"Luke seems to think that, too, which I find staggeringly arrogant." Was that a little fear in Alema's eyes? Sometimes it was interesting to play the madwoman herself. "The galaxy revolves around him, he thinks, but then many men think that way. No, I don't miss my beauty, you fool, because it would have vanished by now anyway. Once I understood that my injuries freed me from worrying about such trivia, I realized I had a task that only I could fulfill." She tightened her grip on the flimsy fabric at Alema's throat. "And that task is close to completion, so if you thwart me in any way, I'll become very focused on you. Do you understand?"

For a moment, Alema lost that oddly demented expression and looked like a normal sane person in fear of her life. Lumiya wasn't sure what she looked like herself at that moment, but it seemed to work.

"We will . . . respect your wishes," Alema said imperiously.

Lumiya decided not to backhand her, but it took an effort. She didn't have time for this nonsense.

"Do yourself a favor," she said, and let Alema's collar slide out of her grasp with a hiss of sheer fabric over her gloves. "Ask yourself what you have against Leia Solo other than the fact that she made you ugly. If there's nothing beyond that, then your quest for Balance is a waste of time."

Alema blinked as if she'd been slapped. Maybe it was the first time anyone had used the word ugly to her. She wasn't; she wasn't anything. In a galaxy of vastly diverse life-forms, Lumiya had ceased to be able to judge appeal, or even want to. It was fascinating how the once beautiful fared so much worse than lesser mortals when age and disfigurement overtook them. It was all illusion. The millions of species in the galaxy couldn't agree on what const.i.tuted beauty anyway.

But Alema looked as if she was thinking it over.

"We still wish to help you achieve your objective."

"Good," said Lumiya. The way Alema used we gnawed away at her patience for some reason. She knew it was a hive-mind remnant of her Joiner days, but it irked her. "Because if hurting Leia is what you want most, letting Jacen get on with what he has to do is going to hurt her most of all."

"Do you want to hurt Leia?"

"She's done nothing to me. I have no feelings either way. There might be something you can do to help me, something you do better than anyone." Appeal to her vanity. It's big enough. "Keep tabs on Jacen for me. Covert observation."

"We will, but can you not locate him anytime you want?"

"Not closely enough." Lumiya didn't have the complete Sith ability to see all the pieces in the game, every element in the battle. That was for a full Sith Master. But she didn't need to let on that she had fewer powers than Alema might think. "I don't have time to log his movements, but for his own safety, I need to know exactly where he is at all times, especially when he leaves Coruscant. Do you think you can do that? It's tedious work, but necessary."

"We can."

"And lose the Conqueror. I'll find you a less conspicuous ship."

"The orange sphere?"

"No." Alema seemed to have taken a fancy to the Sith vessel.

Perhaps it was because she could communicate with it: once Lumiya penetrated the jagged chaos in her mind, there was a sense of isolation in the Twi'lek that made her recoil. "Something more suitable. And cover your tracks when you leave-don't lead anyone back to this asteroid."

"Our expertise is surveillance and a.s.sa.s.sination," Alema said stiffly. "We aren't an amateur."

Lumiya took her through the winding pa.s.sages that honeycombed the asteroid and brought her to the emergency access-even in s.p.a.ce, she thought of it as the backdoor-where a few small ships were standing idle.

Once she'd had a battle fleet, but it was long gone in the Yuuzhan Vong war. Her needs were different now anyway. She needed stealth, not firepower.

"There." She pointed Alema to a decidedly scruffy shuttle, the kind that priority couriers used to ferry urgent consignments between worlds.

It was fifteen meters long, and a third of that was now given over to a hyperdrive and discreet armaments. A courier shuttle needed to be fast and able to defend itself against piracy, but this one had considerably more than the standard specifications. Lumiya waited for Alema to complain about it.

"We won't be noticed in this," the Twi'lek said, appearing satisfied.

"You can change the identification transponder and the livery panel to any of a hundred courier companies." That configuration was actually standard, but Lumiya had added a few bogus and untraceable companies for good measure. "It's not luxurious, but it does the job."

Alema lifted the hatch. It sprung away from the casing to form an awning. She peered inside.

"She took everything from us." Her voice was m.u.f.fled by the hatchway. Then she pulled out again. "We're alone. She's made us solitary."

Oh, give me strength, she's rambling again. "Who did?"

"Leia Solo. She took our lekku, and so we can't communicate fully with others. She caused the destruction of our nest, too. And she took what attracted others to us, our beauty." Alema had been thinking, then: she'd chewed over Lumiya's challenge and worked out what really drove her. "We're lonely, and we can never touch the world properly again."

