"Don't make a sound," whispered a harsh voice, unnecessarily.

Kamil was so exceptionally shocked by the sudden attack that she couldn't scream, couldn't even whimper. Her mind was bewildered. Her body limp, unresisting. All was over in those first few seconds, and by that time her arms were pinned, her captor had a tight hold on her.

A young woman appeared from around one of the bisecting garden paths, came to stand in front of Kamil. She recognized the woman-a fellow student.

Kamil went limp with relief. This must be some sort of prank. Then she stiffened with anger. If so, it wasn't funny! She didn't know the young woman very well; she'd only seen her around campus. She stood out among the other students, not only because of her height and unusually strong physical development for a human female, but because of her haughty pride and standoffish attitude. She kept to herself, viewed everyone else on campus with contempt.

She dressed in leather armor, which looked rather ridiculous for campus wear. Her head was shaved, except for the scalplock that was traditional among females of her planet, Ceres, the same planet that Dion's wife . . .

Astarte ... Ceres ... DiLuna ...

Baroness DiLuna and her women warriors . . .

Kamil understood. She had only to glance down at the long nails, digging into her arms to know that the person holding her captive was also a woman. And this was no joke. Kamil began to choke, tried to catch her breath. But the gag constricted her breathing.

"Loosen it, Phileda," ordered the woman holding Kamil. "We don't want her to die on us. Not yet."

Phileda-who had been eyeing Kamil warily-reached out and jerked the gag loose, enough to permit Kamil to breath.

"You are Maigrey Kamil Olefsky?" asked the woman holding her.

Kamil didn't respond.

Phileda answered, "She is, Portia. I recognize her. Maigrey Kamil Olefsky, we have received an order for your execution on the charge of adultery." The woman drew a long-bladed knife; sharp-edged steel flashed in the sunlight.

"First, however," said Portia, her voice grating in Kamil's ear, "we have been told that you received, this day, a message from the king. We have orders to intercept it. It is not in your room-we searched. Where is it?"

Kamil stared at the woman, unable to believe any of this was happening. She shook her head. "I don't know-"

"Search her," ordered Portia, holding on to Kamil more tightly.

Phileda reached a hand toward Kamil.

Stunned and confused, with only a muddled idea of what was happening to her, Kamil might well have died without making a sound. But the hand reaching for the letter acted like an electric shock, jolted her to action.

They must not have the letter! It doesn't matter what they do to me. Dion's crown, his honor, perhaps his very life are in my keeping. ...

Kamil Olefsky had been raised with fourteen brothers. Most of them were older than she was, larger, stronger, of a boisterous, fun-loving nature. She'd learned at an early age how to fight against overwhelming odds. Add to this the fact that she herself came from a warrior planet. She'd been trained in hand-to-hand combat since she was first able to pick up her mother's heavy war shield.

Using the woman holding her as a brace, Kamil lilted both feet and kicked out violently at the woman coming toward her. Her feet slammed into the solar plexus. Phileda groaned, bent double.

Kamil's feet hit the ground. She jerked her upper body forward, rolling her captor over her shoulder, throwing Portia into her compatriot, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

Kamil was off running. Fumbling in her pocket, she grabbed hold of the letter, held it clasped tightly in her hand, looking for a likely place to hide it.

The garden paths twisted and wound and turned around on each other. She came upon a diverging path. A few steps and she would be out of sight of the women, who had already regained their feet, were coming after her. This would be her only chance. She'd caught them off guard once. It wouldn't happen again.

A strange whirring sound came from behind her. Kamil hadn't time to wonder what it was. She started to race around the path. This direction would take her close to the garden wall. She could jump it and- A leather thong whipped around her legs and ankles, tripping her, sent her crashing headlong to the ground. She squirmed to a sitting position, tried frantically to free herself. The thong, weighted by two ornately carved ivory balls, was far too tangled and tight.

The letter. No matter what happens to you. Hide the letter.

Kamil tried to shove it into the roots of a rosebush, ignoring the sharp thorns that tore long scratches in her flesh. And then the two women were on her.

One kicked her in the face, sent her reeling backward. The other stomped a booted foot down on Kamil's wrist.

