His back to the room, Luke was standing at the wraparound transparisteel window when Kyp Durron, Wurth Skidder, Cilghal, and the other Jedi he had asked to come to Coruscant filed in. The chamber occupied the top floor of the Ministry of Justice building, which while far from the tallest tower in the vicinity, nevertheless enjoyed majestic, panoramic views of the cityscape in all directions. Against the light of the sinking sun, the windows were darkly tinted, but not so impenetrable that the chamber wasn’t bathed in the same reds and oranges that painted the sky.
Luke was seemingly absorbed in watching Coruscant’s ceaseless traffic flow. By the time he turned from the window, all twenty Jedi Knights had entered and were taking seats at the round table or simply standing about, hoods lowered, waiting for Luke to explain why he’d asked them to come nearly halfway across the galaxy.
“The New Republic has two enemy defectors in custody,” he announced without preamble. “One is a priestess, the other is apparently her mascot or companion. As a result of their supplying military intelligence that was at least in part responsible for the recent victory at Ord Mantell, the defectors are being brought to Coruscant for further debriefing.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Kyp Durron said above outpourings of surprise and excitement. “I knew there had to be some disaffected among the Yuuzhan Vong.” He showed Luke an eager, thin-lipped smile. “When do we get a shot at debriefing them?”
“But it has to be subterfuge, doesn’t it?” Cilghal said before Luke could respond. “Notwithstanding the alleged military intelligence.” Her webbed hands were concealed in the opposite sleeves of her Jedi robe, and her bulbous eyes took in Luke and Kyp simultaneously.
Luke nodded as he moved to the table. “The New Republic is being cautious. If the defectors continue to supply intelligence that holds up, they’ll be given more credence.”
“They’ve agreed to provide more?” Wurth Skidder asked. He was the only one who wasn’t wearing Jedi robes, though from the tousled look of his blond hair he might have passed the entire journey from Yavin 4 with the hood of his cloak raised.
“Conditionally.”
Many of the Jedi traded glances, but no one spoke. Luke perched himself on the edge of the table, with one booted foot extended to the floor.
“They’ve requested a meeting with us.”
The gray-haired and bearded Streen uttered a short laugh. “Exactly the sort of thing I expected.” He regarded Luke. “Did they happen to say why they want to meet with us?”
Luke stood up and took a few steps toward the former Bespin miner. “They claim to have information about an illness Yuuzhan Vong agents introduced, long before the first worldships landed on Helska 4.”
A shocked silence fell over the room.
“I won’t try to fool any of you,” Luke said after a moment. “With all my heart I want to believe it’s the illness Mara has been suffering, but that remains to be seen.”
“If it is the same,” Cilghal said, still a bit stunned by the revelation, “dare we surmise that the Yuuzhan Vong know that Mara is ill?”
Luke tightened his lips and shook his head. “I don’t think we should leap to that conclusion.”
“Of course they know,” Wurth said firmly. “What’s more, I say they’re using Mara to get to us the same way they got to her.”
“You don’t know that,” Anakin said sharply. “The defectors have been scanned for just that sort of thing, and they’ll be scanned again before we meet with them.”
Nonplussed, Wurth sat back in his chair and stared at Luke. “Then you’ve already made up your mind to meet with them?”
Luke nodded once. “As an accommodation to the New Republic as much as anything else—a way of demonstrating to them that we can work together.”
Several meaningful glances were exchanged.
“We can all appreciate that, Master,” Ganner Rhysode said, “but if we’re going to do this, let’s do it for Mara and not for the New Republic. Personally, I couldn’t care less about accommodating the military or the senate after all that’s happened.”
Murmurs of agreement filled the room. Luke waited for everyone to settle down, then said, “I’m going to propose that the defectors meet with Mara and me alone.”
Jacen shot to his feet. “You do think it’s a trap!”
Luke turned to him. “I don’t know that it is or it isn’t.”
“Then let them meet with me or Streen or Kam Solusar,” Jacen said. “Any one of us would be willing to risk our lives to help Mara.”
Cilghal looked at Jacen and Luke, her broad slash of mouth slightly ajar. “Your nephew is correct, Master. If there is some risk, you and Mara are the last ones who should assume it.”
Luke glanced around the room. “What are you suggesting, that all of us meet with them?”
“You can count me in,” Kyp said. “I’d like nothing better than a few moments alone with a Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Kyp speaks for me, as well,” Wurth said.
