Osman had mentally filed most of the hundreds of human colony worlds with one-word labels: glassed, silent, hiding, resentful, struggling, loyal, outlaw. Venezia had dropped off the plot more than ten years ago, when it was a known safe haven for terrorists. It could have been dusting off old grievances now that it thought the Covenant was gone.

Vaz stared at the image of the backside of a hazmat-suited engineer squeezing into a small machinery space. He didn't look amused.

"Can't help hoping the hinge-heads pay Venezia another visit," he muttered. "But I suppose you can make that happen, can't you, ma'am?"

Vaz seemed to catch on fast. Good choice, that one. The Psych Eval deadbeats have their uses. Ethics were never simple in ONI, because planetary politics weren't simple either, but Osman could see that lines would get much more blurred before too long.

"Yes, I can," she said.

Parangosky's words came back to her. Never settle a score until it's tactically useful and you're certain you can finish the job. Then make sure they know you did it. That's how you keep them all in line. Osman had all her mentor's words of wisdom filed mentally too, just like the disposition of colony worlds.

She went back to her cabin and splashed her face with cold water to stop the throbbing in her temples. When she straightened up from the basin and scrutinized herself in the mirror, she still looked drained of blood. That wasn't going to inspire confidence in anyone. She reached into the small cabinet behind the mirror to find a shot of analgesic, but her fingers brushed against something smooth and sharp-edged that crackled.

It was a glistening, transparent bag of crystallized ginger, scrunched into a pouch and tied with a gold bow. A tiny handwritten tag dangled from it. Osman read it, chuckling to herself.

You'll find this works pretty well for nausea. MP.

Yes, Parangosky had hidden facets. If you crossed her, she could make sure you ended up very, very dead. But if she liked you-if she trusted you, if she respected you, if she felt you deserved better than the hand you'd been dealt-then she'd be your guardian angel.

It didn't happen often.

Osman popped a cube of ginger in her mouth and savored the burn all the way down to the hangar bay.

MDAMA, SANGHELIOS.

Jul 'Mdama realized that the old ways weren't working any longer, but he had nothing to take their place.

He stood at the kaidon's door and waited for the old man to acknowledge him. Courtesy cost nothing, after all, and Levu had always been a sensible leader. Jul was ready to tear down society but he drew the line at personal disrespect.

"You don't look happy, Jul." Levu, seated at his huge wooden table, beckoned him into his office. The table had been carved from a single piece of jet-wood, legs and top together, no joints or separate pieces at all, and a thousand years of constant use had polished it to a satin blackness. "What can I do for you?"

"I have to know where you stand on the Arbiter," Jul said.

"On the truce with the humans?"

"That's our most immediate problem. Whatever my wife says."

"I haven't opposed him, if that's what you mean. But I don't plan to sanction an assassination, either."

"Well, I have my answer, then. A mistaken answer, but an answer nonetheless."

Jul had no idea why he stood there a moment longer. He'd been given his answer and Levu wasn't going to change his mind. Helplessness overwhelmed him for a moment, a frustration akin to seeing flames licking at a building and being unable to make its occupants heed his calls to run and save themselves. But it was his world that would burn if nobody listened. He was sure of that.

"Do you think we can make peace with humans, Kaidon?"

Levu put his hands flat on the table in front of him. It was a gesture of resignation. He'd always been a pragmatist. "I think they're devious creatures that can be held in place with the right degree of mutual threat," he said. "And I think that we're in no shape to mount the kind of attack that could wipe them out cleanly. But that's not to say I want to make peace with them. We do what we must."

The only items on Levu's desk were his computer from the San'Shyuum system that had linked the Sangheili city-states to their Prophet masters, and an arum-part puzzle, part ornament, a wooden ball of nested concentric spheres carved from a single piece of wood much as the ancient desk had been. It sat on a carved base. Hidden in its core was a small gem crystal of some kind that could only be shaken free when the player worked out the complex alignment of spheres.

The object seemed impossible to anyone except the craftsman who made it. Youngsters learned patience from it. Apart from providing diversion and strengthening character, it was said to represent what made the Sangheili strong; a perfectly engineered, orderly system that presented a smooth, impenetrable face to the outside world, and each had his appointed place in it. Jul suddenly saw it another way.

