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“What are you talking about?” the Jeedai exploded.

“You are Riina of Domain Kwaad. You are one of us. You always have been.”

“No! I know who my parents were!”

“You know the lies you were told, the memories you were given. Fear not. We will bring you back.”

Mezhan Kwaad signaled, and Nen Yim bowed and followed her from the room. Behind them, the young Jeedai wailed in the first sign of true despair that Nen Yim had heard from her.

“Do not wait for tomorrow,” Mezhan Kwaad said. “Make your modifications and begin your trials. We must show results, soon.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Anakin rode in the belly of the beast.

Literally. And it stank. The Yuuzhan Vong equivalent of an organic gill, the gnullith Anakin wore did nothing to buffer the confused and odious smells of river crawlfish, silman eel, rotting wetweed, the viscous mucus that coated the inside of the vangaak like jelly—or of the breather itself, which insisted on reminding him, by slowly and constantly writhing, that he had a live animal shoving its tentacles down his throat and nostrils.

The only bright spot was that he hadn’t eaten anything for a day and a half.

It had been better, earlier, when the trawling-boat creature was still making its catch, swimming with its mouth expanded into a flattened funnel ten meters across. The water passed through and out the filtering membranes in its posterior, acting as the underwater equivalent of a fresh breeze. Now that the belly was bloated, the lips had sucked in on themselves, and water flow was cut to the minimum necessary to sustain the live catch squirming all around him.

He was reminded of the story of how his mother and father had met, on the Death Star, a story he’d heard far too many times. Seconds after seeing each other for the first time, they’d ended up fleeing stormtroopers into a garbage hold.

“What an incredible smell you’ve discovered,” his father had sarcastically told his future wife. He hadn’t been very happy with her at the time.

I’ve found a better smell than you did, Mom, he thought.

The thought of Rapuung above, in the warm breezes of Yavin 4 and no doubt delighted over the discomfort of his infidel ally, did nothing to improve Anakin’s mood. If he’d had a working lightsaber, he would have long ago slashed his way through the vangaak even if it meant facing a hundred Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Some things made death seem pretty.

He immediately regretted that thought. There were beings in the galaxy who endured misery that made what he was going through look like a day in a garden on Ithor.

Well, back when Ithor had gardens.

Still, he was more than ready to get out. He passed the time by getting to know his bellymates, gently convincing the more adventurous ones he wasn’t something to nibble on. He tried to relax and forget his body and the unpleasant sensory data it was processing. He found Tahiri—in pain, but alive. He thought he briefly found Jaina, then lost her again. Time stretched and ceased to have meaning.

Some strange motion jarred him. Had he been asleep? It was difficult to tell.

The motion came again, a sudden contraction that squeezed water-dwellers against him.

Then a stronger contraction hurtled him forward, blasting into the light in a stream of fluid and fish, then plunging into new water. Something strong caught his arm and hauled him up, and he found himself staring blearily into the face of Vua Rapuung.

The warrior set him down on his feet and detached the gnullith. Anakin coughed up water and then took deep, grateful breaths. He looked up at Rapuung.

“I’ve just been vomited by a fish,” he said.

Vua Rapuung cocked his head. “Obviously. Why are you telling me?”

“Never mind. Where are we?” The vangaak had disgorged its prey at the narrow end of a wedge-shaped pool. The larger end of the wedge, about twenty meters away, opened into an even larger aquatic space. Anakin and Rapuung stood on a landing, of sorts, bounded by slightly uneven coral walls six meters high. Every six meters or so, the walls were marked by ovoids the size of doorways, obvious because