Chapter Eight
Lady Catherine Montaigne, Countess of the Tor, stalked around her sitting room with all of her characteristic energy . . . and very little of her characteristic cheerfulness.
"Damn the lot of them!" she snarled over her shoulder to the slab-sided, broad shouldered man seated motionlessly in his favorite armchair. In every way, they might have been expressly designed as physical opposites. She was at least fifteen centimeters taller than he was, and so slender she looked even taller than she actually was, while he was so broad that he appeared almost squat. She was golden-haired and blue-eyed; his hair was black, his eyes dark. She literally could not sit still, while his ability to sit motionless in thought frequently reminded an observer of a boulder of his own Gryphon granite. Her staccato speech patterns and blindingly fast changes of subject often bewildered those unprepared to keep pace with the speed of her thoughts; he was deliberate and disciplined to a fault in his own. And where she held one of the Star Kingdom's thirty oldest peerages, he was a Gryphon highlander, with all of the bred-in-the-bone hostility towards all things aristocratic which that implied.
And they were also lovers. Among other things.
"Don't tell me that you're surprised by their tactics, Cathy," he rumbled in a voice so deep it appeared to come from somewhere just south of his toenails. It was a remarkably mild voice, given the speaker's obvious distaste for what it was saying. "Against someone like Harrington?" He laughed with absolutely no humor at all. "She's probably the one person they hate more than they hate you right now!"
"But this is so despicable, even for them, Anton," Lady Cathy shot back. "No, I'm not surprised—I'm just pissed off. No, not pissed off. I'm ready to go out and start removing body parts from the assholes. Preferably ones they're particularly fond of. Painfully. With a very dull knife."
"And if you can figure out a way to do it, I'll be delighted to help," he replied. "In the meantime, Harrington and White Haven are just going to have to fight their own battles. And it's not exactly as if they don't have anyone they can call on for support while they do."
"You're right," she admitted unhappily. "Besides, our track record isn't all that good, is it?" She grimaced. "I know damned well that Jeremy expected us to do better than we did, given what you managed to hack out of those idiots' files. I hate disappointing him—disappointing all of them. And I don't much like failing at anything, myself."
"You want me to believe that you expected them to just roll over?" he asked, and there was a hint of a twinkle in the dark eyes.
"No," she half-snarled at him. "But I did hope that we'd get more of the bastards nailed!"
"I understand what you're saying. But we did get convictions for over seventy percent of the names on my list. Given the timing, that's actually better than we had any right to expect."
"And if I'd come straight home by way of the Junction the way you'd wanted to, the timing wouldn't have mattered," she grated.
"Woman, we've been over this," Anton Zilwicki said in a voice as patient as his beloved mountains. "Neither one of us could have foreseen the Cromarty Assassination. If it hadn't been for that, we'd have been fine, and you were perfectly right about the need to get Jeremy off Old Earth." He shrugged. "I admit that I haven't spent as many years as deeply committed to the Anti-Slavery League as you have, but it's grossly unfair of you to blame yourself for spending three extra weeks getting home."
"I know." She stopped her pacing and stood gazing out the window for several taut moments, then drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and turned to face him.
"I know," she repeated more briskly. "And you're right. Given the fact that that asshole High Ridge was in charge of the Government by the time we got home, we did do very well to get as many convictions as we did. Even Isaac admits that."
She grimaced again, and Zilwicki nodded. Isaac Douglas, somewhat to Zilwicki's surprise, appeared to have attached himself permanently to the countess. Zilwicki had more than half-expected Isaac to accompany Jeremy X, but he remained in Lady Cathy's service as combination butler and bodyguard. And, Zilwicki knew, as the countess' clandestine pipeline to the thoroughly proscribed organization known as "the Ballroom" and its escaped slave "terrorists."
He was also the favorite uncle, preceptor, and assistant protector of Berry and Lars, the two children Zilwicki had formally adopted after Helen rescued them on Old Earth. And a very reassuring presence for them Isaac was, too. And for Zilwicki, come to that.
"Of course," the countess continued, "he hasn't exactly told me so in so many words, but he would have told me if he'd thought otherwise. So I suppose he's probably about as satisfied as we could reasonably expect. Not that I think for a minute that he and the Ballroom—or Jeremy—are prepared to call it quits. Especially not since they know who was on the list and wasn't convicted."
