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Elyas Caran was the emissary Daala had sent to Mon Calamari. She checked her chrono and did some quick math. It would be midmorning in the time zone where Admiral Niathal lived, so Caran would have been in the admiral’s company for half an hour or so. A live holocomm message from him did not bode well. “Is there some reason you can’t pipe the transmission into my chambers?”

“I don’t think you want it transmitted anywhere yet. I think you need to see it full-sized, in the comm center, before anyone outside your staff does. We need to be thinking about how to respond.” The faint hiss of comm transmission vanished as Dorvan ended the call.

Daala was up in an instant. This was not like Dorvan, and this was not good.

Dressed in tan sweat garments suited to a workout and a blue robe, Daala walked into the communications chamber where, a day earlier, she’d spoken with Niathal. The reception area was already showing the live transmission from Mon Calamari. Two steps in, she began to understand what she was seeing. Her pace slowed as she approached the wavering three-dimensional image.

Elyas Caran, a lean, graceful man dressed in pearl-gray and blue garments cut like a military dress uniform, had elegant features creased with middle-aged lines and a shock of jet-black hair that suggested he was a much younger man. Daala knew he dyed his hair; she didn’t know whether this was from vanity or a diplomatic urge to suggest vitality. Caran stood in the foreground of the transmission image.

The background was dominated by a water tank, three meters high, its floor-to-ceiling transparisteel surface curved. The water within was a beautiful green-blue.

In the center of the tank was Cha Niathal. She wore her admiral’s uniform. Her eyes were open and fixed. She was not entirely unmoving; little invisible eddies in the water stirred her uniform, caused her arms and legs to sway oh so slowly. The skin of Niathal’s face and hands was a curious color, more reddish than the previous day, and Daala wondered distractedly if the hypercomm’s color correction was set correctly.

Clearly, Niathal was dead. Daala felt a sudden ache, as though she’d swallowed a sharp rock and it had gotten lodged halfway down her throat.

Caran took a deep breath as if bracing himself for the bad news he was delivering. “It was done sometime this morning. When I arrived, her assistant came in to tell her I was present … and found her in this state.” He gestured up at the top of the tank, toward something the holocam did not include in its image. “She apparently ran a gas feeder line into her tank. Carbon monoxide. A painless method.”

“Did she … did she leave any indication as to why?” Daala knew the reason. She knew why she herself might have done exactly the same thing if she had been in Niathal’s position. Any protracted legal defense would harm her extended family, the navy. But Daala had to know what words Niathal might have left, since they would be the last expression of Niathal’s legacy.

Caran offered Daala a smile of mixed sympathy and sadness. “She left a note.”

“Read it, please.”

The diplomat did not fetch out a datapad or a piece of flimsi. He quoted it from memory. “‘This has been done with honor, without error, and by my choosing. Niathal out.’” He glanced down at the floor, a moment’s reflection.

The stark simplicity of those words seemed to make the stone in Daala’s throat grow larger and sharper. She ignored the pangs. For now.

Caran met her gaze again. “What do you … want done?”

“Bring her here. Let those who asked for her blood see what they have achieved.” And, she told herself, we will see who is sorry and who rejoices, the better to know our enemies. “Then we’ll return her to Mon Calamari for a funeral with full military honors.”

“I’ll make it so.”

The image wavered more sharply and then disappeared.

Shaken, but unwilling to let anyone recognize the fact, Daala spun on her heel and marched from the communications center, not making eye contact with anyone there. Once in the hall,