PURGATORY - Chapter 34

"You really don't know anything about your people, do you? The Tribe is a meritocracy. Whoever's best at a job can have it—provided that a public challenge is made. Dernas never made a public challenge to the Grand Lord. Neither did Pallima."

"Nor did your mother," he offered, kneeling to retrieve her bowl. He looked slightly startled when she used the Force to levitate it into his hand. "Thanks."

"Look, it's really simple," she said, standing and making a futile effort to brush the dirt from her uniform.

"If you get to your rivals before they're ready, you can do anything you want—including assassination."

His brow furrowed as he looked up at her. "It sounds like a bloodbath."

"Normally we keep it low-key, for order's sake. Poisonings. A shikkar blade in the gut."

"For order's sake."

She stood in the doorway and glared. "Are you going to criticize, or are you going to help me?"

"I'm sorry," Jelph said, rising. "I didn't mean to upset you." He shook his head.

"It's just that the thought of having rules for this sort of thing seems, well, odd. There are rules for breaking the rules."

Ori walked to the bank and looked west. The sun appeared to be sinking into the river itself, setting the water ablaze with orange. It was a beautiful place, and she'd fantasized about stolen nights here before. But this wasn't what she had imagined at all. She wasn't going to be able to plot her return from this place. And she'd need more help than a strapping farmhand.

"I have to go back," she said. "My mother was framed. Whoever did this to us will pay—and I'll have my name back." She looked back at him, gnawing on a stalk of something he'd pulled from the ground. "I have to go back!"

"I wouldn't do that," he said, joining her at the riverside. "I suspect your Grand Lord did all of this herself."

Ori looked at him, amazed. "What would you know about it?"

"Not much, I'll grant you," Jelph said, chewing. "But if your mother was the key to selecting Venn's replacement, I could see the old woman wanting her out of the way."

Incredulous, Ori looked into the growing shadows. "Stick to fertilizer, Jelph."

"Look at it this way," he said, edging into her field of view. "If Venn didn't stage the assassination and really suspected your mother, you wouldn't have been condemned.

You'd be dead. But the Grand Lord doesn't have to kill you, because she knows you didn't do anything. You're more useful as an example." He tossed the stick into the river.

"By making slaves out of a High Lord and her family, she's got living, breathing deterrents in front of people for as long as you live."

Ori looked at him, stunned. It made sense. Dernas and Pallima had died out of public view. The bonfire at the estate had attracted the attentions of humans and Keshiri alike. If she had stayed in Tahv, she might already be at work, doing hard labor in full public view.

"So what do I do?"

He smiled, softly, his scar invisible now. "Well, I don't know. But it strikes me that, as long as you still don't sense your mother suffering through your Force, the way to thwart Venn is … not to be an example."

He didn't say the rest, but she heard it. The way not to be an example is not to be there. She looked up into his eyes, reflecting the starlight hitting the water. "How does a farmer know about these things?"

"You've seen my job," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I deal with a lot of things that stink."

She laughed, despite herself, for the first time since she arrived. As she took a step away from the river in the darkness, her footing faltered in the soft ground.

He caught her. She let him.

Standing in the doorway of the hut after midnight, Jelph looked in at her sleeping form on the straw bed. It had been wrong to let Ori stay this long, he thought—and certainly wrong to let things go as far as they had in the last nine days. But then, it had been wrong to encourage her visits to begin with.

Stepping outside, he tightened his tattered robe. After so many sultry days, there was an unseasonable chill in the air tonight. It matched his mood. Ori's presence put everything in jeopardy, in ways she could never imagine. So much more was at stake than the fortunes of one Sith family.

And yet, he'd taken her in. It was a different Ori Kitai that had come to see him, one he couldn't resist. She'd seemed so proud on her earlier visits—full of the noxious entitlement of her people, certain of both her status and herself.

With the loss of one, the other had gone. He'd seen the person underneath: tentative and unsure. As angry as she still was over what had happened, she was also sad over the loss of a vision she had once had of herself. And lately, sadness had been winning out, her days limited to walks from his hut to the garden.

Humility in a Sith. It was an amazing thing to witness, an impossibility. Her armor melted down, the impurities seemed to boil away. Was it possible that not every Sith on Kesh was born venal? Her anger over being dispossessed seemed… no more than normal. No more than how he would feel, and had felt, in similar situations. It wasn't the kind of fury that destroyed civilizations for sport. It wasn't Sith.

It struck him as wrong that the greatest misfortune in Ori's life had only made her more attractive to him. The reserve he'd worked to develop had fallen away after that night on the riverbank. She had needed him, and it had been so long since anyone had. There wasn't much market for nonentities, in the wilds or anywhere else. But the risk was always there, accompanying the happiness.

He looked to the north. A faint streak of light nestled between the clouds and the hills. The aurora was beginning again. In a couple of nights, the northern sky would be afire. It would soon be time.

Casting a glance to the storehouse, he calculated how long he'd have to be away from the farm. It wasn't safe to have her wandering around in his absence. She would have to go.

But he couldn't let her leave.