The deference didn’t surprise me. Depending on who was doing the counting, the Filiaelian Assembly was either the biggest or second-biggest of the Twelve Empires, with an overall power, prestige, and influence to match. Individual Fillies, in my admittedly limited experience, didn’t pull rank all that often. But when they did. you could bet that everyone else in the vicinity was ready, willing, and eager to cut them the necessary slack.

But it wasn’t Filiaelian prestige or influence that was suddenly sending shivers up my back, but the fact that the Modhri’s shock front for our most recent operation against him had been a group of these sell-same Fillies.

I looked at Bayta, noting the tightness around her eyes as she watched the procession. Granted, all Fillies looked somewhat alike, as did all Bellidos and all Halkas and all Humans. And I certainly had no reason at the moment to suspect that this group had anything whatsoever to do with the Modhri.

On the other hand, up until a few weeks ago we’d been under the impression that the Modhri hadn’t penetrated Filly society at all. Our main purpose for this trip, in fact, was to take a run out to the Ilat Dumar Covrey system, where those six Modhran-controlled Fillies had come from, to see if we could find out what was going on out there.

The first of the four Fillies reached the door; and just as he started aboard, I saw their Human escort’s shoulders twitch. He paused there, gesturing the rest of the group forward.

And as he did so, he casually turned back around for another look at me.

He held the look no more than half a second before turning back to his charges. But it was more than enough. He had recognized me, and the recognition hadn’t been friendly.

Problem was, I didn’t recognize him.

“Interesting,” Bayta murmured.