The squarish one might have been an architect, she thought, the silver-haired one a poet. Stop it!she told herself. Shut off the voices in your head and listen to what they’re saying! The Lord is testing you, and you’ll have to tell him something…

“…always intemperate, Alidar,” she heard the elder say before the jeweler had emerged from the back of the shop. Did she only imagine he was looking her way when he said it? “Intemperate in war, and now you reverse course and speak too vociferously for peace. It’s going to cost you.”

His eyes were so blue she could determine their color from where she stood, and she’d always had a thing for cheekbones. There were bloodlines here, Zetha thought, that were far more easily traced than hers, and something else, anger and a deep and unremitting sadness, as if in his long life he’d seen enough and more than enough of death and most of it unnecessary. Stop it!

“But it’s too much, Tal!” the younger one said too abruptly. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude, but even you have to admit that these days it’s war for the sake of war, because if the Romulan in the street turns his eyes away from the stars and starship battles, he’ll see that the economy is in shambles, his livelihood threatened, his children poorly educated, his future mortgaged for yet another warbird. The entire system is corrupt.”

“And so it always has been!” the one called Tal agreed, then stopped himself as the jeweler came prancing toward them, balancing velvet-lined trays of precious baubles in both hands. “You see, now you have me doing it!”

“Perhaps I thought to have an ally,” the one called Alidar mused after a long silence spent contemplating the wares before him, waving aside a tray of silver rings, sending the jeweler to the back of the shop for more. “At least someone who agreed with me in spirit.”

“We’re reduced to family names now, I see,” the silver-haired one said, avoiding a direct answer. “Shall I call you ‘Jarok’ from here on?”

Jarok,Zetha thought. Now, why is that name familiar? Aemetha would know. Aemetha knows everyone of any importance. Knew everyone. Aemetha, how are you, where are you? Did the Lord leave you alone once I agreed to go with him? Stop it!

“Forgive me, Che’srik. I have become a bit…obsessive.”

“I’m glad you said it!” Tal muttered, fingering a filigreed pendant that had caught his fancy.

“First names, surnames, what does it matter?” Jarok asked bitterly. “Mine will be anathema if I’ve judged the climate wrongly…”

“The Hero of Norkan?” Tal snorted. “That alone will protect you, but only up to a point. Leave off this line of inquiry, I beg you.”

“Not this time, old friend,” Jarok said.

“How many such triumphs and reversals have you and I survived?” Tal leaned forward so as not to be overheard, but Zetha heard him anyway. “That business following Narendra III, for instance? How long did that measure of peace endure before it once again was set on its head? But you and I moved with it and are here today to tell of it. These days it’s not only the enemy at the gates we need to fear, but the one in the room beside us. Yet we do survive, if we’re careful. We have no alternative.”

Not kin, then, Zetha noted for herself, not the Lord, watching the white-haired Tal clasp Jarok’s shoulder in support. A mentor advising a student who he felt had surpassed him in rank, in accomplishment. What serious thing were they talking about? Something so serious no nonmilitary half-breed could begin to guess at it.

Jarok,she thought, as the jeweler returned as if to stay this time, plopping himself down on a couch at a deferential distance from the two, nattering on about the merits of this piece or that. If I’ve heard the name, or read it, it’s in my mind somewhere. Why can’t I retrieve it?The stresses of the past few months, the constant drills, the lack of sleep, more empty bunks in the barracks, the sense that something was building to a fever pitch, were taking their toll. She couldn’t endure this much longer.

I am wallpaper,she thought. They do not see me; therefore, I don’t exist. But what if they actually say something that the Lord wants to hear? How will I know what’s of value to him? How will I know what he will use it for? Is it only because these two are so interesting that I wish them no harm? Or is it because the only pleasure left in my life is thwarting his lordship?

“…and your family to consider,” Tal was saying, indicating with a gesture that he would take the delicate pendant after all, and motioning the jeweler off to wrap it and ring it up. “You’ve wed again, I hear.”

Jarok smiled then for the first time. “It’s why I’m here. To get her something suitable for her naming day.” He produced a padd from his pocket and displayed what was probably his wife’s holo. Zetha couldn’t see, but both men stopped to admire it. “Something suitable for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.”

“She is a beauty,” Tal acknowledged. “Children?”

Even from where she stood, Zetha could see Jarok’s eyes mist over.

“Not yet, but we were planning, if I could get enough leave time…” Jarok’s voice trailed off. “Perhaps it was a mistake to marry again, considering…”

“Haven’t you got those settled out yet?” the jeweler hissed, coming up suddenly behind her. She pretended to be startled, and dropped the tangle of chains so she would have to start over. Beyond fury, the jeweler stalked to the back of the shop to deal with the purchase of the pendant.

If the jeweler is Tal Shiar, then why do I have to listen?Zetha wondered. He’s practically sitting in their laps with his trinkets and his simpering; let the Lord ask him what he’s heard. Or is that part of the trap? The jeweler reports one thing, I another, the Lord assumes I’m lying and kills me.

She eyed the exit just beyond Jarok’s square shoulder, and wondered how far she’d get if she ran for it. One of the other ghilikhad told her there were sensors sewn into the hems of their clothing, something in the food they ate that made it easier to track them. She didn’t know what she believed anymore. Jarok, meanwhile, was angry about something. He never raised his voice, but it was clear he was furious.

“There’s never enough time, don’t you see, Tal? They work us to death, and for what? It used to be honor, but no more, no more. We give the Empire our lives—go here, fight there, rendezvous here, attack there—”

“Alidar, for Elements’ sake—!”

Jarok seemed to remember where he was. Shopkeepers and their apprentices were not on the same plane as senior officers of the Fleet, but they had ears.

“Forgive me; you’re right,” he said, somewhat subdued and, resuming his seat, continued his search among the baubles for a gift for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.

Jarok!Zetha remembered at last. Alidar Jarok, even a groundling like me knows who you are. The Hero of Norkan, Tal called you, and it’s what the Praetor called you in his speech when he awarded you that medal on the vidscreens for the whole world to see, but what I’ve heard in the catacombs among my kind is that you’re a cold-blooded killer. What harm in telling the Lord that? Takes one to know one, and none of my business.

But what I hear you saying now suggests a change of heart. Maybe you can do some good with that. Maybe that’s what his lordship is afraid of. Maybe, maybe, maybe, and all of it, if I want to go on living, is my business.

She tossed the tangled chains back in the bin they’d come from. The jeweler was too busy with his pricey customers to notice. Zetha knew what she would tell the Lord.

“Nothing!” Koval hissed. His voice became even softer than usual when he was furious, and Zetha could barely hear him through the ringing in her ears. Why was it, she wondered, picking herself up off the floor, that a blow to side of the head always sounded worse than it felt? “How dare you tell me you heard nothing? How stupid do you think I am? Get up. I didn’t strike you that hard.”