Welcome to Part II!
Killing Eo broke Ry Kyver. All but unable to wield the power of the Force, she does not dare return to face Vader, much less the Emperor.
What follows is the story of how, in seeking a way forward, Ry becomes Devin's unexpected and unwelcome ally, and why Varda does all she can to give Ry a chance at redemption, up to a point.
We'll also get a peek at what happens to Ava Kirrin and intersect with Ahsoka Tano and a few other canonical characters.
But first, many thanks to...
...Ross, whom I know from the farmers market. Thank you, Ross, for encouraging me to write, and especially for recommending Lisa Cron's Story Genius. Rest in peace, Ross. I miss you.
...ME Thomas, author of Confessions of a Sociopath, for writing back in answer to a few questions I had after reading her book to try to decide whether or not to portray Ry Kyver as clinically sociopathic. The answer seems to be no, but the reasons why were still interesting. I highly recommend Confessions of a Sociopath for a look into the life of a female sociopath by someone who is one.
...FanFiction author Sensey for suggesting and working together to create a crossover with Shaak and Maris: a Star Wars Story, which overlaps the time period of the chapters that lie ahead. I'll flag the crossover scenes and references by providing notes at the end of the chapters in which crossover material appears. Thanks also to Sensey for comments provided on earlier drafts of this and other upcoming chapters.
Sensey has incorporated a number of characters from this story in Shaak and Maris: a Star Wars Story, which is the lead-up to the popular Ahsoka and the Rebellion. Please check it out! Because I shared plans for yet-unpublished chapters with Sensey, one or two spoilers may result from reading it, but not ones that I imagine would detract from enjoying The Way of a Siluan.
Now, let us begin.
The Way of a Siluan, Part II
Chapter 25: The Hunter, the Hunted
14 BBY 0 months 13 days
It could not be. It should not be. But no matter how long Ry Kyver sat there in the pilot's seat of her compact passenger starship, arms folded across her chest, one black-booted leg up on the control panel, staring into the blue swirls of hyperspace, she could not change one simple fact: she had been stripped of her Force abilities, and that by a twig of a girl only a few years out of puberty.
Knowing that she had killed her was of no consolation. She had lost too much besides her Force-skill to be able to savour any sense of sweet revenge. The death of that blasted Siluan child should have been her triumph. It should have meant that she'd no longer have the Emperor's infernal prophesy hanging over her head, no more Vader haranguing her about its impending threat. It should have meant she would acquire the power to do all she had yet to achieve, to manipulate the midi-chlorians themselves and bend them to her will – and thereby prove that no one, no one, had the right to make her feel small. But instead...
A steady beep, beep, beep signalled the impending drop out of hyperspace. Slumped there in the leather pilot's seat, Ry screwed her knuckles into her eyes and realized they felt like they were full of gravel. How long had she been sitting there staring into the blue swirls of hyperspace anyways? A glance at the chronometer told her that it was a full nine hours since she'd left Iwaki.
Somehow the thought of the planet where she had killed that unnamed girl made her feel sick, not bad or guilty but just plain physically sick to her stomach. What's with that? she wondered, and then her stomach growled. She scrolled back through her memories of the last few days – the trip to Iwaki, and before that her visit to the planet Yalith, and before that the mind-numbingly late night in the lab, and before that Vader's unwelcome visit – and then realized that she hadn't eaten in almost forty-eight hours.
The beeping from the control panel grew more rapid and incessant. Ry shoved her hunger aside, took her leg off the control panel, sat up straight and yanked a big black control lever towards her, pulling her sleek little commuter ship out of hyperspace.
The blue-green disc of Takodana filled the forward viewport. Not because of, but in spite of what Ava Kirrin had said, she had chosen this as her destination. The sight of the planet stirred a wild hope in her, and even though she hardened her heart like a cage around it, hope would not be restrained: maybe, just maybe, in this place, she could recover what she had lost.
