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Her eyebrows rose.

He shook his head as if to shake the epiphany away. “This morning you said Kaj was getting cocky. I just realized that I’ve been cocky, too. And about something a lot more important than a practice droid.”

“You’re just full of riddles today. You sound like Master Yoda.”

He shook his head again, wrapping his hands around the daro root beer. “Master Yoda would never have made this mistake.”

She gazed at him, her eyes, he was sure, seeing more than he wanted them to. “I’m sure, if you asked him, that he’d tell you that we all make that kind of mistake once in a while.”

He opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that kind of mistake when she turned her attention to a couple of Rodians who had just entered the dimly lit grotto, arm in arm. When she turned back to him, he could tell that another of his life’s moments had passed. The thought brought with it a tickle of nascent panic.

There is no emotion; there is peace.

“How’s your little brother?” Laranth asked, referring to Kaj.

“He’s fine. He was playing sabacc with—with the guys.”

“He was playing sabacc with the Zeltron.”

Had he been that transparent? “Is that a problem?”

“No. In fact, I think it’s a good idea. She can keep him calm. She worked wonders with the Togrutan female, by all accounts.” She tipped her head toward his drink and raised her voice just a bit. “Why don’t you finish that so we can go someplace more private?”

He struggled briefly with cognitive dissonance, confused for half a second by the soft warmth of her voice. The vague static that rose between them when she leaned in close to him.

There is no passion; there is serenity.

He tossed back his drink and grinned at her, falling into his assigned role. “I’ll go wherever you want to take me.”

She gave him a look that, from across the room, must have looked smoldering. Close up, the effect was somewhat different. More like scalding.

He sobered. “What—too much?” he murmured.

She grasped his hand and hauled him out of the booth. They were making their way out of the cantina when a tall Devish woman passed them in the entry.

“Laranth!” the woman cried with a broad grin. The Twi’lek returned the greeting, if not the smile.

“Who’s the new man?” the Devish asked, a suggestive leer on her red, saturnine face.

“Don’t know yet,” Laranth told her. “But I’m going to find out.”

They left the cantina with the Devish’s laughter following them down the walk.

“The new man?” Jax asked when they’d gone about a block. “Is there an old one?”

“I meet a lot of people in that cantina, Jax. Contacts. Friends.”

Lovers? he wanted to ask, but didn’t.

They went down three levels from the very verges of the spaceport, into a maze of tunnels and alleys so complex that Jax wondered how anyone who was not a Jedi—or at least a Force adept—could find his or her way out again.

When he thought they must be coming to their destination, Laranth stepped into a waiting airspeeder, and they were whisked away to a neighborhood not unlike the one in which Poloda Place was situated. Deep in the crisscross of alleys there was an old theater of the type where live stage plays were mounted to limited audiences. They had been all the rage some four hundred years earlier, but now the old building was long past its heyday and cloaked in grime and faded glory. It had a little art gallery on the first floor where artists unfamiliar to Jax displayed a diverse array of work, including, he noted with interest, some light murals.

Though the medium was the same as that used by the late Ves Volette, the style of display was entirely different. Instead of a bowl from which a fountain of cleverly shaped light sprang, these were affected by having the light leap up the wall from a long, narrow tray or even a bar that housed the emitters and field generators. They were significantly smaller than Volette’s work, too, and the generators were miniature.

Still, he caught Laranth’s attention and gestured at the works. “Interesting.”

“Yeah. I wondered about those myself when you mentioned