Lowbacca brayed forcefully. Em Teedee, the miniaturized translator droid hovering near Lowie’s shoulder on his own repulsorlift jets, supplied, “We’re all for one. Together, we are stronger than the sum of our individual powers.” Built by Chewbacca and programmed by C-3PO, Em Teedee spoke in the voice of the protocol droid, but absent his sometimes prissy inflection.
“I stand with Lowbacca,” Streen said. “Whatever insights are to be gained about the Yuuzhan Vong will be shared by all of us.”
“I, too,” Tenel Ka added.
Luke clasped his hands behind his back and paced to the windows. The camaraderie heartened him. He thought back to the early years of the academy, and how his students had rallied to defeat the spirit of a dark Jedi who had sought to possess Yavin 4. Some of those in the room now had been there—Cilghal, Streen, even the kids. And some who had joined the fight were dead, as were Cray Mingla, Nichos Marr, Miko Reglia, Daeshara’cor …
Luke exhaled slowly, turned, and nodded. “I’ll inform New Republic Intelligence of our decision. We’ll meet with the defectors as soon as they arrive on Coruscant.”
“One for the human,” the dealer said, pressing a sabacc chip-card from the shoe.
An Ithorian card-bearer fitted with a paddle appendage where an arm should have been slid his wafer-thin device beneath the microcircuitry-embedded card and deposited it faceup in front of Han.
“Six of sabers,” the dealer announced to the table.
Han calculated the total of the three cards he held and made a subtle waving motion with the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand, signaling the dealer that he would stand.
The dealer, a Bith whose opposable thumb and little fingers made for adroit card handling, looked to the Sullustan seated to Han’s left for instructions. The heavyjowled, jut-eared being rapped his fist once on the long table’s nonskid surface and failed to repress a grin when a card flipped by the bearer’s paddle turned out to be the face card Endurance.
The Bothan in the next seat folded, as did the diminutive Chadra-Fan alongside him. That left Han playing against the Sullustan, and to Han’s right, an Ithorian and a Rodian—both of whom were unscrupulous vendors—the latter holding tightly to the two cards originally dealt to him, and with none on the table.
Han leaned back to show Droma his concealed cards: the Ace of coins, worth fifteen, and the one of staves—recently altered by the sabacc randomizer from the Queen of Air and Darkness. With the six of sabers showing, the hand had a total value of twenty-two, a mere point away from a pure sabacc. He felt certain that the Sullustan wasn’t holding more than twenty, despite the Endurance face card. The Ithorian’s two table cards alone valued twelve, and from the way the alien had bet, Han doubted he held more than eighteen or nineteen. As for the Rodian, his two cards certainly totaled more than twenty but probably not more than twenty-two. A pure sabacc dealt to him earlier in the game had all but propelled him from his chair, and while he had greeted the present hand with excitement, there was nothing in his glassy, bulging eyes to suggest another instant win.
No one had fixed the value of any chip-cards by placing them in the interference field at the table’s center.
Additional cards were refused all around, and final bets were placed. Unless the randomizer struck again, Han knew he had the pot.
The Sullustan called, and everyone showed their hands.
Han’s instincts were right on the money, and he won his third straight pot. Under the wary and watchful gaze of a human pit boss with enhanced vision for spotting skifters—rigged chip-cards sneaked into the game—or players attempting to glimpse color reflections from ionization of the interference field, the bearer’s paddle gathered the cards, and the banker assembled Han’s winnings into neat stacks and slid them across the table.
The game was being conducted in the Queen’s sole extant gaming parlor, where a couple of uvide and jubilee wheels spun noisily in the background and a half-dozen Twi’lek women with tattooed head-tails moved about with trays of free drinks, transdermal drugs, and a host of smokable substances.
Curiously, Droma had ridiculed Han’s decision to buy into the game—at the cost of almost all his credits—even when Han had justified it as a means of delaying the inevitable return to his filthy cabin, where Han had reluctantly passed the previous night and most of the day, and even the current win failed to disabuse the Ryn of disdain.
“An enterprise entirely lacking in depth,” Droma commented as Han, with arrogant delight, made even neater stacks of his winnings. “And humans, owing perhaps to their evolutionary good fortune, seem more inclined to be taken in than any other species.”
Han’s retort was a smug snort, but he couldn’t help recalling a similar sentiment he’d heard expressed more than twenty years earlier.
“Of all the races who gamble their well-being on uncertain returns—and there aren’t many, statistically—the trait’s most noticeable in humans, one of the most successful life-forms.”
The speaker had been a Ruurian academic named Skynx, who had accompanied Han on the search for Xim the Despot’s treasure.
“Laugh all you want,” Han told Droma, “but I’ve been playing since I was fourteen, and sabacc once won me a ship, not to mention a planet.”
