The black beaded scales on a Naxid's torso and long back were capable of a flashing red, and beadpatterns were used as a form of auxiliary communication. The chameleon-weave fabric of the Naxids' uniforms duplicated the patterns on the scales beneath, so even Naxids in uniform were capable of communicating silently in a private language that few non-Naxids could read.

"I doubt she said anything interesting," Sula said.

"Are you sure that's our judge?" Macnamara asked. "I can't tell them apart, usually."

"I'm reasonably certain," Sula said. "I got a glimpse of his face as he went past and it looked right to me." She offered the world a chill smile. "But even if he's not the judge we're after, he's important enough to rate a couple guards. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him a target."

The Naxids crossed to the opposite side of the boulevard, where the Makish Palace waited. Sula and Macnamara remained on their own side of the street and watched with what she hoped was an appropriate level of disinterest. The judge passed through an elaborate fence of gleaming silver alloy, then entered the house through the formal garden out front. One guard went into the palace with him, and the other stationed herself in the garden.

Sula's eye had already moved on to the building next to the Makish Palace, another ornate structure, a palace of mellow gold sandstone with an intricate, carved facade of radiating, interlinking lines. The place was obviously shut down, and the garden out front had run riot.

"No obvious security besides the two guards," Macnamara said.

"Beg pardon?"

Macnamara repeated his statement. Sula looked at the abandoned palace again.

"I've got an idea," she said.

A gold-accented door opened in front of Sula, the door to a private club. In a whiff of tobacco smoke a well-dressed Terran, braided lapels and fashionably pleated trouser front, stepped out of the club and glanced left and right as he made a minor adjustment to his cuffs.

The door closed behind him. His mouth gaped under its narrow little mustache."Lady Sula!" he gasped.

She stepped forward, took his arm, and steered him down the street. Macnamara, suddenly alert, kept a wary eye behind.

"You're dead!" the man cried.

"For all's sake, PJ," said Sula, "you don't have to make such a fuss about it."

THREE.

"Laredo is too far," said Fleet Commander Tork. His melodious voice sounded like wind chimes, and it took a modest effort to separate content from melody. "A message would take eight days each way to Chijimo, and ten to Zanshaa. We are Fleet Control Board; we must remain near the Fleet."

Lord Chen had no desire to join the fleeing Convocation on Laredo, the home of his bumptious in-laws. He had no desire to accept the hospitality of Lord Martinez, and face the daily reminders of his dependent status. He had no wish to see his daughter Terza surrounded by the members of the parvenu family to whom he had sold her.

On the other hand, he was less than enchanted with what Lord Tork seemed to be proposing, if for no other reason than it offered fewer opportunities to escape Tork's company.

The eight members of the Fleet Control Board were traveling together on theGalactic, a sumptuous passenger yacht the Fleet maintained in order to ferry dignitaries from one system to another. ThoughGalactic was a large vessel, it was stuffed full of evacuees from Zanshaa-a large staff of secretaries and communications staff, members of the Intelligence Section and the Investigative Service, bureaucrats from the Ministry of Right and Dominion, servants of the board members...all people who existed to serve the lords of the Fleet, and who Lord Chen was finding it difficult to escape.

Lord Chen was trapped on a small ship with his job, and he wasn't enjoying himself. At Tork's insistence, the board had followed the rules it had laid down for everyone else, and so Lord Chen was permitted only a single servant, and family members were forbidden to accompany-and in any case Lady Chen, who had strongly disapproved of the arrangement by which her only child and heir was married to a Martinez, would never have consented to visit Laredo. Since boardingGalactic, Lord Chen's sole diversion had been frequent communication with his daughter Terza, who was on the Martinez yachtEnsenada, traveling a few days ahead.

"What do you have in mind, my lord?" he asked Tork.

A waft of air brought Lord Chen the scent of Tork's decaying flesh, and he took a discreet sniff of the cologne he'd applied to the inside of his wrist. The Control Board met in a room that had been intended as guest quarters for important Fleet dignitaries. It was bright with mosaics that showed ships dashing through wormholes; but now a long table crowded the room and the air was rather close.

The Daimong turned his round black-on-black eyes on Chen and chimed again. "We will divert to Chijimo and remain with the Home Fleet until the time comes for the recapture of Zanshaa."

