Chapter Thirteen:

Where Tradition Is Upheld

Somehow, Shae was not surprised to learn that they still didn't know enough. After all, Xesh had only seen a part of the Infinite Empire. He couldn't tell them all that much about its economy or even how it fed itself. But since he and the newcomer both had held the same position, he could confirm if she was telling the truth.

And so, Shae was spending the morning asking him questions from a list provided by Master Lha-Mi to Master Quan-Jang.

"You said you didn't know who the next scout would be," Shae said, and took a bite of what appeared to be an attempt at cake. It wasn't a bad one, she decided as she chewed. Although maybe there was a bit too much chocolate. Given who had made it, though, the concept was probably still too difficult to grasp. "But you know the woman whom they sent?"

"Her owner is- was my owner's superior," Xesh replied. If she hadn't been able to sense he was upset, the fact that he was poking cake crumbs with his fingers instead of eating them would be enough of a clue. "And we were- I knew her before. They separate Force-sensitive children from other slaves. I guess so that we don't sympathize with them. Or they with us. Anyway, she was in the same group as I was. And we stuck together for a while."

"So, you used to be friends?" Shae guessed.

Xesh didn't reply for a moment. He just kept on gathering the crumbs into a neat little pile in the middle of his plate.

"I... think so," he said eventually. "At one point. But I'd have killed her if my owner told me to, and she'd have done likewise. I don't think- that's something that friendships survive."

He had a point there, definitely. But on the other hand, shouldn't the other Force Hound understand this, since she had been in the same situation?

"You think you can't trust her anymore?" she asked, trying to figure out what the problem could be. Besides, if he couldn't trust her and they had been friends that likely meant she wasn't going to be trust-worthy in general.

"No. Not if her life is at stake," Xesh replied. He didn't seem to have any doubts about this, at least. Which was rather sad. "It's... something we learn from- from when someone takes you as their Force Hound. That no one will help you unless there's something to gain and that if there's nothing to gain from helping you- Anyway. It's hard to not think like that at first."

"But unless someone shows you that this is not true, you'll never know," Shae said.

"No, you won't," he answered. "Anyway—yes, I do know her. I didn't think dictator Skal'nas would send her to scout. His other Hound was killed recently and training a new one takes time. Sending her means he doesn't have anyone to sense ambushes and the like."

"So, do Rakata get assigned a flaw they must exercise every day? I mean this guy is clearly several shades of over-confident, and whatshisname your jerk had zero imagination," Shae replied dryly.

Xesh snorted. "Yes, they probably have secret parties where they compare who is more annoying or more horrible."

It might have been a fairly bad joke, but he wasn't poking at his food anymore.

"You know we should start introducing you to people who are not me and Daegen. You're picking our bad habits up," Shae said jokingly. It seemed it was not the best of her jokes, since she immediately sensed a jolt of anxiety from Xesh. "I'm joking—I'm not angry with you for that comment. And most of my friends won't be either."

Xesh shook his head. "It's not that- I don't really like being around too many people."

"How about one person at a time? I'll be there." Shae replied. She wasn't surprised the idea didn't appeal to him, but right now he was terribly isolated. It didn't mean he had to go out and meet strangers, but it wouldn't help him, if she let him hide from everyone.

"I'm- If you think that's a good idea," he said. "I'm not- I don't think I know how this is supposed to work."

Well, that at least was not much of a surprise. Clearly, the Rakata didn't want their slaves—or at least the Force-sensitive ones—to have any sort of relationships.

"You won't learn unless you try?" Shae replied doing her best to sound reassuring and not imagine any sort of disasters. Xesh was way too good in sensing negative emotions, sometimes. "It's going to be fine."

That earned her a sceptical look and a sense of very doubtful 'if you say so' from him. "You're supposed to ask me about more things about the Infinite Empire, so we should go back to that."

Well, that was a fairly clear indication he didn't want to talk about the subject of meeting other people more. Besides, he did have a point. They were deviating from the subject. Shae inspected her datapad to see what else there was they needed to know.

"Right, so did you ever hear about something called Star Forge?" she asked.

