She didn't answer right away. Instead, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. She felt the Force gathering; it swirled around her like a rising storm, carrying the dust of memory imprinted on the campsite.
The captured memories encircled her; images flooded her mind. She saw a child, dressed in a frayed and tattered tunic; she saw the child blossom into a young woman; she saw the woman leave Ambria, only to return many years later as a princess.
'You grew up here,' she whispered as she continued to probe even deeper.
Sometimes the history of a place was faint, washed away by the passage of mundane events and insignificant people. Here the memories were strong, preserved by isolation and trapped in the currents of the Force that permeated the camp.
'I see a man. Tall and thin. Dark hair. Brown skin.'
'My father,' Serra explained. 'His name was Caleb.'
'He was a healer. Wise. Strong. A man who commanded respect.'
She didn't say this to please the princess; the Huntress never cared what her clients thought of her as long as they paid.
'There is another man,' Serra told her. 'He came to my father for help during the New Sith Wars. Tall and muscular. Bald. He was:evil.'
Evil. Reaching out with the Force required intense focus and deep mental concentration. Even so, the Iktotchi couldn't help but notice the other woman's hesitation.
The Huntress had no use for words like evil, or good, or even justice. She killed those she was hired to kill; she gave no thought of whether they deserved their fate. Still, she found the princess's choice of labels odd. She was an assassin. She killed for profit. Was this any more evil than the man Serra spoke of? And what about the princess herself? She wanted to hire someone to take the life of another; did that make her evil?
She did not speak her thoughts aloud, however. They had no relevance to what she was doing. Instead she pushed deeper into the well of memories, submersing herself in them in search of the man Serra had described.
Hundreds of faces flashed before her. Male. Female. Human, Twi'lek, Cerean, Ithorian. Soldiers serving the Jedi, and even those serving the Sith. Caleb had healed them all. The only ones he turned away were the leaders of the armies. He saw himself a servant of the common folk. The Jedi Masters and the Sith Lords he always refused to help, with one notable exception.
The Huntress could see him now: a Sith Lord in black armor; the curved hilt of a lightsaber clipped to his belt as he towered over the healer. They were locked in a battle of wills, the big man dying from some illness she couldn't discern. Even though they were decades removed from the encounter, the Iktotchi sensed the raw power of the dark side emanating from him. It was like nothing she had seen or felt before, both terrifying and exhilarating.
'I see him,' she told the princess. I see what he did to you.
'My father always said he would return. That was why he sent me away. Made me change my name.'
'Your father was right.'
Now that she had seen him in her visions, it was easy to skim the passing years looking for the imprint of the Sith Lord. Through the maelstrom of images, she easily picked out his next visit to the camp. Yet again, he arrived in need of the healer's aid. This time, however, he did not come alone.
'There are others with him. A young woman. A young man.'
'What happened?' the princess asked, her voice trembling slightly.
A series of shocking and violent images assailed the Iktotchi's senses. She saw the healer's decapitated body, his limbs hacked from his torso and arranged in a gruesome display near the fire pit. Inside the cabin the young man crouched in a corner, a babbling idiot driven mad by the horrors that had been visited upon him. The other two-the young woman and the Sith Lord-were harder to see, though she sensed they were still there. Something concealed them; some power or spell cloaked their presence.
When she tried to pierce the veil something pushed back, snapping her out of her meditative trance and severing her connection with the past. She fell to her knees with a cry of anguish, clutching at her temples, her mind reeling.
Serra was at her side in an instant, crouching over her. 'What happened? What did you see?'
The Huntress didn't speak right away. She had heard of this happening to others, but she'd never experienced it herself. It wasn't the images of Caleb's gruesome death that had caused her to recoil. It had been sorcery, Sith magic. A spell of concealment had hidden the Sith Lord and the young woman from the Jedi who had discovered the healer's body. The memories still carried the echo of the spell upon them; even after a decade it had been potent enough to momentarily overwhelm her.
How can one individual command such power?
'Tell me what you saw,' the princess demanded, rising to her feet.
'Your father's death,' the Huntress replied, also rising to her feet.
'He was there? The man in the black armor?'
'Yes. I think so. It wasn't clear.'
'He was there,' the princess said with certainty. 'He was responsible for my father's death.'
'There was another with him,' the Huntress said. 'A young blond woman.'
'I only care about the man in black. Can you find him?'
'If he still lives, I will find him,' the Huntress assured her. She knew she would dream about the Sith Lord tonight, and for many nights to come. Her sleep would be filled with pictures and images from his daily life. She would see how many suns rose in the sky each morning on whatever world he called home; she would see their color and their size. Whatever moons and stars marked the night sky would be revealed to her. Familiar landmarks would bubble up from her sleeping subconscious night after night. She would cross-reference these with a database containing descriptions of all the systems and worlds in the known galaxy, narrowing her search down until she had his exact location.
It might take days, or possibly even weeks, but in the end she always found her prey. This time, however, she wasn't certain what the outcome would be. She had killed a Jedi on Doan, but this encounter would be far more dangerous. The lingering remnants of the Sith spell had been enough to thwart her efforts to peer into the past. How much stronger would the creator of that spell be in person? And who had cast the spell? The Sith Lord? Or the young woman with him?
She still intended to take the job, of course. But she was smart enough to understand that her odds of success would increase if she wasn't acting alone.
'This man is powerful,' the Huntress admitted. 'I don't know if I will be able to kill him without help.'
'I don't want you to kill him,' the princess replied. 'I want you to capture him. I want you to bring him to me alive.'
The assassin's lips twisted up in an angry sneer. 'I'm not a bounty hunter.'
'I'll pay ten times your normal price. And I'll hire mercenaries to help you. As many as you want.'
'Even if we capture him, how are we supposed to keep him prisoner while we bring him back to you? Normal restraints can't hold someone who has the power to call upon the Force.'
'Leave that to me,' the princess replied, pushing past the Iktotchi and heading toward the small hut on the other side of the camp.
Curious, the assassin followed her.
Only a few meters on either side, the hut was little more than a crate with a doorway. On the floor inside, buried under a layer of sand that had blown in from the encroaching desert, were a tattered old curtain and a threadbare rug.
The curtain looked as if it had been torn down. The rug, on the other hand, was still spread out across the far corner of the hut, though its fibers were caked with dirt.
With the Iktotchi watching from just outside the doorway, the princess pulled the carpet aside, revealing a trapdoor built into the floor. A small ladder led down to a tiny chamber below. 'My father built this cellar to store the tools of his trade,' Serra explained, climbing carefully down the ladder.
The Huntress entered the hut to get a better view, approaching the trapdoor and peering down into the darkness below. She heard a sharp crack as the princess ignited a glow lamp to dispel the gloom.
From her vantage point the assassin could just make out a series of shelves built into the cellar walls, each lined with jars, satchels, and other small containers. The princess rummaged through them quickly until she found