Lord Chen could not imagine Lord Eino Kangas, who commanded the Home Fleet, being very pleased at the idea of his superiors hovering over him that way.

"My lord," said Lady Seekin, "shouldn't we remain with the Convocation? We may need to contribute our expertise on important matters, and of course our votes."

Lady Seekin, a Torminel, was one of the civilian members of the board, and a convocate. Her comprehension of Fleet matters was imperfect, but she understood the political dimension of her career very well.

"The important votes have already been taken," Tork said. "Policy has been set and allocations have been made. It is our duty to make certain that the proper policy is implemented, and that no mistakes are made with regard to Fleet deployments and tactical doctrine."

Kangas was going tolove this, Chen thought.

"I confess to reservations," he said. "Aren't we better employed being Lord Eino's advocate with the Convocation? Few of the Lords Convocate have our experience in-"

"We are best employed by ensuring the destruction of the rebels and the restoration of the Praxis to the capital!" Tork declaimed. His voice took on the harsh, clanging, dogmatic overtones that others on the board had learned to dread. Lord Chen tried not to wince as the discord clashed in his skull.

Junior Fleet Commander Pezzini, the other Terran member of the board, gave a convulsive sneeze. Perhaps he'd gotten too strong a whiff of the chairman.

"My lord," he said, "if we sit on top of Fleet Commander Kangas that way, it's going to look as if we don't trust him."

"We will be ensuring the correct employment of the Home Fleet!"Tork said. His voice was like a razor blade shredding Chen's nerves. Chen took another whiff of cologne.

"We have entrusted Lord Eino to make those deployments," Pezzini said. His voice was firm. "It's not our task to second-guess him."

"We must not take chances!"In the small room the voice sounded like a blaring fire alarm."The Fleet has been undermined by subversive activity and unsound doctrines!"

"The Fleet," Pezzini said patiently, "will be undermined by a crisis of confidence if we spend months looking over Lord Eino's shoulders."

Lord Chen cast Pezzini a grateful look. He and Pezzini were often on opposite sides of board disputes, but at least Pezzini had been a serving officer, and understood how such a preemption of authority would look.

Tork, who had also been a serving officer, had either forgotten or never knew in the first place.

"Kangas must not be permitted any latitude!"Tork cried."He must adhere without question to the ways of our ancestors!"

Lord Chen took a long breath. As Fleet recruits gradually built up a resistance to high gees, he and the others of the board had gradually steeled themselves against the chairman's outbursts.

"Fleet Commander Kangas is not a child," Chen said. "He does not require a nursemaid standing over him, particularly a nursemaid in the form of a committee." As Tork turned his pale, frozen face to reply, Lord Chen slapped the table with his hand, making a sound like a gun crack. The others jumped.

Tork, Chen thought, wasn't the only one in the room who could make a sonic attack.

"We must obey the dictates of the Praxis!" he said. "The Praxis states that there must be a completely clear chain of command, from the Fleet Commander to the lowliest recruit. For the Control Board to interfere in that relationship is a violation of theempire's...fundamental ...law!"

He slapped the table again on each of the last three words. Glasses of water and tea jumped. Tork gazed at Chen with his expressionless face, his gaping mouth and round eyes giving the impression of perpetual surprise.

"So can we please go to Laredo?" asked Lady Seekin, her voice a bit plaintive.

Of course they compromised. In the end the decision was taken to go to Antopone, where the board could hover between Laredo and Chijimo, and also supervise the three cruisers that were being constructed on Antopone's ring.

At leastGalactic would berth on the ring, and Lord Chen knew he would have some time away from his colleagues. He had friends who had fled to Antopone from Zanshaa, and he could count on a gratifying reception from them.

He therefore wouldn't have to put up with Laredo or the Martinez clan, with their rude accents and barbaric manners. And he would have at least a few hours of liberty from Tork and the others. He could look forward to Antopone with satisfaction.

But unfortunately Terza would not be staying with him. Her calm presence was the last reminder of his old life on Zanshaa, the days before Naxids and the Martinez clan became such oppressive presences in his life.

