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Halliava had heard the message, and her eyes were wide. “They’re here.”

Vestara smiled at her. “They’re here, and the Jedi and the Bright Sun Clan will burn like dry leaves in a fire under the weapons they’re bringing you.”

“What do we need to do?”

“We need to choose a landing field for the Sith shuttles. A broad meadow or a flat beach, something like that. It should be at least a couple of kilometers from the Bright Sun hill so our enemies can’t bear witness to their landing. I need to go there and transmit the location with my device, so they know exactly where to come. Then, tonight, at the time we’ve told them, we show up to collect our rewards.”

The smile that crossed Halliava’s face was one of relief and victory. “I know just the place. Let’s go.”

Some time after he realized that he could no longer find Vestara anywhere in camp, Dyon spotted her again—carefully ascending the southwest approach, a waterskin at either end of a pole carried across her shoulders. After she made it across the hill crest, he approached her. “Replenishing our water stores?”

“No, hunting lizards.” Then one of the skins she carried caught her eye and she gave a little gasp. “Why, it is water!”

“Clearly, sarcasm is a universal constant among teenage girls.”

“Only the worthwhile ones. Didn’t you hear the call for water bearers?”

“I did.” But you didn’t. You were already gone. You just knew the call would be coming.

“You could help, too.” She swung around to face the forest again. The motion caused one of her waterskins to sweep toward Dyon. He ducked beneath it, stood again once it was past.

She gave him a smile of apology. “Sorry. There, where you see the line of clan members headed into the trees? In that direction is a creek.”

“Thanks.” Dyon waited until she continued on her way, to the central spot on the hill where water containers were collected. Then he headed down the slope and brought out his comlink. He’d better tell Luke and Ben right away of his failure to keep track of the Sith girl. That was the sort of information that could become more dangerous as it aged.

THE SCOUTS AND HUNTERS OF THE BRIGHT SUN CLAN LEARNED SEVERAL things in the morning hours. Before noon, they, the chiefs, and the offworlders gathered at the foot of the hill to tell what they’d learned and concluded. Ben kept his eye on Halliava and Vestara as they separately arrived, but the two did not interact any more, or with anything that looked like hidden meaning, than any other two clan members.

The Nightsisters had taken away their dead. There were no bodies from Luke’s rock bombardments for them to identify, only bloody patches. In his visions, Luke had not seen their faces well enough to describe them for identification. Their identities remained secret.

The Nightsisters had withdrawn, and without laying in any traps that had been detected. Some Bright Suns took this as a sign that they had fled for good. Kaminne, Tasander, and other wiser heads, the Skywalkers among them, dissuaded the optimists of this notion. “They knew we’d be looking for their traps today,” Tasander told them. “They’re changing tactics. Not allowing us to predict them.”

“We must do the same to them.” That was Halliava, who had evidently ranged many kilometers in her search for the Nightsisters. “They expect us to stay on the hill and endure another assault. I say we leave hunting parties out after dark to visit death upon them from behind.”

There was a general murmur of assent at her words, and after a few moments of consideration, Tasander and Kaminne nodded. Kaminne called, “Come to me to volunteer for those hunter duties. I will assign units so that you can be in place well before dark.”

Luke spoke into Ben’s ear, too quietly for others to hear. “That’s what we’ll be doing.”

Ben nodded. “Too noisy and rocky on the hill to sleep anyway.”

CHIEF OF STATE’S OFFICE, SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT

It was a near-perfect re-creation of the meeting of the previous