Atton shoved open the door to Csilla's frozen surface. He stood in the vestibule for a moment, the door wide open, reluctant to plunge into the cold night after the climate-controlled comfort of the Foreign Quarter. Outside, the black sky was pelted with cottony tufts of snow, falling fast and thick into knee-high drifts. He wasn't looking forward to scraping the stuff off the ship's windows.

He stepped out into the cold, grimacing as the wind lashed at his face. Leaning into the blast, he trudged towards the ship, now just a fuzzy silhouette, an outline nearly erased by the blinding fall of snow. Behind him, he could hear HK rattling through the drifts, his vocabulator emitting whirrs and rumbles of complaint.

When he reached The Direstar's gangplank, he could see the thing had almost completely frozen over.

Atton turned back to HK, who was still tramping through the snow. "It looks like we aren't getting out of here for -"

The switchblade pressed against at his throat made him pause and swallow hard. His adam's apple bobbed against the sharp edge. The nick in his neck was already beginning to trickle warm blood.

"For awhile," he said.

HK stood stalk-still, his blaster-carbine poised to fire. Staring down the barrel, Atton wasn't sure whether the droid planned to shoot him or the Nagai thug at his back. Even if there was a distinct target, he had to wonder how much the psychotic bucket of blots cared which one he hit as long as he hit something. After all, the HK took the term 'friendly fire' much too literally for comfort.

The Nagai gibbered a few phrases in his own language. His breath reeked like something left out to fester in the sun. In the shadows under the ship, Atton could hear several other Nagai cackling, choking up laughter from their withered lungs.

"[Commentary:] This is a distinctly challenging situation, Meatbag. I am preparing to fire on my primary target, but there may be some collateral damage."

"What are the odds of you not painting the snow with my brains?"

"[Statistical Analysis:] Adjusting for weather conditions and physical proximity, I would estimate a 21% percent chance of survival."

Atton grimaced. "I don't think I need to inform you that I have a bad feeling about this."

The blaster carbine fired, setting the darkness alight. Atton screwed his eyes shut, anticipating the worst. Everything seemed to happen at high velocity, the snow driving down against his head, the beams speeding past his ear, the warm spatter against his cheek, the sound of a body falling muffled by the snow. The switch-blade twitched against his skin, made a shallow slice, but in the shock of freezing air, he couldn't feel it for more than second. It was no worse than what he'd done shaving. In any case, he was breathing and it felt good.

Before he even opened his eyes, he'd withdrawn his lightsaber. He spun around and caught the nearest Nagai in the chest with his beam. Another thug saw an opening in his defence and hit him in the ribs with a green shockstick. Electricity shot through Atton's body, sizzling across his chest and melting the snow matted in his hair. He recoiled as the volts surged under his skin, mowing down his assailant but almost losing grip of his 'saber in the process.

On rubbery legs, he managed to stumble away from the next attacker, but put himself directly into HK's line of fire. Blaster beams careened past him, one shot hitting a gang member, the next bouncing off the side of the ship. The exultant droid was firing wild, blasting as many holes in the snow drifts as he was in the grey flesh of Nagai.

As Atton sent another assailant flying into a patch of cloudy, black ice, a blaster beam passed perilously close to his upraised arm.

"Hey HK, you mind maybe not shooting me? You're more dangerous than all these poor suckers put together."

HK's answer was carried away by a furious wind, but Atton could tell from the way the assassin droid's eyes lit up that he took it as a compliment. The thing kept blasting with as much exuberance as his mechanical frame could muster.

"Damn droid," Atton muttered.

His lightsaber made for quick work against a pack of scraggly thugs armed only with second-rate weapons, ugly faces and an overpowering stench of decay. When they finally lined up the bodies, there were nine in total. Atton searched the remains, an activity that always stirred up memories of war, the first one, the one when he'd been fighting on the 'right side'. Whenever someone said soldiering was a noble life, he had to laugh. If military service had done one thing for him, it had made him a pro at picking over corpses and scavenging what he could. Friend or foe, at a certain point, it hadn't mattered anymore. They were dead, you were alive and you took what you needed to keep it that way.

