Between the two of them, they had the animals saddled with some rather worn equipment in short order. "I'll want a couple of bedrolls as well."

"Very good, dom. We have many of those." Without being told more, the man brought out two neatly tied bundles with nothing about them to suggest either wealth or station. Clearly the groom understood that Herm was on some sort of clandestine errand, and he could tell that the man was rather enjoying the whole event.

As soon as they were attached behind the saddles, Herm mounted the gelding, took the reins of the ugly mare in one hand, and asked, "What are their names?"

"The mare is called Fortune, and your gelding is Aldar, because he comes from up in the Hellers." What a tale this is going to be.

Herm caught the thought and frowned. "Not a word of this to anyone, you understand. You never saw me."

"Oh. Saw who?" There was disappointment in the groom's voice, and the hint of uneasiness in his mind. Herm knew he was weighing the value of a juicy bit of gossip against a direct order, and then wondering how he was going to explain to the stable master about the disappearance of two animals which were his responsibility.

"Speak with Danilo Syrtis-Ardais if you have any questions, and he will tell you everything you need to know."

"Very well, Dom." Catch me bothering Dom Syrtis-Ardais! I thank not!

Herm rode out of the stableyard, and hoped that the groom was trustworthy and loyal. The worry of it brought back Katherine's stinging accusations, and he felt quietly miserable as he rode through the now silent streets of Thendara, heading for the North Gate. The groom had not exaggerated the poorness of the gelding's gait. It was dreadful. It almost spoiled the pleasure Herm had in being on horseback again, until he adjusted his body to conform to it a little. The mare trotted along behind him, the sound of hooves on the cobblestones echoing between the buildings.

It took him less than an hour to reach his goal, but even in that short a time his thighs were protesting this unexpected exercise, and he was ready to regret his impulse. It was not cold, he knew, for the time of year, but after two decades in the heated confines of Federation buildings, he felt like he might freeze to death. The breath of the horses barely misted the air, and he told himself he would readjust soon.

He looked around. There were two fields, one on either side of the road. He saw the brightly painted wagons of the Travelers in one, and some food vendors and muleteers in the other. Several fire pits were blazing, and he saw a number of figures standing around them. There was a sense of quiet about the scene. Someone was telling a story to a fascinated audience beside one fire, and a deep voice carried through the stillness.

Finally he spotted a small figure sitting beside one fire, cloaked and hooded. There were a couple of old men sitting across from him, on stones that had been there for ages, arguing about some small matter, but they paid no attention to him. Herm dismounted and led the horses over.

"Well, nephew," he began quietly, "I see you got here before me. I was delayed in the city."

The head beneath the hood moved at the sound of his voice, stilled, and then lifted. "I was starting to think you had forgotten me, Uncle."

"I would never do that. I hope you were not bored, waiting."

"Oh, no. I just watched the performances, and got something to eat."

Herm! You are not who I expected!

I know. Now, we are going to be pretending to be quite ordinary people, on our way to a wedding in the hills.

We? Does that mean you aren't going to send me back?

Not immediately, Nico. I promised your father I would keep you safe-he was not very pleased with you. Now, I want you to be called Tomas, and I will be Ian MacAnndra. It occurred to him then that there was something he had missed earlier, during the discussion in the study. Herm wondered why Danilo and Lew wanted Domenic away from Comyn Castle. Then he decided they probably had good reasons and stopped worrying about it.

I understand. That's a good choice-there are hundreds of MacAnndras in the hills. I've been keeping an eye on the wagons while I waited, and nothing has happened so far. What are we going to do?

We are going to remain here until morning-there's a bedroll for you-and then we are going to decide our next move. Tell me everything you have learned thus far, Nico.

Tomas! Not Nico. You might forget and say the wrong name-Uncle Ian!

Damn, but the boy was quick! Herm sat down next to the young man and stretched his hands toward the fire. Then he listened intently to the voice in his mind. The tale unwound clearly, beginning with how the Travelers' wagon had passed Comyn Castle that morning and ending with what the boy had heard later. Domenic seemed to have a good memory and an eye for detail. As he went over his story, Herm could sense that Nico was starting to relax, and even enjoying himself a bit. He asked a few questions, and discovered that Nico had never seen the men's faces, but thought he could identify them anyhow.

At last they stood up together and got the bedrolls from the horses, spread them out beside the fire, and prepared to sleep. Herm discovered he was very tired, and that his legs ached from riding, but he was excited as well. The pleasant smells of woodsmoke and horse dung, cold air and a light breeze, refreshed him. He ignored the rocks under his bedding and thought about Katherine and the children. His spirits started to plummet, but before he could pitch himself into despair, he heard the boy again. I think something as happening over near the Travelers.

What?

