No one else said anything else for at least thirty seconds, but then McKeon cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I take it,” he said in a wry tone, “that your last comment indicates you haven’t received any secret new orders from the Admiralty which we’re not aware of?”

“No,” Honor replied, then snorted. “Of course, if they were secret orders, I’d tell you I hadn’t gotten any anyway, wouldn’t I?”

“Sure,” McKeon agreed. “But you’re not a very good liar.”

Honor chuckled, almost despite herself, and shook her head at him. But he’d succeeded in breaking her mood, exactly as he’d intended, and she gave him a smile of thanks, as well. Then she shook herself and turned resolutely back to the matter at hand.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I wish I had received some sort of new instructions, secret or not. Even bad ones would be better than none… which is exactly what we’ve actually been sent. The Admiralty’s acknowledged receipt of my last dispatches, including George’s report on the pattern of increasing provocation and on the Empire’s decision to send Rabenstrange out, but that’s all. It’s as if no one at the other end is even bothering to read our mail.”

“So all you can do is continue under your existing orders,” Alfredo Yu mused.

“Exactly. And they’re even more out of date—and, to be blunt about it, irrelevant—than they were when they first sent us out here,” Honor said, with a frankness she would have shown in front of very few non-Manticorans. “Worse, I’m beginning to think no one at Admiralty House or the Foreign Office is even thinking very much about Silesia or the Andermani right now.”

“You think they’re being distracted by the Peeps? I mean, by the Republic, of course,” McKeon said.

Neither Yu nor Caslet so much as blinked, but Honor felt both of them wince internally. Not in anger, and certainly not because either of them suffered from mixed loyalties at this late date. It was more of a sense of loss, a bittersweet regret for the changes in Haven which they would never be a part of.

And a smoldering anger, worse even than that of most Graysons, over the policies of the High Ridge Government which seemed to be fanning the tensions between Haven and the Star Kingdom once again.

“I think that’s exactly what’s happening,” she confirmed after a moment. In fact, she’d been afraid something like that was coming from the moment word that Benjamin Mayhew’s concerns about the mysterious “Operation Bolthole” had been amply justified had finally reached Marsh.

“As a matter of fact,” she went on, putting her fears into words openly for her staff, “I think the Government’s confidence in its ability to ‘manage’ the Republic—” and through it, the domestic situation, she carefully didn’t say “—is deteriorating. Thomas Theisman’s announcement didn’t help in that regard, but the most recent mail from home is full of op-ed pieces on President Pritchart’s ‘hardline’ position in the treaty negotiations, too.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how whatever Harvest Joy discovers is going to affect the Government’s thinking, but unless something changes radically, I think High Ridge is going to become more and more fixated on the Republic. I don’t think he has the attention to spare for something as ‘unimportant’ as Silesia.”