'I told you he's gonna kill us!' Nick hissed. 'I toldyo't'ti't't Shee, I hate it when I'm right!' 'Like I said before: think of Vaster as a wild akk. He won't kill us unless there's no other way to get what he wants.' 'Yeah? What does he want?' 'Same as any akk dog: to assert his dominance. Defend his territory. And his pack.' 'And you think he won't kill us for taking those prisoners?' Mace shrugged. 'Not you, anyway. You're subordinate: you don't really count.' 'Oh, sure. Thanks a lot-' Nick stopped in mid-sarcasm and looked thoughtful. 'Know what? I think I actually mean that.' 'You're welcome.' Vaster spun the hooked goad, and the ankkox lumbered toward Mace and Nick, its tail mace whipping through threatening arcs around it.
'So, what?' Nick kept on under his breath. 'You think he's just gonna throw you out of here? 'You got till sundown to get off my planet'?' 'Something like that.' 'What about this hostage you were talkin' about?' 'We'll see if we need him.' 'Urn, it's not me, is it? Because, y'know, to tell you the truth, I don't think Depa likes me all that much-or even, y'know, any. At all.' 'Hush.' The ankkox stopped. The beak-curve of the crown armor on its landspeeder-sized skull lowered to the ground at Mace's feet. The beast's eyes were orange and gold and as large as Mace's head, and they peered up from under the curve of armor with melancholy saurian patience.
Vaster vaulted to the ground. Make your good-byes. Then you are leaving.
'Nice doggy.' Nick said with a sickly forced smile. He gave a weak laugh. 'Nice-' Vastor's immense left arm flashed at Nick in a blinding palm slap that would have taken his head right off before he could even blink-but that massive arm was intercepted by the heel of Mace's open hand.
Mace's fingers locked momentarily around Vastor's wrist. 'He's with me,' he said, and before the lor pelek could react, he released Vaster and backhanded Nick off his feet.
Nick lay crumpled on the leaf mold, stunned, staring up at Mace in astonishment. Through their Force-link, Mace sent a pulse of private reassurance: an invisible deadpan wink.
Nick played along. 'What was that for?' The Jedi Master jabbed a finger at his face. 'You are an officer in the Grand Army of the Republic. Act like one.' 'How does one act?' Mace turned back to Vastor. 'I apologize for him.' Vaster grunted. His mother should apologize.
'Any problem you have with him, you bring to me.' Mace had to bend his neck back to look up into the lor peleKs eyes. 'I struck one of your men, earlier. I apologize for that as well.' He met Vastor's glare lazily. 'I should have hit you.' You are Depa's Master, and my doshalo, and I do not wish you harm. Vastor's rumble went low and silken. Don't touch me again.
Mace sighed, still looking bored. He said to Nick, 'Don't get up,' and to Vastor, 'Excuse me,' and he sidestepped the lor pelek to vault onto the dorsal shell of the ankkox.
He had time to wonder if his pretense of confidence was fooling anyone.
Mace looked up at the howdah, now only a step or two away. His mouth had gone entirely dry.
He still couldn't feel her.
Even this close, finally, after all this time, whatever presence she cast in the Force blended invisibly into the jungle night around them.
The sick weight gathered in his chest again: the one that had been born weeks ago in Palpatine's office. The one that had grown heavier in Pelek Baw, and had nearly crushed him last night in the outpost bunker. That weight had lifted somehow through this long afternoon: maybe it was because he'd been so sure he was doing the right thing.
The only thing.
And now he was a meter away from being face to face with her: his Padawan: his protegee: the woman for whose sake he had left behind Coruscant and the Jedi Temple and the simple abstractions of strategic war. For whose sake he had plunged into this jungle. Had subjected himself to the harsh, complicated, intractable reality behind the strategies that had seemed so simple and so clean back in the sterile chambers of the Council.
He discovered that once again, he didn't know what he should do.
Just seeing her shadow on the curtains had loosened his grip on right and wrong.
Palpatine's words echoed inside his head: Depa Billaba was your Padawan. And she is still perhaps your closest friend, is she not?
Is she? Mace thought.,' wish I knew.
If she must be slain, are you so certain you can strike her down?
Right now, he wasn't entirely certain he could look at her.
He was that frightened of what he might see.
.' have become the darkness in the jungle.
A slim brown hand took one edge of the curtains. Long fingers, but strong: nails broken, and black with grime-the shape of the O. Ollttl ILI't'trUII palm, the faint rolling texture of vein and tendon and bone, that he knew as vividly as he did his own-and the curtain was streaked with mold and stained, and hand-patched with dark thread that showed like scars against the lace, and it draped around her hand as she drew it slowly aside, and Mace's heart hammered and he nearly turned away, because he should have known he wouldn't meet her in the dawn, at the beginning of a day, even among a firestorm raining from gunship cannons; he should have known that was only wishful thinking, a solace from the Force; he should have known that they would only meet again in the twilight shadow- But fear, too, leads into the dark.
He thought, I have met the darkness in this jungle already. I've felt it in my own heart. I have fought it hand to hand and mind to mind. Why should I fear to see it on her face?
The knot in his gut untied itself.
All his anxiety drained from him. All his darkness trickled away. He stood empty of everything save for fatigue and the pains of his battered flesh, and a calm Jedi expectation: ready to accept the turn of the Force, no matter what it may bring.
She drew the curtain aside.
She sat on the edge of a long, padded chaise. She wore the tatters of Jedi robes over the rough homespun of a jungle Korun. Her hair was as he had seen at the outpost: ragged, greasy, hacked short as though she'd used