Bone crunched. Pain shot through her arm. Kamil's fingers, clasping the letter, went limp.

"Finish her," Portia ordered, reaching for the letter.

Phileda loomed over Kamil. The knife flashed.

Involuntarily, Kamil turned her head away. She had time to whisper brokenly, "Dion, I-"

Two bursts of light, coming in rapid succession, exploded above her, blinding her. Heat washed over her body. She smelled burned flesh, heard soft thuds, a crash in one of the rosebushes.

She couldn't see, had no idea what has happening. Fearfully, she waited for the stab of the knife.

It didn't come.

Heavy footsteps crunched through the gravel, moving toward her.

Kamil blinked, trying to clear the red burst of the blazing light from her eyes. She started to push herself up to a sitting position, but pain flashed through her right arm. She collapsed.

Someone picked her up, using steel hands, apparently. She felt the cool touch of metal on her skin.

"Take it easy, sister," said a deep voice that had a faint mechanical sound to it. "Your arm's broken. Don't move it."

Kamil heard other sounds, other footsteps. But these were light, silken sounds, as of slippered feet walking with a delicate tread. The footsteps circled around her, paused.

"They're both dead," said a woman's voice, as cool as the steel fingers of the cyborg.

Kamil stared upward. Images were beginning to emerge from a fire-tinged blue haze.

"Of course they're dead," said the man. "You're not paying me to miss, Your Majesty."

Your Majesty . ..

Kamil leaned weakly back against the metal arm. Pain and shock left her without the ability to think. She couldn't understand what was happening, couldn't react to it.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

The woman knelt down. She was heavily veiled, wearing a chador-the long, flowing, body-enveloping garment of the deserts. The woman removed the veil from her face, let it fall.

Queen Astarte. Queen of the galaxy. Dion's wife.

"I am sorry that they hurt you," said Astarte gravely. "They moved much faster than I had anticipated they would."

Her gaze shifted from Kamil to the letter, still clasped in the useless hand. Blood oozed from the scratches made by the rosebush. Kamil saw the eyes shift, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Astarte reached out with slender fingers, plucked the letter from Kamil's limp grip. Traces of blood stained the crumpled paper It was smudged with dirt from the attempt to bury it beneath the bash.

"We shouldn't hang around here long, Your Majesty," advised the cyborg. "We re lucky no one's spotted us before now. I'll put a field dressing on her arm. And I've got a drug here that'll perk up her a bit. At least so she can make it to the spaceplane."

"The drug won't harm her . . ."

"No, it's one of Raoul's concoctions."

"Very well." Astarte unfolded the letter.

"Don't . . . please . . ." Kamil made a feeble protest.

Astarte glanced at her, turned her attention to the letter. Kamil watched the purple eyes-beautiful eyes, she thought dreamily, through a haze of pain-track the writing, read every word, including the postscript.

It wasn't signed, but then, a wife would know her husband's handwriting.

A needle jabbed into the skin of Kamil's upper arm; a sensation of warmth flooded through the muscle, into her body. Pain began to ease away: the pain of her broken arm. The pain in her heart intensified. She was watching, with a dreadful kind of fascination, Astarte's face.

The queen was obviously skilled in keeping her emotions hidden beneath that suave and lovely mask. But for an instant, just an instant, the mask slid away, dropping like the veil. Hurt and betrayal, stark and terrible and cruel. It is one thing to suspect, another to hold the evidence in your hand.

Kamil's eyes filled with tears, not from the pain of her injury, which she could no longer feel, but from shame, guilt. The break in her arm would heal. This wound that she herself had inflicted on another mortal would never heal. No matter what happened, the pain would always be there.

"Sorry, sister," said the cyborg, mistaking her tears. "I don't have time to be gentle."

He was dressing her arm, wrapping it in a plastic sling that inflated at a touch. The sling was filled with cooling liquid that both stabilized the break and acted to reduce the swelling.

Kamil looked up at Astarte, wanted to say something, to offer some sort of explanation, but the words wouldn't come for the tears.

Astarte folded the letter carefully, tucked it inside the capacious folds of the chador. Her features were once again masklike.

