"You'd better have an explanation for this, or I swear I'll have your head on a Winterfair dish!"

Allegre quirked an eyebrow and waved off a concerned guard. "It's a little premature, Miles. We have a few subordinates to skewer, and then we can bother with the trimmings."

It was a measure of the ImpSec chief's distraction that he did not say 'my Lord Auditor'; Miles clamped up. Don't bother the man. Miles had already spent the last two weeks hovering around Allegre. There wasn't much good an undersized and enraged Imperial Auditor could do, anyway. At least, not in the bowels of ImpSec HQ.

'But under no circumstances is Gregor to inform ImpSec.' So his visitors had warned. Right. It was all ImpSec could do to stem this chaos.

"At least tell me how that woman got in there with weapons, and I'll make myself scarce," said Miles.

Allegre looked up. "How did you know she had weapons?"

"I--- What do you mean, how do I know? She fired that plasma arc, didn't she?"

"No, Miles. The plasma hit her square on. She collapsed, but as far as my doctors can tell, she wasn't burned. Her injuries were somewhat accidental. Broken glass, I believe. She's under heavy guard in the infirmary."

Miles sputtered, "How, how did she---? Allegre, who fired the shot?"

Allegre wet his lips. "I thought you knew. One of our own men. Major Gustav Kapas, twenty-year man. Hand-picked by Illyan."

Whatever you do, do not tell ImpSec about us… "Where is he now?"

"He's dead, sir." A captain, whom Miles recognized from the infirmary, saluted. Allegre sketched a salute and took the flimsy the captain had brought.

"Is this a full medical exam?" asked Allegre.

"Yes, sir."

He skimmed through the file. "All right. Miles, I'm going to call the Emperor. Are you coming?"

Miles shook his head, held rapt by the full-color scans of the corpse. Gouts of blood. And one long ragged cut from ear to ear. The man's head was nearly sawn off. "Tell Gregor I'll report later. As soon as I clear something up."

Allegre nodded. The other officers went on their ways but, alert to Miles's interest in the images, the man from the infirmary stayed. "We removed the knife, my Lord Auditor. It was more repellant when they wheeled him in."

"Why is that?" Miles said, sickly fascinated.

"It was impaled through his throat, as though someone had thrown it from the side. A lucky shot for most people," the captain said, meaning most people in ImpSec. "Kapas must have turned around, it had to be quick if he didn't move aside. But the worst of it was that the assassin put epoxy on the hilt. We couldn't pull it out in time. Then the lab called for it, and we had to pry it out somehow… it was a nasty business, my Lord Auditor. I'm nearly a twenty-year-man myself, and I've never seen anything so barbaric."

"So… you haven't caught this guy? No, I would have seen his name in the detainment area. Do you have a possible physical description, from the trajectory?"

The man was ImpSec to the core. "Oh, about two meters, maybe a little taller. A good eye, certainly."

"Thank you, Captain." The woman's accomplice was just about that height. ImpSec could be crawling with traitors, and my only apparent allies are undoubtedly insane. Great. Miles went off to call Ekaterin to see if she was all right. Then he would visit the brown-haired woman in the cells below.