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She canted her head slightly. “So you went looking for trouble and let someone beat you up?”

Corran brought his chin up. “Trouble found me all by itself, I didn’t have to go looking. It was a little gang of kids. A Rodian was leading them. I wasn’t paying attention, so they decided to take me.”

Mirax took his right hand in hers and led him over to the edge of the bed. She made him sit there, then she knelt at his feet and started to unbutton his tunic. “I think I can get the blood out of the shirt. Where’s the jacket?”

“By the door. Most of it, anyway. One of the little glit-biters made off with a sleeve.” Corran pressed the wet cloth to his swollen right eye. “The Rodian swung a pretty good left. He came up on my right side from behind and clouted me. Spun me around, then he split my lip. Another of them grabbed my sleeve and for a second, I thought it was all over.”

He shook his head. “I started to feel sorry for myself, then I saw Urlor lying there in the morgue and I realized that as bad as I felt, at least I could feel. I thought of you, and of Jan Dodonna, and the other Lusankya prisoners, and whoever it was that sent Urlor here to Coruscant. I realized I had more important things to be doing than worrying about myself and that’s when things began to get a bit weird.”

Mirax tugged Corran’s shirt off his left arm, then unbuttoned the right cuff and quickly slipped it past the wet cloth in his right hand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d felt it before, a couple of times, flying with the squadron or when I was with CorSec. Everything slowed down, I knew what the Rodian was going to do, what the others were going to do. I could just feel them there. I knew which way to move to avoid their punches. It felt as if they were puppets going through a series of highly choreographed moves, and I just slipped in and out between them. I didn’t have to hit anyone or anything. I just got away.”

Mirax tossed his shirt to the floor and pulled off his right boot. “Sounds very Jedi to me.”

“Yeah, maybe it was a Force thing. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, though. What does is this: I need to focus on finding Jan Dodonna. Somehow, with Thrawn running loose and everything, it was easy to get distracted. No longer.”

Corran’s left hand curled down into a fist and Mirax quickly took it in her hands. “Corran, I know you’re disappointed in yourself for not having kept your word to General Dodonna about coming back to the Lusankya to free him, but you have to remember that you did do that. Your resignation from Rogue Squadron is what led everyone to go after Ysanne Isard and bring her down. You did get to the Lusankya, just as you said you would.”

“Sure, but they weren’t there.”

“No, they weren’t, but I think you need to stop seeing them as complete victims.” She reached up and tapped a finger against his temple. “I remember what you told me about Jan Dodonna, how he followed you and stopped Derricote from killing you. He was a smart man, and you have to know that he was fully capable of interpreting the move from the Lusankya. Isard’s moving him and everyone else out of there told them that you were succeeding. If you weren’t, if you weren’t going to make good on your promise, Iceheart never would have moved them. They know that.”

She let her hand come down to stroke the left side of his face. “If I were ever to go missing, I’d have no fear. I know you’d turn this galaxy inside out to find me. You’d do whatever you had to do to find me.”

Corran’s left eye narrowed. “No question, whatever it took.”

“Jan Dodonna knows you’re a man of your word. He also knows the move will have complicated things, but he’s not going to doubt that you’ll keep your promise.”

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. The conviction in Mirax’s voice pierced the veil of self-doubt that had sprung from his feeling that he’d failed Urlor. He knew Wedge and Iella had been right in pointing out that the death was not his fault, even though his voiceprint