Moments of Truth/Part 13

Zaella shrugged. "Let's kill 'em."

Tirien closed his eyes; Narasi recognized his look of strained endurance, and though she wasn't opposed to the idea in theory, she went to her master's defense anyway. "We can't just kill them."

"Why not?" Zaella demanded. "They just promised to kill anybody who walks far enough down the road. They want a fight, fine; let's give it to them and be done with this nonsense."

Narasi found she had no ready explanation, so she looked at Tirien, who opened his eyes and said, "They made a threat, and a serious one, but a threat is only words. So far they've acted only against us, and ineffectually at that.  They're weaker than they let themselves believe; they've had only Guudrians to oppress for nine years, and it's made them arrogant.  But we've disabused them of that overconfidence, and given time to reflect, they may admit they're outmatched and concede without fighting."

Zaella's right lek twitched close to her skull. "Maybe the wimpy priest might give up, but that Chagrian will win or die."

Remembering his wide-eyed snarl, Narasi couldn't disagree. Feeling she was trying to talk herself into agreeing with her master, she said, "Jirdo might fold. He didn't even say anything when you knocked him down."

Zaella snickered, but Tirien sighed. "Please don't do that again."

"Why not? It showed them all he's all snarl and no teeth."

"We could have just as easily proven that once they were gone." He nodded at Narasi. "It's the same reason I didn't want you baiting Maia when she passed the quarantine."

Abandoning her efforts, Narasi sighed. "Yeah, what was with that, Master? All these people are probably terrified to walk out to their fields now."

"I wanted to leave them a way to escape the situation with something resembling dignity."

Narasi stared. "Why?"

But she sensed a glowpanel coming on in the Force, and Zaella said, "Ooooh."

Tirien nodded. "Yes?"

"It fits your whole 'let's not fight until we have absolutely no choice and they're swinging their lightsabers at our faces' strategy," she said. "If they feel like they have a way out, they'll be weaker."

Tirien smiled for the first time since the news of the Jedi's approach. "Very good."

Zaella smirked in response, and Narasi felt a stab of irritation. "I don't get it."

"It's an important psychological tactic, both for battle and dueling," Tirien explained. "If an enemy feels he has no way out of a situation, he'll fight much harder, because his only choices are victory or death. If he has an escape—even a narrow one, or even an illusory one you've convinced him exists—there will always be part of him that plans for failure, and so accepts the idea of it.  Remember that if you're ever given the chance to arrange the circumstances of a duel—and be on guard against less than full commitment just because you have a way out if you need it."

While Narasi processed that, Zaella pulled her lek back over her shoulder and draped it down her chest. "Is that why you were giving them countdowns to death, too? Psychology?"

Tirien nodded. "I couldn't foresee the exact numbers, of course, although I doubt Jirdo would take long. But they've been here with each other for almost a decade; I've sparred more than two different people just in the last month.  I'm confident I could beat any of them individually, and I think they could sense it, which also dissuaded them from fighting."

Narasi thought about it, then shook her head. "Still…if you know you can beat them, and they wind up hurting somebody here before we get them settled, does that make it your fault?"

She hadn't meant to slap him in the face with it, and her ears backed as his eyes tightened. But he said, "Then that's motivation for us to get this right. But I don't want the Guudrians to believe that a first resort to violence is the Jedi way; they've been misled that way for nine years, we need to show them the truth.  Come on, let's take a walk through town."

"Again?" Zaella asked. "It's like eight roads! Even I have this place memorized by now, and I don't even care about these people."

Tirien sighed, but didn't give her the castigation Narasi had expected. Instead, he said, "We haven't looked at it from a siege perspective, seeking weak points and vulnerable outliers. That should occupy us for a while."

