More than anyone else in Karrde’s organization, she was equipped to survive outside the confines of his encampment. So why was she trying so hard to get back there?
It wasn’t for Karrde’s sake—that much she was sure of. All that he’d done for her—her job, her position, her promotions—she’d more than repaid with hard work and good service. She didn’t owe him anything, any more than he owed her. Whatever the story was he’d concocted this afternoon to explain the Skipray chase to Thrawn, it would have been designed to protect his own neck, not hers; and if he saw that the Grand Admiral wasn’t buying it, he was at perfect liberty to pull his group off Myrkr tonight and disappear down one of the other ratholes he had scattered throughout the galaxy.
Except that he wouldn’t. He would sit there, sending out search party after search party, and wait for Mara to come out of the forest. Even if she never did.
Even if by doing so he overstayed Thrawn’s patience.
Mara clenched her teeth, the unpleasant image of Karrde pinned against a cell wall by an interrogation droid dancing in front of her eyes. Because she knew Thrawn—knew the Grand Admiral’s tenacity and the limits of his patience both. He would wait and watch, or set someone to do it for him, and follow through on Karrde’s story.
And if neither she nor Skywalker ever reappeared from the forest, he would almost certainly jump to the wrong conclusion. At which point he would take Karrde in for a professional Imperial interrogation, and eventually would find out who the escaping prisoner had been.
And then he’d have Karrde put to death.
Across from her, the droid’s dome rotated a few degrees and it gave a quietly insistent gurgle. “I think Artoo’s picked up something,” Skywalker said, hiking himself up on his elbows.
“No kidding,” Mara said. She picked up her glow rod, pointed it at the shadow she’d already seen moving stealthily toward them, and flicked it on.
A vornskr stood framed in the circle of light, its front claws dug into the ground, its whip tail pointed stiffly back and waving slowly up and down. It paid no attention to the light, but continued moving slowly toward Skywalker.
Mara let it get another two paces, then shot it neatly through the head.
The beast collapsed to the ground, its tail giving one last spasmodic twitch before doing likewise. Mara gave the rest of the area a quick sweep with the glow rod, then flicked it off. “Awfully good thing we have your droid’s sensors along,” she said sarcastically into the relative darkness.
“Well, I wouldn’t have known there was any danger without him,” Skywalker came back wryly. “Thank you.”
“Forget it,” she grunted.
There was a short silence. “Are Karrde’s pet vornskrs a different species?” Skywalker asked. “Or did he have their tails removed?”
Mara peered across the gloom at him, impressed in spite of herself. Most men staring down a vornskr’s gullet wouldn’t have noticed a detail like that. “The latter,” she told him. “They use those tails as whips—pretty painful, and there’s a mild poison in them, too. At first it was just that Karrde didn’t want his people walking around with whip welts all over them; we found out later that removing the tails also kills a lot of their normal hunting aggression.”
“They seemed pretty domestic,” he agreed. “Even friendly.”
Only they hadn’t been friendly to Skywalker, she remembered. And here, the vornskr had ignored her and gone directly for him. Coincidence? “They are,” she said aloud. “He’s thought occasionally about offering them for sale as guard animals. Never gotten around to exploring the potential market.”
“Well, you can tell him I’d be glad to serve as a reference,” Skywalker said dryly. “Having looked a vornskr square in the teeth, I can tell you it’s not something the average intruder would like to do twice.”
Her lip twisted. “Get used to it,” she advised him. “It’s a long way to the edge of the forest.”
“I know.” Skywalker lay back down again. “Fortunately, you seem to be an excellent shot.”
He fell silent. Getting ready to sleep … and probably assuming she was going to do the same.
Wish away, she thought sardonically at him. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the survival kit’s tube of stimpills. A steady stream of the things could ruin one’s health in short order, but going to sleep five meters away from an enemy would ruin it a lot faster.
She paused, tube in hand, and frowned at Skywalker. At his closed eyes and calm, apparently totally unworried face. Which seemed strange, because if anyone had ever had reason to be worried, it was he. Stripped of all his vaunted Jedi powers by a planetful of ysalamiri, trapped in a forest on a world whose name and location he didn’t even know, with her, the Imperials, and the vornskrs lining up for the privilege of killing him—he should by rights be wide-eyed with pumping adrenaline by now.
Maybe he was just faking it, hoping she would lower her guard. It was probably something she would try, under reversed circumstances.
But then, maybe there was more to him than met the eye. More than just a family name, a political position, and a bag of Jedi tricks.
Her mouth tightened, and she ran her fingers along the side of the lightsaber hanging from her belt. Yes, of course there was more there. Whatever had happened at the end—at that terrible, confused, life-destroying end—it hadn’t been his Jedi tricks that had saved him. It had been something else. Something she would make sure to find out from him before his own end came.
She thumbed a stimpill from the tube and swallowed it, a fresh determination surging through her as she did so. No, the vornskrs weren’t going to get Luke Skywalker. And neither were the Imperials. When the time came, she would kill him herself. It was her right, and her privilege, and her duty.
Shifting to a more comfortable position against her tree, she settled in to wait out the night.
The nighttime sounds of the forest came faintly from the distance, mixed in with the faint sounds of civilization from the building at his back. Karrde sipped at his cup, gazing into the darkness, feeling fatigue tugging at him as he’d seldom felt it before.
In a single day, his whole life had just been turned over.
Beside him, Drang raised his head and turned it to the right. “Company?” Karrde asked him, looking in that direction. A shadowy figure, hardly visible in the starlight, was moving toward him. “Karrde?” Aves’s voice called softly.
“Over here,” Karrde told him. “Go get a chair and join me.”
“This is okay,” Aves said, coming over beside him and sitting down cross-legged on the ground. “I’ve got to get back to Central pretty soon, anyway.”
“The mystery message?”
“Yeah. What in the worlds was Mara thinking of?”
“I don’t know,” Karrde admitted. “Something clever, though.”
“Probably,” Aves conceded. “I just hope we’re going to be clever enough to decrypt it.”
Karrde nodded. “Did Solo and Calrissian get bedded down all right?”
“They went back to their ship,” Aves said, his voice scowling. “I don’t think they trust us.”
“Under the circumstances, you can hardly blame them.” Karrde reached down to scratch Drang’s head. “Maybe pulling Skywalker’s computer logs tomorrow morning will help convince them we’re on their side.”
“Yeah. Are we?”