She looked acutely unhappy as she finished her last sentence, and Zilwicki shrugged.
"You don't like killing." His rumbling bass was gentle yet implacable. "Neither do I. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over the sick bastards involved in the genetic slave trade—and neither should you."
"And neither do I," she said with a wan smile. "Not in the intellectual sense. Not in the philosophical sense, either. But much as I hate slavery and anyone who participates in it, there's still something deep down inside me that hates the administration of 'justice' without benefit of due process." Her smile turned even more wry. "You'd think that after all these years hanging around with bloodthirsty terrorists I'd've gotten over my squeamishness."
"Not squeamishness," Zilwicki corrected. "An excess of principle, perhaps, but principles are good things to have, by and large."
"Maybe. But let's be honest. Jeremy and I—and the Ballroom and I—have been allies for too many years for me to pretend I don't know exactly what he and his fellow 'terrorists' do. Or that I haven't tacitly condoned it by working with them. So I can't quite escape the suspicion that at least part of my present . . . unhappiness stems from the fact that this time I'm afraid it's going to be happening on my own doorstep. Which seems more than a little hypocritical to me."
"That's not hypocrisy," he disagreed. "It's human nature. And Jeremy knows you feel that way."
"So what?" she asked when he paused.
"So I doubt he's going to do anything quite as drastic here in the Star Kingdom as you're afraid he might. Jeremy X isn't the sort to let anything stand between him and genetic slave peddlers or their customers. But he's also your friend, and even though we didn't get everyone on the list, the Star Kingdom is still a paragon of virtue where genetic slavery is concerned compared to places like the Silesian Confederacy and the Solarian League. I feel quite confident that he'll be able to keep himself busy for years with the Sillies and the Sollies who were also on the list without extending his hunt to Manticore. Especially if you and I manage to keep the pressure turned up on our domestic piglets without him turning all of them into ground sausage."
"You may have a point," she said after a thoughtful moment. "Mind you, you wouldn't have one if he didn't have a shopping list for those other places. And I'm not sure how successful we're going to be at keeping the pressure on now that High Ridge and that unmitigated asshole MacIntosh have managed to 'damage control' everything right under the carpet."
"Let's not forget New Kiev," Zilwicki replied, and this time the shifting plate tectonics of anger rumbled in his deep voice. The countess looked a question at him, and he growled bitterly. "Whatever anyone else might think, High Ridge and MacIntosh couldn't have pulled it off if she hadn't let them." Lady Cathy started to open her mouth, but his waving hand stopped whatever she'd meant to say. "I'm not saying they were stupid enough to actively involve her in any coverups or damage control strategy sessions. All I'm saying is that like every other fucking aristocrat supporting High Ridge, she's not about to do one single goddamned thing that might risk rocking the boat and letting Alexander form a government. Not if all she has to do is close her eyes to something as unimportant as genetic slavery!"
"You're right," the countess admitted after a moment, her expression manifestly unhappy. Then she began to stalk around the apartment once again.
"I know people think I suffer from tunnel vision—those who don't call it monomania—where slavery is concerned," she said. "They're probably even right. But anyone who isn't outraged by it fails the litmus test for basic humanity. Besides, how can anyone talk about their support for civil rights, legal protections, social betterment, and all those other noble causes Marisa Turner preaches about so learnedly if they're willing to shut their eyes to a trade in human beings—in specifically designed and conditioned human beings—that violates all of those pious principles?"
Her blue eyes flashed, her fair cheeks glowed with outrage that was not at all feigned, and Anton Zilwicki leaned back in his chair to admire her afresh. "Lady Prancer." That was her friends' teasing nickname for her, and it was apt. There was certainly something of the highbred filly about her restless movements and explosive temperament. But behind the filly there was something else, something uncomfortably akin to the hunting hunger of a Sphinx hexapuma. Zilwicki was one of the very few people who'd been allowed to see both of them, and he found both equally attractive in their own very different ways.
"So you don't exactly see New Kiev as the ideal leader for the Liberal Party?" he inquired ironically, and she snorted bitterly in reply.
