David Weber - Honor 12 - Crown of Slaves

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Crown of Slaves

David Weber and Eric Flint

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-7148-2

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, September 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weber, David, 1952-

Crown of slaves / David Weber & Eric Flint.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-7148-2 (hardcover)

1. Life on other planets—Fiction. I. Flint, Eric. II. Title.

PS3573.E217C76 2003

813'.54—dc22

2003014257

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

To Andre Norton—

Andre, you proved long ago that being a giant

has nothing to do with physical stature. You've been taking giant steps and

teaching the art of story-telling for over half a century, and we are among

those—

those many—who have been privileged to be your students. It's time we told

the teacher thank you.

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER

Honor Harrington:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Echoes of Honor

Ashes of Victory

War of Honor

edited by David Weber:

More than Honor

Worlds of Honor

Changer of Worlds

The Service of the Sword

Empire From the Ashes (omnibus)

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empir

Path of the Fury

The Apocalypse Troll

The Excalibur Alternative

Oath of Swords

The War God's Own

with Steve White:

Insurrection

Crusade

In Death Ground

The Shiva Option

with John Ringo:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

March to the Stars

with Eric Flint:

1633

PART I:

MANTICORE

Chapter 1

"I'm really nervous, Daddy," whispered Berry, glancing almost furtively at the resplendently

uniformed soldiers who seemed to line the entire length of the hallway leading to Queen

Elizabeth's private audience chamber.

"No reason to be," gruffed Anton Zilwicki, continuing to advance stolidly toward the great

double doors at the end of the hallway. The doors, like much of the furniture in Mount Royal

Palace, were made of ferran. Even at the still-considerable distance, Anton could easily recognize

the distinctive grain of the wood, as well as the traditional designs which had been carved into it.

Ferran was native to the highlands of his home planet of Gryphon, and he'd done quite a bit of

work with the stuff in his youth. Most Gryphon highlanders did, at one time or another.

Part of him—the rational, calculating side which was so prominent a feature of his

personality—was pleased to see the wood. The wooden doors, and the carvings on them even

more so, were a subtle reminder to everyone by the Winton dynasty that they valued their

Gryphon highlander subjects as much as Manticorans proper. But Anton couldn't help

remembering how much he'd hated working with the stuff as a boy. The root of the word "ferran"

was a none-too-subtle indicator of its most outstanding property other than the attractive grain

and rich color.

The enormous muscles in Anton's forearms were the product of his weight-lifting regimen as

an adult; but, already as a boy, those muscles had been hard and powerful. Ferran could not be

worked by weaklings. The stuff was almost as hard as iron, and just as easy to shape with hand

tools.

Anton's lips twitched. The same accusation—or its kin, at any rate—had been leveled at him,

and quite a bit more often than once. Damn you, Zilwicki! Hard as a rock and just as easy to

move!

That very morning, in fact, and by his lover Cathy Montaigne.

"I think Mommy was right," whispered Berry. "You should have worn your uniform."

"They put me on half-pay," he growled. "I'm supposed to wear that silly dress uniform—most

uncomfortable thing I own—afterward? Like a poodle sitting up to beg forgiveness?"

Berry's nervous glances at the guards in the hallway were now definitely furtive, especially

the glance she cast at the four soldiers following them a few steps behind. Clearly enough, the

teenage girl was half-expecting the Queen's Own Regiment to arrest them on the spot for . . .

Whatever fancy legal phrase covered: charged with being the stubborn disrespectful lout

Anton Zilwicki and his adopted daughter.

"The Queen didn't put you on the beach," she hissed hastily, as if that disclaimer might

possibly establish her own innocence. "That's what Mommy kept saying to you this morning. I

heard her. She was pretty loud."

The thing that flashed immediately through Anton's mind was a soft pleasure at Berry's use of

the term Mommy to refer to Cathy Montaigne. Technically, of course, she wasn't. Berry and her

brother Lars had been adopted by Anton, and since he and Cathy were not married the most that

Cathy could officially be called was . . .

Again, his lips twitched. Daddy's girlfriend, maybe. Paramour, if you wanted to be fancy

about it. "Anton's squeeze" was the term Cathy herself enjoyed using in proper company. The

former Countess of the Tor took a childish pleasure in seeing pained expressions on the faces of

polite society.

For Berry and Lars, born and raised in the hellhole of the Old Quarter on Earth's capital city

of Chicago, the legalities were meaningless. Since Anton's daughter Helen had found and rescued

them from the catacombs, Berry and Lars had found the first real family they'd ever had. And

Anton was glad to see the ease with which that knowledge now came to them.

