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He gave her a crooked grin in return, then it faded. “But still … by choosing not to tell us, you’re putting all of us at risk. What if she is there? She’s got to be stopped, Ves, you know that.”

“I do. But not at the expense of my whole world.”

Ben didn’t know what to say. He wanted to argue that it wasn’t genocide the Jedi were after, just … destroying Sith. But it sounded like the whole planet had become Sith, even the non-Force-users. He couldn’t give her a promise that only the “bad people” would be targeted and destroyed, because as far as Jedi like his father went, all Sith were bad people.

She looked thoughtful for a moment, the datapad forgotten. “Unless …” she said, then shook her head. “Never mind.”

“Unless what?”

She hesitated, gnawing her lower lip for a moment. Ben again found his eye drawn to the tiny scar, the single perfect imperfection in a face that otherwise, to him, had no flaws. “Unless … you could give me a promise that my people—those who haven’t cooperated with Abeloth—would be safe.”

He stared at her mutely, his blue eyes sad. She smiled, her own brown ones resigned. “See? I didn’t think so. The only way for that bargain to work would be if I had a chip to bargain with. Which … you might be able to give me.”

After so much time in her company, Ben was getting used to Vestara’s subtle shifts in the Force. He was on the alert now, sensing that, contrary to what she wanted him to think, what she was about to say was something that had been on her mind for some time.

“Go ahead.”

“Trust … comes hard. But this would be something each of us could use against the other—if we had to, of course.”

“Of course.” He leaned back and folded his arms, his face impassive.

“I would consider revealing to you the location of my world … if you would tell me who you think is this Jedi queen.”

He almost laughed. “There’s a difference, Vestara. Kesh is real. It exists. The Jedi queen is likely just some kind of figment of Taalon’s fevered imagination.”

“You know,” she said, her voice equally conversational, “I somehow don’t think so. There’s at least a kernel of truth in it, or else you and your father wouldn’t have reacted so when it came up.” She leaned her chin on her hand, smiling at him.

Ben considered the trade-off she was proposing. For about a nanosecond. And in that nanosecond, he came to the painful realization that at least for now, he didn’t trust Vestara Khai, though he badly wanted to.

“If you’re telling the truth,” he said, “the best we can hope for is maybe—maybe—finding Abeloth and the Sith fleet. The best you could hope for is murdering someone very important to the future of this galaxy who might actually exist. And if you’re lying, and I actually did give you information—if there was any information to give—you would have everything and we’d have nothing.”

Vestara did not seem at all put out. She actually smiled. “Ben, I can see why Ship was drawn to you. There’s the making of a fine Sith in you, you know that?”

“Let us not devolve into insults,” Ben said. Vestara Force-tossed her muja fruit core at him, which he easily deflected. He wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t be. This was where they were, plain and simple. He was frustrated, but unsurprised, and he found that it did not stand, and never had stood, in the way of his liking and caring about her. He still believed she was edging her way over to the light side, but she wasn’t there.

At least, not yet.

“Well, now that you’ve had a chance to read about these,” Ben said, dragging the subject back on track, “where do you think Ship would be most likely to go?”

“It’s hard to say. Perhaps Ziost?”

Ben shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. “There was nothing for him on Ziost. That’s why he wanted me to free him, so he could get away from it.”

She looked at him, no doubt picking up on his discomfort. “Sure you’re not saying that because you don’t want to go back there?”

The initial retort died on his lips. It was a fair question. He took a minute to think about it. “I’ll be honest,