“I’ve been very satisfied with Merlin,” Honor agreed. “And I’ve noticed Clarise always lends a certain… presence to any meeting. Whether she’s actually there or not.”

She smiled at Maxwell, and he grinned back at the studied understatement of her remark.

Merlin Odom was Willard Neufsteiller’s handpicked deputy on Manticore, managing the operations of the steadily growing Harrington financial empire in the Star Kingdom in accordance with Neufsteiller’s general directives from Grayson. At forty-two, he was much younger than Willard, and even less inclined to get out of the office in the name of heathen exercise. But the heavy-set lawyer with the brown hair, blue eyes, and startlingly red goatee was already demonstrating similar instincts. With a few more decades of experience, he would be more than ready to take over when Willard finally retired, which was a very high compliment indeed.

As for Childers, the mere fact that everyone knew her services were available to Honor at need was an asset beyond price. Not only was she one of the most capable attorneys in the Star Kingdom in her own right, but her firm’s short—very short—client list loomed large in the mind of any commercial negotiator. Honor herself had become one of the richest individuals in the Star Kingdom over the past decade and a half, and her Sky Domes of Grayson was firmly established among the Kingdom Five Hundred list of top corporations. But Childers worked directly for Klaus Hauptman, whose personal and corporate wealth was at least equal to the combined assets of his half dozen closest competitors. Clarise Childers was the president and senior partner of the enormous law firm of Childers, Strauslund, Goldman, and Wu, whose sole clients were the Hauptman Cartel (which headed the Kingdom Five Hundred by a wide margin), the Hauptman family… and, on occasion, Honor Harrington.

“With the commercial side of things under control for the moment, Your Grace,” Maxwell went on, his pleasantly ugly face thoughtful, “what I’d like to do next would be to spend some time setting up the Harrington judiciary.”

“Do we really have to do that this quickly?” Honor asked with a small grimace. “It’s not like we have anything approaching a true population in the duchy yet!”

“Your Grace,” Maxwell said a bit sternly, “if anyone in the Star Kingdom should know better than that, it’s you. You’ve already been through setting up a new steading on Grayson, after all.”

“But I left most of that to Howard Clinkscales,” Honor pointed out. “All I really did was sign off on the decisions he’d already reached.”

“I happen to know from private correspondence with Lord Clinkscales that you were considerably more involved in the process than that, Your Grace,” Maxwell disagreed respectfully. “And even if you hadn’t been, you’ve had plenty of time to see how badly a well-organized infrastructure is needed in situations like this.”

“The cases aren’t parallel,” Honor objected. “As a steadholder, I hold the powers of high, middle, and low justice in Harrington. I don’t want them, mind you, and any steadholder’s power of arbitrary decision has been steadily reduced by precedents over the last few centuries. Not to mention what the Sword’s done to subordinate steading law codes to the planetary Constitution since the ‘Mayhew Restoration.’ But Steadholder Harrington is still a head of state in her own right, with all of the legal prerogatives and responsibilities that entails. Duchess Harrington is only an administrator—a Crown governor, basically.”