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The slightly curved handle of Bane's lightsaber wasn't quite right in Cognus's grip. Sure, it gave her an increased sense of safety not possessing the weapon hadn't given her. But it was … off. Somehow. The tail end of it just didn't agree with the natural curvature of her wrist, the way it flexed and rolled as she swung the lightsaber back and forth through the pliant flesh of the men in the room around her.

She had been told the weapon would be hers only as long as it took her to make one of her own. At first, Cognus had been happy to accept it. Bane had thought himself worthy to teach her before accepting his apprentice's challenge, and Cognus had recognised the depths of his power, the promise of which was implied by becoming his apprentice—replacing Zannah.

But when the fair-haired human had triumphed over her former Master's attempt to seize her mind, Cognus had realised that Bane was insufficient. Zannah was clearly the stronger. And the abilities she had called forth to fight the hulking brute had been far more impressive than anything Cognus had ever seen before during her life as the Huntress.

When she was finished dispatching the last of the pitiful tradesmen Zannah had tasked her with eliminating, she switched off the weapon in her hand and looked around once to make sure there were none that she'd missed. There wasn't.

She turned the hilt of the lightsaber over in her hand once, gazing at it. There was a distinctive hook-curve towards the pommel-end of the lightsaber, ending in a point that could prove as fatal as the energy blade that came from the other end. A little more than half of the exterior was covered in weathered steel; a rubber grip was beneath it, extending almost the entire length of the weapon. At the front end of the weapon was the magnetic stabilizer she assumed was the mechanism that made the blade retain its shape. It followed a very short, narrow neck inside which she could sense were transference wires and conduits.

Curious, she used ... the Force? ... to probe the weapon deeper, seeking out every facet of its interior.

If she was to build her own one day, she must understand how the weapon functioned.

A sound behind her.

"You have done well," came the voice of her Master. Whirling, Cognus saw the human standing by the doorway, leaning against the frame with her own lightsaber in one hand, an end resting against her shoulder.

"I have pleased you?" Cognus quizzed.

"Barely," Zannah said flippantly. She nodded to the weapon still in the apprentice's hand. "You handle your lightsaber like a child handles a star ship." There was something in her tone, Cognus decided, that sounded like she had experience enough with exactly that to draw such a comparison.

"I …" Cognus frowned to herself. She had been about to blame the weapon, its unfamiliar shape and design, its refusal to adapt to her. But she knew that the fault lay with her. And she knew that her Master would brook no excuses, for that was exactly all such outbursts would be—excuses. "It is new. I will learn," she said instead.

Zannah nodded, satisfied by the answer, and dropped her hands to her sides before taking a couple of steps into the room. "Were you able to get the account numbers?"

"Numbers, encryption keys, passwords and a thumb print." Cognus pointed to the nearest body, the victim of a quick beheading whose fingers had all been sliced clean with a single blow. The severed digits were on the floor next to him.

"Retrieve it. We're done here. I have no further business on Ciutric Four." She looked around the room once more; at the bodies on the floor, the overturned sofa, the shattered crystal brandy decanter and the stain beneath it on the plush rug. There was no blood. "You have another assignment."

Cognus hung the lightsaber back at her hip and stepped over the remains of an overweight tax broker that had tried to bargain for his life. After she'd taken from him what she'd wanted, he'd had nothing left to bargain with. His flesh was just as soft to the touch of a lightsaber as that of the men who had died before him.

Dropping to a knee before her master, Cognus bowed her head to look at the floor directly in front of her. "What is thy bidding?" she said. Reverence in her tone would have been identified straight up as false. And though she knew her Master very little thus far, she deduced that Zannah was not a woman with much tolerance for feigned reverence.

Unless that feigned reverence was hiding fear.

"I want the accounts based here accessed." Fingers touched the underside of the Iktotchi's chin, urging her to stand. She stood and looked up at her Master. "Take this."

Zannah handed over a small sheaf of paper. Numbers and names were printed on it, but nothing the apprentice recognised at a glance.

"What am I to do with it?" she asked in earnest.

"I'm sure you'll soon discover on your own the disposition of these … people," Zannah responded. "So I won't bore you with those details. Suffice to say that the contents of the Ciutric accounts the men you killed had are to be funnelled to the men, women and groups on this list. Discreetly."

"Your wish is my command, my Master," Cognus said. She bowed her head once in respect. "And then?"

"Meet me on Coruscant in ten days. I will be registered under the name of an alias. Until then, the time is yours to do with as you see fit. I suggest training." She eyed the lightsaber at her apprentice's hip once more. "Stars know you need it."

"Yes, Master."

Zannah turned and walked towards the door, her lightsaber hidden once more beneath the duster she wore. "Oh," she started, stopping at the door and turning to her apprentice. "Next lesson: There can be only two Sith. No more. So if you choose not to meet me, you had better be prepared to kill me, because I will find you."

