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Jaina and Jag exchanged a glance. Jaina said, “That's an interesting theory.”

Tahiri managed a bitter little laugh. “Solo-speak for That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

“No, I'm serious. I'll pass it on to the Grand Master. Right or wrong, it suggests some avenues of investigation we haven't considered.”

“Oh.” Mollified, Tahiri relaxed. “Thank you.”

As they were departing, Jaina, seized by a sudden impulse, embraced Tahiri, something she had not done in years, and Tahiri held her in turn.

On the walk to the turbolift, Jag said, “I'm afraid I can't find a way to forgive her so readily. She assassinated a man I respected very highly.”

Jaina nodded. “I had a lot of respect for Admiral Pellaeon, too. But who really killed him? The woman we just talked to, who's trying to find her way back from a very dark place, or the woman of two years ago?”

“One descends from the other. They're inextricably linked.” Stopping before the turbolift, Jag pressed the button to summon the car. “Does someone shed all responsibility for what she's done when she suddenly decides it was wrong?”

“Neither one of us has ever been broken the way she has.” Jaina found her voice was unusually gentle. “Maybe we're too hardheaded, or too stupid, or we've just never run into anything that could damage our core selves the way it happened to her. How do you know what we'd be capable of doing in her situation?”

Jag thought about it and merely shrugged. “The Jedi have more faith in redemption than I do. I'm not saying my way is best. Just that I'm not sure I could do what you do. Forgive something that monstrous.”

“I hope I never make a really big mistake in your presence, then.”

JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT

AS A SENIOR JEDI KNIGHT—ONE WHO, IT WAS SAID, WAS UNDER CONSIDERATION for the rank of Master—Jaina warranted private quarters when staying in the Temple. They were small and bare, but offered her more peace than the dormitories reserved for younger Jedi Knights and apprentices.

At her desk, she studied preliminary information assembled on her behalf about the Chief of State's bounty hunters.

The Quarren was almost certainly Dhidal Nyz, an inventor specializing in imprisonment and capture technologies. He had made some of his fortune capturing high-value fugitives, some from patents and military contracts.

The dark-haired woman had given her name as Zilaash Kul to both Luke and the press. There was no mention of her in Jedi files, and she had no criminal record. Holos that showed her lightsaber had been magnified and strenuously analyzed, only to reveal that its hilt seemed to have been modeled on that of Obi-Wan Kenobi's last lightsaber, the one the legendary Jedi had carried aboard the Death Star on his final mission—a weapon reasonably thought to have been lost when that asteroid-sized spacecraft had been destroyed.

The Skakoan was a known quantity. Hrym Mawaar was a bounty hunter with decades of experience, known for returning to his home system and spending years as an elected member of law enforcement between bouts as a bounty hunter.

The YVH droid, fourth on Jaina's list, was the one who caused her the most concern. It was not a droid at all. Vrannin Vaxx, a human mercenary from Dorvalla, had distinguished himself during the Yuuzhan Vong War but had been horribly burned and maimed during a personnel shuttle crash late in the war. He chose not to replace with prosthetics the two-thirds of his body that had been irreparably destroyed. Instead, his family, a wealthy mining clan, had somehow acquired a black-market YVH 1 droid and had it repurposed as a cybernetic body for Vaxx. All that remained of his human self was packed into the droid torso.

Only because there wasn't as much room within Vaxx's carapace as there was in genuine YVH droids was he less formidably armed than a true Hunter droid, and he more than made up for it with human experience and ingenuity. Jaina had received a report that he had survived Leia's laser attack on him and was already