Rankin was not among the captives. Nor was the girls' mother.
Mace knew neither had escaped.
Rankin. Though he and Mace could not have trusted each other, they had been, however briefly, on the same side. They had both been trying to get everyone out of here without anyone dying.
Rankin had paid the price of that failure.
Perhaps Mace had started paying it as well.
One more question to one more captive, and then the akks moved aside for him again.
Vaster was nearby, growling and barking and snarling the Korunnai into groups organized for the withdrawal. In his disconnected state, Mace felt no surprise to discover that he could not now understand the lor pelek. Vastor's voice had become jungle noise, freighted with meaning but indecipherable. Inhuman^ Impersonal.
Lethal.
not because the jungle kills you, Nick had said. Just because it is what it is.
Mace put out a hand to stop Vaster as the lor pelek swept by him. 'What will you do with the captives?' Vaster rumbled wordlessly in his throat, and now again his meaning unfurled in Mace's mind.
They come with us.
'You can take care of prisoners?' We don't take care of them. We give them to the jungle.
'The tan pel'trokal,' Mace murmured. 'Jungle justice.' Somehow, this made perfect sense.
Though he could not approve, he could not help but understand.
Vastor nodded as he turned to move on.,'/ is our way.
'Is that different from murder?' Though Mace was looking at Vastor, he sounded like he was asking himself. 'Can any of them survive? Cast out alone, without supplies, without weapons-' The lor pelek gave Mace a predator's grin over his shoulder, showing his needle-sharp teeth. I did, he growled, and walked away.
'And the children?' But Mace was talking to the lorpeleKs departing back; Vastor was already snapping at three or four ragged young Korunnai. What he might be ordering them to do, Mace couldn't say; Vastor's meaning had departed with his attention.
Mace drifted in the direction the last captive he'd spoken to had indicated. He stopped at the edge of a smoldering puddle of flame-projector fuel. It had burned nearly out; black coils of smoke twisted upward from only a few patches of dawn-paled flame.
A step or two in from the edge of the puddle lay a body.
It lay on its side, curled in the characteristic fetal burn-victim ball. One of its arms seemed to have escaped its general contraction. The arm pointed at the near rim of the puddle's scorch mark, palm-down, as though this corpse had died trying to drag itself, one-handed, from the flames.
Mace couldn't even tell if it had been a man, or a woman.
He squatted on his heels at the edge of the scorch, staring. Then he wrapped his arms around his knees, and just sat. There didn't seem to be anything else to do.
He had asked that last captive where she'd last seen the girls' mother.
He could not possibly determine if this corpse had once been the woman who'd given birth to Pell and to Keela; if this smoking mass of charred dead flesh had held them in its arms and kissed away their childish tears.
Did it matter?
This had been someone's parent, or brother, or sister. Someone's child. Someone's friend.
Who had died anonymously in the jungle.
He couldn't even tell if this corpse had been killed by a Korun bul let, or a vibroshield, or a Balawai blaster. Or if it had simply been unlucky enough to get in the way of a stream of fire from a steam-crawler's turret gun.
Perhaps in the Force, he might have been able to sense some answers. But he couldn't decide if knowing would be better than not knowing. And to touch the Force again in this dark place was a risk he was not prepared to take.
So he just sat, and thought about the dark.
Sat while the guerrillas splintered into bands that melted away down the mountainside. Sat while the prisoners were marched off in a gang, surrounded by akk dogs. Sat while the sun slanted past a pair of northeast peaks, and a wave of light rolled down the slope above him.
Vastor came to him, rumbling something about leaving this place before the gunships arrived.
Mace did not even look up.
He was thinking about the light of the sun, and how it did not touch the darkness in the jungle.
Nick stopped on his way out of camp. In one arm, he carried Urno; Nykl slept against his other shoulder, tiny arms clasped around his neck. Keela stumbled along behind, one hand pressing against the spray bandage that closed her head wound while she used the other to lead little Pell. Nick must have asked Mace a question, because he paused at the side of the Jedi Master as though waiting for an answer.
But Mace had no answers to give.
When he got no response, Nick shrugged and moved on.
