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No, although that question did concern Ben, it wasn’t what was eating at him. He tried to drift away from thoughts and puzzles, to feel the ambient flow of the Force through him.

There was malevolent intent at work here in the camp.

He could feel it, a faint tinge of malice, very scattered, very diffuse. He immediately thought of Vestara, but, to his surprise, even resuming his observation of her through the macrobinoculars, he did not feel that it emanated from her.

And as the sun rose higher, that sensation grew, even though it became no more focused.

Near noontime, Ben greeted the other offworlders and Tribeless Sha as they returned for the midday meal. “I saw you shooting,” he told Han. “How’d you do?”

“First place, of course. Seventy of seventy.” Han’s tone was matter-of-fact. “That fancy boy from the Broken Columns came in second, sixty-nine of seventy.” He jerked a thumb toward two of their companions. “Carrack and Yliri tied at sixty-eight, and they had a shoot-off to break the tie. Yliri smoked him.”

Carrack scowled. “I don’t practice much with pistols. If a target is close enough to be in pistol range, I’ve fouled up somehow with my rifle.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Yliri said cheerfully. She held up a medallion, circular and about five centimeters in diameter; it was of yellow porcelain, had the image of a pistol on it, and hung from a leather thong. “They give out awards.”

Han held up his. It was glossy black and had apparently been carved from onyx and then polished rather than fashioned from clay. “I think I’ll win six or eight more and have a complete set of coasters.”

Tarth and Sha took over the maintenance of the campfire and the pot of stew over it—Ben’s ostensible reason for staying at the camp all this time—and the others settled down to eat. Luke, Leia, and Ben sat apart, a Jedi cell.

“Do you feel it?” Luke asked.

Leia and Ben nodded. Leia glanced toward her husband. “It has something to do with him.”

“Really?” Luke sounded surprised. “He hasn’t been here long enough to give anyone reason to harm him—”

“That doesn’t take Han very long,” Leia assured him.

“—meaning that it may have something to do with his relationship with Dathomir from before. When he theoretically won it gambling.”

Ben shook his head. “If it were just him, maybe. But I’m feeling malice that’s more widespread.”

They quieted for a minute as Tarth and Sha moved among them, distributing bowls of stew. Ben ate, surprised at how hungry he’d become just from hours of spying. He himself had assembled the stew from ingredients provided by the Dathomiri and scavenged from the supplies brought by the offworlders. It was largely made up of Redgill fish, sliced tree tubers from the rain forest, and tart clusterfruit leaves, all seasoned by Ben to spicy Corellian standards. He had to admit that it had turned out pretty well.

Then he felt just a trickle of alarm and wondered if, somehow, the stew had been poisoned while he wasn’t looking.

Luke and Leia felt it, too. It appeared that Dyon did as well; the man’s head snapped up, and he looked around.

Leia rose in a smooth motion and walked over to her husband. “Don’t move, Han.” Her voice was pleasant enough.

He stopped with a wooden spoon halfway to his mouth. “You want to remember me just like this, right?”

“Sure.” She leaned over him, past him, and grabbed at something on the ground. “Oh, no, you don’t.”

When she straightened, she had a serpent in her hand, gripping it just behind the neck, and it was in the process of coiling around her arm. It was mostly green, with red and yellow bands decorating it. The color scheme was one of warning.

Han came upright as if he were a puppet yanked to his feet by an overly energetic child. His stew splashed across Carrack’s legs. He spun around, somehow keeping an eye on Leia’s snake while also scanning every meter of ground near him. “What the …”

“Kodashi viper.” Sha’s tone was flat, but her eyes were big. “Most poisonous serpent in the rain forest. It bites you, you