She glanced across at Nimitz, draped in splendid isolation across the double perch he normally shared with his mate. It was Thursday, and Samantha was absent, accompanying Miranda and Farragut to the Andreas Venizelos Academy, the orphanage and private school Honor had endowed for the children of war dead, Manticoran and Grayson alike. AVA had campuses in both the Star Kingdom and Yeltsin, and Miranda, as Honor’s chief of staff, deputized for her regularly, since the press of other duties consumed more and more of her own time. The kids idolized Nimitz, Samantha, Farragut, and treecats in general, and all ’cats loved to spend time with children, whether they had four limbs or six. It was a treat all of the ’cats looked forward to, and Nimitz often went with the others even when Honor couldn’t. But not when something like today’s meeting was on his person’s schedule.

She looked past the ’cat and caught a glimpse of LaFollet, outside the study door standing his post even here, before it closed behind MacGuiness. Then she pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to stand in the enlarged bay window that overhung her mansion’s landscaped grounds like a sort of hanging turret. The window’s outer, floor-to-ceiling crystoplast wall looked out over the bright blue beauty of Jason Bay, and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy the view afresh, then turned back to face the door once more and twitched her Grayson-style gown and vest straight.

Over the years, she’d become completely accustomed to the traditional Grayson garments. She still considered them thoroughly useless for anything except looking ornamental, but she’d been forced to admit that looking ornamental wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. And there was another reason to wear them almost constantly here in the Star Kingdom, when she wasn’t in uniform, at least. They helped remind everyone, including herself, of who else she was… and of how much the Star Kingdom and the entire Manticoran Alliance owed the people of her adoptive planet.

Yet another point that ass High Ridge seems able to effortlessly ignore… or worse, she thought bitterly, then brushed the familiar surge of anger aside. This wasn’t the time for her to be storing up still more mental reasons to go for the Prime Minister’s throat.

MacGuiness returned a very few moments later with Hamish and William Alexander.

“Earl White Haven and Lord Alexander, Your Grace,” Honor’s steward and majordomo murmured, and withdrew, closing the polished wooden doors quietly behind him.

“Hamish. Willie.”

Honor crossed the room to them, holding out her hand in welcome, and it no longer seemed odd to her to greet them so informally. Every once in a while she experienced a sudden sense of unreality when she heard herself addressing her Queen or Benjamin Mayhew by their given names, but even those moments were becoming fewer and further between. In an odd sort of way, she remained fully aware of who she was and where she’d come from even as she found herself moving more and more naturally at the very pinnacle of political power in two separate star nations. She seldom thought consciously about it, but when the realization crossed her awareness, she recognized the way in which her belated admission to the innermost councils of her two nations shaped her perspective.