Xesh nodded. "It's in the Lehon system," he said and then continued in the tone of someone repeating a lesson, "and it's the glory of the Rakata, the apex of the Infinite Empire. It's a machine of invincible might, a tool of unstoppable conquest." He scoffed then. "I don't know if my owner knew what it does, or if it was something I wasn't allowed to know."

"That was not very helpful of him," Shae said dryly. "Hm. I'm not sure I actually get how the military structure of theirs works."

Xesh made a face at that. "It's fairly simple, really. You have slaves at the bottom—Flesh Raiders for the brute force assaults—they're genetically engineered lower caste rakata. They're made to be resilient, but they're generally pretty dumb. And slaves of other species for more complex things, like sneaking up on something and shooting it from cover.

"With Flesh Raiders, you just drop them all at once on a region you want to wipe out. Other slaves are organized into units of ten to thirty, whatever works, and then you have one to three more experienced slaves leading them," Xesh explained. "Leaders of two or more units are free people—either young Rakata or anyone lucky enough to be born free. Six or eight units make a company, again, led by someone free. Then you have regiments—those are from two to four companies, and only Rakata can lead them. After that, two to four regiments make a battalion.

"And then you pile them on and on, until the predor responsible for the particular invasion is satisfied or the other predors start yelling, and you put them on as many transports as you need. There's a limited number of them you can attach to a capital ship for hyperspace travel—enough for one planet usually. And then once you're done with that, you invade something." He grimaced. "My owner was one. There was usually a lot of yelling-"

And then he fell silent.

"Wait. Why was your owner out scouting then? That doesn't sound like normal procedure to me?" Shae asked, feeling even more confused than she had been beforehand.

Xesh shook his head. "It's not. I... don't remember very well most of why we were sent here. I think there was something that displeased Dictator Skal'nas—he wanted to prove something..." He fell silent then, clearly frustrated that he couldn't remember anything more.

"Would Vev know?" Shae asked.

"Probably," Xesh said after a moment. "She would have heard him mention what it was that made him angry."

Shae nodded, and then another question occurred to her. "You didn't mention Force Hounds at all in the military hierarchy. Where exactly were you?"

That had not been a subject he had seemed to want to bring up, and she could see him tense now that she asked.

"A status symbol, a bodyguard," he said, and looked down at his hands. He was balling them into fists, so hard that his knuckles were turning white. She could sense fear from him too. "And we're supposed to sense things for our owners. If someone is planning to attack them. Or other Force-sensitives."

And then she knew what it was that he was afraid of. It wasn't that he was remembering something—it was what she'd think.

"You didn't believe you had a choice," she said.

That probably wasn't exactly the most reassuring thing she could have told him, come to think of it. After all, no one would ask him to bring anyone to the rakata here.

She put her hand over his, and after a moment he uncurled his fists and nodded.

"It's stupid," he said after a moment. "I know whatever I would have done would have changed nothing. If I had killed my master earlier, there would have been someone else to take his place. If I had refused to find Force sensitives for him, he'd just have taken another child in my place. But I still- There might have been something."

Shae almost offered him a hug then, but it would have been quite pointless. They may have gotten to the point where he was fine with holding her hand or her touching his shoulder, but she seriously doubted he'd be fine with someone holding him. It'd probably just make him feel trapped.

"Let's take a break," she said. "Is there something I can do to make you feel better?"

"I'm-" Xesh started to say then closed his mouth and frowned deeper. "Can we just talk about something that has nothing to do with the Infinite Empire?"

"Sure," Shae said. She looked around trying to think of a subject—she could easily talk for hours about, say, the spinal horns of uxibeasts and how it related to extranuclear inheritance, but that probably would be either horribly confusing or plain boring for Xesh. And then she glanced out of the window, at the blue cloudless sky. "How about we take a walk, too? I can show you... hm, there's a park people use for meditating."

Daegen took in the sight—there was Shae at the bottom of THAT tree. There was Xesh, sitting on one of the lower branches and fighting a losing battle against his frowning habit in a futile attempt to look innocent. And there was the tree of course—the one that he'd climbed when he was fourteen just like a number of other apprentices with too much free time on their hands.

