10

I think Daru planned to be at Sechiru whenever we were. I don't know how he did it, but he was always there with about half of his itaka.

The day after we found the little Hssak, I met Daru with a heart full of questions. I knew so little about this planet. Maybe its history was what I should have been studying in the archives.

I had spoken to Zefel the evening before. She had been in a good mood for a change, so we talked a lot. I didn't tell her about the Hssak – she would have had a fit – but I did tell her about Fang's species. She didn't seem happy about that. I had thought that it was just nice to know what species Fang was. It wasn't as if we had really thought he was human, had we?

But I didn't think about that then. It wasn't important.

"Daru, do you know what Paifei are?" I asked. We were leaning against the wall in Sechiru and just relaxing. Kerai, who Daru called his best friend, was off somewhere, so we had license to talk alone.

"Of course. Everyone here does."

"I didn't until yesterday."

He turned to me with surprise. "But your friend Fang –"

"That's how I found out. What do you think of them?"

"I dunno. I've only ever met Fang, and he doesn't come here much. Or talk much. You get really funny answers from Mibir. Some love Paifei, some hate them some won't say a word on the subject, and some just seem to think they're wingless Mibir and there's nothing to discuss. I guess that's how I feel."

"Huh." I didn't know whether any of this was important, so I changed the subject to something easier. "Daru, did you give this place to the Jedi?"

"No!" He laughed. "Kids don't have authority like that. Neither do adults actually – it's probably illegal for us to be here – but no one's going to enforce that law. No, me and my itaka were staying in an apartment where one of us lived, but we were kicked out, and we were homeless for a while. We met Master Tirem, and we decided to join him, and he showed us this place. It was good."

"Why do you do everything you do for us? Is it for this place and food? Is that enough for you to risk your lives for us?"

"Okay, first, I do it for the city, not the Jedi," he said, sitting up straight. "But, Akite, would I be safe if I weren't doing anything? There would be more danger in the city, wouldn't there? Besides, you know, what would I be doing? I lost my family, and it's hard enough to find people to adopt the little orphans without trying to give the older ones homes, too."

I thought about the little Hssak. I didn't know yet that three of them had died, so I was still hoping.

"There's no school running in this part of the city. Nobody to go home to. Few places to spend money and fewer to earn it. And it's not like the better parts of the city like refugees, especially teenagers. What should I be doing? At least I have a home and food and an itaka here."

He was waiting for an answer. I nodded. "Yeah – you're right."

"Besides," he added, leaning against the wall again. "I like running an itaka. It's nice to be in charge of things and respected."

He gave me a calculating look out of his black eyes. "You probably never feel this way, since you're a Jedi and everything, but I used to think nobody respected me enough. You know, I spoke Basic before most of my class, I was smart, and I always noticed things and came up with answers everyone else overlooked, and they treated me like another kid. I was so frustrated. At least when people look at you, they see a Jedi."

"Not everyone," I said. "When I was first a padawan, I wasn't even twelve years old yet, and everyone would look at me like they couldn't believe I was a Jedi. And I wanted to look at the archives when I came here, but I had to get Tiku Lasir's permission because I'm only a kid. It's not so easy."

There was a lot more I could have said. When I was a youngling in the Temple, I thought that nobody appreciated my skills. I was good at everything. I thought I should be recognized for that, but the masters knew I would get a deadly case of pride if they did. Thank the Force I had learned by the time I became a padawan. I would have gotten some nasty surprises.

"Really? I never would have thought… I guess I'm in good company." He grinned. He has a great smile, and I had to give one back. "I like doing this, though. It feels good to be listened to. And it's so great to be free, you know, not having to answer to adults."

I started wondering then. How many people liked the freedom of not answering to anyone? A bad reason to be causing such misery in Kebro, but there are heartless people in the galaxy. Surely this motivated a few.

I was starting to suspect that there wasn't a clear answer to the problem in Kebro, but I wasn't ready to admit that. It would mean that there was no clean, sure way to end this, and I didn't want that to be true.

Unfortunately, that was the last time we really relaxed in Sechiru. That evening, someone threw two small grenades through the broken windows. There were three itaka inside at the time, but they were in the basement, so nobody was badly hurt.

Still, it made us nervous. There had been halfhearted attacks before, but this one was clearly malice against the Jedi. Somebody had painted – don't ask me where they got the paint – the only graffiti I ever saw in Kebro across the front of the building. The message was something about Jedi and Jedi-helpers that would have made a good number of the Masters back home have heart attacks if we had told them about it. (They wouldn't have been too happy to find out that I only knew what it meant because Moyek had explained it to me a year earlier, either.) We were losing what respect we had had, and I knew that only death could come out of that.

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