And then there was Hamish. Hamish, standing there, looking at her with his soul in those ice-blue eyes from the heart of a firestorm of welcome and joy that turned even Elizabeth’s into a candle’s glow by comparison. She felt herself reaching out to him—not physically, not moving as much as a centimeter in his direction, yet with all of the irresistible power of a stellar gravity well. And as she looked into his eyes over the Queen of Manticore’s shoulder, she saw the echo of that same reaching out. Not with the same sharpness or acuity as her own empathy. Not even with any conscious recognition of what it was he felt. It was… blinder than that, and she suddenly realized it must be what treecats saw when they looked at their mind-blind people. A sense of a presence that was asleep. Unaware yet immensely powerful and somehow linked to them. Yet not totally unaware. He had no idea what he was feeling, yet he felt it anyway, and a part of him knew he did. She tasted that confused, groping sensitivity in the sudden flare of his mind-glow, and saw Samantha stop signing to Nimitz and turn to stare in wonder at her person.

Honor had never felt anything quite like it. In some ways, it was like her link to Nimitz, but weaker, without the strength anchored by a treecat’s full-blown empathic sense. And yet, it was also far stronger, for its other end was not a treecat, but another human mind. One that matched her own. That… fitted on levels that hers and Nimitz’s would never be able to fully share. There was no “telepathy,” no sharing of thoughts. Yet she felt him there, in the back of her brain as he had already been in her heart. The other part of her. The welcoming fire ready to warm her on the coldest night.

And with it the knowledge that whatever else might have happened, the impassable barriers which held them apart still stood.

“It’s good to see you home,” Elizabeth told her, her voice slightly husky, as she stood back, still holding Honor’s upper arms, and looked up into her face. “It’s very good.”

“It’s good to be here,” Honor replied simply, still tasting Hamish, still feeling his amazement as the echo of her awareness flowed through him, however faintly, as well.

“Come inside,” Elizabeth urged. “We have a lot to talk about.”

· · • · ·

“—so as soon as word came in about Grendelsbane, High Ridge had no choice but to resign,” Elizabeth said grimly.

Honor nodded, her own expression equally grim. She, her hostess, and Elizabeth’s other guests all sat in deep, old-fashioned, comfortable chairs in Elizabeth’s’s private retreat in King Michael’s Tower. It was a welcoming, cheerful room, but Honor could taste the tangled flow of conflicting emotions deep inside Elizabeth. Emotions which stood in stark contrast to their surroundings.

Horror and dismay over the disastrous defeat the Navy had suffered at Grendelsbane. An awareness of how brutally the Fleet’s strength had been wounded that terrified even the woman treecats called “Soul of Steel,” especially in light of what the new Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence had reported about the probable strength of the Republican Navy. And mingled with all of that, the savage, vengeful joy she’d felt when the merciless requirements of formal protocol ground High Ridge’s face into the totality of his ruin and disgrace as he surrendered his office.