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The Devaronian glared at Leia. “What if additional worlds should fall to the Yuuzhan Vong? How many refugees will we be asked to accept? Is there a limit, or does the New Republic plan to squeeze the populations of thousands of worlds onto hundreds?”

“We will limit the number,” Leia replied. She turned to Ord Mantell’s representative. “Ord Mantell could inaugurate the plan by allowing people stranded on the Jubilee Wheel to settle in temporary camps north of the city.”

The planet’s button-nosed female representative looked aghast. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Ambassador. Why, for one thing, the area around Ten Mile Plateau is one of our most important tourist attractions.”

“Tourist attractions?” Leia said in disbelief. “Ord Mantell lies practically on the edge of contested space. How many tourists do you expect to receive in the coming months?”

The woman made her face long. “Ord Mantell appears to have been spared the horrors. We anticipate an upswing in tourism very soon.”

Leia took a calming breath. “Farther to the west, then,” she suggested.

The woman ridiculed the proposal with a condescending laugh. “I’m very sorry, but those lands have been set aside as reserves for the Mantellian savrip. Hunters come from great distances for the honor of stalking the beasts.”

Leia exhaled in exasperation. “Is there no one here who will step forward?”

The representative of Gyndine and the Circarpous system spoke up. “Gyndine will accept some of those stranded on the Jubilee Wheel.”

“Thank you,” Leia said.

“As will Ruan,” delegate Borert Harbright of Salliche Ag announced proudly. “House Harbright will do whatever it can for the cause.”

Leia smiled appreciatively, but she had to force it. A powerful and wealthy corporation, Salliche Ag controlled a string of worlds on the fringe of the Deep Core, with Ruan and a host of similar worlds ideally suited to relocation centers. But there was something about the supercilious Count Harbright that put her instantly on guard. Duplicity seemed to shine from his coal-black eyes and lurk behind his obliging smile.

But Leia thanked him anyway. “On behalf of the thousands whose lives your generosity will save, the Advisory Council applauds you.” Her gaze swept the table. “Now, perhaps some of the rest of you can be persuaded to follow the count’s lead.”

When the meeting adjourned for lunch, Leia hurried to exit the circular room before anyone had a chance to get her ear. Olmahk, one of her Noghri bodyguards, was waiting in the hallway, along with C-3PO.

“I do hope the meeting went well, Mistress Leia,” C-3PO said, hurrying to match her pace.

“As well as could be expected,” Leia muttered.

They made their way to a turbolift and descended to Government House’s spacious and ostentatious lobby, where every droid in sight appeared to be moving with uncommon haste toward the building’s several exits.

“What’s all this about?” Leia stopped to ask.

“I can scarcely imagine,” C-3PO answered. “But I’ll do my best to find out.”

C-3PO angled across the lobby, placing himself directly in the path of an administrative droid, whose head was shaped like an inverted test tube. The 3D-4X was forced to come to a skittering halt on the polished floor. In an impossibly rapid exchange, the pair traded information like two insects meeting on a forage trail.

A moment later, C-3PO whirled and headed back toward Leia, stiff-backed and arms pumping in a way she had come to associate with trouble.

“Mistress Leia, I have just received the most distressing news,” C-3PO sputtered. “It seems that Ord Mantell has been targeted for attack by the Yuuzhan Vong!”

THIRTEEN

“The brute might have killed you, mistress,” Vergere remarked in the secret tongue of the deception sect, while she ministered to the injuries Elan had received at the hands of the assassin.

The priestess moved Vergere aside so she could regard her image in the mirror Showolter had provided. “I never feared for my life. I feared only for the development