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futile attempt to hold back the tears that had already begun to stream down her cheeks. If someone had asked, she probably couldn’t have even explained why she was crying, whether it was for her father, or the collapse of the only system she had ever known, or simply because she was so very, very tired.
    Once the fit of weeping had passed, though, a deeper chill took hold of her. All this time she had feared the outsiders who might converge on Mast’s compound at any moment—and all the while she had been harboring a man who could prove to be a greater danger than any of them.

IV

    In her dreams Miala heard an insistent shrilling that went on and on, a sound that could not be ignored, even though she only wanted to sleep for at least a hundred years. With a gasp she sat up in bed, clasping the side of the cot on which she lay in an attempt to orient herself. The room was dark, except for a light fixture she had left burning at quarter-power in the dressing area, but it took only a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Nothing seemed any different from the time she had put herself to bed—had it been hours or only minutes ago? Then she realized the screaming sound had not originated in her dreams but had actually interrupted them—it was the siren for Mast’s perimeter security system. That could mean only one thing.
    Cursing, she pushed the covers away and bolted for the door, tripping over the sandals she had left on the floor next to her bed. She paused just long enough to gather them up and half-skip, half-run as she slid her feet into first one, then the other, even as she pounded down the hallway to the staircase that led to the ground floor of the compound. As Miala passed the landing to the second floor, she heard a loud crash from the vicinity of the med unit and looked back, startled, only to see Eryk Thorn stagger out into the hallway, pulling at the bandages on his hands even as he headed toward her with grim determination.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, stopping to let him catch up to her.
    “Is that the perimeter alert?” he asked.
    She scowled at him, provoked that he was out of bed at all, and even more irritated that he had so obviously brushed off her first question. “Yes,” she said shortly. “I can handle it.”
    “You?” he asked, and raised an eyebrow. Before she could reply, he went on, “Are the main defensive controls in the security station?”
    “Yes, but—”
    He didn’t bother to wait. Limping a little, he hurried down the stairs as Miala trailed in his wake, desperately racking her brains for any argument that would be effective at getting him back into bed and finding none. Not for the first time she mentally cursed the monks who had built the place—they had deemed elevators a worldly indulgence, instead building stairs everywhere. Mast had a private lift that went to his suite, but it was locked down, and she’d had better things to do than break the code just to avoid a little exercise.
    At this hour the compound was dark; no one was around, after all, to see that proper illumination was provided. Thorn seemed to have very good night vision— he must have eyes like a Stacian , she thought—but even he accidentally collided with some low-hanging chimes in one doorway, the sound a sweet discordance against the continued shrilling of the siren.
    She wondered how he was able to find his way to the security station so easily. It was not as if he had been a regular inhabitant of the compound, after all, but perhaps it was his practice to familiarize himself with his surroundings wherever he went. Again she thought of his murderous career, and of all the survival skills he would have been forced to develop along the way.
    Light flooded out of the security station into the dark hallway. Miala wasn’t sure whether she had forgotten to shut it down when she had retired for the evening or whether the overhead lighting came on