Ezra was back in the real world, blinking and dazed. He sat next to the guttering fire, and he'd barely had time to register the red coals and heaps of ashes before him when a stack of new logs dropped down on the old ones, crushing them into dust. Startled, Ezra looked up and saw Thrawn standing next to him, a pinched expression on his face as he wiped flammable sap off his hands.
An entire planet — that's what the woman in Thrawn's memory had said. Ezra leaned back in his seat, keeping as far away from Thrawn as he could. Trying not to flinch.
Without meeting Ezra's eyes, Thrawn took a seat across from him on a nearby log. The sun was lower now, Ezra realized, bringing them into late afternoon with approximately ten hours of daylight left. He stared at Thrawn, who had rolled up his sleeves and was now scratching absent-mindedly at a shallow cut on his forearm. He stared into the middle-distance, his expression unreadable.
Ezra's blood was cold. His limbs felt watery and shaky all at once, like he'd run a long distance. He didn't want to break the silence — didn't want to be anywhere near here — but at the same time, the silence itself was unbearable. He felt like if he didn't say something, he'd probably puke.
"Uh…" he said.
Thrawn didn't glance his way. Suddenly, it seemed almost impossible to address the bantha in the room. Ezra cast around for something else — anything else — to say and found himself focusing on the cut.
"Uh, is that new?" he asked, voice shaking, feeling ludicrous and surreal. Like this was all happening to someone else.
Thrawn's eyes flickered toward him. He raised an eyebrow, and Ezra felt his cheeks heating in response.
"The cut?" he said, pointing.
"Yes," said Thrawn, his voice carefully moderated. "It's new."
He averted his gaze again, and now Ezra could see the subtle hints of irritation — or maybe something far more dangerous — on his face, centered in the tightness of his lips and eyes. Thrawn tugged his sleeves back down and, for just a moment, lay one hand flat against his collar bone. It stayed there for the length of one deep breath, and then he let it drop.
"Tell me what you saw," said Thrawn. His voice was flat now, expressionless. Looking at him closer, Ezra saw pale green stains on the knees of his trousers and wondered — there was fresh green grass all around their campsite, but none near the animal hide, where Thrawn had been kneeling. Had he tripped while Ezra was immersed in his mind? Was that how he'd cut himself?
Only a few seconds of silence passed while Ezra noticed the stains and thought it through, but it was long enough for Thrawn to notice.
"Yes," he said dryly, "those are new, too. Tell me what you saw."
Ezra ignored the request for the second time, his eyes still glued to the grass stains. "Was that because of me?" he asked, reverting (as he always did in situations like this) to his default boldness. A pale smirk tugged at his lips. "I took you by surprise, didn't I?"
There was a brief pause before Thrawn answered, like he was choosing his words carefully. "You caused me considerable discomfort," he said, "but I cannot claim to be surprised. Are you unable to sense as much?"
He gestured almost wearily to his head, inviting Ezra to peek inside. Ezra didn't feel much like accepting that invitation right now.
"Is surprise an emotion?" he asked rhetorically. When it looked like Thrawn might actually answer him, he rushed to add, "Cuz in case you hadn't noticed, you don't actually have those."
Thrawn blinked, his expression giving nothing away. He rested his forehead in his hand, rubbing at it gently as if he had a headache.
"I have emotions," he said blandly, unconvincingly.
Ezra said nothing. He didn't know how to explain it to Thrawn, but the stuff he'd witnessed inside the other man's head was … well, inhuman. There were no emotions attached to anything, and even the subtle mental reactions Thrawn displayed in reaction to certain stimuli couldn't really be defined or interpreted as feelings.
"Do you want me to describe the memory, then?" Ezra asked — more because he didn't want to be the one to break it to Thrawn that he was kind of a sociopath than out of any real desire to describe the memory he'd seen.
Thrawn inclined his head, his eyes narrowed.
"Well, you were in Palpatine's throne room," Ezra said uncomfortably. He stared down at the fire, avoiding Thrawn's gaze. "You were giving him some kind of report about — about a planet you destroyed. And you tried to hide it from him, but he caught you out, so … he …"
Ezra gestured wordlessly at his head. When Thrawn only stared at him, not responding, Ezra forced himself to go on.
"He read your mind," Ezra said. "And he found a memory of you talking with that woman, uh …"
"Commodore Faro," said Thrawn calmly.
Ezra eyed him, unsure what to think. Thrawn's even tone, juxtaposed with the horrible things he'd done, was making him break out in sweat.
"Commodore Faro," Ezra repeated. "She was mad at you because you…" His mouth ran dry, then suddenly flooded with bitter saliva. He spit it out onto the ground beside him, feeling for a moment like he might vomit again. Thrawn watched him the entire time, saying nothing, and eventually the feeling subsided and Ezra went on. "Because you destroyed the planet," he said, and he could hear the venom in his voice. "And you had no reason to do it, either — you said you did it because they weren't useful, or they couldn't be used as an ally, as if that justifies—"
"And then?" Thrawn asked calmly.
Ezra glared at him, fury warring against the instinctive fear inside him.
"Forget the narrative details," Thrawn said. "We both saw it; there's no reason to repeat it now. What did you learn? What did you extrapolate from the scene before you? Did you glean anything from my thoughts, my physical sensations, my emotional state—"
"You don't have an emotional state," Ezra snapped. "That's what I've been trying to tell you — you keep asking me that, but you don't feel anything , even when that Faro lady was throwing stuff at your head! Even when you talked about destroying an entire planet or when Palpatine caught you in a lie and it looked like he might kill you, you didn't feel anything . You have all the same emotions as a kriffing mouse droid!"
Across from him, Thrawn's jaw was tight, his eyes seeming to glow more fiercely than they ever had before.
"I have emotions," Thrawn said, his voice deathly quiet. He stabbed at the fire with a broken stick, then tossed it away and sat back, looking disgusted — with himself or with Ezra, it was impossible to tell. "Right now," he said, "I'm feeling a significant amount of anger. Take a look."
Reluctantly, Ezra did just that, allowing his mind to come in contact with Thrawn's — but only barely. Those all-too-familiar ciphers were unusually chaotic, jumping from one signal to the next, and the very layout of his mind seemed wrinkled and over-layered. But there was no sign of emotion, despite the fact that Ezra could very clearly see the anger on Thrawn's face.
"There's nothing," he said aloud, drawing back.
