Luke and Mara emerged from the hut that Augwynne had provided them into the Singing Mountain Clan's village. The main square was busy—where the day before had been one for celebration and festivities, clearly today was a day for work. Men moved through the streets with carts, carrying supplies for planting from the village's warehouses out towards the fields. A handful of the men had pieces of technology that would make the tasks easier—that had not been the case the last time Luke had been here—and there was the occasional rumble as a rancor tromped through the village, helping with the most difficult labor.

"The clan mother sent our speeder to Solo's Folly to fetch your friends," Kirana Ti said. She stood tall, gazing out over the work with a look of focused concentration. "It is faster than traveling by rancor, so they should arrive quickly."

Luke looked towards Mara. She still seemed vaguely discomfited—he could feel her lingering annoyance at Kirana Ti's barging into their hut—but that was fading quickly as she contemplated all the reasons that Iella would come out to Dathomir to find her. Iella had become Mara's closest friend and the Pulsar Skate was Mirax Terrik's ship—another personal friend of Mara's. "If every minute mattered, Iella and Mirax wouldn't have landed the Pulsar Skate at the settlement," she said. "They would just have landed the ship right outside the village. Skate is smaller than Mettle and doesn't need as much space to set down." She frowned at Luke. "So whatever it is they're here for isn't that urgent. But that leaves a lot of possibilities."

He nodded. "But if it wasn't urgent at all, they could just have waited until we were back on Coruscant," he pointed out. "So even if each minute doesn't matter, each day might."

"Point," Mara said with a nod.

Kirana Ti looked between them. "Your friends will arrive within the hour," she said. "Let us eat."

The witch led them down a short street to the main village square. The ground was not paved, but it was grassy and firm despite all the feet that trod upon it daily. Four long wooden tables were laid out along each side of the square, and men and women were all eating and laughing together boisterously—the good mood that had been established at the celebration the day before had not abated, it seemed. The people noticed immediately when Luke, Mara, and Kirana Ti entered the square, but they did not stare as much as they had the day before.

Food was already laid out upon the table. Luke took from it unhesitatingly, and Mara did after a moment. She clearly was more skeptical about it than he was—he knew, despite her protestations, that Mara had a taste for fine dining and could be fiercely (but quietly) judgmental—but despite the lack of care for presentation, the village men who had prepared breakfast clearly both knew what they were doing and had a fine palette for using spices. Just as clear was they had begun to incorporate imported spices from offworld into the cuisine, because there were several flavors that Luke didn't remember from his last trip to Dathomir.

"I can taste calarantrum," he murmured to Mara, stirring his dish together before taking another bite. "That's a new import to Dathomir."

Mara shrugged. "Karrde once told me that the galaxy invented trade just to make food taste better." She took a bite, seeming amenable to the taste.

Luke smiled at her. There were days—and those days were often—that the reality of their relationship hit him hard. The morning sun gleamed against her hair and he was struck yet again at just how brilliant she was. How did I get so lucky? he thought, feeling his smile grow.

Her eyes met his, and he watched with a grin as she rolled them at him. Skywalker, you're such a sap.

He snuck his hand to squeeze hers under the table. She hid a smile—he could see her hiding her smile, and feel the way her mood lightened, the way affection swelled in her heart and mind—and turned her hand to briefly squeeze his back. Then, subtly, they disentangled their hands and went back to breakfast as if the exchange had never occurred.

"Tell me of the Jai?" Kirana Ti asked. She was a tall, imposing woman, with obvious physical prowess and he had yet to see her without a spear near to her hand. But Luke also could feel her strength in the Force. She was the first who would join the new Jedi from entirely outside of the traditions of Jedi and Sith, and had her own traditions and practices for using the Force. That meant she had a lot to learn, but also that they had a lot to learn from her.

"In the larger galaxy, we're usually called 'Jedi'," Luke began. "For generations, Jedi served as protectors in the Old Republic. At our height, there were tens of thousands of us at any given time. Many of the records of what the Jedi did and how we did it were destroyed by the Empire, but what we know tells us that the Jedi were negotiators and peacekeepers. Mostly we served as a neutral party for negotiations or the settlement of disputes. But when the Clone Wars broke out, Jedi were forced to become the Old Republic's first line of defense, fighting the Republic's enemies."

