The soldiers made their way systematically down the corridor-street, searching every room in every home as they went until they were satisfied that their quarry was nowhere in Hewlak sector, whereupon they moved on to search the next sector of the moon city. Morley gave the word that it was safe to emerge, and Shaun and Matthew dashed out to Clarissa’s home to see if Diana was safe.

     “I’m sorry I left you,” said Shaun as he gave her a bonecrushing hug. “I don’t know what came over me!”

     “It’s just as well you did leave,” replied the cleric as soon as she could breathe again. “There’s no way we could both have hidden, Clarissa was drained to exhaustion just hiding me! I was actually safer without you.” She then burst out laughing at the expression on his face.

     Later, as the Tharians relaxed in their new home, Diana, Lirenna and Jerry sitting on the three living room chairs and the others sitting on the floor, their knees bumping in the middle, they debated what they were going to do next. “We were lucky this time,” said the tiny nome, idly stroking his short, silver beard, “but they’re likely to search the city again. We daren’t hang around here a moment longer than we have to.”

     “Right,” agreed Lirenna. “As well as the danger, we’re dependent on their charity for food and drink and I don’t like that. We’ve got to get out of here as soon as possible.”

     “So we need to steal back the Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing so we can get to the teleportation chamber,” said Shaun. “Maybe we can ambush a group of them on their way to the airlocks.”

     “Or find where they’re kept and just steal them,” suggested Matthew. “They’ll be in the Konnen mansion somewhere.”

     “It’d be suicide to try breaking in there,” protested Thomas. “They all know us by sight. We’d be caught the moment we showed our faces.”

     “Then we’ll just have to make sure they don’t see us,” said Shaun. He turned to Diana. “That trick you and Clarissa used. Could you do it again?”

     “No,” replied the cleric. “For one thing, she’s a cleaner in the Hewlak mansion, not the Konnen mansion. She’s got no legitimate reason to go there. And anyway, she has to be lying down or standing still to concentrate. She couldn’t walk at the same time. And even if it was possible, I’ve put her and her family in enough danger already. I’m not putting them in any more.”

     The soldier nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe Lenny can enchant a guard and get him to steal them back for us.” He looked at Lirenna hopefully.

     “I think that may be our only chance,” agreed the demi shae. “It’s still risky, though. This’ll be the fourth time I’ve enchanted a Konnen guard. They’ll be wising up to it by now.”

     “Not necessarily. They don’t know you enchanted Duncan...” Pain and guilt flashed momentarily across Lirenna’s face, “...and they don’t know for certain why Parkus helped us steal our spellbooks back."

     "Don't forget that man in the spindle shaped cave," said Lirenna. "One moment he was trying to rape me, the next he attacks one of his former friends. Three Konnens got away and came back here. What if they saw me casting the spell, reported it to their superiors?"

     "They were all too busy fighting the rest of us," pointed out the cleric. "They weren't paying any attention to you."

     "This is Lenny we’re talking about," Thomas reminded her. "No living man could have helped looking at her."

     "Maybe not," said Shaun, though. "From what I've heard, the guards pretty much have the pick of the women here. They can help themselves to anyone who takes their fancy. The sight of a pretty girl may not mean as much to them as it does to us. I certainly didn't notice any of them staring at Lenny. When the fighting was over, yes, then they probably would have, but I don't think a pretty girl's such a novelty to them that they'd allow their attentions to be distracted in the middle of a battle."

     "We won't know for sure until she tries to enchant someone," said Matthew. "We can lure one of them away from his friends, get him alone with Lenny while the rest of us keep watch nearby, ready to jump in if she gets into trouble."

     "That's a hell of a chance to take with Lenny's life!" protested Thomas.

     "Her life won't be in any danger," replied Shaun. "We'll make sure of that. The worst that can happen is that we have a dead guard to dispose of." He looked thoughtful. "To maximise our chances, we ought to enchant more than just one guard. A team of five or six would be better.”

     “Make it eight,” suggested Matthew. “How long would it take for you to enchant eight guards?”

     "Time isn't really the problem," said Lirenna, though. "The problem is that every time I cast the spell, there's a chance it might not work. I might make a mistake casting it, or the subject might manage to fight off the effects. The more men I enchant, the greater the chance for something to go wrong."

     Thomas nodded his agreement. “We’ve only got to come across someone with a bit of shae blood somewhere in his ancestry,” he said. “And even with pureblooded humans, the spell doesn’t always work. I hate it every time you have to use that spell! It only has to fail once and you could, could be...”

     He couldn’t say the word, but they all knew what he meant. If the spell failed, she’d be at the mercy of an intensely aroused, uncivilized animal who thought nothing of just taking whatever he wanted. Despite being one of the most powerful, most useful spells a young wizard could have, most wizards just didn’t think it was worth the risk, which was why it was so infrequently used by wizards in general.