Lumiya had been trained never to drop her guard, and pity wasn't something she was accustomed to feeling. She didn't quite feel pity for Alema, but she did get a sudden and painful glimpse of her loss, and it must have been a particularly agonizing one for a Twi'lek; without both lekku intact, she would have difficulty communicating with others of her kind, feeling pleasure-even loving someone. The head-tails were part of her nervous system. And how much more in need of intimacy was she now, after becoming part of a close-knit Killik nest?

Alema did have her reasons for wanting retribution, then. Lumiya was careful not to let that brief flood of pity start her thinking about what normality she, too, had lost.

"I'm sorry," Lumiya said, and meant it. "Now use that to remain focused, and to bide your time."

Alema looked at the courier shuttle and seemed to be somewhere else entirely. Then she gazed down at the deck of the hangar and began swaying a little as if listening to music. She raised one arm-the other hung limp, paralyzed by Luke Skywalker's lightsaber-and seemed to be going through the motions of a dance, turning slowly and with difficulty on her crippled foot.

For a moment Lumiya thought it was one of her affectations. Then she realized that it was quite genuine: Alema was remembering her past, and what she could no longer do.

"We were a dancer," she said wistfully, but she was talking to herself. "We loved to dance."

Lumiya tried to think of all the things she had once loved to do, in the days before she entered Imperial service, and remembered none of them. "Get a move on, dancer," she said. "You can start by tracking the Anakin Solo."

The past didn't matter, any of it. There was only the future.

SANVIA VITAJUICE BAR, CORUSCANT.

Mara swirled the sediment of groundapple and dewflower juice around her gla.s.s and drank reluctantly as Kyp Durron watched. He clearly had something to say that he didn't want to bring up in the Jedi Council Chamber-or in front of Luke.

And Ben still hadn't called in. The Anakin Solo had arrived back at Coruscant two days earlier and there was no sign of Ben. Somehow she'd hoped he would have made his way to Jacen even if he wasn't feeling communicative. Just feeling that he was alive and unharmed wasn't enough.

He was her little boy. She didn't care how many Centerpoints he could take out. This was her kid, and she couldn't stand it. Sometimes, when she looked at their lives through the eyes of a normal mother for a brief moment, she was horrified.

"If I didn't know better," Kyp said, "I'd think you were avoiding me. The whole Jedi Council, in fact."

"Just busy. But you called me here for a reason, and it wasn't to boost my antioxidant levels."

"Well, maybe I'm just observant, but we have an out-of-control Jedi on the loose. Maybe the Council can help you with that. Y'know, combined efforts of the most experienced Jedi in the galaxy?"

"What if I say Luke and I can handle it on our own?"

"Oh, family business . . ."

"That. And the fact that not all the Council is on the same side, so we don't want to open a rift," Mara said.

"Been there-"

"-done that. Put yourself in Corran's position. Would you feel comfortable helping the chief of the GA's bullyboy police after what he's been doing to Corellians and even his own parents? Better we clear up our own family mess."

"I'm surprised that Luke's tolerated Jacen this long," Kyp commented. "I wasn't entirely joking when I said we should make Jacen a Master. People tend to stop throwing rocks when they're inside the tent."

"I think now might not be the best time."

"Is Luke embarra.s.sed he's got problems within his own family?"

Mara almost blurted out that she'd stopped Luke from acting more than once and now she bitterly regretted it, but that wasn't wholly true.

"If I tell you that I've identified the root cause and I'm going to deal with it, will you back off?"

"I note the p.r.o.noun."

"Luke knows what I'm doing."

"Which is?"

"I'm going to kill Lumiya."

"That removes the threat to Ben, but how does it deal with Jacen?"

"She's infiltrated the GAG. I don't know who her insiders are, but we have to a.s.sume she can get at Jacen, too. She might even influence him. She's got to go."

"What took you so long? The old cyborg must be running low on lube oil by now. You could take her anytime."

"Luke tends to favor taking people alive and trying to talk them around." She couldn't bring herself to tell Kyp that Luke had had a civilized chat with Lumiya on the resort satellite. Touched her-even when she had her lightwhip in the other hand. He said her intentions felt peaceful. What was he thinking? "But she's not so decrepit, believe me. I won't have an easy time of it."

"I'll help you if you want backup."

"I don't think I'll need it, but thanks." Mara couldn't avoid the next question. "What are the rest of the Council members saying?"

"That you need to get a grip on this. We talk, you know."

"So we have a Jedi Council with the Skywalkers, and a shadow Council meeting without them . . . sounds like a fault line's forming."

"Well, you decided to go whack a Sith without consulting us . . ."

