Forty
Kaas City, Dromund Kaas
17 ATC
As he found himself at the mouth of a dark alley in one of Kaas City's shadier areas, Darth Ravage took a moment to pause and question his sanity. Was he really going to go through with this? Would he chase Nox's past to the ends of the galaxy itself if necessary?
It appeared he would.
You're obsessed, whispered the small voice of reason in the back of his head. He ignored it. This was necessary. Nox was planning something, he was certain of it. And if he understood who she was and where she had come from, then he might have some insight into the nature of that plan.
With this rationale firmly in mind, he took a quick look around to make sure he wasn't being watched or followed, then strode purposefully into the alley. He'd worn a hooded cloak to maintain a degree of anonymity—it was not exactly commonplace to see a Dark Council member traipsing about the city in the middle of the night—and he made sure that the hood was concealing his face.
There was someone waiting at the end of the alley. He could sense them.
Their presence lacked the telltale luster of a Force-sensitive, but Ravage remained wary. The possibility that this entire business was a trap had been present in the back of his mind from the moment Elaedrin had told him about the meeting. She seemed loyal, but she'd shown her capacity for betrayal when she abandoned the Jedi. She could just as easily turn on him.
He reached the end of the alley and stopped, discreetly putting a hand on his lightsaber. The presence he had been sensing belonged to a figure shrouded from head to toe in a dark cloak, scarcely visible in the gloom; the alley was a slot between two tall buildings that ended against a third, and the city lights did not illuminate far into it.
Ravage looked at the figure. The figure shifted, presumably looking at him.
And then its presence in the Force changed, blossoming like a datura flower in the moonlight, the dim light of a Forceblind giving way to a terribly familiar well of stygian power.
"I admit," Darth Nox said, drawing back her hood, "I was not expecting you."
Ravage had his lightsaber ignited and pointed at her in an instant. He unclasped his cloak and let it drop to the ground; it would only get in the way. "You set this up."
She smiled, the light of his blade illuminating her face in scarlet. "Of course I did. You had that charming fallen Jedi of yours wandering around Alderaan asking all manner of questions. Did you really think I wouldn't notice? I was going to send her back to you in pieces to make a point, but I suppose now I'll have to improvise."
"You hid yourself in the Force. That shouldn't be possible."
"Oh, that little trick? Simple, really." Nox eyed his saber blade, but showed no sign of concern. "After my ancestor, Lord Kallig, was murdered by Tulak Hord's assassins, his family went into hiding. They learned to conceal themselves from the Sith, passing the secret down through the ages."
"A secret you just revealed very easily," Ravage pointed out.
"It's not as if I told you how to do it." She raised an eyebrow. "Now, what am I going to do with you?"
He'd been waiting for that tone of smug certainty. After five years, he was ready for the way it needled at his temper, but Nox, unlike other irritations, had grown no less infuriating with time.
Unfortunately, she knew this.
"I don't know," Ravage said, keeping his tone light. How many times had they had this exchange? "Perhaps we'll see if you can manage to summon any lightning before I cut you down."
Kill her, urged the rational part of his mind. Kill her and be done with it.
"Ravage, my dear," Nox sighed. "How long will you insist on pretending that you want me dead?"
"As long as it's true," Ravage snapped, tightening his grip on his lightsaber.
One step forward. That was all he needed to drive his blade through her wretched heart.
She laughed. "How much time and resources have you spent trying to figure out my origins? You won't waste that."
Just one step…
"I could," Ravage whispered. "It might be worth it."
"You could," Nox agreed. "But you won't."
She met his gaze with glacial calm. He tried to stare her down, and she just looked at him, her gray eyes filled with unrelenting certainty.
Ravage deactivated his lightsaber, and Nox's face became a pale hint in the shadows.
"There," she said softly. "Much better."
Ravage silently replaced his lightsaber on his belt. Rage thundered in his head and made his hand quiver. She was in control. Somehow, she was always in control.
"Now then, I think we should talk about all this sleuthing you've had your people doing." Nox shook her head. "Why are you so interested in my past? It's hardly worth all the effort you've put in."
"If that's the case, why go to such lengths to hide it?"
"Oh please, I have nothing to hide."
"Enough of your damn games!" Ravage glared at her, though he knew she wouldn't see the expression in the darkness.
"But I like my games," she protested with mock innocence. "They amuse me ever so much. Almost as much as you do, in fact. So tell me, O fearsome Lord of the Sith, what have your agents found? What do you think you know?"
