“I just want to rest.”

“I know.” He squatted down and stared at her. “I don’t know much about swords, either, but I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat.”

He didn’t move. His persistence annoyed her. Actually, it suddenly angered her; she’d had enough. She was exhausted, and she wanted to sit numbly and do absolutely nothing. She jumped to her feet, snatched the pole, and ran at him.

He sidestepped her, but only just.

“Relatively safe way to perfect your lightsaber skills,” Darman said.

“Relatively?” She held the pole two-handed, furious.

“Relatively,” Darman said, and brought his own mock lightsaber around sharply on her shin.

“Ow! You—”

“Come on. Do your worst.” Darman leapt back out of the range of a savage and uncontrolled lunge. “That’s it. Come at me.”

That was the point at which she always stumbled—the fine line between giving maximum effort and being blinded by angry violence. You have to mean it. It’s not a game any­more. She came at him with a two-handed sweep from right to left, cracking hard against his weapon and feeling the im­pact in her wrists and elbows, forcing Darman onto his back foot. Three more rapid sweeps, right, right, left—and then one immediately downwards, unexpected, hitting him so hard between neck and shoulder that if the pole had been a real lightsaber she would have sliced him in half.

She heard the sickening thwack. It was the first time she’d seen him in pain. It was a split second of a grimace, no more, but she was instantly appalled at herself.

“Sorry—” she said, but he came straight back at her and sent the stake flying from her hand.

“You have to press home your advantage,” Darman said, rubbing his neck. “I’ve never used an energy blade and I don’t have the Force to call on. But I do know when to go all-out.”

“I know,” Etain said, inspecting her shin and catching her breath. “Did I do any damage?”

“Nothing serious. Good move.”

“I don’t want to let you down when you need me most.”

“You’ve done fine so far, Commander.”

“How can you do all this, Darman?”

“Do what? Fight?”

“Kill and remain detached.”

“Training, I suppose. And whatever was in Jango Fett that made him… detached.”

“Were you ever afraid in training?”

“Almost always.”

“Did you ever get hurt?”

“All the time. Others died. It’s how you learn. Getting hurt teaches you to shoot instinctively. That’s why our instructors began training us with simunition that would hurt us with­out causing permanent damage. Then we moved on to live rounds.”

“How old were you then?”

“Four. Perhaps five.”

She hadn’t known that. It made her shudder. She couldn’t recall any Jedi dying in training. It was another world. She picked up her pole and made a few slow passes with it, her gaze fixed on its tip. “I find this accelerated growth difficult to comprehend.”

“It’s a Kaminoan industrial secret.”

“I mean that it’s hard for me to reconcile what you ap­pear to be and what you can do, with—well, with someone who’s had less experience of the profane world than even a Padawan.”

“Sergeant Skirata told us we perplexed him.”

“You talk about him a lot.”

“He trained my squad and also Niner’s and Fi’s. That might be why they put us together for this mission when our brothers were killed.”

Etain felt ashamed. There was no self-pity in him whatsoever. “What will they do with you in thirty years, when you’re too old to fight?”

“I’ll be dead long before then.”

“That’s rather fatalistic.”

“I mean that we’ll always age faster than you. We’ve been told decline for clones is mercifully swift. Slow soldiers get killed. I can’t think of a better time to die than when I’m no longer the best.”

Etain really didn’t want to hear anything more about death right then. Death was happening all too easily and fre­quently, as if it didn’t matter and had no consequences. She could feel the Force being distorted around her; not the regu­lar rhythm of life as it was meant to be, but the chaos of de­struction. She felt she could neither accept it nor influence it.

“We’re supposed to be peacekeepers,” she said wearily. “This is ugly.”

“But war always is. Calling it peacekeeping doesn’t change anything.”

“It’s different,” Etain said.

Darman pursed his lips, looking slightly past her as if re­hearsing something difficult in his mind. “Sergeant Skirata said that civvies didn’t have a clue, and that it was all right for them to have lofty ideas about peace and freedom as long as they weren’t the ones being shot at. He said nothing fo­cuses your mind better than someone trying to kill you.”

That stung. Etain wondered if the comment were just an unguarded recollection, or a subtle rebuke of her principles. Darman appeared equally capable of either. She still hadn’t come to terms with his duality, killer and innocent, soldier and child, educated intelligence and grim humor. Undis­tracted by a normal life, he seemed to have spent more time in contemplation than even she had. She wondered how much the intense experience of the outside world would change him.

She’d killed just one fellow living being. It had certainly changed her.

“Come on,” he said. “Sun’s coming up. Might dry out your clothes.”

It was definitely autumn. A mist had blanketed the coun­tryside like a sea. A puddle had formed in the sheeting stretched over the top of the shelter, and Darman went to scoop it out but stopped.

“What are these things?” he asked. “I saw them on the river, too.”

Ruby– and sapphire-colored insects were dancing above the surface of the puddle. “Daywings,” Etain said.

“I’ve never seen colors like it.”

“They hatch and take flight for a day, and they die by the evening,” she said. “A brief and glorious …”

Her voice trailed off. She was appalled at her own insensi­tivity. She began assembling an apology, but Darman didn’t appear to need one.

“They’re amazing,” he said, completely absorbed by the spectacle.

“They certainly are,” she said, and watched him.

Lik Ankkit’s villa had been splendid. It was still splendid in its unnecessary way, but the polished kuvara floors, with their intricately inlaid flower motif borders, were now scuffed and gouged by the metal feet of droids.

Ankkit hovered in the doorway while these four droids screwed alloy sheets across the window frames, shutting out the sunrise. Ghez Hokan watched the progress of the conver­sion from mansion to fortress.

“You’ll split the wood,” Ankkit hissed. “Careful! Do you know how long it took to have those panels carved?”

Hokan shrugged. “I’m not a carpenter.”

“They were not made by carpenters. They were made by artists—”

“I don’t care if Supreme Chancellor Palpatine carved them himself with a dinner fork. I need to secure this building.”

“You have a perfectly adequate purpose-built facility not three kilometers from here. You could defend that.”

“And I have.”

“Why? Why ruin my home when Uthan is no longer here?”

“For a devious and treacherous little bean counter, Ankkit, you show a surprising lack of tactical creativity.” Hokan walked over to the Neimoidian and stood close to him. He would not be intimidated by this grocer’s height. He didn’t care if he had to crane his neck to look him in the eye; he was the bigger man. “I know she’s no longer here. The enemy might believe she is. If I observed my enemy making lavish preparations to defend an installation, I might assume it was a bluff and investigate an alternative target. If I found that al­ternative target discreetly prepared against intruders, I would make an educated guess that it was the real objective, and at­tack it.”

Ankkit appeared unconvinced. He glared at Hokan with half-lidded red eyes, which was a rare show of courage for him. “And how will they spot this discreet reinforcement?”