"If I'd ever had any doubts about it, they disappeared the instant she agreed to climb into bed with High Ridge," the countess declared roundly. "Whatever the short-term tactical advantages might be, the long-term consequences are going to be disastrous. For her and for the party both."
"You agree with me that sooner or later the wheels are bound to come off the High Ridge Government, then?"
"Of course they are!" She glowered at him. "What is this? Twenty Questions? I know you're a lot more interested in interstellar power politics than I am—at least where the slavery issue isn't a factor—but even I can see that those idiots are heading us right back into some stupid fucking confrontation with the Havenites. And that they're in the process of wrecking the Alliance before they do it. And that they're too goddamned blind even to see it coming! Or to realize the electorate isn't nearly as stupid as they think it is. When the shit does hit the fan, and the public finds out just how right White Haven and Harrington have been about our naval preparedness all along, there's going to be Hell to pay. And even the rank and file Liberals are going to realize that New Kiev's been High Ridge's willing political whore. They're going to look at all of the 'Building the Peace' social spending she's so busy congratulating herself over right now, and they're going to recognize it for exactly what it was. And they're going to understand how funneling all that money into her pet projects took it away from the Navy. And while we're on the subject of stupid, shitty political maneuvers, let's not overlook what she—and the rest of the Liberal leadership right along with her—are perfectly prepared to help High Ridge do to Harrington and White Haven. You think there's not going to be a backlash against that when everyone finally figures out what a put up job it was? Please!"
She rolled her eyes in exasperation and folded her arms.
"There! Did I pass your little quiz?" she demanded.
Zilwicki chuckled as she bestowed one of her patented glares upon him. Then he nodded.
"With flying colors," he agreed. "But I wasn't really trying to find out whether or not you already knew water was wet. What I was doing was laying the groundwork for another question."
"Which is?" she asked.
"Which is," he said, and every bit of humor had vanished from his crumbling granite voice, "why the fuck you're letting her take your party down with her?"
"I'm letting her?! My God, Anton! I've been hammering away with everything I've got ever since I got back from Sol. Not that it's done any damned good. Maybe I could've accomplished more if High Ridge hadn't replaced Cromarty and I'd gotten my seat in the Lords back, but I've certainly done everything I can from outside Parliament! And," she added moodily, "made myself almost as unpopular again as I was the day they first excluded me, to boot."
"Excuses," Zilwicki said flatly, and she stared at him in disbelief. "Excuses," he repeated. "Damn it, Cathy, haven't you learned anything from all you managed to accomplish working with Jeremy and the rest of the Anti-Slavery League?"
"What the hell you talking about?" she demanded.
"I'm talking about your inability to separate yourself from the Countess of the Tor now that you're back home." She gazed at him in obvious incomprehension, and he sighed. "You're trying to play the game by their rules," he explained in a more patient voice. "You're letting who you are dictate the avenues available to you. Maybe that's inevitable given your title and family connections."
She started to interrupt, but he shook his head quickly.
"No, that wasn't a highlander's slam at all things aristocratic. And I certainly wasn't accusing you of being the sort of overbred cretin High Ridge or even New Kiev are. I'm only saying that you have an inherited position of power. The fact that you do is obviously going to shape the way you approach problems and issues, in that you're going to attack them from the powerbase you already have. Fair?"
"So far," she said slowly, studying his expression with intense speculation of her own. "And this is going someplace?"
"Of course it is. Just not to someplace an aristocrat might naturally think of," he amended with a slight smile.
"Like where?"
"Let me put it this way. We're both in agreement that the current Government is in a position to continue to exclude you from the House of Lords, effectively indefinitely, which means that your position as a peer actually doesn't give you any advantage at all. Put another way, the powerbase you have is all but useless under the current political circumstances. Yes?"
"That might be putting it a bit dramatically, but it's essentially accurate," she conceded, gazing at him in fascinated speculation.
One of the things she most loved about him was the depth of insight and analytical contemplation his controlled exterior hid from so many casual observers. He lacked her own darting quickness, her ability to isolate the critical elements of most problems almost by instinct. But by the same token, there were times that ability deserted or failed her, and when it did, she tended to try to substitute energy and enthusiasm for analysis. To batter her way through a problem, instead of taking it apart and reasoning out the best approach to it. That was one mistake Anton never made, and he often prevented her from making it, either.
