“I don’t know what they believed,” Jaina said.
Gyad narrowed her eyes and studied Jaina in silence. Despite Luke Skywalker’s advice after the war to avoid involving the Jedi in the mundane concerns of the new government, the challenge of rebuilding the galaxy obliged much of the order to do just that. There were just too many critical missions that only a Jedi could perform, with too many dire consequences for the Galactic Alliance, and most Reconstruction Authority bureaucrats had come to view the Jedi order as little more than an elite branch of interstellar police.
Finally, Jaina explained, “I was too busy fighting to probe their thoughts.”
Gyad let out a theatrical sigh. “Jedi Solo, isn’t it true that your father once made his living as a smuggler?”
“That was a little before my time, Inquisitor.” Jaina’s retort drew a siss of laughter from the spectator area, where two of her fellow Jedi Knights, Tesar Sebatyne and Lowbacca, sat waiting for her to finish. “And what would that have to do with the price of spice on Nal Hutta?”
Gyad turned to the panel of magistrates. “Will you please instruct the witness to answer—”
“Everyone knows the answer,” Jaina interrupted. “It’s taught in half the history classes in the galaxy.”
“Of course it is.” The inquisitor’s voice grew artificially compassionate, and she pointed to the Yaka captive. “Would it be possible that you identify with the accused? That you are reluctant to testify against a criminal because of your father’s own ambivalent relationship with the law?”
“No.” Jaina found herself squeezing the witness rail as though she meant to crimp the cold metal. “In the last five standard years, I’ve captured thirty-seven warlords and broken more than a hundred smuggling—”
Suddenly the sense of desperation grew more tangible in the Force, more clear and familiar. Jaina’s gaze turned back to the viewport, and she did not finish her answer.
“Wait.”
Tahiri Veila raised a hand, and the two Yuuzhan Vong standing before her fell silent. The two groups of spectators watched her expectantly, but she remained quiet and stared into Zonama Sekot’s blue sky. Over the last few weeks, she had begun to sense a distant foreboding in the Force, a slowly building dread, and now that feeling had developed into something more … into anguish and panic and despair.
“Jeedai Veila?” asked the smaller of the speakers. With one blind eye and a lumpy, lopsided face, he was one of the Extolled, a disfigured underclass once known as the Shamed Ones. They had earned their new name by rising up against their upper-caste oppressors to help end the war that had nearly destroyed both the Yuuzhan Vong and the civilized galaxy. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes.” Tahiri forced her attention back to the group. Their blue-rimmed eyes and leathery faces seemed more familiar to her than the reflection of the blond-haired women she saw in the mirror every morning—but that was hardly a surprise, considering what had happened to her during the war. She was as much Yuuzhan Vong now as she was human, at least in mind and spirit. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with this. Go on.”
The Extolled One—Bava, she remembered—bowed deeply, intentionally lowering himself to her height.
“As I was saying, Jeedai Veila, four times this week we have caught Sal Ghator and his warriors stealing from our gardens.”
Tahiri cocked her brow. “Your gardens, Bava?” La’okio was supposed to be a communal village, an experiment where the contentious castes of Yuuzhan Vong society would learn to work together—and to trust each other. “I thought the gardens belonged to everyone.”
“We have decided that every grashal is also allowed to plant an extra plot for itself.” Bava sneered in Ghator’s direction, then continued, “But the warriors are too lazy to work their own ground. They expect us to do it for them.”
“We cannot do it for ourselves!” Ghator objected. Half a meter taller than Tahiri and nearly three times her mass, he still bore the tattoos and ritual scarrings of a former subaltern. “We are cursed by the gods. Nothing we plant will grow.”
Tahiri fought back a sigh. “Don’t tell me you’ve separated by caste again. You’re supposed to be living in mixed groups.”
As Tahiri spoke, she felt the familiar touch of a Chadra-Fan searching for her in the Force, wanting to know if she also sensed the growing strength of the feeling. She opened herself to the contact and focused her thoughts on the mysterious fear. Tekli was not particularly strong in the Force, and what Tahiri perceived as a clarion call would seem barely a whisper to the little Chadra-Fan. Neither of them bothered to reach out for their companion Danni Quee; Force-sensitive though she might be, so far Danni had proven numb to the sensation.
“Living in mixed grashals is unclean,” Ghator said, drawing Tahiri’s attention back to the problems in La’okio. “Warriors cannot be asked to sleep on the same dirt as Shamed Ones.”
“Shamed Ones!” Bava said. “We are Extolled. We are the ones who exposed Shimrra’s heresy, while you warriors led us all to ruin.”
The blue rim around Ghator’s eyes grew wider and darker. “Beware your tongue, raal, lest its poison strike you dead.”
“There is no poison in truth.” Bava sneaked a glance in Tahiri’s direction, then sneered, “You are the Shamed Ones now!”
Ghator’s hand sent Bava tumbling across the rugrass so swiftly that Tahiri doubted she could have intercepted it had she wanted to, and she did not want to. The Yuuzhan Vong would always have their own way of working out problems—ways that Danni Quee and Tekli and perhaps even Zonama Sekot itself would never fully comprehend.
Bava stopped rolling and turned his good eye in Tahiri’s direction. She returned his gaze and did nothing. Having risen from their outcast status through their efforts to end the war, the Extolled
