At which point the door clicked and Kyakhta entered the room.

To say that the senior Alwari was startled by the sight that greeted his bulging eyes was an understatement worthy of a senior tax collector. The sight of the Jedi Padawan unbound was disquieting enough. The sight of her slumped slightly in his partner"s arms was a spectacle that const.i.tuted an irresolvable conundrum. If Bulgan did not with his first utterance say exactly the right thing, Kyakhta was ready to bolt back outside and lock them both back in.

Fortunately, the heretofore guileless Bulgan was now in a cerebral position to do so.

"She fixed me," he informed his companion simply and straightforwardly, tapping the side of his head. "Fixed me here. She can fix you, too."

"No promises," Barriss warned them both.

"Fix what?" Kyakhta had already taken a wary step backward. "I not broken. What do you mean, fix me?"

"Up here." Once more, the mentally mended Bulgan touched hand to head. "I have no more pain in my mind. I know you suffer from the same syndrome, my good friend. Let her work her Jedi healing on you."

Another step back. The door was within reach. Easy to dart back out into the hallway, slam the barrier shut, and seal the lock. But-what had happened to Bulgan in his absence? Kyakhta wondered. He hadn"t been gone very long. Only a few minutes, and now his good, honest, dumb companion in mutual exile and disgrace was talking like an infernal city councilor!

No, he corrected himself. Not like a councilor.

Like a true Alwari nomad: independent, confident, and free.

Three fingers hovered in the vicinity of the door. The Jedi made no move to stop him, though he sensed she might have done so. "What this nonsense about "Jedi healing"?"

"She worked it on me. Fixed my head, my mind. It doesn"t hurt anymore, Kyakhta! I can think clearly again. My thoughts haven"t been this free since I was a child and was thrown from that suubatar." His voice lowered. "That was the same throw, the bad dismount, that broke my back and stole my eye-and damaged my mind."

"But I..." Kyakhta was at a loss for words. In the face of the evidence, in the face of his friend"s face, he was forced to accept a seemingly inconceivable reality.

There was another reality that would have to be faced, and quickly.

Unbound hands outstretched, the Jedi was advancing slowly toward him.

"Let me help you, Kyakhta. I give you the same promise I made to Bulgan.

Whether I can help you or not, I am still your prisoner."

That was true, Kyakhta realized. Dissolved bonds notwith standing, he and his friend were still the ones in control here. Only they knew the way out of the building in which the cell was located. Only they could get her past the outer guards and security checkpoints. Of course, a Jedi Knight would probably make short work of such minor obstacles, but a Padawan still in training . . .

Unarguably, she had worked a marvel with Bulgan. Could she take away the similar pain that had afflicted him all his adult life; remove the regular, pounding waves of agony that daily stabbed through his brain?

Wasn"t it worth, if nothing else, a try?

"Go ahead," he told her, adding by way of warning, "if this a trick, the bossban may not receive you undamaged."

Paying no attention to the threat, she reached out and up to put her hands on the sides of his head and draw it toward her. Her fingers were cool against his skull, he realized, and there were too many of them, but otherwise her touch was inoffensive. Calming, even.

Several moments later, he was blinking back at her with the same awed realization that had not long before nearly overcome his companion.

Unlike Bulgan, he did not throw his arms wildly in the air and dance small circles. Instead, he bowed. As performed by an Ansionian, it was a particularly graceful and supple gesture.

"I owe you my sanity, Padawan. For had you not interceded, I see surely now that the pain I have been living with would have led all too soon to utter madness, and eventually to death." Turning from her, he embraced his old companion-in-despair, long arms wrapping around Bulgan"s broad shoulders, maned and bald head bobbing together in ardent, mutual exultation.

The joyous sight of the two Ansionians she had been able to heal did Barriss"s heart good-but it was not getting her out of this place, or restoring her to her friends. "My name is Barriss Offee, my Master is the Jedi Luminara Unduli, and the sooner we find them, the better it will be for me and the safer, I suspect, it will be for you. For surely your employer will not be pleased to learn of the unexpected turn you have done him."

