Let me buy you an ale."

"Maybe another day, ner ad'ika," Venku said. "But thank you."

Mirta watched the door close. As she turned back to Fett, the door opened again and disgruntled drinkers filtered back in, giving the two of them a wide berth.

"Well? Was he right, Ba'buir?"

Fett shrugged. It had shaken him, like all the painful memories that flooded back without his permission. "On the nail."

"Well, we can follow that lead."

Fett dreaded what else the old man had seen in the stone. Old man.

He was only ten or maybe fifteen years older than Fett. "I don't think I've ever been to Phaeda."

The tapcaf owner lined up fresh ales on the bar. "I see you've met Kad'ika, then, Mand'alor."

"Yeah. Fascinating."

"The old man with him-don't see him around much. Gotab, I think. I used to think that was Kad'ika's father, but apparently not."

The name didn't mean a thing to Fett, but he filed it mentally under subjects to investigate later. Phaeda. He'd scour Slave I's databases, maybe hack into the Phaeda archives. Mirta was examining the stone closely.

"Must have cost every credit you had, Ba'buir."

She pa.s.sed the heart-of-fire to Fett and he turned it over in his fingers, touching the carving on the edge. Only the most skilled cutter could facet the uncut stones without shattering them, let alone carve them.

"It's rare to find one with all the colors in it. They're usually red or orange, but the light ones with the whole rainbow . . . they cost."

"I saw a blue one once," Mirta said.

"I was sixteen. I couldn't afford a blue one."

Fett could afford one now, any number of them, even the rarest of deep royal-blue stones that showed their incredible range of multicolored fire only in bright sunlight. But he no longer had a lover to give them to. It had been a very long time.

"Tell me something about Ailyn," he said. "Was she ever happy?"

Mirta chewed over the question. "I don't think so."

The only thing Fett knew about his own daughter beyond the people she'd killed and what she'd stolen was that she had never been happy, never called him Dad, and that she'd taught Mirta to hate him. He still hadn't questioned the girl about that. The time never felt right.

"Were you ever happy?" Mirta asked.

Fett never considered if anyone wondered if he was happy or not.

There seemed to be a blanket a.s.sumption that Boba Fett coasted along on a narrow path of dispa.s.sion, never angry, never happy, never sad.

"I was happy as a kid," he said at last. "I stopped being happy on Geonosis and I never bothered trying again."

But he'd been angry, all right: angry, grief-stricken, terrified, lonely, and hostile. He'd run through all the negative emotions at full intensity in those days after his father's death, crammed in the s.p.a.ces between doing what he had to do to survive, when he needed to be all cold logic. It was a switch he had to throw, off and on, off and on, until one day it didn't switch on again, and the pain was gone. So were the joy and the love.

If he did what his dad wanted, it might come back. If he did an honorable job, and tried to at least understand the remnant of his own family, he stood a chance of recapturing some of what was ripped from him in that arena on Geonosis.

"Drink up, Ba'buir" Mirta said. "I want to go and do some digging about Phaeda."

GALACTIC ALLIANCE WARSHIP OCEAN.

ON STATION JUST BEYOND CORELLIAN s.p.a.cE.

It's awfully good of you to join us," said Admiral Niathal. Jacen walked onto the bridge and tasted the mix of emotions around him, ranging from vague interest to nervousness. "I was very sorry indeed to hear of your loss."

Jacen nodded politely. She sounded as if she really meant the condolence, but then she was pretty good at hitting the right note. He was visiting Ocean in his capacity as Chief of State to try out a little hearts-and-minds on a gathering of the various ally worlds. There was nothing like a meeting on a suitably mighty warship to show folks what was at stake. The Confederation was now planning a major push against the Core Worlds, intelligence suggested, so Jacen hoped everyone was paying attention.

Life was going on much as before. Recent days seemed to have been a lot of sweat for nothing. If he needed any more answers to Sith philosophical questions, he was on his own. Lumiya had managed to commit suicide-by-Skywalker. Jacen might not have been part of the Jedi Council, but the GAG were very efficient interceptors of messages.

Uncle Luke did it. He actually did it. Like my dad-you never know how far they'll go, do you?

"So," Jacen said, "Corellia seems to have been very quiet in my absence."

"They were waiting for your return-that push on the Core looks imminent. They'd hate you to miss anything." Niathal, annoyed or not about his extra day or so of absence, seemed to have an air about her of someone who was suddenly more comfortable with her new role, as if she'd taken advantage of his back being turned to forge fresh alliances and consolidate her power. It was almost like a fragrance; the aura that surrounded the love of power was something Jacen knew very well indeed.

"The triumvirate is still doing the day-to-day running of affairs, but I've got our Intel folks and political a.n.a.lysts reading the signs about who might replace the dear departed Prime-" She stopped abruptly, and this time she was genuinely rattled. He could feel it. "I'm so sorry.

That was grossly insensitive of me under the circ.u.mstances."

"It's okay." Maybe there was a gentler side to Niathal after all.

If there was, he'd exploit it to the hilt. "Can't tread on eggs and suspend all normal conversation about deaths. The best thing we can do to honor my aunt's memory is to win for her."

"Indeed."

"Murkhana seems tense. We're past the deadline, yes?"

"We're keeping a watching brief on that. Might well be Mandalorian psych tactics. Eight X-wings on standby to keep the peace is the price of GA harmony. On the other hand, if the Mandalorians do show up to support their Verpine allies by halting disputed production in their own inimitable way, then at least we might get a very useful look at the capabilities of their new a.s.sault fighter."

"Some might think," he said quietly, "that we'd prefer to see them attack Murkhana than not."

"I never turn down intelligence, Colonel Solo."

"Very wise, Admiral Niathal."

