"So their decision is final?" one man asked, and Burdette scowled.

"It is," he grated. "The Sacristy's become totally subservient to that gutless wonder in the Protector's chair, and it's ready to take Father Church, and all of us, to damnation with it."

The man who'd spoken shifted in his armchair. Burdette’s cold eyes moved to his face in silent question, and the other man shrugged irritably.

"I agree the Sacristy has hardly shown the wisdom God's children have a right to expect, William, but Benjamin Mayhew is the Protector."

"Oh?" Burdette's lip curled as he gazed at John Mackenzie.

"Oh," Mackenzie replied without giving an inch. Mackenzie Steading was almost as old as Burdette Steading, and, unlike Burdette, the original Mackenzie family had held steading there in direct line of descent since its founding. "Whatever you think of Protector Benjamin, his family's served Grayson well. I don't care to hear him called a 'gutless wonder' ... by anyone."

Mackenzie's brown eyes were as hard as Burdette's blue ones, and tension hovered in the air until Burdette's second guest cleared his throat.

"My Lords, we serve neither Grayson’s interests nor God's by quarreling." Steadholder Mueller's voice was calm but pointed, and both of the others looked at him for a moment. Then Burdette grunted.

"You're right." He took a swallow of wine, then turned back to Mackenzie. "I won't take it back, John, but I won't say it again, either." Mackenzie nodded curtly, well aware he'd just gotten as close to an apology as the other was capable of making, and Burdette went on. "Nonetheless, I take it you share my dismay at the godless course he seems hell-bent on pursuing?"

"I do." Mackenzie didn't sound happy to agree, but he did, and Burdette shrugged.

"Then the question is what we do about it, isn't it?"

"I don't see a great deal more we can do," Mackenzie replied. "We've supported you this far, and I'm sure we'll continue to." He glanced at Mueller, who nodded, then returned his attention to Burdette. "We've all contributed to support the witnesses we've sent south to try to bring 'Lady' Harrington’s people to their senses, and I've added my protests to your own before the Sacristy. I haven't hidden my feelings from the Protector, either. But outside our own steadings, our legal recourses are limited. If the Protector and the Sacristy are both committed to this course, we can only trust in God to show them the error of their ways before it's too late."

"That's not enough," Burdette protested. "God expects His people to act, not just to sit around and wait for Him to intervene. Or are you suggesting we simply turn our backs on the Test He's sent us?"

"I didn't say that." Mackenzie's effort to control his own temper was apparent, and he leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. "I simply said our options are limited, and I think we've exercised all of them. And, unlike you, I do think God will refuse to let His people be led into sin by anyone. Or are you suggesting we simply forget the power of prayer?"

Burdette’s teeth grated and his nostrils flared at the ironic bite of Mackenzie's question, and Mackenzie settled back in his chair once more.

"I'm not saying I disagree, William," his tone was more conciliatory, "and I'll continue to support you however I can, but there's no point pretending we can do more than we can."

"But it's not enough!" Burdette reiterated hotly. "This world is consecrated to God. Saint Austin led our fathers here to build a holy place under God's law! Men have no right to chop and prune at His law just because some fancy off-world university's convinced the Protector it's not 'fashionable' anymore! Damn it to Hell, man, can't you see that?"

Mackenzie's face went very still. He sat silent for a long, tense moment, then stood. He glanced at Mueller, but his fellow steadholder remained seated and gazed down into his glass, avoiding his eyes.

"I share your sentiments," Mackenzie's voice was level, though the effort he made to keep it so was obvious, "but I've had my say and you've had yours. I believe we've done all we can, that we can only trust God to do what more is required. You obviously disagree, and I've no desire to quarrel with you. Under the circumstances, I think perhaps I'd better leave before one of us says something we'll both regret."

"I think you're right," Burdette grated.

Samuel Mackenzie looked at Mueller again, but the other man only gave a silent headshake without looking up. Mackenzie gazed at him for a moment, then inhaled and looked back at Burdette. The two of them exchanged small, coldly correct bows, and Mackenzie turned and walked from the library with a long, anger-quickened stride.

Silence hovered in his wake until Burdette's third guest rose and carried Mackenzie's abandoned wineglass to the sideboard. The crystal click was loud in the stillness as he set it down, and Mueller looked back up at last.

"He's right, you know, William. We've done all we can legally."

"Legally?" the man who'd so far kept silence repeated. "By whose law, My Lord? God's or man's?"

"I don't like the sound of that, Brother Marchant," Mueller said, but his tone was less stern than it might have been, and the cleric shrugged. He had few doubts about Samuel Mueller. Mueller might be too much the calculator to voice his feelings openly, but he was a man of the Faith, as opposed to Protector Benjamin's "reforms" as Marchant or Lord Burdette themselves. And if he also had more worldly motives, well, God worked with whatever tool He required, and Mueller's ambition and resentment of his own authority's diminution could prove potent tools indeed.