"I see you decided to teach Xesh some of our finer traditions," he said dryly. Heroically, he had managed to wrestle his urge to start rubbing his forehead.

Shae continued looking self-satisfied, as if she had not obviously encouraged Daegen's apprentice to steal his underwear and tie it to a tree. Young people these days. One could just not leave them to their own devices. "How could I not? It is one of our finer traditions."

"Aren't you both too old for this particular game?" Daegen asked, not ready to give up just yet. Besides, while he might have caught them by accident, he was fairly certain that not getting caught was part of the game. Which meant that he was absolutely entitled to complain.

"I have backlog," Xesh said, having apparently decided that trying to pretend he was just sitting in that particular tree for no reason related to juvenile pranks was futile. At least, he stopped trying to look innocent, and now moved on to looking smug, which apparently was much easier to do without frowning.

Besides, it was rather hard to argue with that.

"I suppose I can't dispute that," he replied, shaking his head. "Now I suppose I should comply with the tradition and try to get my underwear down, shouldn't I?"

He looked up—and fine, maybe he was feigning some of his weariness, but not all of it. Clearly, climbing trees ridiculously high was something the boy had learned—to what purpose Daegen was not going to ask at this point, but he was definitely not to try and get to pretty much the top of the tree just for underwear.

Going by the colour, the two had actually found the piece he'd worn to seduce Hadiya. To be fair, it was exactly the type of underwear people used for this particular prank. That is to say, wearing it made one look more naked than not wearing anything at all.

He breathed out and reached out with the Force.

At least it was going to be a good exercise. And he knew the boy could tie things into complicated knots.

Truly, teaching was a joy.

Shae had to admit that Daegen had definitely learned how to act in an embarrassing situation well from Master Quan-Jang. Which was not to acknowledge that it was embarrassing at all and treat untying one's underwear with the Force as a perfectly normal occupation.

He didn't seem to pay attention to anyone, even when a Ranger stopped right next to him. He was a togorian: not as enormous as some of them, but he still towered over Daegen.

"Oh. You really did get yourself an apprentice," he said with a smirk. Out of the corner of her eye, Shae noticed Xesh was watching it with quite a lot of apprehension. "Should I offer condolences to him or you?"

"Neither," Daegen and Xesh say at the same time, sounding equally offended. Then they glared at each other. Apparently, this was going to be a joint comedy performance now.

"I'm a perfect teacher," Daegen said not bothering to look at the Ranger.

"Hm." Xesh gave him a sceptical look and then clearly remembered he was supposed to be on Daegen's side, because he nodded.

"I certainly learned a lot from you," the Ranger said with a grin that was looking a little too smug.

"Not maturity, I see," Daegen replied. Then he turned to look at the togorian. It lasted a moment, and ended with him arching his eyebrows. "Or how to dress. Now, is that some sort of a clumsy attempt at flirting on your side or do you just enjoy basking in my superiority so much?"

Well, that seemed like it was going to be a comedy performance alright. Just with a new actor—who to be fair, was actually dressed perfectly sensibly in a black jacket and grey pants which did match his black-striped white fur. He did look a bit drab next to Daegen in his dark reds and rich browns.

Shae jumped and grabbed the branch Xesh was sitting on, so she could pull herself up and sit next to him.

"That's flirting?" Xesh whispered with the expression of someone watching uxibeast mating rituals.

"I wouldn't call it basking," the Ranger said with a grin. "But I think we should discuss this in private. Catch up."

"Yup," Shae whispered back. "Very clumsy flirting of the 'I don't know how to pay compliments' kind."

"I heard that," Daegen said turning to look at her. "Was I not informed that I'm performing for your enjoyment?"

"Aren't you always performing, Master Lok?" Shae replied.

The Ranger opened his mouth, but failed to say anything, and instead covered his mouth with a gloved hand to stifle his laughter.

"I do not perform for children," Daegen replied in his most haughty tone, and put a hand on the Ranger's back. "Come. We should catch up away from easily-amused children." Then, after a split-second, he added, "Or grumpy ones."

"I'm not grumpy," Xesh grumbled. He sounded genuinely offended, too. Then, as they left, he turned to Shae, and asked, "Who was that?"

