Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [8]
But he was different in other ways.
He drew level with the awning and ducked sideways out of the flow of traffic, making his way around to the back of the booth. It was even darker back here than in the shadowed arcade, and he took advantage of that to slip into the deeper blackness of the narrow passage that ran the width of the booth between its fabric back wall and the ferrocrete surface of a cloudscraper’s dingy exterior.
When he emerged from the narrow slit on the other side of the booth—which, from the wild dance of aromas, he realized was an herbalist’s shop—he found himself less than three paces from a row of fruit bins containing little that was familiar and much that was not. Not wanting to risk discovery for something that might not even be edible to a human, he scanned the bins for something familiar. Finally he saw what he was looking for: a basket of daro root.
Mouth watering, he edged beneath the tightly pulled corner of the awning and crouched, his eyes on the treasure. Daro root grew on several worlds that humans had colonized. His had been one of them. As a child he had developed a taste for the sweet, creamy golden flesh of the root and now, as hungry as he was, he was sure it would provide the most delicious meal in recent memory.
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