How that skinny Siluan girl could possibly have had the power to cause her such a loss in the first place was damningly inexplicable to Ry, but the effect was one she had read about in the Sith holocron that sat in her desk drawer back in her office on Ukio: according to the ancient wisdom of both Sith and Jedi, when opposing energies were brought together, there was the potential for a sort of cancellation to take place. As much as Ry couldn't stand to think that the girl she had killed was any match for her power, at least the explanation offered some course of action for a cure.
She had no intention of taking Ava Kirrin's advice to seek out Ava Gerges, not unless she could get her Force-skills back and so have no fear to return to the Emperor. Then it would be worth her while to have another kill to report. But Ava Kirrin's mention of Takodana reminded her of a place she had been years ago as a young woman, when she was still a young Jedi in the Agri-Corps, back when she had first learned to fly a starship well enough to make a trip on her own.
Back then, on her way from one Force-forsaken AgriCorps outpost to another, she had passed by Takodana. As she came in for a landing to stop for food at the cantina, a sunken patch in the forest called her attention, and the thought of it haunted her even while she ate her meal. She went there later and found something she had only read about but never seen before: deep beneath the trees, a swamp in which the plants were not green. They stretched tall stalks the colour of dried blood up from murky waters. Their pale, fleshy spathe-like flowers shed a heady and intoxicating scent, sweet without being at all floral.
What they were called by either locals or scientists she did not know at the time, but a little research later told her that these were the Umbraphytes, a type of myco-heterotroph, one of evolution's weirder offshoots of the plant kingdom. They needed no green to catch the filtered sunlight. Beneath the mucky soil their roots consorted with something of fungus-kind to suck life from dead and decaying things around them. And hence their scent, which mimicked the pheromones of some wild beast and drew them to be mired there. She could remember seeing the wet and slimy form of some deer-like creature floating in the dark water.
The memory did nothing to help that awful nausea that kept on dogging her; Ry swallowed hard and did her best to focus on the surface of the planet whizzing into focus below her: the leafy forests, shining lakes, and eventually the spires of an old grey castle that served now as the cantina. Some hundred kilometres beyond the cantina was that swamp. She would go there, she had decided, in hopes that what had been before would be again.
Almost twenty years earlier, when she was barely sixteen and newly come to the decision that she would take control of her own life, that she would use Light and Dark based only on the dictates of her own will, Ry had stood there on the edge of that strange swamp, breathing the heady scent of those blood-red and death-pale flowers and drinking up the dark power that pooled there.
It was in that dark nexus of the Force that she felt her way into corners of the Force that she had only ever dreamed of accessing. The skill of transmutation, which many even of the Jedi Knights failed to achieve, began to open up to her in that damp and humid place. With living things, she realized, transmutation was simply a variation of telekinesis. Only it was not about lifting rocks, but rather about shifting things too tiny to see: moving the proteins that act as transcription factors so that a gene in a bacterial cell would turn on or off; or transferring tiny groups of carbon and hydrogen atoms to change the methylation state of a stretch of DNA, and so un-writing or re-writing notes that plant cells had made about their environment.
This skill was not wholly unknown among the Jedi, but the few who possessed it tended to think this sort of intervention was against the will of the Force and used it sparingly. But for Ry Kyver, being able to bend a plant's very DNA to her will was a key she used to open door after door after door. It gave her an out from the drudgery of the Agri-Corps and an in with advanced laboratories in the Republic Agricultural Administration, and at last, it even opened the way for her to prove herself to the man who became Emperor.
Flying low over the trees now, Ry pushed the thought of the Emperor aside. If she didn't get her Force-skills back, there was no way she could stand the shame of facing him. She could only hope that the concentration of dark power there in the fetid swamp would allow her to tap back into the skills she had lost.
The ship's communication log, shown in blocky green letters on a little black screen to her left, showed several missed calls: mostly from Nathan, but three of them were from Vader. She had decided to return none of them. But just as she came to land her starship on a rocky outcropping near the dark-swamp, a simple text message flashed onto the screen: The Emperor requires your presence within seventy-two hours. It was from Vader.
Seventy-two hours. That was a deadline Ry didn't want to even begin to think about. Rattled, she overshot the swamp and had to make a sharp turn back to come in for her desired landing.
