"And just what did you have it in mind to do about Mr. Hayes?" Honor inquired mildly. "This isn't Grayson, you know, Miranda."
"Oh, I certainly do, My Lady." Miranda's mouth twisted in distaste, and Farragut, her treecat, made a soft hissing sound from the perch beside her chair. "Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing, My Lady. We have it on Grayson, too, you know. But this Hayes person wouldn't care at all for what his brand of 'journalism' would get him back home."
"Sounds like a very free press to me," Honor observed." Not that I don't think Mr. Hayes would look ever so much better with a couple of broken legs. Unfortunately, if that were a practical solution to the problem, I'd already have taken care of it myself."
"There's always Micah," Miranda pointed out. Micah LaFollet, her youngest brother, had just turned twenty-six. Young enough for third-generation prolong and blessed with adequate diet and medical care since childhood, he towered more than fourteen centimeters taller than his eldest brother, Andrew. Despite his formidable height (he was actually five centimeters taller than Honor herself), he looked much younger than his age to Grayson eyes, but he was already in the final stages of armsman training, and he had a pronounced case of hero worship where Honor was concerned.
"No, there isn't always Micah," Honor scolded. "He's not an armsman yet, and he's overly enthusiastic. Besides, assault with violence is a felony here in the Star Kingdom, and unlike your older brother, he doesn't have any sort of diplomatic immunity."
"Well, then surely there's something Richard could do about him." Miranda kept her tone light, trying to pretend she was no more than half-serious, but Honor tasted the white-hot rage just below the younger woman's surface.
"Miranda," she said, stepping fully into the office, "I truly, truly appreciate how angry you. How much you-and Andrew, and Simon, and Micah, and Spencer, and Mac-all want to protect me from this. But you can't do it. And while Richard's a very good attorney, Solomon Hayes has spent decades figuring out exactly how close he can sail to outright libel without quite crossing the line into something actionable."
"But, My Lady," Miranda protested, abandoning her pretense of humor, "word of this is going to get home to Grayson. It's not going to matter much to our steaders, but that midden-toad Mueller and his loathsome bunch are going to try as hard as they can to hurt you with it where the conservatives are concerned."
"I know," Honor sighed. "But there's not anything I can do about it at this point. I'm getting out of town and away from the newsies myself by going back to the Fleet, but I've sent letters to Benjamin and Austen, warning them about what's coming. That's about all I can do at this point."
Miranda looked rebellious, and Honor smiled at her.
"It's not like I've never had anyone taking shots at me in the 'faxes before," she pointed out. "And so far, I've managed to survive, however little I've enjoyed the experience, sometimes. And...."
She paused for a moment, then shrugged.
"And," she confessed, "I'm not being quite as blas‚ about this entire thing as you seem to be assuming. Trust me, Mr. Hayes is going to come to regret this particular... endeavor."
"My Lady?" Miranda perked up noticeably, and there was a slight, edge to her voice. An edge accompanied by the sort of look a Grayson nanny might employ when not one of her charges seemed to know anything about how that dead sandfrog had miraculously materialized in the nursery air purifier.
"Well," Honor said, "I just happened to run into Stacey Hauptman at lunch yesterday, and somehow or other the conversation turned to journalism. And it seems Stacey has been considering venturing into that area for some time. She told me she thinks she might begin by buying the Landing Tattler-just to get her toes wet, you know. Sort of explore the possibilities. And I think she might also have said something about making it her business to-how did she put it? Oh, yes. Making it her business to 'clean up the professionalism of Manticoran journalism generally.'"
"My Lady," Miranda said in quite a different tone, her gray eyes twinkling suddenly. "Oh, that's evil!" she continued with deep satisfaction.
"I never suggested that she take any action whatsoever," Honor said virtuously, "and no one could possibly accuse me or any of my retainers of taking any sort of action, either. I will confess, however, that I find the prospect of Stacey Hauptmann taking personal aim at Mr. Hayes... profoundly satisfying. It won't do much to undo what he's already done, but I feel fairly confident we won't be hearing from him a third time."
"And you were just suggesting the Grayson press might incorporate a few journalistic constraints."
"Even in the Star Kingdom, Miranda, private citizens-as opposed to governmental agencies or public bodies-are permitted to make their displeasure known, so long as they violate no laws or civil rights. Which, I assure you, Stacey has no intention of doing. Or, now that I think about it, any need to do."
"Oh, of course not, My Lady!"
"I want to know who leaked this, and I want to know yesterday."
Dr. Franz Illescue's voice was flat, almost calm, with a lack of emphasis and exclamation points which rang alarm bells in every member of the Briarwood Reproduction Center's senior staff.
"But, Doctor," Julia Isher, Briarwood's business manager, said cautiously, "so far, we don't really have any evidence it was one of our people who was responsible."
"Don't be stupid, Julia. And let's not pretend I am, either," Illescue said in that same almost-calm tone, and Isher winced.
Franz Illescue could be an unmitigated pain in the ass, and despite the very nearly half-century he'd spent getting the worst of his natural aristocratic arrogance knocked out of him, there would always be that core of implicit superiority. That unassailable knowledge that he was, by the inevitable process of birth and the natural working of the universe, inherently better than anyone around him. Despite that, however-or possibly even because of it-he was normally very careful to observe the rules of courtesy with the "little people" with whom he came into contact. On the rare occasions when he wasn't, it was a very, very bad sign, indeed.
"One of 'our people,' as you put it, most definitely was responsible," he continued after a heartbeat or two. "Whether someone deliberately sold the information to this... this... individual Hayes or not, that information had to come from someone inside the Center. Someone with access to our confidential records. Someone who, if he or she didn't deliberately sell the information was still criminally-and I use the adverb advisedly, in light of our confidentiality agreements with our patients-negligent. Someone who either gossiped about it where he or she shouldn't have or allowed someone else unauthorized access. In either case, I want his-or her-ass. I want it broiled, on a silver platter, with a nice side of fried potatoes, and I intend to see to it that whoever it was never works in this field-or any other branch of the medical profession-in the Star Kingdom again."
More than one of the staffers seated around the huge table blanched visibly. Illescue had still to raise his voice, but the temperature in the conference room seemed to hover within a degree or two of absolute zero Kelvin. Some of those staffers, like Isher herself, had been with Illescue for twenty T-years or more, and they had never seen him this incandescently angry.
"Doctor," Isher said, after a moment, "I've already initiated a review of everyone who had access to Duchess Harrington's records. I assure you we're doing everything we possibly can to determine how that information got out of our files and into Mr. Hayes' hands. But so far our security people, some of whom are very well versed in forensic cybernetics, are coming up completely blank. I asked Tajman Meyers-" Meyers was the Center's head of security, who was absent from this meeting only because he was out personally heading the investigation "-if we need to bring in someone else, like the Landing PD. He says our people are probably as good as most of the LCPD's investigators, but he also agrees that if you want to bring in a completely outside team, he'll cooperate fully."