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“Oh, I know,” she said. “And it wasn’t the brightest thing you’ve done, now is it? When you get your feeling back, you crawl into your X-wing and fly away home. Back to your family. You’ll be better off.”

“I’m looking for someone.” His voice wheezed out of him, like an old man’s voice.

“Well, you found someone.” She lowered the chair, got off it, and turned up the knobs on the bacta tank. “Sometimes,” she said, as if she were speaking so that he couldn’t, “I miss droids. But only sometimes. Won’t have them anywhere near me now.”

She had said that to provoke him, because in this galaxy, avoiding droids was not only odd, it was difficult. You had to live on a planet as far away as Msst even to attempt it.

“I’m looking for a man who was here when the Empire was.”

The pink slime had faded from the tank. She shut off some of the other equipment, then walked into the main room as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

Luke sighed and concentrated. Feeling in his back, in his legs, in his face. He worked on his chest and his arms. If he closed his eyes, he could make his hands tingle as if he had slept on them wrong. The tingle spread along his skin into his shoulders.

Slowly, cautiously, he raised his right arm. Except for slime trails that shimmered under the glow panels, his skin looked normal. He knew better than to sit up on an air cushion. He would have to float off or find the switch.

The switch was below him. Using the Force, he turned the knob so that the air cushion died gradually. He landed on the regular cushion and suppressed a scream as pain, sharp as needles, shimmered through his back.

He could stand it. He had to stand it.

He sat up. The pain shifted with the pressure points. He eased his legs off the bed and saw his clothes, stacked neatly in a pile on a nearby chair.

His lightsaber was on top of them.

He dressed. Even the light touch of fabric against his skin caused him agony. But he could endure it. She had said it would only be temporary.

Then he hobbled into the main room.

She was seated on a pile of cushions, her back to the door. A cup of liquid steamed beside her. The room blazed with light, but none of it was natural. Heavy black sheets blocked the windows, almost as if she didn’t want to see outside.

“I can walk,” Luke said, his voice breaking like a teenager’s. “Does that mean I can drink?”

He had hoped for a laugh. Instead she whirled, her face filled with shock.

“You shouldn’t be up,” she said.

He managed a small smile. “The pain is an amazing experience, but I assume it will fade soon. I’m not making anything worse, am I?”

She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. Then she sighed and got up. “Sit, Luke Skywalker. Let me make you a meal.”

He started at her knowledge of his name. A thousand rationalizations came to mind—she might have probed his X-wing; she might have recognized him from long-ago news holos—but he suspected none of those reasons was right.

“You know why I’m here.”

She nodded, her expression miserable. “My son told me you’d come.”

This time Luke did sit down, ignoring the pain that shot from his thighs to his chest. She was Brakiss’s mother.

And she had saved Luke’s life.

“He wasn’t a bad boy once, Luke Skywalker. Really he wasn’t. He was this bright, wonderful baby. He fairly glowed with life.” She stepped into the Kitchen, her hands busy as she spoke. It was as if talking about her son made her restless. “Then they came.”

“The Empire.”

She nodded. “They came into my home, looked at my boy, and they could use him. Him. A baby. And they took him from me.”

Luke stood, about to go comfort her, when she started moving again.

“They let him come back for visits. But he never smiled after that. Not really. Not the kind that reached his eyes.” She turned on the hydroprocessor. It made a quiet whirring sound. “They took something from him.” She turned, leaned on the counter, and looked at Luke. “You tried to give it back to him, didn’t you? At that academy. You tried to bring my baby back.”

Luke was chilled. The Empire had taken Brakiss away as a baby, knowing that he