On top of a steep rocky outcrop beside the swamp, the starship touched down a bit more roughly than Ry intended. Even without Vader's message, that sense of dissonance, that nausea, that feeling of being in a fog that had haunted her ever since she killed that little Siluan made it difficult to do anything with normal precision. But she debarked and took a deep breath of fresh air. Then, climbing down the rock backwards with both hands for support, she steadied herself and came out under the shade of the trees with the strange tall un-green plants shedding their pollen in lazy clouds and casting their heady scent around her.
She breathed deep. Her head swam. She felt the energy of the place beat down on her. It felt almost like when she stood beside the supercomputer at IMAg, that whole-body sense of a being in a strong electromagnetic force-field, that radiation that people said wasn't perceptible to humans but she had to grudgingly admit she could feel.
Ry sat down on a damp fallen log and tried to start meditating. Her stomach growled. It would take less than half an hour to get over to the cantina, but for this to work, fasting would be her best bet, so there was no point eating anything now. It chaffed her, the thought that she couldn't just take what she wanted and get it, but she knew all too well that whether lightsider or darksider, all Force-users were bound by one thing: in the Force, there was always some form of balance. To acquire power, something else must be let go. Fasting was a way to be emptied in order to be filled.
And so Ry Kyver hardened her will against her hunger. She closed her eyes, tried to connect. Flies buzzed around her head. She hated them but hate too would help her.
Focus. She began to recite an old mantra, one she had learned from a book the Emperor lent her back before he was Emperor and they used to just talk sometimes:
The Force is mine and I will claim it and wield it as I will;
The Force is mine and I will take it and make of it what I will.
So ran one of many mantras of the Sith. The Force is mine, she began again...
It was warmer in the swamp than she had remembered. The air was thick and heavy with the smell of death-flowers and swamp methane. Another wave of nausea hit her hard enough that her eyes flew open as she pitched forward and threw up.
Ry pushed herself up from the log and found a different place to sit, but the stink followed her. Seventy-two hours to respond to the Imperial summons, Vader had said. How long would this take? she wondered. And if this doesn't work, then what?
14 BBY 0 months 10 days
"The three days have passed according to your prophecy." Vader paused to observe his master, who sat glowering into the darkness around him. But Vader stood dispassionate now, at ease with the cycle of each breath that rasped against the air around him. "She has not obeyed your summons," he added.
The Emperor's only answer was the clenching and unclenching of his bony fingers on the end of the armrest of his high throne.
Vader could not read his master's thoughts, not unless the Emperor allowed him, but he knew his master well enough to guess his fears. "It would seem," he said pointedly, "that she has indeed acquired the power you prophesied and turned it to her own ends."
The Emperor glared at Vader, yellow eyes smouldering under his dark hood. He did not need his own underling pointing out what he already imagined to be true.
"And have you done nothing to seek her?" he snapped, but Vader let a full two cycles of breath pass before he answered.
"I have inquired of the Ministry of Agriculture and there has been no report of her. The Imperial Security Bureau has likewise found nothing."
"And the Inquisitors?"
"I have requested that they focus solely on this search, but they have found nothing."
The Emperor made no answer, but glared down at the floor so hard that the sleek black surface smouldered and turned matt.
Vader decided to press his advantage. "The longer she remains at large, the greater her new powers may grow."
"Do you mean to tell me you have failed?" The Emperor shot Vader a dangerous look, laced with all the Force-feel of what happened to apprentices who fail.
"No, my lord," Vader said evenly. "I seek only your permission."
"For what?" the Emperor spat back.
"That I may enlist the aid of the bounty hunters."
The Emperor's face twitched with disgust. Vader knew what he was thinking: the ignominy of it! To resort to mere bounty hunters to bring back one of his own.
"With their help," Vader said, "you may yet get what you want from her."