“It’s a fool’s enterprise, nonetheless,” Droma said.
Han smiled cavalierly. “I’ll take a handful of luck to a cargo hold of wisdom any day.”
The Bith loaded a new deck into the shoe and showed the palms of his hands—ritual assurance that he had nothing up his sleeves, as well as the signal for the start of a new round.
Traditional sabacc games pitted player against player in a contest to come closest to negative or positive twenty-three, without bombing out by breaking twenty-three or holding cards equal to zero. And while the Queen’s casino employed the standard four-suit, seventy-six-chip-card deck, randomizer, and interference field, the house not only demanded a buy-in price but withheld 20 percent of all pots—the entire pot if all players folded—half of which went into a special bank for rounds played against the house.
The Queen also had special rules governing pure sabacc hands. A positive twenty-three beat out negative twenty-three, but a two-card twenty-three beat out a three-card twenty-three, and no player was permitted to request more than three cards in addition to the two received on the deal.
The next round found Han with an initial value of fourteen, a twenty after one randomizer hit, but a thirteen after an unexpected second randomizer hit. Even so, he drew the five of coins and, through skillful bluffing, managed to keep three of his opponents betting until the call, when he raked in another pot.
The following round went much the same, though he wound up edging out the Sullustan by a mere point and winning with a fifteen. With his original buy-in stake, plus his winnings, Han had close to eight thousand credits stacked on the table.
“When they fold every time you bet a good hand, you play to their eyes,” he bragged to Droma, just loudly enough to be heard.
He was about to ante up for another round when Droma called, “Bank!”
While Han’s jaw was dropping, the pit boss hurried over to confer with the cashier, who shortly announced that Han needed 7800 credits to play the hand against the house.
Murder in his eyes, Han whirled on Droma. “Is that fright wig of yours growing down into your brain? If I lose, I’m cleaned out!”
Droma merely shrugged. “The randomizer is the only worthy opponent in this game. The randomizer is fate. Play against that if you want to impress me.”
“Impress you?” Han echoed irascibly. “Impress you? Why you—”
“You called ‘bank,’ ” the strapping pit boss reminded in a threatening tone. “Are you playing or not?”
Everyone at the table looked at Han, and a crowd of passengers began to gather round. To decline would not only be gutless but an insult to the players he had nearly cleaned out. He shoved the credits toward the center of the table.
“Bank,” he grated.
As the Bith prized cards from the shoe, the passengers pressed closer to watch. Outside of tournaments, it was rare to see so many credits wagered on a single hand.
Han carefully lifted his two cards and forced them apart: twenty-one.
Almost immediately the randomizer struck, reducing the value to thirteen.
He threw the Commander of flasks, worth twelve, into the interference field—just short of another strike, which converted the one of coins into the Idiot, with a value of zero.
He asked for a card and drew the Evil One, valued at negative fifteen, leaving him with a total value of negative three. Whispered disappointment spread through the crowd.
Tension mounted as Han studied the shoe, glanced at the randomizer, then studied the shoe some more. When he announced that he would stand, the audience gasped in unison. A twelve in the interference field and a negative fifteen on the table; he was either an inspired player or a born loser.
The Bith turned over the house’s two cards, the one of staves and the Commander of coins, for a total of thirteen. House rules required the dealer to draw a third card on a twelve or thirteen.
The Bith’s hand went to the shoe and the crowd held its breath. A ranked card would put the house on the wrong side of twenty-three, and a face card could very well drop the house into the negative. Han appeared to have a fighting chance. A rivulet of sweat coursed down the side of his face and dripped from his jaw.
But when the bearer’s paddle lifted the card, Han caught a glimpse of its reflection in the interference field.
The nine of sabers.
A twenty-two for the dealer.
Han’s heart sunk.
In the same instant the randomizer struck for an unprecedented third time. Han’s Evil One became the Mistress of staves, increasing his total to twenty-five! But then the Idiot transformed, as well—to the Queen of Air and Darkness, valued at negative two, for a total of twenty-three.
Pure sabacc.
Sitting tall in the chair once more, Han showed his hand. Wild applause erupted behind him. He had won again.
The banker shoved Han’s winnings forward and closed the table. As the disheartened players left and the crowd dispersed—save for a Twi’lek woman trying desperately to attract Han’s attention—Han counted out his initial buy-in stakes and pushed the hefty remainder to Droma.
“Here,” he snarled, “buy yourself a new outfit—something that doesn’t shout.”
Droma grinned and swept the credits into his two-toned beret. “I know some folks on the lower decks who can use this.”