     They discussed several other possible plans of attack, each of which had fatal drawbacks and weaknesses that led to it being dismissed fairly quickly. The only alternative plan they came close to seriously considering was to just leave the key where the soldiers would find it. They would lie low while the Konnens opened the teleportation cubicle and then hide among the other citizens as they were led back to Tharia. They eventually dismissed this plan as well, though, for the same reason Lord Basil had dismissed the very similar plan of just letting the Tharians go back to Tharia. The first people passing through the teleportation cubicle could prevent anyone from following by locking the door again and taking the key with them, or even by just leaving the door open at the receiving end, the equivalent to leaving an old style phone off the hook. They didn’t want to believe that even Lord Basil was ruthless enough to lock the rest of his people in the moon city for the rest of time while he took his family and the city’s wealth back to Tharia, but they didn’t want to take the chance.

     “So we’re back to enchanting the guards again,” said Lirenna with a sigh of resignation. “I’m willing to take the risk if it’s our only chance.”

     “I still don’t like it,” said Thomas.

     “Neither do I,” said Shaun impatiently. “Neither do any of us. But it’s either that or go on hiding here until they find us. They will find us, you know, and when they do they’ll kill us. All of us. Don’t have any illusions about being too useful to them.”

     “I know,” agreed Thomas, still unhappy. “All right. If Lenny’s willing, I’ll go along with it, but I want to be there every time she uses the spell, close enough to help if things go wrong.”

     “Of course,” agreed Shaun. “We’ll all be there. We’re not going to take any chances with our team’s most beautiful member.” He grinned at her, and the demi shae smiled shyly back, dropping her eyes modestly.

     They didn’t put the plan into effect immediately, though. First they wanted to spend a few days familiarising themselves with the daily routines of the guards and the other citizens around them, so that they would know how best to use their enchanted guards once they had them. They were very careful to look as normal as possible whenever they went out into the city. Lirenna had to make sure that her characteristically pointed shayen ears were hidden under her hair, and that she wore plenty of face powder all over the exposed parts of her body to hide the clear, healthy lustre of her skin, far surpassing that of any merely human woman.

     Poor Jerry couldn’t go out at all, though, being so obviously different from everyone else in the city. He’d attract attention the moment he poked his bulbous red nose out the door, and it was a source of constant astonishment to them all that he’d gotten away with the unavoidable walk from Tomsk’s home to their present hideaway. Fortunately, nomes spend most of their lives in shallow underground dwellings and so have no problems with confined spaces and lack of variety in their surroundings, so he accepted the situation with good grace.

     They only dared go out at those times of day when there were no soldiers about and when those people that Tomsk had positively identified as informers were busy in their own homes. Even so, it was still a terrible risk, as their descriptions were posted on every street corner and the soldiers had orders to arrest anyone they didn’t recognise. If it hadn’t been for the fact that most of the citizens hated the Nobles and were willing to do anything they could to help those who opposed them, they wouldn’t have remained free for five minutes, but even a citizen who hated the Nobles might still turn them in if they were tempted by the huge reward in food and privileges that had been offered for them.

     While Shaun, Matthew, Thomas and Lirenna were carefully and cautiously exploring the city, going as far as the edge of Konnen sector and venturing back down into the tunnels to reach that part of the city that had, until recently, been controlled by the Traldians, Diana spent some time visiting the sick and injured, those that Tomsk and Clarissa’s family could swear were trustworthy and wouldn’t betray her to the Nobles. Clarissa had done what she could for them, but she was only a girl and her ability to heal the sick was limited, on top of the fact that she could only do so much without giving herself away as a healer. She could only get away with minor acts of healing that she could explain away as first aid, or as an injury not being as bad as the patient had at first thought.

     Diana, however, was already known to be a cleric of Caroli and so was able to use the full range of her holy healing powers, subject only to the condition that the patient’s recovery shouldn’t appear too miraculous in case it attracted unwanted attention from less trustworthy citizens. As the days went by, therefore, she built up a considerable circle of admirers to whom she preached and led in prayer. After an absence of three hundred years, the worship of the Gods came back to the moon city.

     Eventually, however, the time came when they thought they’d learned as much as they could and that it was time to act. Lirenna had advanced in wizardry to the point where she could cast the spell several times a day, but Thomas insisted that she only enchanted two men a day, leaving her enough magic to defend herself in case anything went wrong. She agreed readily to this, being more aware than anyone else the tremendous risk she would be taking, and then they went out to find a soldier.

     The first one would be the most dangerous. Once they had one soldier enchanted, they could use him to lure others into an ambush, but to get that first soldier they’d first have to get him away from his suspicious fellows who might well have been warned by now of the danger posed by the graceful, slender demi shae. She couldn't just flutter her eyelashes at him and get him to take her somewhere private. They had to find a guard who was already on his own, out of sight of any of his fellows, and it was only after some serious head scratching that they finally settled on a plan that might work.

     They remembered how, when the soldiers had been searching the city for them, a group of three or four had entered an apartment, and that while one had remained in the living room the had others spread out to search the other rooms. The movements of these other soldiers had been too unpredictable for them to take advantage of, with them sometimes splitting up to search one room each and sometimes staying together to search one room at a time. In each case, though, there had been a few seconds in which their commander had been alone in the living room, just long enough for Lirenna to enchant him if she was quick and got her timing exactly right.

     "But what if the other soldiers come back before she's finished?" protested Thomas.

     "Then we kill them all and run back to the tunnels, get out of the city," replied Shaun. "Tom, we have to do this. It's the only chance we've got!"

     The wizard stared at Lirenna in agony, but then he nodded. They would give it a try.