“Or Admiral Young,” Henke said grimly, and Honor nodded with a carefully neutral expression. The implacable hostility between her and the Young clan went back for over forty T-years, punctuated by bitter hatred and more than one death. Which was one reason she’d taken great pains to maintain her facade of neutrality when the Navy recalled Admiral Edwin Young from Old Terra, convicted him of violation of the Articles of War before a court-martial, and stripped him of his rank. The civilian courts had been equally harsh, even with his family links to the powerful Earl of North Hollow, whose influence at the highest level of the Prime Minister’s own Conservative Association was enormous. He’d managed to escape the death penalty, but despite his exalted birth, he would be spending the next several decades as a guest of the Royal Ministry of Justice.

“Or like Young,” she agreed after a moment. “In fact, what happened to him is a pretty fair example of just how ruthlessly the leadership was prepared to cut its losses… and exactly who they were prepared to jettison in the process. He was a Young, which made him highly visible, and a Navy flag officer, which made his ‘isolated criminal actions’ even more satisfyingly visceral. But he was only a fourth cousin of North Hollow, and, frankly, he was a nonentity in terms of the Conservative Association’s real power structure. So when North Hollow made no move to save him, he became a highly satisfactory sacrifice to the ‘principles’ of his noble relative and simultaneously served as ‘proof’ that North Hollow himself and—by extension—all of the Conservative Association’s leadership had never been involved in such heinous offenses. Which was precisely why the Government party leaders turned on all the minor fish so violently… and publicly. After all, they’d not only broken the law; they’d also betrayed the trust those leaders had reposed in them.” It was Honor’s turn to shrug. “Much as it stuck in my craw, I have to admit it was a brilliant job of political damage control. Which, however, High Ridge and New Kiev only managed to pull off because a majority of the Lords who weren’t involved, including the Independents, decided to look the other way and settle for scapegoats.”

“But why?” Henke demanded. “Mom said exactly the same thing to me in one of her letters, but I never understood the logic behind it.”

“It all comes down to politics and what you might call the historical imperatives of constitutional evolution,” Honor told her as two heavily armed stingships in the markings of the Harrington Steadholder’s Guard slid into place on either wing. She and Henke were invited to supper at Protector’s Palace, and Honor leaned further back and crossed her legs as the air limo started out on the lengthy flight to Mayhew Steading through a brilliantly blue, cloud-stippled sky, carefully watched over by its escorts.

“Basically,” she said, “a majority of the House of Lords are willing to close their eyes to things they don’t want to know about, even where something like slavery is concerned, because, however honest they may be themselves, they’d rather have a government like High Ridge’s than take a chance on what might replace it. Despite all the corruption and pork barrel vote-buying that involves, they regard High Ridge as a lesser risk than giving Elizabeth and her supporters back control of both houses.”