"Bossban Soergg!" Bulgan exclaimed. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he looked askance at his companion. But Kyakhta was not upset at the unforced revelation.

"It doesn"t matter now, Bulgan. I"ve just finished relaying news of our success to his headquarters. Someone else will have to inform him of this change in plans. We"ve cast our lot in with this female. Now she is going to have to deliver us from Soergg, instead of us delivering her to him."

He eyed the Jedi expectantly. "Can you do that? We throw ourselves under your protection, without which we two who stand now clanless before you will surely be food for marauding shanhs before tomorrow"s first light."

"Get me out of here in one piece," she a.s.sured them with a grim smile, "and I can promise you the grat.i.tude of two Jedi Knights and a fellow Padawan-in addition to my own personal indebtedness." She started purposefully for the open doorway. "That"s enough rea.s.surance for almost anyone in the galaxy."

"Strange," Bulgan murmured as he followed his companion and their former captive toward the exit, "how clear thinking im proves one"s outlook on life. For the first time in a long, long while I begin to see myself as a person again, instead of a lowly source of jokes and cruel humor."

"I never saw you that way, my friend," Kyakhta called softly back to him as they quietly mounted the spiral staircase.

"Yes, you did," Bulgan shot back, "but I don"t blame you for it. It wasn"t your fault. It was all in the mind."

"Most cheap invective is." Feeling slightly naked without her service belt, Barriss followed Kyakhta upward. "Where is my gear?"

"In the storeroom. We"ll get it for you before we leave."

There was one guard in the room. The Dorun sat in a deeply indented chair designed to accommodate his commodious back side. In his twinned tentacles, he held an oval reader. Both stalk-mounted oculars swiveled in Kyakhta"s direction as the latter emerged from the stairwell.

"How beeth the prisoner?"

Kyakhta shrugged boredly as Bulgan emerged behind him. Barriss kept out of sight farther down in the stairwell. "Quiet. An unusual state of affairs, or so I have been told, for a humanoid female."

"Resignedeth to her fate by now, I wager." The Dorun re turned to his viewing. Neither of his independently swiveling eyes noticed Bulgan picking up an empty chair. Both swiveling oculars dimmed when the powerful Alwari brought it down on the guard"s head.

"Quickly now!" Entering a combination into a keypad, Kyakhta reached into the drawer that popped open in response and withdrew Barriss"s service belt. Her lightsaber, she was re lieved to note, was still fastened in place. As she was slipping the belt around her middle, she noticed Kyakhta fingering a small device secured at his own waist.

"What"s that?"

"We have to call in our position at regular intervals," the Alwari explained dolefully, "or we"ll die." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Bossban Soergg had explosive devices placed in our necks to ensure our compliance with his orders."

Barriss made what was, for a Padawan, a rude noise. "Typical of a Hutt.

We certainly can"t let him track us. Come, let me see."

Obediently, Kyakhta and Bulgan approached. Taking a scanner from her belt, she pa.s.sed it carefully over the indicated spot on the back of Kyakhta"s neck. It wasn"t hard to find the inserted device. There was a perceptible b.u.mp under the skin just to the right of his mane.

Checking the scanner"s reading, she entered a sequence and pa.s.sed the compact instrument a second time over the Alwari"s neck, then repeated the procedure with Bulgan. Satisfied, she headed cautiously for the outer door.

Kyakhta followed, once more rubbing his fingers over the raised place.

"The explosive is still there." Cleansed mind or not, he was still understandably uneasy at its presence.

Barriss studied the street outside. From everything she could see, traffic appeared normal. "I could cut them out, but I"d rather have it done neatly, and I don"t have the tools with me. So I just deactivated them. They"re harmless now. But we"d do well to move fast. Possibly the process of my deactivating them will result in notification of whoever is monitoring you for your boss-ban that something has gone wrong. I a.s.sume a rapid response will be forthcoming."

"Let"s go, then." Pushing past her, Bulgan opened the door and stepped unflinchingly out onto the street. Kyakhta and their former prisoner followed.

