At All Costs

"I hope you're right." Henke sipped coffee, then lowered her cup. "I hope you're right," she repeated, "because hard as I tried to stay cynical, I think Pritchart really means it. She really wants to sit down with Beth and negotiate peace."

"Then let's hope she manages to pull it off," Honor said softly.

"And I think I don't trust them as far as I could throw a superdreadnought!" Elizabeth III said angrily.

The power of her emotions was like a black thundercloud to Honor's perceptions, looming over the pleasant council chamber in Mount Royal Palace. None of the other humans could sense it, but all of the treecats were only too obviously aware of it. She reached up to stroke Nimitz's spine, watching as Prince Justin did the same for Monroe. Ariel's half-flattened ears were an accurate barometer of the Queen's emotions, and Honor could sense Samantha buttressing herself against them from Hamish's chair back.

"Your Majesty-Elizabeth," William Alexander said, "nobody is asking you to trust them. Certainly not on no more basis than the fact that they've returned Michelle and that Pritchart is requesting a meeting with you. That's not really the point."

"Oh, yes, it is!" Elizabeth shot back.

"No, it isn't, Your Majesty," Sir Anthony Langtry disagreed firmly. The Queen glowered at him, and he shrugged. "Willie's right. The point is whether it's better for us to talk to them or shoot at them when we don't know what's happening in the Cluster."

"Which we'll know in another week or so!"

Honor very carefully did not sigh. Elizabeth had proven far more intransigent than she'd hoped over the four days since Michelle Henke's return to Manticore with Honor from Trevor's Star.

"Elizabeth," Honor said now, calmly, "four days from now is the soonest we could really hope to receive a dispatch boat, assuming Terekhov sent one off within twenty-four hours of his pla

Elizabeth looked at her, and Honor shrugged.

"If he'd been wrong about his initial assumptions, he would have learned that when the Copenhagen met him at his rendezvous point after scouting Monica. At that point, he would have turned around and headed back to the Cluster, and a dispatch boat from him at that time would have been here at least two weeks ago. So, obviously, Copenhagen either told him his suspicions were justified, or never made the rendezvous. Which would have told him pretty much the same thing."

"And?" Elizabeth said, when she paused.

"And that means he did continue to Monica, where he almost certainly violated Monican territorial space. Let's assume he managed to carry out his best-case plan without firing a shot, and the Monicans agreed to halt whatever preparations they were making until we could assure ourselves they had no designs against the Cluster. That's the best message we could be receiving in the next week."

"In which case the situation is under control," Elizabeth said.

"In which case we're effectively in control of Monican space," Honor corrected gently. "For now. It's also possible his dispatch is going to tell us he's fought a battle. In that case, he either won, or he lost. In either of those cases, we have a shooting incident with a sovereign star nation with a long-standing relationship with the Office of Frontier Security. In that case, it's going to be weeks, even months, before we know whether or not OFS is prepared to commit Solly naval units against us. In fact, even if no shots were exchanged, if Terekhov and Khumalo have occupied the Monica System under threat of force, we could still be looking at OFS intervention. And whatever Terekhov's dispatches might tell us a week from now, we're still going to be facing the same wait until we can be sure which way OFS is going to jump."

"Precisely what I'm trying to say." Baron Grantville looked gratefully at his sister-in-law and nodded vigorously. "I'm sure Pritchart didn't make it because of how much she loves us, but her point about the value of a cease-fire while we find out whether or not we're at war with the Solarian League is completely valid."

He turned back to the Queen.

"That's the same point Tony and I have been trying to make ever since Mike got home. Elizabeth," there was raw appeal in his eyes, "we're in serious trouble. The Peeps alone outnumber us two-to-one in ships of the wall. We all hope Terekhov and Khumalo have managed to nip whatever was happening in the Cluster in the bud, and that Admiral O'Malley's task force will be enough to keep a lid on things if they did. But we don't know that, and we won't know it until we know absolutely that OFS is going to back down. And don't forget the Mesan element in all this. We know they've got a cozy deal with a lot of Frontier Security commissioners, but we don't really know how much pressure they're going to be able to bring to bear to try to salvage whatever they were up to if Terekhov and Khumalo have spoked their wheel."

"And whether you trust them or not, and whether or not Pritchart really intends from the outset to negotiate in good faith, there's always the possibility a peace treaty would emerge, anyway," Hamish Alexander-Harrington pointed out in a neutral tone.

Elizabeth's eyes flashed at him, and he looked back steadily.

"She's the one who's told the newsies about the proposed summit," he said. "That means the onus to make some sort of progress is at least largely on her if you do agree to meet with her. Unless the two of you are going to sit down somewhere, all alone, in a smoke-filled room and negotiate some sort of private deal, the whole thing's going to go forward in a positive glare of publicity. So if you make a reasonable offer, she may find herself hoist by her own petard and forced to entertain it seriously."

"You tell Emily not to try to manage me by remote control, Hamish!" Elizabeth snapped. "I've got enough official advisers trying to do that!"

Honor started to protest, then kept her mouth firmly closed. This being married business had its own complications, she'd discovered. The last thing she needed was to sound as if she were weighing in in concert with her spouses.

"Oh, be reasonable, Elizabeth!" the seventh human seated at the table said in a voice of considerable exasperation. The Queen turned her glare upon the speaker, only to be met by glittering eyes exactly the same color as her own.

"Stop pitching such a snit," Caitrin Winton-Henke told her niece sharply. "You don't like Peeps. You don't trust Peeps. Fine. Neither do I, and you know exactly why I don't. But you're the Queen of Manticore, not a schoolchild! Act like it."

Honor felt several people wincing in anticipation of a furious explosion from the Queen. But it didn't come. Instead, Elizabeth looked into her aunt's eyes and the tight shoulders and rigid spine of the woman the treecats had named Soul of Steel seemed to droop.

Honor felt her own eyes soften in sympathy, but she understood what Michelle Henke's mother had just done. The Dowager Countess of Gold Peak was Elizabeth's one-time regent. She was also the only person at the conference table who had lost even more deeply and personally to the Peeps than Elizabeth had... as she had just reminded her niece.

"And don't forget, Elizabeth," Honor said as she felt the Queen's adamantine resistance waver, "if you attend this summit, and if I attend it with you, there'll be at least two treecats present. Don't you think it would be worth getting Ariel and Nimitz close enough to taste Pritchart's mind-glow, whatever else happens?"

Elizabeth's eyes darted to Honor, and she frowned thoughtfully. She was obviously thinking about the fact that it would also get Honor close enough to do the same thing, and Honor was cautiously pleased by the evidence that the Queen was finally stepping back far enough to think.