There as some sort of argument between the one called Vancof and another driver. They both seem a bit drunk, and their thoughts are not very clear. But it seems as if Vancof as picking a fight on purpose. There as an undertone in his mind-he's afraid. No, he's drunk and torn up aside. He wants to get away from here, but he thinks he has to stay at the same time. It is all muddled up with remorse and firewine.

A moment later loud voices erupted in the other field. There were shouts from within the wagons to be quiet, and the noise of wooden doors being opened and closed. Everyone who was awake looked over with interest. A few of the muleteers began to wander across the road, abandoning the storyteller at the fire pit in favor of more lively entertainment.

Herm sat up and looked, and Domenic as well. Two shadowed figures were struggling in front of one wagon, fists flying and mostly missing the mark. Then several other people got out of the wagons and joined in the fray, trying to separate the combatants.

The fight was over quickly, though the loud voices continued. One man swore at everyone, and shuffled away. He vanished into a wain, and reemerged a few minutes later with a rather clumsy bundle. He started to trudge away from the encampment, and a woman screamed at him. He turned and shouted back at her.

That's the man, uncle that's Vancof I don't know who the harridan screaming at him is. It's not the girl I saw earlier, but someone else. I never heard a woman, even Mother, say such things!

You have led a very sheltered life, Tomas. Never be surprised at what a woman can think of to say when she is angry. Can you sense anything more from him?

Not much. He really is pretty drunk. He just wants to get as far away as he can. But I can't tell if he wants to get away from the Travelers or from the men he talked to before. He just seems disgusted with everything.

We can't follow him without drawing attention to ourselves.

He is too drunk to get very far, I think, Uncle Ian. Sometimes Uncle Rafael gets like this, after he has had a row with Aunt Gisela. He drinks himself into a stupor, and falls asleep. Vancof seems to be in a similar state.

Good. Then let's get some sleep. Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day.

12.

Lyle Belfontaine stared at the stack of sheets on his desk. They were the messages he had sent during the past two days, and all of them had been returned without any reply. This was something that had never happened before, and it left him with a knot in his belly and a raging headache. It was as if the Federation had vanished from the galaxy, leaving him stranded on Cottman IV. He had not felt so helpless since his father had dismissed him over thirty years before. And he had not felt so frustrated since just before the disastrous events on Lein III, when he had tried to overthrow a planetary government against all the rules of the Federation. It gave him an anxious feeling, a roughening of the skin at the back of his neck, an almost prescient sense that he might revisit those events, and this time make them work out to his advantage. Strange-this planet must really be getting under his skin, if he was starting to think like the superstitious natives who believed in such nonsense.

Miles Granfell walked into the office without announcement, his face sober, but his eyes gleaming with surpressed emotion. His boots were soiled, as if he had been walking on dirt, and his usually tidy hair was wind-tossed. Without a word, he took the chair on the other side of the desk and stretched his long legs forward.

"What is it?" Lyle growled the words, glaring at the stack of returned messages, aggrieved and almost eager to take it out on his underling. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, 'walking to and fro upon the earth.' "

Belfontaine recognized this as some sort of quotation. The last thing he wanted to do was play literature with Granfell, but he decided he had to be patient. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Granfell grinned and crossed his ankles. "I have some good news. Regis Hastur is dead."

Belfontaine found himself angry at the man's words rather than pleased. Surely he should have known about this before his subordinate! With an effort, he mastered his emotions and asked only, "Are you sure?"

"Vancof is, which will have to do for now."

"I see. Well, that is news indeed," he conceded with as much grace as he could muster. When he did not say anything further, the other man shifted in the chair, as if trying to gauge Lyle's mood.

After a minute of silence, Granfell asked, "What's all that clutter? I've never seen so much paper on your desk in all the years you have been here."

Lyle eyed the other man with thinly masked dislike. Granfell's tone bordered on insolence. Then he dismissed his feelings-it was just Miles' way, after all. "It is every message I have sent out in the past thirty-six hours. Regional Headquarters seems to have . . . vanished."

Granfell came to attention abruptly. "Is there some problem with the relay station?"

"I don't know. Our transmitter appears to be functioning perfectly, but whatever I send out just bounces." He did not need to add that the transmitter for Cottman IV was ancient by Federation standards, that all the equipment at Headquarters had been there for ten or even twenty years without replacement. Fortunately, most of it still worked, but recently they had had to scavenge parts from some mechanisms to keep others going-all because of the austerity measures that had spread across the Federation.

"This is serious, Lyle."

"I am well aware of that," he answered as icily as he could. "It makes your concerns that we might be abandoned here take on a whole new dimension."

"Precisely. And I think we should . . ." Miles' voice faltered, and he looked around the office slowly. "It makes planning anything very difficult," he said at last.