"Central square, I think. The shop where you found me." Barriss followed Kyakhta"s lead. "In looking for me, my companions will split up and begin their search from there." She fondled the closed-band comlink on her belt. "As soon as we"re a safe distance away from here, I"ll notify them of our destination, course, and that I"m okay." She smiled. "And of your change of heart, as well."

"Better to say change of mind." Everything that was previ ously familiar to him, Bulgan was now seeing out of new eyes. Harmless it might now be, having been rendered so by the Padawan, but the lethal packet embedded in his neck still itched. "Get rid of this as soon as possible."

"We will," Barriss a.s.sured him as they turned a corner onto a much busier thoroughfare. The presence of so many sentients around them eased her tension. "Until then, we"ll simply tell anyone we meet to be careful what they say to you, because you happen to have an explosive personality."

Prior to her discerning ministrations, Bulgan would have simply gaped dumbly at this remark. Now, both he and his friend Kyakhta had the pleasure of laughing at the joke.

It was the kind of pleasure that had been all too long de nied them.

Sooner or later, a distraught Ogomoor felt, Bossban Soergg was going to grow tired of listening to his majordomo deliver bad news. When that happened, Ogomoor knew he had better be ready to run-or at least be standing well out of range of the Hutt"s ma.s.sive, powerful tail.

"Gone." Soergg lay on the resting divan in his sleeping quar ters. He had been in the midst of his afternoon nap when Ogo moor, driven by urgency, had felt duty-bound to wake him. "Vanished. And those two morons with her."

"We do not know that they are with her, Great One. Only that she is missing, and so are they. The guard says he was at tacked from behind, in all likelihood by one of them. Why would they suddenly decide to go with her?"

"Who knows?" The Hutt grunted as he slouched his sagging corpus off the divan and onto the floor. Immediately, a pair of tiny geril servants commenced the odious task of grooming the sluglike shape. Soergg ignored them as he scowled down at his subordinate. "I smell the stink of Jedi wiles behind this misfortune."

"The devices that were supposed to ensure the loyalty of the two abductors? ..." Ogomoor left the question hanging.

"Pagh! I activated those as soon as you told me what had happened. Either those imbeciles are now headless, or else more Jedi sleight of hand is at work in this." As the gerils clung to his ma.s.sive body, continuing their grooming without interruption, Soergg lumbered forward. Exhibiting courage he did not feel, Ogomoor held his ground. His own head, he knew, remained at tached to his shoulders only because of his continuing value to the Hutt.

"Put out the word to every lowlife, criminal, lawbreaker, and felon in Cuipernam. A thousand Republic credits to anyone who brings the accursed Padawan back to me alive, or the head of a dead Jedi. Hurry! We may still have a chance if she can be intercepted before she can rejoin her companions."

"I hear and obey, Bossban." Too relieved at the dismissal to fear a shot in the back, Ogomoor whirled and fled unceremoni ously from the bedroom, his comlink already out and activated.

Behind him, the gerils reflexively sealed their nostrils as their misshapen employer voided his disgust in an exceptionally ghastly and malodorous manner.

What Ogomoor did not know was that his intimidating employer now had to report the failure to one far more important than his Huttish self.

Soergg did not fear that individual-but he respected him. Almost as much as he respected the credits being paid into his own local account in the service of furthering the cause of Ansionian secession.

Who was behind the one making the payments? he often wondered. Not that it really mattered. It was the money, the credits, that were important.

The Hutts had little interest in politics except insofar as these served their immediate interests. It mattered not at all to Soergg whether Ansion and the worlds to which it was tied via treaties and pacts remained within the Republic or pulled out.

Or even if something else, as yet unseen and unvoiced, arose to take its place.

6.

No one was surprised when Luminara was the first of the anxious searchers to find Barriss and her new allies. They met in the middle of a secondary marketplace. The two Alwari looked on with interest as Master and Padawan embraced unashamedly. Intent on the day-to-day grind of business, everyone else, shoppers and merchants alike, ignored them.

