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Valdore raised his own glass in response, but remained silent. So not only must you remind me that you can read my mail with impunity, he thought, but you also must reiterate that the Tal Shiar has at least as much access to Karzan’s ear as I do.

T’Luadh drained her glass and set it down on the table. “What will you do next, Admiral?” she said. “Regarding First Consul T’Leikha and your chief technologist, I mean.”

Valdore allowed a death’s head grin to split his craggy, weather beaten face. “I am content to leave Nijil working in his present position—for now. He may become complacent, grow careless again, and expose whole nests of Ejhoi Ormiin vermin as a consequence.”

T’Luadh grinned. “Well played, Admiral. You’re beginning to think like a veteran Tal Shiar field operative. And what of the first consul?”

“I shall bide my time with her as well.”

“Wise, Admiral. Now that Senator Vrax is out of prison, I would think you’d have to get in line behind him to get revenge against T’Leikha.”

“Perhaps,” Valdore said. “Vrax is considerably more patient than I am, T’Luadh.”

“Does that mean you do plan to retaliate against the first consul before Vrax does?”

He shrugged. “Retaliate for what? The destruction of my residence has been officially recognized as purely accidental, has it not? Therefore I needn’t be in a rush to seek revenge.”

She nodded, finally seeming to take his meaning: Once a suitable time interval had passed, similar “accidents” could be relied upon to befall both T’Leikha and Nijil, no doubt at the times and in the places they were least likely to expect them.

Provided, of course, that Valdore did not wait so long as to allow T’Leikha to strike preemptively against him.

SEVENTY-ONE

Northern ShiKahr, Vulcan

IN ONE OF THE HOUSE’S spare bedrooms, Tucker stood regarding T’Pol in silence, utterly at a loss for words as she stared back at him with equal intensity. Neither of them spoke, and although they weren’t in physical contact, he could feel her presence intensely, the durable telepathic bond they shared no longer attenuated by parsecs of distance. The bond nevertheless still apparently functioned as a kind of open carrier wave, the conductor of a telepathic reverberation that reminded him of the echo that occurred when one spoke to someone in person and through an open comm channel simultaneously.

At the moment, however, the link served as a conduit for the loudest silence Trip had ever heard, a roaring ocean of emotional white noise.

This was the first time he’d been alone with her—hell, it was one of the very few times they’d even both been in the same sector—since that memorable day on Taugus III, more than eight months ago. Now, as then, he wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms and disperse all the built-up tension he could feel roiling within them both—and maybe break some of the furniture in the process.

Down, boy, he told himself in some private corner of his innermost thoughts. He felt like a randy teenager, knowing that T’Pol’s mother had lived in this house not all that long ago. Besides, we still have company out there in the living room. True enough, Ych’a had all but banished them both from the main living area in order to rid herself of anything that might break her concentration or distract her from her present task. The time had come for one of Centurion Terix’s “therapeutic mind-melds,” the latest in a series of telepathic treatments necessary to maintain the fiction that the Romulan Centurion Terix was actually the Vulcan V’Shar operative Tevik.

T’Pol’s eyes were aflame in the room’s dim light, confirming that she, too, had to struggle against the same impulses he was experiencing.

“I need...” she said.

“Yes?” Stepping toward her, he realized he was bracing himself, his muscles tensing. He hadn’t forgotten the wicked shoulder bruise she’d given him on Taugus III, when in her passion she’d slammed him into one of the seats on the small Romulan scoutship he’d been using at the time.

She shook her head, as