"I don't know his name, but he's a Ranger," Shae explained, turning to look at him. "They're peace-keepers. Not just on Tython but in the whole system—you have to spend five years as one to become a Master. It's supposed to give you a perspective on how things work outside of Tython. But some people just stay Rangers, and some never join them."

"Will you?" Xesh asked. He seemed to be both curious and worried.

"Maybe. I wasn't planning to go for it until a few more years," Shae said with a smile. "Don't worry, I won't leave you alone with Master Lok."

Daegen's quarters were not that far away from the park, fortunately. He and Acaadi had spent most of the way talking about meaningless things, with a few bits and pieces of news about old acquaintances strewn in between. Perhaps the conversation would have been more informative if the togorian had not been so amused.

In fact, Acaadi was still trying very hard not to laugh. It wasn't working entirely, and the occasional snigger kept escaping him. Daegen bore it with as much stoicism as he could muster, which had never been much. Eye-rolling was so much more satisfying.

"Well, out with it," he said after the tenth fit of sniggering. It would be pity if another one would endanger their drinks and the table would end up getting the tea.

"So how is teaching?" Acaadi asked showing all of his sharp teeth in a bright grin.

"Fine," Daegen replied, refusing to be insulted by an implication that it should be anything else. "How is gallivanting between planets?"

Acaadi stopped chuckling then, his good mood rather effectively dampened "The Council asked me to bring news about the possible invasion to Shikaakwa, since I know the new despot."

"Sounds reasonable, given that the outer system will also be affected by an invasion," Daegen replied. "Who ended up taking Hadiya's place?"

"Volnos Ryo," Acaadi replied and grimaced. "You remember the Hawk? He's his older brother—although fortunately not nearly close to being as nasty a piece of work as the Hawk is. He wasn't happy about having to take up the title of despot, but with his father and older brother murdered, and the Hawk in exile, he was the best candidate."

Daegen nodded. He did recall the Hawk—he had been a handsome one and strong in the Force, but he had also been rather full of himself, always ready to bring up something that would dismiss the experiences of others. At one point, he had tried to correct Daegen on something about neurotransmitters. They hadn't spoken since.

And then, one day, he had been exiled to Bogan. Given that it had happened just as Hadiya had the old despot killed and started her warmongering that had been all he had ever learned.

"So how did the new baron take the news?" he asked.

"Given that Shikaakwa is further from the sun and likely is going to end up invaded before us, he took it remarkably well," Acaadi replied and shrugged "Imagine telling the late, great Hadiya about it—she'd have used it as another reason for why she should be the over-lady of the whole system."

Which was true enough, of course. "It's such a pity about her," Daegen said. "She had a brilliant mind. We could have used her charisma and strategic skills, once the time comes."

Acaadi did not seem to share his mood, given his frown. "If you admire her so much, why didn't you try harder to change her mind? You managed to convince her you're in love with her—if you did that, why couldn't you get her to stand down? No deaths would have been necessary and the cleaning staff would not be cursing your name for the state of her bed-sheets."

So it was going to be that time again, wasn't it? Although, to be fair, he hadn't needed to explain that to Acaadi so far. "Having me as a lover tickled her vanity. A Force-sensitive? One who prefers men? She convinced herself more than I did—she was so amazing, so special that of course I couldn't have resisted her.

"Do you think a person like that could be convinced that they are wrong?" Daegen asked. He certainly had seen no way of doing so.

"I know," Acaadi said after a moment of silence. "And her supporters would have freed her from any exile."

"So what was that all about?" Daegen asked, feeling wary.

Acaadi hesitated. "I'm sorry—I had a run in with some loyalists back on Shikaakwa. It was unpleasant. More so for them than for me, but I guess I'm still not entirely over it. It's been ten years and they still do not realize what a disaster she would have brought on them."

"Come here," Daegen said, as he sat down on his bed. "Stupidity is a depressing subject, and I'd rather do something that is absolutely not depressing now that you're here."

Acaadi grinned, as he rose. "Only if you wear that charming garment your apprentice stole."

"I thought you'd never ask," Daegen answered as he grinned back.