He reached out for it and waited for Levu to give him a nod to pick it up.

"Have you ever released a crystal?" Levu asked.

"Once. Then never again." Jul held the arum in his right hand, one thumb on the anchor piece, and pushed his nail into one of the holes to move one of the inner spheres. He put it back on its base. "But this is indeed what we are. Good day, Kaidon."

"Good day, Jul. Have patience."

Jul bowed his head politely and left. There was no point arguing with Levu because there was nothing to argue against. The kaidon made perfect sense, just as the Arbiter had also made perfect sense when he said the Sangheili had surrendered their selves and their ability to run their own affairs.

And the arum summed up the problem. To reach the core, each sphere had to be operated in turn to activate the next. No sphere could act without the next one in a hierarchy that was impossible to reorder. It mirrored the Sangheili social structure and Jul wondered if that was the unspoken rule the arum actually taught children and reinforced in adults-that the keep system had to be obeyed and that flouting it was impossible. The family keeps all needed the approval of their township keep to act, and the township keeps answered to their city keep in its turn, spheres within spheres.

Above that, though, there was nothing now that the San'Shyuum had been ousted. A world of eight billion needed more than a mass of uncoordinated fiefdoms to deal with the humans.

And those Jiralhanae who've turned on us. We have many enemies now. As the humans say-the lid has come off.

Jul found himself at the end of the colonnade that connected Levu's keep to the marketplace without remembering the walk at all. It was a bad sign. And he still didn't have a plan.

Do I dispute Levu's decision and exercise my right to assassinate him?

His grievance wasn't with Levu, and there was no point acting alone anyway.

There's Forze ...

But he needed more than a friend to back him up. He needed to find an army of like-minded patriots. Honor was all very well for settling clan disputes, but it was pitifully inadequate for fighting a war.

He walked all the way back to Bekan. It took him hours, but he needed the time to think. As he walked along the highway, he saw serfs working in the fields, but still very few Unggoy. Perhaps it was for the best. Sanghelios should never have allowed itself to rely on alien races, either as masters or servants.

He stopped on the aqueduct to gaze out over the valley. In the center of the Relon clan's farmland, a fifty-span area of grass had been left untouched around the remnants of a Forerunner monument, an elegant but crumbling three-sided spire that had snapped off five meters above the soil. It was sacred ground, the handiwork of the gods, and not to be touched. As a child Jul had never dared say he thought it strange that gods should need to build ordinary things, and that many of those things would crumble in time just like any mortal's work, but now he knew he'd been right.

Even now that the Prophets had been exposed as liars, though, nobody had attempted to cross the boundary and plow up the grass.

Does it matter? I think not.

By the time Jul got back to his keep, it was long past the midafternoon mealtime. Children raced past him, hissing and squabbling. He grabbed one of the boys by his collar and yanked him to a halt.

"Discipline, Kimal," he said. He noted that his sons weren't in the unruly mob. Good. "You're not infants, any of you. I expect better."

"Sorry, my lord."

Kimal slunk away. The sober mood spread through the others in a heartbeat. Jul climbed the steps to his own keep and went looking for Raia. He found her in her private chamber, doing the accounts for all the Bekan clan keeps, a time-consuming job that fell to the wife of the elder. It never improved her mood.

"Where have you been?" she demanded. "Forze called. He wants to talk to you. And you missed the meal. Is this what it's going to be like now you're back from the front? Wandering around wasting your time?"

"I went to see Kaidon 'Mdama. He's going to support the Arbiter." Jul waited for an acid comment but none came. "Did Forze say what he wanted?"

"He said that old man Relon's going to blow up the holy spire. Seeing as the gods are dead, he didn't think they'd mind him plowing the land to grow tubers."

Jul found it odd to hear her talking so disrespectfully about the Forerunners. She'd always been the devout one in the marriage. Perhaps, like others, she was punishing the gods for letting liars and parasites deceive them and exploit them for so long.

"Aren't you offended by that?" he asked.