He tucked his findings away into his pocket: the shockstick, two ornate-looking blasters, a wallet full of yellow currency. Hidden in the inside panel of a long leather jacket, he found a datapad, its screen still illuminated by a sector map, planets glowing against a black background. It took him a moment to remember where he'd seen the image before. Atton thrust the datapad up at HK's photoreceptors.

"Look familiar?"

"[Observation:] This image was used in the aged meatbag's galactic map."

"How much you want to bet Konrad stole these? They're probably home-world co-ordinates. Kind of sours me on our good deed for the day."

"[Commentary:] According to my system directives, the only good deed is shooting all targets good and dead, Meatbag."

Atton sighed. "Well, mission accomplished, HK."

He surveyed the bodies one last time, and then started up the Direstar's icy gangplank. "I'm going to warm up the ship's engines. In the meantime, why don't you get started making some snowmen?"

"[Confused Inquiry:] What do you mean, Meatbag? I hardly think this is the ideal moment for silly human entertainments."

He kept forgetting that droids don't do subtlety. "What I mean is I want you to take the bodies and bury them in the snow, as much snow as you can. Cover our tracks."

He was grateful to get inside the ship and away from the whip of the wind. All at once, the pain hit him, not enough to floor him but certainly enough to make him dizzy. There was blood on his neck, blood on his face, one of his ribs was definitely bruised at best and cracked at worst.

When Atton finally reached the pilot's chair, he hit its cushioned seat like a bag of spare parts. Charging up the ship, he let the engines idle and steam up the windows. Heat pumped into the cockpit. It felt like a surge of new blood in his wounded body.

He contemplated flying off without HK. The droid was a lucky shot but it was also a wild one and it didn't give a damn who got hurt. One day the dumb droid luck would run out, but the craziness, the recklessness, would stay the same. Having the thing around was a constant temptation, that vocabulator always squawking at him to shoot as though the thought hadn't already occurred to him, as though the instinct to kill wasn't already branded into his flesh. He'd locked the door on Jaq and starved him into submission, but now there was a new black thing lurking at his shoulder, another hollow voice grinding into his ear.

He would have abandoned HK on Csilla and played deserter again, but he needed that map if he was going to find the ritual grounds Konrad had described. If he knew anything about Jedi, it was that you went looking for trouble, you were likely to find them in the process. With the map downloaded on HK's system, finding trouble would be significantly easier.

Besides the map file, Atton knew there was another pressing reason to keep an eye on HK: left to his own devices, who knew what havoc a lone assassin droid might wreak? After all the blood staining his hands, he wasn't sure he was willing to kill more innocents by proxy. There was no way around it. As unpredictable as he could be, as malignant as his loyalty might become, the droid would have to stay. For now, anyway.

The lights flickered and the damaged ship shuddered beneath their feet. Golden sparks shot from a damaged computer console, spurting up like an electric fountain and searing against the deck floor. As Shira fought, she could feel the sparks sizzling against her cheeks, a hot rain amidst the feverish dance of lightsabers. She whirled around, finding grace at last in the hiss of her 'saber, in the fluid motion of her arms as she countered the Sith officer's attack.

She could tell this Sith was young despite his withered skin and hooded brow. It was his eagerness that betrayed him. He was excited at the thought of all the bodies he would flay and intoxicated by the illusion of his power, a power that had not yet exacted its cost. Brandishing his 'saber, he stared at her as though he had already stabbed her, the way a scientist might look at a butterfly stuck on a pin.

The lights went out again. In the darkness, the Sith's black saber appeared only as a glimmering trail of blue efflorescence. Shira concentrated, allowing her intuition and the Force to guide her movements. The Sith lunged forward and Shira dodged to the side, slowly maneuvering him. He did not know that she was in control now, if only in these moments, when she stood in the furnace of battle and heard her pulse pounding in her ears.