"There's nothing?" Thrawn repeated. He touched his collar bone, laying his palm flat the same way he had earlier, but this time he kept his hand there as he spoke. "You started training in the art of mind-reading three days ago , Commander. With so little experience, your first assumption should be that you've made a mistake or are for some reason incapable of reading me. Only a master of the art would sense nothing and reasonably conclude there is nothing. Have you already decided you have nothing more to learn?"
Ezra was smart enough to recognize a trap when he heard one. He glowered at Thrawn, refusing to respond. For a moment, they studied each other, Thrawn's eyes narrowed and unreadable.
"You are incapable of detecting my emotional state, so you decide there must not be an emotional state to detect," Thrawn said. "Is that correct?"
When Ezra still didn't respond, only continued to glare, Thrawn said, "That is the height of arrogance—"
This was too much. Ezra opened his mouth to protest, but Thrawn plowed on, raising his voice even as he kept each syllable tight and controlled, clearly monitoring his tone.
"—but arrogance is what I've come to expect from you," he said. "Your entire military career — short as it may be — has been marked by a stunning amount of arrogance. It is matched only by your ignorance, your eagerness to jump into a mission without any of the necessary information to complete it without casualty. You are a commander, yet you set self-defeating, half-informed goals for yourself and your men and then consider yourself victorious when they are accomplished, unaware of the adverse effects you've set into motion."
"The adverse effects I've set into—?!" Ezra started.
"To stop the bombing of Lothal," said Thrawn, "you set purrgils on an enemy force still in orbit over the very planet you wished to protect, resulting in waves of debris from my fleet which caused more harm to the citizens of Lothal than my own salvo of laserfire. You destroyed the TIE Defender plant on Lothal without even attempting to discern its true purpose — killing civilian workers your Rebel cell claimed to protect — and now, as a direct result of your actions, a much more dangerous weapon is in place somewhere in this galaxy, poised to destroy entire worlds. Had you only done your groundwork first, or bothered to cross-reference your plans with other Rebel cells as any good soldier would do — if you'd spoken with the Alderaanian Senator or his agents—"
Ezra didn't think about it. His hand shot up of its own volition, palm open, arm outstretched. By pure instinct, he channeled all his rage and fear into the Force, into a single, powerful gust of air. Thrawn didn't have time to react, to form a defense. Struck in the chest by something invisible, something he could never possibly see or defend against, he seemed to cave in on himself in the first millisecond, hunching over his bruised ribs by instinct as they were pummeled again. And then he hurtled backward, slamming into the dirt and skidding over the grass for several meters. His words were cut off mid-sentence, replaced with unnatural silence — anyone else would have cried out or groaned with the impact, Ezra thought — and he only moved to cover his face as the Force thrust him back against the shelter; the entire frame rocked when Thrawn crashed into it, his back hitting one of the support poles square against his spine.
For a moment, he lay still and limp in the dirt, his face buried in his arms, and Ezra was horribly certain he'd knocked Thrawn out — but just as concern won out over fury and he rose to help, Thrawn stirred, getting one knee beneath him and pushing himself off the ground. A thin scratch crossed his cheekbone; his hair was mussed and his clothes were dirty, but he was on his feet soon enough, composed and expressionless. As if nothing had happened at all.
The same could not be said for Ezra. His chest was heaving, his hand still outstretched from when he'd pushed Thrawn with the Force. Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck and the sides of his face, and his lungs felt like they were filled with water; he found it almost impossible to catch his breath. Numbly, he fell backward onto his seat, the motion jarring him straight to his core.
"You're the one who destroyed a planet," he rasped, putting his head between his knees to fight off a sudden bout of nausea. "Not me. Don't act like I'm the bad guy here."
He was vaguely aware of Thrawn approaching him, standing opposite Ezra on the other side of the fire.
"I have never destroyed a planet," said Thrawn coldly. "The planet Koja was under the control of a warlord named Creysis, a ruthless sentient who has subjugated many worlds outside the Empire's borders. I freed them from his control, as I freed many other planets in the Unknown Regions. Do you know what you saw?"
Ezra buried his fingers in his hair and closed his eyes. He didn't answer — and then he felt something small hurtling through the air toward him and he stopped its trajectory by instinct, looking up with wide eyes. A small pebble hovered in the air before him, suspended by the Force; across from him, Thrawn was poised to throw another one, his face hard, the cut on his cheekbone bleeding.
"I don't know, okay?" Ezra said, letting his Force-grip on the pebble relax. It dropped to the ground harmlessly. In response, Thrawn gradually lowered his arm. "You made it up?" Ezra guessed. "To trick him, or something? I don't know!"
"The memory is not fabricated," Thrawn said, tossing the other pebble underhanded into the brush. "I could not allow Koja to come under Imperial influence; Creysis targeted them for their vast natural resources. The Empire would do the same, leaving the people to suffer."
"Yeah, no shit," said Ezra, confusion and anger spiking again all at once. "Like Lothal."
"Not like Lothal," Thrawn snapped. "We are not discussing mild economic hardship, high unemployment levels or uncomfortable levels of military presence, Commander Bridger. Koja faced an inevitable planet-wide famine; the psychological makeup of the Kojai people would almost certainly lead to stand-offs between their native ethnic groups and economic classes, escalating to massacres, and finally to genocide at the hands of any invading force. What Koja needed was to remain safely off the Imperial star charts, and as I could not hide the memory of it from him, the only way to do that was to convince Emperor Palpatine it was destroyed."
Ezra kept his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed shut.
"Commodore Faro worked closely with me on Koja," Thrawn said, his voice quieter now. "She was one of very few crew members aboard the Chimaera who understood the planet's options. She was also my second-in-command; I knew that if I convinced her of Koja's destruction — even if only for a moment — the severity of her reaction and my response to it would cement the memory at the forefront of my mind, in an optimal position for Palpatine to discover. He did not see the memories before it or the memories which came after; those I translated into a code and buried as deeply as I could."
A code — suddenly, Ezra remembered a part of that memory he'd almost forgotten, a throwaway line that loaned credence to Thrawn's claim.
"You have a brother," he said slowly, looking up from the fire. Thrawn met his gaze and held it, his eyes cold. "You have a brother, and the two of you made up that code together when you were kids," Ezra said, eyebrows furrowed. "Is that right? You thought about it in the memory, but it was so fast, I…"
"You learned of the existence of a code, but did not apply this knowledge to the scenario at hand?" Thrawn asked.
"You made it up when you were a kid," Ezra repeated, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "Why would I think that was relevant? How the hell would I know a code made up by a bunch of kids would work against a Sith lord?"
