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“Again, I do not doubt you.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you know where this supposed world is?”

“No.”

“So you would have me smuggle you from beneath Shimrra’s nose, equip you with a ship—”

“I can supply my own ship,” Nen Yim interrupted.

His eyes turned appraising, but he resumed. “Very well. So I need only smuggle you out, outfit you, and help you find this planet—which Shimrra claims is destroyed.”

“That is what I desire, yes.”

“I cannot do that,” he said. “I am too highly placed. I will be noticed.”

“Then I have come in vain,” Nen Yim said, preparing the weapon in her finger.

“Perhaps not,” the priest said. “Perhaps the Prophet of whom I spoke could aid you?”

Nen Yim relaxed, marginally. “You counsel me to collaborate with a heretic?”

“If you are correct about the threat this planet poses, then a temporary alliance with a heretic could certainly be forgiven. You were right, by the way, not to ask Shimrra to help you. Neither Ekh’m Val nor any of his crew remains alive. The Supreme Overlord fears this secret. That in itself tells me it is vitally important.”

“On that we agree,” Nen Yim allowed. “Still—what good could come of contacting this ‘Prophet’? Even if he was so disposed, how could he help me?”

“How many Shamed Ones work within the Supreme Overlord’s compound?”

“I do not know.”

“How many of them can you name?”

She snorted. “One.”

Harrar showed his teeth again at the thinly veiled reference.

“This heresy is widespread and well organized. It, as much as your Zonama Sekot, is a threat to the well-being of our people. I feel certain that if this ‘Prophet’ can be convinced you are with his cause, he will find a way to help you. Especially if, as you say, you have a ship.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s getting the ship off the surface of Yuuzhan’tar and out of this system that is the problem.”

A new suspicion struck her. “You want to use me as bait.”

“Indeed. But I will not pounce on the Prophet when he comes to free you. I will wait, until such time as you deem your mission complete. If done in exactly the right way, it might even be possible to convince Lord Shimrra that you were a hostage of the Shamed Ones, rather than the instigator of the expedition.”

“You propose a trade in deceits.”

“Consider. Two great threats to the Yuuzhan Vong—your mysterious planet, my Prophet. We can be rid of them both. If all goes well, you and I continue to serve our people. If not, we go to the gods, who know our motives were pure. Can you see a better path?”

“No,” Nen Yim said. “I cannot. But I know little of this Prophet. I have no way of contacting him.”

“I cannot contact him directly, of course,” Harrar said. “But there are ways of bringing things to his ears. I can arrange this. Are we agreed?”

“We are,” Nen Yim said.

And though she felt she had sealed her doom, she made the trip back through the darkness with lighter feet, and the air felt almost warm.

Harrar watched the shaper move out of sight, wondering again how she had managed to meet him without an entourage of guards. Did she have some sort of concealing cloaker, like the cloak of Nuun the hunters wore?

Probably. She was a master shaper, after all. That didn’t matter.

What mattered was that he had committed himself to the proposition that she did not represent a trap laid for him by Shimrra or someone in the Supreme Overlord’s hierarchy who disliked him. Every natural instinct warned him away, but something very deep—perhaps something from the gods themselves—told him he should trust the strange shaper. Rumors of the planet Zonama Sekot had circulated very quietly among the Quorealists and some priestly sects for many cycles, and he knew for a fact that Ekh’m Val was not the first Yuuzhan Vong to encounter the planet. Nor, indeed, had Ekh’m Val been sent by Shimrra, though the commander himself hadn’t known that.

If Zonama Sekot existed—and especially if the shaper was right about there being some hidden history between it and the Yuuzhan Vong—then it could be very important. In any event, the priesthood was being kept in the