Buzzing conversation echoed around the chamber, and some of the peers were rising and flowing toward the door. North Hollow saw the closest ones stop dead exactly as the Speaker had, then wheel back to the peers behind them, gesticulating and muttering animatedly, and some were looking back at those of their colleagues who were still seated. North Hollow had shunned any close association with his fellows ever since Harrington leveled her charges, but now his own curiosity was roused. He pushed himself up out of his seat, then stopped as the Speaker stepped out of the knot of bodies. He returned to his desk, and his spine was stiff with either outrage or anger.
North Hollow sank back into his chair as the clot around the door began to shed bodies, and the Speaker seated himself behind his desk with an angry flounce. He picked up his ceremonial gavel and pounded it on the rest under the microphone. The sharp, jarring impacts echoed through the chamber, and he leaned towards his own microphone.
"Be seated, My Lords and Ladies," his voice boomed, and North Hollow had never heard just that note from the Speaker. The gavel fell again, so hard the handle cracked and the head flew up to rattle against the mike. "Be seated, My Lords and Ladies!" the Speaker repeated even more loudly, and the sound of his voice chivvied the peers back to their places like frightened birds.
The buzz of conversation died, and the Speaker stared out at the chamber. He waited for total silence, then cleared his throat.
"My Lords and Ladies, I crave your indulgence," he said harshly, not sounding as if he craved anything of the. sort. "I apologize for this interruption of your deliberations, but under the rules of this House, I have no choice." He turned his head, almost as if against his will, to look toward the robed figure at the door, then turned back to his microphone.
"I have just been reminded," he announced, "of a seldom used rule. It is customary" he turned to glare at the newcomer again "for new peers to send decent notice to this House, and to be sponsored, before taking their place among us. Under certain circumstances, however, including the exigencies of the Queen's Service, new members may be delayed in taking their seats or, as I have just been reminded, may appear before us at a time convenient to them if their duty to the Crown will make it impossible for them to appear at one convenient to the House as a whole."
North Hollow rubbed his beard, wondering what in hell the Speaker was talking about. Exigencies of the Queen's Service?
"That rule has just been invoked, My Lords and Ladies," the Speaker said heavily. "A member who wishes to make her maiden address to the House informs me this may be her last opportunity for some months due to the demands of the Service. As such, I have no choice but to permit this irregularity."
The buzzing mutter was back, louder than ever, and heads were turning to peer toward the rear of the House. No, not toward the rear, North Hollow realized. They were peering at him, and sudden dread gripped him as the Speaker gestured to the robed newcomer.
The stranger crossed to stand before the Speaker's desk, then turned to face the House. Her hands went up, drawing back the blood-red cowl of the Knights of the Order of King Roger, and Pavel Young lunged up out of his seat with a strangled cry of horror as Honor Harrington smiled coldly up at him.
Honor's hands trembled in the concealing folds of her robes as she let them fall back to her sides, but she hardly noticed. Her eyes were locked on Pavel Young as he jerked to his feet, his face white with sudden understanding. His head whipped about, like a trapped animal searching desperately for escape, but there was none. This time he couldn't run away, not without everyone in this chamber knowing that he'd run. And, perhaps even more terrifying to a man like him, his only exit route would have brought him within arm's reach of her.
Hate boiled within her, battering her with the need to attack him physically, but she simply folded her hands before her and let her eyes move across the rest of the seated peers. Some of them looked as horrified as Young; others simply seemed confused, and a very few were watching her with narrow, alert eyes. The House's judicial air had shattered like so much fragile glass, and the Sergeant-At-Arms moved closer to her, as if he feared he might have to restrain her forcibly. She felt the uncertainty shudder about her, as if they sensed the hunger of the predator who had suddenly appeared among them.
"My Lords and Ladies," she said finally, her soprano rising clearly amid the quivering tension, "I apologize to this House for the unseemly fashion in which I have interrupted its proceedings. But, as the Speaker has said, my ship is under orders to depart Manticore as soon as her repairs and working up period are completed. The demands of restoring a Queen's ship to full efficiency will be a heavy burden on my time, and, of course, my departure from the system will make it impossible for me to appear before you after my ship is once more ready for deployment."
She paused, tasting the silence and savoring the terror that hovered almost visibly above Pavel Young, and drew a deep breath.
"I cannot in good conscience leave Manticore, however, without discharging one of the gravest duties any peer owes to Her Majesty, this House, and the Realm as a whole. Specifically, My Lords and Ladies, it is my duty to inform you that one of your members has, by his own actions, not only demonstrated that he is unfit to sit among you but made himself a reproach to and a slur upon the very honor of the Kingdom."
Someone blurted a chopped-off exclamation of disbelief, as if unable to credit her sheer effrontery, but her calm, clear voice was like a wizards spell. They knew what she was going to say, yet no one could move. They could only sit there, staring at her, and she felt the power of the moment like fire in her veins.
"My Lords and Ladies, there is among you a man who has conspired at murder rather than face his enemies himself. A would-be rapist, a coward, and a man who hired a paid duelist to kill another. A man who sent armed thugs into a public restaurant only two days ago to murder someone else and failed in his purpose by the narrowest margin." The spell was beginning to fray. Peers began to rise, their voices starting to sound in protest, but her soprano cut through the stir like a knife, and her eyes were fixed on Pavel Young.
"My Lords and Ladies, I accuse Pavel Young, Earl North Hollow, of murder and attempted murder. I accuse him of the callous and unforgivable abuse of power, of cowardice in the face of the enemy, of attempted rape, and of being unfit not simply for the high office he holds but for life itself. I call him coward and scum, beneath the contempt of honest and upright subjects of this Kingdom, whose honor is profaned by his mere presence among them, and I challenge him, before you all, to meet me upon the field of honor, there to pay once and for all for his acts!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"Well, she doesn't do anything by halves, does she?" Bitter amusement colored William Alexander's voice, and the Duke of Cromarty fought an urge to snarl at him.
"You might put it that way, I suppose," he said instead. He shook his head angrily, then opened the balcony's sliding doors. Alexander followed him out into the breezy dark, and the two of them stood three hundred stories above the streets of Landing. Air car running lights drifted like rainbow bubbles beneath a huge moon, and black-barred banks of moon-silvered cloud gathered on the damp breath of approaching rain. Distant lightning flickered somewhere along the eastern rim of the world, and the capital's lights glittered below them. More rivers of light swept up the flanks of other towers, like the carelessly spilled jewels of some elvish queen, and the Prime Minister stared at them as if an answer hid among their beauty.
But there was no answer. Honor Harrington had snatched events totally out of his hands. Queen Elizabeth might have forbidden anyone to pressure Harrington, but Cromarty had known the fix was in. The civilian government and Navy alike had conspired to save her by keeping her from North Hollows throat, yet she'd found her way to him despite the odds against her.