Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [64]
It was the Ithorian who spoke.
“She left Hweg Shul within a week of her arrival, of her own will insofar as we know. But whether she left in quest, or in flight, or at the behest of another, that we cannot tell.”
They had reached the Newcomer area of town, the square white houses like truncated Imperial walkers on their stilts. The antigrav balls were all drawn down close to the ground, and the freezing wind roared like the vanished seas in their leaves and moaned around the permacrete rendering towers where brope and smoor were processed into edible form. Grupp and Snaplaunce looked Luke over one more time, bade him take care where he walked, and strode off to the shadows under a house where they’d left their speeder-bikes.
Luke stood for a long time, looking back toward the tangled walls and algae-covered rocks of the Oldtimer town.
Within a week of her arrival. Eight months ago.
Whether in quest, or in flight …
Luke shivered in disgust and abhorrence. He would have bet anything he possessed that, eight months ago, Taselda had tried to use Callista as her weapon, her striking arm, as Palpatine had used Vader and Vader had tried to use him, Luke. One of the old gangs that fought for control of this city between the crime-boss Beldorion and another. Was that what Taselda had sunk to, however and whyever she had come to the planet in the first place, the planet where the Force seemed to imbue the very stones like radiant light?
She had tried to enslave Callista with the promises of leading her to what she most wanted, with the illusion of belonging, of having found a home.
Callista had come seeking instruction in the Force and had found instead a terrible example of what could happen when you did not have it, when it decayed to almost nothing, leaving only cravings and anger and madness behind.
And Callista had fled.
Luke shivered and, leaning against the wind, turned his steps back toward his room above the Blue Blerd. His mind refused to release the horrible image of Taselda, once a Jedi, now a dirty old madwoman, picking drochs off her arms and eating them, staring at him out of the dark.
9
“Beldorion the Splendid sends his compliments, Your Excellency.” In the doorway, the tall synthdroid bowed. “He would be honored by your presence at tea.”
Oh, would he? Leia had to bite back the words. The ad-cube for synthdroids had mentioned nothing about their aural and visual receptors being wired as remote pickups so that their owners could see and hear what they did, but Leia knew in some circles it was routinely done. The sweetblossom sometimes made her careless, and she knew that with Dzym waiting, she had to be as careful as if she were walking the blade of a razor.
“Will Master Ashgad be present?” She exaggerated the sweet haziness of voice as she always did around the synthdroids or, in fact, around Liegeus—one of her schoolmates many years ago at the Select Academy had been stoned most of the time and the singsong quality was easy for Leia to fake. The mere fact that no one had come in to make her drink the drugged water had told her at least—belatedly—that the room wasn’t wired; due to the effects of the drug the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her until that morning.
“I do not know, Your Excellency.”
“It’s just that I need to know what to wear,” she murmured dreamily, for the benefit of a possible listener.
“I do not know, Your Excellency.”
Not, thought Leia, with the synthdroid’s departure, that she had a whole lot of choice.
From her post on the terrace she’d counted at least five synthdroids, but some of them might be duplicates, so there could be more. At least two bore marks of necrosis, the slow dying of the flesh that covered their metal armatures that was