"Perhaps not, My Lord," the cleric said after a moment, "and I mean no disrespect, either to you or to Lord Mackenzie." His voice suggested that part, at least, of his statement was a lie. "But surely you agree God's law supersedes that of man?"

"Of course."

"Then if men, be it willfully or in simple error, violate God's law, do not other men have a responsibility to correct those violations?"

"He's right, Samuel." The rage in Burdette's voice was thicker and deeper than he'd let Mackenzie hear. "You and John can talk about legal considerations all you want, but look what happened when we tried to exercise our legal rights. That whore Harrington's thugs almost beat Brother Marchant to death for simply speaking God's will!"

Mueller frowned. He'd seen the press coverage of the episode, and he suspected only the Harrington Guard's intervention had saved Marchant. Still, they'd had to do that, hadn't they? Harrington's Sky Domes personnel had led the strong-arm groups which had broken up the demonstrations outside Harrington House, after all. Most people might not have noticed that, but Mueller had, and felt a grudging respect for how she'd hidden her own involvement. Yet the strategy was blatantly obvious to anyone who knew where to look, and if she'd let the mob kill a priest before her very eyes, other people besides Samuel Mueller might look much more closely.

Under those circumstances, letting her subjects lynch Marchant would only have made her own culpability clear and branded her before the rest of Grayson's people as the agent of sin she was.

"Perhaps so," he said finally, "but I still fail to see what more we can do, William. I deeply regret what's happened to Brother Marchant," he nodded to the ex-priest, "but it was all done legally, and..."

"Legally!" Burdette spat. "Since when does an upstart like Mayhew have the right to dictate to one of the Keys in his own steading?!"

"Now just a minute, William!" Burdette's question had touched a nerve, and anger flickered in Mueller's eyes, not at his host, but real all the same, and disgust sharpened his voice. "It wasn't just the Protector; it was the entire Sacristy and the Chamber! For that matter, most of the other Keys supported the decision when Reverend Hanks brought the writ before us. I agree Mayhew pushed for it, but he covered himself too well for us to make an open fight of it over steadholder privilege. You know that."

"And why did the Keys support it?" Burdette shot back. "I'll tell you why, for the same reason we all sat there like so many gutless eunuchs and let Mayhew ram that infidel bitch down our throats last year! My God, Samuel, the woman was whoring with that foreign scum, what's his name, Tankersley!, even then, and Mayhew knew it! But did he tell us? Of course he didn't! He knew not even he could've gotten her past the Keys if he had!"

"I'm not so sure of that," Mueller said grudgingly. "I mean, infidel or no, she did save us from Masada."

"Only so her own side could devour us! We knew the Masadans were enemies, so Satan threw something more insidious at us, didn't he? He offered us Harrington as a "heroine' and the bait of 'modern technology,' and that fool Mayhew swallowed the poison whole! What does it matter whether Masada destroys us by force of arms or Manticore corrupts us by trickery and bribery?"

Mueller took another sip of wine, and his eyes were hooded. He agreed that Benjamin Mayhew's "reforms" were poisoning his world, but he found his host's rampant religious fervor wearing. And dangerous. Burdette was too much the fanatic, and fanatics could be ... precipitous. Any hasty action might be disastrous, Mayhew and Harrington were too popular, and before their opponents could accomplish anything, the groundwork to undermine that popularity had to be in place, so perhaps it was time for a note of caution.

"And what about the Havenites?" he asked. "If we break with Manticore, what's to keep them from conquering us outright?"

"My Lord, Haven would have no interest in us if Manticore hadn't sucked us into their Alliance," Marchant replied before Burdette could. "It's not enough for Queen Elizabeth to corrupt us, she had to bring her ungodly foreign war to us, as well!"

"And it was Mayhew who made that possible," Burdette added in a sorter, more persuasive voice. "He was the wedge, and he did it for his own selfish reasons. For over a hundred years, the Protector's Council governed Grayson. That bastard used the 'crisis', the crisis he created in the first place by convincing the Council to consider allying with Manticore, to turn the clock back and force us all to accept 'personal rule' again. Personal rule!" Burdette actually spat on the library's expensive carpet. "The man's a damned dictator, Samuel, and you John want to talk to me about 'legal' options?"

Mueller started to speak, then stopped and took yet another swallow of wine. The implications of Burdette's tirade were frightening, and he wasn't at all certain he shared Marchant's dismissal of Haven's ambitions. On the other hand, he thought suddenly, how likely was the People's Republic to strike at an ex-ally of Manticore? Wouldn't they be more inclined to leave Grayson alone? To adopt a hands-off policy to encourage other Manticoran to consider the advantages of neutrality? And intemperate as Burdette’s description of the domestic situation might be, there was a core of truth to it. A hard and painful core.