It occupied them for the remainder of the day. Marekka's sprawling farm fields gave them visibility for kilometers in every direction, save one side where the forest encroached. Narasi floated the idea of constructing a palisade, but they all talked it down; even if they used their lightsabers to cut trees faster and the Force to drive the spikes into the ground, a palisade would delay Jedi by seconds, at most. Zaella suggested they instead cut trees into spears and train the Guudrians in combat ("One rycrit's nothing to a lylek, but a whole herd of them can bring it down."). As Narasi wondered whether the Twi'lek just wanted an excuse to get them off Guudria, Tirien vetoed the idea, citing the inevitable massive body count and his desire not to throw Marekka's culture any further off what it should've been than the Dark Jedi already had.

Some braver Guudrians emerged from their homes throughout the day, and one or two ventured into the fields closest to the nearest structures to harvest crops, but all of them were edgy and few made eye contact with the Jedi. Narasi kept her senses sharp for any hint of the dark side, but the only source of it walked beside her.

Even after weeks, she couldn't tell if she was making progress with Zaella or just going in circles. Some days they opened up to one another, telling stories about their early lives and formative influences. Other days, like today, Zaella went to the dark side on reflex, as if she had left Ryloth only the day before; Narasi suspected Zaella, left to her own devices, would have taken the fight to Jirdo even unarmed. On both kinds of days, no matter how vocal she had been while they sparred, Zaella had sunk into dour silence in Tirien's presence, but now even that seemed a thing of the past. Her frustration was clear each time Tirien declined one of her proposals for eliminating the Dark Jedi, but she stayed engaged in the discussion, pointing out easy targets and homes that could be picked off if the three of them concentrated their defenses on the center of town. By sundown it was Narasi who had fallen out of the debate, taking in their discussion with the uncomfortable feeling of tagging along.

"And we can't get so far away that we expose the Second Chance," Tirien said.

Zaella's lekku twitched, one after the other. "Kark, yeah. I don't want to be stuck here."

Tirien rolled his eyes. "Nor do I, but that wasn't what I meant."

Narasi suspected he wasn't moved by protective love for Gizmo either. "So why, then?"

He looked at each of them, incredulous. "How did you two meet? What were we just doing on Circumtore?!"

"Oh," said Narasi. "Oh."

"Right. Bomb," Zaella agreed. Her fingers toyed with the intact tip of her right lek as she thought about it, but then she brightened. "Hey, there's an idea."

"Where's an idea?" Narasi asked.

"Use the bomb on 'em."

Tirien massaged the corners of his eyes with his thumb and index finger for a moment before speaking. "Putting aside the fact that it would be a war crime, even the villages farthest from their headquarters in the center are within the blast radius; we'd kill every Guudrian we're trying to liberate, not to mention poisoning most of the continent with radiation for decades."

Zaella bobbed her head side to side, but as she opened her mouth, Narasi snapped, "Don't say, 'But we'd win'."

Zaella smirked. "I didn't say it."

"You were going to."

"…you can't prove that."

Tirien raised his hands. "I admit there could be multiple viable ways to resolve this situation, but liberating the Guudrians doesn't include 'liberating' them from being alive. But we can't let the Dark Jedi get their hands on the bomb."

In the end they rolled out sleeping mats on top of the Second Chance so they could wake and either defend the ship or race back into town at need. Zaella complained, which Narasi had expected, but she defied expectations by dragging a mat outside as well instead of sulking inside with Gizmo. Once she had fed her gizka, tempting him with a new gourd her Guudrian friends had introduced her to, Narasi took three bowls of processed food back outside only to find Zaella laying on the ship's hull over the cockpit corridor. She pantomimed shooting down circling gnats with a finger blaster; each time she "shot", she crushed a bug with the Force.

"Stop that!" Narasi said as she leapt onto the hull.

"I don't want a zillion bug bites," Zaella said, sitting up and levitating a bowl into her hands.

"You're welcome," Narasi complained. "Where's Tirien?"

"He went into town to get the night watch sorted out. Give them a pep talk, that sorta thing." Eating a spoonful, she grinned. "Ah, Number Twelve, my favorite."

