“You should have waited,” he told his audience. “Now you’re going to have to do it all over again, because my second announcement is that yesterday morning, Lady Allison Harrington informed my senior wife that she and her husband are expecting.” That simple sentence spawned a sudden silence in which a falling pin would have sounded like an anvil, and he nodded much more seriously. “Tomorrow, I will formally inform the Conclave of Steadholders that an heir of Lady Harrington’s blood will inherit her Key and the care of the people of her steading,” he said quietly.

The previous applause, Alexander discovered, had only seemed thunderous. The ovation which arose this time truly was. It battered him like fists, surging like an exultant sea, and he saw Allison Harrington flush, whether with excitement or embarrassment he couldn’t tell, as she stood at the Protector’s urging.

It took a seeming eternity for the applause to fade, and as it did, Alexander saw someone else stand at the Protector’s table. The wiry, auburn-haired man looked remarkably young to be wearing the uniform of a GSN admiral, and his gray eyes flashed as he faced his ruler.

“Your Grace!” he cried, and Benjamin turned to look at him.

“Yes, Admiral Yanakov?” the Protector seemed surprised at hearing the admiral address him.

“With your permission, Your Grace, I would like to propose a toast,” Admiral Yanakov said. Benjamin considered him for just a moment, and then nodded.

“Of course, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Yanakov reached down and picked up his wineglass, holding it before him while the light pooled and glowed in its tawny heart.

“Your Grace, My Lords and Ladies, Ladies and Gentlemen all,” he announced in a ringing voice, “I give you Steadholder Harrington… and damnation to the Peeps!”

The roar which answered should, by rights, have brought the Great Hall crashing down in ruins.

· · • Book Four • · ·

Chapter Twenty-Two

“DO you think we’ll get the break this month?” Scotty Tremaine asked as he used a brightly colored bandana to mop irritably at the sweat trickling down his face. He tried to keep any trace of anxiety out of his voice, but his audience knew him too well to be fooled.

“Now how would I know that, Sir?” Horace Harkness asked in reply, and his tone, while utterly respectful, managed to project so much patience that Tremaine grinned despite himself.

“Sorry, Chief.” He shoved the bandana into the hip pocket of his trousers—no longer StateSec issue, but produced, like the bandana, by Henri Dessouix, who functioned as Camp Inferno’s chief tailor—and shrugged. “It’s just that all the waiting around is getting to me. And when you add things like this to the waiting… Well, let’s just say my nerves aren’t what they used to be.”

“Mine either, Sir,” the senior chief said absently, then grunted in triumph as the jammed access panel he’d been working on sprang open at last. “Light, Sir?” he requested, and Tremaine directed the beam of his hand lamp up into the shuttle’s number one communications bay.