Loyalty/Prologue

1,385 BBY

Anzati did not bleed, and so Nevya Khiyali shed no blood as she dug the fingers of one bruised, battered hand into the gravelly stone beneath the surface of Anzat. Her lips were chapped and cracked, her ragged clothes so filthy they might have been any color. When she set her face in the crook of her elbow to pant for a moment, she felt the bones around her sunken eyes.

How far she was beneath Anzat, she could not say—no more than she could guess how long she had been in the Abattoir. A week? A month? Was Darth Alecto still master of the Brotherhood—or even alive? Nevya had endured trying fights in the first and second levels, and her wounds had sapped her concentration and turned the maddening sameness of the third level into a tailspin to the penumbra of insanity. She had been wounded on the fourth level, as she had a century before, but this time she had pressed on, snapping off the arrow shaft and leaving the head embedded in her side. Each step was like a fresh stab, which was among the reasons she was reduced to crawling.

But still she crawled. She had not pleaded, bartered, and argued with Darth Alecto for permission to exercise her centennial privilege only to surrender to the fourth rank for another hundred years. Certainly she had not boldly declared her decision to reenter the Abattoir—a choice that left even seasoned brethren in awe—only to return to the surface in defeat and admit she was no better than Katrijan Naveskatsi.

And to face Darth Alecto in failure…Nevya swallowed and dragged herself another meter.

The green glow of bioluminescent fungi cast shadows in a thousand nooks and crannies of the cavern system, but Nevya had keener senses than sight. Even fatigued, her sharp ears heard every scrabble of dislodged rock and chuff of breath. Breathing in through her mouth and nose at once, she could taste and smell the lives around her—the innumerable creatures that dwelled in the deep places of Anzat. In the…days? weeks?...since she had entered the fifth level, she had avoided some, killed others, and stalked a few in hopes that they were close enough to sentient to have something resembling soup.

But she had only hunted one.

It was near, she knew—the little pteropine reptile that had nipped her ear when she had first descended into the caverns. Of course, she had thought the same the last dozen times she had hunted down and slain one of the wretched things; they smelled the same, flapped their wings the same, made the same cry…for all she knew, some ancient Anzat had unleashed a horde of clones into the Abattoir and left them to funnel the genetic pool over the eons.

Nevya was not the finest hunter in the Order, nor the most skillful tracker, but only her speciously faithful brother Katrijan was her equal, and only Qritzel and Darth Alecto herself outranked her. She had served a century in the Brotherhood, hunted sentient prey across the galaxy longer still; if she could not track one winged reptile, she deserved to die down here.

She crawled another meter and heard a familiar flutter of wings above. She had not driven the creature off its perch, but it was aware of her presence, so she lay down on the stones and rested, keeping her breathing slow and even, closing her eyes so she could listen more carefully. As she waited, she wondered how many times Darth Alecto had stirred too soon and sent her quarry fleeing deeper into the endless recesses of Anzat's underground. Darth Alecto had her Sith skills to guide her, but she was also far more mortal than Nevya or the other brethren, and perhaps prey to the impatience of younger species. Where a Human would grow anxious after an hour or two, the brethren could stalk their prey for weeks, months, even years, if that was required.

Hoping she would not have to spend years here in the Abattoir, Nevya settled down to wait. A faint chittering marked the target's position in her mind, so she strained until she thought she could hear its breathing amidst the thousand ambient sounds around her. She waited until those whispers of breath slowed and she lost them, and the last fluttering of wings subsided, then waited another hour after that.

Then an hour after that. A rock dug into his side where the arrowhead was embedded; she gritted her teeth through the pain.

An hour after that, Nevya slid her hand a centimeter every minute or two, until she palmed a smooth stone. Dust from the ground beneath her irritated her left eye, but she ignored it.

Two and a half hours later, Nevya drew several slow, deep breaths, allowing anything listening to become accustomed to the sound as she prepared herself for action. Then, with a suddenness that sent a stab of pain through the wound in her side, she arched her back to crank herself up to a sitting position as silently as possible and flung the stone upward.

Amid the crack of stone on stone and the shower of chips from the stalactite, Nevya heard the duller thud of compressed flesh, and her chapped lips broke into a smile. When the reptile hit the ground she was already moving, and as it flapped its broken wing and screeched, she seized it by the skull and tore its whole head off. By the light of an obliging fungus, she fished the creature's necklace out of the pool of blood; there, by the neon green light, she made out the shape of the key.

She braced herself for days of trekking back, but she had barely picked her way back into the previous cave, swum a hundred-meter subterranean pool, and hauled herself ashore than she saw light so bright she squinted against it, even around a corner. Letting her eyes adjust and stooping to pick up a sharpened rock without looking away, she crept forward for the better part of half an hour, then lunged around the corner.

There was the door promising descent into the sixth level of the Abattoir, and upon it the lock in which fit the bloodstained key clutched in Nevya's hand. And across the open expanse of cavern, behind an indistinct wall of stone, was the path Nevya had taken down from the fourth.

Her breathing accelerated. Had she gone in circles for the days or more that she had been down here? Was this no more than the nightmarish third level on grand scale—or even a not-so-grand scale? Nevya whirled on the spot, her wide eyes staring into the cave openings to all sides; were there truly caves upon caves there, or had clever architecture or some eldritch power made an endless maze of a cubbyhole smaller than the Temple of Shadows above?

Beyond a section of wall that had opened for her stood the ladder that would deliver her safely back to the surface, and for a moment Nevya was tempted. She had surpassed Katrijan and equaled Qritzel; Qritzel was senior, perhaps, but no brother or sister outranked her now but their master. She could ascend to the surface with no disconnect between her rank in the Brotherhood and her position at Darth Alecto's right hand.

Except…what if a brother or sister—whether a veteran exercising her own centennial privilege, or a raw recruit with atypical talent—passed the sixth level? That was not a feat restricted to the Sith Lords; Azeroth Seji, her disgraced predecessor, had done it on his first try. If Nevya found herself outranked again, she would be right back where she started—worse, for she would have another century to wait before she could delve into the Abattoir yet again. She shuddered; she never wanted to set foot in this nightmarish abomination again.

And eventually, regardless of her Sith powers, Darth Alecto would die. If no Forceful Anzat, no new Vandak, rose to claim the mantle of mastery, the Brotherhood would pass to the most senior of those left, as it had to Azeroth when Vandak fell. Would Nevya be safe if the Brotherhood was not hers?

What would Darth Alecto do?

For all her objection to Nevya reentering the Abattoir, Darth Alecto had expressed faith in her second's abilities, too. Nevya could not be sure what her master would command if she were here. But she knew what Darth Alecto had done when she stood in this place.

Gritting her teeth, pressing the arrowhead back into her side as it threatened to protrude from the wound, Nevya unlocked the gate to the sixth level. As she lowered herself down, she smelled the sulfur stink of gas vents mixed with something else, and, at the very edge of hearing, she heard someone laugh…