Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [82]
Luke frowned. “You’re being awfully flip about a woman’s death.”
“Sorry. Investigator humor. I heard a lot of it when I was with the Galactic Alliance Guard. Anyway, it would help if I could pin down the dates a little more precisely.”
“I might be able to help with that.” Dyon went fumbling through his many vest pockets and eventually brought out a scuffed, sturdy-looking datapad. “Luke, can you take over the fire for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
Dyon began tapping commands and queries into his ’pad. “It’s nice to have comm repeaters and satellites. I can access the records at the spaceport. I mean, you’re used to that sort of thing on Coruscant, but here … Um, Sha Tsu and Vagan Kolvy are first recorded as visiting the spaceport seven years, one month ago. The husband has no more visits after five years, ten months back. Five years, eight months ago, Sha lists herself as available for scouting, guiding, hunting activities.”
Ben thought about it. “So in all probability, they took her baby—”
Luke shot him an admonishing glance. “Her theoretical baby.”
“They raided her theoretical campsite, murdered her theoretical husband, and took her theoretical baby just over five years, eight months ago.” He scanned the campsite again. “It would be pretty hard to introduce a new child into a clan like this, wouldn’t it?”
Dyon snapped his datapad shut. “No, but it would be hard to do it unobtrusively. These people lead a hard, low-calorie existence, so nobody has a pregnancy that goes undetected because of extra weight. There’s some exchanges of members among clans, so it’s possible, say, for you to have a cousin over in the clan next door, and that cousin dies and you adopt her child. But everybody knows that the child originally came from another clan.”
“Huh.” Ben accepted a piece of foil-wrapped meat from his father and tossed it from hand to hand to keep it from burning his fingers. “After lunch, I think I’m going to start asking new questions.”
His father grinned. “And when someone asks you to talk to her among the Trees of Imminent Doom?”
“I say yes, and close my eyes and pucker up for a big kiss?”
“There, that’s the Skywalker survival instinct at work.”
Ben was true to his plan. After the midday meal, he wandered the camp again, asking new questions. Is this your child? How old is she? Daughter of one of the Broken Columns, I take it? Does she have any friends her own age?
It was nightfall before he came across any answers that interested him.
With a special wrestling event, honoring those that had fallen to the snakes, loud in the distance, Ben stared down at a little black-haired girl, who stared solemnly back up at him. “This is your daughter?”
Halliava, winner of the short footrace for those with the Arts and other competitions, gave him a wide smile, a proud smile. “Yes. This is Ara. Ara, this is Ben. He’s from far away, and he’s a boy-Witch. Give him proper greetings.”
The girl raised a chubby hand, palm toward Ben. “Welcome to our fire. We have bread and meat and water.”
Halliava’s prompt came as a whisper: “I am called …”
“I am called Aradasa Vurse.”
Ben returned the salute. “I am called Ben Skywalker.”
“Are you really a boy-Witch?”
He nodded. “But we call ourselves Jedi. Some Jedi are boys and some are girls, and the Arts we know are a little different from yours.”
“Oh.” Suddenly shy, Ara grabbed and clung to her mother’s thigh, but she did not turn away from Ben.
Ben gave Halliava a friendly smile. “She’s, what, four?”
“Five and a season. She’s small for her age.” Halliava shrugged. “You can never tell how fast they’ll grow. I’m tall, and her father was very tall. We used to jest that he was half rancor.”
“Was tall?”
“He died before Ara