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“This will put you in harm’s way, Jacen. People will assume you can get out of situations that you can’t handle anymore.”

“Just tell them why, Uncle Luke.” Not Master Skywalker, this time. Not if he really meant to go through with this.

“Do you have a comlink?” Luke asked somberly. Even without using the Force, Jacen heard regret and concern in his voice.

Jacen shook his head.

Luke tossed something onto the bed between them. “Keep it hidden. If we find out anything, we’ll call. Maybe Brarun’s not corrupted. If you want to stay here and try to talk sense into him, that might help. But be ready to get out quickly.”

“I will.”

“And get some rest. Don’t try to save the whole galaxy yourself. Believe me, it doesn’t work.” His uncle rose off the bedside, smiling faintly. “I have to warn you about one more thing. If you choose not to do what you can do, you will endanger the ones you love most.”

Jacen shivered again. “Have you seen the future?”

Luke shook his head. “It’s just a … a feeling,” he said. “May the Force be with you, Jacen.” He slipped his mask back on, and then his goggles. Immediately, he drew out a second comlink. “Got it, Artoo,” he said.

“What?” Jacen asked.

“We might have a break in our disappearance case … finally.”

With that, Luke left the room—headed out, Jacen knew, to try to get justice for one person. Not the whole galaxy, at all. Just one person, one situation, one at a time. Just as he’d always taught his students.

Jacen rolled over. Could he really stop using the Force? Trying to silence it felt like putting on a blindfold or plugging his ears. He would have to live that way, for the rest of his life.

Jaina had learned to adapt to diminished vision.

But Jaina was getting her vision back.

And when he shut his eyes, he still saw a galaxy sliding into darkness.

As Sunulok’s crew prepared her to depart Rodia, Tsavong Lah’s aides called him out of a briefing. In his communication chamber, his Nom Anor villip sat on a stand, waiting. The moment he slipped into the chamber, the villip spoke.

“Warmaster, I have excellent news. My naotebe wingling organisms successfully brought down Settlement Thirty-two, and now, the young Jedi coward has been detained by one of my contacts, on board the abomination they call Bburru City.”

Tsavong Lah did not speak. That news was not worth interrupting his briefing. He knew full well that the master shapers who provided Nom Anor with detoxification organisms had also created the winglings.

“Even better,” Anor continued, “I have just sent two other Jedi, members of his family, to the gods. His sister, and their aunt—the notorious Mara Jade Skywalker.”

Tsavong Lah crossed his arms, irked. His shipboard coven of priests had finally decreed that the portents for his ultimate success would improve with every Jeedai that he, personally, sacrificed.

“You saw them die?”

The executor hesitated. “They tripped a stone-fall trap they cannot escape. Without vonduun crab armor, even our bodies would not survive that.”

Tsavong Lah’s fighting nails twitched. “We have seen Jeedai call on supernatural abilities.”

“I set this trap with Jedi in mind—set it, actually, for Ambassador Organa Solo, in case she intruded in my private place. Even if they survived the initial crushing, they will die slowly now. I am confident that such mass cannot be cleared aside. Organa Solo and her investigators still have no clue that the stone-fall is anything but a natural collapse.”

And Nom Anor, the Trickster’s disciple, remained under orders not to tip his hand. If the women were dead, the gods would not be displeased. Tsavong Lah nodded.

“Can your Bburru agent’s Jeedai prisoner be sedated for breaking and study? We still must develop ways to kill them easily.” He would not insult Yun-Yammka by offering a known coward in sacrifice.

“I have suggested that my contact hold him, pending your arrival. Meanwhile …” Nom Anor’s cheek pouches crinkled with pleasure. “I have arranged for riots.”

Nom Anor’s field of expertise.