Raia considered the question, eyes fixed on the accounts folio, all her jaws clenched.

"It'll ruin a pretty view," she said at last.

Jul decided to leave well alone and went to find some leftovers in the kitchens, braving the disapproving snaps and hisses of the older wives who were trying to clean up before the next meal. Raia was right. He was in danger of looking for something to fill his time, just like every other Sangheili warrior who suddenly had no war to fight.

How do I wake my people? How do I galvanize them? The war isn't over.

He grabbed a couple of slices of roast meat on the way out, stopped to take an arum from one of the children in the courtyard, and went off to seek some clarity in the quiet at the top of the old watchtower. From the battlements, he could see right across the valley on a clear day. He lost himself in the arum for a while, utterly absorbed in trying every permutation of movement until a distant explosion jerked him out of the puzzle.

He stood up just as a second rumbling boom carried on the afternoon air, leaning on the edge of the stonework to look north. Smoke was rising into the air farther up the valley. When it cleared, Jul realized that the sacred spire was gone.

Relon had been as good as his word. Jul suspected it was another expression of the sense of betrayal, blaming the gods for three millennia of deceit. Gods, after all, should have been able to step in and bring the San'Shyuum to heel. They didn't: so they were either neglectful gods not worth worshiping, or they didn't exist at all. It was sobering to be alone in the universe.

Raia didn't pass comment on it at supper. Jul wondered whether to point it out to her but decided against it. He suspected there would be a rash of this destruction and then the novelty would wear off, and everyone would get on with their lives.

After breakfast the next morning, he went to the armory to see what personal resources he had left. It was all small arms. He couldn't seize a ship, not even if he added Forze's armaments and brothers to the raiding party. He would need to assemble a small army to commandeer a frigate from a crew loyal to the Arbiter, and assassinations-perfectly legal challenges to authority, an orderly and honorable way to resolve disputes-required personal weapons. Anything beyond that was dishonorable. It was also designed to stop feuds escalating into civil war.

So how do I find like-minded Sangheili? How do these old laws apply to the situation we find ourselves in now?

He was wondering whether to enlist his keep brothers in the plot when the ground beneath him shook a little. Then he heard three muffled whumps more like artillery fire than tree clearance. But the Forerunner spire had already been destroyed; what was Relon doing, pulverizing the rubble? There were quieter ways to do that. Annoyed at the thoughtlessness of his neighbor, Jul stormed outside and activated his comms to call Relon's keep. The channel was dead. The old fool. He'd have to drive over to the keep and ask him to stop this nonsense.

Jul called Gusay to bring the Revenant. "Gusay, where are you?" Jul was in the outer courtyard now, wondering why he could hear the familiar sound of a Spirit dropship in the distance. "Gusay, I need to pay a visit to Relon."

The comm channel was silent for a moment.

"My lord, Relon's keep is on fire. It's been attacked."

For an insane moment, Jul's first thought was that the gods had finally chosen to make an appearance. The destruction of the spire had enraged them. No. That's superstition to keep you in your place. You know that now. He was about to reply when the sound of the Spirit's drives grew a lot louder and the dropship suddenly roared over the keep, heading south. By the time Jul got outside, the Spirit had dwindled to a speck in the distance and a pall of smoke hung in the sky. Relon's keep had probably been burning for some time, judging by the density and spread. The Revenant whined to a halt at the end of the path and Gusay beckoned him from the open cockpit, looking agitated.

Raia shouted after them from an open window. "What's happening? Is it Jiralhanae? Humans? How did they get past our defenses?"

"It's Sangheili, my lady," Gusay called back. "It's our own."

Jul sprang into the passenger section. "What do you mean, our own?"

"The keep's been hit by plasma cannon."

"Impossible."

"Why? Who would do that?"

"No idea, my lord."

Jul tried to make sense of it as Gusay steered along the line of the highway between the keeps. Other keeps in the area had already responded to the explosions. The Revenant joined a small fleet of vessels and vehicles trying to get close to the burning buildings, and the kaidon's transports seemed to be everywhere. Nobody could accuse Levu 'Mdama of not coming to the aid of his client keeps.