Narasi rolled her eyes as she sat down with her back to the gun turret. "Yeah, I made it special for you."

"You've been in a pissy mood today," Zaella observed.

"Gee, you think maybe this whole Dark Jedi thing might've soured my mood a bit?"

"No, not really." As she chased a chunk of processed protein around the bowl with her fork, faced screw up in concentration, Zaella added, "I actually think you're jealous."

"I…what?"

"Yeah, that Tirien's paying more attention to me now." She finally speared her target with a grin, then looked up and tilted her head. "What, was that not the kind of Jedi honesty you like? If you people aren't going to write all this down for me, you can't give me that look when I mix it up."

Narasi stared until anger kicked in. "I'm not jealous of you! He's my master, we talk all the time; until today you could barely look at him!"

Zaella's face darkened for a moment, but then she shrugged. "Kinda the point, isn't it? He's been yelling at you, but even though I'm still waiting for him to get sick of me and cut my throat, today he almost gave me my lightsaber back.  Trust me, I've been jealous of how my master treated other people—basically, better than garbage, which was a step up from me.  It's kinda funny seeing it from the outside."

I'll show you something funny, you stuck-up little tramp, Narasi thought savagely. See how much you're laughing when I—

She realized the direction her thoughts had taken then, and the realization pulled her up short. She was Zaella, even Bras Kozondo—ready to meet mockery with force. Her stomach heaved, and the smell of her food was suddenly disgusting. Setting the bowl down, she lurched to her feet and paced around the double gun, leaning on the gunner's canopy with her eyes squeezed shut. Tirien had told her years ago that the desire for respect was one of her weaknesses. She had hoped that, in sparing her parents' killer and admitting her past to her master, she had finally slain that temptation; the discovery that she had merely cut off one head for another to grow back in its place, more agile and sinister than the last, filled her with anger and shame at once. Master Fane had been right. The pressure squeezed her until she thought her head might split to let it out.

"I'm sorry."

Startled, Narasi spun and saw Zaella leaning against the far barrel of the double gun, eyes tight and no longer smiling. When Narasi said nothing, Zaella grimaced and looked down. "I remember what it was like from the inside. It wasn't funny when it was me."

Which unloaded Narasi's anger and left her holding an empty blaster of regret.

Still looking down, Zaella fidgeted and asked, "So what, do you not want him to help me?"

Some part of Narasi's mind was astonished that she could go from thinking she couldn't feel worse to being proven wrong in the space of about five seconds. ''Is that what I've been reduced to? A couple arguments with Tirien and a handful of nice things he says to Zaella, and I want to maroon her at the port?'' Was a little pressure all it took to make the Jedi veneer crack and show her true colors through the fault lines?

"No, look, Zaella," Narasi said, leaning over the gun from the other side. "I'm sorry, I don't want to be jealous…"

"So what is it, then?"

She thought for a long moment, trying to put it into words. "Today, with the Dark Jedi…it felt really good, all three of us being on the same team, sorta. But that 'sorta' is the point.  If you're with us, then be with us."

Now Zaella looked up, and her amber eyes were hard and guarded again. "I'm still a prisoner, remember? I stood with you today because Tirien's better than these three clowns; at least he's honest about what he is.  But do you really want me to 'be with you' just because your Council's going to execute me or lock me up if I don't?  If that's the kind of loyalty I wanted, I would've gone back to Ryloth."

Narasi winced, knowing she had been avoiding the idea. Somehow it had seemed that Guudria would make everything better; by the time they left, Zaella would have seen the error of her ways and the answer to the Council would be clear. She hadn't settled down to confront the possibility that they would return to the Praxeum Council with Zaella in stun cuffs, an unrepentant agent of the enemy.

"But that's not what either of us want," she managed. "We're trying to help you."

