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Sharibor stood there, looking as wretched as Jekri had ever seen her. "Permission to enter?"

Nodding, Jekri stood aside and let her pass. Shari-bor's gaze fell briefly on the still smoking lamp, but she said nothing. Jekri wondered if she suspected anything. More likely, Sharibor was surprised to find her icy commander in possession of something as romantically old-fashioned as an oil lamp.

"I assume you have deciphered the encryption?"

Mute, Sharibor nodded and handed her commander a personal data pad.

Jekri inhaled swiftly, the calm she had briefly grasped from the fire meditation fleeing. She had been right. Lhiau had been the author of the message, and he had issued it from the royal palace, with the full knowledge and blessings of the bewitched Empress. It was to the highest levels of the military and, she saw to her horror, to her own people.

Quickly, she read. The glory and final triumph of the Romulan Empire is in jeopardy. Even as we are positioning our warbirds along the Neutral Zone, preparing for the surprise onslaught of a slow-witted Federation, there is a traitor in our midst. We do not wish to startle the populace, so the instructions

that follow are highly classified. The chairman of the Tal Shiar, Jekri Kaleh-

Sharibor moved in utter silence, strange for one normally so clumsy. There was no revealing scrape of boot on floor, no shadow falling over Jekri to alert her. But her senses were already finely honed, and die meditation she had just completed had left her subconscious alert.

Jekri whirled, knocking the disruptor out of Shari-bor's hand with a swift kick. Quick as a snake, faster than Jekri had ever seen the large woman move, Sharibor lunged forward with a kaleh that must have been hidden behind her back. It was already in her right hand, arcing toward her belly in a professional underhand stroke by the time Jekri's foot hit the ground from her kick. She sprang back and fancied she could hear a whizzing sound as the knife barely passed her abdomen.

Jekri rushed her attacker as Sharibor stabbed at her again. She seized Sharibor's right hand and bent the wrist up sharply. Jekri slammed her right hand into the inside of Sharibor's wrist. The pain would be agonizing, but Sharibor uttered no sound, not even a wordless hiss. Still, the knife fell from her grasp.

Using her momentum, Jekri slammed her small body into Sharibor's large, muscular one, pinning the larger woman against the bulkhead. Before Sharibor could recover, Jekri had stepped under Sharibor's right arm, which she still clutched, whirled the assassin around and yanked her arm up behind her back.

What she did next startled her. Her left hand came

up, as if it had a will of its own, and clamped down on the side of Sharibor's neck. Fingers placed themselves in proper alignment and she squeezed. Silently, Jekri's would-be assassin dropped to the floor unconscious.

Shaking and breathing heavily, Jekri stared. She had not had the faintest inkling that Sharibor was a plant. The woman had served Jekri with apparent loyalty for many years. She had perfectly played her role of bulky, gawky intellectual, deflecting any suspicion as easily as she might a victim's attack. But she had been well trained-trained the way Jekri herself had been trained. Trained as a professional assassin, a member of the Family of the Blade, planted deeply, awaiting an order that might come any day, or might never come at all.

Veruul! She cried silently. How could you not have seen it? The answer came swiftly: for the same reason Jekri's own victims, years ago, had never seen it in her. Oh, Sharibor was good, very good, there was no doubt about it And yet Jekri was the one still standing, though her knees felt weak. She had triumphed.

Part of her victory was her own training and instincts, but she could not deny how significant a role her Vulcan meditations and exercises had played in her being able to escape with her life. She had foolishly