“Actually,” he told Tibolt after a moment, “I’m more curious about what’s happening at Grendelsbane and Trevor’s Star.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

“MAY I ask what you think of Prime Minister High Ridge’s message, My Lord?” Niall MacDonnell asked politely.

“I think that making himself sound civil probably increased his blood pressure enough to take two or three decades off his life expectancy,” Hamish Alexander replied cheerfully. “One could certainly hope so, at least.”

MacDonnell smiled. A native born Grayson, himself, he was sometimes bemused in many ways by the Manticoran officers who had taken service with the GSN. The Earl of White Haven was scarcely in that category, of course, although he’d fought enough battles side-by-side with Grayson units to make him one of their own by adoption, at least. But what bemused MacDonnell the most was that the Manticorans seemed so outspoken in their criticism of the High Ridge Government. Of course, they were talking about their prime minister, not their monarch, but it was difficult for MacDonnell to conceive of a serving Grayson officer expressing himself so frankly—and contemptuously—about the Protector’s Chancellor.

Not that any of his fellow Grayson citizens disagreed where High Ridge was concerned. It was just that Graysons as a group were more… deferential than most Manticorans. It confused MacDonnell sometimes. The crux of the Star Kingdom’s entire current political dilemma lay in the aristocracy’s control of who formed the executive branch of their government. That same condition, in an even more virulent form, had afflicted Grayson before the Mayhew Restoration had returned the authority which had eroded away from several generations of protectors. But the profound deference which the steaders of Grayson had always extended to their steadholders seemed oddly lacking in Manticorans where their own nobility was concerned.

Of course, White Haven himself was a member of that very aristocracy, which probably accounted for his own lack of automatic respect for it.

“I won’t pretend that I don’t share your hopes, My Lord,” the admiral said after a moment. “But it looks as if he’s decided to put the best face he can on the situation.”

“He doesn’t have a lot of choice,” White Haven pointed out. “To be honest, I’m quite certain that was a part of Protector Benjamin’s calculus when he hatched this entire notion. And while it would never do for me to accuse the Protector of meddling in the internal political affairs of an ally, I think he put High Ridge into his current position with malice aforethought.”

MacDonnell looked a question at him, and the earl shrugged.

“High Ridge’s only option is to pretend he’s in favor of Benjamin’s actions. Anything else would make him look at best weak and ineffectual, since he couldn’t keep Benjamin from doing it anyway. At worst, if it turns out we’re right and he’s wrong about the Peeps’ intentions, he’d look like a complete and total idiot if he’d sat around protesting the fact that we’re saving him from his own stupidity. Not,” White Haven added with a particularly nasty smile, “that we’re not going to make him look stupid anyway, if the ball does go up.”