The young officer swiped at her again with his blade, but this time, instead of sidestepping the attack, she tripped him with a quick Echani move. The spiked tread of her black boot slammed into his gut and sent him reeling back onto the damaged console. The Sith sputtered and writhed as high voltage surged through his limbs. Shira turned away as the charred body slumped to the floor, hitting the deck with a soft thud. As if by magic, the ship's generator kicked in and the power flicked on again.

"That's one way of turning on the lights," Revan said. "Of course, I generally prefer a light switch, but Sith are handy too."

He proceeded to fling a series of lockers at his opponent with his mind, tossing them up as though they were an afterthought.

"Show-off," Shira muttered.

She was almost pleased when none of the lockers managed to hit their target, a tall Sith female with scarred cheeks. Instead, the containers bashed against the floor, spilling out their stashes across the command deck.

Something rolled across the floor and the Sith woman snatched it up greedily. Grinning, she raised it above her head like a prize, her marked face contorting into a triumphant grin. It took Shira a second to realize what it was: a grenade, one with enough force to blow a hole in the already damaged ship.

Shira flung herself forward as the Sith woman's fingers locked around the pin, ready to tug. As the lightsaber gouged into the pallid grey throat, the grenade slipped out of the long-fingered hand and spun across the floor, stopping at Revan's foot.

He knelt down and gingerly picked it up.

"Intact. Thankfully." He glanced down at the Sith woman's body hunched over the sharp end of a locker. "Can't say the same for our grenade-throwing friend here."

"Cut the comedy," Shira replied. "It doesn't go well with corpses."

"Just trying to break the tension. You used to have a sense of humor."

"I used to have a lot of things," she said. "So what's the big plan?"

Revan sheathed his lightsaber and started to rifle through his supply pack. He withdrew a fistful of computer spikes. "I'm going to hack into the navicomputer here and collect whatever hyperspace co-ordinates I can. Hopefully it will help us to track their bases and any other locations they like to frequent. I need you to investigate the rest of the ship."

"Alright," she said.

Revan liked to be in charge and she knew it would be easier to let him work under the delusion that he was still the fearless leader standing astride a galactic army. Never mind that his forces had been reduced to a unit of Chiss soldiers and herself, a Jedi cast-off – she had no doubt that Revan would continue to conduct himself as though the Republic was still singing his name to the skies and using his neck as a convenient place to hang medals.

Shira plunged into the darkened corridor, holding her lightsaber before her as a lantern. She placed her hand against the glassy wall to steady herself as she slunk forward, peering into each room that she passed. As her eyes adjusted, it became easier to distinguish shapes in the fuzzy darkness. Just ahead of her, the door to the dormitory yawned open, revealing a row of ghostly, white-sheeted bunks.

She crept into the dormitory and crouched at the side of the nearest bunk. If she knew anything about soldiers, it was that they kept their most interesting possessions close to them, hoarding what little privacy they could. She lifted the mattress and felt underneath, and then snaked her arm under the bed. Her fingers brushed over something square and solid. Stretching her arm further, she managed to pull the object close enough to grasp it in her hand and withdraw it. It was a box made of dark mahogany, carved with child-like designs of unblinking eyes and rows of squiggly lines that looked like choppy water. In its center, it had an old-fashioned mechanical lock in the menacing shape of a dragon's jaws.

She thought of him before she could stop herself. Atton had always liked a good lock. Maybe it was because he himself was a locked room, one that she had never been able to tease open, even with promises of forgiveness, of love, of a redemption she couldn't find for herself but nevertheless believed she could pluck down from the sky for him. She had become good at breaking her promises.

Whatever she found inside the box, it couldn't be worse than what she knew Atton had locked inside himself. The same hands that had strangled Tahet had caressed her neck and strung a silver chain around her throat. It served her right for believing a man trained to live lies, for refusing to break into his mind despite all Kreia's warnings. She had pretended that she could read the broken lines of his palms, tracing them to their origin like the blue paths of charted rivers. She had deceived herself in trusting those nimble hands. They were the hands of a thief and they had unlocked her too easily.

