“You’ve seen the political calculus back in Nouveau Paris, Honor,” he said. “I don’t even want to think about how Younger and McGwire must’ve reacted when the draft terms got home and they found out where their President and two thirds of Capital Fleet had wandered off to!” He shook his head. “I’m sure a lot of Eloise’s political opponents must be screaming bloody murder about now, and I imagine Tullingham and Younger are making all kinds of veiled—or not so veiled—comments about people exceeding their constitutional authority. But the truth is that she isn’t exceeding her authority, and your own diplomatic mission had significantly changed public opinion even before the Yawata Strike and Simões.”

“Really?” she raised an eyebrow as they reached the lifts, and Theisman chuckled.

“Most Havenites, whether they’d admit it or not, have always felt a sneaking admiration for you. Even when that pyschopath Ransom was in charge of Pierre’s propaganda. Of course, there was a lot of ‘bogeyman’ about it, too. You had this really irritating habit of kicking the shit out of us.”

“I never—”

Honor broke off, unsure how to respond, and he laughed out loud.

“I didn’t say you were the only Manty who managed that. You were just the most…noticeable. Let’s face it, even the Sollies’ figured you made good copy, and it didn’t hurt that you were reasonably photogenic, unlike your humble servant.”

“Yeah, sure!” She rolled her eyes.

“I did compare you to me,” he pointed out. Then his smile faded.

“But all joking aside, you had a pretty damned towering reputation in the Republic, and a big part of that was the fact that you were an honorable enemy. That’s the real reason StateSec and Public Information went to such lengths to blacken your name when they decided to hang you.”

His smile vanished, and she tasted the bleakness of remembered shame as he relived his own helplessness in the face of Cordelia Ransom’s determination to have Honor judicially murdered.

“Anyway,” he twitched his shoulders, “you were already pretty visible, let’s say, in the Republic even before they gave you Eighth Fleet and turned you loose on our rear areas. And then there was that little business of the Battle of Manticore. For better or worse, you’d become the personification of the Star Kingdom as far as our public opinion was concerned.

“Then you turned up in Haven itself. Not to attack the system when everyone knew you could’ve trashed it. No, you were there to negotiate a peace settlement…and since we got rid of Saint-Just, we’ve never tried to deny our people access to the Star Empire’s news services. It didn’t take long for most people to figure out you were there to do the negotiating because you wanted to be there. It was your own idea.”