"A code in my native language," Thrawn reminded him. "A language which the Emperor does not speak and has only encountered in my own mind."
It was all too much, Ezra thought. He kept his head angled down, rubbing ceaselessly at his tired, itching eyes. He was no longer really processing anything Thrawn said, just letting it wash over him; he was too exhausted by the onslaught of information and emotions to take any of it in.
"I should've known you'd do something like that," he said. When Thrawn stayed silent, Ezra continued, refusing to look up. "Trick the Emperor. Plant memories, use code. You know nobody else in the whole universe would be ballsy enough to try that, right?"
"Few would, perhaps," said Thrawn. His eyes were narrowed. "Any full Jedi Knight should know about the technique, either through training or through his own experiments with mind-reading."
Era scoffed; it came out sounding weak and weary. "Well, sorry," he said. "We can't all be all-knowing like you."
The look Thrawn gave him was withering — but his posture deflated suddenly and when he spoke, his voice sounded almost disappointed. "We would not be here if I were all-knowing," he said. He came closer to the fire, sitting down heavily on the same log Ezra had pushed him off of earlier. "If I were all-knowing," said Thrawn, "I would not have come to the Empire at all."
Ezra eyed him warily. He couldn't be sure how much to trust — which of Thrawn's actions were real and which, like his memory of Commodore Faro, were engineered or otherwise manufactured. But if he could just take a quick peek into Thrawn's mind…
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Let me try something," he said.
Now it was Thrawn's turn to eye him warily. Ezra opened himself up to the Force, reaching out tentatively to Thrawn's mind — and for the first time to date, found an impenetrable wall there waiting for him. It felt like he had reached through an open window only for someone to slam the glass down on his fingertips.
"You must have forgotten," Thrawn said evenly, his eyes searing into Ezra's. Slowly, he rolled up his dirt-stained sleeves, revealing the fresh cut on his forearm again. It was thin but long, the edges of it jagged and torn. "I agreed to be your test subject because I was reasonably sure it would not cause me immediate harm. That agreement no longer stands."
"Seriously?" Ezra said. The cut couldn't be more than a few inches long; it wasn't even bleeding anymore. "Because of that cut?" He squinted at the other scratch, the one right beneath Thrawn's eye. "Or is it because of that one?"
"Not even because of the excruciating pain which caused this cut," Thrawn said, tapping the small wound on his forearm. "When you accessed my memory of the Koja incident, it triggered pain so intense I temporarily lost consciousness. I was prepared for the eventuality of physical pain, although I did not believe it would ever progress to such a level; I was not prepared for the subsequent escalation to conscious, deliberate use of the Force…"
Thrawn's left hand came up, fingers circling lightly around his own neck in a gesture that seemed almost subconscious, as though he were soothing a bruise that was no longer there.
"...to cause physical harm," he finished, his voice hushed.
Ezra's mouth was dry. After a long moment, Thrawn let his hand drop; his eyes flickered up to meet Ezra's.
"Using the Light Side means using the Force to help others and foster peace," he said. "Dark Side users seem more powerful because they tap into their negative emotions, embracing their hatred of the enemy rather than pushing through it — do you remember saying that, Commander? I'm paraphrasing, of course."
He watched Ezra, waiting for an answer, but Ezra couldn't think of anything to say. His chest felt hollow, like his heart had sunk deep into his rib cage and disappeared.
"You also said 'some things are just bad,'" Thrawn reminded him. "That one is a direct quote. How would you classify your actions today?"
When Ezra still didn't answer, he said, "Would you agree I am justified in blocking an uncontrolled and unstable Force-user from accessing my mind?"
He was deliberately provoking Ezra just like he'd provoked Commodore Faro, and Ezra knew it, but he didn't feel any of the irritation or defensiveness he normally would. He sat back, more exhausted than he'd been since the day they crash-landed on this planet, and sighed through his nose.
Thrawn watched him, quietly waiting for a response. In the ensuing silence, Ezra bit the inside of his cheek, his thoughts tracking back over every little thing that had gone wrong today. He tried to pretend Thrawn wasn't staring at him, tried to ignore the feeling that he was being observed like a specimen in a lab, but eventually he couldn't take it any longer and he looked up, meeting Thrawn's eyes.
"It was my fault for pushing you with the Force," Ezra said firmly. Thrawn blinked, but it wasn't a startled blink; his face conveyed no emotion at all. "I know that; I can admit it was wrong. And you can admit that — well, what I did, it's understandable. Isn't it? Not justified, but understandable. After what I saw in your memories, about Koja — and with you refusing to talk about it or explain anything — any reasonable person would react the same way."
Still, Thrawn said nothing. He didn't accept Ezra's claim, but he didn't reject it, either. With a deep breath, Ezra plunged on into the next part.
"What I don't understand is the mind-reading thing," he said heavily. "It's never hurt you before today — not when I did it, I mean — and even today, it didn't hurt you at all until we got to the memory with Palpatine, right?"
Thrawn simply sat there with his elbows propped on his knees, staring contemplatively at Ezra.
"So how do we know it was me who caused the pain?" Ezra pressed. "I mean, how do we know it didn't just come from the memory? Because Palpatine caused you a lot of pain, too, right? Maybe the memory of the pain was—"
"—somehow stronger than the original sensation?" Thrawn finished. A small line had appeared between his eyebrows; Ezra couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or if he was really considering it.
"It's got to at least be connected, right?" he said hopelessly.
Across from him, Thrawn scrubbed at his face, exhibiting some of the same weariness Ezra was feeling.
"I believe," he said eventually, "the pain from that particular memory may have amplified some of the physical sensations caused by your … one-sided foray into a deeper layer of my mind. That was not a memory I prepared for your viewing; when you broke through to it, I felt a sharp pain here—" He gestured to his temple. "—which only grew as the memory continued."
Relief washed over Ezra, even if this was only a small victory — even if he had still used the Force to attack Thrawn, even if they were technically stranded here because of him, even if the people on the Chimaera might have made it if—
Well, it was a victory. He found his eyes locked on Thrawn's, both of them surveying each other with a kind of exhausted embarrassment.
"Why did you wish to access my mind?" Thrawn asked.
"Hey, this whole thing was your idea," Ezra said.
"No — just now, when I blocked you. What did you hope to achieve?"
"Oh." Ezra blinked; although it had only been minutes, it felt like a lifetime ago since Thrawn blocked him. He rubbed his eyes, working back through each agonizing point in the conversation until he remembered his own motivations. "I thought maybe you were lying to me — about Koja, I mean. I wanted to … well, I thought maybe if I connected to your mind and I asked you some simple questions — stuff like 'what is your name' and all that — I could figure out how to tell when you were lying. And then I would know if you really destroyed that planet or not."
