet day, was she who had learned to rely not on her enemy's weakness, but upon her own strength. She who understood that the difference between the salle and what Honor faced today, between fencing, the art, and life or death by the sword, was always in the crease, not the dominance.

Honor knew she'd taken longer to grasp his meaning than someone with her background should have. But once she had, and after she'd studied the library information on Japan, she'd also realized why, on Grayson, as in the ancient islands of the samurai, a formal duel almost always both began and ended with a single stroke.

An edge of puzzlement flickered in Burdette's mind as she simply stood there. He, too, had been taught about the dominance and the crease, and he'd used both to his advantage in many competitions. But he was certain she had no more idea of what his crease was than he did of hers; surely she didn't think she could somehow deduce it at this late date!

Or perhaps she did. Perhaps she was too new to the sword to have sorted out all the metaphysical claptrap from the practical reality, but William Fitzclarence was too experienced to allow himself to be distracted from the real and practical when he held a live blade.

He held his position, and his upper lip curled as he reached out for the dominance. That was the part of every match he'd always enjoyed most. The invisible thrust and parry, that tension as the stronger will drove the weaker to open itself to attack, and he licked mental chops at the thought of driving the harlot.

But then the curl smoothed from his lip and his eyes widened, for there was no clash. His intense concentration simply disappeared against her, like a sword thrust into bottomless black water which enveloped it without resistance, and a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek What was wrong with her? He was the master here, she the tyro. She had to feel the pressure, the gnawing tension ... the fear. Why wasn't she attacking to end it?

Honor waited, poised and still, centered physically and mentally, her eyes watching every part of his body without focusing on any. She felt his frustration, but it was as distant and unimportant as the ache of her broken ribs. She simply waited, and then, suddenly, she moved.

She never knew, then or later, what William Fitzclarence's "crease" was. She simply knew she'd recognized it. That something deep inside her saw the moment he committed himself; the instant his arms tightened to bring his blade slashing down.

The instant in which he was entirely focused on the attack, and not on defense.

Her body responded to that recognition with the trained reaction speed of someone born and bred at the bottom of a gravity well fifteen percent more powerful than her opponent's. Her blade flashed up in a blinding, backhand arc, and the Sword of State's razor-sharp spine opened Burdette's torso from right hip to left shoulder. Clothing and flesh parted like cobwebs, and she heard the start of his explosive cry as shock and pain froze his blade. But he never completed that scream, for even as it rose in his throat and he began to fold forward over his opened belly, her wrists turned easily, and she slashed back to her left in a flashing continuation of her original movement, backed by all the whip-crack power of her body, and William Fitzclarence's head leapt from his shoulders in a geyser of blood.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Honor sat in another pi

She turned her eyes to the seat beside hers, twin to the one in which Reverend Hanks had ridden to his death. A sword sat upright in that seat. Once it had been the Burdette Sword; now it was the Harrington Sword, and she tried to analyze her feelings as she gazed at it.

Exhaustion, she thought with a small, bleak smile. That was what she felt most strongly just now, through the shimmery false energy of too many stims. But under that there were other emotions.

It wasn't like her duel with Pavel Young. Then she'd felt nothing but... relief. A grim sense of completion, yes, but nothing more than that, for she'd known it would never bring Paul back to her. It had been something she'd had to do, something she couldn't not have done, yet in its own way it had been as empty as Young himself, for it had healed nothing. Prevented nothing.

But this time was different. Burdette's death could no more atone for his crimes than Young's had, but he'd been a danger to others, as well. He a been a danger to Benjamin Mayhew and his reforms and to all the other people he would have destroyed in the service of his fanaticism, and now he would destroy no more. She'd managed that much, she thought. She'd stopped him from killing again, and this time no voice had condemned her actions. She'd killed him, yes, but she'd done so as Steadholder and Champion, executing the power of high justice that was hers as Steadholder Harrington in full accord with the law even as she discharged her sworn duty to her Protector.

She sighed and leaned back, hugging Nimitz against her, and felt his fierce approval. There were no qualifications in his feelings, for treecats were less complicated than humans, and for all their intelligence, they held to a simple code. For them, those who threatened them or their adopted humans came in only two categories: those who had been suitably dealt with, and those who were still alive. Nimitz accepted that it would sometimes be impossible to deal with Honor's enemies properly, for humans embraced a variety of often silly philosophical conventions, but that didn't dampen his satisfaction when it was possible. More to the point, perhaps, a dead enemy was no longer a matter of much concern to him.

Not for the first time, Honor wished her own feelings could be as straightforward, but they weren't. She felt no regret for killing Burdette, yet his hatred of her had been the catalyst for all his murderous actions, and she hadn't stopped him in time. Intellectually, she knew it was stupid to blame herself for his fanaticism; emotionally, it was hard, so hard, not to feel somehow responsible. And whoever had been to blame, killing him had undone nothing he'd already done, just as the sword in the seat beside her could never fill the emptiness left by Julius Hanks in her own life and the life of Grayson. And because of that, she thought wearily, this time Nimitz was wrong. There were debts no death could pay, and she was so tired of death.

They'd reach Terrible soon, and all those men and women in uniform would remind her painfully of how Jared Sutton had died. Yet even so she longed to get back aboard. She had too many dead to mourn; no place could be free of reminders of them all, and at least her flagship was also a refuge. It was a world she understood, one in which she could shelter while her body recovered and her soul healed, and she knew how badly she needed that refuge now.

Alfredo Yu and Mercedes Brigham stood in the boat bay gallery. Just this once, as Lady Harrington had requested, there was no side party, no honor guard of Marines. Only her flag captain and her chief of staff waited to greet her, and if that was a gross violation of naval etiquette, neither of them very much cared.

The docking tube hatch opened, and the two captains turned to face it, waiting side by side until Honor Harrington caught the grab bar and swung herself into Terrible's onboard gravity. Mercedes hid an i