"And who might these two stalwart-looking locals be?" Lumi nara eyed the Alwari with interest. Kyakhta felt Jedi eyes burning into his own. For no reason at all, he began to shuffle his feet.

"My kidnappers, Master." At the look on Luminara"s face, Barriss had to laugh. "Don"t gauge them too harshly. Both suffered from cerebral infirmities. In return for my curing them, they helped me escape."

"A temporary escape, I"m obliged to remind you, Barriss," Bulgan said.

Straining to see over the heads of vendors and customers alike, he was scanning the mult.i.tude for signs of imminent a.s.sault. "Even as you enjoy this happy moment, I"d wager my last good credit that Bossban Soergg is sending a host of cutthroats in pursuit of us all."

"Then we must hasten to leave." Pulling a comlink from her belt, Luminara addressed it briefly, listened to a reply, spoke again, and replaced it.

"Obi-Wan and Anakin are hurrying to join us." She pointed. "We"ll gather by the fountain on the far side of this square." Putting an arm around her Padawan"s shoulders, she guided Barriss in that direction.

"I"m glad you"ve had a chance in the field to use your skill in the healing arts. In the future, I wish you would try to find practice subjects other than kidnappers. I should be upset with you for letting your guard down so badly, but I"m too happy to see you safe and returned to us to be angry."

They had to wait only a short while on the steps of the lorqual fountain before a swirl of robes in the crowd marked Obi-Wan"s arrival. Anakin was not far behind him. Both greeted Barriss in the traditional Jedi fashion: ceremonial, yet affectionate.

Bulgan observed the proceedings in silence. Only when the formalities had been concluded did he venture to inquire, while swatting away a hovering green-winged pekz, "What are you going to do now?"

Luminara turned to him. "We have secured an agreement with the Unity of Community to make peace with the nomads, if the Al-wari will consent to share a percentage of their traditional lands with the city folk. In return, the city folk will agree to provide the Alwari with all manner of advanced goods and services, and will not try to intrude on or otherwise alter the time-honored Alwari way of life. Each will respect the other and the Senate will stay, insofar as it is possible for bureaucrats to do so, out of Ansionian affairs. In return, An-sion will remain within the Republic, which will ensure its economic and political independence from the Commerce Guild. Among others." Her tone darkened. "Ansion will not become another Naboo."

Kyakhta scratched at the bare skin of his neck, careful not to irritate the explosive still buried there. "Sounds complicated to me."

"So it is," Obi-Wan admitted. "More complicated than should be necessary.

But that"s the way of things these days."

"Do you think the Alwari will accede to such a proposal?" Barriss was watching her friends and the crowd simultaneously.

The two nomads exchanged a look. "It depends on how it is put to them,"

Kyakhta finally decided. "If you can get the most prominent of the overclans, the Borokii, to agree, the others will follow their lead and fall into line. Among the Alwari, it has always been so."

Luminara nodded thoughtfully. "Then we must get their representatives to come to Cuipernam so we can talk with them in person."

Bulgan started to laugh, stopped when he saw that the Jedi was serious.

"No chieftain of the Borokii will come within a hundred huus of Cuipernam, or any other city of the Unity. They don"t trust the city folk, or their representatives. I speak now as a Tasbir of the Southern Hatagai. Albeit," he added painfully, "one who is presently clanless."

Leaning toward Obi-Wan, Luminara whispered something that soon had the other Jedi smiling and nodding. She turned back to Barriss"s new friends.

"If you are clanless," she said sternly, "it means you have nowhere to go. No responsibilities, no place to call home."

"Haja, that is all too true," Kyakhta exclaimed mournfully. "One who is clanless is as rootless as the blowing irgkul bush."

"Then," she continued, winking at Barriss, "you"re free to work for us, to lead us to the Borokii."

"Ou, I suppose we ..." Kyakhta paused, blinked, and stared back at the Jedi. As he did so, his mouth parted slightly, the thin lips moving farther and farther apart, showing more and more whiteness of tooth. "You mean-you would take on two such clanless ones as Bulgan and myself as your guides? Even after what we did to your Padawan?"