All that she knew now was that she couldn't pick locks. She would dash that box to splinters if she had to, to get what was inside. She lifted the box over her head and was about to dash it against the metal bed frame when she heard someone bumbling down the hall outside, fingers scraping against the walls.

Tucking the box under her arm, she rose up on the balls of her feet and moved towards the edge of the door. Under the violet beam of her 'saber, she saw the terrified face of a young Chiss man and a pair of trembling hands held palms up.

She lowered her weapon and said one of the few Chiss words she knew, the word for 'hello'. He blurted out a lengthy response, his thin body wracked with the effort of speech, but all she could do in reply was guide him down the corridor to the command deck where Revan waited.

When she entered the room, Revan was still deeply absorbed with the navicomputer, his back turned, his head lowered and his fingers jabbing quickly at the keys.

"I've found a few strategic locations," he said. He didn't seem to expect a response to this and Shira certainly didn't plan to stand around marveling at his ingenuity.

"I found a Chiss prisoner walking in the hall."

Revan didn't look up. "That's odd. Only one?"

The ship rattled underneath their feet, causing the rescued prisoner to nearly lose his balance. Shira caught him by the arm and steadied him. He eyed her warily, his gaze shifting between her face and the box still tucked under her arm. He had been peering over at that box ever since she'd discovered him.

"He's the only one I've found. You want me to multiply him like a gizka?"

Pressing down on a key with a final decisive tap, Revan turned to examine the Chiss man. "The Sith marauders usually capture entire households. Many prisoners, not one. If he's the only one on this ship, he might be significant to them."

Revan spoke to the man in hurried Cheun. The Chiss man responded with a few short phrases, demonstrating markedly better pronunciation.

"He says there are no others, which is good because I doubt this ship is going last much longer," Revan said. "Anyway, I have everything I need."

Having come to this conclusion, Revan turned on his heel and strode off towards the docking bay without a backwards glance, leaving Shira fuming. It was just like him to walk away like that. He knew full well that she'd have to tail behind him, enforcing the idea that she was his underling to bossed and scolded.

As much as she hated chasing after a megalomaniacal control-freak who was too smart for his own good and too arrogant for anyone else's, she knew it could be worse. She could be back in that white, sun-lit room, lolling in bed with Tahet's killer, laughing, imagining that she could sweep the past into a corner like dust that lay heavy on the wooden floors. At least here she had truth and a sense of mission, something she could salvage from the wreck of her life. At least here, there was a fight where she could prevail or die trying. It was better than sparring with shadows.

On the security cameras, everything appeared in black and white. The images on the screen were blurry and Revan's face was partially obscured so that Shira could only make out the predatory jut of his nose and the firm line of his jaw. The cameras didn't process sound and each gesture displayed on the console screen had dream-like quality, as though Revan and the rescued prisoner were moving underwater. Nevertheless, Shira recognized Revan's games, the way he leaned forward on the table cajoling the Chiss man and then stood up, circling the seated captive and whispering insinuations. Soon he would ease back in his chair and ingratiate himself with the nervous man as though they were a couple of friends lounging around with cigarras clenched between their teeth.

Years ago, she'd skimmed through the sixth edition of Revan's interrogation manual in the time she snatched away from battles and strategy sessions. Shira knew his proven techniques, the unnerving games that turned on a knife's edge between camaraderie and menace, even the order in which they should occur. The manual had explained every step as concisely as if it was instructing readers on how to disassemble a hyperdrive. She'd left the datapad lying face-down on her bedside table the morning before she gave Bao-Dur the final order.

She watched as Revan slammed his fist on the table, in a pantomime performance of anger. The display might have fooled a casual observer, but Shira knew all too well that he did not get angry. Genuine rage would mean admitting that he had lost control and above all things, Revan loved control. Even back in the dark days, his displeasure would manifest itself as an exaggerated calm and consideration, a quiet smile as ominous as the clouds that gathered to spear down rain on the scorched grass of Dantooine. It was only once the offending underling turned his back, assured of his master's confidence, that Revan's smile would fade, that he would unleash his kath hounds and let them taste blood.

