Moments of Truth/Part 15

Zaella followed Narasi with her eyes until she disappeared past a house's wall, feeling a mirror of her own disquiet in her…what? That was really the question, she thought, or at least one of them—what was Narasi to her? A captor, yes—she still had Zaella's lightsaber on her belt—but was that all she was? Zaella told herself she had been gathering intelligence on the two Jedi in her conversations with Narasi since the riverside, but had that prompted her to open up and share stories of her life in turn? Putting Narasi off her guard sprang to mind, but even without speaking the words aloud Zaella heard the lie.

She had no answers, and the questions kept bouncing around inside her skull. She knew she wouldn't get any enlightenment from Narasi's retreating form, but watching her go also had the benefit of not having to look at Tirien.

He picked up the untouched third bowl and sat a few meters away on the hull; Zaella heard the click of his fork's tines on the bowl. "Number Twelve?"

"Yeah." Zaella only appreciated how critical Narasi's presence had been to her confidence by her absence. She had spent the day chipping in to, and eventually dominating, the strategic discussion of siege tactics, but the whole time Narasi had been present—sulky and withdrawn, maybe, but at least physically there. She had been a buffer against Tirien's total attention, most of which was already being spent on analyzing Marekka as a fortress instead of the exposed little target it was. Somehow, Zaella doubted a bowl of Number Twelve was going to divide the Jedi Knight's attention quite as well.

She sat down by the gun turret, wolfing down her own dinner and wishing Narasi would hurry back. She could let them have their Jedi chat, comment whenever she felt like it, withdraw when she didn't, stay unnoticed…

"Narasi thinks well of you," Tirien said.

Zaella froze. She didn't look right away, but she didn't need to; she had learned from a young age what it felt like when people were watching her, and Tirien Kal-Di's gaze weighed heavier on her senses than most. Unable to think of an excuse to leave, she said, "I…yeah. That's…nice, I guess."

Even without looking she could tell that wasn't what he'd been looking for. Eventually that feeling of being observed became too much, her skin crawling at not seeing someone who saw her, and she rotated around to find those cool, calm yellow eyes measuring her. Thinking about what he'd said, Zaella thought she heard an unspoken contrast. "So…?"

"She doesn't just think you're a nice person—in point of fact, usually you aren't," he observed, his expression turning wry. "But she thinks there's something in you that's worth redeeming."

Again that language, like she needed them to swoop in and rescue her, like she was as pitiful and defenseless as the Guudrian primitives. And now the contrast was clearer. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself not to look away from him as she demanded, "And you don't, do you?"

He tilted his head, eyes tightening, but not like she had hit the mark. "No, I do."

Zaella blinked, a little deflated by that, but Tirien added, "But what she hasn't yet realized is that means there's also a part of you that isn't."

Cold seeped through Zaella; he had not raised his voice or even changed his tone, but something was different and darker, and she felt it carving away at her insides. The dozen cares preoccupying him on Guudria had dimmed that harsh light she had felt from him on Circumtore, but now, as he refocused on her, she fought the urge to cower down or cover her face. She searched for a caustic reply—any reply—that wouldn't come.

He took his eyes off her, nodding toward Marekka. "Part of you sees these people suffering and thinks, 'I should stop this'. Another part of you sees the power these Dark Jedi have and thinks 'I could do it better ' .  They're both parts of your soul, Zaella, but only you can decide which part is going to win."

He laid back on the hull without another word, lacing his fingers together over his stomach and closing his eyes, but even as he withdrew into himself, Zaella felt no more free, his words still pinning her to the spot. Narasi had somehow intuited the defection she was considering, and Tirien had thrust into that sudden hole in her armor and pierced her through. She knew she had been wrestling with those two extremes since they had arrived, but hearing him say it aloud threw her mind into disarray.

The dark side made sense. Preserving every life, no matter how unproductive or useless, only weighed the entire galaxy down with sentient mynocks, leeching off a society that would be more efficient without them. But Narasi hadn't been wrong—taken to its extreme, that philosophy would have been the end of Zaella, too. Was she such an adherent that she would die for her beliefs?

