“I’ll bear that in mind,” Honor said grimly, “and the time might just be coming when some of those ’Black Legs’ will learn the error of their ways.” The right corner of her lips drew up, baring her teeth. “But my point right now is that we can’t take the chance that you and I are wrong about whether or not they have Inferno under observation, and I really need to speak to this Commodore Ramirez. Would you two be willing to invite him to come up here to speak with me this evening? And could you convince him to do it without giving anything away if the Peeps are bugging the camp?”

“Yes, and yes,” Benson said promptly.

“Good!” Honor held out her hand, and the captain from Pegasus gripped it firmly. Then all three of them stood, and Honor smiled at LaFollet.

“Hand our friends back their spears, Andrew. They’re on our side, I believe.”

“Yes, My Lady.” LaFollet bobbed his head in a half-bow to Benson and handed the spears over, then pulled the stone blades from his belt and passed them across. “And may I say,” he added, with a confidence born of his faith in his Steadholder and her treecat’s ability to read what others felt, “that I’m much happier to have them on our side than the other!”

Chapter Fourteen

THE man who followed Benson and Dessouix up the hill just as the sun was setting was enormous. Honor told herself it was only the setting sun behind him as he climbed the slope towards her which made him look like some faceless black giant or troll out of a terrifying childhood tale, but she was forced to reconsider that opinion as he drew nearer. He was over five centimeters taller than she was, yet that only began to tell the tale, for San Martin was one of the heaviest gravity planets mankind had ever settled. Not even people like Honor herself, descended from colonists genetically engineered for heavy-grav planets before humanity abandoned that practice, could breathe San Martin’s sea-level atmosphere. It was simply too dense, with lethal concentrations of carbon dioxide and even oxygen. So San Martin’s people had settled the mountaintops and high mesas of their huge home world… and their physiques reflected the gravity to which they were born.

As did that of the man who reached the top of the hill and drew up short at sight of her. She felt his surprise at seeing her, but it was only surprise, not astonishment. Well, surprise and intense, disciplined curiosity. She didn’t know what Benson and Dessouix had told him to get him out here. Clearly they hadn’t told him everything, or he wouldn’t have been surprised, but he’d taken that surprise in stride with a mental flexibility Honor could only envy.

“And who might you be?” His voice was a deep, subterranean rumble, as one would expect from a man who must weigh in at somewhere around a hundred and eighty kilos, but the San Martin accent gave it a soft, almost lilting air. It was one Honor had heard before—most recently from a since deceased StateSec guard with a taste for sadism. Yet hearing it now, there was something about his voice…