The Council had reduced the Protectorship to figurehead status long before Benjamin Mayhew's birth, and the Conclave of Steadholders had liked it that way, for they had controlled the Council. But Benjamin had remembered something the Keys had forgotten, Mueller thought bitterly. He'd remembered that the people of Grayson still revered the Mayhew name, and in the crisis of the Masadan War, while the Council and Keys had dithered, Mueller's face burned with shame as he recalled his own panic, but he was too honest with himself to deny it, Benjamin had acted swiftly and decisively.

That probably would have been enough to shatter the Councils power by itself, but then he'd survived the Maccabeans attempted assassination, as well, and Manticore had gone on to destroy the Masadan threat forever, a combination of events which had devastated the old system. No Protector in centuries had been as popular as Benjamin now was, despite his unholy social "reforms," and, Mueller thought bitterly, the Conclave of Steaders had embraced the renewed power of the Protector with enthusiasm. The Chamber's lower house had become almost as irrelevant as the Protectorship itself as the Council secured its control. Now, in alliance with the Protector, it held the balance of power in the Chamber, and if it had been both respectful and moderate in its demands so far, it had also made it clear that it intended to be treated henceforth as the Conclave of Steadholders equal.

And the worst of it was that there seemed to be nothing anyone could do about it. Lord Prestwick remained Mayhew's Chancellor. Indeed, he'd become one of Mayhew's champions, claiming that a stronger executive was critical in time of war, which was a direct slap at his fellow Steadholders' failure to provide a strong foreign policy. But there'd been no need for a foreign policy, a corner of Mueller's brain protested angrily. Not until Manticore had brought its damned war to Yeltsin's Star, and that was Mayhew's fault, not the Keys'!

The Steadholder’s head ached, and he massaged his closed eyes while his mind raced. He was a man of the Faith, he told himself. A servant of God who'd never asked to be born into a time of such turmoil. He'd always tried to live by God's will, to meet the Tests God sent him, but why had God chosen to send him this Test? All he'd ever wanted was to do God's will and, someday, in God's good time, pass his steading and his power on to his son and his sons sons.

But Benjamin Mayhew wouldn't let him do that, and Mueller knew it. The Protector couldn't, for the old tradition of steadholder autonomy was anathema to the ugly new world he strove to build in despite of God's will. His reforms were but the tip of an iceberg whose true peril was obvious to any discerning pilot. To make them work, they must be applied across the length and breadth of Grayson, and enforcing them would require an enormous increase in the Swords authority. The Protector would intrude more and more deeply into each steading, always politely, no doubt; always with a pious appeal to the rectitude of his actions in the name of "equality", unless the power of the Sword was broken soon, decisively. And the Havenite War. The need of a wartime leader for unquestioning obedience. That would be another potent weapon in Mayhew's arsenal, and the only way to take that weapon from his hands was to force a break with Manticore. But the only way to do that...

He lowered his hands at last and looked at Burdette.

"What do you want of me, William?" he asked bluntly. "Even Reverend Hanks supports the Protector, and whether we like it or not, our world's at war with the most powerful empire in this part of the galaxy. Unless we can make that just go away..." he made a throwing away gesture with one hand, "we don't dare give him an excuse to crush us in the name of the war effort."

"But this world is God's." Burdette's soft voice shivered with passion, and his blue eyes blazed like sun-struck sapphires. "What do we have to fear from any empire if God is our Captain?"

Mueller stared at him, mesmerized by the glitter of those eyes, and felt something stir inside him. A part of him remembered where he'd heard those words before, heard the echo of the Maccabean fanatics and their Masadan masters, but somehow that seemed suddenly less important. His own heart cried out for the certainty of his faith, the comfort of the world he'd inherited from his father and wanted to pass to his sons, and bitter resentment of the way Benjamin Mayhew and Honor Harrington were warping and changing that world reinforced the seductive power singing in Burdette's soft, fiery words. "What do you want of me?" he repeated more quietly, and Burdette smiled. He held out his glass to Marchant, and the defrocked priest filled it once more. Then the Steadholder sank back into his own chair, and his voice was quiet and persuasive.

"Nothing, Samuel. Nothing at all right now. But think. Mayhew spurned a century of legal precedent to seize power. He spat on an entire way of government so that he could overturn the way of life God intended, what loyalty do we owe a man like that?" Mueller gazed at him silently, and Burdette flicked a look up at Marchant, then continued in that same quietly seductive voice.

"We owe him nothing, Samuel, but we owe God everything. Surely He has the right to expect us to at least try to preserve the world our people spent a thousand years building obedient to His way. And however Mayhew may have deceived the people into following him into sin, somewhere deep inside, they know that as well as we do. All they need is leadership, Samuel. Only a reminder of what God expects of godly men... and of what happens to those who embrace the ways of sin."

"What sort of a reminder?" Mueller half-whispered, and a strange eagerness, a half-fearful sense that the weapon he needed to restore the world he understood might lie just beyond his fingertips, quivered deep inside him as Burdette smiled.