Tirien wasn't wrong either—though part of her saw the inefficiencies the Guudrian Jedi had permitted in their cobbled-together kingdom, there was part of her that had felt strangely proud putting them in their place as they tried to bully the Guudrians. She had been proud in the defiance of thinking, ''You think you're going to hurt these people? No, you're not—not unless we allow it. And we're not going to.'' But putting the weak to work for the strong made sense too, because it was the strong who moved and shaped the galaxy. Even the Jedi, for all the love they professed for the poor and pitiful, were the ones ruling the Republic these days, not the Senate they had bent to their will.

The dark side told her that her enjoyment of besting Maia and her minions was nothing to do with the Jedi and their meddlesome do-gooding; it was the natural joy of having power over others. She tried to find something to compare, but her slaves on Ryloth hadn't given her much feeling at all, they had just been…there. Guldroq, now…he had enjoyed having power over others. The notion of being like Lady Hadan's torturer, grunting and mouth-breathing with excitement every time he drew out a scream, made Zaella sick.

The Empire will be better, she told herself…but would it be different? And what about Narasi's question—if she escaped the Jedi, would she look back on them with contempt? Or if the Guudrian Jedi somehow got the best of Tirien, would Zaella take up her blade and turn it on Narasi instead of Maia and her lackeys, striking down the Zygerrian to make her own escape? For all she kept Zaella's lightsaber on her belt, Zaella thought Narasi wouldn't see it coming…if the circumstances were right she could kill Narasi before the Jedi realized the danger from her…her…

Friend?

Zaella sat on the hull long after darkness fell, trapped in her own head, nails digging into the base of her lekku until she gave herself a headache. Narasi returned at some point, but she did not speak, and Zaella didn't speak to her. Even when the moon rose Zaella was still fighting in her head; she saw two different huddled groups of Guudrian sentries making their way around Marekka by lantern-light before she finally laid down. She had slept worse places than atop a freighter on a cool evening, but she tossed and turned for what felt like hours.

Too soon, sunlight on her face woke her. Narasi yawned a few meters away, ruffling her shaggy hair. "Well, at least nobody murdered us in our sleep."

Squinting against the sun, Zaella thought she saw shadows under Tirien's eyes too. "Killing us in our sleep doesn't make as strong a point. They'll want to face us in the light of day until they're certain they can't win that way."

Stretching her neck, Narasi offered, "Maybe they're not coming today."

They came a few hours later, just as the village began to really go about its day. Bras and Jirdo lugged a crate of stones off Bras's swoop, and Maia began to telekinetically fling them at buildings. She managed to break four shutters and a door, and missed by centimeters an ancient Guudrian whose fiery mane had turned gray and black. Then Tirien made it to the square, and every time a projectile went flying, he stopped it in midair with a thought. By the time he had forty-four stones hanging in the air, his face still smooth and cool, the Dark Jedi admitted defeat and turned.

Zaella felt a sudden one-two punch in the Force, and a cascade of airborne rocks pummeled Jirdo and Bras's swoops into twisted lumps of sparking metal. They leapt aside, and Tirien called, "If you ride to us to do harm, you'll walk back where you came from."

Bras snarled and reached for his lightsaber, but the projectiles Tirien hadn't thrown lurched a meter his way at once, and he thought better of it. Once they were gone, Zaella spent the rest of the morning helping Narasi repair the shutters while Tirien recovered from the strain of so much individualized concentration. It was reassuring to know he had limits, even if they were still far beyond hers.

The Dark Jedi were back the next day, this time using the Force in a way Zaella had never encountered—Guudrians lurched like drunks, opened their mouths and groaned like their tongues were rebelling, and plodded in slow motion. A few even fell to hands and knees and vomited, but Tirien stretched out the Force to protect them, and when Narasi put herself between a father and his two younglings, Zaella rolled her eyes, sighed, and reached out to rebuff the sickening energies swirling around a pair of Guudrian girls. She sensed the poison in the Force, but she was better-practiced at the dark side than any of these false Jedi, and she repelled their powers with a mocking grin.