The Emperor clenched his teeth. Would he get what he wanted from her? Would she, in fact, now yield up to him the secret Darth Plageous once learned, the way to control the midi-chlorians themselves? He could not doubt that she has acquired some new power. How else could she hide her presence from within the fabric of the Force? She was no match for him before, but if his prophecy was true, and he did not doubt it was true, she could make herself a force to be reckoned with. All who have power are afraid to lose it. His own words came back to mock him.
Power was not something he was willing to lose. "You may do so," he said, "but I am watching you, Vader. If you should fail in this task..."
Behind his mask, Vader smiled. "I will not fail," he said.
Now that Vader had what he wanted, he wished no further conversation with his master. He bowed and went out with his black cape swirling behind him, leaving the Emperor to gnaw at his thoughts.
With aching arms and shaky legs Ry Kyver approached the old cantina on Takodana. It was about five days since she had last eaten.
Even as the deadline for Vader's ultimatum came and went, she had sat by the dark-swamp, her head light with hunger and with the heady aroma of those fleshy death-eating flowers. But though she stayed in that damp place long after she grew to hate it, no renewed power came to her, only a sober clarity: her life as she had known it was over. She had lost her power and defied an Imperial summons. For that, she couldn't possibly just return to her post at IMAg.
Anger would come later. For now, she felt only hunger, determination, and a vague relief that the fog that seemed to wrap itself around her also shielded her from the dark self-loathing despair she had know that nightmare night in the lab. Her nausea was gone now, too, for the time being at least.
Ry walked up through the castle courtyard with its coloured banners hanging all around and a statue standing high over the door to the cantina: it depicted a diminutive woman, round-headed, arms raised to the grey sky. Ry glanced up at it but didn't look at it for long. As the door opened for her, the smell of beer and fried food wafted out and made her mouth water.
Inside, she breezed past the inviting fire pit (too many Zyrgygians emoting at each other with their long feathery antennae) and wove her way between tables of Rodians and Ithorians drinking something pink and Harmanians playing go-go ball at the game table and found her way to the bar.
"What'll you have?" the barista asked, a Mirialian with big hair and lots of jangly bangles.
Ry scanned the chalk-written menu. Her favourite burger was on the list, but hard experience had taught her to be careful what she ate coming off a fast.
"I'll have the chicken soup," she said.
The barista raised an eyebrow. "Nothing to drink?"
Ry wavered. Beer would feel good, but alcohol on an empty stomach would be a bad decision; she wanted to fly out of there again pronto. "Just the soup," she said.
The barista made a face, but bustled around getting a bowl and ladling soup out of a gleaming steel tureen, and then slid a steaming bowl of broth and dumplings over the counter to Ry. There was more green veg in it than Ry would have liked, but she took the hot bowl and found a seat as far as possible from the other patrons, then picked up the spoon and started to eat around the green stuff. The first sip of broth was sheer bliss.
Until she'd finished the last drop of soup, all but those unknown greens, Ry knew only a ravenous desire to eat. When she was finished, it took a while for her mind to clear, but when it did, buoyed by the flood of calories and protein that was finally hitting her brain, her plan for the future began to feel more solid.
From Takodana, she could go anywhere really, but her first priority would be to get somewhere where she could hack into the Imperial computer system and download her experimental data onto a disc. In her files there were yet un-released research findings that she could sell to any number of agri-business corporations that hadn't yet been amalgamated into Imperial AgSystems. But more importantly, there was the entire experimental protocol and records of her midi-chlorian project, her attempt to create cell lines with enhanced midi-chlorian counts, which might in turn be used to enhance a sentient's Force sensitivity.
She kicked herself for not making sure she had all that in her ship's computer, but there was no point wishing now. She'd just have to wipe from the Imperial computer system all the parts of the midi-chlorian project data that she hadn't told Vader about yet and keep it all for herself in hopes that she might yet be able to find some breakthrough on it. At least then she wouldn't be leaving empty-handed. Even if she was badly weakened, she knew that some spark of the Force remained in her. She would have to do it the slow way, but she vowed that she would work to revive her power again. If any breakthrough whatsoever could be found with the midi-chlorian project, it would help her immeasurably.