Ravage heavily considered not answering. But if Nox knew why Elaedrin had been on Alderaan, then she probably also knew what she had found there. Lying now would gain him nothing.
And so he told the truth as he saw it. "Twelve years ago, an Alderaanian woman named Katilya Mavess was hired by the Empire to assassinate Countess Leraine Organa."
"Not my finest work," Nox said blandly, "but I was on a tight schedule."
Of all the responses he had anticipated, that had not been one of them. "You admit it."
Her shadowed form shifted in what might have been a shrug. "You're hardly the first person to figure it out. As I said, not my finest work."
"Then you are Katilya Mavess."
"Katilya Mavess wasn't a real person." Nox sounded amused. "Really, Ravage, I gave you the truth at the beginning of this conversation, and you didn't even notice."
Ravage froze. What?
He quickly went over the past few minutes. His arrival in the alley, Nox's unexpected appearance, her explanation of her uncanny ability to hide herself—
Kallig's family went into hiding. They learned to conceal themselves from the Sith.
During his investigation, he had not forgotten Kallig. The few records that mentioned the ancient Sith Lord at all said that his family had vanished, Tulak Hord having ordered their destruction. Ravage had assumed that they had fled the Empire altogether. He should have remembered that where Nox was involved, assumptions were generally wrong.
"You're Imperial," Ravage stated. "Not born into slavery. A citizen."
Nox chuckled. "All these years of digging and searching and deducing, and I still had to point it out to you. I'm a little disappointed."
The full implications of this revelation boiled in Ravage's mind. He didn't even care that she had just insulted him. He was far too busy connecting the new pieces of the puzzle that was Nox, and taking in the picture that they formed.
That picture made him angry. It was a quiet, futile anger directed at things he could not change, but he let it bleed into his voice anyway. "Who was responsible for this?"
"Responsible for what?"
"All Force-sensitives are to be trained as Sith. That is Imperial law." Ravage found his hand had gone instinctively to his lightsaber. What was he going to do, attack the past? "To think that someone defied that law—kept someone of your potential from being properly trained for years—"
"Ooh," Nox murmured knowingly. "Angry about the law, are we?"
"If random citizens think they can defy the will of the Sith, it undermines everything that the Empire stands for."
"Indeed. And if I'd trained on Korriban at the more traditional age of…oh, I don't know, twenty, that would have been a year before the Treaty of Coruscant. Around the time a certain new Darth might have been looking for an apprentice, hm?"
Ravage gritted his teeth. "This has nothing to do with me."
"Of course not."
"All I am saying is that having someone of your capabilities might have made a difference for us in the war."
"I'm touched that you think so highly of me, truly. It wouldn't have been me, though. Not really. Not the way I am now."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Sith take people young so they can change them," Nox said matter-of-factly. "They mold them, remake them until they are something entirely different from when they started. That's all well and good for some people, but my mother thought differently. She taught me to hide myself, determined that I would have the freedom to choose my own fate. And so I did."
Ravage frowned. "You were brought to Korriban as a slave. You didn't choose anything."
"Don't be obtuse. Do you think it was coincidence that evidence of Baron Tyvinian's embezzling was suddenly leaked to the right people?"
"That was you?"
"Four years." For once, there was no trace of humor in Nox's voice. "I swore I'd have revenge. It's a shame I wasn't there to see the baron executed, but I did kill his wife. With the Force, in front of the Sith sent to do the job. My ticket to Korriban."
Ravage considered his response for a moment. "Why are you telling me all of this?"
"I'm in a chatty mood. It's not too often I get to reminisce."
"I don't believe for an instant that you're just talking for the sake of talking. You have an ulterior motive."
"Your suspicion wounds me."
"And if I wasn't suspicious, you'd wound me."
Nox laughed. "Very clever! Prudent, too. You know, for a man someone saw fit to name 'Ravage,' you're awfully cautious."
"It's how I stay alive."
"Mm, yes. Of course. A bit of careful ravaging here and there, but not so much that you leave yourself open."
Ravage peered at her intently, wishing he could see more of her expression in the darkness. "You're in rare form tonight, Nox."
"I feelrare. I blame you for dredging up my past. Reminds me of how much I am not your average decicred-a-dozen Sith Lord. Rare indeed."
"Have you been drinking?"
