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“Stop it, you two.” That was Kaminne, stepping forward, but there was no censure in her tone, and she was smiling. She turned to face the crowd. “So in the weaponless combat for those with the Arts, champion for this year is Luke Skywalker of the Jedi.”

Members of both clans, though mostly Broken Columns, came forward to congratulate Luke, and Tasander gave him his first-place winner’s medallion. Then, inevitably, the audience began to dissipate, most of its members headed off to the next staging ground, the next event.

Luke took a look around then glanced skyward to check the position of the sun. Midafternoon. He wondered if tonight would bring—

“Yes, they will.”

He glanced at his son. “What?”

“Yes, the Nightsisters will attack tonight.” Ben lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone straight out of a holodrama. “Your thoughts betray you.”

“I’m going to shake you so hard … I’m certain that you got nothing through the Force about my thoughts.”

“Not everything is the Force, Dad. First you looked off in the direction where we had our traps and bodies and so forth the other night. Then you scanned the tree line all around, but not the lake. So you were thinking about avenues of approach toward the camp, which meant enemies, which meant Nightsisters. You checked the sun, which, since it’s usually there, means you were really estimating time until sundown, so you were asking how much time minimum we had before the Nightsisters attack.”

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to let you train with the Guard. You think you might be happier dispensing caf or sketching caricatures?” Luke breathed a sigh. “All right, why do you think they’re going to attack tonight?”

“Because Dyon got a very interesting communication on his comlink while you were in the semifinals.”

They took the short walk back to their campfire, where Dyon was clearly expecting Luke. At Ben’s nod, Dyon took a look around to make sure no one was in hearing distance. “Yliri contacted me a little while ago.”

“Good.” Luke was anxious for word from the spaceport. He knew Han and Leia had gotten offworld without incident, but didn’t know how things had gone with the rest of those who had departed.

“Anyway, I think there’s something going on there.”

Luke gave him a quizzical look. “At the spaceport?”

“No, between Yliri and Carrack. She was so worried about his injuries, so insistent about accompanying him back. She’s clearly been tending him night and day. I think some sort of romance sprang up while they were here. Of course, a conclave like this is just the place for it …”

Ben sighed. “Dyon? Speeder bikes?”

“Oh. Right. Earlier today, the spaceport sensor station picked up speeder bike transponders, three of them, arriving at a broad meadow west of the spaceport at different times.”

Luke shrugged. “So what? I understand that there are speeder bikes with several of the clans now.”

“So they were arriving from different directions. Suggesting different clans. And a lot of the speeder bikes get modified when they fall into clan hands, their transponders being disabled, because the clans have a natural dislike of people being able to track their movements. So if three speeders with transponders converge on a site, it means there were probably more than three there at the time.”

Luke nodded. “Where do their signals say they are now?”

“That’s just the thing. They were there for a little while, then the three signals winked out, all within two minutes of one another.”

“Which suggests,” Ben broke in, “that they were sitting around waiting, and someone said, You have all disabled your transponders, haven’t you? And three of them with the brains of monkey-lizards said, What are transponders? And then they fixed the problem.”

Luke thought about it. “So you’re calculating that the Nightsisters decided they needed reinforcements, and more Nightsisters are coming in on speeder bikes.”

Ben nodded. “Sure, there are other explanations. But I’m kind of naturally suspicious.”

“Well, being suspicious seems to work for your uncle Han.” Luke looked around, scanning