"Then the Jedi served much as the witches do," Kirana Ti said, nodding. "We are the warriors for our clans. We use our spells to enhance each clan's prosperity, and we fight off the evils of the fallen Nightsisters." She tilted her head. "Will you take me from my own clan only to have me serve your Republic instead?"

Luke and Mara shared a glance. This remained a point of contention between Luke and Mon Mothma. Some time before Luke had made the deliberate choice to separate his nascent order from the New Republic; Mon Mothma continued to believe this was a mistake. "No," he said. "We are not capable of doing any of the things the Jedi of old did. They had tens of thousands. Even with you among us, Kirana Ti, we do not even have ten." He shook his head. "Our task is simply to learn and share what we know of the Force and let it guide us to help others."

"Do you mean to practice prophecy, as Mother Rell?" Kirana Ti asked uncertainly. "That has never been a particular skill of mine. There are other witches more skilled at augury than I."

Luke smiled at Mara. "Why don't you take this one?" he prompted.

Mara put down her spoon. "Prophecy can be unreliable," she said. "The future is always changing, and a vision does not present what will be, but what could be. But the Force does offer less spectacular guidance. The sensation of pending danger, or an instinct to be in a certain place at a certain time. Luke and I believe that the Force is at its most potent in the moment, guiding what we do now."

"The Living Force," Luke added with a nod.

Kirana Ti seemed curious. "The witches do not usually think about the… Force… in this way," she said after a moment's contemplation. "What about the Dark?"

"The Dark Side is the one foe we must oppose," Luke said seriously. "Those who have fallen are a danger to themselves and to others, like the Nightsisters here on Dathomir. The single obligation that belongs to the Jedi is to fight the Dark—both the Dark we find in ourselves and the Dark we find in others."

"That is why Augwynne chose me," Kirana Ti said, without pride. She actually looked vaguely abashed. "I was not the strongest of us, when last you were here. Compared to Teneniel…" her voice faded and she shook her head. "I was lesser then, in every way. But Augwynne says that I was never tempted by rage. She says that to become a Nightsister on Dathomir is a dire thing, but to become a Nightsister among the stars is something far worse."

Luke thought about the Nightsisters of Dathomir he had fought when last he had visited this world, of what Gethzerion might have done if she had been loosed upon the galaxy, and shuddered. "I think Augwynne is very wise," he said.

There was a commotion from outside the square and people looked off towards the outer fortifications of the village. A minute later the sound of humming repulsorlifts was followed by the arrival of a speeder. A witch was in the driver's seat, comfortably maneuvering the offworld technology, and in the back seat were Iella Wessiri and Mirax Terrik Horn.

Luke could feel Mara's swell of comfortable affection for them as they came into sight. Iella and Mara had worked together, helping the Smugglers' Alliance grow into a fully-functioning intelligence and transportation business with close ties to New Republic Intelligence. Then, when Mara had made the transition from Smugglers' Alliance to Jedi, she had recruited Mirax—the daughter of the well-known smuggler kingpin Booster Terrik and also the wife of one of Luke's novice Jedi, Corran Horn—to replace her. While Luke had sought other Jedi and settled other new arrivals, Iella, Mara, and Mirax had traveled together off and on for some months, had a few adventures, been banned from two different sectors, and come out of the experience with a fire-forged friendship.

When Iella caught sight of them she waggled her fingers in a playful wave and sent them a small smile before she and Mirax disembarked. The two women were both dressed in nondescript spacers' garb with work-worn flight jackets lending them an air of professional credibility, but Mirax's hung a bit looser around her frame than was typical. Luke caught a hint of hesitation from Mara, of old defensive patterns kicking back into place demanding reserve and caution, but then she overcame them and greeted Iella with a friendly embrace.

