A Working of Stars by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald Page A

headquarters. The building had once housed the main offices for everything the sus-Peledaen fleet-family did that wasn’t managed by the big man personally—the Finance Division, the Division of Research and Development, both the Internal and the External Security Divisions, and a host of others—but most of them had suffered a downgrade to “Eraasi Branch” during the big reorganization following Lord Natelth’s move to the orbital station.
    The Internal Security Division had escaped that much humiliation, at least. But the External side of the family’s security operations had moved up to the station with Lord Natelth—and the head of External had moved up into the syn-Peledaen—while Internal Security had not.
    Egelt took the executive elevator up to the Internal Security floor. The division’s second-in-command, Jyriom Hussav, was already checking the main board in the outer office for updates. The wall-sized flat-display currently showed a detailed street map of Hanilat. Colored glyphs—violet for favorable indicators, green for items of possible interest, and bright yellow for dangerous or urgent situations—dotted the city grid. Based on the display alone, Egelt reflected, today was shaping up well. Plenty of violet dots and no yellows, and just enough green dots to make life interesting.
    He joined Hussav at the board. “What have we got?”
    “Not much, for a change.” Hussav was a Veredden Islander, short and dark by Hanilat standards, with curly black hair and a thick mustache. Standing next to him tended to make the fair-skinned and much taller Egelt feel like an illustration from his grandmother’s old Peoples of Eraasi textbook; nevertheless, the two men had worked well together for several years. Hussav pointed to a cluster of green dots in the port district. “The sus-Radal are still pushing at us and trying to penetrate our operations, but the level of activity hasn’t changed markedly, so it’s probably just routine snooping.”
    “Get some people on all those incidents,” Egelt said. “Maybe they’re just going through the motions over there—but if they happen to find something that gives when they push it, they’re going to push even harder and move right on in. We can’t afford for that to happen.”
    Hussav entered a series of notes on his textpad. “Got it.”
    “Anything else?”
    The second-in-command jabbed his stylus at another green dot. “More disaffected mutterings among the landed gentry. Country nobility come to town, for the most part.”
    Egelt frowned. “Analysis doesn’t make it yellow?”
    “No. Consensus is more hurt ego at work than actual grievance—and no real power to act. And the threat’s too diffuse; they don’t like the other fleet-families any more than they like us.”
    “For now, at any rate.” Egelt understood the power of a hurt ego. It had made him head of Internal Security, when his predecessor—denied the outer-family adoption given to his External counterpart—took early retirement in the wake of the great reorganization. “Keep watching them.” He turned his attention to the largest cluster of green dots, in the area around the Court of Two Colors in the downtown entertainment district. “How’s the sus-Dariv situation?”
    “Stable, for the moment,” Hussav said. “But it’ll be interesting to see what kind of policy changes come out of the big meeting.”
    “I assume we’ve got people on the inside taking notes.”
    Hussav nodded. “Right. We’ve been working them up through the ranks for a while now.”
    “Good,” said Egelt. “Keep me posted—the sus-Dariv may not be pushing us at the moment, but they’ve got enough money and resources to become a real problem if they ever change their minds.”
     
     
    Arekhon and Maraganha found Ty at the Cazdel Guildhouse. Locating him hadn’t been difficult; Ty had never made any secret of his whereabouts, and he and Arekhon had kept up a sporadic correspondence over the