Mara tried to see the double standard, spotted it easily, and ignored it. "If I'd stood up in Council and said, Hey, this lunatic is threatening my kid and keeps coming after my husband, so Pm going to take her head off-you really think the other members would have nodded politely and voted on it? There are folks who think like Luke does, that the Council doesn't condone a.s.sa.s.sinations, and that would make that fault line into a big rift faster than a greased Podracer."

Kyp inspected the depths of his juice. He'd ordered something thick and opaquely orange that he didn't seem to be enjoying. "So you're saving us from the moral dilemma."

"If that's the way you want to see it."

The vitajuice bar was quiet and smelled unappetizingly of wet raw greenery like a flower shop. Maybe that was why it was so quiet; it made it a good place to meet. n.o.body knew them here. Most of the customers seemed to be Ementes, probably because they could guarantee getting totally fruit-based nourishment here, prepared right in front of their six eyes. Ementes weren't big on trust, least of all in Coruscant's catering industry.

How much do I expect everyone to trust me?

Mara struggled with not telling her husband the entire truth while she confided in a friend. That was the problem: they were all friends, the whole Jedi Council. The Galactic Alliance Senate could tear chunks out of itself and not feel it, because it was thousands of rivals and enemies and even strangers, but the Council-they'd grown up together in many cases. They'd fought together. They were family, and not just because they were Jedi.

Cilghal often cited the ancient rule of no attachments, but the Council was one big attachment in its own right.

Mara realized she didn't like dewflower, mused on ways to get around a lightwhip, and then flinched as her comlink chirped. She pulled it from her belt and raised it to see Ben's face.

"Mom, I just landed," he said. "I-"

"Ben? Are you at the military port?"

"No, the civilian one. Galactic City. Look, I'm sorry that-"

"Stay right where you are. Don't move, okay? I'll meet you at Arrivals Seven-B, okay?"

"Mom-"

"No arguing this time. Be there." Mara snapped the comlink closed and grabbed her jacket. "If you're thinking of telling Luke, Kyp, give me a head start."

"Wouldn't dream of getting involved," he said, shrugging. "I'm glad Ben's okay. Just remember that kids like clear limits. He's still too young to set his own."

"Tried that," Mara said, and strode for the doors. "And he set his own just fine."

She worked her way through the crowds at the s.p.a.ceport, sensing Ben's location. There were black-suited GAG personnel operating openly now, on foot patrol in the arrivals hall with blue-uniformed CSF officers. They were pretty conspicuous for secret police. Jacen was adept at hearts-and-minds operations; he seemed to like to have his deterrents visible. It certainly seemed to rea.s.sure the public, despite the black visors that gave the GAG troopers the facelessly dispa.s.sionate air of battle droids.

And suddenly there was Ben, sitting on the white marble pedestal of the ten-meter abstract statue of Prosperity that formed one of the supports for the central dome of the roof of the arrivals hall.

Prosperity, Progress, Culture, and Peace.

Peace. Fat chance.

Ben looked like any other fourteen-year-old kid, drumming his heels idly against the marble, staring intently at his datapad and keying in something one-handed. A GAG trooper pa.s.sed him. Ben looked up, nodded in acknowledgment, and got a respectful nod back.

If Mara needed a reminder that Ben was anything but a normal teenager, that was it. He was a junior lieutenant. He commanded troopers like that. Her son helped run the secret police.

But she'd learned the most silent and efficient ways to kill the Emperor's enemies by Ben's age, and Luke had been just five years older when he joined the Rebellion.

What did we expect to give birth to, a librarian?

"Hi, Mom." Ben slid the datapad into his jacket pocket. He had that tight-lipped look that went with bracing for a dressing-down. "You're mad at me, right?"

Mara paused, wanting at the same time to yell at him for terrifying her and to grab him in a ferocious hug. She settled for swallowing both reactions and ruffling his hair. He'd never live it down back at the barracks otherwise.

"You couldn't call us?" she said. "You couldn't even tell Jacen where you were?"

Ben frowned slightly. "I'm sorry. I was on a mission and I didn't want to give away my location."

"We can talk about it later. Let's have lunch." She gestured toward the exit. "It's okay. Your dad will be happy just to see you back safe.

No yelling. I promise."

Ben slid off the pedestal in uncharacteristic silence, and they walked to the speeder platforms. Mara kept a careful eye on the crowd, not entirely sure if she'd recognize or even sense Lumiya if she was around. Lumiya might even send one of her minions, and she had people within the GAG. The biggest threat might be one of Ben's own troopers.

"What are you frightened of, Mom?" Ben asked.

Mara didn't take her eyes off the crowds around them. She scanned constantly, as she had been trained to do. "Okay, you might as well know.