Ry cautiously watched the other cantina patrons laugh and talk and play cards and decided that she would have to keep a low profile in this new endeavour. She would get new contact lenses, she decided. Not dark brown but blue this time, and a different shade of skin paint. She debated what to do about her hair. She liked her hair too much to eith dye it or straighten it, but she also liked herself too much to let her hair give her away. As for where to go, Ukio was a bit too risky but she decided that she'd go apply for work with Imperial AgSystems on Marfa, even if it was just as a lab tech. Then she'd have plenty of chances to hack her old data, and knowing Vader, he wouldn't bother looking for her in a place like that. He hated all things rural, and it was so close to her old work that he wouldn't think she'd dare.
Now that she had a full belly, Ry felt so good that she could start to feel angry again, start to remember to hate that infernal fog around her, unseen yet making everything seem far away. Normally she could use the Force to read the people around her and use that to her advantage. Feeling suddenly cut off from all that information only made her feel more angry.
As Ry glared out at all those unreadable Ithorians and Zyrgygians and humans, a person came and took a seat nearby, not at the empty table next to Ry but the next one over. She sat down with a fat hamburger, the same one that Ry had been eyeing on the menu. Skinny Jim, it was called: a thick bun with three different kinds of meat and two different kinds of cheese with purple tomatoes and red lettuce and green pickles and lots of sauce. Ry felt her mouth water just looking at it. She watched the hamburger eater lift the burger to her wide-open mouth. Juice dribbled down the eater's muscled forearms as she sank her teeth in for a greedy bite. She leaned forward so that nothing would drip on her red tank top and closed her little pink eyes as she savoured her burger with a look of sheer bliss on her pinky-white face.
Ry watched with narrowed eyes in envy and scorn as the hamburger eater continued to eat, muscles flexing in her strong square jaw as she ate, taking big bites and chewing mouth half-open. Ry eyed the horns on the eater's head and concluded she was a Zabrak.
Ry noticed before the hamburger eater did that another person approached her table: another woman, also a Zabrak, pale-faced with spiky black hair and pointy black horns and sharp black eyes and all dressed in black leather, covered in silver studs and spikes, with a skull and blaster painted in white across her broad back. This punk Zabrak stood feet hip-width apart, hands crammed into her back pockets, and waited for the hamburger eater to jump when she realized she was being watched.
"Oh! Hey Trina! What's up?" the burger eater said, mouth half full. She gestured with one free hand for her friend to pull up a chair.
The punk Zabrak grinned and took a seat. "Thought I'd find you stuffing your face," she said.
"A girl's got to eat!" the eater said, and grinned with bits of burger showing between her sharp teeth. She swallowed and took a swig of beer.
"So you want in on a new job with me?" the punk asked.
"You still working for the Imps?"
"They make it worth my while."
"How much this time?"
"Ten...hundred...thousand credits." The punk enunciated each word distinctly, for emphasis.
The hamburger eater's little pink eyes lit up. "Nice!" she said, mouth half full. "Well, if we can catch him."
"Her," the punk corrected.
"Ooo! So girl on girl this time, eh? Should be fun. What's she about?"
"Name's Ry Kyver." Ry almost choked.
"Never heard of her. You got more info?"
The punk slid a datapad over to her friend, who wiped her hands on a napkin and then started pulling up holo-images. The first was of a fairly unremarkable human woman. Dark wavy hair framed a face with high cheekbones and wide dark eyes and a healthy glow to her dark complexion. It was an old image, the one the Imperial Security Bureau had put on file five years earlier when Ry was vetted for her position as Minister of Agriculture.
Ry looked furtively around her. The seat she had chosen was on the far edge of the room and the two Zabraks were between her and the door. She shifted uneasily in her seat and looked down at her empty bowl. She would leave, she decided as soon as she was sure she wouldn't draw attention to herself by getting up.
The hamburger eater flipped to the next holo-image. This one was an artist's rendition, but the sketch was all too accurate. It depicted Ry wearing the same black jeans and black denim jacket as in the last picture, the same shape to her face and eyes, but all semblance of her natural complexion was replaced by a pale and sallow grey. Yellow eyes gleamed out of that gaunt face.