"Interesting planet you found here," Iella said with a wry grin when the embrace ended. She looked around the village, curiously taking in her surroundings. "I knew there were tame rancors on Dathomir, but seeing them pulling farm equipment still out-did my expectations about the place." She paused, looking at Kirana Ti; the Dathomiri witch was dressed in her native lizard armor and carrying her spear. "Iella Wessiri, New Republic Intelligence," she introduced herself, offering a handshake.

Kirana Ti looked a bit uncertain as she shifted her spear to her left hand to accept the handshake. "Kirana Ti of the Singing Mountain."

"You look good, Mara," said Mirax with a grin.

Mara hugged Mirax, too. "So do you," Mara responded. She stepped back and looked Mirax over. "How far along are you, now?"

Mirax practically glowed with happiness at the question. "Almost three months. Corran keeps trying to get me to take it easy, but he knows better than to press me."

"So what is so important that you had to come out and talk to me in person?" asked Mara, the jovial feel of the reunion dimming to something more serious.

Her seriousness infected both Mirax and Iella, and Luke could feel how their own emotions shifted to concern. Mild concern, rather than acute—Mara had been right, whatever it was that was wrong, it wasn't an immediate problem—but they both were evidently concerned about how Mara might react to whatever they had to say. "Is there somewhere we can talk in private?" asked Iella.

Kirana Ti gestured towards the central structure at one side of the village square, the same structure that Augwynne had used to greet them the day before. "This way."

Once they were inside, Iella Wessiri produced a datapad and handed it to Mara. She took it, turning it on and starting to review the information, but Iella preempted her review with a hand. "We'll brief you, Mara. I'll let Mirax start."

"A week ago, the Smugglers' Alliance picked up intelligence about the Inquisitorius. Specifically, we were told that the Inquisitors have begun an intense search for ancient Force artifacts," the smuggler began. She paced a bit as she talked—Mirax was a bundle of energy and hard to contain, and was often in motion—gesticulating as she did. "This isn't all that unusual. The Inquisitorius has been poking around such things dating back to the first days of the Empire, usually as part of their efforts to destroy anything related to the Jedi—which has made Jedi artifacts quite lucrative, I might add."

"Looking for what?"

"I don't know," said Mirax with a shake of her head. "It could be something else like that amulet of Exar Kun's you destroyed aboard Chimaera, or something altogether different. But there's something else…" her expression grew just a bit worried, and Mara could feel Mirax's matching concern. "Mara, the reports were that the person spearheading the search was the Emperor's Hand."

The blood drained from Mara's face. Not from surprise, because there was a part of Mara that had long expected this. She had been the Emperor's Hand, his servant and agent. She had carried out his will throughout the galaxy, and been his dupe. For her entire life, Palpatine had told her that she was special and unique, that there were no others like her. The idea that Papatine had lied to her about that, as he had about so many other things, was all too plausible. "Do you know anything else?" she asked, hearing the slight hoarseness in her voice.

Luke stepped closer to her and put his hand on the small of her back. Part of her resented that he thought she needed comfort, but she did not reject the comfort that he offered.

"After Mirax first discovered these reports," Iella took over, "NRI started its own investigation. We didn't come up with anything more than she did at first, but in the last week we discovered something new." She nodded at the datapad in Mara's hand. "Our assets within the Empire have been trying to untangle the top of the New Order's hierarchy ever since it proclaimed Halmere as the Emperor-Regent. We know that the new Emperor is a child, supposedly Palpatine's heir, though we have no way of verifying his parentage. We haven't found out much, but we have discovered two titles used to refer to the Emperor's mother: Empress Dowager… and the Emperor's Hand."

Mara's face was pale as she reviewed the datapad. There wasn't much in the intelligence reports, just snippets of conversations overheard, recorded, and transmitted back to NRI. But on no fewer than three occasions, there was a clear reference to a member of Emperor-Regent's inner circle and someone named the "Emperor's Hand."

She sat just as Luke provided her a chair.

