"I feel like an idiot," the young woman half-snarled. Her dark-brown eyes flashed angrily, but the two men sitting across the private table from her in the busy, dimly lit restaurant bar didn't worry about that. Or, rather, they weren't worried that the anger was directed at them. Agnes Nordbrandt was furious about a lot of things lately. Which, after all, was what had brought them together.

"Better to feel like an idiot than to get snapped up by the graybacks," one of the men replied. The nickname referred to the Kornatian National Police's charcoal gray tunics.

"Maybe." Nordbrandt tugged irritably at the blond wig covering her own black hair. One of the others quirked an eyebrow, and she snorted. "Getting arrested might just give me a more visible platform!"

"For a day or two," the other man said. He was obviously the senior of the two, and his physical appearance-medium brown hair, medium brown eyes, average features, medium -complexion-was so eminently forgettable that Nordbrandt felt irritably certain he'd never bothered with a disguise in his life. "Possibly even for a few weeks. Hell, let's be generous and give it three months. Then they'll sentence you, send you off to do your time, and you'll vanish from the political equation. Is that what you really want?"

"Of course it isn't." Nordbrandt's eyes darted around the dim room.

A large part of her current irritation, as she was perfectly well aware, stemmed from her dislike for having a conversation like this in a public place. On the other hand, the man she knew only as "Firebrand" was probably right. Given the paucity of modern technology in the Talbott Cluster, the other patrons' background noise probably provided all the cover they needed. And there was something to be said for hiding in plain sight to avoid suspicion in the first place.

"I didn't think so," Firebrand said. "But if you have any inclinations that way, I'd really like to know now. Speaking for myself, I have no desire to see the inside of anybody's jail, whether it's right here on Kornati or in some Manty prison far, far away. Which means I'm not especially interested in working with anyone who might want a firsthand penology tour just so she can make a political statement."

"Don't worry," Nordbrandt grunted. "You're right. Letting them lock me up would be worse than pointless."

"I'm glad we agree. And do we agree on anything else?"

Nordbrandt looked at him across the steins of beer on the table between them, studying his expression as intently as the poor light permitted. Unlike many people living in the Verge-that vast, irregular belt of marginal worlds beyond the Solarian League's official borders-she was a prolong recipient. But she really was almost as young as she looked. Only the cruder, less effective first-generation prolong therapies were available here on Kornati. They halted the apparent aging process at a considerably later point in a recipient's life than the more recently developed second— and third-generation therapies. At thirty-three, Nordbrandt was a whippet-thin, dark-complexioned woman who seemed to vibrate with the unending internal tension of youth, anger, intensity, and commitment.

Even so, she hesitated. Then she gave her false golden curls a shake and took the plunge with a nod.

"Yes, we do," she said flatly. "I didn't spend my life fighting to keep those Frontier Security ljigavci off my world just to turn it over to someone else."

"We obviously agree with you, or we wouldn't be here," Firebrand's companion said. "But to give the Devil his due, there actually is a difference between OFS and the Manties."

"Not to me there isn't." Nordbrandt's voice was even flatter, and her eyes flashed. "Nobody's ever been interested in trading with us, or treating us like equals. And now that the galaxy's found out about the Lynx Terminus and all the money it represents to whoever controls it, you want me to think we suddenly have both the frigging Sollies and oh-so-noble Manticorans lining up to embrace us solely out of the goodness of their hearts?"

Her lips worked, as if she wanted to spit on the tabletop, and the man who'd spoken shrugged.

"That's true enough, but the Manties didn't even suggest we join them. It was our friends and neighbors' idea to ask them to annex us."

"I know all about the annexation vote," Nordbrandt replied bitterly. " And how my so-called 'political allies' deserted in droves when Tonkovic and that unmitigated bastard Van Dort started waving around promises of how rich we'd all be as good little Manty helots." She shook her head fiercely. "Those rich bastards figure they'll make out well enough, but the rest of us will just find ourselves screwed over by another layer of money-gouging overlords. So don't tell me about the vote! The fact that a bunch of stupid sheep voluntarily walk into a wolf's lair behind a Judas goat doesn't make the wolf any less of a carnivore."

"And you're prepared to back your views with more than just words and get-out-the-vote projects?" Firebrand asked quietly.

"Yes, I am. And not just me. As I'm sure you realized before you ever contacted me."

