I promised the Twenty that we wouldn't have a repeat of Twylec, Norian practiced his newly acquired skills of mindspeech. It's to protect you, Lissa Beth.

You tell them everything? That had me stopped dead in the middle of the busy walk, forcing people to move aside all around us since foot traffic flowed continuously.

Only the one, Norian grumped as he took my arm and we started moving again. How will it look if you are seen near that sort of thing regularly? Rumors fly about you anyway, breah-mul. We do not wish for more troubles to land on your doorstep.

"Nobody ever worried about that before," I grumped aloud. Norian pulled me closer to him.

"We worry about it, now," he hissed in my ear. Refizan certainly remembers a little Vampire Queen. Even though the cameras went dark or fuzzy during the Conclave on Nemizan, do you think they aren't talking about that anyway and speculating wildly? Cheah-mul, you are in enough danger. Let us protect you when we can.

Norian's words almost made me stop again but he prevented it, keeping a tight grip on my arm and pulling me along with him. Rych had moved to my other side and I walked in step, flanked by both of them. We talked to three more shop owners before taking a break for lunch. I'd had to place compulsion with each of the three in order to learn what Norian wanted to know. It wasn't good—any of it.

"Where are we meeting with your people?" I asked, as we ate at a small table inside a café. Norian was cold, I could tell, and he wanted to eat inside rather than staying outside and ordering from a vendor's cart.

"About six blocks from here, at another hotel," Rych answered. Norian's mouth was full, so he let his assistant take up the slack.

"Do any of them know where we're staying?" I asked.

"They think they do—I've got a suite set up not far from here, under Norian's name." Rych was proud of himself, I could tell. He grinned as he bit into his sandwich.

I nibbled at my food. I was far away, though, in thoughts anyway. All the vendors we'd spoken with had mentioned children disappearing. I didn't like that one bit and wanted to go right to the temple and pull any out that might be there. Norian was doing his best to hold me back.

"We'll take care of business later, when it's dark and we know which of our agents are moles," Norian tapped the edge of my plate, bringing me back to my uneaten food. "Eat your lunch—I don’t need a collapsing Liaison." I sniffed at his words and lifted my sandwich.

* * *

Norian gave an improvised speech, telling twenty-nine operatives that we were making some progress in this case, but it was going slowly and we weren't likely to find anything truly incriminating for a while. I'd gone Looking, just to make sure there weren't any cameras or listening devices on any of them, but they probably knew better than that. Nobody had anything. Norian was misleading them, too, putting any moles' fears to rest that we didn't have any solid proof yet. When his speech was over, I mingled with the crowd and told Norian and Rych through mindspeech just who the bad guys were. Six of them were tainted and Norian had their names by the time they walked out the door.

That evening, he placed a call to each of the six operatives, asking them to meet him at our bogus hotel room. Rych answered the door and each of the six were led to a bedroom for a private conference with Norian. I was inside the bedroom with Norian and watched as each one was bitten by a twelve-foot lion snake that leapt at them the moment they walked through the door. All six died of poisoning and all six were transported, courtesy of yours truly, to Tykl. Someone would pick up the bodies later. Rych/Lendill never saw the snake and never asked questions, either. We all knew what was going to happen to those operatives when they were invited to the suite. Perhaps Rych thought I did it—he'd seen me work when Norian and I had come to help him while he was under attack.

"Now, on to other business," Norian shrugged into his coat later. "Lissa Beth, you named every one of the six we suspected," he added. "Rych here," he clapped his assistant on the back, "had already gotten hits on all of them; we just wanted confirmation. Now, feel free to take us to the dungeons of the Brotherhood of the New Dawn." He grinned at me. I turned all of us to mist and got the hell out of there.

Norian probably didn't want me to kill the guy, but I did it anyway. No way was he going to live after raping a nine-year-old. That brother of the New Dawn got sent to Tykl in two pieces, just as dawn was breaking there. He got to keep company with the poisoned mole operatives.

* * *

"Lissa Beth, if you're done now, we need to have a few words." Norian was back to hissing after I dropped eight children off at an emergency room and sent them inside, some of them nearly unable to walk, they were so brutalized.

Rych took himself out of our hotel suite so Norian could have his few words. I figured the words were going to come from his side and all the listening was going to come from my side. Well, I had experience with this. I thought about sending him to work with Gavin for a while.