The hamburger eater hissed and made a face. "Yikes, one of those, is she?"
"That's why the job's worth ten hundred thousand."
"Yeah, but those guys give me the creeps. And if she's that good at changing her appearance we're hooped."
"Nah-ah," the punk said and her eyes gleamed. "You can't change a retina scan. I've got all her biometrics in that file there. She won't get past my droid."
The hamburger eater scowled. "Your droid scares me," she said, and pulled up the next holo-image: a starship, sleek black, with IMAg logo emblazoned in yellow on the side, the Imperial crest circled by a shaft of wheat. Some digits below gave the ship's details.
"Hey!" the hamburger eater said and pointed at the picture excitedly, "I saw that ship!"
"Where?"
"Here, in the dock."
"You're kidding me."
"No bull, I'm sure I saw it. Same logo, same numbers. See, the last six digits of the registration code? 329545. I remember noticing it 'cause if you take the three and raise it to the power if two you get nine, then if you multiply nine by five you get forty-five, see?
The punk gaped for a moment, then let out a whoop and clapped her friend on the shoulder.
"That's why I like working with you, Pinky," the punk said. "You go check that out. I'll get your bill, scout here and meet you outside, K?"
The hamburger eater gulped the last of her hamburger, washed it down with a swig of beer, and went out. The punk scanned the cantina crowd, then got up and started to stroll casually around the room.
Ry sat, eyes carefully downcast, waiting until the punk's back was turned, then she tucked a twenty-credit chip beside her soup bowl, took her black denim jacket from the back of her chair and quietly slipped off to the washroom, which was directly behind her. Even in that old castle, the washroom cubicles were the same dura-plast grey as anywhere else. Ry locked herself in one of them and forced herself to breathe, breathe, breathe.
There was no way out. With that hamburger eater Pinky out at her starship she couldn't leave, and even if she could every bounty hunter in the Galaxy would be after her. And, she knew all too well, Vader. And the Inquisitors. They were no match for her before, but now...
It was then that something quiet asserted itself within her. Go to Ava Gerges, it said. You'll be safe there.
There is no way on the face of this blasted planet that I'm doing that, Ry silently shot back, but the quiet voice stood its ground, wordlessly representing to her the one thing she would not escape even if she evaded capture: that damned haunting question of how that damned Siluan child could possibly have taken her power from her. Maybe, the quiet voice said without saying, Ava Gerges can help you understand.
Ry almost laughed out loud. There's no way in the galaxy I'm telling him what happened. There's no way in the galaxy I'm telling him half of what happened.
Another voice took the opportunity to speak then, one more like Ry Kyver's normal self: The weakness of Siluans is their compassion.
The gears of Ry Kyver's mind started turning.
You don't have to tell him everything, that third voice said. You don't even have to tell him half of everything. All you need is a sob story.
There in the little grey washroom cubicle with the sound of someone flushing the toilet in the stall next to her, Ry smiled. She had a sob story. The best part was, it was perfectly true: she was a Jedi survivor, and the Lord of the Sith himself was hunting her. Ava Gerges would have no choice but to help her to hide. It would be his duty. And while she hid, maybe she could begin to understand even without having to ask him.
With that Ry felt she could breathe naturally again, and a bit of tension began to melt away. But she still had to go back out into the cantina.
Without having to make a decision, her hands found the knife in her jacket pocket. One handful at a time, she hacked off her long wavy hair, dark brown with streaks of early grey, and balled it up in her pocket. She had always been proud of her hair, but it looked gross now as it came off in thin handfuls; she tried to work quickly so she wouldn't have to look at it or think about it for long.
When she was finished, she pulled out two wads of dark hair from the bulging pockets of her jeans. With disgust she rolled them in toilet paper and hid them in the garbage can. Then she took her black denim jacket off the hook on the back of the toilet stall door and pulled it on. Before heading out into the cantina again, Ry did a quick check in the mirror. Her hack-job looked like just that, but at least she didn't look much like herself. Then she realized: her jacket would have to go. It was her signature item, the first thing she'd bought with her first paycheque back when she got her first paying job, but the bounty hunters would know it from those pictures they had of her.
