Sacrifice

"I know. I know."

"It's Lumiya."

"We don't know that."

"You're reasonable to the last, aren't you, Uncle Luke?"

"None of us is thinking straight at the moment." He didn't need Jaina going off on an impulsive quest for vengeance. He had to focus—somehow. "Why don't you call . . . Zekk? Jag?" He hadn't a clue which of the two men she'd want to turn to now. "They need to know, too."

Jaina brushed the tip of her nose discreetly with the back of her wrist, and seemed to take an unnaturally fixed interest in the ornate carvings on a chair leg nearby. "I'll inform them, but I'm done with all that personal stuff. I'm going to concentrate on one thing, and that's making Lumiya pay. If I'm supposed to be the Sword of the Jedi, then it's time I took it seriously, and there's nothing that's worth my time more than this."

The duty captain of the guard came in later with a datapad on a bronzium platter and held it out to Luke. When he hesitated, Jaina took it and pored over it. The expression of I-told-you-so on her face told Luke that it wasn't going to be comfortable news.

"You want the short version, Uncle Luke?"

"Up to you."

"Mara shows up after Jacen, in Five-Alpha, and asks Ops to keep an eye out for an orange spherical ship with cruciform masts, because our new Chief of State might be under threat."

Luke always tried not to be swayed by circumstantial evidence, because two and two frequently proved to add up to anything but four. But he didn't know if they'd find any other evidence. He didn't know if they'd ever find Mara's body—or even if she'd left mortal remains. He couldn't ignore this.