Thrawn was silent for a moment, absorbing this information.
"I've never been stranded with someone who thought me capable of destroying a planet before," he said eventually.
Ezra was reasonably sure Thrawn had never been stranded with anyone before, but he didn't say so out loud.
"Typically," Thrawn continued, scratching absently at the cut on his arm, "the worst I'm accused of is making a few fortunate guesses and passing them off as tactical skill."
Ezra decided not to voice his opinion on that, either. Thrawn glanced at him speculatively, perhaps growing suspicious of the silence. He tugged his sleeves down again, covering the light wound, and crossed his arms over his abdomen as he leaned closer to the fire.
They said nothing for a long time after that, both of them allowing the silence to continue. As he listened to the fire pop and the birds sing, Ezra felt the tension slowly draining out of him. It lulled him into a sense of almost-normalcy, made the events of the last hour or two seem over-dramatic and silly.
After ten minutes of silence, Thrawn stood, piling more logs onto the fire. When he took his seat again, Ezra sat up, somehow knowing — as if by instinct — that the mood had shifted enough for them to start again.
"I would like to test a theory," Thrawn said, his eyes slipping closed.
"Okay…" said Ezra.
"I would like you," said Thrawn slowly, "to connect with my mind, but do not attempt to read it. Simply make the connection and maintain it. Can you do that?"
Ezra reached out with the Force, making the connection swiftly and easily. "Already done," he said. "Your block is gone."
Obviously, Thrawn thought in Basic.
Aloud, he said, "What makes you happy?"
The question came out of nowhere. Ezra was so thrown by it that it ruined his concentration; he almost lost the connection right then and there. He stared at Thrawn, thinking for a moment he might have heard him wrong.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Vaguely, Thrawn gestured at the woods around them. "Think of something you enjoy, something which makes you feel content," he said. "Birdsong; the sound of the river; sunrise; the scent of wildflowers; those peculiarly long naps you take at mid-day…"
"You have absolutely no grasp on who I am as a person, do you?" said Ezra, somewhat baffled by Thrawn's list. "I mean, seriously — wildflowers and birdsong? Have you never been flying?"
"Flying, then," said Thrawn with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Imagine flying."
"Do you not like flying?"
"Do you not like sleeping for egregiously long periods during the day?" Thrawn shot back.
"Fine, fine," Ezra groused. He closed his mind, imagined his first time on a speeder — the warmth of sunlight reflecting off the transparisteel, the wind pushing his hair back from his forehead, the images streaking by so quickly he could barely make them out. Gradually, he felt himself relax, his muscles feeling lighter and less exhausted, some of the tension leaking from his face.
And then, abruptly, he caught a sense of something else, something that didn't come from him: a dull tremor hidden deep beneath the unending cycle of thoughts and ciphers that was Thrawn's brain — a feeling like sand shifting unexpectedly beneath his feet, like a sudden and deafening noise waking him with a jolt in the middle of the night, like the wary flinch of a mistreated animal when someone raises their hand to pet it.
"Fear," Ezra breathed, opening his eyes. Thrawn watched him from across the fire, saying nothing, his face giving nothing away. "Fear of … the Force?" Ezra guessed, unable to make sense of the readings. "Of me?"
"Look closer," Thrawn said.
With a slow sigh, Ezra immersed himself again. It all somehow stemmed from his own memory of flying a speeder for the first time; he called that to mind again, letting the memory consume him — the wind whipping against him and forcing water from his eyes, the smile he couldn't wipe off his face, his dad letting him choose which path they took, taking them through the wild plains of Lothal.
And the more he thought about that moment, his moment, the more clear Thrawn's mind, so opposite to his own, became. Deep within it all, hidden behind a web of ciphers that now seemed as insubstantial as fine gauze, was a cold blue nexus not much different from the color of Thrawn's skin. It was like a heart at the center of his mind, and it was from this nexus that the chill feeling of fear was emanating.
He didn't want to go anywhere near it — but if he wanted to make any progress here, he had no choice. Ezra allowed his mind to wrap around it, absorbing everything he could:
He's curled up tightly in an alcove in the cave wall, hidden away from prying eyes. The adults can't fit into small spaces like this and don't have the athletic ability to climb so high anyway, so they never think to look for him here. If he's quick about this — if he makes it back to the tech lab in time — they'll never notice the questis is missing.
He keys in the reception code for Vuras's base on Copero and watches with anxiety as the display flickers, sizzles uselessly. He keys it in again, adjusting the parameters, working off instinct and half-guessing at everything he does. He's never used one of these before. He'd promised he'd be able to figure it out on his own; if this doesn't work, Vuras will never let him hear the end of it.
Then the display solidifies and an image appears, making his heart jump. Vuras, no older than twelve, stands in front of the lens, aiming a hovering camera (they don't have anything that new in the tech lab here, Thrawn notes with a pang) so that it catches the wide smile on his face.
You'll never believe this, he says without preamble. He hadn't doubted for a second that Thrawn would get the projector to work; Thrawn can tell. They have all sorts of plants here, Vurawn. Not just edible or medicinal plants, either. They just grow wild all over the surface, not just in the greenhouses — on the surface! And they have these things — you'd love them, I swear — well, here. Just take a look.
The camera flickers as Vuras turns it around. The lens focuses, revealing something that makes Thrawn's breath catch in his throat. It's a plant, but unlike anything he's ever seen before, not in the Great Family greenhouses and certainly not growing on the cave walls. Colorful blossoms gather at the end of the stem, each one a vibrant shade of yellow — the type he's only seen in paintings and unnatural dyes.
The camera twists back to Vuras, but Thrawn still hasn't caught his breath.
Everyone says that only peasants gawk at the flowers, Vuras says, still smiling. Well, actually, they say these are technically weeds, not flowers. But I don't care. They can think whatever they want of me — I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to send you one.
The memory seemed to dissolve around Ezra; he had a sensation like he was slipping out of the alcove and falling an impossible distance — hundreds upon hundreds of feet — and suddenly another scene was forming up in front of his eyes.
They call themselves the Grysks, Thrawn says. The noise of Darth Vader's ventilator fills the room, so mechanically timed that it gives nothing of Vader's mental state away; Commodore Faro stares at Thrawn, her face pinched with tension; it's clear from the tightness of her jaw that her instincts scream at her to look out the viewport at the strange cylinder floating there, but she forces herself to hold still.