To her surprise, her first reaction was anger. Despite the fact that she had known there might be others who claimed the title of Emperor's Hand for themselves, despite the fact that Thrawn had outright told her there had been others, despite the fact that she now knew Palpatine for the manipulative, lying fraud he had been… the revelation that there had been others, the proof of their existence, still made a dark piece of her heart flash with anger. How dare he? How dare he use her the way he had? How dare he…

But Luke was there, with her in her mind, and at her side. And even if he had not been, Mara neither claimed nor desired the title of Emperor's Hand any longer.

She was a Jedi.

She served something greater than Palpatine. Something that she knew would never lie to her. She served the Force, and she served it alongside Luke, who had taught her to trust and love.

The others were looking at her with expressions ranging from compassionate to wary—all except Kirana Ti, who just looked confused. Mara took a deep breath and let it out again, and with it she released the anger that had threatened her Jedi calm, and the dark piece of her heart was still once more. "I had wondered if anyone would emerge and claim the title," she said.

Iella's pinched expression relaxed just a bit. Mara offered her a thin, reassuring smile, and the NRI agent's expression relaxed a bit more. "We don't know anything else," Iella explained. "Only that someone using the title has been giving instructions at the highest levels of the New Order."

"What is an Emperor's Hand?" asked Kirana Ti.

"I was the Emperor's Hand—or, an Emperor's Hand—because I had a gift." Mara grimaced. "No, that's not right. I was told I was the Emperor's Hand because I had a gift—specifically, the gift of being able to communicate telepathically with Palpatine across any distance. We're not sure if I was capable of that because of something unique to my own talents, though I do seem to have a talent for telepathy, or if it was something that Palpatine did to me that he could have replicated with another."

"So you think this other Emperor's Hand had the same talent?"

Mara snorted. "The only thing I know for sure is that I was an Emperor's Hand because Palpatine made me one. Maybe this other Hand also served him, but was special in a different way that also made her useful. Or maybe Palpatine had dozens of us running around all over his Empire."

"Do you think there were dozens of Hands?" asked Iella seriously.

"No," Mara said bluntly. "No, at least some of the people in the Palace knew I was Palpatine's Hand. Isard, for instance. And if there had been many Hands, I doubt it would have taken so long for one other than me to emerge. They would have been scattered around, serving all the Warlords the way the Inquisitors did." She shook her head. "No, we must have been few in number, and I imagine each of us served some particular role for him."

"Well, New Republic Intelligence wants you back on Coruscant," said Iella apologetically. "General Cracken wants to interview you again."

Mara blanched. "Again?" she sighed, leaning back in her chair.

"Is that really necessary?" asked Luke. Mara could hear the defensiveness—and protectiveness—in his voice, the way he moved almost to put himself between Mara and their friends, as if to shield her from the message. It wasn't necessary and there was a part of Mara that recoiled in annoyance at Luke not letting her fight her own battles. The rest of her just loved him.

"It's not going to be anything invasive—"

"It's alright," Mara cut Iella off with a sigh, then placed her hands back on her lap. "It's alright. Of course they want to ask me questions. They probably want me to go through my memory and think of anyone I would see at the palace often who might have been another Hand in disguise. It's nothing I'm not going to do anyway." She looked at Kirana Ti. "Though this does mean we'll be leaving Dathomir earlier than we expected."

The witch nodded, her expression firm. "When I agreed to learn the ways of the Jai, I agreed to share their burdens as well. I will come."

Mirax gave the warrior witch an appraising look. "We're going to have to find you something to wear that will blend in better," Mirax said with a grin, gesturing at Kirana Ti's matte green lizardskin armor and the leathers below. "You'll stick out traveling around Coruscant dressed in that."

Kirana Ti looked defensive. "This is the armor and garb of my people…"

Mara let the conversation fade out. She felt Luke beside her, his hand shifting to rest comfortingly on her leg, and closed her eyes. An Emperor's Hand. Mara wondered if this Hand, like her, had been taken as a child and raised for the Emperor's service, or if—like so many of the Inquisitors—they had been recruited as a grown adult. The fact that the Hand remained in Imperial service suggested that they, unlike Mara, had not abandoned the Empire after the Emperor's death. But at the same time, it had been a long time since Endor… where had the Hand been for all this time? What had they been doing?

