That’s what she’d thought then. Now, as he walked through the door into the heavily guarded conference room, she realized just how wrong she’d been. Not about how he looked, but about how forgettable she would have found him.

  It took all her self-control to hide that sudden awareness and sit calmly in the comfortable chair, watching the wary Queen’s Own sergeants escort him across the room to the chair on the opposite side of the table. They were courteous but watchful, and she considered telling them they weren’t watchful enough. She could taste their mind-glows, knew their professionalism was fully engaged, yet she also knew they’d allowed that surface ordinariness to lull them.

  They really had no idea at all who—what—this man was. But then, they lacked her advantage, her ability to see beneath the surface with a treecat’s acuity.

  And, after all, he looked so ordinary.

  It was just as well her armsmen didn’t share that ability of hers. She’d never have convinced them to wait outside the conference room if they’d had a clue about just what this man truly was. She felt Nimitz sharing her impressions, like a beloved echo in the back of her brain, and knew his assessment matched her own. He lay stretched along the top of her chair back, not perched on her shoulder, but she felt the wary tension in the long, sinuous body pressed against the back of her head. Whatever the escorts might have thought, Nimitz was poised, ready to erupt off his perch in a heartbeat.

  The man stood behind his chair, head cocked, one eyebrow raised above a mild eye, and she smiled at him.

  “Sit down, please, Mr. Harahap,” she invited.

  “Thank you.”

  He settled into the chair with a near-treecat neatness, the first real flaw she’d seen in his façade of ordinariness. He’d masked that smooth, trained suppleness quite well walking across the room, but Honor Alexander-Harrington had spent half a century as a practitioner of coup de vitesse. The way he sat, the way he placed his feet so carefully, centered himself perfectly in the chair—those things said quite a lot to someone with her experience.

  She tipped back slightly in her own chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled under her chin, legs crossed while she contemplated him. Then she raised her eyes to the noncoms.

  “That will be all,” she said.

  The senior of them started to object, or question her wisdom, at any rate. But she twitched her head in a minute shake before he got his first sentence launched, and he closed his mouth.

  “Of course, Your Grace,” he said, instead. “We’ll be stationed at the door with your armsmen if you need us.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and felt Damien Harahap’s faint amusement as he, too, recognized the real target of that last sentence.

  The sergeants withdrew, the door slid shut behind them, and Honor returned her attention to the man across the table, studying him thoughtfully for exactly twenty-five seconds by the digital display in the corner of her artificial left eye’s field of vision.

  “You do realize all the reasons we should just execute you and be done with it, I trust, Mr. Harahap,” she said then, pleasantly.

  “Oh, I doubt I know all the reasons,” he replied. “I can think of at least—two dozen? Three?—right off the top of my head, though. I’m assuming your people have decided there’s at least a possibility I’m worth more alive and talking than I’d be dead as an object lesson, though. Far be it from me to disagree if you have, Duchess Harrington.”

  “They told you who I am?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “The only thing they told me was that I was about to be interviewed by a highly competent interrogator. I admit, I didn’t expect a navy admiral. I’ve been thinking more in terms of, oh, Mr. Zilwicki. Or possibly someone with bottles of chemicals and maybe a rubber hose or two, assuming he was a traditionalist. But—I hope you’ll forgive my pointing this out—you and your friend”—he twitched his head at Nimitz—“have attained a certain notoriety in Solarian circles. You almost fooled me, though. Sitting down the way you are, I hadn’t realized you were three meters tall.”

  “Three meters?” She shook her head with a faint smile. “Just under two, actually.”

  “So I noticed. Nobody reading the Solly newsfaxes would believe it, though. They’d probably wonder where the horns were, too, now that I think about it.”

  “I suppose someone might wonder the same thing looking at you, if they were familiar with your track record, Mr. Firebrand.” She shook her head again. “From our perspective, you’ve been a very bad boy.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you it was nothing personal?” he asked, and she cocked her head. His tone was almost whimsical, but underneath it…

  “Yes, Mr. Harahap. I think I would.”