Cognus stared the other woman down, not in defiance of the woman, but in defiance of the implication that she would desert. After a few moments locking gazes, Zannah smiled, satisfied, and left.

The apprentice stood there for several minutes after that. Part of her was fuming. How dare Zannah make such a presumption! True enough, she didn't know the Iktotchi well enough to predict what she might do. But she should have taken it on faith that Cognus would meet her, that she was earnest in her desires to learn the ways of the dark side from her, as she had been eager to learn from Bane when he had offered. Was trust nothing to the Sith?

Cognus halted herself.

Trust? She had never trusted a soul in her life. Why would she suddenly now apply such a dangerous concept to these people—first Bane, now Zannah—whom, for all intents and purposes, she didn't know? What was it about being near them that had triggered that in her?

Flashes entered her mind. Clouded, yet vibrant. Intense and short, yet far-reaching at the same time. Flashes of insight into the future. Precognition—from which she had taken her Sith moniker. There was something about her future that made her want to trust Zannah, had made her want to trust Bane. She had seen similar images, deduced similar feels of the future in his presence too.

It wasn't something she could just will to happen.

But, maybe, with the Force? Bane had hinted that intense, rigorous training of her gift would one day give her the ability to call upon it at will, to direct it, to see what she wanted to see. Training under Zannah might give her the ability to direct her forward vision until she saw what it was that made her want to trust these Sith when she had never trusted anyone.

She brought the sheaf of paper up to her eyes and read. It was a list of names and numbers, each name followed by three sets of numbers. The first seemed to be an account number, the account number of the person named above. The second was a key code to access that account freely. The third was a credit amount.

Grinning, Cognus slipped the bundle into an inner pocket of her vest and left the slaughter.


Zannah made herself smaller when she entered the spaceport. She needed to be nondescript in her departure, so as not to draw attention to herself in case there were still other former associates of hers and Bane's that were watching, waiting. To be called out by any of them now when she was so close to leaving them behind forever would only draw her into a confrontation, and she was in too much of a hurry to waste her time dealing with them.

Though her business on Ciutric 4 was done, over, Zannah still had other ghosts of her life with Bane that needed to be purged. That strange power he'd had, that had nearly robbed her of her own mind and body …

That was troublesome indeed. Zannah had known fear only once before, when Bane—in a fit of rage brought on by the orbalisks he had at the time worn as armour—had viciously attacked her on Ambria, thinking her a usurper and an immediate threat. He had almost killed her. It was the first time she'd ever had a glimpse of the true power of the man that had brought her up, taught her the ways of the dark side. And now, she found she had barely scratched the surface.

She knew from all the years of Bane instructing her about holocrons that he would have destroyed the source that have given him the knowledge to try and steal her body from her. Most holocron guardians, he'd said, included specific instructions for the destruction of their holocron once all the knowledge it possessed had been absorbed by the finder. It was a way of ensuring that their darkest secrets were passed on to one other and one other only.

The thought that gave Zannah pause, that frightened her even now: did Darth Bane, Dark Lord of the new Order of the Sith Lords, record that knowledge onto his own holocron … to be found and learned by a future generation of Sith?

She hoped not. She surely did. Though her knowledge of Sith alchemy was unmatched in the past thousand years, Bane had once told her, and the ability to usurp another's body seemed, at least to Zannah, the sort of ability that fell into her field of dark side abilities, it was something she neither relished or appreciated.

Darth Bane had spent twenty years drilling into her the merits of his Rule of Two. He had spent twenty years telling her time and time again via numerous and never-repeated examples of how the old Sith Order had failed where his would not. He had said that too many Sith operating at once could not function, for they would feel the irresistible urge to fight amongst each other, covetous of their rivals' abilities, influences, resources.

But he had also said that no Sith could live forever, or the line would wither, die, become a joke. If the Sith were ever to hope to overthrow the Jedi at some point in the future—and Zannah had no delusions that it would be in her life time—then the cycle of renewal and growth demanded that the weaker of the two be destroyed so the stronger could go on. If an apprentice, as it should be, was to become stronger than the master, then it was their duty to destroy the master and take an apprentice they knew would one day destroy them.

Zannah had thought Bane had accepted this. He had told her many times that he would never be proud of her until the day she killed him and took her rightful place as the new Dark Lord.

Bane had lied! Frantic for a way to outlive her, frantic for a way to survive her imminent destruction of him, he had sought out knowledge he'd always told her was forbidden. Had he been successful, he would have bastardised his own Order. He would have lived forever, continually taking apprentices and training them to match his strength before using the dark rituals to seize their body for his own, destroying the one he had. If Zannah had not been strong enough, the Sith would have been ruined.

So now, she knew what she must do. Any holocrons Bane had constructed must be destroyed.

And she knew just where to start looking for them.