But pleasure was for a later time. This was a moment for a father's stern instructions. So

Anton removed the smile, came to an abrupt halt, and half-glowered at his daughter. He ignored

the four soldiers who abruptly found themselves coming to an unexpected halt, almost stumbling

into their charges.

"And so what?" he demanded. He made no attempt to keep his basso voice from rumbling

down the hallway, although the thickening Gryphon highlander accent probably made the words

unrecognizable by the time they reached the ears of the majordomo standing by the far doorway.

"The monarch stands at the center of things, girl. For that, the Crown gets my allegiance.

Unconditional allegiance, too, so long as the dynasty respects the rights of their subjects. But the

reverse stands true as well. I do not condemn Her Majesty for the actions of 'her' government,

mind. It's a constitutional monarchy, and as things stand at the moment, that would be silly. But

she gets no praise for it, either."

He almost laughed, seeing Berry swallowing. To the former urchin of Chicago's underworld,

power was power and "the laws" be damned. No laws nor lawmen had prevented her from

suffering the horrors she'd lived through. Nor would they have, ever, in the world she'd come

from. All that had ended it was the naked violence of Anton's daughter Helen, a young Havenite

intelligence officer named Victor Cachat, and a dozen ex-slave killers from the Audubon

Ballroom led by Jeremy X.

Yet a father's job is to educate his children, and Anton would no more shirk that duty than

any other.

He heard one of the soldiers standing behind him clear his throat in a none-too-polite

reminder. The Queen is waiting, you fool!

A splendid opportunity to continue the lesson, he decided. Anton gave the soldier—the

sergeant commanding their little four-man escort—his most intimidating stare.

And quite intimidating it was, too. Anton was a short man, but so wide and extravagantly

muscled that he looked like something out of a legend of dwarven kings. The blocky head and

dark eyes—hard as agates, at times like these—only heightened the effect. The soldiers staring at

him would no doubt be wondering if Anton could bend steel bars with his bare hands.

He could, in fact. And the soldiers were probably also suddenly remembering that the

grotesquely built man glowering at them had, in younger days, been the Star Kingdom's

champion wrestler in his weight class.

All four of them took a half-step back. The sergeant's right hand even twitched ever so

slightly toward the sidearm holstered at his side.

Good enough. Anton wasn't actually seeking an incident, after all. He let his eyes slide away

from the soldiery and come back to his daughter.

"I'm no damn nobleman, girl. Neither are you. So we ask no courtier favors—nor do we bend

our knees. They put me on the beach, and the Queen said nothing. So she can live with it as well

as they or I can. That's why that uniform is in the closet and will stay there. Understand?"

Berry was still nervous. "Shouldn't I, maybe, bow or something?"

Anton rumbled a laugh. "Do you even know how to 'bow'?"

Berry nodded. "Mommy showed me."

Anton's glower was coming back in full force. Hastily, Berry added: "But not the way she

does it—or used to do it, anyway, before she became a commoner."

Anton shook his head. "Bowing is for formal occasions, girl. This is an informal audience.

Just stand quietly and be polite, that's good enough." He turned and resumed his progress toward

the doors leading to the Royal Presence. "Besides, I wouldn't trust you to do it right anyway. Sure

as certain not if Cathy showed you how, with all of a noblewoman's flourish and twirls."

His lips twitched again, his good humor returning. "When she's in the mood—not often, I

admit—she can make any duchess turn green with envy with that fancy bow of hers."

If nothing else, by the time they reached the doors and a glaring majordomo began swinging

them open, Anton's display of highlander contrariness seemed to have relaxed Berry a bit. No

doubt she'd reached the conclusion that the Royal Displeasure soon to descend on her father

would be so thoroughly focused on him that she might emerge unscathed.

* * *

In the event, however, the Queen of the Star Kingdom greeted them with a smile so wide it

might almost be called a grin. Against Elizabeth's mahogany skin, the white teeth gleamed

brightly. From what Anton could determine, the sharp-toothed gape on the face of the Queen's

companion Ariel seemed even more cheerful. Anton was no expert on treecats, but he knew they

usually reflected the emotions of the human to whom they were bonded. And if that vaguely

feline shape lounging casually across the thickly upholstered backrest of the Queen's chair was

offended or angry, there was no sign of it.

Despite his contrariness of the moment, Anton could not keep himself from warming toward

the Queen. He was still a Crown Loyalist, when all was said and done, even if that once-simple

political philosophy had developed a lot of curlicues and embroidery in the years since he'd met

Catherine Montaigne. And he approved of this particular monarch, from all that he'd been able to

see of her since she came to the throne.

The knowledge was all from a distance, however. He'd never actually met Queen Elizabeth,

other than seeing her at a handful of large official gatherings.