  Damien Harahap stiffened. It was a tiny thing, more sensed than seen, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

  “Kind of you to say so, anyway,” he said lightly. “Somehow I doubt that’s going to make a lot of difference to my ultimate fate, though.”

  “Actually,” she told him, “the outcome of this interview will make quite a lot of difference to your ‘ultimate fate.’”

  “Oh?” It was his turn to cock his head. “I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing this out, but aren’t you supposed to be a fleet commander? Not a spook, I mean?”

  “Like yourself, I’m a person of many parts, Mr. Harahap. As far as you’re concerned, what matters at the moment is that in addition to commanding Grand Fleet, I’m a peer of the realm, a Grayson steadholder, the cousin of the Beowulf System Chairman, and a personal friend of both Empress Elizabeth, Protector Benjamin, and President Pritchart. Oh, and also of Chien-lu von Rabenstrange, who’s third in line for the Andermani throne.” This time, her smile was a treecat’s. “My point is that I have a certain influence with people who trust my ability to make judgments about other people’s sincerity. I’d advise you to make a good impression on me.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and then he chuckled. From his mind-glow, she knew his amusement was genuine.

  “Somehow,” he told her, “that sounds like a very good idea. So, tell me, Duchess Harrington. How can I start making that good impression?”

  “Well?” Elizabeth Winton said as Honor followed Colonel Ellen Shemais into the private drawing room. Spencer Hawke and Joshua Atkins had peeled off at the door, joining the Queen’s Own sentries already stationed there.

  “Would it be all right if I sat down before we began the cross-examination?” Honor asked her, and most of the treecats present bleeked in laughter. Ariel, Elizabeth’s treecat, joined in it, and the empress snorted.

  “If you insist,” she said, pointing at the armchair across from her own, and Honor sank into it with a sigh. She urged Nimitz down into her lap, hugging him rather than parking him on the back of her chair, and looked around the drawing room thoughtfully.

  In addition to Elizabeth and Ariel, Hamish and Samantha were present. So were Patricia Givens and her treecat bodyguard, Thought Chaser, and her civilian counterpart at SIS, Sir Barton Salgado and Crooked Tooth. Thomas Theisman was there with Springs From Above, and so were Thomas Caparelli and Clear Mind, Sir Anthony Langtry and Moon Dancer, and Sir Tyler Abercrombie, the Home Secretary, and his furry bodyguard, Stone Climber. Stone Climber and Samantha were the only female ’cats in the room.

  After so many decades when Nimitz had been the only treecat in the room, period, the denseness of the ’cat population took a little getting used to.

  And there was a lot of celery being munched upon.

  “Despite what Palace Security and the Queen’s Own may have told Mr. Harahap, I’m not really a ‘highly competent interrogator,’” she said after she and Nimitz were settled.

  “You may not be a highly trained interrogator, Your Grace, but you’re definitely one of the most competent ones I’ve ever met,” Patricia Givens disagreed.

  “I’d have to admit I wouldn’t want to try to lie to you, Honor,” Theisman put in. “And neither would any of the other cabinet secretaries, senators, and congressmen who met you in Nouveau Paris. Most of them had reached that conclusion long before we found out you were half treecat yourself, too.”

  “I suppose that’s one way to put it,” she conceded as the treecats went off into a fresh round of laughter.

  “That’s why we all wanted you to talk to him.” Elizabeth’s tone and expression had turned much more serious. “Our ’cats can talk to us now, tell us what they’re sensing, and we all know how useful that’s been to people like Admiral Givens and Sir Barton.”

  She twitched her head in the direction of the SIS Director and Patricia Givens, and Honor nodded. One unanticipated—although it darned well should have been anticipated—advantage of the treecat bodyguards was the enormous edge they gave counter-intelligence agents. There still weren’t enough of them—treecats were a top-tier predator species; their population densities had always been low—but they’d already made their presence felt in a big way. The vetting process was still in its early stages, but the human-’cat teams had already unmasked no less than eleven spies in the upper levels of the ministries’ professional staffs. Four of them had “died of natural causes” when they realized they’d been detected, which left little doubt about who they’d been working for. The seven who hadn’t died didn’t know who their employers had been.

