Star Wars, page 6
Vika said she wanted to go first. Velya grinned with all his teeth and offered to mediate. Their eagerness made them seem almost as young as me.
I removed my staves from the small harness against my back and lowered into a defensive stance.
Vika wrapped her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, then slipped a long knife from a sheath on her thigh. “Not fighting with knives, Marda Ro?”
I bared my teeth at her. “I have all the knives I need.”
Before I finished speaking, I attacked. Vika and Velya both laughed, exhilarated, and Vika blocked my staves quickly, spinning. She slashed with her knife.
I am not especially skilled, but I like practicing. I like the repetition of the movements, the speed and the dance of it. I learned this because I had to. My cousin taught me. I love it because it is good. If I wanted to kill, I would throw down the staves to rend and tear.
Vika disarmed me of one stave, and I flexed my freed razor-sharp nails. I feinted and grabbed her wrist. I squeezed. She twisted her arm and slashed mine open. Dark blood splattered the floor. I slammed my fist into her jaw. She turned with the punch and grabbed my hair. She flung me, and I caught on a knee and leapt back at her with a growl.
Dropping her knife, Vika grappled with me. She caught my arm and pulled it behind me. I threw my weight down and managed to toss her over my shoulder.
She landed with a huff, and I was on top of her, my stave in both hands, pressing her throat.
Vika spat blood. She kicked up, dislodging me. I rolled, and then Velya stood between us. “Enough,” he said. He smiled at me. He looked hungry.
“Not hardly,” Vika said. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and was smiling, too.
My ears rang. I smiled back.
Alirya rushed to me, a cloth in hand. She took my arm and pressed the cloth onto my sluggishly bleeding wound. “Marda,” she breathed.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll take some of that liquor now,” Vika said to Alirya.
Alirya ignored her. She wrapped the cloth around my forearm. It stung, and I liked it. It was so real. I wanted to tell them.
Velya’s dark eyes bored into me, looking for something. “I’m thirsty, too,” he said.
“Alirya,” I said. She raised her eyes to mine. There was such worry in them, and her frown was too deep. With my other hand, I stroked her hair. “I’m well.”
Slowly, Alirya released me. She stood. Without putting her back to us, she went to the decanter.
“Your pet is sweet,” Vika said.
Alirya spilled the pink liquor against the edge of one of the small cups she’d brought.
“Alirya is not a pet,” I said, getting to my feet. “She is a part of my crew, and as important as she makes herself.”
When I said the last, I moved my gaze from Vika to Alirya, who was looking back at me.
I expected something like this. Not this, but—
We—
We make ourselves matter. If we don’t, who else will?
The Evereni remained with me on the Gaze for several days. Vika explored every section of the ship. Velya looked back and forth between us. When the raiders went out, the Faers went with them. They returned with plentiful bounty. They teased me and each other about making offerings to me as my raiders did. “It is the price of eating and sleeping here,” I teased them back.
There was a meal. We ate together, everyone on board—not quite a celebration, but close to it. Everyone had come back to the Gaze safely.
I ate seated on my throne, distanced from the tables and benches dragged in for the occasion. We had a multilayered Corellian opera playing, and one of the members of Fori’s team had baked fresh finger cakes frosted with ground palm sugar. Vika brought a small plate of the cakes and her chair. She set it down beside my throne. “My brother thinks you are beautiful,” she said.
Taking the small cake, I glanced at Velya. I smiled. To Vika I said, “You do not?”
Her black eyes did not waver as she considered her response. As she stared at me, I nibbled at the cake. The palm sugar warmed in my mouth.
I did not notice Alirya approaching behind Vika. Neither did the other Evereni.
Vika grunted softly, her eyes widening. Her lips parted.
“Vika,” Velya growled from his seat at the nearest table.
Behind Vika, Alirya backed away. A dagger in her hand. The blade covered in gray Evereni blood.
Then Vika snapped into action. I barely caught my breath before Vika snatched Alirya up, one hand gripping the wrist with the knife, the other on her neck.
Vika stood to her full height, with Alirya hanging from her hand like she weighed no more than a wet robe. Alirya kicked as Vika lifted her. Then Vika broke her wrist and sank her claws into Alirya’s throat. Alirya cried out, garbled and wet. Vika dropped the body to the floor.
I stared at the red blood. I was standing but with no memory of moving. My skin flushed hot suddenly, and slowly I reached for the throne. I touched the hidden release in the thick arm. The panel slid open.
All around me my raiders yelled and gasped, and Velya reached Vika. He turned his sister to face him, a frown bitter on his face. He touched the dagger wound against her ribs. Her gray-and-red vest barely showed the blood. He was speaking.
Everyone was speaking.
I took the blaster out of the small compartment and flicked it on.
I raised it.
I shot Vika in the chest.
“She was mine,” I whispered.
Vika’s body landed softer than Alirya’s had.
Velya whipped around to stare at me. His breath hissed in and out through his sharp teeth. “What have you—”
I leveled the blaster at him. All I could see was Alirya’s expression when I had said, As important as she makes herself.
And the old uncle telling me not to trust anyone. Everything falls away.