During the weeks it took to reach Antopone, the press of business never slackened. Tork, whatever his other faults, was a peerless organizer: somehow he managed to keep in his gray, bald head the details of recruitment and training, ship building and repair, logistics, and support for the entire Fleet. He read reports and dictated memoranda. He ordered supplies to be shipped from one location or another. He supervised the deployment of recruits from the training camps, and deployed officers to the ships building in the yards.

Lord Eino Kangas, reasonably free of interference, remained orbiting the Chijimo system with Home Fleet, which had lost not only its home but most of its ships. The Home Fleet proper had been reduced to the five survivors of Magaria, all heavy cruisers, to which had been added an additional seven heavy cruisers of Faqforce, the Lai-own divisions commanded by Squadron Commander Do-faq. These twelve vessels were hardly a match for the nearest enemy, the forty-three Naxid ships known to be at Zanshaa.

If the enemy advanced, Kangas would have no choice but to fly before them, surrendering any systems the Naxids chose to threaten. But the Naxids didn't seem to be interested in advancing. They remained at Zanshaa, guarding the capital while their government sank its roots into the soil below. They seemed confident that the remaining loyalists would surrender.

But the loyalists had no intention of surrendering. More than half the loyalist fleet, Chenforce under Michi Chen and Light Squadron 14 under the Torminel Squadron Commander Altasz, plunged on separate raids into rebel-held systems, there to demonstrate that while the rebels might have the capital, the rest of their domain wasn't safe.

The strategy of abandoning the capital and defending nowhere while building forces and raiding into enemy territory was referred to as the Chen Plan. In fact the plan had been developed by Captain Martinez and Lady Sula, but neither of them were sufficiently important or free enough from controversy to deserve having the Fleet's strategic aims named after them. So Lord Chen, who had first presented the plan to the board, had his name appended to it, and his career would rise or fall with its success.

While Tork managed the business of the Fleet, while Kangas orbited Chijimo with his outnumbered force, while warships were building on many worlds, while the representatives of the Investigative Service bickered over fine points of interpretation with their rivals in the Intelligence Service, while the Naxids occupied the capital and Lord Chen's sister and son-in-law advanced with their squadron into the unknown, Lord Chen occupied himself sending messages to his friends on Antopone.

It would be such a relief to see them again.

So much for my clever disguise,Sula thought. Blond hair dyed black, green eyes turned brown, pale skin darkened, and she couldn't even fool someone of PJ Ngeni's...extremely localized intelligence.

PJ had recovered his equilibrium somewhat, and the reflexes of a man of fashion came to the fore. "You must let me give you dinner at my club," he said.

Sula dropped PJ's arm and indicated her gray coveralls. "We're not exactly dressed for it, PJ," she said.

He touched his little mustache. "We'll order in, then."

Sula felt a nervous giggle flutter like a butterfly in her abdomen. The jolt of adrenaline that had followed PJ's blurting of her name was followed by an equally powerful impulse to break the tension with laughter.

"I don't think you should be seen with us," Sula said through her breaking smile. "We're wanted by the Naxids. If you're caught with us, you'll be tortured and killed."

PJ waved a hand. "Oh," he said,"that."

Lord Pierre J. Ngeni was a tall, slim, elegant man, not quite middle-aged, with a long balding head and clothes of a modish cut. It was generally believed he'd wasted his inheritance on the usual dissipations available to members of his class, and now-for a Peer-he was poor, and living largely on the charity of his clan.

Sula knew PJ because he'd once been engaged to Gareth Martinez's sister Sempronia. This, Martinez had clearly explained to her, had been a sham engagement, yet another of Martinez's attempts to clamber from his obscure provincial origins into the cream of Zanshaa society. An engagement to a member of his patron clan, the Ngenis, would guarantee access for Martinez and his siblings to the highest levels of the city. After Martinez and his family had won access, Sempronia would be at liberty to discover, to her horror, that PJ had led a scandalous life, and then break the engagement.

The chief fault of the plan was that PJ Ngeni, himself, had never realized his engagement was a travesty. He'd fallen in love with Sempronia, who in her turn had rebelled at the very idea of a burlesque engagement and run off with one of Martinez's lieutenants. The resulting scandal had threatened to unhinge the relationship between the Ngenis and Clan Martinez, and another sister entirely had been offered as a family sacrifice. PJ traded a farce of an engagement for a mockery of a marriage.