Which of Palpatine's secrets had the Hand kept when their master had been sent to his grave?

They made the trip back to Tempered Mettle and were in the air less than two hours later. The witches had marked their departure with a spell intended to strengthen them during a long journey and a gift-basket of traveling food which Luke had been too polite to decline. Then they'd settled Iella into her normal room aboard Tempered Mettle and got Kirana Ti situated. The witch had done her best to be strong and undaunted, but space clearly left her dizzy and uncertain, and the transition into hyperspace had made her more nauseous than most. Miserable, she'd retreated into her cabin.

Luke had faith she'd adapt, and under other circumstances would have spent the time with her, helping her meditate and find her calm, but Mara was even more rattled than Kirana Ti. She tried not to show it, but he knew that Mara had long dreaded the possibility of other Emperor's Hands and that she needed his support and reassurance and love.

So he offered it to her, unreservedly. She didn't speak—he could feel her mind, busy, ticking away at all the possibilities, smoldering anger at Palpatine lingering underneath it all—but she did cuddle into his chest as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. Her hands rested atop his, stroking his fingers gently as she nestled in against him. She was vulnerable, she hated feeling vulnerable, and in her past that vulnerability was something she would have faced and defeated alone, but she was no longer alone. She had him.

Together, Mara. Always.

She exhaled slowly. "I doubt this Emperor is really Palpatine's heir," she said, snuggling in against him. "Palpatine always wanted to give off the illusion of physical strength despite how infirm he appeared, but it was just an illusion." She sighed and shrugged. "Unless that was a lie for my benefit as well. I don't know." She squeezed his hand. "But true or not, within the Empire being Palpatine's heir is a powerful claim to Imperial authority, a tool Halmere and an Emperor's Hand could use to convince the Moffs to fall in line, and ensuring the Empire—what's left of it—will fight to the last."

"That makes sense," Luke mumbled against the back of her neck, clearly not wanting to discuss it further just now.

Mara, however, was far too practical to let her distaste disrupt her analysis. "If the new Emperor's mother is a former Emperor's Hand, she likely knows many of Palpatine's secrets, as I do. I'd expect that we know different secrets, though… that Palpatine used me for some tasks and her for other tasks. And I would expect that she was more secret than I was, too; part of my job was being publicly visible, at least to some people, some of the time, but I never got wind of a second Emperor's Hand, and the NRI reports on the Emperor's Hand were all references to me."

"You read NRI's reports on you?" Luke asked.

"I asked Madine for them. I was curious." She stilled for a second, then put one of her arms around his back. "I hate this," she confided softly. "I hate the reminder that Palpatine used me. I hate the reminder that we still haven't eliminated every bit of his legacy. I hate wondering what Palpatine's other Hands might have done, and what dangerous secrets they might know."

"Mara?"

"Hmm?"

"You think too much."

That made her laugh and the sound lightened Luke's heart. He felt her close her eyes, deliberately immersing himself in Jedi meditations meant to relieve tension and stress. He felt her disquiet fade, felt her attention turn fully upon him. He felt their consciousnesses mingle, the serenity that the Force offered them—that they offered one another—descend upon them, a brief gift from the galaxy. "So what did you think of Dathomir?" Luke murmured, enjoying the languid, shared sense of calm.

Mara turned onto her side to face him. "I'm getting soft. I'm not sure I could survive on instant caf for longer than a few days anymore."

"The witches seemed to like you."

She shrugged. "I liked them too, for the most part. Theirs is an interesting Force tradition and it will take some time to see what we can take from their spells to enhance our own understanding of it." There was an almost predatory gleam in her green eyes…. "As for all their men being slaves to the whims of their women, that was mildly intriguing, but then I thought… how is that any different from the moonstruck Farmboy I already have?"

That, and her self-satisfied smirk, tore an astonished laugh from Luke. Yes, he thought, maybe I started it, but I'm still going to have to pay her back for that little quip.

Mara arched her eyebrow at him, challenging. I look forward to seeing you try, Farmboy.