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“I’ve been thinking. Putting things in order.”

“Marshaling your troops, General?”

“Only when I could force myself to stop thinking about you.”

Her shoulders shook a little and he realized she was laughing silently. “You know what’s so wonderful about compliments from you?” she asked.

“What?”

“I know you always mean them. You have no skill at flattery.”

Cheriss unstrapped herself and rose. She walked over to Wedge and Iella, her steps unsteady because of the craft’s rocking motions and occasional battles with turbulence. Her expression was as serious as it had been back in Iella’s quarters. “General … Wedge … may I speak to you for a moment? Privately?” She turned a look of apology toward Iella.

“Sure.” Wedge looked down into Iella’s eyes, tried to gauge her reaction. But her expression offered little but sleepy contentment. There was no concern, no jealousy to be seen in them.

Wedge joined Cheriss toward the front of the compartment. They held on to the rings in the framework to steady themselves against the craft’s motion.

When Cheriss spoke, her voice was barely loud enough for him to hear over the engine’s roar and the whistling of wind through rivet holes. “I just wanted to say … you were right and I was wrong.”

“That’s a hard admission,” Wedge said. “It tries to stick in my throat whenever I’m obliged to offer it.”

She managed a faint smile. “I didn’t really understand it after I woke up on your big ship. My injury was almost healed and I knew I had nothing left to me—my title lost, the perator’s regard for me lost, your regard for me probably lost—”

“No.”

“Let me talk. But I couldn’t concentrate on all that because the medics kept asking me questions. How my wound felt. What I might be allergic to. Other conditions I had that were medical in nature. I told them of my dizziness with heights …”

Wedge was surprised to see tears form in her eyes. She wiped them away and continued, “They scanned my head and took my blood to look for chemicals in it, and decided that it was a chemical imbalance. They gave me a drug. Half an hour later I stood on the top walkway of your starfighter landing bay, over the great distance to the floor where the starfighters landed, even over the gap they flew out of—I could see all the way down to the clouds of Adumar’s skies, and I felt not even a twinge. All I have to do is take a chemical once every few days. I can learn to fly.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“Yes … though I could not even make the medics understand that. To them, it was such a little thing. A diagnosis, a chemical, and their patient could be set aside and a new one brought in. For me, it was years of knowing I could never be anything in Cartann, suddenly swept away … and to those who helped me, it was nothing more than a minor task, successfully accomplished. I was almost angry with them for not understanding.

“And that’s when I knew. If I had died the other day at the perator’s court, I could not even be resentful. I could never enjoy this thing, which is a few grains of chemicals to your medics and a miracle to me. So I understood that you were right. To throw away my life would have been dishonorable. It was the choice of a stupid girl. Someone I hope I no longer am.”

“Having seen this, you have only one choice.”

“Which is what?”

“To live your life well. To find a purpose and pursue it.”

“I want to be a pilot,” she said. “Not for Cartann. Not for Adumar. For your New Republic.”

“If I’m still alive in a few days, I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

“I also wanted to say …” Her glance flicked to Iella and back to Wedge. “I wanted to wish you and your lady every happiness.”

“Thank you.”

“I—I don’t know what else to say.”

“Let me say something, then. One last piece of advice. Cheriss, you’re always going to be too young for something important to you, too old for something else, and the timing is just not going to be right for a third set of things. That’s life, and you can make yourself crazy by dwelling