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“I think people know what Sith do.”

“Perhaps. But you have firsthand experience. Please tell the court the sort of things that might be in store for anyone who, shall we say, disappointed a Sith.”

Tahiri took a moment. Then, calmly, she began to speak.

“They begin with just the threat. Or maybe I should refer to it as the promise, because they’re certainly willing to keep it. They’ll hint, or imply, or leave a sentence trailing with the single unspoken word that they know you’re going to supply for them so they don’t have to state it bluntly. It may be something they’ll do to you, or to someone you love, or something, some ideal you cherish. And they’ll promise to hurt you, or them, or it—hurt it in the exact way that it’s going to cause the most pain.”

The room had gone silent. Tahiri continued.

“Then there’s the physical hurting. One of the most well known is something called a Force choke. That’s when they reach out in the Force and just … clench their hands. And it’s as if that hand is on your throat, except much, much stronger.” She clenched her fist, then lowered it slowly. The jury was watching her raptly. “And … you choke. They use the Force to crush your windpipe. And of course, they don’t stop there. They can hurl you against the bulkhead with a thought.

“Then there’s Force lightning. Blue energy comes from their fingers. It burns and stuns and shocks, and it’s painful, very painful. Excruciating. Then, finally, there’s what they can do to your mind. Jacen Solo interrogated—well, if we’re being honest, he tortured—a prisoner by forcing his way into her mind. She couldn’t take it. It killed her. Painfully.”

She spoke in a dispassionate tone, as if she were discussing the weather. She knew she wasn’t trembling, but there was a knot inside her gut that wouldn’t go away, hadn’t gone away, not since the first time she had flow-walked back in time and given her past self a shove into the arms of Anakin Solo. Since she had started down the path of the dark side. Ben had tried to pull her back, and she thought he had succeeded. She wanted him to have succeeded.

She didn’t want to be like Jacen.

She didn’t ever want to be like Jacen.

Eramuth covered her hands with one of his own, warm, reassuring, slightly furry. “May it please the court—knowing what lay in store for this young woman if she disobeyed even the vaguest suggestion Sith Lord Darth Caedus made … I ask you to consider what you might have done had you found yourselves in this same situation.”

The jury was silent. Even the Mon Calamari, who had glowered at her so intently, had his head lowered.

The door at the back of the room opened to admit a latecomer. Tahiri’s eyes were drawn by the movement. And then those eyes widened.

He stood there, a ghost come to life. Not the fifteen-year-old boy she remembered and loved, no, but Anakin as he would have been had he survived. Sandy-brown hair, blue eyes, ice blue eyes that were somehow never cold, not when they looked at her—

“Anakin,” she whispered. The microphone picked up every syllable.

The crowd murmured and heads turned to where she was staring. The young man looked terribly uncomfortable and tried to duck out. The crowd’s agitation increased.

“Order!” cried Judge Zudan. “You there. Please state your name and your reason for being in my courtroom.”

And even as he opened his mouth to speak, Tahiri knew exactly who it was. The void left by the adrenaline leaving her system made her shake, and she was glad she had not been standing.

It was, of course, not Anakin Solo, although it looked exactly like him. It was, of course, Dab Hantaq, who had been kidnapped as a child by Senator Viqi Shesh and surgically altered to look exactly like the youngest Solo child. Shesh had plotted to kidnap Ben Skywalker through the deception, but the attempt had failed.

She cursed herself for her reaction. She knew about Dab’s existence, had even met him before, for star’s sake, when he had recently been assigned