Once they were gone, the Guudrians both bowed to her. Narasi—after she finished getting hugs from the children she had shielded—came over and smirked. "Feels good being the good guy, doesn't it?"

"…shut up."

The third day their only warning was the toll of the village bell. As Tirien and Narasi ran for the square, Zaella leapt onto a house's roof, put a hole in the thatching with her boot, swore, and scrambled onto a more stable viewpoint. She saw ripples moving through a field of crops—fast-moving lines converging on Marekka. She sensed fear in the few Guudrians nearby, and an insentient savagery in whatever was coming.

Glancing down to Tirien and Narasi, she pointed. "There!"

It turned out to be a pack of native Guudrian predators—four-legged, long-snouted, hairless creatures with hooked claws and mouths full of sharp teeth. They were half a meter high at the shoulder, but there were ten of them, and Zaella understood why the Guudrians went running when three of them leapt on an uglavuur ten times their weight and dismembered it in half a minute. Of course, the Jedi insisted on running toward them.

"Give me my lightsaber!" she barked as she joined them.

"You don't need it!" Tirien called back.

"What?!" she shrieked, but he was already gone.

Unarmed, and unable to conjure Force lightning, she was reduced to beating the things down with Force pushes whenever they came for her. She found time to be surprised when they didn't back down; ferocious they might be, but they were too small to be sure of victory once she had already bludgeoned them. She suspected this was the new, subtler form of Guudrian Jedi attack, though she had no idea what Maia and her minions had done to them.

The pack attacked again and again, and Zaella retreated until she almost stumbled over a rake. Snapping the head off, she turned it into a staff and whacked one of the things into unconsciousness with a blow across its temple. Still the others came on, attacking despite the blows and even injuries she dealt them.

Then a weird, wailing howl echoed over the field, and one of the predators that had been charging her slowed to a trot, raising one ear to listen. Others paused around her, and Zaella felt instinctive submission. In the end they aborted their attack and ran—one stopped to nudge the creature Zaella had knocked out back to consciousness—and vanished toward the forest.

"What'd you do this time?" she asked Tirien as he emerged from the field.

"Not a thing," he said. "Only defended myself. This was all Narasi."

Narasi, it turned out, had happened upon the pack's alpha and used the Force to convince it to run away, and where the alpha went, the pack followed. Apart from Narasi punching one of them and knocking out a fang, neither of them had done any real damage either. Zaella thought it a bit much when Tirien made her fix the rake she had broken, but Narasi helped her smooth the splintered end and reattach the head, and the farmer smiled when she handed it back to him. The Guudrians whose roof she had ruined thanked her as well after she finished re-thatching it.

"Think they'll happen upon any Force powers you haven't seen?" Zaella asked that night over dinner—in Huttese, considering the people with the newly-repaired roof had begged for the honor of hosting the Jedi, and Tirien had thought it discourteous to refuse.

Narasi, who was spooning herself a third helping of stuffed peppers, looked at Tirien, who shrugged. "The dark side's nothing if not inventive, and they seem to have breadth in their powers. Fortunately for us, they lack depth."

But he looked out the window as he spoke, and even Zaella knew him well enough to recognize the tightness in his eyes as he harbored worries of his own.

The fourth day was different. The fourth day, the queen brought her army.

"You wondered where the collaborators were," Narasi remarked to Tirien.

"I suppose I have my answer," he admitted, never looking away.

Maia rode her speeder at the head of half a hundred Guudrians, most of them male and all of them young and fit, each carrying a poleaxe with a blade as big as his head and many of them wearing hand axes through their belts, too. Bras marched beside Maia, while Jirdo trailed to one side of the formation, making strange gestures and chanting in a language Zaella couldn't make out.

