Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 04_ Backlash - Aaron Allston [83]
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged again.
“I heard the circumstances of her birth were difficult, too.”
Halliava gave him a little quizzical frown. “Who said that?”
“I forget. My father was telling stories around a campfire. Before I was born, my mother carried me around from battle to planetary disaster and back again, and one of your Raining Leaves wanted to top that story.”
“Oh. Well, yes. I was saddened by Dasan’s death and had told no one I was expecting his child. I went on one last long scouting expedition for the clan, knowing that soon after my return I would begin to show … but when I was at the farthest point on my trip from home, I slid into a ravine and broke my leg. I nearly starved, which I think is what has left Ara so small. It was not until after she was born that I was able to return to the Raining Leaves.”
“Clearly, you’re a strong woman.”
She gave him another smile. There was no guilt or duplicity evident in it. “There are no weaklings among the Raining Leaves.”
He waved at Ara. “Nice meeting you, Ara.”
The little girl gave him another salute, but turned it into a wave halfway through.
Ben turned and, with a last cordial nod to Halliava, moved on to the next campfire. There he’d continue the deception that he was meeting as many clan members as possible, the better to understand their ways.
Halliava’s story was unlikely but possible. Dasan of the Broken Columns had indeed died a month after the clan conclave six and a half years before, though no one could remember him wedding Halliava; still, not all such unions were officiated or remembered.
Halliava had indeed departed on a lengthy scouting mission three months after that conclave and had not returned for months, now with the baby Ara in her arms.
Blast it. Ben didn’t want his suspicions to be correct. He rather liked Halliava. And maybe he was wrong. He’d have a better sense of whether he was right if something befell him to end his investigation—a plausible accident or a murder attempt.
He reminded himself that he did need to survive if he was to achieve his goals: justice for a dead woman and the uncovering of a nest of Nightsisters. Nightsisters, and perhaps Sith in collaboration with them.
CORUSCANT
TAHIRI VEILA STARED OUT THE TINY VIEWPORT OF HER DETENTION cell, staring at the late-afternoon traffic streaming past at a slightly lower altitude. Thousands and thousands of people swept by in their airspeeders every hour. And if they knew that Tahiri Veila, murderer of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon—an officer and leader remembered as affectionately by the Galactic Alliance as by the Empire—stood behind this viewport, some would probably try to put a blaster bolt though the transparisteel.
She knew she did not look like a killer. Tall and blond-haired, attractive though she did not enhance her looks with makeup or glamorous clothes, bearing curious faint scars on her forehead from events a lifetime ago, she looked like the sort of athlete who’d won championships early and then retired to a life of endorsing breakfast foods while smiling at the holocams. But it had been a long time since she’d smiled.
She turned to her visitor, who was seated at the end of the bunk that—aside from an unpartitioned refresher unit—was the only furniture in the tiny room she now called home.
The visitor gave her an understanding nod. “It’s difficult to understand because it’s based on logic that is alien to all rational minds. It’s attorney logic, legal logic.”
His name was Mardek Mool. A Bith, he had the elongated cranium and epidermal cheek-folds of his species, and huge dark eyes that watched Tahiri as though he expected her to fly into a rage and use a Force-choke on him. It did not bode well for her case, she knew, that her own public defender seemed to believe her capable of a senseless, cold-blooded murder just because