  It would have been nice to take someone who could confirm the Alignment’s existence alive, but those four “natural” deaths had been plenty of confirmation for the members of the Grand Alliance. And at least they were progressively sealing off the leaks they hadn’t known about previously.

  “But whatever the ’cats can tell us, none of us can sense it ourselves,” Elizabeth continued. “You can. That’s the reason none of us shared a word of our own impressions with you until we’d dragged you down from your flagship and you’d had the opportunity to ‘taste his mind-glow’ yourself. So, now that you have, what’s your impression?”

  “The first point, I suppose,” Honor said thoughtfully, “is that I understand now why he’s been so damnably effective. I think probably the only people I’ve ever met who could compare to him as a covert operations sort, if in somewhat different ways, would be Anton Zilwicki,” she extended her right index finger, “Victor Cachat,” her second finger joined the first, “my Uncle Jacques,” the ring finger rose, “and Kevin Usher.”

  The silence which followed was profound. Then Theisman stirred.

  “That’s impressive company, Honor.”

  “I know. But he’s a very dangerous fellow. He’s very smart, very skilled, and extraordinarily methodical. Those are dangerous qualities in anyone, but Mr. Harahap is also a…call it an honest craftsman, for want of a better term. If he takes a job on—any job, not just blowing up star systems—he gives full value.”

  “You’re saying he’s a mercenary?” Givens asked, frowning intently, and Honor shrugged.

  “I suppose that’s one way to put it. On the other hand, when he says none of what he did was ‘personal’ he means exactly that. Not that his statement was entirely accurate. He didn’t want to admit it—because he didn’t think I’d believe him, I think—but what ultimately happened in Seraphim was personal for him.”

  She shrugged again, her eyes gazing intently at something only she could see as she searched for the right words.

  “The truth is—and, again, it’s nothing he said; I tasted it behind what he was saying—he wanted every single one of the rebellions he helped foment to succeed.”

  “I find that…difficult to believe,” Sir Tyler said slowly. Of all those present, he knew Honor and Nimitz least well, and she tasted his skepticism. His belief Harahap had somehow managed to snow her despite her ability to taste the emotions of those about her.

  “I doubt you find it much more difficult to believe secondhand than I did at firsthand,” she told him with the off-center smile her artificial facial nerves imposed. “It’s true, though. He really did.”

  “Why?” Theisman asked. “And did that apply to his activities in Talbott, too?”

  “I can’t tell you why for certain,” Honor said slowly. “Can’t give you all the reasons, I mean, but at least part of it was that the strategist in him thought the Mesans were missing a bet. He thought that at least a few successful rebellions by people who everyone believed had been backed by the Star Empire, however vociferously we denied it, would hurt us a lot worse in the court of Solarian public opinion. That it would tie into the line Abruzzi’s selling everyone about our ruthless imperialist ambitions. But that was only a part of it. I think mostly it was because he despises Frontier Security.”

  “Honor, he worked for Frontier Security,” Hamish pointed out.

  “No, he worked for the Gendarmerie, which farmed him out to Frontier Security,” Honor corrected. “And underneath all that serenity of his, so far underneath I’m not sure even he realizes it’s there, there’s one hell of a lot of anger at OFS.” She saw his eyebrows rise at her choice of adverb, “He thinks it’s only contempt because they’re sloppy and incompetent, Hamish, but he’s wrong. What he actually feels is a lot stronger than that…and his reasons are a lot more personal than he thinks they are.”

  “Why?” Theisman asked again.

  “Because he comes from the Startman System.”

  Honor’s voice was oddly flat, and her husband frowned as he heard that flatness. Patricia Givens heard it, too.

  “Why is that significant, Your Grace?” she asked. Honor looked at her in evident surprise, and she shook her head. “The name sounds familiar, but I’m not making any connections.”