“Alirya wanted to stay at my side,” I explained softly. It felt like speaking through a very long tunnel. I could still taste palm sugar on my tongue. “She saw your sister pushing beside me.”
“Is that how—how it works here?” Velya said through his teeth. His hands were curled to display his razor-edged claws, though he held them at his sides.
“There is space at my side now. For one.”
A darkness spread down from Velya’s ears, a vivid gray flush beneath his skin. Fury. Pain. Desire. I thought it was all those things.
I wonder if I flushed there, too. Do you?
“I’ve been with Vika my whole life,” he murmured.
“Be with me for the rest of your life,” I said. My arm ached from holding out the blaster. I let it fall before it betrayed me by trembling.
Velya looked sharply at me. “That sounds like a threat.”
“Death isn’t what I want from you.”
I reached for him with my other hand, palm up, offering.
Velya took my hand. His skin was cold. He watched me as he crawled his hand up my wrist and grasped me there. I returned the embrace.
He curled his fingers, digging his claws into the soft flesh of my forearm. The pain blossomed in five precise points. My lips parted, and for a moment I thought I could taste the blood in the air.
I dug my own claws into his soft wrist.
Velya hissed. We stood there, our claws forming a closed circuit of pain between us.
Blood dripped to the floor.
Later, it was only the two of us in the throne hall.
The bodies were gone. The raiders, gone.
I asked what Evereni do with our dead.
“Remember the name,” he said. “The body is nothing once it is dead. It is food, or rot, or waste.”
Remember her name. Vika Faer. When we find other Evereni, if we find them, we will tell it to them.
Velya and I sat at one of the tables. We sipped hot tea, wrapped each other’s forearms.
“You aren’t like other Evereni I’ve known,” he said.
I kept my gaze lowered. “How many have you known?”
“Six. Seven now.”
“More than me,” I said. “I’ve only known four. And one of those wouldn’t tell me his name.” I frowned. “Does that mean he didn’t think I mattered?”
“Did he know your name?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps he didn’t think he mattered. He didn’t want his name passed back to us.”
The thought made me sad. “He told me Evereni only meet in death.”
Velya clicked his teeth, amused. “Sometimes we meet in the Rystan system.”
I finished my tea. The holo-torches flickered blue all around us. I studied the lines of Velya Faer’s face, the short dark lashes around his black eyes. I touched the line of his cheek with the pad of my finger, then tilted to prick there with my claw.
It felt tender to me. It was on the tip of my tongue to offer him something—a gift, freely given.
His eyes narrowed. “This. This is what is different.”
I withdrew my hand.
“You are gathering people to you,” he said. “You hunt like a ginntho at the center of a web.”
When I looked up, his eyes were trained past my head. I turned, and there was the red storm planet, the smeared blood and paint against the dark walls. “Is that what it looks like to you?” I asked softly. “A web?”
“What else could it be?”
“The planet at the heart of a storm,” I said.
“A heart, behind the great Marda Ro?”
“A legacy,” I whispered.
Yours.
Jedi Padawan Rooper Nitani hadn’t been able to concentrate all morning.
She tried to tamp down her rising frustration. Her focus was shot, and nothing she did seemed to be helping. She’d spent the morning practicing lightsaber drills, working her muscles until they were sore with overuse, but even the monotonous regime of familiar defensive forms—usually so successful in ironing out any mental fatigue—had failed to jolt her out of the disagreeable mood she’d woken up in that day.
She’d tried taking a walk, tending the plants in the gardens, chatting idly with the other Jedi stationed with her at the temple on Batuu, but try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. It was as if her body was aware of a phenomenon that her mind wasn’t—as if it was anticipating some oncoming threat that she wasn’t yet cognizant of. But the idea seemed outlandish. There was no pressing danger on Batuu. And there was nothing else troubling her mind.
Rooper’s recent missions had proved more than successful. She was diligent in her lightsaber training, and her instincts were sharp and well honed. Her studies into the ancient mythologies of the frontier cultures were a constant source of enlightenment and had helped her on more than one occasion to find common ground and understanding with beings new to the very concept of the Republic. People trusted both her judgment and her ability to get things done. Master Sho had made that more than clear: Rooper was an asset to the Order. A reliable pair of hands.
Why, then, did she feel so unsettled?
She felt that during the past few years, she’d finally begun to grow into herself, becoming more comfortable in her own skin and truly finding her place in the Jedi Order. Life on the frontier suited her well, and she hoped to remain there for many years to come.
Whether it was fighting raiders off the heel of the Stradtofen Cluster, settling an uprising on Banfoden Prime, exploring the ruins of old Force sects deep in the Collus Reach, or serving as a peace delegate with Pathfinders like her old friend Dass Leffbruk, she’d embraced every challenge, every lesson the galaxy could throw at her, and each time she’d fallen, she’d picked herself up again and carried on. She bore the scars, and the teachings, of those hard-won lessons. She had found herself, and in doing so, she had found peace.
With this newfound perspective had come new responsibilities. She’d undertaken several missions of her own while Master Sho had been otherwise engaged, and the responsibility had sat on her shoulders, if not exactly comfortably then at least not uncomfortably. She anticipated the future, and what it would bring, with relish.