Ry slipped back into the toilet stall and went through the pockets of her jacket: her knife went into the back pocket of her jeans, her blaster went to her beltloop, her keycard and ID card likewise went into her back pocket. Then there was her light-sabre...she held it for a moment, looking at the smooth, matt-finish of the bronze-coloured handle. She couldn't exactly walk around with it hooked to her belt, but it wouldn't fit down her boots either.
With a few deft twists Ry dismantled the light-sabre hilt. It meant nothing to her, just one of many attempts to craft a better handle. What mattered was the kyber crystal. She'd found it herself, all on her own, and she wasn't about to let it go now.
She popped it out into one hand and watched it gleam red. She couldn't hear it sing the way she used to, but it still had a sort of vibration to it that she could sense well enough. She crammed it into her front pocked. The bits of the hilt went in the garbage.
There was no turning back. Ry straightened her red shirt and squared her shoulders and went back out into the cantina. She couldn't see the punk Zabrak who was called Trina, and the other she assumed must be outside. She turned to a short, skinny Twilek boy who was wiping tables nearby.
"Where's the owner?" Ry asked, "I need to talk to her."
"Hey Maz!" the Twilek yelled over his shoulder in a twangy and decidedly non-Twilek accent, "Lady here wants to talk to ya!"
From somewhere in the crowd a little figure appeared, like a living version of the statue high above the castle entrance. If her face had been pointier, Ry would have sworn she was a big hairless rat.
"You need something?" the little woman called Maz asked.
"I need to talk to someone from the Gunma family. A friend told me to ask you for them," Ry said, smoothly bridging truth and lie.
What followed was something Ry entirely did not expect. Maz looked up at Ry and twisted the rims of her thick-lensed goggles so that her eyes became impossibly huge. Ry got a weird feeling in her stomach, like Maz was trying to look right inside her. She took a step back and looked away.
"You," Maz said, and Ry glanced back to see Maz wag a diminutive finger at her, "need to be careful."
Ry gaped, but before she could say anything Maz was motioning for her to follow. They threaded their way along the edge of the cantina towards the main entrance. Ry glanced back over her shoulder and saw Trina head to the washroom. I have to get out before she gets back, Ry told herself, almost a vow.
"Wakeh!" Maz called out to a tall woman who was about to head out the door. "Someone wants to see you."
Wakeh turned around, and Ry bristled. She was never sure afterwards what she had expected Wakeh Gunma to look like. She certainly was not prepared for the woman who towered there in Mandalorian armour, blue with gold and pearl details, with a gleaming helmet carried under one arm. Her hair, braided tight against her dark scalp, was interwoven with threads of blue and red and gold. Her dark face was serious, but glowed with a health that Ry had not known for years. She stood a whole head taller than Ry, and looked down on her with one hand on the hilt of her blaster.
Ry hated people like that, people who weren't intimidated by her.
Wakeh cocked her head and looked at Ry as if she half recognized her and didn't like what she saw. When she spoke, her voice was a smooth and deep alto. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
Ry quickly pulled herself together. "Maybe," she bluffed brazenly. "My name is Sen, Sen Kaydo." She lowered her voice. "Please, I need to go see Ava Gerges."
Wakeh narrowed her eyes at Ry and looked her up and down. There was something familiar about this gaunt woman in the black denim jacket that she couldn't place and didn't trust. She wondered if she might be a drug addict; it wouldn't be the first time she'd ferried addicts to Ava Gerges for help. As a full-time smuggler and part-time bounty hunter, doing this was part of the truce she made with her conscience. But something told her that this person in the red shirt and black jeans didn't add up.
"Why d'you want to see him?" Wakeh asked.
"It's...kind of personal," Ry said, "but it would mean a lot to me." She glanced back toward the washroom. She didn't see Trina out yet, but time was running short.
