What remained for Drust Chazhul was to solidify his hold on the position without seeming to do so. What would go furthest toward accomplishing this was the elimination of any serious competition.

It had been easy enough with the old Prime Minister, who suspected nothing. It might prove harder with the two who had lost the position they coveted and were more likely to want to change that.

But there were other fish to fry, so to speak, and his attention at the moment was occupied with something completely unrelated to threats from defeated rivals. They would not be too quick to want to act; neither of them yet suspected the role he had played in eliminating the old Prime Minister and in helping to discredit them. They would find out once they dug deep enough into the web of his machinations, but that would not happen overnight. By the time they knew enough to be worried, it would be too late.

Down the corridors he passed, lost in his private thoughts, to all outward appearances a man beset by the weight of his new responsibilities and given over to addressing the work that must be done. He was on his way to his private chambers—formerly those of the old Prime Minister—his work completed for the day, a good night’s rest the reward that waited.

“Sleep well, Prime Minister,” one fellow member of the Council called to him in passing.

“Well done, today,” said another.

He nodded in response, giving nothing away, no reply offered. He turned down the west wing of the building, a private space now reserved for him alone. Guards flanked the entry and, farther ahead, the doors to his sleeping chamber. They straightened and came to attention as he passed, a response he secretly enjoyed. Puppets pulled erect by invisible strings that he alone wielded. Such fun.

Yet he understood, too, that his power had been bestowed with the sure and comforting knowledge that as a compromise choice for Prime Minister he could be easily removed. The history for such abrupt changes in Federation leadership was lengthy and colorful. No one much worried about it happening again. No one was immune to change, after all.

And so he was already planning how to avoid what had claimed so many before him, intent on being the exception.

He opened the doors to his private chambers and went inside, pausing in the entryway to see if Stoon had arrived yet. He had. Sitting in a chair well back in the shadows by the curtained windows, Stoon’s sharp eyes glittered in the faint light cast by the candles on the fireplace. Drust closed the doors behind him and locked them.

“Been waiting long for me?”

The assassin shrugged. “I don’t mind waiting. I do a lot of it.”