"In that case, what you need is a new powerbase," he said. "One that your current base helps you acquire, perhaps, but one completely separate from it."
"Such as?" she asked.
"Such as a seat in the Commons," he told her simply.
"What?!" She blinked. "I can't hold a seat in the Commons—I'm a peer! And even if I weren't, the one thing High Ridge isn't going to allow is a general election, so I couldn't run for a seat even if I were eligible for one!"
"The Countess of the Tor can't hold a seat in the House of Commons," Zilwicki agreed. "But Catherine Montaigne could . . . if she weren't the Countess of the Tor anymore."
"I—" She started a quick response, then froze, staring at him in shock.
"That's what I meant about letting your inherited position of power stand in your way," he said gently. "I know you don't have any greater instinctive veneration for aristocratic privilege than I do—probably less, in your own way, because that's the background you come from and you know how often anything like veneration is completely undeserved. But sometimes I think you're still blinkered by the social stratum you grew up in. Hasn't it ever occurred to you that since they managed to emasculate your position as a peer by excluding you from the Lords, your title's actually been a hindrance rather than a help?"
"I—" She shook herself. "Actually, it never has," she said slowly. "I mean, in a way, it's just . . ."
"It's just who you are," he finished for her. "But it isn't, really, you know. Maybe it was before you left for Old Terra, but you've grown a lot since then. How important is it to you to be a peer of the realm?"
"More important than I'd like to admit," she confessed frankly after a long moment of thought, and shook her head. "Damn. Until you actually asked that question, I'd've said it didn't matter a good goddamn to me. But it does."
"I'm not surprised," he told her gently. "But let me ask you this. Is being Countess of the Tor as important to you as your principles?"
"No way in Hell," she said instantly, with a fierce certainty which startled even her just a bit.
"Then consider this scenario," he suggested, crossing his legs and settling even more comfortably into his chair. "A fiery noblewoman, consumed with the passion of her convictions, renounces her claim to one of the most respected and venerated titles of nobility in the entire Star Kingdom. Determined to fight for her principles, she sacrifices the privileged status of her birth in order to seek election—election, mind you—to the House of Commons because she's been excluded from the House of Lords because of those same convictions. And once elected, of course, she has a moral imprimatur she would never have enjoyed as the holder of an inherited title. She's paid an obvious price for her principles, given up of her own volition something no one could have taken from her, because it's the only way she can fight effectively for what she believes in. And unlike her aristocratic opponents, who are obviously fighting at least in part to maintain their own privileged positions under the status quo, she's started out by giving up her special privileges. Not to mention the fact that her successful election campaign demonstrates that she commands the popular support to get herself into Parliament on her own merits in the first place. Which none of them do. Or, at least, which none of them is prepared to risk finding out whether or not they do."
"I don't believe I quite recognize the self-sacrificing heroine of your little morality tale." She spoke dryly, but her blue eyes glowed. "And even if I did resign my title, I'd hardly be swearing some sort of self-sacrificing vow of poverty. I'd have to talk to my accountants to be sure, but right off the top of my head, I'd guess that less than twenty-five percent of the total Tor fortune is actually entailed. To be honest, well over half of the current family fortune came from Mother's side and has nothing at all to do with the title."
"I realize that, but somehow I wouldn't expect your brother to complain if you suddenly dumped the title on him," he said, even more dryly then she had, and she snorted. If Henry Montaigne suddenly found himself Earl of the Tor, he would equally suddenly find himself among the top ten percent of the Star Kingdom of Manticore's wealthiest subjects. Of course, Cathy Montaigne would still be among the top three or four percent, but that was another matter entirely.
"But even though giving up the title wouldn't exactly consign you to poverty and leave you living in the gutter," he continued, "it wouldn't be a purely symbolic sacrifice, either. People would recognize that. And it would let you turn what High Ridge and his kind have made a liability—your exclusion from the Lords—into an asset."
"Do you actually think I'd be able to accomplish more as a very junior MP than I can from where I am right now?"
"Yes," he said simply.
"But I wouldn't have any seniority, wouldn't qualify for any of the choice committee chairmanships."
