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She felt a flicker of amusement, watching the reports about the Fountain of the Ancients, knowing as she did exactly what had transpired on Klatooine. She gazed, unmoved, at the horror of a tsunami on a world that had fully a quarter of its population swallowed by the devastating wave, observing the grief and carnage as she watched famine turn bodies into living skeletons.

She watched holodramas, interviews—

Interviews …

Abeloth instructed Ship to pause, to focus on one of the scenes. The others faded out, their brightly moving images replaced by the dull, old-blood color of Ship’s interior.

The speaker was a Chevin, an elder of his species, conducting an interview in what appeared to be a newsvid. But his kindly, wise, large face was not what had attracted her attention. She had been galvanized by the being he was interviewing, a female of another species with which Abeloth was unfamiliar. As she watched, her eyes unblinking, Abeloth inquired of Ship as to the nature of this species.

Ship responded by filling her mind with images and history, which Abeloth absorbed at once even while listening to the interview.

The female was of a species called the Jessar. Their planet, Qaras, had recently undergone the upheaval of a revolution. The Jessar had risen up and overthrown their masters, a species called the Minyavish, who had enslaved them for thousands of years. As such things went, while it was not exactly a bloodless coup, it was nonetheless remarkably civilized and constrained. The images flashed in Abeloth’s mind at lightspeed, of peaceful protests, one single strike in the night on the seat of power that resulted in only a few dozen casualties, a new government that forbade retaliation against the Minyavish even as it joyfully celebrated the dream of freedom.

And this female was the heart and mind of the entire affair.

Her name was Rokari Kem. Upon initial perusal, she did not look like the leader of millions who led a rebellion to topple a reign of a thousand years. Rokari Kem was slightly built, humanoid, with elongated limbs and a tranquil demeanor. Her skin was a lovely shade of blue, her hair—long and straight and shiny, falling almost to her hips—blue-green and woven with colorful ribbons. While she listened to the question from the Chevin interviewer, Kem appeared almost languid, so still was she as she concentrated. And then she spoke.

“But you see, Perre,” Kem said, her large green eyes wide as she leaned forward and gestured with her three-fingered hands, “words are important. In and of themselves, they are simply noises, or symbols etched on stone or in the sand!”

“So you are censoring free speech, as the Minyavish government in exile has stated?” questioned the Chevin.

She looked sad rather than angry, and shook her head. “No. Because we respect words far too much. My people have a long tradition of never speaking anything that is untrue, as you may know.”

“That seems—hard to believe,” the Chevin—Perre Needmo, well-known holonews star—said, his eyes kind even as he expressed his dubiousness. “Deception seems to be a part of every being, in some form or another, whether it be intentional or not.”

Rokari Kem smiled, her great green eyes crinkling, her small pert nose upturned. “We do not even have a word for it in our language. If words cannot be trusted, what then? All we believe in spins into chaos. The Jessar creation myth tells us that with the naming of things, they came into being, and the Jessar were charged with never violating the creative power of the word.”

“Rokari—”

She waved her hand, smiling. “Please—call me Roki. Everyone does.”

“Roki, then. Let me ask about your Silence oath,” he said. “I’ve heard about this. Slaves who were planning to escape never lied about their intentions. Instead they stayed silent, even when they were beaten to death. Is that right?”

She nodded sadly. “Even when it might mean the deaths of themselves or others, they never spoke what was not. They simply chose not to speak at all. Some Minyavish understood this, and were merciful to their slaves. Others