PARAGON - Chapter 21

Seelah had already set her mind on leaving Ludo Kressh before he executed her family. It was trivial; his ankle had been injured in a battle, and she had failed to stop the infection.

He'd killed her father the first night, and his leverage lessened considerably after that. Seelah found her chance to go a few days later, when one of Sadow's mining teams stopped on Rhelg to refuel. She didn't have anybody left by then, anyway.

Devore Korsin had been her escape. She saw his immaturity and recklessness, but she also saw something there to work with. He, too, strained against the invisible chains limiting his ambition. He could be her ally. And in Sadow's service, at least, something could happen—as long as Devore didn't foul it up.

And if he did, well, there was always their son …

Lightsabers flashed in the night on the mountain—but not on the main plaza. Seelah walked calmly along the darkened colonnade, now festooned with added decorations: the tentacled heads of the Fifty-seven, staked at even intervals.

There was the young sentry from the tower, trapped and killed. He'd never abandoned his post. To the right was Hestus, the translator; Seelah had been involved personally in his takedown. Korsin had said they'd come back to Hestus in the morning to remove the cybernetic implants. Who knew, there might be something they could use there.

She could sense Korsin and his chief lieutenants beyond the outer wall now, driving the remnant to a last stand beside the precipice where Omen nearly met its end. No quarter would be offered; she could see Korsin hurling any who surrendered over the side.

Well, he has experience with that.

The stone silo of the stable master loomed before her. Uvak enclosures stretched out in all directions from this central hub, where Keshiri aides would wash the stinking beasts. The Keshiri were gone tonight, she saw as she entered the round room.

At the center, watched only by a guard in the shadows, hung the limp but breathing body of Ravilan. Strong cords of Keshiri-woven fiber lashed his splayed arms to cornices high on either side of the structure. The arrangement was designed to keep uvak from bolting during their baths.

Now it was doing the same for Ravilan, his feet dangling mere centimeters above the ground. Seelah stepped back as a rush of water poured from slots high in the tower, gagging the prisoner.

The flow stopped after a minute, but it was longer before the weary Ravilan registered the presence of his visitor. "All gone," he choked. "Right?"

"All gone," she said, stepping into his sight. "You are the last." Ravilan had been caught early, his bad leg failing him once and for all.

Ravilan shook his head. "We only did it one time," he said, his throat a gravelly trail. "In Tetsubal. These other cities—I don't know. We never planned—"

"—for me," Seelah said.

It had been surprisingly easy, once she'd realized Ravilan's ploy in Tetsubal. The only element was time. She'd returned to the mountain retreat in the night and summoned her most trusted aides from the ward. Soon after midnight, her minions were in the air, propelling their creatures toward the lake towns of the south that Ravilan's people had been instructed to visit the day before.

Her ward had held the only other surviving supply of cyanogen silicate; now it was in the wells and aqueducts of the lake cities—and in the bodies of dead Keshiri. Time was the key element—but she'd had help coordinating it all.

"Y-you did this?" Ravilan coughed and managed a weak chuckle. "I guess that's the first time you liked one of my ideas."

"It did the job."

Ravilan's crumpled grin vanished. "What job? Genocide?"

"You care about the Keshiri now?"

"You know what I mean!" Ravilan strained at his bonds. "My people!"

Seelah rolled her eyes. "Nothing's going on here that wouldn't have happened in the Empire eventually. You know how things were going. Whose movement were you in, anyway?"

"Naga Sadow didn't want this," Ravilan rasped. "Sadow valued power where he saw it. He valued the old and the new. He valued us—"

She nodded to the guard—and another crushing barrage of water slammed Ravilan.

It took longer for him to recover this time.

"It could have worked," he choked. "We could have worked … together, like the Sith and the fallen Jedi of old. If only our children—my children—had lived …"

Ravilan looked up, water streaming from his sagging face. "You."

Seelah fixed her silent gaze on the chutes, still dripping, near the ceiling high above.

"You," he repeated, louder. "You ran the crèche. You and your people." His face twisted into an agonized scream. The future of his people had already been smothered, long before. "What did you do? What did you do to us?"

"Nothing you wouldn't eventually have done to us." She stepped toward the shadows, near the guard. "We are not your Sith. We are something new, a chance to do it right. A new tribe."

"Younglings—infants!" Wilted, Ravilan moaned. "What … what kind of mother are you?"

"The mother of a people," she said, looking toward the guard in the shadows. "Now, my son."

The guard stepped forward—and Ravilan recognized the animal form of Jariad Korsin with the wild-eyed face of his father under jet-black hair. The teenager leapt at the prisoner, wielding a jagged vibroblade without remorse. At the last, he drew his lightsaber and cut Ravilan down in a violent flash of crimson.

"You've changed the world today," Seelah said, stepping close to her son and confederate. He'd been critical to coordinating the previous night's gambit, getting her accomplices where they needed to go. It was right that he should have part of this moment.

The boy panted, looking down at his victim. "He's not who I want to kill."

"Be patient," Seelah said, stroking her son's hair. "I have been."

Tilden Kaah walked quietly along the darkened pathways of Tahv, only recently paved with stones. The Sith had dismissed the other Keshiri attendants earlier in the morning, when the excitement began; he had been one of the last to leave. The streets, usually peopled with merrymakers even at this hour, were alarmingly still.

He saw only one middle-aged member of the Neshtovar standing station at a crossing; stripped of his uvak years before, the figure looked bored.

Tilden nodded to the watchman and passed into a plaza near one of the many village aqueducts. Sheets of fresh mountain water tumbled in long crescents from flumes, a cooling presence in what had become a hot night. Arriving before a wall of water, Tilden donned the robe he was carrying, raised the hood, and stepped into the downpour.

Or, rather, through it.

Tilden walked, dripping, down the dark passage leading deep into the stone structure. He followed hushed voices to the end of a passage. There was no light—but there was life. Tilden heard agonized chatter as he approached: the horrible news from the south had begun to arrive.

The superstitious Keshiri would probably be expected to absorb the horror quietly, a voice said from the shadows. The Sith would unvariably blame the mass deaths on the Destructors.

"It is done," Tilden spoke to the darkness. "Seelah has rid the Skyborn of the Fifty-seven. Of the people not like them, only the bumpy man, Gloyd, remains."

"Seelah doesn't suspect you?" returned a husky female voice from the blackness. "She doesn't read your mind?"

"She doesn't think I'm worth it. And I speak of nothing but the old legends. She thinks me a fool."

"She can't tell our great scholars from our fools," said a male voice.

"None of them can," said another. "Good. Let's keep it that way. Seelah has done us a favor, reducing their numbers. She may do more." A blinding flash appeared as an old Keshiri man lit a lantern. There were several Keshiri there, huddled in the cramped space—their attentions not on Tilden, but on the figure stepping from the shadows behind him. Tilden turned to recognize the woman who had first addressed him.

"Stay strong, Tilden Kaah. With your help—and with the help of all of us here—the Keshiri will finish the job." Anger glistened in Adari Vaal's eyes. "I brought this plague upon us. And I will end it."