Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [63]
Garray narrowed his eyes to slits. “What in the galaxy am I looking at?”
Leia loosed a troubled exhalation. “That, Commander, is what the Yuuzhan Vong call an yncha. The one they deployed at Duro practically ate an orbital city.”
Garray stared at her, scarcely able to speak.
The klaxons began to trumpet a more dire alert.
“Commander,” an ensign said, “enemy vessels on the attack.”
Han looked at Leia. “Guess we will be hanging around, after all.”
“Studious person that you are—or at least claim to be—you no doubt took to heart the Supreme Overlord’s admonition that nothing untoward should interfere with the coming sacrifice,” High Prefect Drathul hectored Nom Anor. “Given especially the diminished number of victims.”
Former prefect of the worldship Harla, Drathul had a wide and broad-browed face, sufficiently scarified to demonstrate his allegiance to the gods, but not so much that the scars marred what Drathul considered handsome features.
He had kept Nom Anor waiting for half a local day, while the sun climbed high into the sky, making the rainbow bridge shine like a jeweled necklace. His windowed and drizzle-topped quarters in the prefectory overlooked the Place of Hierarchy, south of the Citadel, in a district once known as Calocour Heights. Nom Anor still remembered the heights from one of the first of his reconnaissance missions, when the market area had teemed with pushy survey takers and blazed with flashing musical advertiscreens. Free product samples delivered from worlds throughout the galaxy had been on continual display, floating on repulsor carts and wafting wonderful aromas into the air.
“I took the Supreme Overlord’s admonition to heart,” Nom Anor said from the exquisitely woven vurruk floor mat to which he had been shown by Drathul’s attendants. The high prefect himself spoke from a pillowed recess in his dais.
“Then you’ll be interested to know it has reached my attention that a coalition of Shamed Ones is intent on disturbing the ceremony.” Drathul fixed Nom Anor with a gimlet stare. “I think you are not entirely untutored in the tactics of the heretics, Prefect.”
“I profess to know something of them.”
Drathul was clearly entertained by the response.
“You give yourself too little credit. Such self-effacement is not becoming to one who has managed to escalate himself from mere executor to prefect of Yuuzhan’tar in so short a time. Who, on at least two occasions now, has enjoyed private audience with the Supreme Overlord; who, I would risk saying, even has Shimrra’s ear.”
Nom Anor feigned a short laugh. “Hardly his ear, High Prefect.”
Drathul scrutinized him some more. “However did this come about?” he asked, as if to himself. “Was it not Nom Anor who sent the priestess Elan to her death, who created the bumbling Peace Brigade, who helped engineer the disastrous assault on Fondor, who allowed the traitor Vergere to escape, who has disguised himself as a human, a Duros, a Givin, and who knows how many other species, who is rumored to have refused a duel with a Jeedai and to have murdered his own operatives with an infidel’s weapon, who all but lured Warmaster Tsavong Lah to dishonor at Ebaq Nine?” He paused briefly. “Look how his plaeryin bol stares at me—so eager to spit venom.”
“You misunderstand, High Prefect.” Nom Anor touched the artificial orb that substituted for an eye. “Just a particle of sand, lodged in the corner. In fact, you have succeeded brilliantly in disparaging me. But you neglect to add that there has been a bright side to all those events. Or else—” He grinned faintly. “—how is it I have come to wear the green robes of high office?”
Drathul was infuriated. “The sole reason I tolerate your presence and your escalation is that you are known to have been in the company of my predecessor, Yoog Skell, when he died. I know in my heart that you had something to do with his death,