Wakeh arched an eyebrow at her. "OK," she said, and put the hand of one muscular arm on her hip. "How are you going to pay for the trip."
Ry froze. She'd given the barista the twenty-credit chip she'd had earlier and left the rest of the her credit tiles locked in the safe on her ship. Her ship that she'd rather not be associated with right now. "I...I don't have much right now," she said slowly, trying to buy time while she felt in the back pocket of her jeans. She felt something oblong that fit smoothly into her searching hand. She let the weight of it rest in her fingers for a moment.
"I'll trade you this knife," she said, holding up the sleek blue handle into which the blade was folded. It gleamed in the light of the fire-pit nearby.
Wakah took it from her, examined it, opened the blade. It shone fine pale dura-steel, flawless, with tiny letters engraved on one side. She didn't stop to read them. She closed the blade and put the knife in her pocket.
Ry almost reached out to grab it back again. She had history with that knife. Not only that nightmare night in the lab, but before that. Nathan had given her that blade as a parting gift back when they first worked together, back when she was still in the Agri-Corps and scored her first chance to be cross-posted with a non-Jedi lab, with the Republic Agricultural Administration. She could remember the look on his face when he gave it to her. He wasn't just saying goodbye. He was saying Please, I want you... She had laughed in his face, but she still took the gift of the knife.
A knife like that, with a blue pearl handle and dura-steel that fine, was worth at least two hundred credits on the used market. Wakeh figured it wouldn't cover the cost of the trip, but at least she'd have something to stack against the cost of her trouble if this Sen tried to pull anything stupid.
"And your blaster, too," she said.
Ry handed over her gun without a word but Wakeh still didn't look convinced.
Ry sized Wakeh up. With armour like that, Wakeh was obviously a Mandalorian, but that didn't make her a bounty hunter. Ry didn't think that a Siluan elder would consort with bounty hunters. She decided to take a risk.
"Please," Ry said and hoped she could stop using that word real soon, "I need your help. I need to get out of here. And I need to get to Ava Gerges. I have bounty hunters after me."
Wakeh looked beyond Ry into the cantina and motioned with her chin. "You mean her?" Ry turned and saw Trina scanning the crowd with casual deliberation.
"Yes," Ry said. "If my guy hadn't..." she let her voice trail off. She figured someone like Wakeh would go for that bit.
But Wakeh wasn't listening. She was watching Trina. She hated Trina. Trina had double-crossed her, twice. Trina was why she was in the mess she was in now. To pull a bounty out from under Trina was worth taking a risk. And if this Sen Kaydo really was trouble, she could always look up who had the bounty out for her and try collecting on it herself. Going by Ava Gerges' place was only a couple hours out of her way anyways.
Wakeh turned to Ry. "You got yourself a ride," she said and motioned for Ry to follow her out the door.
They wasted no time walking through the maze of ships in the dock outside, and came to a silver Corellian cruiser. Scoring along the hull and peeling trim showed the ship's age. It was Ry's turn to raise an eyebrow, but she followed Wakeh up the gangway without saying anything.
Inside the ship was considerably better kept than the outside. Ry tried to follow Wakeh into the cockpit, but with her sheer size Wakeh blocked the way.
"You," she said with a big finger pointing at Ry, "Sit in the hold. I fly the ship."
Ry held up her hands in exaggerated surrender. "No prob," she said, and took a step back. "But hey, what planet are we heading for?" Ry asked, now that they were out of earshot of the other customers in the cantina. She tried to sound casual but in her own ears her voice had too much of an edge to it.
Wakeh narrowed her eyes at Ry. Something about this Sen Kaydo still wasn't adding up for her. "How do you know about Ava Gerges anyways?" she asked.
"The Siluan elder on Iwaki told me."
"Ava Kirrin?" Wakeh asked, raising an eyebrow.
In her head Ry did a quick risk assessment. She didn't think Wakeh was trying to trick her.
"Yes," she said.
"And he didn't tell you?"
Ry tried not to cringe. "It's complicated," she said.
Wakeh rolled her eyes. "Look, go strap yourself in. I'll tell you where we are when we get there."