  “I think it’s significant because it’s in the Protectorates and Harahap was seven years old when OFS handed his entire homeworld over to StratoCorp,” Honor said with that same flat, hard edge, and Theisman’s eyes narrowed.

  “StratoCorp?” Givens said a bit sharply. “That’s not in his dossier!”

  “Forgive me, Pat,” Caparelli said in a dry tone, speaking up for the first time, “but I was rather under the impression we were building a dossier on him.”

  “Well, yes.” Givens looked a bit chagrined. “But that much should already have been in it! If Her Grace could get it out of him this quickly…”

  “My understanding is that Commander Kaplan and her people were specifically told not to interrogate him on the trip here,” Theisman observed. “That would make it just a bit difficult for them to get anything out of him, wouldn’t it?”

  Givens nodded, and not entirely happily. She understood the reason for Jacob Zavala’s instructions; she just wasn’t sure she agreed with them. Still, Zavala’s argument had contained at least one compelling point. It probably had been better to let Harahap stew in the juices of his uncertain future—assuming the insufferably composed bastard knew how to stew in his own juices over anything—without giving him an opportunity to begin building a narrative with people who’d never been trained to interrogate someone who operated at his level.

  “Point taken, Sir,” she said. “Both points, actually.” She returned her attention to Honor. “I’m still a little surprised you got that out of him, Your Grace. If you’re right about how it shaped him, it’s the sort of vulnerability an operative of this caliber would go a long way to conceal from an adversary.”

  “As you’ve all just pointed out, I have certain unfair advantages.” Honor smiled briefly. “I don’t think he realized where he was going till we got there. Either that or it was what they used to call a Freudian slip. For that matter, he obviously didn’t know I’d ever heard of his home system.” Her smile disappeared. “Most Manticorans haven’t.”

  “I don’t believe I have, either,” Hamish said. “But like Pat says, it sounds vaguely familiar.” He frowned for a moment. “Was it something that might have come up in regard to Lacoön?” he asked then, and she nodded.

  “Probably. It’s on the far side of Sol, about a hundred and seventy-six light-years from Old Terra.” She shrugged. “It never had much in the way of an economy, but it’s only about a hundred light-years from the Titania Wormhole and less than twenty-six from Franzeki. That was enough to draw StratoCorp’s attention.”

  Hamish nodded, although he still looked a bit perplexed.

  Startman’s location, especially its proximity to Franzeki, might explain why it had been mentioned at least peripherally in one of the Lacoön briefs. And most Manticorans who’d ever had to deal with the Solarian League had heard of StratoCorp. Otherwise known as Stratosphere Services, Incorporated, it had been around a long time. It actually predated the Solarian League itself, although it had been Stratosphere Enterprises when it was first founded. It was also even more acquisitive than most Solarian transstellars, probably because it had fallen upon hard times for a couple of T-centuries. Its survival had been problematical, and it had emerged from the experience under a ruthless, and particularly rapacious leadership team which had set its mark on its corporate personality for generations to come.

  He’d never heard of the Startman System—aside from its name—but he knew StratoCorp had been building a portfolio of captive star systems for at least the last three hundred T-years. And although the Franzeki-Bessie hyper bridge was fairly short—little more than 125 LY—the Bessie System was only 30 LY from the Clarence Terminus of the Clarence-Artesia warp bridge, which was almost 370 LY long. For that matter, the Titania-Mullins warp bridge was well over 900 LY long, and the population of the Mullins Cluster systems was expanding rapidly. So, yes, he could understand why something like StratoCorp would want to get its claws into a system near enough to those termini to provide a useful base.

  But that didn’t explain why Honor knew about it. And why whatever she knew seemed so significant to her.

  Honor felt her lips twitch as she tasted her husband’s curiosity.

  “I know about it because of Uncle Jacques, Hamish,” she said. “StratoCorp’s been in bed with Manpower for a long time. Among other things, Manpower staged slave ships through Startman on their way to and from Clarence. The people they had in charge of the Startman slave depot were even worse than usual, but they were too far away for the BSC to do anything about. About fifteen T-years ago, though, the Ballroom paid them a visit. It was…ugly.”