"Narasi…" Zaella swept a hand over her scalp and down her shortened lek. "Sometimes I wonder if you hear yourself, or if you've just heard all this Jedi propaganda so long you don't think about it. What if it was reversed, and I took you back to Ryloth and told you everything you've been taught and believed, your whole life, was wrong?  Would you just drop being a Jedi and join the Sith because I beat you in a duel?"

The truth of the Jedi philosophy was so self-evident to Narasi that she hadn't seriously entertained the idea that someone could sit down, have a logical discussion about it, and still come away thinking the Sith had it right. Maybe a hardcore dark sider like Alecto, but not somebody like Zaella…or so she'd thought. Did that mean Zaella was farther gone than she'd allowed herself to believe? Had she dropped the ball in representing the light?

She knew the answer to that at once; in this conversation alone Zaella had highlighted her failures as a Jedi without even trying. Desperate not to let the thin opening Zaella had given her slip away, she said, "But that's the thing—if you took me back to Ryloth, would we be having that conversation? Or would I just be dead?  Or tortured to death?"

Zaella opened her mouth, but hesitated, and Narasi pressed, "I can't imagine what this is like for you. I remember how disorienting it was for me coming to the Jedi from Zygerria, and I was just a little kid.  But Hadan, or Izkara, or these three Dark Jedi…none of them want what's best for everybody, Zaella, they just want what's best for themselves.  I know the Jedi aren't perfect, but at least we're trying to help everybody."

"Saving every life form, no matter how pathetic," Zaella grumbled, but her narrow-eyed, averted gaze betrayed the conflict Narasi could feel.

"Well…look, I'm not trying to be a bitch, and I'm not calling you pathetic—"

"That may be the least encouraging start to a sentence I've ever heard, and I got trained by Sith."

"—but if we all went with 'survival of the fittest'," Narasi bulled on, "then you'd be dead, too. Is that what you want?"

"Of course I don't wanna die!" Zaella snapped. "I may not be able to live forever, but I don't want to go sooner than I have to."

Narasi blinked. "If you could live forever, would you?"

"Of course. Wouldn't you?"

Would she? Narasi had never seriously considered the question; Zygerrians were not a long-lived species, compared to races like Master Sarno's, so it had always seemed too fantastic to spend much energy on except in idle daydreams. But the Force nudged Narasi—just a little poke in her mind, easy to ignore if she wanted to—and when she rewound the last few seconds in her head, she heard the incredulity in Zaella's voice and realized the Twi'lek had given her a real insight into her soul.

Zaella seemed to understand what had happened too; Narasi sensed her shutting down in a way that had nothing to do with Force powers. Thinking on her feet, she shifted back and asked, "So if Tirien and I get killed here and you get away, and escape off to the Sith Empire or Darshkére or somebody, are you going to tell them about the stupid Jedi who should've killed you when they had the chance?"

Zaella started, eyes wide. Narasi was pleased (if surprised) her blow had landed so close to a bullseye. "Do you think we should've? Does the Sith philosophy only apply to other people, not you?  Do you just think of Tirien and me as captors and nothing else?"

Zaella clutched the bases of her lekku. "I…"

But before she could go on, she whirled back toward the heart of Marekka, and when Narasi looked past her she saw her master coming through the gap between two houses. The Force carried him from his light jog to the hull of the Second Chance in a single bound. "They're ready, if not particularly cheerful. And here?"

His tone gave nothing away, but a hint of shrewdness about his eyes made Narasi think he hadn't left her with Zaella by accident. "We're…getting there, Master."

"Get there quickly, then," he said, "these Dark Jedi aren't done with Marekka by a long shot."

"Have you figured out why 'it isn't what it seems'?" Zaella asked.

"No…" His cool confidence diminished; Narasi recognized him retreating into himself as his eyes went out of focus, but after a moment he snapped back. "But that's all the more reason to be wary, and present a united front against them."

Zaella crossed her arms, nodding while staring at the hull. Narasi circled around the gun turret the long way and said, "I'm going for a walk, Master."

