And Stinker’s right, too, she thought. It doesn’t make sense on any rational level, but what I really am is afraid. Afraid some message from Uncle Al or somebody else on Beowulf is going to start him bleeding all over again. Which is pretty stupid, when you come down to it. I sort of doubt the Board of Directors would’ve sent an official diplomatic mission—especially under such mysterious circumstances—just to deliver a family message. She shook her head. Am I really that fragile, myself? Running scared enough to jump at that kind of imagined shadow?

“You’re right,” she admitted out loud, leaning forward until her cheek touched the treecat’s nose. “And I guess it is pretty silly. It’s just—”

“Just that you’re human,” Elizabeth said quietly. Honor looked at her, and the empress shrugged, stroking Ariel’s ears as he lay across her lap. “I can read sign, too, you know. And I know you both well enough to follow the subtext.” She smiled sadly. “You’re not the only person who’s been hit hard enough to be a little illogical, either. Sometimes I think the smarter we are, the better we are at finding ways to hammer ourselves with imagined disasters ahead of time.”

“I don’t know about smarter,” Honor said, walking back across the room to the couch facing Elizabeth’s armchair. “I do think people with more imagination do a better job of putting themselves through the wringer, though.”

“All right, I’ll grant that.” Elizabeth’s smile turned mischievous. “But if I do, then you have to grant—”

A discreet, mnusical chime interrupted the empress, and she glanced at the small com unit on the coffee table between them.

“Ah, our mystery guests have arrived!” she said. “I wonder if Ellen and Spencer are going to let them join us without demanding some ID?”

She smiled whimsically, and Honor chuckled.

“I doubt it,” she said out loud, shaking her head. “Ellen’s the only person I know who’s even more paranoid than Spencer. Now, at least.”

Her voice dropped and her eyes darkened with the last three words, and Elizabeth looked at her sharply. The empress started to open her mouth, but Honor shook her head quickly. The memory of Andrew LaFollet’s protectiveness—of all the years he’d served her and of how he’d died when she wasn’t even there—could still ambush her with no warning at all. But it was getting better, she told herself firmly. It was getting better.

“Anyway,” she went on in a determinedly brighter tone, “if one of them doesn’t insist on complete identification, you know the other one will. And Ellen isn’t about to let anyone into your presence without a complete briefing on—”