"And precisely which committees in the Lords are you sitting on at this moment?" he asked sardonically, and chuckled when she made a face at him. "Seriously, Cathy," he went on more earnestly, "you could scarcely accomplish less politically sitting in the Commons then you can as a peer who's been denied her seat in the Lords. And the house you sit in won't have any effect one way or the other on the types of influence you have outside official government channels. Besides, the Commons' seniority rules are a lot less ironclad. You might be surprised at the access to useful committee assignments which could be open to you. Especially if the Centrists decide to look for common ground with you."
"And they probably would, wouldn't they?" she mused aloud, her expression thoughtful. "If nothing else, they'd see me as a potential wedge to split New Kiev and the party leadership further away from the malcontents like me."
"At the very least," he agreed. "And let's be honest here. One reason that they'd see you as a potential wedge is because that's precisely what you would be. In fact, it's the reason you'd be there in the first place."
She glanced at him sharply, and he chuckled without humor.
"Come on, Cathy! We both know Jeremy taught you to be honest with yourself where your objectives and tactics are concerned. Don't you want to remove New Kiev and her cronies from control of the party?"
"And aren't you a Crown Loyalist who'd love to see the Liberals cripple themselves in internecine internal warfare?" she shot back.
"It wouldn't exactly break my heart," he acknowledged cheerfully enough. "But by the same token, since I've come to know you, I've actually been forced to admit that not all Liberals are goddamned idiots. Which, I might add, was not an easy thing for me to accept. I suppose present company is responsible for seducing me—you should pardon the expression—into recognizing the possibility that not all of them have overaged oatmeal for brains.
"However that may be," he went on with a slight smile as she stuck out her tongue at him, "I've come to the conclusion that I can live with a lot of the sorts of things you and Liberals like you believe in. We'll probably never agree on everything, but there's a lot to be said for a society where merit trumps bloodlines. I don't have a lot of use for most of the social-interventionist, lack-of-reality economic crap that comes along as part of the package with most Liberals, but then, neither do you, do you?"
"You know I don't."
"Well then." He shrugged. "As I see it, if you're able to influence the party into pursuing goals compatible with the ones I favor anyway, then there's no reason I shouldn't work with you—or even other Liberals. But as you suggested a few minutes ago, there's not much chance of New Kiev and her bunch climbing out of bed with that unmitigated bastard High Ridge anytime soon. So if I want to work with any Liberals, I have to try to put someone like you in charge of them." He grinned at her. "You see? Nothing but pure, unadulterated, calculating self-interest on my part."
"Sure it is." She snorted, then stood in uncharacteristic stillness for several heartbeats while she thought it over.
"This is all very fascinating, Anton," she said finally. "But even if this entire ambitious scenario you've mapped out for me were workable, it would still depend on High Ridge calling elections. Which means that however interesting the possibilities are, I can't do anything about them. Probably not for years, the way things are going right now."
"I agree that there's not much chance High Ridge is going to call a general election any sooner than he has to," Zilwicki agreed calmly. "But I've been doing a little quiet research. And it seems that the Member of Parliament for the Borough of High Threadmore right here in Landing has just been offered a very lucrative position with one of the major Solarian banking houses. If he accepts it, he'll have to relocate to the League. The only reason he hasn't already said yes is that he takes his responsibilities as a member of the old Liberal Party seriously, and he's extremely unhappy with the way New Kiev and the party leadership have decided to play fast and loose with their principles in the name of political advantage. According to my sources, which include the gentleman in question, he and his family could certainly use the additional income the new position would provide, but he feels he has a moral responsibility to himself and to his constituents to stay where he is and try to prevent things from getting still worse.
"Now, if he were to accept the banking job, he'd be required to resign his seat in Parliament. High Threadmore wouldn't like that, because a majority of the borough's voters are also members of the old Liberal Party, and they're no happier with their present party leadership than he is. But under the Constitution, his resignation would automatically trigger a special election to refill his seat within a maximum of two months. That's an absolute requirement, one not even High Ridge could prevent or defer, time of war or no time of war. And if you were to register as a candidate for his seat, and if he were to give you his enthusiastic endorsement and actively campaign for you, and if your campaign strategy emphasized the fact that you've renounced one of the most prestigious peerages in the entire Star Kingdom in order to seek election as a mere commoner as a matter of principle . . ."
He shrugged, and her eyes slowly widened as she stared at him.