Jacen wandered over to the bridge holochart that showed the entire Corellian theater. They still had a lot of ships. There was a limited action going on on the Coreward side of the chart. It always struck Jacen as overdetached to show real-time life-and-death struggles as charmingly aesthetic and silent graphics.

"Is this current?"

"Yes, sir," said the officer of the watch. "Updated once a minute."

"I think we're missing something, Lieutenant," Jacen said, dipping his fingertip into the maze of light to make his point. "Look, what you have here is actually a flotilla of corvettes, and this Destroyer here will move into this position, because she's actually operating a-"

He trailed off, aware of the raised eyebrows and puzzled looks he was getting, but bathed in the growing warmth of revelation.

I can see all this.

"Can we check that out?" the officer of the watch called to a colleague. "Colonel Solo is rarely mistaken."

Colonel Solo, Jacen thought, had just had the epiphany of his life.

It's true. Lumiya was right. Oh, this is exquisite. I was blind before. How did I ever think I could succeed as a commander without this?

Lumiya had promised him a battlefield awareness and judgment that made ordinary battle meditation look like a finger painting-to sense and coordinate by the power of his mind and will alone, a power that only came to fruition in the Master of the Sith.

It's me. It really is. It was Mara's sacrifice after all, I accept that now.

But I still don't understand the prophecy. And I don't like what I can't understand.

He was a Sith Lord. Now his work could truly begin.

It had happened.

And it was beautiful.

JEDI COUNCIL SHUTTLE, HAPES Cl.u.s.tER.

Luke was grateful for something he still couldn't understand. He paused before he walked through the doors to the compartment, taking a few deep breaths. Cilghal looked up as he came in, and moved as if to leave.

Mara-no, Mara's body-lay draped from the neck down in a plain white sheet on an examination table. Luke had steeled himself for something terrible, imagining her horribly disfigured or her features contorted; but she simply looked as if she were sleeping on her back, pale and peaceful, her red hair smoothly tidy in a way it never was when he watched her as she slept.

"It's okay, Cilghal," he said. "I don't need to be alone with her."

"Oh, yes, you do, Luke," she said softly "And I can come back later."

"I don't understand it," he said. "But I get to hold her one last time, and I wondered if I ever would. I can't tell you how grateful I am."

He couldn't see Cilghal's face now. His eyes were hot and br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

She patted his arm.

"You thought she would become discorporeal," she said.

"We talked about it once or twice. I thought she might choose that when the time came. I'm glad she changed her mind."

"She certainly made sure we had evidence." Cilghal paused for a second, inhaled sharply, and started again. "It was poison, one I've never seen before. But don't doubt that she also wanted you to be able to say good-bye."

Cilghal turned and hurried out.

Luke couldn't speak or even look away from Mara, and he spent a long time staring into her face. If her eyes had opened, and she'd asked how long she'd overslept, he wouldn't have been surprised. He lifted the sheet to clasp her left hand, and it was just the chill that made him flinch. After a while the skin felt warm from the heat of his own body.

Cilghal needed forensic evidence for the record. But Lumiya had killed Mara, and Lumiya had paid the price. There was no investigation to follow.

Yet that meant there was no need for Mara to remain now, and Luke was torn between wanting never to take his eyes from her and recalling how Yoda became one with the Force: then he might really see her again.

But he understood so little of those elements of mysticism. Right then, he was grateful to settle for watching her.

"You really did want to see me, didn't you?" he whispered, and leaned over to kiss her. He wondered if she would vanish in the next instant. He didn't dare look away, and knew that it was only stopping him from accepting that she was gone. Even when he felt Ben walking toward the compartment, and heard him walk softly across the deck, he didn't turn around. He reached out his left arm so Ben would walk up to him and accept the embrace while Luke watched over Mara.

"Hey, sweetheart," he said to her. "It's Ben."

"I'm sorry you couldn't find me, Dad," he said. "I just had to go to her and be there."

It was the first time Luke had spoken to Ben since before Mara had left: it felt like the first time in ages, in fact. Luke tried to think about what it must have been like for Ben to stand guard over his mother's body, alone and scared, but he was still too mired in his own grief and shock.

"Dad ... I know she's telling us something. I've been thinking about it all the way back."

Poor kid. Luke didn't quite understand what he meant, but they could talk it through later. He was proud of his son's strength and dignity. Ben could take the other news, too. He did a man's job now.

"Anyway, I got Lumiya."

"Yeah?" Ben sounded surprised. "What do you mean, got?"

"I killed her. I won't dress it up. I owed it to Mara to give her justice."

Ben was totally silent. Luke felt a small disturbance around him and his muscles stiffened.

"Dad . . ."

"I know, legal process and all that, but legal process . . . Lumiya said she had to . . . well, a life for a life. That's all."

"Dad . . . Dad, it wasn't Lumiya."

"It was. She said What exactly had Lumiya said?

"No, no, it can't be, because I was right next to her at the moment Mom died, nowhere near the scene. We'd landed on Kavan, both of us. She was still in the Sith sphere."

Luke heard Ben's voice from a long way away, and everything was upended again.

It wasn't her. It wasn't Lumiya.

"Dad, take it easy, okay? We'll find who did it." Ben grabbed his shoulders. "Dad, that's why Mom stayed. She stayed so we could find evidence. We don't know who did it yet. Forget about Lumiya. You just got to her first-I was going after her before Mom died. You did the galaxy a necessary service."

No, he hadn't. Luke didn't feel he had done that at all. He'd killed Lumiya-evil as she was-for something she hadn't done. That wasn't justice.

Luke found himself sinking to his knees. "I killed the wrong-"

"Sith."

"I killed the wrong person. But she said-"

Ben put his hands on either side of his father's face, suddenly years older than Luke. "Look at me, Dad. It's not good to do this here.