Jul stared as Gusay brought the Revenant to a halt. The main keep was just a stump of rubble shrouded in smoke. He knew only too well what a plasma cannon strike looked like. He jumped down from the vehicle and went to walk through the gates, wondering why all the activity seemed to be in the courtyard and not the keep itself. The fire was cracking and hissing, but he could hear no roars of anger or panic. It was only when he turned a corner, gulping in a lungful of acrid smoke as the heat hit his face, that he understood why there was such silence.

He didn't take in the group of warriors, wives, and children clustered in the yard. He saw only what they were staring at. A scaffold of sorts had been made from a joist that jutted from the wall, and from it hung two objects that Jul took a few moments to recognize.

It was Relon and his brother, Jalam, both very old warriors, and both dead. Beneath their dangling bodies-what was left of them-were pools and splashes of purple blood. They were so mutilated that it was hard even for a shipmaster like Jul, used to combat and the ugly scenes it left in its wake, to work out exactly what he was looking at, but he couldn't drag his eyes from the horror even though he was desperate to look away. It took him some moments to realize Levu 'Mdama was standing next to him, staring in silence too.

A handwritten board hung from cords around Relon's neck made the situation very clear. The script was stylized and ancient, more like the scrolls of the priests from before the time of the war with the San'Shyuum. But Jul could read it easily enough.

We do not allow blasphemers to live The gods demand a return to piety Truth abides "I thought they were all talk," Levu said quietly. "It seems that they've woken up again. They were everywhere when I was a boy."

"Who?" Jul couldn't work out why nobody was ushering the family away from the terrible scene. "How did they manage to do this in a keep? What are they?"

"The Neru Pe 'Odosima," Levu said. It was an ancient name in a form of Sangheili that was no longer spoken. "Fanatics. Fools."

Jul recalled the name. "The Servants of the Abiding Truth? But they were monks."

"Well, we let them became warriors, and now they're dangerous, savage fools. And they seem to have stockpiled arms." The kaidon gestured to his aide to do something about the bodies. "Thun? Thun! Get those bodies down from there. Cover them. It's not decent."

Jul looked away from the slaughter and that brief lapse of attention let a stray thought cross his mind. He wished it hadn't, because the sane, responsible elder in him said this was all utterly wrong, cowardly-dishonorable. These were just old warriors who'd served Sanghelios and the gods all their lives. But the thought wouldn't go away.

And there was no better idea to take its place.

If these Neru Pe 'Odosima would butcher venerable old men for blowing up a meaningless ruin, they would surely take on the Arbiter for turning all Sangheili from the gods.

Abiding Truth was an existing network that Jul could draw on. Its followers were clearly willing to break every moral convention on disputes. Jul just had to work out how to organize and discipline them, and then he could bypass the kaidon and anyone else to bring down the Arbiter-and unite Sanghelios against the real threat that would inevitably return.

He would have to do deals with monsters for the greater good. The rules of war had changed.

CHAPTER.

FOUR.

WHY DO WE BOTHER TO FORCE UNHAPPY COLONY WORLDS TO STAY IN THE UN FOLD? BECAUSE UNSC BUDGETS AND UNSC HEAVY LIFT ENABLED THOSE COLONIES TO EXIST. BECAUSE THE UNSC NEEDS AS MANY SUPPLY BASES IN DEEP SPACE AS IT CAN GET. AND BECAUSE THEY'RE HUMAN-THEY'RE US. IN A GALAXY OF HOSTILE ALIENS, YOU'RE EITHER FOR US, OR YOU'RE THE ENEMY.

(ADMIRAL MARGARET O. PARANGOSKY, CINCONI, TO CAPTAIN SERIN OSMAN).

FORERUNNER DYSON SPHERE, ONYX, FOUR HOURS INTO RECONNAISSANCE PATROL: LOCAL DATE NOVEMBER 2552.

The passage ahead of Lucy wasn't the tunnel it first appeared to be.

It could have changed shape in the second that she'd looked away, or maybe her helmet optics were on the fritz, but the opening was at least six meters high, a black, featureless maw that didn't appear to have interior walls.