The man known as "Firebrand" nodded, and reminded himself not to let Nordbrandt's intensity and narrow focus fool him into underestimating her intelligence.

It was his turn to study her thoughtfully. Agnes Nordbrandt had been one of the youngest members of the planetary parliament of Kornati, the sole inhabited world of the Split System, before the discovery of the Lynx Terminus had brought the Star Kingdom of Manticore into contact with Split. She'd won that position as the founder of the Kornatian National Redemption Party, whose extremist nationalist politics had resonated with the large percentage of Kornati's population which feared the eventual arrival of the Office of Frontier Security in Split. But those not unjustified fears couldn't explain her success by themselves. Although she'd been adopted as an infant and raised by a childless couple who'd been among the junior ranks of Kornati's oligarchical elite, she'd also reached out to the disenfranchised, the all-too-large Kornatian underclass who struggled daily to put food on the table and shoes on their children's feet.

Many of her political opponents had sneered at her for that. They'd mocked the National Redemption Party as a mismatched hodgepodge with no coherent platform. As for trying to build a political machine out of the underclass, the very idea was ridiculous! Ninety percent of them hadn't even registered to vote, so what sort of political base could they provide?

But Nordbrandt been a shrewder political animal than they'd recognized. She'd maneuvered with the best of them, building alliances between her NRP and less extreme politicians and political parties, like Vuk Rajkovic's Reconciliation Party. Perhaps the marginalized urban poor who supported her most enthusiastically didn't vote, but there'd been enough middle class voters whose fear of the Sollies had combined with their recognition that economic reform was essential to give her a surprising strength at the ballot box.

Until the temptation to stampede into Manticore's arms as a way to escape generations of debt peonage exploitation by Solly commercial interests under the auspices of OFS had reached Kornati, at least.

The Manticoran standard of living, despite over a decade of bitter warfare with the People's Republic of Haven, was one of the highest in the explored galaxy. The Star Kingdom might be small, but it was incredibly wealthy, and the extent of its wealth had lost nothing in the telling. Half of Kornati's people seemed to have believed that simply acquiring Manticoran citizenship would somehow make them instantly and incredibly wealthy, as well. Most of them had known better deep down inside, and, to their credit, the Manticorans never made any such promises. But any illusions the Kornatians might have cherished about Manticore hadn't changed the fact that they'd known exactly what to expect from OFS. Faced with the decision, seventy-eight percent of them had decided anything was better than that, and that permanently binding themselves to Manticore was the one way to avoid it.

Nordbrandt had disagreed, and she'd mounted a bitter, no-holds-barred political campaign to resist the annexation vote. But that decision had shattered the National Redemption Party. It had quickly become apparent that many of the NRP's erstwhile supporters' resistance to being gobbled up by Frontier Security had been fueled far more by fear than by the fiery nationalistic socialism which had inspired Nordbrandt. Her support base had crumbled quickly, and as it had, her rhetoric had become steadily more extreme. And now it appeared she was, indeed, prepared to take the next logical step.

"How many other people agree with you?" Firebrand asked bluntly after a moment.

"I'm not prepared to discuss specific numbers at this point," she replied, and leaned back slightly in her chair with a thin smile. "We hardly even know one another, and I'm not in the habit of getting intimate on a first date."

Firebrand chuckled appreciatively, although his smile barely touched his eyes.

"I don't blame you for being cautious," he said. "In fact, I'd be far less likely to risk any association with someone who wasn't cautious. But by the same token, you need to convince me that what you have to offer is sufficient to justify my willingness to risk trusting you."

"I understand that," she said. "And I agree. To be brutally frank, I wouldn't be risking contact with you unless I believed you could offer us something sufficiently valuable to justify taking some chances."

"I'm glad we understand one another. But my point still stands. What do you have to offer?"

"A real Kornatian," she said bluntly, and smiled at the involuntary flare of surprise-and alarm-in Firebrand's eyes.

"Your accent's quite good, actually," she told him. "Unfortunately for you, linguistics have always been something of a hobby of mine. I suppose it has something to do with a politician's ear. I always found it useful to be able to talk like a 'good old girl' when it came to politicking at the grass-roots level. And, as we say here on Kornati, 'You're not from around here, are you?'"

"That's a very dangerous conclusion, Ms. Nordbrandt," Firebrand said, his eyes narrow. His companion's hand had disappeared into the unsealed opening of his jacket, and Nordbrandt smiled.