Their methods are particularly cruel, Thrawn says. They have a way to brainwash their victims so completely as to make them into wholehearted slaves — not mindless, but willing to sacrifice themselves or even their families in order to protect the Grysks.
The scene warped and twisted before Ezra could get a proper hold on it, catapulting him into another memory:
He is uncomfortable, perhaps even awkward, in civilian clothes. It doesn't matter that these are old and patched and familiar clothes rescued from his parents' home before it was allocated to another commoner with a family of his own; the smell of his father's pipe is still attached to the tunic he wears, and in a sense that gives him a certain amount of strength. But the fit is wrong, and it has been so long since he last wore civilian clothes, and he can't help but feel ill at ease.
He isn't used to seeing her in civvies, either. He sits sideways on the torn leather seat of a parked one-person speeder deep in the tunnels of Csilla, far from the prying eyes of the Nine Ruling Families.
And Ar'alani stands across from him, her arms crossed, tension radiating from her face.
You understand, she says, that if you take this mission you may never come back?
That is true of every mission, Thrawn says. If possible, her lips seem to tighten even more at this; his words do nothing to comfort her. She is agitated, full of nervous energy, eager to fly into battle herself.
I estimate the exile will last no longer than three months; the mission itself, perhaps a year, Thrawn says. When she only glares at him, her eyes still hard, he tries to reassure her. It's a simple reconnaissance mission, nothing more.
It's never a simple mission with you, Ar'alani says.
The bitterness in her voice steals anything else he might have said. He has one hand on the speeder's handlebar, the old leather wrap rough against his palm. He stares down at it, fingers tightening anxiously around the grip; if Ar'alani notices this, it could give him away — but she's staring him down, waiting for him to answer her, an all-too-familiar challenging look on her face.
We need allies, he says softly. We cannot protect our people without allies.
He does not meet her eyes.
With a resounding, ear-shattering explosion, the memory shifted again. The ground shakes; five meters ahead of him, the cave wall collapses with a roar, filling the tunnel with wood and mortar. A child from the upper-class residences above falls through at the same time, landing bonelessly in the debris; broken water pipes gush from the walls, spraying their contents onto the tunnel floor.
None of the adults seem to see her fall or hear the crack of her skull against the floor. He's the only one who reacts to it. He runs to the child without thinking, dodging the adults' legs as they hurry by, and falls to his knees beside her. He feels his trousers tear, the skin scraping off his knees where he hits the ground and cold water seeping into his clothes, but he barely registers it.
With small, steady hands, he checks her pulse — she's older than him perhaps by a year and clad in the prefab robes of a palace worker — like one of his cousins — but she won't open her eyes; he can't feel her heartbeat at all; she's dead — and then someone grabs him roughly by the shoulder and pulls him away.
Whoever it is, they let go and run off before Thrawn properly catches his feet, leaving him staggering in the crowd. A man races by, so panicked that he doesn't watch where he's going; his hip strikes Thrawn in the arm, sends him stumbling to his knees in the water again. He makes a quick decision, crawls back to the dead girl's body. Almost everyone running past unconsciously avoids her and the pile of debris she lies upon; if he stays there for a moment, he won't be stampeded. His fingers are smashed under the boot of an adolescent trying to beat the crowd, but it's the only injury he receives, and it's easy to shake the pain away. Now posted near the dead girl's body, he takes in the situation, filtering out the noise of panic so he can take in the data he needs — figure out what's going on — survive. Shivers wrack him, an unstoppable mix of fear and adrenaline and water so cold it's close to freezing.
The tunnels are flooded with Chiss, all of them in peasant clothes like his, all of them fleeing. There are no outsiders that he can see; if this is an attack, either it was perpetrated by one of their own or the attacker has not yet entered the tunnel. If Thrawn runs with them — adults, mostly — he runs the risk of getting trampled, maybe even drowning if he is trapped face-down. He notes the broken skin on his right hand where he was stepped on, the blood pouring out of relatively small wounds thanks to the water, which keeps it from congealing and has a diluting effect. He can feel a broken bone in one of his fingers, the pain sharp but not the worst he's ever experienced. He's broken bones before through daily chores, just like every other child in this settlement; he can deal with something as small as that.
But if he stays here, right here, he runs the risk of being crushed in another collapse. He cranes his neck, spots straining rafters and broken struts above him. This girl comes from an upper-level; the levels even higher up, the ones above her, are not secure. Glancing at the crowd, he finds it thinner, navigable but still not safe.
So he climbs to his feet and darts eastward, away from the commotion, away from the polished cave systems carved out by a thousand generations of Chiss. He runs for the rough, natural line to the surface, a narrow crack in the cave system traversed only by children — and only the most adventurous ones at that; it will be cold, especially with the floodwater already soaking through his clothes, but it's sturdier than the wood structures collapsing all around him, and he can wait there until the ground stops shaking and the explosions subside. The cave structure ensures that explosions will only cause this particular crack to widen; he has the unique seismic plates of a gigantic iceberg to thank for that.
He slips between the walls, coming to a stop not ten meters in. There's no chance of finding his family in this mess; the elders are at work in the mines, his cousins each old enough to be at their separate apprenticeships or training yards.
Still, some unknowable instinct — morbid curiosity — draws him back to the entrance, and he can't help but glance over his shoulder at the mob. At the mouth of the narrow tunnel, an elderly neighbor — a schoolteacher named Hass'atha'nuroc — has stopped running, facing the oncoming crowd with eerie stillness. His face is set, his eyes dull; somehow Thrawn gets the impression that this is Hass'atha'nuroc's body, but not Hass'atha'nuroc's mind. The schoolteacher holds his arms out — beckoning, Thrawn knows, for his daughter and grandson, a boy not much younger than Vuras; a slow runner, a confused mind, the type who would get left behind easily.
But when the boy reaches Hass'atha'nuroc, the old man doesn't embrace him. He pulls a vibroblade from his tunic and holds it loosely, like he's showing it off to his grandson. He slits the child's throat. The movement is matter-of-fact, a simple, blunt sweep of the knife with none of the flourish Thrawn's seen before in cadets practicing combat outside the academy. For a moment, it's so unlike anything else he's ever seen that he thinks it can't be real — but the boy's body slumps to the ground, lifeless, dead weight. The mother, too startled to flee, dies next.