Since the Martinez family had sensibly cleared out before the Naxids arrived, as had the Ngenis, the fact that the new bridegroom had been left behind did not speak well for PJ's conjugal condition.

"We'll bring in a nice dinner," PJ continued amiably, "and open a bottle of wine. Oh-sorry-I forgot you don't drink."

"PJ," Sula said, "what are youdoing here?"

PJ shrugged. "I volunteered to stay behind and guard the family's interests on Zanshaa," he said. "Not that there are very many interests left, barring some property. But we still have clients here, and some old servants that we've pensioned off, and I'm doing my best to look after them." He looked at Sula, then glanced over his shoulder at Macnamara. "Do I know your friend?" he asked.

"I don't believe so. Call him Starling." Which was Macnamara's code name.

PJ was amiability itself. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Starling."

Macnamara gave a terse nod. "My lord."

PJ hesitated as he peered along the street. "If I'm going to give you dinner," he said, "we should be walking in the, ah, theother direction." He pointed the way they had come.

"You're staying in the Ngeni Palace?"

"The palace is closed. The servants have been dismissed, and the pensioners sent to our place in the country. I'm in a guest cottage."

"No cooks? No servants?"

"Someone from an agency comes in to clean. And I either eat at one of my clubs or call for delivery from a caterer."

Sula looked at Macnamara, who gave her an equivocal look.Up to you, Sula read.

"It sounds safe enough," she ventured. She turned to PJ. "Go ahead of us, please. If we walked together it would look odd."

PJ was bemused but led the way. He passed his smoking club again and then crossed the boulevard, where he led them past the Makish Palace. Sula tried to amble casually along, and as she passed the palace she paused to shift her toolbox from one hand to the next. She paid as much attention to the abandoned palace next door as she did to her target. From the name inscribed in a sunburst over the doorway,Orghoder, Sula assumed the empty building had been built by a Torminel clan.

The Ngeni Palace wasn't on the Boulevard of the Praxis, but several streets behind, backed against the gray cliffside for a stunning view of the Lower Town. The palace itself was tall, faced with veined pink marble, and nearly a cube, with a huge glass-fronted, barrel-vaulted hall visible from the street. PJ didn't enter the palace, but took them around by a side entrance, then past a huge old banyan tree that looked as if it might have been standing on the High City since the dawn of time.

His "cottage" was three stories tall and probably had twenty rooms, but PJ seemed only to be living in a small part of it. He ushered his guests into a parlor, one with a view of the flagstone terrace that overlooked the Lower Town. PJ went to the comm unit concealed in a dramatic commode of arcule wood, ordered dinner for three from a caterer who seemed to know him, then closed the commode and turned to his guests.

"Well!" he said brightly. "So you're alive after all, Lady Sula!"

"Yes." The laugh that had been struggling to escape from her finally broke free, and she indulged it. "I hardly expected to see anyone I knew."

"That's lucky, isn't it?" PJ seemed pleased. "I'm glad I'm able to be of service." He reached for the drink trolley. "What may I give you to drink? Whisky, Mr. Starling?"

Sula looked at him. "Whatever you've got that doesn't have alcohol. And what did you mean 'service'?"

PJ looked at her. "You're obviously in, ah, straitened circumstances. You can stay here with me, of course, and I'm good for any tailor's bills you may run up." He patted his pockets. "Do you need any ready money?"

Sula's laugh rose again, unstoppable, and went on for some time. PJ hesitated, a half-hurt expression coming over his face. Sula controlled the laughter.

"PJ, you're wonderful!" she cried, and his expression turned from hurt to pleased. "We don't need money," she told him. "We're just dressed this way because, well, we're just taking a look around, and we don't want people to look atus. "

PJ nodded, then hesitated again. A massive, startling thought worked its slow way across his face. "Oh!" he said. "Oh! I understand!" He pointed a finger at his two guests. "You're here on amission! You're doing something for the secret government!"

Sula wondered if she should tell PJ that, so far as she knew, shewas the secret government.

"Actually," she temporized, "we're just taking a look around. We're not on an assignment or anything."

"Well, if there's anything I can do," PJ said, "anything at all, you'll be certain to let me know." He looked at Macnamara. "That was whisky you wanted, was it, Mr. Starling?"

Macnamara looked at Sula. "Feel free," she said.