Ashes Of Victory

"You never spent a day in your life on your `best behavior'!" Honor snorted. "Um." She cocked her head. "Unless you wanted to charm something out of some poor unsuspecting male with your winsome smile and dimples, that is," she amended.

"Oh, I can think of one or two times I behaved myself to get something out of a female, too," Allison said, then sighed. "That was before you were born, of course," she added pensively.

"Two or three? Are you sure you wanted something out of that many females? That sounds like an excessive estimate, considering how relentlessly heterosexual you are. You're not even a hundred years old yet, you know."

"I'm certain there were at least two, and I think there were three." Allison wrinkled her nose in thought. "I'm almost sure there were three," she a

"I see." Honor leaned back against the closed sitting room door and smiled down at her mother. "Feeling better?" she asked genially.

"Oh, lots better!" Allison laughed, then shook her head. "Do you have any idea how your Graysons would react if I went on with one of them that way, Honor?"

"Oh, I think Miranda might surprise you. And I know Howard and Andrew would."

"Not a fair sample selection," Allison objected. "You've been breaking those three in gradually for years now!"

"Agreed." Honor shrugged and the two of them started down the hall once more. "On the other hand, it was probably a good thing that I had a decade or so to `break in' the entire planet before you washed up there."

"It did help," Allison agreed with a small chuckle, then shook her head in fresh amazement as they started down the huge, sweeping grand staircase to the mansion's enormous foyer. "I think this is even worse than Harrington House," she mused. "And Mistress Thorn has already discussed the distance from the kitchen to the dining room with me. She Does Not Approve, Honor. Rather vocally, as a matter of fact."

"I'm not surprised. As a matter of fact, people seem to be developing a nasty habit of giving me houses that are entirely too magnificent for my taste. Not that they see it that way, of course. They seem to think the problem is simply that my taste is insufficiently magnificent for one of my high station and general all round demigoddess status." She made a rude sound, and the live side of her face grimaced. "Actually, of course, it's all your fault for failing to instill a proper desire for the finer things in life into me. I told Mike that if her cousin were anyone but the Queen of Manticore I would've handed this oversized docking slip straight back to her. It'd take an entire battalion of servants to keep up with something this size back on Grayson, and even with all the remotes and the house AI, the staff here on Manticore is still over thirty!"

She shook her head and led the way down the staircase.

"It takes a good half hour to walk from one end of the place to the other," she went on, exaggerating only slightly, "and I feel like I need an inertial navigation box and way points just to get from the library to the bathroom. At least Harrington House has the excuse that it's also an administrative center, but this thing is pure ostentation!"

"Calm down, dear," Allison advised. "Her Majesty just wanted to give you a shiny new toy to show everyone how much she likes you. And you must admit she really did manage to come up with something you'd never have thought to buy for yourself."

"Oh, you hit that one right on the head," Honor agreed feelingly. "Mac loves it, of course. He feels it offers the proper setting for an individual of my towering stature." The living side of her face grimaced one more. "And Nimitz and Sam like it, too, because it's big enough they'll be able to spend years exploring before they find all its 'cat-sized nooks and cra

"I don't see any reason to feel guilty," Allison said as they reached the bottom of the staircase and headed across the statue and holo tapestry-decorated foyer's endless expanse of black-and-green marble. She paused to admire the water feature splashing at its center while the black, gold, and green darts of Sphinxian koi (which actually did favor the Old Terran species of the same name, allowing for the absence of scales, the extra fins, and the horizontal flukes of the tail) sailed about in the polished granite basin's forest of water plants and artistically placed cobbles.

"You didn't build it or squander the money on space you don't really need," she went on after a moment. "And if someone else did, it's not like the planet is going to run out of living volume anytime soon. Besides, Honor — all kidding aside, the Queen really did give this place to you more to show the public how much she values you than because she ever imagined you'd need anything like it. From that perspective, it was as much a political move on her part as that statue of you outside Steadholder's Hall was on Benjamin's. But that doesn't mean she didn't really want to give you something special."

Honor made an uncomfortable little gesture, and her mother laughed softly.

"So that's the real reason for all this heat! You're feeling all embarrassed again."

"I am not," Honor protested. "It's just—"

"Just that you hate being `turned into' some sort of hero."

Allison stopped and touched her daughter's elbow, halting her until she turned to face her.

"Honor, I love you very much," she said then, her voice unwontedly serious. "You know I do, even though I probably haven't told you so as often as I should have. And I'm also your mother — the one who changed your diaper, watched you learn to walk and talk, sent you off to school, bandaged your ski

"I know, I know." She waved a hand when Honor tried to edge in a protest. "You didn't do it so people would admire you, and most of the time you were doing all those `heroic' things you were scared to death. I told you I know you, Honor, and how could I know you without knowing that, as well? I've seen you grit your teeth each time some newsie or vote-grubbing politician calls you `the Salamander,' and I know all about the nightmares — and worse — you went through after Paul's death. But do you really think all those people who came to your funeral when we thought the Peeps had killed you don't understand that too? They may not know you as well as your father and I do, but they know you better than that! And truth to tell, I think that's one reason so many of them do think of you as heroic. Not because they expect you to be so stupid or so arrogant that you think you're invulnerable or because fear never enters your thoughts, but because you've demonstrated that you know you're not invulnerable—" her tiny wave indicated Honor's missing arm and the dead side of her face "—and they're smart enough to realize you are scared... and you do your job anyway."