Thrawn presses into a minute crevice in the cave walls, hiding himself from sight, hands clasped tightly over his mouth. He sinks his teeth into his broken finger, squinching his eyes shut through the bolt of agony that shoots through him, letting the pain wipe his thoughts away and calm his mind. From here, if he crouches down and peers through a crack in the stone, he can see Hass'atha'nuroc abandoning the bodies of his daughter and grandson, his vibroblade held before him as he searches — no, Thrawn knows the look in Hass'atha'nuroc's eyes. He isn't searching. He's hunting.
His heart pounds, but to run now would be stupid, maybe fatally so (fatally stupid, part of his mind echoes; that's Hass'atha'nuroc's phrase, that's how he describes some of the other children at school). He takes a deep breath and squeezes the broken bone, then blinks through the tears of mixed panic and pain until his vision is clear. When he can see that Hass'atha'nuroc is far away, with his back turned to the ancient tunnel and his vision blocked by the pushing and shoving crowd, Thrawn hurries over to the entrance and bends down, furtively examining the bodies. They lay directly beneath a broken pipe, cold water spraying down on top of them, soaking their clothes, their hair. None of the adults have bothered to check on them. The older boy's eyes are open, his throat gaping and still bleeding, his skin still warm — but he is undeniably dead, and so is his mother.
Carefully, surreptitiously, Thrawn moves them away from the pipe, but he's too small to haul them completely out of the water. It's shameful to leave them; he doesn't have much choice. Before he goes, he scrabbles forward across the wet floor, shuts their eyes quickly but with gentle fingers, and tilts their faces to face north — when he glances up, he's just in time to see a group of his uncle's colleagues subduing Hass'atha'nuroc, taking him to the ground. One of them holds the vibroblade away from his body, his disgust evident from the curl of his lip.
The men are competent, but too focused on the task at hand. Thrawn's eyes track farther down the corridor, taking in more data than the others can see. He sees a woman he doesn't know by name stop in the middle of the stampede, her face blank and eerily calm; she turns to face her fellow Chiss head-on and removes a blaster from her robes.
The ground stabilized; the dim light of the cave system turned to static and grew brighter. Ezra blinked, taking a moment to get his bearings, and found himself somewhere horribly familiar: the command room of the Chimaera, staring at the blue lines of a holomap.
The room is silent, filled only by the click-whir of the projector. He leans close to Commodore Faro, both of them huddled around the holodeck, and points to a node in the map near Coruscant, marked red.
We've tracked them this far, he says.
The color drains from Faro's face. She purses her lips, eyes darting rapidly over the holomap. We don't know how long they've been here? she asks.
No.
But if they've made it that close to Coruscant… She doesn't need to finish the sentence. She's watching him now, looking at him the same way she does in the middle of a battle when he gives an order she doesn't fully understand — doubtful, perhaps a little anxious, but thoughtful and trusting. Waiting for him to tell her the plan, already lining up her own adjustments and suggestions to perfect it.
But can he trust her? He switches the holomap off, pulls away from the deck. He respects Faro; he knows she is a competent, fair leader, above average in applying both the scientific process and her tactical skills to any issue at hand, with a strong sense of honor and a streak of independence. But she is older and more experienced than Vanto — more similar to Ar'alani than to Car'das — and he cannot predict her reactions with perfect certainty; can he trust anyone if he doesn't know how they might act?
He retraces his steps back to his desk and takes a seat, folding his arms on the desktop with his shoulders hunched — a move both genuine and calculated, letting some of his exhaustion show. He can see from the way Faro's eyes flicker that she notices; that it catches her off-guard.
Good.
Tell me what you know about the Grysks, Thrawn says.
The borders shifted again; this time, Ezra felt as if he were shunted sideways, removed from the Chimaera and hurtled through space and time.
He's been waiting in the shuttleport for hours, sitting quietly and unobtrusively in the corner, unnoticed by the adults passing through. He wears the uniform of a senior school candidate, taken from a common pool of clothing used for students of all sizes — the cloth is thin from many years of rough use and rougher washings, the fit too big for his frame, perhaps meant for a boy one or two years older than he is — and he's being very careful not to tear the cuffed sleeves or smudge dirt from the station on his trouser legs.
The thick coat he wears over the uniform is the only thing keeping him warm as he waits, and even with that, he shivers. He sits with his feet up on the bench, his knees hugged close to his chest and his hands clasped loosely around them. He hasn't had anything to eat or drink today, too anxious to even think about it — and there is a certain sharpness which hunger and thirst lend to his mind, a sharpness which ensures he'll remember everything about today a little clearer. His stomach is a hard stone pit, shrunken and heavy all at once, and his eyes are glued to the shuttles coming in. When he sees the sleek design of a Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet, his breath catches in his throat; his fingers tighten around each other, numb and pale from the cold.
The hatch hisses open and Thrawn stumbles to his feet, watching each and every person who comes out. The officers and enlisted men who exit first are too tall, too old, and his eyes pass over them without a second thought, scarcely registering their features or ranks.
Then — wearing civilian clothes and taking up the rear — his older brother leaves the shuttle and steps foot back on Ascendancy ground. His eyes sweep the port, searching for familiar faces, but Thrawn is moving too fast for him; by the time Vuras catches sight of him, Thrawn is only a few steps away.
He smiles so widely it hurts his cheeks; Vuras smiles, too. He clasps his younger brother by the forearm, simultaneously embracing him and pulling him away from the open dock. His first few words of greeting are lost in the deafening noise of another arriving shuttle.
—the uniform of the Mitth family? Vuras asks. Or just a candidacy uniform?
Still smiling, feeling almost stupid with happiness, Thrawn says, They're considering me for adoption. They're considering you, too. Didn't you get the notice?
He can tell by the look in his eyes that Vuras has known for a while, that he only kept it a secret in case Thrawn had not been invited, too. He leads Thrawn farther from the dock, to the quieter, less-crowded tunnels behind the bay. They are still being reconstructed from the attack years ago.
I suppose I'll have to call you Thrass now, Thrawn says, eyeing Vuras contemplatively. Everyone's already calling me Thrawn. He can hear the shy mixture of embarrassment and pride in his own voice, and it just embarrasses him more. It's not his fault; he feels awkward around his brother, like meeting a stranger he's always admired, even though they've spoken hundreds of times over voice call since Vuras left. He feels jittery, eager to please.
You'll get used to it, Vuras assures him. And anyway, it's not until I muster out.
Thrawn takes a gamble. His words will either amuse Vuras — if Vuras hasn't changed — or anger him.
Which will be any day now, right? he says. Because your Sight is failing?