He caught a glimpse of the young woman seated next to the Queen making an almost-furtive

motion at the small console attached to her own chair. Glancing quickly to the side, Anton

spotted a discreetly recessed viewscreen in the near wall of the small chamber. The display was

dark now, but he suspected that the Queen and her companion had been observing him as he

approached down the hallway—in which case, they would have heard his little exchange with

Berry. Every word of it, unless the audio pickups were a lot worse than you'd expect in the palace

of the galaxy's most electronically advanced realm.

He was not offended by the notion. In his days as a Navy yard dog, he might have been. But

Anton's many years since as an intelligence officer—which he still basically was, even if in

private practice—had given him a blasé attitude toward surveillance. So long as people respected

his privacy, which he defined as his home and hearth, he didn't much care who snooped on him in

public places. Whatever his other faults, Anton Zilwicki was not a hypocrite, and it wasn't as if he

didn't do the same himself.

Besides, it was obvious from her smile the Queen wasn't offended. If anything, she seemed

amused. He could sense Berry's relaxation as that knowledge came to her also.

But Anton wasn't paying much attention to Berry. As they continued to advance slowly

toward the elaborate chairs which served Elizabeth and her companion as informal thrones,

Anton's attention was given to the young woman seated next to the Queen.

At first, he thought he'd never seen the woman before, not even in file imagery or a

holograph. As he drew nearer, however, he began connecting her features with those he'd seen in

a few images taken when the girl was considerably younger. Soon enough, Anton had deduced

her identity.

The age was the final giveaway. Anton was no expert on couture, but it was obvious even to

him that the young woman's apparel was extremely expensive. The kind of clothing that would be

worn by a noblewoman serving as the Queen's adviser. But this woman was much too young for

that. Granted, prolong made gauging age rather difficult, but Anton was sure this woman was

almost as young as the teenager she looked to be.

That meant a member of the royal family itself, or close kin, and there was only one such who

fit the bill. The fact that the girl's complexion was so much paler than the standard Winton skin

color just added the icing to the cake.

Ruth Winton, then, the daughter of the Queen's sister-in-law Judith Winton. Ruth had been

sired by a Masadan privateer but adopted by the Queen's younger brother Michael when he

married Judith after her escape from captivity. If Anton remembered correctly—and his memory

was phenomenal—the girl had been born after Judith's escape, so Michael was the only father

Ruth had ever known. She'd be about twenty-three years old now.

Because of the awkwardness of the girl's paternity she was officially not part of the line of

succession to the throne. Other than that, however, she was in effect Queen Elizabeth's niece.

Anton wondered what she was doing here, but he gave the matter no more than a fleeting

thought. He had no idea what he was doing here, after all, since the Queen's summons had come

as a surprise to him. He was quite sure he would discover the answer soon enough.

He and Berry reached a point on the floor which Anton decided marked a proper distance

from The Royal Person. He stopped and bowed politely. Next to him, Berry did a hasty and

nervous version of the same.

Hasty, yes—but still far too elaborate for Anton's taste. However much of his rustic

background Anton might have abandoned when he left Gryphon many years earlier, he still

retained in full measure a highlander's belligerent plebeianism. Kneeling and scraping and

kowtowing and fancy flourishes before royalty were aristocratic vices. Anton would give the

Crown his loyalty and respect, and that was damn well all.

He must have scowled a bit. The Queen laughed and exclaimed: "Oh, please, Captain

Zilwicki! The girl has a splendid bow. Still a bit awkward, perhaps, but I recognize Cathy's touch

in it. Can't miss that style, as much trouble as Cathy got me into about it, the time she and I

infuriated our trainer by doing what amounted to a ballet instead of an exercise. It was all her

idea, of course. Not that I wasn't willing to go along."

Anton had heard about the incident, as it happened. Cathy had mentioned it to him once.

Although Cathy rarely spoke of the matter, as girls she and the Queen had been very close friends

before their developing political differences ruptured the relationship. But, even then, there'd

been no personal animosity involved. And Anton had not been the only one who'd noticed that,

after Cathy's return from exile, there was always an undertone of warmth on those occasions

when she and Queen Elizabeth encountered each other.

True, the encounters were still relatively few and far between, because the Queen faced an

awkward political situation. While Elizabeth herself shared Cathy's hostility to genetic slavery—

as did, for that matter, the government of Manticore itself, on the official record—Cathy's

multitude of political enemies never missed an opportunity to hammer at Cathy's well-known if

formally denied ties with the Audubon Ballroom. Despite Manticore's position on slavery, the

Ballroom remained proscribed in the Star Kingdom as a "terrorist" organization, and its leader

Jeremy X was routinely reviled as the galaxy's most ruthless assassin.

