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A gaggle of shoppers was passing the kiosk, occasionally obscuring the daro from sight. He willed them to find the produce here uninspiring and to go elsewhere.

They did.

Kaj leaned forward and raised a hand toward the prize. Sweat trickled into his eyes, startling him and disrupting his concentration. He swore, swiped the salty rivulet away, and reached out again. His hand was shaking, he realized, and not with hunger. His encounter with the Inquisitor yesterday had been much more than merely disturbing. He was scared, plain and simple—scared of doing anything to call attention to himself. Their attention, anyway. He flattered himself that he was well capable of handling the unwelcome attention of ordinary people. But Inquisitors were not ordinary people. They were the Emperor’s watchdogs, and they had powers he could only guess at.

He steeled himself. Two seconds. It would take only two seconds to procure a couple of pieces of the alluring food. He would open the way to the Force and then close it, quickly. Simple. It would be simple.

Resolved, he wiped the sweat from his palm, stretched out his hand, and called. A daro atop the pile wiggled, then rolled down the mound of produce to drop to the ground unnoticed. He called again, and it flew unerringly to his hand.

His heart, which had been beating out a wild tattoo in his chest, calmed. Not bad. And not an Inquisitor in sight … or sense. Encouraged, he decided to get more. He tucked the fat, golden root into an inner pocket of his voluminous cloak, raised his hand, and—

He felt it then, a sick trickle of dread coursing down his spine: the sudden eddy in the Force as someone nearby groped for the one who had just used it.

Kaj sensed purposeful movement in the crowded avenue before the produce vendor’s stall, saw people moving swiftly out of the way of something or someone who was in a great deal of haste. He bit back his fear and threw a desperate, sharp salvo of thought at the bin of daro root. Amplified by a charge of adrenaline, the blast hit the bin like a burst from a repulsor field. Daro roots exploded into the air and cascaded to the ground, rolling every which way. Patrons milling about the booth reacted haphazardly, sidestepping, ducking, bobbing, and weaving to get out of the way, slipping on splattered fruit and stumbling out into the overcrowded avenue.

Kaj used the distraction to scoop up two more of the precious gourd-shaped roots before he hurriedly withdrew, scurrying rodent-like along behind three or four stalls in the row before finally emerging at the corner into a cross-alley. He’d secreted the daro roots on his person by that time and glided into the flow of foot traffic, straightening his cloak.

He smiled grimly, a strange mixture of relief and exhilaration flooding him with warmth. Once again he had barely avoided detection; once again he had eluded the Emperor’s minions. He had a swift vision of himself as a much-sought-after prize. A shadowy rogue Forcesensitive dancing on the fringes of society, always one step ahead of the Inquisitorius and its frustrated operatives. He could almost see himself leaping between the sky-raking buildings, flitting along ledges—an elusive silhouette. A powerful possessor of the Force.

A Jedi.

A sudden, almost overwhelming surge of anger arose in Kaj’s breast to swamp his relief and drown his self-congratulatory daydreams. Once, in a more enlightened age, he would have become a Jedi and been instructed in the ways of the Force, honing his relatively newborn skills—skills that had fully awakened only this past year. But the Jedi Temple lay in ruins, and the Order had been scattered all across the galaxy—if there were any left alive. He alternately hoped for and despaired of that … and raged at the universe and the Force itself.

He gritted his teeth, trying to suppress the seething anger that burned through his veins.

No. There are no Jedi left, he told himself. I’m alone. Alone.

Alone