The look Vuras gives him is withering but not serious; Thrawn gracefully dodges a cuff to the head, hiding his smile, and when he retraces his steps to stand by his brother's side, Vuras does not try to hit him again. The sense of nervousness fades away; Vuras hasn't changed. By silent mutual agreement, they turn down the crumbling southeast tunnel, walking along the pedestrian paths in the direction of their childhood home. The neighborhood has been altered enormously since Vuras last visited; he takes it in without a word, his eyes glazed and far away, and Thrawn is tactful enough to stay quiet as they walk. Inside, he's burning with questions, desperate to know more about the life of an ozyly-esehembo, about the daily minutiae of life on a military ship — about missions Vuras has been on, secrets he hasn't been able to tell Thrawn over the holo.
But he holds it all in. He's had years to process the attack on their homeworld; Vuras has been away, is possibly comprehending the full extent of damage for the very first time.
Thrawn only hopes he won't ask about their mother. He hears Vuras inhale deeply and slows his pace in response, suddenly certain the dreaded question is about to come. He casts about for something else to say, a reasonable topic to distract Vuras from the attack, but Vuras beats him to it.
I have something for you, he says, coming to a stop. Thrawn turns to face him, stepping out of the way of an upper-class commoner bustling by. He watches, wide-eyed and somber, as Vuras bends his head and reaches up, deftly undoing the knot on a leather cord tied around his neck.
Carefully, he slips the necklace out from under his jacket, holding it out for Thrawn to see. It's simple and rustic, the pendant beaten from a piece of tarnished metal, perhaps durasteel, by inexperienced hands. Hands smaller than Vuras's are now, Thrawn notices; he guesses Vuras must have made it when he was no older than seven. There are no engravings, crude or otherwise, and no symbols carved into the surface — it's only a flat, somewhat uneven pendant on an unassuming leather string.
Tentatively, Thrawn holds out his hand and Vuras lowers the pendant into his palm. It's warm to the touch, warmer than it should be; so warm that the temperature against Thrawn's freezing hands throws him into a sort of shock and wracks his body with renewed shivers — and as he stares at it, it seems to give off a silver-blue flash of color, like a quick and subtle glow.
A sense of alien calm engulfs Thrawn — a sense of comfort. Dimly, so vaguely he can't be sure it's real, he thinks he can smell the spicy, herbal smoke from his father's pipe, thinks he can hear his mother's clipped, quick voice as she walks him through the steps to work the mining drill on his own — her hands guiding his hands, her skin cool and chapped. He screws up his face, ears perked, trying to make out the words — to confirm what he's hearing — but the sounds of the station flood in and drown his mother out.
When he looks back up at Vuras, searching for answers, his brother is watching him with a sad smile.
It's called an oth'ola endzali, he says. It's something we all do right after we leave home, when we're really little. You make a pendant out of scrap metal, or you can make it from wood if you want, and you imbue it with the Sight. It's like a beacon; it always leads home.
A beacon? Thrawn asks.
Like a wayfinder, Vuras says. Thrawn's nose wrinkles.
That's not very good for operational security….
Vuras barks out a short laugh, cutting it off just so he can roll his eyes. You're gonna be the most obnoxious officer in the galaxy when you grow up, he says. You sound like Ziara.
I do not, Thrawn protests. He ties the pendant around his neck, ducking his head so Vuras can tighten the knot for him, his own fingers still too cold and clumsy to do the trick. How do you imbue it with the Sight like that? he asks, touching the pendant gently, reverently. It rests a little below his clavicles, close to his heart.
It's complicated, Vuras says.
Complicated? Surely he doesn't mean that Thrawn won't understand the details; there must be military secrets involved. Thrawn stares at him, waiting for the explanation, censored though it might be. Eventually, Vuras laughs and gestures for them to continue home. When Thrawn starts walking again, still clutching the peculiar little pendant, Vuras says,
I forgot what it's like talking to you.
Thrawn frowns at that. What do you mean?
But Vuras just shakes his head, pointing to the pendant around Thrawn's neck.
I'll tell you how it's made. It's like there are little atoms and other particles inside the metal, he says. And if you concentrate really hard — you have to be young to do this, when the Sight is really strong — you can open up this sort of link between yourself and the atoms, and then you can channel anything you want into them. So you just open yourself up as much as you can, mentally, and you think of home and all the things you love about it, all the stuff you remember … and there it is.
And one of the things you love is Mother teaching me how to use the drill? says Thrawn, aghast.
Well, it connects to your memories, too, now that you're wearing it, says Vuras. So I guess you're the one who loves the drill. Maybe you'll be a miner instead of a soldier; Dad would like that.
Thrawn shoves him, but Vuras just laughs. They walk together in comfortable silence after that, the pendant suffusing Thrawn with a warm glow, a feeling of content that stems his usual propensity for talkativeness and non-stop questions; it greases the wheels inside his head in a pleasant way, slowing down the extraneous stimuli and observations he can never seem to turn off, allowing him to focus entirely on what seems most important right now, without other curiosities and concepts budging in. This is a new experience for him; he feels slower yet sharper all at once. His steps seem somehow lighter and swifter with the pendant around his neck — perhaps because, like Vuras said, it's a beacon leading him home, assisting him in ways he can't even comprehend.
They pass the section of repaired tunnels where the bodies were found. Thrawn's throat tightens; he glances at Vuras to see if he knows, sees the furrowed line of his brother's eyebrows, the clouded quality of his eyes. If he doesn't already know, he's quickly figuring it out. Perhaps he knows because of minute changes in Thrawn's posture or expression; perhaps the location was described by whichever military officer broke the news to him years ago.
Silently, unobtrusively, Thrawn slips his left hand into his brother's, feels large fingers closing around his own in a gesture that's been unfamiliar to him for years. It feels strange and awkward now, like he's outgrown this, like the time has passed. But he doesn't let go.
He keeps his other hand clenched tightly around the pendant as they walk by.
The time shifted; the location did not. He's smaller again, wearing the homespun clothes his elders helped him make at the beginning of the year. Blood has dried on his hands from where he tended to the bodies of Hass'atha'nuroc's daughter and grandchild, staining the gold trim on his sleeves; his sense of hearing has been affected by the explosions, leaving every sound around him distant and dull. All he can be sure of is the ache from his trampled, broken hand.
His adrenaline is fading, leaving him cold, making him feel younger than his six years. At this age, he tells himself, Vuras had already left to serve the Fleet. At this age, perhaps Vuras had already seen plenty of dead bodies, already killed someone himself. His concept of military service — and the duties of an ozyly-esehembo — are vague but suffused with natural respect, and he can imagine Vuras handling this gracefully and with all the maturity of an adult, and imagining that helps him achieve some sense of maturity himself.
