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He threw a series of short slashes at Not-Corran's head, left shoulder, and left side, but his opponent blocked each one with minimal arm motion, with little effort. Then the imposter's brown boot was slamming into Valin's chest, hurtling him backward and to his right. Valin crashed down painfully atop the water-filled sink, his ribs bruising against the faucet, his right buttock shattering soaking dishes. Disoriented, he spun his blade in a defensive circle. But Not-Corran did not immediately follow up; instead, he was shouting, “Mirax, out now,” and the woman impersonating his mother was leaving the room at a dead run, tears and a bewildered, pained expression on her face.

Valin heaved himself off the sink, his rear end wet, and landed on his feet. He pointed his blade at Not-Corran, an informal salute of grudging respect. “You've studied. Where?”

“Put the blade away, boy. I don't know what you're seeing or feeling, but we can get people in here whom you trust. We can even get Luke Skywalker here.”

“Sure, I'll happily give you time to call your reinforcements. Tactically, that's a good solution for me.”

“You make the calls, then.”

Valin paused as if hesitating but took that moment to assess his options.

Not-Corran was at least as good a swordsman as Valin, and Not-Mirax was clearly off calling in more help. Soon enough, Valin would be overmatched.

To Valin's right were the sink and stove, cabinets above, wall behind. To the left was a wall between him and the living room; against it stood a sideboard and the small table where Mirax's carrybag rested. Ahead was the only path out of this chamber, and Not-Corran was in the way.

Well, that was all right. In rental quarters like these, lightly constructed for ease of remodeling and for the sake of cheapness, Valin didn't need a door.

He darted to the left and boosted his speed with a touch of the Force. He aimed for the open spot between table and sideboard, and the wall there was suddenly wreckage filling the air with white powder, falling away from him in pieces, barely registering as an impact against Valin's body; it gave way as readily as a flimsi barrier would to a normal man.

Now he was in the main living chamber. Ahead was a sofa; in the wall behind it was a large picture viewport with a real waterfall cascading by a few meters beyond. To the right was the door out and another window beside it—

Also to the right was a blur, Not-Corran in Force-speeded motion, paralleling him, now between him and the door.

Valin didn't alter his trajectory. He dived forward into the viewport, counting on the minimal-expense construction of this property to mean that the transparisteel there was thin, or that the mountings holding it into the wall were not the stoutest …

He was right on both counts. Again he barely felt the impact as he punched through the viewport. The thin transparisteel folded around him. Together they hurtled into sunlight, through the waterfall downpour, and into open air beyond.

Valin exerted himself, throwing the oversized sheet of transparent foil away, and dropped into what looked like a bottomless city canyon bordered on two sides by soaring, gaudily decorated banks of skytowers.

This was a vacationers' district, the vast lengths of skyrises occupied mostly by hostels, restaurants, spas, and other businesses catering to travelers and celebrants from all over Coruscant and the Alliance. The gap separating this bank of skytowers from the one facing it was about thirty meters wide, farther than his leap would carry him, but there were multiple streams of speeder traffic above and below. As he dropped, he took note of a blue-and-yellow-striped speeder approaching below; he twisted, angling toward it, and he came down on the hood of the vehicle, landing in a deep crouch.

The front end of the speeder dipped precipitously under the force of his impact. The pilot was an Ortolan, rotund and blue-skinned, his broad ears and snout suddenly being snapped back by the wind; Valin saw the pilot's eyes open wide. The repulsorlift of the speeder