"It was imprudent of him to write this. Imprudent of you to keep it. If my mother had gotten hold of it . . ." Astarte shook her head. "I could not have saved you, either of you. You would have both been lost."

She gathered the silken sweep of the chador around her, rose gracefully, stared down at her from what seemed to Kamil's drugged senses to be a great height.

"Is she almost ready to travel?"

"Yeah." The cyborg grunted.

"Travel?" Kamil repeated dazedly. "Where . . ."

"The one place you will be safe," said Astarte. "The one place where my mother dares not touch you."

The cyborg helped Kamil to her feet. She would have said she was too weak to stand, but once she was up and moving, she was amazed at how much better she felt.

"What about the bodies?" Astarte asked coolly.

Kamil looked down at her two attackers. Both lay dead. The flesh of their faces had been melted away, leaving charred bone, covered with blood and brains, exposed. A wave of dizziness swept over Kamil. She swayed on her feet.

"No, you don't, sister," said the cyborg, catching hold of her, shaking her. "I'll dispose of the corpses, Your Majesty. You take her away from here. Put those clothes we brought on her."

The cyborg was also dressed in the concealing robes of the desert dwellers, a kafia covering his head.

Astarte put an arm around Kamil, led her away from the gruesome remains lying in the rose garden. The queen was shorter than Kamil, barely reached her shoulder. But Astarte's grip on her was firm, her footsteps unfaltering. Kamil staggered like a drunken spacer, would have fallen if the queen had not supported her.

The two reached the garden wall. Kamil leaned weakly against the stonework. The queen pulled out a pack that had been stashed behind the wall. Rummaging inside it, she produced another chador and draped it over Kamil's unresisting body.

It was much like dressing a child. Kamil thrust her arm into the sleeve when Astarte told her to, obeyed the woman's commands without thought. Kamil couldn't think. The sight of the bodies had badly unnerved her; not even the stimulant could alleviate the effect.

It might have been her lying dead.

The chador's tight-fitting wristband wouldn't go over the battlefield sling. Astarte took hold of the fabric, ripped it at the seam, slid it up and over the arm.

Another bright flare of light came from the garden; a sizzling and popping sound, and a strong smell of burning flesh.

Both women stared at each other. Astarte's skin was pale; she caught her breath. Kamil dug her hand into the sharp stones of the wall to keep from fainting.

The cyborg returned, thrusting a lasgun inside the sleeve of his flowing robes.

Astarte lifted a veil and wrapped it around Kamil's nose and mouth. "Keep your face covered. If you have any thoughts of trying to escape, put them out of your mind. Remember, I have the letter. You hold Dion's fate in your hands. You can save him-"

"-by coming with you?" Kamil shook her head. She had regained her wits somewhat. She thought she understood. "You're planning to use me . . . some sort of plot to ... to blackmail him. Force him to do what you want. I won't let you. Kill me . . . the way you did them."

Astarte regarded her without emotion. "Your death will accomplish nothing. He would be yours for all eternity then. Believe me, Daughter of Olefsky, I do not want to hurt my husband." The purple eyes shimmered above the veil. "I only want him back."

"Time to go, Your Majesty," said the cyborg grimly.

The three left the rose garden. Behind them, two thin spirals of smoke and a few ashes drifted up from the path, were caught by the wind and blown away.

When the headmaster woke, refreshed, from his nap and came out to walk in his garden, he would find nothing amiss except two charred patches on the ground where it appeared someone had been burning leaves.

Her face hidden by the veil, Kamil was hustled swiftly through the Academy grounds. She said nothing, made no attempt to escape-a futile move anyway, considering the cyborg held her in a grip of steel. No one paid any attention to the three. Many of the students and faculty came from arid planets, wore the traditional garments of their people.

Arriving at the spaceport, she was taken aboard a private spaceplane. The plane lifted off, was soon in the endless night of space.

Once they had made the Jump, the cyborg gave her another injection. This one, he warned, would knock her out.

"I'm going to set that broken bone, sister. I assume you don't want to be awake for the operation."

"No," said Kamil confusedly, "I don't want to be awake."

Darkness slid over her. The last thing she saw, before she lost consciousness, was Astarte's beautiful, expressionless face.

Chapter Nine.