Sacrifice

he'd been digging. Maybe he'd acted out that nightmare.

He bounced on his heels a few times to see what happened. There was no pain. He didn't even feel that nausea that had been so routine, he'd forgotten what it felt like to wake up without it.

Apart from running a temperature, he felt better than he had in days —months, in fact. He was alive. He wouldn't believe he was in the clear until the nerf-doctor came back with the test results, but he knew something fundamental had changed.

So you didn't poison me, Jaing.

He went to the refresher to shower, if a torrent of cold water from an overhead cistern could be called that, and shaved with an ancient fixed blade that nicked his chin. Where the Sarlacc's acid hadn't left smooth, glossy scar tissue, there was still stubble to tackle, and these days most of it was pure white and hard to see. He shaved twice a day anyway. These were the unguarded, naked times when he allowed himself to think of Ailyn and other painful things, because he had to look himself in the eye, and he wasn't a liar. Lying wasn't just bad; it was stupid.

Lying to yourself was the most stupid thing of all.

And now that he wasn't so preoccupied with his own death, he could think about the deaths of others. There was a lot of unfinished business.

He'd start with Ailyn.

She was a stranger when I opened that body bag. A middle-aged woman. Not lovely like her mother. Old before her time, exhausted, dead.

And still my baby, my little girl. I don't care if you tried to kill me.

I really don't.

Killing was his trade. He didn't enjoy it, and he didn't dread it.