[Through the clouds they work best,] Ralrra said. [The clouds spread the light. A kroyie will see it from great distances and come.]
As he spoke, the double wedge of birds banked sharply, climbing toward the clouds overhead and the lights playing against them. [Even so, you see. Tonight we shall perhaps dine on one of them.]
“I’d like that,” she said. “I remember Chewie saying once that they were delicious.”
[Then we must return to the village,] Ralrra said, touching the liftcar’s control. With a creak of the cable, it started upward. [We had hoped to shelterr you in one of the morre luxurious homes,] he commented as they started upward. [But Chewbacca would not allow it.]
He gestured, and for the first time Leia noticed the homes built directly into the tree beside them. Some of them were multistoried and quite elaborate; all of them seemed to open up directly onto empty space. “Chewbacca understands my preferences,” she told Ralrra, suppressing a shiver. “I was wondering why the liftcar went this far down past the village proper.”
[The liftcarr is used mainly forr cargo transportation orr the ill,] Ralrra said. [Most Wookiees preferr to climb the trees naturally.]
He held out a hand to her, palm up; and as the muscles under the skin and fur flexed, a set of wickedly curved claws slid into sight from hidden fingertip sheaths.10
Leia swallowed hard. “I didn’t realize Wookiees had claws like those,” she said. “Though I suppose I should have. You are arboreal, after all.”
[To live among trees without them would be impossible,] Ralrra agreed. The claws retracted again, and the Wookiee waved the hand upward. [Even vine travel would be difficult without them.]
“Vines?” Leia echoed, frowning up through the liftcar’s transparent roof. She hadn’t noticed any vines on the trees earlier, and didn’t really see any now. Her eyes fell on the cable running from the liftcar up into the leaves and branches above …
The dark green cable.
“That cable?” she asked carefully, nodding toward it. “That’s a vine?”
[It a kshyy vine is,] he assured her. [Do not worry about its strength. It is strongerr than composite cable material, and cannot even by blasterrs be cut. Too, it is self-repairing.]
“I see,” Leia said, staring at the vine and fighting hard against the sudden sense of panic. She’d flown all around the galaxy in hundreds of different types of airspeeders and spaceships without the slightest twinge of acrophobia, but this hanging out on the edge of nowhere without a solid powered cockpit around her was something else entirely.11 The warm sense of security she’d been feeling at being on Kashyyyk was starting to evaporate. “Have the vines ever broken?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
[In the past, it sometimes happened,] Ralrra said. [Various parasites and fungi, if unchecked, can erode them. Now, we employ safeguards which ourr ancestorrs did not have. Liftcarrs such as this one contain emergency repulsorlift systems.]
“Ah,” Leia said, the momentary discomfort easing as she once again found herself feeling like a raw and not very bright diplomatic beginner. It was easy to forget that, despite their somewhat quaint-looking arboreal villages and their own animalistic appearance, Wookiees generally were quite at home with high technology.
The liftcar rose above the level of the village floor. Chewbacca and Salporin were standing there waiting for them, the former fingering his bowcaster and giving the little twitches that Leia had learned to associate with impatience. Ralrra brought them to a stop at the level of the wide exit ramp and opened the door, Salporin stepping forward as he did so to offer Leia his hand in assistance.
[We have made arrangements forr you and Chewbacca to stay at Salporin’s home,] Ralrra said as they stepped out onto relatively solid ground again. [It is not farr. Therre arre transports available, if you wish.]
Leia looked out across the nearest parts of the village. She wanted very much to walk, to get out among the people and start getting the feel of the place. But after all the effort they’d put into sneaking her onto Kashyyyk in the first place, parading herself in front of the whole population would probably not be the smartest thing to do. “A transport would probably be best,” she told Ralrra.
Chewbacca growled something as they came up to him. [She wished to see the village’s structurre,] Ralrra told him. [We arre now ready to go.]
Chewbacca gave another growl of displeasure, but returned his bowcaster to his shoulder and strode off without further comment toward a repulsor sled parked at the side of the road perhaps twenty meters away. Ralrra and Leia followed, with Salporin bringing up the rear. The houses and other buildings began right at the edge of the matted branches, Leia had already noted, without anything more substantial than a few twisted kshyy vines between them and empty space. Ralrra had implied that the homes clinging to the trees themselves were the more prestigious ones; perhaps those here at the edge belonged to the upper middle class. Idly, she looked at the nearest of them, glancing into the windows as they passed. A face moved into view in the shadows behind one of them, catching her eye—
“Chewie!” she gasped. Even as her hand darted for her blaster the face vanished. But there was no mistaking those bulging eyes and protruding jaw and steel-gray skin.
Chewbacca was at her side in an instant, bowcaster in hand. “One of those creatures who attacked us on Bimmisaari is in there,” she told him, reaching out with all the Jedi sense she could muster. Nothing. “At that window,” she added, pointing with her blaster. “He was right there.”
Chewbacca barked an order, sliding his massive bulk between Leia and the house and easing her slowly backward, his bowcaster weaving back and forth across the structure in a covering pattern. Ralrra and Salporin were already at the house, each carrying a pair of wicked-looking knives they’d pulled from somewhere. They took up flanking positions beside the front door; and with a brilliant flash from his bowcaster, Chewbacca shot the door in.
From somewhere in toward the center of the village someone roared—a long, ululating Wookiee howl of anger or alarm that seemed to echo from the buildings and massive trees. Even before Ralrra and Salporin had disappeared into the house the howl was being taken up by other voices, rising in number and volume until it seemed as if half the village had joined in. Leia found herself pressing against Chewbacca’s hairy back, wincing at the sheer ferocity in that call and flashing back to the Bimmisaari marketplace reacting to her jewelry theft.
Except that these weren’t funny little yellow-clad Bimms. They were giant, violently strong Wookiees.
A large crowd had begun to form by the time Ralrra and Salporin emerged from the house—a crowd that Chewbacca paid no more attention to than he had the howling as he kept his eyes and bowcaster trained on the house. The other two Wookiees also ignored the crowd, disappearing around opposite sides of the house. They reappeared seconds later, their manner that of hunters who’d come up dry.
“He was there,” Leia insisted as they returned to where she and Chewbacca stood. “I saw him.”
[That may be true,] Ralrra said, slipping his knives back into hidden sheaths behind his baldric. Salporin, his attention still back on the house, kept his own knives ready. [But we found no trace of anyone.]
Leia bit at her lip, eyes flicking across the area. There were no other houses near enough for the alien to have crossed to without her and Chewbacca seeing him. No cover of any sort, for that matter, on this side of the house. On the other side, there was nothing but the edge of the village.