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Vestara was still embarrassed, and the thought pleased him a little. She cared about how he thought of her. He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, and she didn’t protest. She even leaned into him a little, smiling at him. The scar, that tiny little scar that she disliked so much, stretched with the gesture and made her smile even wider.

He wanted to tell her, I don’t want to fight with you. There’s enough strife and anger and bad feelings running around as it is. I know there are things we can’t agree on, and things that make my gut hurt to think that you really believe. I know that I want to show you my world, my thoughts, what I believe is right. And I think that maybe you might listen, one day. But for now, I just want to walk around with you and just … be us. Can’t we just be us?

Instead he said, keeping his voice light, “So, how’d you get that scar?”

Her smile widened, became mischievous. His heart did something strange in his chest. “Oh, that was when I was beginning my apprenticeship training,” she said, her voice deadly serious but her eyes bright. “In order to prove that I was worthy to be trained, I had to fight four rukaros, all fed enough to keep them strong and deadly, but kept so that they were not at the height of their aggression. I had a sporting chance.”

They had started walking now, ambling, heading no place in particular. She continued melodramatically.

“They all came at me at once, four sets of claws as long as my hand, a mouthful of teeth, tails that were barbed with poison. I killed all but one before they could get me, but before that one died, right as my lightsaber sliced him neatly into six pieces, he struck out with a claw and tore my mouth. And that’s what caused the scar.”

Ben grinned at her. The argument they had had earlier was forgotten, gone like a cloud blown away by a cleansing wind. “Well, I have to say, I’m not impressed. I—”

A sudden scream sounded from inside the market, followed by a loud crash. For half a heartbeat Ben and Vestara stared at each other. Then Ben grasped his lightsaber and raced back toward the marketplace as fast as he could go. Vestara was right beside him.

MOS EISLEY, TATOOINE

SHE WAS ELEVEN, DIRTY, TOO SKINNY, AND TOO CLEVER FOR HER OWN good. Or so her master told her. Her name was Kitaya Shuul, and she was a slave.

Inserted just below her shoulder blade was a subcutaneous chip that transmitted a signal. Her master, Truugo the Hutt, could tell where she was at any time of the day or the night. And she knew she was monitored nearly constantly. If Truugo didn’t like where she was, he would order that the chip be detonated. And Kitaya would no longer be dirty, too skinny, and too clever for her own good; she would be a messy, gooey collection of small pieces of flesh and bone.

That didn’t stop her.

Fortunately, one of the duties Truugo liked to utilize her for was the occasional—more than occasional—round of espionage. He had done his best to teach her several languages, making his other slaves teach her everything they knew. Kit could speak four different languages and comprehend eight more; her human ear could understand certain languages when spoken, but her human tongue could not replicate them.

It was ironic, that while conducting her service to her master, she was also plotting his downfall.

Slavery was an institution as old as there were sentient beings. In the days of the Republic, Tatooine was too far afield to warrant the enforcement of the antislavery laws. And now, in the era of the Galactic Alliance, because it had not joined said Alliance, there were no antislavery laws to enforce at all. Tatooine, as it had for most of its history, was left to take care of itself.

And Kit wanted to be among those who would “take care” of the institution of slavery.

It had begun with books, smuggled to her on chips or encoded among repair manuals on datapads. Poetry, history, fiction, or truth, Kit drank it all in as thirstily as she drank water on this arid world. Stories of revolutions