Only Boss Mukka and Jebba had come with the Jedi and Zaella to meet Maia's army, Jebba's face impassive, Mukka's the resigned expression of a convict setting out into the Bright Side; Tirien had refused to risk baiting a battle with an equal opposing force, even if enough volunteers could be found. A few of the hardier farmers and men brimming with good intentions and impulsive stupidity lurked at the edges of Marekka anyway, which was perhaps why Tirien had advanced to meet Maia a hundred meters out from the village rather than relying on the cover of buildings.

"Lightsaber?" Zaella sighed without much hope.

"Not yet." Tirien showed her a placating palm, then used the Force to amplify his voice so it rang out over the crop fields. "Good morning, Maia. I see you've brought friends."

She stopped her speeder, and her army stopped with her. Several of them glowered; Zaella could sense they did not like their queen being referred to by name. Jirdo called from the side, "This is Queen Maia's personal guard, here to liberate Marekka from the grip of your heresy and punish those responsible for the village's rebellion."

"TRAITORS!" someone in the Guudrian ranks bellowed, and several others took up the cry. Maia let it go instead of raising a hand to quiet them, and Zaella felt the anger building and feeding the dark side, although in a way that would empower Maia, not her. She tried to psych herself up with anger in turn, longing for Tirien to unleash her on Jirdo, imagining the pleasure of wiping the superior look off his face—or just wiping his face off his skull.

"Easy, Zaella," Tirien breathed, then raised his hands and flicked his fingers outward. Zaella wasn't sure what he did, but quiet spread over the ranks as if he had struck them dumb. Once enough of them had fallen silent, he called, "I'm Tirien Kal-Di, Jedi Knight; this is my Padawan Narasi Rican, and our companion Zaella Sabir. I don't know what Maia has told you to bring you to this pass, but we are Jedi."

"It's true, brothers!" Jebba had to yell to equal Tirien's volume. "They are true Jedi with true hearts. I am Jebba the Force's son, and I testify—"

"Have you no shame, Jebba?!" Jirdo barked. "Bad enough that you give shelter and comfort to our enemies, now you try to cloak them in the Force's robes? After all we have sacrificed to teach and protect you, after all the Force has given you, you embrace the first heresy that comes calling?"

Jebba took a deep breath. "It isn't heresy, Master. They truly—"

"'Master'? You praise me with your mouth, but your heart is far from the truth, Jebba disowned by the Force."

A gasp ran through the army, and Jebba staggered back; he might have fallen if Narasi hadn't caught the collar of his robe and held him up. Tirien looked at Jebba, then back, and even in profile his expression was frightening; the only other time Zaella had seen him look like that, he had slaughtered Runganna's Gank guards and blown off the back of Izkara's head.

"You have no authority to raise up Guudrians to some special favor or cast them from the Force's embrace, Jirdo," Tirien said, and the Guudrian soldiers who weren't busy gasping or stamping in agitation shivered. "You're a Jedi without Knighthood, a priest without consecration, and a charlatan without principles. You're nothing but a pitiful clown performing in Maia's circus, and your act is about to end."

Many of the soldiers gave outraged cries, but they looked at Jirdo for guidance, which was very unfortunate for him, because that was the moment his veneer of authority crumbled and left him diminished and fumbling for words he couldn't seem to get out. Zaella sensed unpleasant surprise in the ranks and grinned. "That was awesome. Now, if I kill him, it'll really sell the—"

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," Tirien said, "but no."

He glanced at her and gave her a thin smile, though, and Zaella returned it; by the time she realized what had happened, he was facing Maia again. She blinked, disconcerted; it took her a moment to refocus, and she saw Maia had called a Guudrian soldier forward.

"Marekka can't be part of treason!" he yelled. "Stop this, Mother!"

Mother? Zaella thought, but Boss Mukka, who had said nothing since Narasi had fetched her, strangled a sob in her throat. At once Zaella understood her air of doom, and why Jebba more than Mukka had been Tirien's counselor in Marekka.

