can point to."

A feeling of being looked into rather than at. Owajima frowned more deeply. That bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a particularly observant person's reaction to someone who was reading @'s face and body language. That was not a common skill, particularly among Sandemans--though he had to admit it would be as useful a skill for an assassin as it was for a field agent.

In which case, it was possible DarLowrie had obtained more information than Owajima had intended--including that the information had been set up for him to find. And where had DarLowrie learned such a skill? Not on any of the Sandeman worlds, which weren't given to such subtleties. The only places Owajima knew, in fact, that taught more than the most basic such reading were the Kai school here, and the Imperial field agent school on Terra. No Sandeman had ever studied here, and he was aware of only one who had successfully completed field agent training--his predecessor as top agent, Nevan DarLeras, now sworn to the Crown Princess by the totally-binding Sandeman personal-fealty oath.

That left a graduate of one of those two schools as DarLowrie's teacher. An ex-field agent was by far the more likely, if only because there were many more of them, and few Kai-school ninjas left Nippon-Ni. Take that as a working hypothesis, then. In that case, was it likely the agent had taught DarLowrie only face and body reading?

It would be safest, Owajima thought, to operate on the worst-case assumption that DarLowrie had learned most, if not all, of an agent's skills. He would need them, if he had any intention of assassinating Owajima on his home territory and then escaping.

Should he simply eliminate DarLowrie, or would it be better to capture and question him? The second, Owajima decided almost immediately. That would be more difficult, but it might be a good idea to discover the agent reckless enough to teach such skills to anyone able to pay--and discourage . . .

He was going to do it himself. He could and would ask for help from his former colleagues, the Shogun's secret police--but attempted murder of an Imperial officer was an Imperial crime; they didn't have jurisdiction. He could call in assistance, but that was something field agents were, as an occupational characteristic, disinclined to do unless there was no other way to get the job done--which, at this point, was not the case.

Nevan spent the first two days of his flight to Nippon-Ni studying everything the Last Resort's ship-comp had available about that planet. It sounded interesting, and he decided he'd like to visit sometime when he could do so openly; it had been settled by Japanese who wanted to return to the days of the Samurai, without giving up modern conveniences or an industrial base. They even called their Baron the "Shogun", on-planet.

But it also looked like a dangerous place to operate. The Shogun's secret police force was made up of the Kai-school ninjas Owajima was rumored to have been, and it seemed possible he'd been one of them before joining the Corps. If so, he'd undoubtedly use them for backup--which meant going in, Nevan thought, would be like sticking his head in a balik's den. A female balik's, with newborn cubs. One alerted field agent would be bad enough; a police force of agent-equivalents . . . the smart thing would be to call it off, go back to Terra, set up a new identity, and start over. He did know who his quarry was, now; he wouldn't be starting from scratch.

He was reluctant to do that, though. He'd done nothing even the most fanatical secret police could legally arrest him for; it seemed a shame to abandon his mission when he was so close to accomplishing it. Being arrested without cause would be justification for mind-calling his thakur, and he was sure she'd intervene; Owajima had to be the only agent with an entire planetary police force to call on for backup, which made him an unrepresentative opponent. Besides, Nevan admitted, he relished the challenge. He hadn't had the