"Lissa Beth," Norian paced in front of me. I'd chosen to sit on a nice sofa inside the living area of our suite. If he intended to yell, I wanted to be as comfortable as I could be while he did it.

"Norian Keef," I muttered.

"Lissa Beth, I want to hug you and yell at you at the same time," Norian stopped his pacing for a moment and stood in front of me. "They'll know something is up when one of theirs disappears. You should have left the prisoners there," Norian began his chastisement. "You need to learn control. We have to take them unawares, if we can. This will allow them time to pull together and form a battle plan."

"Then why didn't you stop me before we went? You know I'm not going to sit still and watch them mistreat babies."

"I know why this upsets you so much. Please try to see it from my perspective. It is my duty to take them down. Half of them could be on their way off-planet by now and we'll lose contact with them. I have a handful of my men at the space station, but we don't have all the names involved in this yet. Do I need to point out the problems with a blown cover?"

"No, you don't have to point that out," I turned my head away from him and hugged myself as tightly as I could. "But you killed six moles yourself, earlier. Do you think your cover wasn't already blown?"

"We haven't moved against them yet. Until now. They thought the moles were protecting them. Now they'll try to make contact and none of the moles will respond. New Dawn will know for sure. If they don't attack that bogus hotel suite we set up by tomorrow night, then they're incompetent."

"We can be there, waiting on them as mist," I offered.

"Lissa Beth," Norian ran a hand through his hair in a frustrated gesture. "Neither I nor Rych like to be mist for more than a few minutes at a time. We've talked about this—we're used to being more solid and substantial."

"You just don't want to give up control," I grumped.

"That, too," Norian nodded at my assessment. "We've been doing this for a while and turning to mist is an unsettling experience."

"Then why drag me into this? You don't like the way I do things—leave me at home. I have enough crap happening there to keep me busy for a while." I still wasn't looking at him.

"I know your life is complicated and I know you're not spending enough time running things on Le-Ath Veronis. Nevertheless, you're our best bet for taking these Solar Red spin-offs down quickly and quietly. I have to use what I have at my disposal."

"And the Queen of Le-Ath Veronis is at your disposal, because the Founder and Twenty Charter members thought she should be." I turned to look at Norian, now. "Don't think for a minute that I don't see their hand in this. I don't jump when they say, they can dump Le-Ath Veronis and we'll be out of the Alliance. Why don't you just go ahead and say it, Norian?" I laid all my fears before him. It had worried me from the beginning; I just hadn't said anything about it until now.

"You make it sound as if they're blackmailing you."

"Aren't they?"

Norian gave a frustrated sigh and turned away. "Lissa Beth, they use whatever they have to protect the Alliance. Surely you can see the reason in that."

"Uh-huh. I just used what I had to protect some children who were being tortured. You let me know by mindspeech when you need me the next time, Norian Keef." I went straight to mist and then to energy and got the hell out of there.

* * *

"I don't know where she is." Norian sat across the tiny café table from Rych and sipped his tea.

"Boss, I don't like to tell you your business, but you probably should have told her what you wanted in the beginning." Rych was venturing onto uncharted seas by pointing out what he considered Norian's flaw in the plan.

"Hmmph," Norian grumbled.

"You think she'll really come if you call?" Rych went on.

"I hope so," Norian stared into the dark liquid inside his mug. "If she doesn't, I'm not sure what to do—what we can do. She told me she feels coerced and that's not what I wanted. She thinks Le-Ath Veronis will be thrown out of the Alliance if she doesn’t jump and run when we tell her to."

"Boss, none of the others did anything close to what she's done for us. If not for her, I'd probably be dead and some look-alike would be sitting across from you right now. Where do you think you'd be, then?"

"Most likely headed toward oblivion," Norian muttered. "I figure I'd be dead too, if you want the truth."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll contact the one and see what he says."

"I don't envy you."

"I know." Norian shrugged into his heavy coat and Rych was right behind him as they left the café.

* * *

"You've become a liability, since the ASD knows the real thing is dead." Seturna Odnard examined Tork's face as he stood on the other side of the Seturna's desk. The study had been lavishly decorated—Odnard intended to have a long and comfortable stay on Trell.