"Barka my…my son…goom raath…." She held out her trembling hands and spoke on in halting Guudrian for a moment. Barka's replies were sharper and terse, and more than once he cut his mother off when she tried to speak. Jebba had steadied himself enough to walk over to Mukka to support her with his presence, but she seemed to have eyes only for her son.

Zaella couldn't follow a word of it, so she resorted to watching Tirien and, when he showed no emotion, Maia. Even from a considerable distance, she could sharpen her sight enough to see the stress lines on Maia's usually-smooth lilac forehead. Zaella thought it was annoyance at not comprehending the exchange until Maia snapped a question in Guudrian; as she and Barka spoke back and forth, Zaella tried to form a new hypothesis on the fly. She kept watching when Barka turned back to argue with his mother, and she saw Maia's eyes tighten. The Jedi queen had shown increasing frustration each day as Tirien thwarted her efforts, but today was different; this looked more like…tension.

Boss Mukka tried to speak, but Barka cut her off and yelled something in Guudrian, which the other soldiers repeated, pounding the butts of their poleaxes into the ground. Maia grimaced, but before she could speak, Bras stepped forward and bellowed, "Even with your own son against you, you'll still stand against your queen, Mukka?!"

Mukka looked up at Tirien, her face wretched with agony. "Please, Master Tirien…"

Tirien considered a moment, then shook his head. "I don't ask you to oppose your son, Boss Mukka. You must lead your village as you think is right.  But Maia and these other pretenders are wrong, and I think you know that.  If you choose them I won't stop you, but you'll be choosing an easy wrong over a hard right."

She clasped her face in both hands, and Jebba leaned in to whisper to her, but Bras roared, "MUKKA!"

She jumped and turned back to him. "I…we…First Knight Bras, we only want peace! You're Jedi, and they're Jedi…can't you—"

"You had the chance to be loyal, Mukka," Bras said. Maia said something too faint to hear, but Bras turned and hissed something back. She recoiled, eyes narrowed, as Bras turned and said, "Let this be a lesson to all of you. You choose the queen, or you choose death!"

And he drew his lightsaber, leapt forward, and brought it down on Barka.

Mukka screamed and several soldiers cried out, but Tirien thrust out both hands and, as the Force surged forward, Bras's dark blue blade came to a halt centimeters from Barka's skull. The blow would have fallen before Barka ever realized it was coming; when he turned and found himself face-to-face with a lightsaber blade, he gasped and tripped over his feet, sprawling on the dusty lane. Bras's blade twitched after him even as Maia yelled for him to stop, and Zaella saw Tirien's hands shaking with the strain of whatever he was doing.

"Help!" he grunted.

Zaella had to check her impulse to blast Bras with a Force push; she didn't want to interfere with Tirien's powers and wind up getting Barka split in half. In that second of adaptation, Narasi used her telekinesis to wrench the poleaxe out of Barka's hands and point it toward Bras. Such immediate danger drove him to break Tirien's grip, but he dropped his lightsaber to catch the weapon by the haft below the blade. Zaella reached out a hand and dragged Barka toward their party, bumping and banging along the road in a cloud of dust until he came to rest at her feet.

He stared up at her, checkered eyes wide, and she grabbed him by the collar and jerked him upright. "Still feeling loyal?"

"I-I…"

A snap-hiss within meters tore her attention away, but Zaella still saw only a flash of green before Tirien returned his curved lightsaber hilt to his belt. A dull thump-thump drew her eyes to the ground; the split halves of Bras's lightsaber lay at Tirien's feet.

Bras and Maia were snarling at each other, and the Guudrian ranks broke discipline as their soldiers put distance between themselves and their quarreling leaders. Bras took a step toward Maia, then another, until she laid her hand on her lightsaber hilt. Zaella saw the hard set of Maia's jaw and the fury in Bras's eyes; she glanced to the side and noticed Jirdo watching the conflict unfold with as much trepidation as any of the Guudrian soldiers. Maia's unspoken threat brought Bras up short, but Zaella saw the signal fire of his rage in the Force.

