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She smiled faintly at him. "We have been alone in this room for hours, Verrak. You have had ample chances to murder your chairman. That you did not take them shows that I may trust you."

She hurt him with the words and she knew it, but they were true. His lack of action, not his apparent love for her, was what she trusted. Love could be faked. She knew-she'd done it herself before. Missing a good chance to kill for money and career advancement could not.

"With this order, I have become a glorious target. I am safe nowhere. Such an extravagant decree speaks of someone who does not respect the secrecy of the Family of the Blade. Any high-ranking Romulan would send out one or two assassins, not this overblown order that would send any greedy would-be killer after the chairman of the Tal Shiar. This is all Lhiau's doing."

"But Lhiau could not issue such a decree without

the overt or at least tacit approval of either the Praetor or the Empress."

Jekri nodded. She had already determined that. He would not have had access to the technology required without clearance. Her mind went back to the tense, unpleasant gathering of several weeks ago. The Empress had been a flighty, twittery girl, not the magnificent ruler she had always been. She had yielded utterly to Lhiau. She had approved the madness of an attack on the Federation without the support of Voyager. She had permitted her chairman of the Tal Shiar-her chairman, not Lhiau's-to be publicly humiliated.

This was not the behavior of a woman whose mind was her own. Jekri knew that Lhiau could penetrate her mind, could read thoughts. Could he also place them? Was he mentally manipulating the Empress into dancing to the tune he piped?

"What will you do?" Verrak asked.

So, what is next?

That is entirely up to you. Little Dagger.

There was only one thing she could do, one course of action she could pursue. She had to clear her name, or else the rest of her life-which would doubtless be brief, as Jekri had every respect for the skills of the Family of the Blade-would be spent looking over her shoulder.

She alone seemed to recognize the threat Lhiau posed to her people, although as yet she did not know the true nature of that threat. But no one would listen to her now, not while she wore the stigma of traitor.

There was only one thing to do. She would clear her name.

It was, as many things are, easier said than done, and before she could even begin to set so complex a plan in motion, Jekri needed to deal with more immediate problems.

Verrak forged a message that requested Sharibor's immediate presence back on Romulus, due to a family emergency. He also beamed the body out into space as disparate particles and erased the transport from the computer's automatic log. Jekri arranged for the Krel family to quietly disappear. She did not issue an order to kill Sharibor's husband and two sons. They would get what information they could first. She knew it was likely that Sharibor's family would die innocent of any wrongdoing. The Family of the Blade fooled nearly everyone, including close family members, but Jekri was not about to let the opportunity slip through her fingers.

Next, she assigned four of her most trustworthy agents to follow the Empress, the Praetor, the Proconsul, and Lhiau. These were considered high-risk assignments, and her agents were compensated accordingly. She had not wanted to employ them yet, as she knew that they would in all likelihood be discovered unless they were very good, very careful and, most important, very lucky, but the death order from Lhiau had forced her hand.

For the next day or two, she behaved normally, though her senses were heightened and she seemed to see assassins in every shadow. There was no further attempt on her life, which, oddly, did nothing to reassure her.

One thing had been worrying her: her conversation with Sharibor about the encrypted message. There had been thirty-five people on duty in that section at that time, and no one had seemed