Han showed him a gimlet stare. “You knew I’d win.”
“I may have had a hunch,” Droma allowed.
“So you’re a player.”
Droma shook his head. “But I am familiar with the cards. The Ryn invented them. The ranked and face cards, that is.”
Han made a face. “This I gotta hear.”
“Each card embodied certain spiritual principles,” Droma went on. “In sum they were a training device for spiritual growth, you might say—but never meant to be used in a game of chance.”
He reached across the table for one of the discarded decks. Fanning the deck in one hand, Droma rid it of the suit cards numbered one through eleven. The rest he spread in a semicircle on the tabletop.
“The ranked cards—Commander, Mistress, Master, and Ace—represented individuals of specific inclination, with the staves corresponding to spiritual enterprise, the flasks to emotional states, the sabers to mental pursuits, and the coins to material well-being. But regard the eight pairs of face cards and ask yourself why a game would include such titles as Balance, Endurance, Moderation, Demise.”
Droma plucked the Master of staves from the semicircle and placed it in front of Han. “You,” he said. “A dark-haired man of formidable strength and intuition, but often brash and self-absorbed. Despite his years, he charges boldly into every situation, regardless of the odds, sometimes banging his head on things. And yet he is at heart a seeker of knowledge.”
“Hokey religions,” Han said under his breath, but deliberately loud enough for Droma to hear.
Grinning, Droma leaned away from him, twirling the left tip of his mustache. “Think so? Let’s see what we can see.”
Leaving the Master of staves undisturbed, he gathered the rest of the ranked and face cards, shuffled them deftly, performed a one-handed cut, and set the abridged deck on the table. Peeling a card from the top of the pack, he placed it faceup below the Master of staves.
“The Master of flasks,” Droma said. “A father figure, protector, or close friend. Loving, dedicated, loyal to a fault.” He fingered another card from the pack, placed it on top of and perpendicular to the Master of flasks, and frowned. “Crossed by the Evil One. A harmful addiction in some cases, but more often a powerful enemy.”
Han swallowed, but said nothing.
The third card—Demise—crossed Han’s card in the same way. Han felt Droma’s gaze on him.
“You lost a friend—a protector?” Droma asked.
Han put on his best sabacc face. “Go ahead, finish with your little divination.”
Droma placed a card to the left of the Master of staves. “The Idiot. The start of a journey or quest, usually down an unknown path. A sometimes unsettling plunge into the unknown.” The next card crowned the Master. “Moderation—but inverted. A craving for retribution or vengeance.”
Han nodded and snorted. “You’re good, you’re really good. You watch and you pay close attention to what people say. That way you get a sense of who someone is or what someone’s going through. Then you put it all in a nicely wrapped package”—he indicated the spread of cards—“and feed it right back. Just like your second-guessing what someone’s about to say.”
Droma made his face long in feigned astonishment. “I’m simply laying out cards.”
Han gestured in dismissal. “You arranged the cards when you shuffled. Or maybe you’re dealing seconds.”
Droma lifted his hands to his shoulders and nodded to the deck. “Draw four cards in rapid succession and line them up alongside the Master of staves.”
Han hesitated, then did so. But before Droma could speak, he jabbed his finger at the first of the quartet. “Don’t tell me what it means, just tell me what the location stands for.”
“Someone who might be affected by your actions.”
Disquiet tugged at the corners of Han’s mouth as he scrutinized the card. “The Commander of sabers,” he said quietly. “Maybe a younger version of the Master. Headstrong, clever …”
“And brave,” Droma added. “An able fighter.”
Anakin? Han asked himself. He moved his finger to the next card.
“It occupies the place of unforeseen consequence or hidden danger,” Droma supplied.
“The Queen of Air and Darkness,” Han mused, examining her depiction for clues. “Could be a person hiding something. Or a delusion, maybe.”
Droma nodded. “Something unrevealed.” He indicated the next card in the line. “How best to proceed.”
“Balance,” Han said. “Being able to stay on your feet when the going gets rough and the ground around you’s shaking.”
“Adjustment to what life dishes out,” Droma elaborated. “Persistence in the face of adversity. And spiritual power.”
Han’s finger fell on the final card. “The future?”
Droma rocked his head back and forth. “A likely outcome. In this case, what the Idiot may find.”
Han scowled and regarded the card. “The Star. But upside down—inverted.” He glanced at Droma. “Not all it could be. Less than a complete success.”
Droma smiled with his eyes and nodded. “Congratulations, Roaky. Fortune has granted you a glimpse of its innermost designs.”