He glanced at her, but then looked out over Marekka, closing his eyes. Narasi sensed him calling on the Force; was he just checking for the presence of the Dark Jedi nearby, or trying to foresee possible problems? Whatever he was doing, the result evidently satisfied him, because he nodded even before opening his eyes. "Go, but don't be long. And on the off chance you encounter any of them, call me."

"Yes Master." Narasi leapt down onto the dirt path, resisting the urge to look back; she could feel both their eyes on her.

She had never seen the village's streets so deserted; the long shadow of Marekka's Tree felt cold as she remembered the song and dance of the festival weeks before. No voices called from house to house, no children played in the failing sunlight…not a single figure was in sight. Narasi felt the dread and disquiet behind the closed shutters and doors, and it was easy to imagine herself the lone guardian of these people. In a way it was worse than it had been this morning—where before the villagers had only feared the clash between the Jedi, now they were under the gun themselves. Marekka held its breath for the fate that would befall it.

Narasi hadn't had a plan for her meandering—she had only wanted some time alone to clear her head—but her feet carried her along a well-worn path, and she took the flagstone steps down to the shrine. She thought the area was deserted until she was almost at the door; only then did she spot a lone figure hunched over beside the pond, stirring the water with a stick.

"Jebba?"

He started and dropped his stick into the pond. When he turned, though, his shoulders slumped and he bowed his head. "Oh, hello Narasi. Forgive me, I wasn't expecting company."

"It's okay." She dropped down onto the smooth stone beside him. "It's been a rough day."

The opening atop his head gave a little snort. "Yes, you could say that."

Narasi tipped her head toward the shrine. "Have you been inside since this morning?"

"No."

"Because of Jirdo and the whole interdict thing?"

He didn't respond right away. Narasi left him alone to think, but when he wiggled in place to face her, she felt the weight of his emotions behind that checkered gaze. "You'd never heard of an interdict, had you?"

"No."

"And Tirien either?"

Shrugging, Narasi said, "He knows a lot more than me, but if he's ever heard of it, he never told me."

It was like watching someone let the air out of a balloon; Jebba's whole body slumped, his chin resting on his chest. Wincing at the feeling in the Force, Narasi squeezed his shoulder. "What is it? Talk to me."

"Was it all a lie?" He didn't raise his head; he might have been speaking to the stone, or the amphibian that hopped out of the pond. "The Church of the Jedi, the Whispers, the mysteries, the shrines, the blessings of the Force, everything?"

Narasi tried to find a way to reassure him. "Well…I had never seen a Jedi shrine before, but Tirien knew what it was…"

Jebba cupped his face with his hands, and Narasi hurried to add, "Look, the whole…the Force as a god, or gods, or divinity…whatever you want to call it. That was new to me.  And Jedi aren't gods—we're supposed to serve the Force and the people, not the other way around.  But the Force is real, you've seen that for yourself.  And…I don't know, Jebba, I had never considered the idea of Jedi and religion going together.  But the Force does have a will of its own…"

She trailed off, still unsure what to make of her master's musings. Jebba nodded. "And yet all I know of the Force's will is what…what our Jedi told me, and what you and Tirien have added. All of you agree I don't share your power; I'll never feel the guidance of that will myself.  So all I know—really know—is that the energy field exists and beings more blessed than I can wield it as protection…or a weapon.  Everything else is an article of faith."

Narasi stretched out one leg; a little water snake slithered over her boot. The first time she had seen one, tagging along with one of the field trips for the village children, she had jumped; the children had all giggled before passing around the harmless creature. Now she watched this one stick out its tongue from her ankle, looking around to gain its bearings.

"You know right and wrong, though," Narasi said. "You've had the queen for nine years—sixteen of your years—and we've only been here a few weeks, but you keep talking to Tirien and asking questions. Isn't that because, in your heart, you know Maia and the others are wrong and Tirien's right?"

