Allies by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

"You
said you knew his work . . ." He stopped, apparently embarrassed at
having broken into the zhena's discussion.
    Agent pel'Nara turned her attention to him.
"I do indeed know his work, Zamir Darnill. What is it you wish to
ask?"
    "He had an . . . an aircraft, he called it,"
Hakan said, more slowly now, as if he dreaded the answer his
question might earn, now that he was committed to asking it. "It
wasn't . . . it didn't have a propeller, and there were other
things kind of odd about it. But the oddest thing was that it
lifted straight up. I saw the snow, and there were–"
    "Who's there?" Kem said sharply.
    "I hear nothing," Agent pel'Nara said
soothingly, but Val Con, at least, knew she was lying.
    The watcher was moving, stealthy and almost
silent. Moving toward the threesome on the walkway.
    Almost unbidden, Val Con found himself
falling back into agent training and called up the decision matrix
he knew as The Loop. Yes, there it was, the question of what an
agent should do in this situation . . . and the probability that
the watcher was going into an attack mode was close to unity.
    Val Con's reaction was just as certain.
Necessity existed.
    Carefully, he bent and slipped the knife out
of his boot, pausing to listen to the watcher's progress. Then,
moving with considerably less noise, he charted an interception
course.
    *
    The zhena's face had gone frighteningly,
familiarly blank, as if she read some inner dialog.
    It seemed to Hakan as if time suddenly
speeded up. He felt a surge of adrenalin.
    There was a crashing, a shout, from the
small dark park beyond them. Zhena Pelnara reacted by reaching out
and grabbing Kem's arm, simultaneously reaching inside her
coat.
    Kem twisted, broke free, and Hakan leapt,
spinning behind the zhena, and his left arm was around her upper
arms, pinning them, while his right hand held the sharp point of
the slick horn zamzorn firmly against her throat.
    The zhena relaxed slightly, as if
recognizing and submitting to peril, and Kem dodged in, snatching
something from the zhena's hand, and dodged back, holding the
odd-shaped object uncertainly.
    "That is not a toy, zhena," Karsin Pelnara
said, her voice perfectly matter-of-fact. "Please have your zamir
release me."
    Hakan saw Kem adjust what she held, as if
determining what it was, how to use it . . . and then she held it,
surely, as if it were a tiny gun.
    "Kem," a familiar voice, slightly breathless
said from the suddenly silent park. "Please be very careful. The
zhena is correct; that thing is not a toy. Hakan–"
    Cory stepped out onto the walk, hair rumpled
and coat torn, the knife he used against the invasion force–or its
twin–in his left hand. It looked quite as it had during the
invasion, too, with its shine mottled with fresh blood.
    "Hakan, I will ask you also to be very
careful. You have not finished your training with that . . ."
    The woman in his grip twisted suddenly, a
move Hakan reacted to with his guardsman training. She redoubled
her efforts, snarled, and bit at his hand holding the the
instrument to her neck. He tried to pull away and the zamzorn
slipped and clattered on the cobbles as it fell. Zhena Pelnara
kicked, as the move required, but he'd moved and she missed, and
spun her attention on Cory, who had dropped into a crouch, knife
ready.
    "Stop!" Kem shouted, and simultaneously
there was a strange coughing sound, followed by the ring of metal
on stone.
    Zhena Pelnara stumbled–and collapsed to the
cobbles at Cory's feet. He knelt down and turned her over, fingers
against her throat a hands-breadth above a small stain on her
blouse front.
    "Did I kill her?" Kem asked, her voice
unnaturally calm.
    "No," Cory said shortly. "It is a . . .
hypnotic . . . a sleep dose. She will rise eventually." He sighed
then and said "The man in the woods, he was not armed with such a
benign device, I think, and is not so lucky."
    "Hakan, we will need something –a rope, a
scarf, to tie her before–"
    Very close, someone cleared