Belfontaine looked at him dumbly for a moment, until he realized that Granfell had something he wanted to say that he did not want to have heard or recorded. Even the chance that they were going to be stuck on Cottman instead of removed did not relieve him of the fear of being suspected of working against the Federation. There were automatic devices in the walls of the room which heard everything, and he had no control over them, even though he was part of the Security Forces. If Lyle had been able to, he would have turned off the listeners long since. And just because the Federation was out of touch at present did not mean it would remain so. They had to proceed with caution.

"My head feels like I have been on a three-day drunk. Let's take a walk, and consider our options," he replied after a moment.

"The hangover without the pleasure of the booze, you mean?" The words were spoken casually as Granfell unfolded his long body from the chair, smiling without humor.

"Precisely."

Belfontaine picked his all-weather cloak off the hook beside the door. They walked out of the office together, down the corridor, and took the lift to the ground floor without speaking again. Then they exited the building, coming into a chilly night, the sky overcast as usual, and the wind brisk. They moved across the tarmac in silence, until they were well away from everything, and had some assurance of not being overheard.

"So Regis Hastur is dead. And I never even got to meet him."

"Yes. And if the Federation has left us behind, we have our own lives to think about. Vancof told me that Regis' heir is Mikhail Hastur, and we know even less about him than we did about Regis. What I do know is that they are going to take the body up to some place near Lake Hali, some religious site."

"Who is?"

"All of them, the entire Comyn Council, is my understanding, with their wives and children, and who knows how many else."

"You mean that the Castle is going to be . . ."

"I'm not sure if it will be empty, but I suspect that it would be comparatively easy pickings. But that is just a building. The real power here is in the Domains." After stating this obvious fact, Miles paused for several seconds, as if experiencing difficulty in continuing.

Belfontaine waited as patiently as he could, sensing the tension in his subordinate. "And?"

"What I think you should do is . . . arrange for this funeral train to be attacked along the road somewhere." The words came in a rush, as if Granfell wanted to release them as fast as possible. When Belfontaine did not react, he went on. "I told Vancof to scout out a likely ambush site-which he did not like very much. But if a substantial part of the ruling class were removed, there would be no obstacle to Federation rule-assuming that there still is a Federation in a few weeks. I confess that this sudden silence makes me very uneasy. What do you think is going on out there?"

Belfontaine moved more quickly to keep the chill out of his bones. He thought about this sudden proposal, wary and suspicious. He did not like his underlings to have ideas of their own, and he was aware that such a plan was very dangerous. If it went awry, it was his head that was in the noose, not Granfell's.

There was something about this sudden proposal that rang alarm bells in Belfontaine's mind. What if Regis Hastur was still alive, and the entire thing was some plan to discredit him as Station Chief. It would not be the first time some ambitious subordinate had tried to further himself at the expense of his commander. He had never entirely trusted Granfell, had he? The whole thing seemed too good to be true, and Lyle had learned very early in life to mistrust anything he had not learned firsthand, for himself.

Still, he should be able to determine if, indeed, Hastur was dead. If he was, he knew why he had not been informed-Lew Alton was behind it, of course. It would be just like the man to keep him in the dark. He felt surrounded by enemies and incompetents, suspecting everyone, even the Planetary Administrator, Emmet Grayson, whom he had managed to neutralize effectively for the most part. The reorganization of the Federation bureaucracy had made it easy for Belfontaine to exclude Grayson from any real authority, but he still had a few loyal followers among the personnel at HQ. It seemed an unlikely prospect, but one which would bear considering when he was alone.

"I can only speculate about what is happening in Federation space, Miles. My best guess is that in order to keep things going they have simply closed down intersystem communication for the time being. That would keep any ambitious admirals or planetary governors from conspiring or causing trouble."

"You think they have isolated all the member worlds, then?"

"Those that might be disloyal, certainly."

"But why take us out of the loop?"

"A sound question, for which I have no answer. For all I know, some group has seized control of the relay station itself. The dissolution of the legislature may have triggered some crisis we cannot imagine-it was an ill-considered move, in my opinion. I have no doubt that Nagy's Expansionist advisors assumed that they could control the situation, but I have never had a great deal of respect for most of them."

"Politicians," Granfell sneered.

"Exactly." He weighed his next words carefully, wishing to seem neither too eager nor too reluctant. Granfell's reaction to them would tell him a great deal. "Do you seriously think this funeral train can be attacked successfully?"

"I think it worth a try, yes."

"I don't want a try, Miles. I can't risk violating Federation policy. It would have to appear as if it were a local action, not a Federation move."

"Yes, that's true. I thought that we might take advantage of our Aldaran friends in this." The wind gusted and the words were muffled.

"What precisely do you have in mind?" Aldaran friends? He meant Dom Damon, who was no friend to anyone but himself. All of Belfontaine's suspicions hardened-why bring Dom Damon into it? What was Granfell up to?

"If we fly some of the troops down from the Hellers, land them along the road, and attack the train . . ."