Contrary to Shira's suspicion, Revan did not ease back into his seat and resume coaxing the witness with shows of fraternity. Instead, he circled the table and walked out of the room altogether, slamming the door behind him. She could hear his footsteps reverberating down the serpentine corridors of the Rhigar military complex.

She quickly glided away from the security console and returned to studying the wooden box and its strange contents. In the main compartment of the box, a row of archaic scalpels, knives and saws gleamed against a red velvet lining. When she'd reached further down into the lower compartment, she'd discovered a tangle of gold chains, bracelets, jeweled pins, heirloom wrist watches, a scattering of old coins tinged with rust. It was a jarring juxtaposition of violence and luxury, one that sent a cold thrill through her chest. The treasure trove didn't seem to belong to one person, a single body, but to countless hands, arms, fingers, wrists, throats, ankles of varying shapes and sizes. Some of the objects were rough-hewn, some were gaudy and others were delicate and finely-crafted, expensive work. It was nonsense, haphazard hoarding like the inside of a krayt dragon's lair.

Shira was feigning intense interest in an elegantly looped chain when Revan entered the room. Letting the chain dangle from her fingers, she aimed for nonchalance.

"How's the questioning going?"

Revan raised an eyebrow. "You know perfectly well how it's going. I didn't expect you to resist the temptation of that security camera."

She dropped the necklace back into the box and shut the lid. "Those techniques of yours don't seem to be working. So much for that sixth edition manual."

"The ninth edition was the best. Too bad you missed it."

Revan slumped back against the wall, brushing a few stray tendrils of black hair back from his smooth brown face. He seemed to be settling in and making himself comfortable, which made Shira distinctly uncomfortable. When Revan started to get too friendly, you could be sure he was going to ask you for an unpleasant favor.

"The prisoner – Krysthan Sandor, that's his name – he's polite as anything but he's set on making himself entirely useless," Revan sighed. "If you were to listen to him, he closed his eyes as soon as the Sith captured him and didn't open them up until we came charging to the rescue. I went so far as to try extracting a few details through his mind, but his resistance is impressive. I'd venture to say he might be Force-sensitive, if only because we know how easy it is to crack into the heads of most blankers."

Blanker. Shira hadn't heard that word in years. It was the term padawans had coined to describe the lackluster majority who couldn't use the Force or at least, the word they deployed when the masters weren't within earshot.

"Blanker? Force, Revan, what are you? Fourteen?"

"It's a useful term. When did you get to be so politically correct?"

Revan smiled, his wine-dark lips drawing back to reveal a row of startlingly white teeth. Shira knew it wasn't really a smile, just as his face wasn't really a face, but simply another mask in an endless series of disguises. She could peel back masks until her fingers bleed but she would never reveal Revan's true features, the vulnerable flesh behind the metal plating. She wasn't even sure that he could find it anymore, after years of costumes, body doubles, scheming and subterfuge, false laughter and daggers lodged in turned backs.

"Anyway," he continued, "I came to see if you would sit in on the interview and help me get Sandor talking. When you're not being self-righteous, you have a surprisingly soothing presence."

Shira narrowed her eyes. "No, I don't. You used to be a better liar."

"Fine, you want it straight out?" Revan said. "I need you to bond with him, Shira. I can't make him talk but I know you can get into his head and get the information we need. He can lie to me, but once you've done your work, he'll tell us everything willingly, no questions asked."

Shira stared down at the mahogany box in her hands, her eyes tracing over the elaborate carvings. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, I do," Revan said. "You forget that I've seen it all first-hand. I remember the way you twisted Atris, Tahet and Kavar around your little finger, and you were just a padawan then. Why do you think I sent Alek to recruit you? I know talent when I see it. You took a bunch of troops who thought a teenage girl general was a bad joke and turned them into a mob of fanatics who'd throw themselves on a grenade if you so much as asked it. By the time you were done with them, they would have thanked you for Malachor, even while the air was being crushed out of their lungs. That's loyalty you can't buy with Republic wages. When I appointed you, I knew you could ensure it."