Tirien was still breathing hard, but he took a step forward, and Maia looked from Bras to him. "Tirien, you—"

"Enough," he cut her off. Bras stopped glaring at her to fixate on Tirien as well. "I have given the three of you every mercy I could, despite your pettiness and cruelty; believe me when I say I have been holding back. Every life has value, even yours, and I don't kill without need.  But if you've reached the point of murder, then my mercy is at an end."

He coiled the fingers of his sword hand around the curve of his lightsaber hilt, and Zaella sensed the light in him brightening. She wondered idly what the Jedi equivalent was of Sith focusing on fear and rage to pump themselves up. If there was no emotion, how did you focus on nothing? I should ask Narasi…

"I did not command that," Maia said, giving Bras's back a dirty look.

"Are you the queen or not?" Tirien demanded.

"Yes," she said. Gritting her teeth, she added, "And my servants would do well to remember it."

Bras turned to look at her again, and Maia glowered at him. Zaella almost thought they were going to fight and solve the problem—surely Jirdo would be no threat alone—but before Bras could act, Maia kicked up her swoop's engines and whirled in a half-circle. "With me!"

She set off down the path; her soldiers followed in twos and threes. A few looked toward Mukka and Barka like they were considering desertion, but Bras thundered at them to get moving, and they scrambled in Maia's wake. Seeming to realize he was on the border of being left alone with Bras, Jirdo jogged off as well. When Bras was alone, he turned and gave Tirien the most hateful look Zaella had ever seen.

"Sleep with one eye open, Jedi," he spat. "You'll get yours, and sooner than you think."

Tirien said nothing, and after a second Bras turned and stormed away. Crouching at Tirien's feet, Narasi picked up the emitter half of the Chagrian's lightsaber. "I bet I could still hit him from here, Master…"

"How about we assume you could and call it good?"

Zaella laughed, and Narasi grumbled, but dropped the lightsaber half. Nodding, Tirien gave Bras's back a final look, then turned to Mukka, who was sobbing into Barka's shoulder as she embraced him. He made no move to comfort her, but he seemed more shell-shocked than standoffish. Jebba stood to one side, watching Bras as well as he wrung his hands.

"Jebba, could I prevail on you to take Boss Mukka and Barka back to the Big House?" Tirien asked.

"Of course, Master," Jebba said, and ushered the two along.

Tirien gave them a headstart, then took Narasi and Zaella back to the Second Chance the long way, around the village. As they walked he said, "You both did well."

"Thanks, Master," Narasi said.

Still learning to maneuver around praise that might or might not hide a trap, Zaella went with a tentative, "Thanks…"

Tirien sighed, drumming his lightsaber hilt with his thumb. "This is getting dangerous."

"Getting dangerous?" Zaella repeated. "Maybe those of us who had our lightsabers yesterday just thought it was a frolic in the fields—"

"Once they fold, Jirdo will collapse," Tirien pressed on, ignoring her. Tchin twitched, but Zaella let him have the moment. "He almost collapsed today with dozens of cohorts. Maia…she could go either way, I think.  But Bras…"

Narasi nodded. "We're gonna have to kill him."

Zaella waited for the denial, the automatic assurance that preserving life was always the right choice—the Jedi way. But though Tirien's face hardened, he nodded back. "I think so. He'll never submit willingly, and he's too dangerous to be taken alive."

"Well, that's a relief…" Zaella blinked. "Wait, was I not too dangerous to be taken alive?"

"No."

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!"

Tirien stopped and fixed her with that look that made her feel transparent—the one that made Zaella cringe against an impending blow. The Jedi's voice was cool, but soft. "It means you killed because you felt it was necessary, but Bras is willing to kill, even throw away the lives of his own followers, to make a point and rule through fear. You're a person who's done evil things; Bras is an evil person."

"I…oh. Uh…"  Tirien started walking again, sparing her the need to fumble on for an answer, but Narasi gave her a smile behind his back.

"That's a good thing," she whispered.