"Not yet. You do tend to drive me to it, though."
"Nox…" Ravage trailed off as he contemplated the entirety of their bizarre encounter. The more the conversation revolved around Nox, the more whimsical she became. Almost as if she were trying to distract him from something.
The truth, perhaps?
"What did you do?" he asked.
She tilted her head. "I beg your pardon?"
"Imperial citizens don't get sold into slavery for no reason. You must have done something, committed some crime."
"Other than the crime of not handing myself over to the Sith as a child, you mean."
"Precisely."
"Ah. Well." Nox clicked her tongue. "Really, it all came down to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Slavers got me on Nar Shaddaa; I'm sure you found the documents during your investigation."
"I did. Kyalah Vern, originally of Balmorra, age twenty-seven, sold to Baron Tyvinian, who was evidently too cheap to buy Imperial. It was under that name that you were registered as a student of the Korriban Academy, though by the time you took your place on the Council you'd changed it to Vesania Serence for some reason."
"I changed it because that's my name," Nox said dryly. "Don't bother looking it up in the official records; you won't find me. But I wasn't about to become Sith under a pseudonym."
Vesania. It suited her. And she'd never be known by that name again.
Ravage refocused his attention. "Since we've established that you are, in fact, Imperial, that raises the question of what exactly you were doing outside the Empire that led you to fall into the hands of slavers."
Nox was silent.
"I see I've found the limits of your verbosity," Ravage remarked after more than a minute had passed. "Astonishing."
"Yes, I think I've said enough."
The shadows rippled as she moved, and quite suddenly she was close. Close enough that Ravage didn't need the Force to feel her presence. Close enough to touch. He took a slow, unsteady breath, and caught the scent of her perfume. Korriban lilies, said to grow only where Sith blood had been spilled.
"Oh, Ravage," Nox murmured. "If only you knew."
And then she was gone.
Damn her, Ravage thought bitterly.
No. Damn me, for letting her do this to me.
"If only I knew what?" he demanded of the darkness, then shook his head wearily. Muttering to himself in an alley like a madman. This was what she'd reduced him to. Pathetic.
He picked up his cloak and put it on, then turned and started walking towards the main street. Every time, she got the better of him. When would it end?
It would end, he knew, if he killed her. That possibility might have intimidated her at first, but it had been too long. Now, she taunted him with the constant reminder of his own weakness.
Mustering all of his will, Ravage put her out of his mind. He had a great deal to do. The Empire was about to be at peace, which was a far more daunting prospect than an impending war would have been. There were logistics to deal with, apprentices to organize, assassinations to arrange…
He reached the street. The sky was just starting to lighten, outlining the dark form of the Citadel looming on the horizon. Beside it, nestled in the Sith's dominating shadow, was Intelligence headquarters. Intelligence made him think of Nox, which made him scowl.
Then he realized.
Nox's strength didn't all lie with her Force powers. She knew Imperial politics. She knew how to read people. She lied, seduced, and manipulated like no one else he'd met. She had successfully infiltrated an Alderaanian noble house and assassinated one of its members. And she had fought for control of Sith Intelligence, fought with more passion than he had ever seen from her, and ran it with the competency of someone who understood exactly how the organization worked…
Ravage clearly remembered the day that Nox had ascended to the Dark Council. Mortis had offered her the seat, not realizing what he was getting them all into, and she had looked through him into a distance only she could see and said finally, the recognition I deserve.
Finally.
Because Imperial Intelligence agents didn't get recognition, no matter their skill—and Vesania Serence would have been among the best.
In spite of himself, Ravage began thinking of Nox with a new sense of respect. No wonder the woman was fearless; she would have hidden in plain sight from Darth Jadus himself. No wonder she spoke with such disdain of Imperial Intelligence's dissolution.
On Nar Shaddaa, even a seasoned agent might be caught unawares by hostile forces. She would have been presumed dead, abandoned by the Empire, left to fend for herself. Some might have given up then, but she had fought, and in the end, she had triumphed. It was the Sith way, and she had embraced it.
I understand, now, Ravage thought, but he felt no sense of victory at his revelation, only apprehension. By knowing where Nox had come from, he now realized how dangerous she truly was. Intelligence operations had destabilized entire governments. What could an ambitious Dark Council member with Intelligence training do to the Empire, for good or ill, and could Ravage survive the process?
Time would tell. He continued walking towards the Citadel.
