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And although “Sodok” looked Vulcan, T’Pol knew his real identity as well: Commander Charles Anthony Tucker III, a man with whom she shared a unique bond.

T’Pol held herself rigid and maintained her silence, restraining herself from reacting in an outwardly noticeable way. Although she found it enormously gratifying to discover that Trip was alive and apparently unharmed, she was not privy to how much the others present knew either about Trip’s real identity or his ongoing espionage work. She had no wish to compromise him, or worse, to place his life in any greater jeopardy than it might be already.

And while she found it sorely tempting to blurt out a warning to everyone present concerning “Tevik,” T’Pol refrained, since that action, too, carried with it the possibility of compromising Trip.

Belatedly, T’Pol noticed that Ych’a was speaking to her, though she had no recollection of what the other woman had said.

“Pardon me?” T’Pol said, feeling foolish.

The corners of Ych’a’s usually stern mouth curled slightly, making her appear almost amused. “I said that for one who has spent so much time lately among the adepts of Mount Seleya, your emotions are surprisingly close to the surface.”

“Indeed,” Denak said with a slow and somber nod. “I was about to make much the same comment. Did you notice that as well, Sodok?”

“Yes.” Trip mumbled, looking at T’Pol in an utterly dumbfounded fashion.

“Do not be concerned,” Ych’a said, her gaze locked upon T’Pol’s. “We are all working toward the same goal.”

T’Pol sat down heavily on one of her mother’s chairs. “Please explain.”

SEVENTY

The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus

NIJIL HAD TURNED to leave the office once First Consul T’Leikha released him to return to his duties. But before he reached the door, her comm unit emitted a piercing electronic tone—a tone that Nijil knew heralded a high-priority incoming communication.

He paused momentarily on the threshold and glanced back at her, prepared to move on instantly should she so much as scowl at him. But the look of dismayed surprise on T’Leikha’s face made his feet throw down roots. All of her color had abruptly drained away.

“It’s from Valdore,” she said, incredulous.

Nijil stepped back into her office and sealed the door behind him. “The admiral is alive?” he whispered in disbelief, though he found the notion curiously easy to accept; after all, in all the images of the post-detonation wreckage he had seen, he had never so much as glimpsed a body.

The world suddenly began to spin wildly about him. Valdore doesn’t know about my involvement, he told himself. He’s not omniscient. He couldn’t possibly know.

But he also wasn’t supposed to have been able to survive.

The Krocton Segment, Dartha, Romulus

“T’Luadh, I believe the First Consul may actually have soiled herself when my face appeared on her terminal,” Valdore said to the woman who sat across the dining room table from him, slurping her bowl of aafvun’in’hhui mollusk soup with noisy gusto. “I’m still more than a little surprised that she found the courage to strike at me so brazenly.”

“This wasn’t about courage, Admiral,” the spy said, setting down her bowl. “If it were, T’Leikha simply would have challenged you to a duel.”

Valdore pushed his own half-eaten plate of viinerine to the side— he had developed a taste for simple military fare decades ago, and had never lost the habit—and slowly swirled his glass of kali-fal. He savored the blue liquor’s pungent aroma as much as he did the continued rock-steadiness of his nerves.

“True enough,” he said. For most of his adult life, in fact, Valdore had been keenly aware of the complex, indirect machinations of which members of the Romulan Senate were capable. This knowledge was the primary reason he had over the years established a number of safe houses such as this one, in Dartha and elsewhere, some of which he felt certain that not even the Tal Shiar knew about. He’d spent enough time in the Senate prior