He forces himself to approach the bodies. The Chiss who killed them are gone; some of them lay dead amongst their victims, slain by other adults even as they attempted to do more harm — but there are no other living beings in sight, not here, not anywhere in the neighborhood. It seems almost like all the surviving adults received some signal, some communication Thrawn missed, and they've all amassed somewhere else. In reality, he suspects they simply panicked, and that he did not, and that's why they are gone and he remains — but his brain stutters when he tries to comprehend this; all his life, he's been told adults don't panic, and children do. Up until now, the evidence he's seen has tended that way as well — outside his family, where Mother panics slightly when the drill isn't working and Father panics when work runs dry, but Thrawn never panics at all.
He steps over the corpses of men and women — children, classmates — he knows, always stooping to check for signs of breathing and a pulse, his shoes coming down in cold, stagnant water that soaks right through the soft leather and bites at his skin.
The bodies in the center of the tunnel are the worst. He busies himself far away from them, where the water is only a few centimeters deep, tending to the body of a girl he knew. With his uninjured hand, he tilts her head to the north and refuses to look at the other corpses, the truly terrible ones. He can hear his own breathing in his ears, harsh and shallow. Maybe he is panicking. Maybe he just doesn't know it yet.
It takes him hours to examine each body — that's what it feels like, and he can't convince himself it isn't true. His vision blurs, each dead Chiss melding with the next; he can't seem to force himself to absorb details the way he always does; some protective measure in his brain deflects it all automatically, against his will. The water grows deeper and darker until it's all just a whir of sticky blood, of his fingers pressed against the pulse point on a dead man's neck, of gaping wounds and dim, staring eyes.
By the time he examines each of the outlying bodies, he can no longer avoid looking at the decomposing corpses in the center. They're the closest to this level's heat source; they've been lying there for more than a day, boiling in water from broken pipes, disregarded by the few upper-level authorities who patrol through in the hunt for surviving enemies.
For the first time in what feels like days, Thrawn straightens his back, keeping his injured hand cradled to his chest. He walks through these corpses without stooping; he's no longer searching for signs of life. Not among these Chiss. He studies the blackened, bloated faces instead, the ruptured skin, the organs spilling out. Each step comes with a small splash, the water eating its way up his trouser legs until he's wet from the knee down. Soft films of sloughed skin float over the water's surface, sticking to his clothes as he pushes through.
He notes the small, dull blue beetles — carrion-eaters who crawl out from their crevices in the cave walls only when something has been killed nearby — as they pick their way slowly, leisurely, over the dead. There are deep pits and long, thin tunnels in each corpse's flesh where beetles have fed on them; there are broken, mashed jawlines on children who were beaten to death with hammers; there are bloated necks that blossom out like hideous mushrooms over the thin monofilament lines which strangled them.
His eyes rove over one of the strangulation victims; the face has bloated to the point of rupture, the woman's face blossoming outward and leaving no trace behind of her nose or eyes; he can make out the jagged, blood-stained edges of her teeth in the seeping, blackened hole that used to be her face. He follows the evidence to the source — the clothesline wrapped tightly around her neck — and sees the tips of clawed, discolored fingers frozen in place where the woman tried to fight her way free.
Something stops him here, glues his eyes to the anonymous, unrecognizable woman lying dead in the heat. He crouches beside her, feeling through the black water until he finds her soft, rotting hand. Some of the flesh comes away beneath his fingers, but he lifts it out of the water and clutches it, turning it to face the light.
It's then that he sees the golden trim embroidered on her sleeves and realizes he's looking at his mother.
He stumbles back with a splash, the strength suddenly disappearing from his legs, the breath going out of him. His heel strikes something and he tilts backward, unable to stop himself before he falls onto the putrefying corpse behind him. Water engulfs him, filling his nose and mouth with a burning sensation, foreign material catching against his tongue and teeth. His head strikes the hard ground underneath; his foot sinks deep in an open wound on the body beneath him, something thick and wet seeping into his shoe. Vision blurred, head swimming, he struggles free from the water and sits up, staring at the body, at his father's familiar white-streaked hair — now flecked with red.
When he regains his feet, he can't force his thoughts to make sense, can't stop his brain from skipping. Words, sensations, numbers, flavors and scents; it all blends together, it all refuses to coalesce, to tell him what to do. He feels carrion beetles crawling up his leg beneath his water-soaked robes, skittering over his hands from where he struck the floor, small legs picking through his wet hair. Numbly, he shakes them off of him; his teeth are clenched so tightly they feel glued together.
He doesn't run away. He walks, not stopping until he winds through the tunnels to their family home. His cousins and elders have not returned, and already it feels stale inside, abandoned.
With one hand, he barricades his parents' bedroom door. He crawls beneath the bed they shared without changing his clothes or washing the gore off his hands and face, his back against the stone wall, his eyes on the entrance. Deep in the night, he is still awake, mind churning, going back and forth over the attack, over his own actions and the actions of the Chiss who'd turned on their friends and neighbors. He clasps his hands over his knees, squeezing his broken finger at the joint periodically, keeping his head clear. Trying to figure out where he went wrong, what he could have done to fix it.
He's smart; he has better balance and sense of direction than anyone in his family; he's faster than the other boys his age and stronger than many of them too. But a child his size might as well be a different species entirely compared to a full-grown Chiss — and an inferior species, at that. His positive traits mean little against an adult, and they mean nothing at all against multiple adults, especially with weapons. But that doesn't mean a battle against enemies like the ones he saw today would be fruitless; there's always a way to work things to your advantage, always a way to win.
He needs allies, he decides, staring at the barricaded door. It's his only chance, maybe the only chance for everyone on Rentor. He needs people bigger and stronger and smarter than himself, and he needs to get bigger and stronger and smarter, too; they need allies with powers they don't have, fleets amassed from many worlds, millions of soldiers at beck and call. When they figure out what happened today, what caused the attack, what alien force caused good, upstanding Chiss to turn on each other … they will need allies. He will need them. He needs them now.
Those words become an ouroboros in his head, an echo that twists back in on itself in a never-ending cycle: He needs allies. He needs allies. He needs allies.
Days later, when the bodies are cleaned up and the perpetrators dealt with, when he's set and splinted his broken bone without the help of an adult, he will remember that he did not close his mother's eyes, did not tilt her head to the north so her spirit could find the sun.
