“And?”

“Kal, you could have explained to them somehow and stopped it.”

“And reveal we had an army in training? And compromise my lads' safety? Never. And not a word to any of the boys, you hear? It's the only thing I ever kept from them.”

He'd sacrificed his good name and the last possibility of his family's love and forgiveness for the men he was training. It hit Etain hard in the chest like a blow.

She turned to Vau. “Do you see your men as your sons?”

“Of course I do. I have no others. It's why I made them into survivors. Don't think I don't love them just because I don't spoil them like kids.”

“Here we go,” Skirata said, all contempt. “He's going to tell you that his father beat the osik out of him and it made a man of him. Never did him any harm, no sir.”

“I've lost just three men out of my batch, Kal. That tells me a lot about my methods.”

“So I lost fourteen. You making a point?”

“You made yours soft. They don't have that killer edge.”

“No, I didn't brutalize mine like you did yours, you hut'uun.”

Etain stepped between them, arms held out, pieces of old conversations falling into place with awful clarity. The strill began rumbling in its throat and dropped to the floor to pace protectively in front of Vau.

It was just as well the bedroom doors were shut.

“Please, stop this. We don't want the men to hear you fighting right now, do we? Like Niner says—save it for the enemy.”

Skirata turned his head with that sudden total focus that left Etain tasting a ripple in the Force. But it wasn't the angry reaction of a man who had been stung by painful observation. It was genuine anguish. He glanced down at Mird as if considering giving it a good kick, then limped off to the landing platform.

“Don't do this to him,” she said to Vau. “Please. Don't.”

Vau simply shrugged and picked up the huge strill in his arms as if it were a pup. It licked his face adoringly. “You can fight ice-cold or you can fight red-hot. Kal fights hot. It's his weakness.”

“You sound just like an old Master of mine,” Etain said, and went out to the platform after Skirata.

Coruscant's skylanes stretched above and below them, giving an illusion of infinity. Etain leaned on the safety rail with her head level with Skirata's as they gazed down. She searched his face.

“Kal, if you'd like me to do something about Vau—”

He shook his head quickly, eyes still downcast. “Thanks, ad'ika, but I can handle that heap of osik.”

“Never let a bully manipulate you.”

Skirata's jaw worked silently. “I'm to blame.”

“For what?”

“Sending boys to their deaths.”

“Kal, don't do this to yourself.”

“I took the credits, didn't I? Jango whistled and I came running. I trained them from boys. Little boys. Eight, nine years of nothing but training and fighting. No past, no childhood, no future.”

“Kal …”

“They don't go out. They don't get drunk. They don't chase women. We drill them and medicate them and shunt them from battle to battle without a day off, no rest, no fun, and then we scrape them off the battlefield and send what's left standing back to the front.”

“And you alongside them. You gave them a heritage, and a family.”

“I'm as bad as Vau.”

“If you hadn't been there, your place would have been taken by another like him. You gave your men respect and affection.”

Skirata let out a long breath and folded his hands, elbows still braced on the rail of the balcony. A speeder horn blared far below them. “You know something? Live-fire exercises. They started five years into their development. That means I sent ten-year-old boys to die. And eleven, and twelve, and right on up to the time they were men. I lost four of my batch in training accidents, and—some of those were even down to me, my rifle, my realism. Think about that.”

“I hear that happens in any army.”

“So ask me the question, then. Why didn't I ever say, Whoa, enough? I've had some unkind thoughts about you, ad'ika, why your kind never refused to lead an army of slaves. And then I thought, Kal, you hut'uun, you're just the same as her. You never stood up against it.”

“Your soldiers worship you.”

Skirata closed his eyes then screwed them tight shut for a moment. “You think that makes me feel better? That stinking strill loves Vau. Monsters get loved irrationally all the time.”

Etain wondered whether to soothe him by judiciously influencing his mind that he would not feel guilty. But Skirata was his own man, tough-minded enough to spot her mind influence and shrug her manipulation aside. If she asked him for his cooperation … no, Skirata would never take the easy path. She had no comfort to offer him that wouldn't make matters worse.

That was part of his unique and appealing courage. Her first impression was that he would be a man whose bluff exterior was simply embarrassed machismo. But Skirata wasn't embarrassed about his emotions at all. He had the guts to wear his heart on his sleeve. It was probably what made him even more effective at killing: he could love as hard as he could punch.

Force, stop reminding me. Duality. I know. I know you can't have light without dark.

Her spiritual struggles were irrelevant now. She was carrying Darman's child. She longed to tell him and knew she had to wait.

“You love them, Kal, and love is never wrong.”

“Yes, I do.” His hard, lined face was an icon of passionate sincerity. “All of them. I started with one hundred and four trainees, plus my Null lads, and now I've got ninety commandos left. They say parents should never have to outlive their kid. But I'm outliving them all, and I suppose that punishment serves me right. I was a rotten father.”

“But—”

“No.” He held up his hand to stop her, and she paused. Skirata was benign but absolute authority. “It's not what you think. I'm not using these lads to salve my conscience. They deserve better than that. I'm just using what I've learned—for them.”

“Does it matter, as long as they're loved?”

“Yes, it does. I have to know that I care about them for who they are, or I've consigned them to being things again. We're Mandalorian. A Mandalorian isn't just a warrior, you see. He's a father, and he's a son, and your family matters. Those boys deserve a father. They deserve sons and daughters, too, but that isn't going to happen. But they can be sons, and the two things you have a duty to teach your sons are self-reliance, and that you'd give your life for them.” Skirata leaned on folded arms and gazed down into the hazy abyss again. “And I would, Etain. I would. And I should have had that degree of conviction when I started this sorry mess back on Kamino.”

“And walked out? And left them to it? Because it wouldn't have shifted the clone program one bit, even if it made you feel like you'd taken a brave stand.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“That stalking out and refusing to lead them is more for my comfort than theirs?”

He lowered his head on his folded arms for a moment.

“Well, that answers my question.”

As a Jedi, Etain had never known a real father any more than a clone had, but in that moment she knew exactly who she wanted him to be. She moved closer to Skirata to let her arm drape on his shoulder and rested her head against his. A tear welled up in the wrinkled corner of his eye then spilled down his cheek, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. He managed a smile even though he kept his gaze fixed on the traffic far below.

“You're a good man and a good father,” she said. “You should never doubt that for a moment. Your men don't, and neither do I.”

“Well, I wasn't a good father until they made one out of me.”