"Wait, so Jedi think evil's bad?" Zaella retorted. "No wonder I've been so confused this whole time."

Narasi smirked and stuck out her tongue, and Zaella laughed despite herself before they both jogged to catch up with Tirien.

After some meditation—of course, Zaella thought—they ventured back into the village and joined Boss Mukka and her family for lunch. Barka had composed himself, though he said little and didn't want to discuss Maia and her plans. Boss Mukka and her husband both thanked Tirien, Narasi, and Zaella for their roles in saving their son. Though she would never have said it aloud, Zaella had to admit being the 'good guy' did feel good, in its way. She wondered—just to consider all the options, she told herself; defecting might be too hard—if she could keep using the dark side for Jedi goals.

Once lunch had settled, Tirien surprised Narasi and Zaella by inviting them to spar. They had only fought for a few minutes in the shadow of the Second Chance, Tirien watching from the hull, when he called a halt, produced a third stick he had obtained, and descended to ground level to spar as well, tackling first Narasi, then Zaella, then both of them at once.

Fighting the Jedi Knight was a new and disturbing experience; no amount of watching him with Narasi had prepared Zaella. He never hurt her—indeed, his movements were so small that half the time he didn't even seem to be moving—and yet her stick kept flying out of her hands in strange and unexpected directions. As often, a rush of air beside one of her lekku made her shiver, and Tirien would retract to a neutral stance that spoke volumes: That brush of air could've been cutting your throat if I wanted it to. Izkara had been better than Zaella too, and more than once since Circumtore she had wondered how a straight fight would've gone between them, but now she knew Tirien would have annihilated Izkara.

Even as a team she and Narasi fared little better; the only change was that Tirien stepped up his pace and came at them more from the sides so he could fight one at a time rather than both together. When he did stand and fight them two-on-one, though, Zaella sensed he was just testing himself—adding in a challenge to make it more interesting for him. For all the bruises she and Narasi had given each other over the past weeks, Tirien disarmed them or stopped lunges just short of their chests without making contact.

There was a strange sort of camaraderie in fighting alongside Narasi again—for the first time since Ghrond's death. It felt more natural now.

When Tirien finally bowed, Zaella leaned against the Second Chance, panting, and Narasi plopped right down on the dirt, wiping off the sweat glistening in the buzzed widow's peak on her forehead. "I think you…made your…point, Master…"

Tirien smiled; he was breathing deeply, but not with difficulty, and Zaella shook her head. "What the hell? You look like you could go ten more rounds now, but with Bras…"

She trailed off as his smile faded. "Flesh isn't like metal, or even energy. All living flesh is connected to the Force, and it has a will of its own.  Manipulating someone else's body directly is difficult, especially when the other person is a Force user.  That's why they had so much difficulty choking any of us.  But by the same token, I couldn't hold him forever."

Zaella said nothing in reply, but she reflected on her audience with Lady Hadan before Circumtore—how the Dark Lord had arched her back and strained her spine as Zaella fought against her. Lady Hadan had not seemed to find it as difficult as Tirien had against Bras; was she better practiced at it, or was this an area where the dark side was indisputably stronger?

When evening rolled around and they had eaten, all three of them were sitting on the Second Chance yet again; Tirien was deep in meditation, Narasi had brought Gizmo outside (after swearing to keep him in sight at all times), and Zaella sat with her feet dangling off the side of the ship, sketching the skyline of the village and the way Marekka's Tree towered over it. As she added strokes to the tree's foliage and looked up for another reference, she saw a Guudrian running their way and whistled.

Narasi caught Gizmo as he sprang for the sensor dish, looked past Zaella, and poked Tirien, who stirred and got to his feet. He moved to stand beside Zaella; she felt less uncomfortable with his closeness than she once had.

"What is it, Zodo?" he called down.

The Guudrian slowed to a jog, then stopped, leaning on his knees and panting. "Master…Boss Mukka sent me…Queen Maia's here. She wants to…see you…alone."