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“He had a lot of people fooled, Wedge Antilles included.” Corran nodded firmly. “He’s not fooling folks any longer, though. Just goes to show the Empire doesn’t win them all, not by a long shot. And if my experiment works, we’ll give them one more loss to account for.”

In some ways Wedge was surprised by his reaction to the display of hospitality Koh’shak put on for his benefit. He found it both barbaric and somehow naive. An area had been cleared near the Alliance ships. Opalescent glow-stones—technological lamps designed to look like natural stones—had been brought out from homes and arranged in a circular pattern. While red and gold highlights played through them, the illumination they produced was coldly blue and white. It made the humans into pale ghosts and rendered the Twi’leks as cyanotic ice creatures.

Rogue Squadron and the ships’ crews had been invited to the celebration. The visitors arrayed themselves in a circle that put them five meters from the outer edge of the glow-stone circle. Twi’leks from various clans interspersed themselves among the visitors, with one who spoke passable Basic acting as interpreter for two or three others. Wedge harbored no illusions about what was going on—his people were being interrogated, albeit politely. Their stories would be compared at Twi’lek councils, and decisions would be made about the future of Ryloth based on what the Twi’leks learned.

Servants passed around the outside of the circle, offering the visitors food, drink, and gifts. The musicians who had been assembled opposite him played a variety of string and wind instruments producing notes that ran up and down on a thirteen-note scale. Wedge found the music only marginally painful, while Liat Tsayv and Aril Nunb seemed to be moving in sync with notes he couldn’t hear. Out behind the cold spectral light cast by the glowstones, life continued as usual in Kala’uun. People walking by gawked for a moment or two, and many braintails—or lekku, as Wedge had learned they were called in Rylothean—twitched with silent messages about the assembly.

Wedge didn’t really have eyes for much of what was happening outside the visitors’ circle, primarily because of what was going on at its heart. A lithe, petite Twi’lek female dancer spun and leaped through the air. Her tattooed lekku lashed out like whips, then whirled down and enfolded her like ivy. The tails of the loincloth she wore similarly clung to her body, sliding away as she whirled, to reveal silken flesh over taut and powerful muscles. She gave Wedge a pixie-wink, prompting a smile from him, then she twirled off to charm another of the visitors.

Cazne’olan draped a braintail over Wedge’s shoulder. “Sienn’rha is the only positive thing Bib Fortuna ever accomplished. He stole her from her darkside family and meant to present her to Jabba the Hutt. In preparation for that he had her taught to dance as well as she does. She was saved from Jabba by your Lukesky’walker. She always dances wonderfully, but this night she approaches perfection because of the gratitude she feels to the Alliance.”

“She is spectacular.” Wedge could not deny that he found her dance exciting and even stimulating, but that bothered him just a bit. By seeing her as being so seductive and beautiful, and reacting to her on a physiological level, it was very easy for him to forget she was a living, thinking creature. That made it deceptively simple for him to see how the Imperials found objectifying and dehumanizing other races justifiable—if they seem like animals or appeal to you on an animal level, clearly they are animals.

Cazne’olan tapped him on the shoulder. “It would be possible for a private dance to be arranged for you, my friend.”

“I appreciate the offer, but …”

Cazne’olan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Sienn’rha asked me to convey that suggestion to you, on her behalf. She is well aware of your history and considers you quite a hero.”

“I see.” Wedge considered for a moment all the offer implied and felt sorely tempted.