“What are they doing?” Affie yelped, trying to swat back one of the 8-Ts. It didn’t matter; another two were swarming in to take its place. “I thought these droids were gardeners!”

Reath readjusted his grip on the roots and steadied his balance. “They are. But…I guess that means they attack threats to the garden.”

“We did just cause some damage,” Dez pointed out as he swung himself up through the snarl of vines to a place just below Reath. “I can see why they’d feel endangered.”

Nan’s round cheeks were flushed; both her arms were wrapped around the nearest thick root, but her legs dangled—because the pincers of an 8-T were snapping beneath her feet, keeping her from finding a steady perch. “Are we going to keep talking about droid feelings, or can you stop these stupid things?”

“Stay calm,” Reath said.

Which wasn’t generally a helpful thing to say, at least not to someone currently hanging by her arms with swarms of attacking robots on the way. But it kept everybody quiet for a moment, giving Reath a chance to think and center himself in the Force.

It also gave the 8-Ts a chance to assemble. Dozens of them were traveling down the tunnel’s curved walls, their magnetic treads gripping so well that they might as well have been speeding along a flat surface. Although their dark bodies didn’t show up well against the blackness of space, he could see them swarming by the way they blotted out the stars. Their tiny pruning claws, which not that long before had been cute, clicked and clacked ominously. Affie yelped as one of them clipped off the end of her long, braided hair. If those pincers could slice through thick vines or slender tree branches, they’d cut through flesh and bone, too.

Whatever long-ago zealot gardener had programmed these droids had done too good a job.

“Okay,” Affie said, huffing as she pulled herself into a more secure position within the labyrinth of vines. “This shouldn’t be a problem. You Jedi can fly, right? So just fly us out of here already.”

Dez shook his head. “We can’t fly. Some of us can levitate—”

“Same difference!” Affie insisted.

“—but it’s a complicated thing to do, and difficult under stressful situations,” Dez finished, as though she hadn’t spoken.

Affie made a face. “So you’re telling me you can only fly when you don’t need to? What good is that, exactly?”

Reath couldn’t help thinking she had a point.

Far beneath them, in the lower rings themselves, a strange light flickered—purplish, brilliant. “What was that?” he asked.

“Looks like some kind of an energy field,” Dez speculated. “There’s something interesting down there—whatever it might be.”

“Let’s figure that out once we’re safe from the attack of the killer gardeners—” Affie’s words were cut short with a yelp. “Oww. This vine has spines or something—it scraped me!”

“We have bigger problems,” Nan said, seemingly through gritted teeth, “than a scrape.”

Dez said, “Everyone stay calm until I get to Nan, all right?”

The safest place to move was in the direct center of the tunnel, but it was also the place with the fewest roots or vines to balance on. Anywhere safe to stand was also well within the 8-Ts’ range.

Dez nimbly climbed past Reath to the place where Nan and the Mizi clung to their feeble handholds. The 8-Ts swarmed closer with each of his steps, but he never paused or even stopped smiling. Reaching out one hand, Dez summoned two of the vines from above, which writhed their way down into his waiting palm. Then he tossed one to the Mizi and bent to gather Nan under his arm. “Follow me with Affie, okay, Reath?”

“Got it!” Reath called back.

Dez nodded to the Mizi, and on an unspoken count between them, they began to climb. The Mizi managed so well that Reath realized Dez was controlling their ascent. It was much easier to use the Force to help boost someone already climbing than to simply levitate them into thin air.

So Reath began working his way toward Affie—but so did the 8-Ts. The full swarm had reached them. Affie winced as the droids crawled like beetles to the bend of the root that provided her fragile hold on the wall.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be taken out by severed astromech heads,” she said, grabbing for her blaster, “but at least I’m taking a few with me before I—”

“Affie, no!” The idea came to Reath in a rush. “Don’t shoot the droids. Shoot the tree roots below us.”

“The tree is not my problem!”

“But it will be the Aytees’ problem! See?”

Understanding dawned. Affie half turned and fired downward, at the lowest root she could possibly target. Her blaster ignited a small fire, which then set some moss ablaze.

Small as the first flames were, it took only those wisps of smoke to set off the 8-Ts’ alarms. The blinking blue lights along their bases turned red and they all rotated as one, swirling to get as close to the tree as possible. As Reath had suspected, protecting the plants from fire took precedence over every other job an 8-T had—including pursuing vandals who’d intruded into the tunnels.

While the droids sprayed small jets of water over the moss, easily dousing the fire, Reath was able to reach Affie, who had already grabbed a vine. He expected her to climb up to the arboretum level without him, but instead she reached out for help, which Reath was glad to give. As she clung to his shoulders, Affie said, slightly winded, “I still think you should’ve let me shoot one.”

“Next time.”

Her grip slipped, and he managed to lower her before she fell. Reath expected her to laugh off her clumsiness and to right herself immediately. Instead, Affie staggered sideways, gripping one wrist. “I feel weird. That scrape—from the vine—”

“It hurts that much?” Reath frowned. “Let me see it.”

She started to hold out her hand, then slumped against the nearby wall and slid down to the floor. The mark on her wrist was already raised and livid, and streaks spread through it in ominous shades of purple and black.

Poison.