She was about to interrupt him, but he spoke over her protestations.

"Don't play dumb with me. I've seen what you can do. Your power has grown since I last saw you, thanks to Malachor, no doubt, and the fascinating little incident of your exile. It's hungrier than I've ever seen it. I'm just asking you to use it for the greater good, Shira."

"Whose greater good, Revan? Probably your own," she snarled. "I suggest you go to hell."

Revan chuckled. "One day, maybe. Today you're going to help me with this, Shira. It's the only way we're going to manage that rescue mission."

It rankled, but she knew he was right. It would be better to turn the curse into a blessing if she could. If she was angry, it was because it was painful to listen to him speak about the old masters, about Alek and the soldiers, to see his old eyes planted in an anonymous new face unscarred by battle or past sins. She couldn't stand to look at him.

"Alright," she murmured. "I'll go. I'll help."

They walked down the maze-like corridors of the Rhigar military academy, passing a long column of recruits and their officers. They moved through hallways lined with golden plaques and the grim-faced statues of the academy's founders, stone hands gripping ancient blades. Shira couldn't read the engravings or the yellow banners draped over their heads, but she was sure they had something to do with loyalty, honor, duty, patriotic love, all the noble abstractions that sent men to die in the mud.

"All Sandor would tell me about himself is that he was a healer with House Sabosen," Revan said. "He used to attend the state-sponsored medical college on Csilla before he volunteered to supervise operations on Farschi. He doesn't speak any Basic, but I don't suppose that will pose too much of a problem for you."

"I can handle it."

They reached the interrogation room doors. Revan pushed in his security code and shoved open the door.

"After you," he said in a tone of mock deference.

"Such a gentleman," Shira muttered, as she stepped through the door.

The Chiss man, Krysthan Sandor, was sitting at the table with his hands folded before him as neatly as if he were sitting down to nerf steak dinner by candlelight. He was young, his lean dark blue face composed of right angles, chiseled lines and a stark geometry of shadows. Empirically, Sandor was handsome, possessing the hollow-cheeked aristocratic features the Chiss seemed to prefer, but Shira had never seen a face that reminded her so much of HK's visor.

Fighting back her revulsion, she seated herself on Sandor's side of the table – the better to earn his trust. Revan sat down across from the witness and began the questioning again in rapid Cheun.

Sandor didn't answer. He was looking at the wooden box in Shira's hands. She drew her arms around it protectively, feeling a chill run from her finger's ends to the bottom of her spine. She should have known that any favor Revan asked of her would turn ugly, but it was too late to back out now, with what she knew.

Revan spoke again and, although she couldn't understand the language, Shira could tell he was admonishing Sandor by the way his voice rose to simulate anger.

Sandor turned away from her and gazed back at Revan, his slanted eyes as cold and precise as faceted gems. He answered in a measured tone, speaking each word at his leisure, making it clear that Revan didn't frighten him in the least.

Revan nodded. "Shira, he says that box belongs to him. He wants it back."

She lifted the lid of the box and displayed the scalpels. "Tell him that I'm interested in this box too. I found it in the Sith barracks. I'd like him to tell me what he uses these out-dated scalpels for and why he's collected all these little trophies."

She reached into the box and pulled out a necklace ornamented with blood-red stones, its long strands tangling around her fist. "Ask him who this belongs to, Revan. I'd like to know where she is and why she gave him such a generous present."

Revan stared at her. "Are you suggesting that -"

"I am. I'd stake everything on it and you know I'm not a gambler."

"But that's crazy. He's Chiss."

"It may be crazy, but it's true. That'ss why he won't give you a straight answer, Revan. It explains why he's so anxious to get these torture tools out of sight."

She glanced over at Sandor and she could swear his thin lips curved into a strange half-smile.

"He's not a Sith prisoner," she said. "He's one of them."