Her life had fallen into a steady pattern: a cycle of training and meditation that filled her time between missions, the quiet downtime she’d come to appreciate almost as much as the wild adventures on distant worlds. Where once she had dreamed of nothing but adventure, now she craved peace and mindfulness as much as novelty and excitement.
Not that she’d become boring. Or at least she hoped that wasn’t the case. More that, as she’d come to understand the Jedi Code in ways she’d been unable to grasp as a young Padawan, she’d begun to see the galaxy through different eyes, to appreciate the tranquility in just being.
That day, though, there was no tranquility to be found.
So she’d gone there, to the temple’s meditation chamber, to seek counsel with the Force, to attempt to gain clarity.
It wasn’t working.
Rooper tried to center herself through her breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
She felt her heartbeat slow, her shoulders drop. The ache in her left arm—where she’d bashed it during lightsaber training—dimmed and faded until she was barely aware of it, of anything but her own thoughts. She pushed forward, moving beyond the confines of her body, feeling her way with the Force.
Rooper had always experienced the Force through color, a vast web that stretched across the galaxy, with each living thing a vibrant node of light and life, brilliant and glowing. In this way, she saw Batuu as a melting pot of swirling purples, yellows, greens, and reds, describing her environment through the glow of the animals, plants, and sentient beings that inhabited it.
She reached out, sensing the blossoming light of the other minds in the temple, recognizing some of them from the hue of their glow—Petrish Imglor, the young Barabel who’d recently become a Knight; Evat Seth, the elderly Czerialan Master (and the best lightsaber wielder Rooper had ever known); and Silandra Sho, Rooper’s master.
Rooper pushed beyond the confines of the temple, reaching out farther into the surrounding wilds of Batuu. Here, a flock of skylar-birds; there, a herd of horned stoans. On still, the forests rippled like a sea of wild, swirling blues and pinks. But there was nothing that—
Rooper’s senses snapped back to the meditation chamber, sharp and alert. Her eyes flicked open. She tensed and started to rise from the mat, aware of some imminent threat. . . .
But there was no one there.
Rooper steadied her breathing. She lowered herself again, closing her eyes, pushing away her frustration, seeking peace. Perhaps it was time to seek the counsel of—
Footsteps sounded outside the room.
Rooper opened her eyes. A face appeared in the doorway. “Master Sho.”
“Rooper,” said Silandra, smiling. She was a tall, wiry woman with brown hair, swept back from her face and punctuated by a bright blonde streak. She wore a blue diamond-shaped mark on her forehead, which, she had often told Rooper, served as a constant reminder of her philosophy to protect others and to always be a shield rather than a sword. She was unusual in the Jedi Order in that she took this mantra to its extreme, carrying a large disc-shaped shield strapped to a harness on her back. That day it was conspicuous in its absence. She entered the room, followed closely by a large, hovering, misshapen droid.
“Hi, Peethree,” said Rooper, raising her hand in greeting.
“The pious greet the coming of each new day as an opportunity to better demonstrate their devotion,” replied the droid in its reedy mechanical voice.
Rooper laughed. “Whatever you say.”
Legend had it that P3—or P3-7A, to give him his official designation—had been assembled from salvage by Bonbraks, who had mounted the head of an old Church of the Force protocol droid in a boxlike construction on the hovering cylindrical body of a processional droid. It gave him a somewhat sinister appearance, not helped by the fact that he could express himself only in epithets derived from the old Church of the Force vocabulator—epithets P3-7A wielded with sarcastic abandon.
No one could claim that P3-7A was an elegant droid, but he’d proved a loyal companion on countless missions, and Rooper had come to rely on him as something of a friend. Silandra had brought him back from Jedha a few years earlier, following the horrific battle that had nearly devastated the Holy City and had resulted in the death of the droid’s original owner. Rooper got the sense that Silandra had somehow felt responsible for P3-7A in the aftermath of that terrible loss and had taken the droid under her wing, despite his obvious idiosyncrasies. Just another example of Silandra’s devotion to protecting others—even droids.
“I’m sorry to disturb your meditation,” said Silandra.
Rooper sighed. “You’re not. I was just about to give up and come find you. I’m having trouble maintaining my focus. I just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. “I have this sense that something important is going to happen, but I can’t figure out what it could be. I know you’ve taught me to always trust my instincts, but this time I can’t help but think they’re leading me astray.”
Silandra laughed. “Oh, Rooper. I’m sorry. But you should trust your instincts. This is a good thing.”
Rooper frowned. “What is?”
“That you’re so attuned to what’s going on around you that you’re picking up on other people’s anticipation.”
“Whose anticipation?”
Silandra grinned. “Mine.”
Rooper gave her an inquisitive look.
“Today is an important day. For me and for you.”
“I’m sorry, Master, but you’re going to have to stop speaking in riddles,” said Rooper.
“In haste we lose our way; in patience we find truth,” interjected P3-7A.
“Yes, thank you, Peethree,” chided Silandra. She put a hand on Rooper’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “It’s time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
