Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [149]
“How did you kill the pilot?” Jacen asked.
“Bare hands. And I buried him. No sense in involving the authorities on Corellia…when the authorities on Corellia were the ones who sent those killers to wreck the Toryaz Station meeting in the first place.”
“You’re assuming.”
“I’m concluding, based on evidence.”
“And then you came here, because you knew that the tassels would lead the Jedi who found them here to Lorrd.”
She shook her head. “Not the Jedi who found them. You.”
“You almost ended up with my sister running down their origin.”
“I don’t think so. In all the galaxy, only you, Jacen Solo, would be sufficiently intrigued to follow them all the way here and beyond.”
“Why me?”
“Because only you could read and understand one of the tassels. Only you could detect its significance. And so you’d demand to be the one who investigated it.”
Ben studied Jacen’s face. His mentor gave nothing away with his expression. But Ben remembered that there was one tassel Jacen had been able to translate when even Dr. Rotham hadn’t—the one from the Sith world. He felt a little chill of unease.
“All right,” Jacen said, “let’s put all this into some sort of context. Let’s have your story from the start.”
“From the start? From when I was a little girl?”
“Sure.”
“No, not here. I’ll tell you at my home.”
“On Commenor?”
“No; my true home, on a planetoid in a star system close to Bimmiel. Not far from here, as galactic distances go. We could take your shuttle or mine.”
“No, thanks.”
“Then you’re not getting any more answers.”
“And you’ll rot in custody here for quite a while.”
Brisha Syo offered him a cool smile. “I don’t think so. What charge would I be held on? The best you could do would be suspicion of complicity in the Toryaz Station incident. There’s enough evidence there to begin assembling a case…but not enough to deny me my freedom while the machinery of the justice system grinds along. I’ll spend a day in jail, then be freed, ordered to stay on Lorrd while things are investigated. Having the run of this lovely educational planet is not exactly what I call rotting. And in the meantime, you get no more information.”
“I could just decide that you’re guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and then kill you.”
The woman’s smile did not falter. “No, you couldn’t.”
“What makes you think that?”
“First, the Force is not telling you that I’m guilty. I know this because I’m not. I doubt you’d murder when not even the Force is defining me as evil, or a threat. Second, to kill me you’d first have to kill Nelani here. Wouldn’t you?”
Jacen and Nelani exchanged a look. Jacen’s face was as free of emotion as it had been for most of the interview. Nelani’s expression, hard to read, had elements of determination and sadness to it. Ben could feel her emotions, though, naked and unconcealed—a hope that Jacen would make “the right choice,” a grim determination to face him if he did not, an underlying attraction to Jacen that was increasingly sad.
Ben backed away from that surge of feelings. They were too complicated, too intermixed. They unsettled him.
Jacen stood. “Let’s talk outside,” he told Nelani and Ben, and left. They followed.
Once in the corridor, he said, “I’m going to visit her home.”
Nelani shook her head, not taking her eyes from Jacen’s. “Why?”
“I have to know how she spoke to me through the tassel,” he said. “Does she know something about me I don’t myself know? Or is it a method she could use on other Jedi, perhaps to lure them into traps? I can’t just ignore this, or assume that imprisoning her would eliminate the risk she may represent.”
“But it’s a trap,” Ben protested.
Jacen gave him a dismissive look. “A trap to do what?”
“Well…kill you, I guess.”
“Ben, she was able to lure me to several different scenes of violence over the last few days, and she knows a lot about Jedi and the Force. If she were going to kill me, wouldn’t one of those situations have been enough?