That was not how either Cathy or Anton looked at the matter—nor the Queen herself, Anton

was pretty sure—but private opinions were one thing, public policy another. Whether or not

Elizabeth agreed with the stance taken toward the Ballroom by her government, that was the

official stance. So, however friendly might be the personal relations between her and Cathy

whenever they "accidentally" encountered each other at social gatherings, the Queen was careful

not to give Cathy any formal political recognition. Even though—of this, Anton was positive—no

one would be more delighted than Queen Elizabeth to see Cathy displace New Kiev as the leader

of the Liberal Party.

Elizabeth laughed again. "The things she got me into! One scrape after another. My favorite

escapade—the one that got her banned from the Palace for months, my mother was so furious—

was the time—"

She broke off abruptly. The grin faded, becoming almost strained, but didn't vanish entirely.

"Yes, I know, Captain Zilwicki. And now she's banned from the Palace again—politically, if

not personally—and by my order, not the Queen Mother's. Which, as it happens, is why I asked

you here. In a complicated sort of way."

The Queen made a little motion to the majordomo. Obviously expecting it, the man and one

of the soldiers standing guard brought up two of the chairs against a wall and positioned them in

front of the Queen and her companion.

"Do have a seat, Captain, please. Both of you."

Interesting, thought Anton. He was not familiar with royal protocol from personal experience,

but he knew a lot about it. Anton knew a lot about most things which bore in any way upon his

concerns. He was sure he lacked knowledge of some of the fine points, but the matter of seating

etiquette was fairly straightforward. When one was summoned before the monarch, one normally

was either presented with chairs as one came into the room, or one stood throughout the

audience. The distinction was rather sharp, and indicated either one's status or one's favor with

the monarch, or both.

This half-and-half arrangement, he suspected, was the Queen's way of signaling a half-and-

half sort of business. What anyone not encumbered by the necessary burden of royal protocol

would have indicated by just saying: "Let's see if we can make a deal."

Anton's sense of humor was far more restrained than that of his lover Cathy Montaigne, but it

was by no means absent. So, as he took his seat, he found himself fighting off the impulse to

respond with "you shuffle the cards and I'll cut 'em."

As soon as he was seated, Elizabeth gestured toward the young woman sitting next to her.

"This is my niece Ruth, as I imagine you've already deduced."

Anton nodded; first at the Queen, to acknowledge her guess, and then at the royal niece.

"You would have rarely seen a picture of her—and none in the last four years—because

we've always kept her out of the limelight." A bit stiffly: "That is not, incidentally—whatever the

'faxes may have speculated about—because the House of Winton is in the least bit concerned

about Ruth's parentage, much less ashamed of it. In her early years, it was to protect her from

possible harm. Her father—her mother's rapist, I should say—along with many of those Masadan

fanatics, escaped after Earl White Haven captured the planet following their attack on Grayson.

We've been looking for them ever since, but as I'm sure you know even better than I, we haven't

had much success finding them."

The Queen grimaced, and Zilwicki nodded mentally. A hard, disciplined core of the Masadan

version of the Church of Humanity Unchained had managed to go deep underground and stay

there. The fact that they were still hidden after over fifteen T-years of Manticoran occupation of

the planet said things no intelligence professional really wanted to contemplate. Especially since

the plot to assassinate both the Queen and the Protector of Grayson which had come within

centimeters of success only four years earlier.

"Who knows what those maniacs might have done?" the Queen continued, confirming that

her thoughts matched his own. "That was a long time ago, of course, and we don't worry about it

much any longer. But since then—"

Elizabeth cocked her head a bit and gave Ruth a wry little smile. "Since then, we've

maintained the secrecy at Ruth's own request. My niece, as it turns out—it's all a bit shocking,

really—has a most-un-Wintonesque desire to do her service in some capacity other than

following the usual military or foreign service or religious careers."

Anton gave the girl a careful scrutiny, considering everything he already knew about her, as

he chewed on Elizabeth's words.

There'd been some furor, especially among the more reactionary aristocracy, at then-Prince

and Heir Michael Winton's choice of a bride. As Heir, he was legally required to marry a

commoner if he married at all, but the expectation had been that he would simply wait until his

nephew replaced him as Heir, then marry someone of his own station. Certainly no one had ever

contemplated the possibility that he would marry a foreign commoner. Particularly not a

penniless refugee commoner from someplace like Grayson. And especially not a pregnant

commoner who'd escaped her Masadan captors only by committing multiple murders and stealing

a starship along the way.

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CrownofSlavesDavidWeberandEricFlintThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2003byDavidWeber&EricFlintAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBook...

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