Jebba sighed again, and once she had gathered up the little snake and steered it back toward the pond, Narasi sprang to her feet. "C'mon, let's go into the shrine. You'll feel better."

He took her offered hand and allowed her to tug him to his feet, but his face was full of misgivings. "You heard the…Jirdo."

"Yep," Narasi said, towing him along. "But I'm not afraid of him, and you shouldn't be either."

She beckoned and the shrine's doors sprang open. Leaving her boots at the threshold, she stepped inside, where a shaft of evening light drew her eye—Jirdo had left the corae ' s dark side door open. Taking that as an encouraging sign, she turned and found him in the doorway, barefoot but hesitant.

"I'm okay," she promised, poking her chest. "You can trust me."

"That's really the question, isn't it?" he asked. But he stepped into the shrine anyway.

Narasi cast about for a topic of conversation. She had chipped in here and there during Jebba and Tirien's daily discussions of Jedi philosophy and the Force, but even if she hadn't thought the topic well exhausted, she figured it would only make him more depressed just now. They had talked the shrine's architecture into the ground too, so after a moment she asked, "So why the tree?"

It took a moment for her words to pass through Jebba's inner turmoil. "I'm sorry?"

"The tree." She gestured to the corae and the sapling inside. "I get that it's an object of contemplation to help you focus, but why this? Why not a rock or a flower or something?"

It definitely got him focused; even if the spasm in the Force hadn't given him away, his bemusement would have been obvious on an even more alien face. "Have I never told you? It's a cutting from Marekka's Tree."

"No, you didn't." Narasi stepped into the corae, kneeling beside the sapling. Standing, its highest leaves only reached her abdomen; it was strange to think of this little plant being related to the towering behemoth at the center of town. "That's why you picked it, I guess."

"At first we considered building the shrine around Marekka's Tree," Jebba said, crouching opposite her and brushing the tree's trunk with his fingers. "The Big House did not exist then, or several of the others. We would have had to tear down some houses, but the queen said we should build a new part of the village for the shrine, and so have a new tree.  The people know it as the senganimie, but I call it Marekka's Daughter."

"A new chapter in your village's history?"

"Yes. But it seems that chapter was fiction."

Narasi sighed and sat in the dirt. "Do you feel better in here? When you're meditating, I mean."

He sat opposite her, resting his cheeks against his hands. "I do. I have, anyway.  I did before you and Tirien arrived and…complicated things."

He looked up after a second, and Narasi sensed his belated worry, but she laughed. "Yeah, my master tends to do that. It's not necessarily a bad thing."

"No," Jebba conceded. "I suppose not."

Narasi tried to feed him happy thoughts through the Force. "It's gonna be all right, Jebba."

His eyes flicked up. "Will you fight them? Queen Maia and her Knights?"

Narasi hesitated. "Only if we have to. Only if they make us."

"And if they do?"

Narasi wasn't sure what answer he was looking for. "We won't let them hurt you or your people. Tirien's holding himself back; he could take them apart if he wanted to."

Jebba frowned, tilting his head. "And yet he doesn't?"

"It's not what we do. We—Jedi, I mean, real Jedi—don't kill unless we have no other choice."

As she spoke the words, Narasi was struck by understanding her master's motivation at last. Not just that he wanted the Guudrians to see that Jedi weren't vindictive tyrants—although he surely did—but because he wanted Zaella to see that there was a path to success without killing. It was the same reason he wouldn't train the Guudrians to fight, even though that would be giving them agency in choosing their own destiny.

"Huh!"

Jebba stared. "What?"

"He's…huh. You know, for as long as we've been together, it still amazes me how smart he is sometimes…"

She imagined Jebba was still thinking about the Dark Jedi, but Narasi found herself wondering… Did Tirien believe, for all his equivocation and careful qualifications, that Zaella could be saved too? Or did he just need to make the effort before accepting the inevitable?