Lyle was shocked for a second as Granfell paused. This did not sound like a spur of the moment plan, but something that had been thought out far more completely. On the other hand, from the evidence of his boots, Miles had walked from wherever he had met Vancof, and perhaps he had used the time to think it through. He had never underestimated the intelligence of his subordinate before, and he was not going to begin now. "We have about a hundred useful men up there," he answered reasonably, as if he were thinking about it, when instead his mind was racing with fresh suspicions. "The funeral procession will be heavily guarded, won't it? The natives here may be backward, but they know how to fight." He waited to hear Granfell's reply, to measure it. The strange prickling he had had earlier on the back of his neck returned.

"Dress the men up in local clothing and pass them off as brigands. God knows there are enough of those up in the hills. And I am sure that a couple platoons of trained soldiers could take out these paltry guards without using blasters. We might mine the road or . . ."

"And if the Federation appears, and there is a Board of Inquiry, what then?"

"If you aren't ready to take the risk . . ."

"I did not say that, Miles. But we have to be extremely cautious. I just want to be certain that, whatever happens, nothing can be traced to us. The idea of using men from the Hellers complex is a good one, since we can blame Dom Damon if anything goes wrong. We all know that he thinks that he could run Cottman if he ever got the chance. He would make an excellent scapegoat, particularly if he were dead. But I don't want to move precipitously. It might be possible that this Mikhail Hastur would be more agreeable than his predecessor, and we could save ourselves a lot of potential trouble by trying to deal with him first."

"I thought you would jump at the chance to get Cottman into the hands of the Federation." Miles sounded disappointed, and a little angry, too.

Mine the road? Use blasters? Had Miles lost his mind? "There are too many random factors for my peace of mind." When he saw the expression on the face of the other man, the look of eagerness fading away, Belfontaine felt a certain smugness. Granfell had to learn who was in charge here. "Still, it is an excellent opportunity, and I agree we should not ignore it. Go ahead. Get Vancof to work on finding a good site for an ambush, and we will try to gather more information. I want definitive proof that Regis Hastur is dead. Vancof's word is not enough. And if I hear from Regional Headquarters tomorrow, we might have to scrap the whole idea."

Granfell grunted, then nodded. "I'll send Nailors out first thing in the morning."

"Why not go yourself?" The introduction of Miles' next in command disturbed him, for the more people who knew of the conspiracy, the greater was the danger of failure.

"Vancof hates my guts, and would do almost anything to annoy me. He was very reluctant when I suggested the idea a few hours ago-the man is a coward and a drunk. It is a pity we don't have a better agent in place, but he is the only one that is on the route the procession will take. And we don't have time to get another band of Travelers into position to spy for us."

"Can Nailors be trusted?"

Granfell did not answer immediately, and Belfontaine felt a sudden thrust of unease pierce his belly. "I believe he can be," the other man finally said.

The reply did not reassure Belfontaine, but instead caused the faint bud of unease in his mind to bloom into a full-fledged anxiety. Granfell was holding something back. He must be! What was it? He had a yearning to grab the taller man by the throat and throttle the truth out of him. For all he knew, the entire story was a fabrication, some plot to discredit him. Lyle chewed over this, hating the wind blowing against his back, the smell of woodsmoke drifting across from the city choking his throat. He looked at the decaying surface beneath his feet, the weeds that had pushed through the ancient concrete, breaking it, and held back a sudden sense of helplessness and fury.

The dilemma before him seemed hydralike. If Granfell was telling the truth, and Regis Hastur was dead, why had he not heard of it from other sources? True, Lew Alton had stonewalled him on certain matters in the past, but it seemed out of character for him not to have informed Headquarters. The man was just a bureaucrat, full of his own position and power, wasn't he? Was there some sort of struggle going on in Comyn Castle? Perhaps this unknown Mikhail Hastur did not trust Lew Alton-which would suit Belfontaine well enough. Alton was Regis' advisor, but was he also a confidant of this unknown man? He needed better information, and he could think of no way to get any immediately. If only that daughter of Damon Aldaran's had been as useful as her father had suggested she might be.

On the other hand, if Granfell were playing him false, then this whole thing might be a plot to discredit him and take his place. Belfontaine played that idea out quickly. With his personal history, it would not be difficult for Granfell to convince their superiors that he had been the instigator of an unauthorized attack on the planetary rulers of Cottman IV. That was assuming that the Federation had not abandoned them to the cold winds of Cottman forever.

Why was he suggesting using troops from the Aldaran Domain? Was Granfell in league with that old fool up in the Hellers? Miles had gone to the Hellers a few months before, ostensibly to evaluate the situation there. But what if the actual reason had been to see Dom Damon and involve him in Granfell's personal ambitions. If Belfontaine were removed, Miles was the logical person to step into his place as Station Chief.