Holding it two-handed over his head, he rotated it slowly, stalking around her.

Lumiya raised her arm to flick the whip and get the momentum for the forward stroke. And then she cracked it, sending forks of dark energy crackling into the ground at his feet, making him jump back before he sprang forward again and brought the lightsaber around in a right-to-left arc that she parried with the whip's handle. He leapt out of range of the whirling tails again and again, then she paused and he edged closer again.

"You hate me that much?" he asked.

"I don't hate you at all."

"You killed her. You killed my Mara."

"Nothing personal." She looked as if she was smiling, but the movement

was around her eyes rather than her cybernetic mouth. "Just doing what I swore an oath to the Emperor to do. To serve the dark side.

Oaths matter, Luke. They're all you're left with in the end."

She drew back her arm and brought the lightwhip crackling through the air, missing Luke by centimeters. He lunged at her again and again, driven back each time. She'd slow sooner or later.

But so would he.

Then, as she began to raise her arm again, he ran at her, so close in that she couldn't get the whip traveling at its maximum lethal speed.

He forced her back, step by step, as she tried to maintain the distance she needed.

One—two—three—four; she blocked him, handle held this way, then that, using the whip like a short lightsaber to deflect him, but Luke didn't pause or shift direction to wrong-foot her. He drove her like a battering ram toward the edge of the mesa, pushing her within meters, then a step, of the edge.

Lumiya held the whip handle in both hands like a staff and blocked his downward sweep. For a moment they were locked in a stalemate, pushing against each other and grunting with the effort, with only the sounds of exertion because they had nothing left to say to each other.

Her rear foot began to slide backward as she struggled for purchase. The edge of the mesa was cracked and fissured. The smooth glittering stone began to crumble.

Luke reached out and caught her hand as she fell, whip tumbling and bouncing down the steep rock face into oblivion. He leaned back, all his weight on his heels, knuckles clenched white with the strain of holding her weight, and for a second he wanted to see her face dwindling as she fell to her death, mouth open in a scream, but that wasn't the way to end this.

"I'd never let you fall," Luke said, and pulled her back to safety.

As she straightened up, he looked her in the eyes—calm, eerily calm—and swung his lightsaber in a single decapitating arc.

Now he could breathe again.

KAVAN: STORM WATER TUNNELS

Ben sat in the tunnel with his mother for a long time, and that fact in itself was the start of his investigation.

At first, he deluded himself that she was in a deep healing trance, even though the Force never lied, and the void that had opened in it would have been felt and understood by every Jedi.

He'd run straight to her side, through country he didn't know, and found her. He wanted to think she wasn't dead because she was there, still much as he'd last seen her except for the blood and scrapes of a new fight.

So he sat with her, waiting.

He wanted to clean her face and make her beautiful again, but his GAG training said not to remove evidence, not to tamper with a crime scene.

Ben the fourteen-year-old son, lost and grief-stricken, willed his mother just to be in a deep trance. Ben the lieutenant knew better but didn't mention it to his child-self, and was careful to note everything around him, take holoimages, make notes of smells, sounds, and other ephemeral data, and begin to form a logical sequence that would tell him how his mother had met her death.

He was still sitting there, taking in every pore of her skin and every speck of brick dust on her jacket, when he heard someone picking his way over debris toward him.

He couldn't feel the person in the Force.

"Hello, Jacen," he said, and turned to look at him.

Jacen's mouth opened slightly while he stared first at Mara—a long, baffled stare—and then at Ben. He reached out his hand to him.

"It's okay, Ben. It's okay. We'll get whoever did this. I swear we will."

Ben was still shut down, hiding his Force presence, but Jacen had found him. It was time to go to his father. He wanted to be with him now.

Maybe the killing of his mother had left a mark in the Force that Jacen had followed. Ben considered the possibility that he was too upset to notice it himself.

He made a careful note of it anyway.

chapter twenty-three

Lawyers for former GA Chief of State Cal Omas have slammed the Justice Department for the delay in bringing charges against him. Omas, currently under house arrest, is said to be pressing for a public trial.

A GAG spokesman said today that investigations were still ongoing.

—HNE news bulletin

THE OYU'BAAT, KELDABE, MANDALORE

Venku—Kad'ika—came up to Fett and Mirta in the tapcaf and gestured over his shoulder. "He says he'll do it," said Venku. "He didn't want to tell you he could read the stone there and then, in case he couldn't. He hates disappointing people."

The old man who'd come to stare at Fett with Kad'ika the other day walked slowly across the tapcaf. He peeled off his gloves and held out a frail hand dappled with age.

"I can do it," he said. "Let me hold the stone."

Mirta looked hesitant, then took off the necklace to hand it to Fett.

"You're Kiffar by origin, then," Fett said. Mandalorians came from any number of species and planets, but adopting the culture didn't erase their genetic profiles. "Saves me a journey."

"I . . . know the planet."

"What's your price?"

"Your peace of mind, Mand'alor. Nobody should search in vain for the resting place of loved ones."

Fett wasn't expecting that. The hand still held out in front of him was surprisingly steady. Fett held the heart-of-fire by its leather cord and

lowered it into the man's palm before sitting down and trying to seem unconcerned.

The old man folded his fingers around it and stood staring at his fist, his breathing slow and heavy.

"She was very unhappy, wasn't she?"

It was a good guess. It was inevitable, in fact. The old man probably said it to all the wounded and lonely souls he came across.

Charlatans and con men relied on the reactions of others. Fett said nothing to help him take a lucky guess, and there was no expression to betray him.

"And she found it hard to ever trust another man."

Fett still sat in silence, one boot on the chair. Sintas had never trusted anyone. Bounty hunters weren't the trusting kind, so it was a safe, easy deduction dressed up as revelation.

"Her worst days were when your daughter learned to talk, and asked where Dada was."

Fett was starting to tire of this. He shifted in his seat, ignoring the voice that whispered it was probably true. How would he know, anyway?

He couldn't verify it. He and Sintas had parted by then and he saw nothing more of Ailyn.

Not until I saw her dead body.

"She thought you still cared when you recovered the hologram for her."

Now that wasn't a guess. It was specific. And it was . . . true.

Fett didn't dare look at Mirta. The inn was absolutely silent: the popping and crackling of the tapcaf 's log fire sounded like battlefield explosions.

"She said you were far too young to know what you were doing, and you said you only needed to know that she was beautiful, that she was a terrific shot, and that you could trust her as much as you could trust any woman."