David Weber - Crown of Slaves

Berry smiled. "Of course we are."

She meant it, too. Berry was good at making friends. Especially close ones.

"Sir, please tell me you're pulling my leg," Platoon Sergeant Laura Hofschulte, Queen's Own Regiment, begged plaintively.

"I wish I were, Laura," Lieutenant Ahmed Griggs sighed, and leaned back in his chair to run his fingers through his thick, reddish hair. It was his platoon Sergeant Hofschulte managed, and the two of them had served together for almost two T-years. During that time, they'd come to know one another well, and a powerful sense of mutual respect had deepened between them. Which probably helped explain the pained, disbelieving look of-well, betrayal wasn't quite the right word, but it was close- Hofschulte gave him now.

"I'm not sure whose idea it was," Griggs went on after a moment. "My impression from Colonel Reynolds is that it was Her Majesty herself, but it sounds to me more like something the Princess would have come up with."

"Her, or maybe Zilwicki," Hofschulte said darkly. "The man's a professional spook, Sir. God only knows how twisty his mind's gotten over the years!"

"No, I don't think it was him," Griggs disagreed. "As you say, he's a professional spook. And a father. I don't see a man as protective as he's supposed to be exposing his daughter to risk this way. Not if it was his own idea, that is.

"Not that it matters who thought it up," he continued more briskly. "What matters is that it's up to us to make it work."

"Let me get this straight, Sir," Hofschulte said. "We're haring off to Erewhon as the Princess' protective detail, but we're supposed to look like we're protecting Berry Zilwicki, who everyone else is going to think is the Princess?"

"Yep." Griggs smiled crookedly at her expression. "And don't forget how sensitive relations with Erewhon are at the moment. I'm sure they'll cooperate with our needs, but they're so pissed off with the Government at the moment that that cooperation's likely to be pretty grudging. And they aren't going to be impressed by our concerns about our proximity to Haven, either. Not after the way half of their voters figure the Star Kingdom was willing to throw away the entire Alliance for purely domestic political advantages."

Hofschulte nodded, but her expression was a bit uncomfortable. True, the Queen's Own's loyalty was to the Crown and the Constitution, not to the office of the Prime Minister or to the current government of the Star Kingdom. The regiment's personnel were charged with keeping the monarch and the members of her family alive, at any cost, and they were expected to discuss the parameters of their mission with complete frankness and thoroughness. Which included calling a spade a spade when the stupidity of the government of the day's policies threatened to complicate the primary mission. Still…

"Do you seriously expect them to drag their feet, Sir?" she asked more seriously, and Griggs shrugged.

"Not really," he said. "What I do expect, though, is that they're not going to go out of their way to extend additional cooperation the way they did when Princess Ruth's father visited Erewhon during the war." He shrugged again. "Hard to blame them, really. Even leaving aside the way we've stomped all over their toes in the last three or four T-years, the Princess is a lot less likely a target than the Duke was, and the threat environment should be a lot less extreme than it was then."

He and Hofschulte looked at one another grimly, remembering the many friends and colleagues who'd died aboard the royal yacht during the attempt to assassinate the Queen on her state visit to Grayson.

"Well, that's true enough, anyway, Sir," Hofschulte agreed after a moment. "On the other hand, the Duke wasn't the Princess, if you'll pardon my saying so. He was a hell of a lot easier to protect than she's likely to be."

"I know," Griggs agreed glumly. Actually, Ruth was normally quite popular with the royal family's protective details. Everyone liked her a great deal, and she was always cheerful and-like most Wintons, whether by birth or adoption-never snotty to the uniformed people responsible for keeping her alive. Unfortunately, the detail also knew all about the princess' ambition to pursue a career in espionage. Anton Zilwicki's presence gave a certain added emphasis to that ambition, and hobnobbing with Anti-Slavery League activists in a situation as politically complex as the Stein funeral was likely to prove was not something any sane bodyguard commander wanted to contemplate. Worse yet-

"How old did you say Ms. Zilwicki is, Sir?" Hofschulte asked, and Griggs chuckled sourly at the proof that her thoughts were paralleling his own.

"Seventeen, actually," he said, and watched the sergeant wince.

"Wonderful… Sir," she muttered. "I'd kind of hoped she might, ah, exercise a restraining influence on the Princess," she added rather forlornly.

"It would be nice if someone would," Griggs agreed. Ruth Winton was a perfectly nice young woman, with an exquisite innate sense of courtesy. She had also, by dint of the way the royal family had closed ranks to protect her and her own intense concentration on the subjects of special interest to her, led a very sheltered existence. She was, in many ways, what an earlier age would have called a nerd. A brilliant, talented, well educated, incredibly competent and well-adjusted nerd, but a nerd and-also in many ways-unusually young for her age.

And no one who knew her could possibly doubt even for a moment that she was already busily plotting and scheming to make the most of her escape from Mount Royal Palace to someplace as… interesting as Erewhon.

The only real difference between her and the Zilwicki girl is that the extra six T-years have probably only made her even sneakier and more cunning when it comes to evading restrictions, he thought glumly. They certainly haven't done anything to dull her sense of adventure. Damn it.

"Well, at least we'll have Zilwicki along to help ride herd on both of them," he observed in a voice of determined cheer.

"Oh, that makes me feel lots better, Sir," Hofschulte snorted. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't he the guy who went out and hunted up the Audubon Ballroom when he needed a little extracurricular muscle?"

"Well, yes," Griggs admitted.

"Wonderful," Hofschulte repeated, and shook her head. But then, suddenly, she grinned.

"At least it won't be boring, Sir."

"Boredom is certainly one thing we won't have to worry about," Griggs agreed with another chuckle. "Actually, I think we're all going to deserve the Spitting Kitty for this one, Sergeant. Riding herd on the Princess, a seventeen-year-old pretending to be the Princess, an ASL intellectual, and the Star Kingdom's most notorious ex-spook, all in the middle of a three-ring circle like the Stein funeral on a planet like Erewhon ?" He shook his head. "Spitting Kitty time for sure."

"I hope not, Sir!" Hofschulte replied with a laugh.

The "Spitting Kitty" was the Queen's Own's nickname for the Adrienne Cross. The medal had been created by Roger II to honor members of the Queen's Own who risked-or lost-their own lives to save the life of a member of the royal family other than the monarch herself. The cross bore the snarling image of a treecat (rumor said that then-Crown Princess Adrienne's own 'cat, Dianchect, had sat as the model), and eleven people had won it in the two hundred and fifty T-years since it was created. Nine of the awards had been posthumous. Of course, the lieutenant reflected, this trip wasn't really going to kill them all. It was just going to make them feel that way.

"Oh, well," he said finally. "I guess it could be worse. We could be taking Princess Joanna along, as well. Think what that would be like."