Orla paced through the center of the arboretum globe. At the moment, every other being docked at the Amaxine station had somewhere else to be, whether that was their own ships or the station’s lower ring. This gave her a chance to study the strange idols they’d found on board.

Unease rippled through her as she approached the statues, that ominous sense of warning emanating from them as surely as light from a flame. Maybe understanding what they were looking at would help determine exactly what this vague warning meant.

She stood face to face with the humanoid queen, the first of the idols to turn up. To Orla’s amusement, she realized that they resembled each other somewhat—strong cheekbones, thick brows, proud bearing. However, the stark simplicity of Orla’s white robes contrasted with the ornately carved and jeweled raiment of this long-ago ruler.

Although Orla wasn’t the scholar Cohmac Vitus was, she had her own gifts to bring to this analysis. Her connection to the Force was instinctive, almost primal; she trusted it to steer her. Sometimes preexisting knowledge stood in the way of discovery—putting boundaries on thought. This, she suspected, might be one of those times. With all his learning, Cohmac had studied these idols already and found only intriguing clues, no truths.

Let’s give instinct a try.

Orla stared at the dark red jewel that sat topmost in the idol’s crown. She let her mind fall into a kind of trance—not full meditation but a deep concentration that allowed random thoughts to rise to the surface. The practice gave the subconscious a chance to be heard.

A queen. Mighty and defiant. That much seemed inarguable.

Well. Mighty was inarguable. Why had defiant come to mind?

When are we defiant? When we are opposed.

Orla studied the queen’s lifted chin, comparing it to the rest of her bearing. The queen’s hands did not hold weapons; instead, a kind of scimitar lay at her feet. She had been forged not with her arms held high in some kind of salute or bearing plundered treasure; her arms remained at her sides, with coiled bracelets around each wrist.

Bracelets, Orla asked herself in a flash of insight, or chains?

It suddenly seemed so clear to her that she was shocked she hadn’t seen it before. The idols didn’t represent leaders or gods.

They represented the vanquished, representatives of the forces (civilizations? planets?) who’d been conquered by whoever built the statues.

“So,” she muttered, “who the hell were they?”

Zeitooine had taught Dez a lot about poisons. The Zeit royalty were made up of treacherous houses, forever attempting to assassinate one another by elaborate means such as powders added to wineglasses or venoms smeared on pillowcases. Dez recognized the black streaks spreading across Affie’s skin even before she’d fully passed out.

“Come on,” he said, scooping her up in his arms. “A medpac will take care of this—but we’ve got to get it right away.”

Dez raced for the Vessel. Reath ran so fast he passed them, which was good; he could get the medpac ready. Already Affie’s skin had turned sallow, and the color had drained from her lips.

“I’ve got it!” Reath reached the airlock mere seconds before Dez would’ve run through it with Affie. Instead he kneeled down, bracing the girl. Within moments, Reath dashed back out with a medpac in hand.

Right behind him was Leox Gyasi. “Whoa, whoa, what’s wrong with Little Bit?”

“Nothing this won’t fix.” Dez pressed the antitox booster against her skin; that hiss and click had rarely been more welcome. Sure enough, after only a few moments, the dark streaks on her skin began fading, and Affie’s breaths deepened. Leox dropped to his knees in relief and put one hand on Affie’s head.

She stirred, opening her eyes. “What was that?”

“A vine scraped you,” Dez said. “Apparently it was poisonous.”

“Great,” Affie muttered. “That’s just what we needed on this station on top of everything else. Something poisonous.”

“The fun never stops.” Leox’s grin could’ve lit up any midnight. “C’mon, girl. Let’s get some Jedha tea in you.”

Dez let Leox take Affie back into the ship. Reath remained behind with him. “We should tag those vines, maybe.”

“I don’t see lots of them around, thankfully.” Dez stretched his arms above his head, grateful to move freely after the confines of the tunnel. “But yeah, that’s not a bad idea.”

Reath hesitated as though there was something he wanted to say to Dez—or maybe more like there was something he definitely didn’t want to say but couldn’t help thinking about.

“Hey,” Dez said gently. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“Out with whatever’s been weighing you down since we met up at the spaceport.”

Reath leaned against one of the nearby trees, studying Dez with a startlingly adult expression. Or not so startling—Reath was nearly of age, even if Dez still thought of him as the youngling excited to have been chosen by Master Jora. Their friendship had to grow along with Reath, into something more equal and more meaningful.

“I can’t believe you chose to come to the frontier,” Reath finally said. “Of all the places you could’ve gone. Even Zeitooine—”

“Zeitooine was endless petty bickering and plotting with next to no action.” Dez rubbed his head, warding off the memories of all the headaches that world had caused him. “At least after the first months, once we’d quieted some of the unrest. Once that was over, I didn’t do anything of real significance. On the frontier there’s a chance to act.”

“I guess I should be more like you,” Reath said. “I know I need to embrace this assignment. Any assignment the Council gives us. But I’m not drawn to action the same way you are.”

Dez confessed what he’d hardly admitted to himself: “Sometimes I think I crave action and excitement too much. It can be dangerous, you know.”

“So Master Jora says.” But Reath didn’t sound as though he believed it—he sounded as if he was judging himself, and falling short.

So Dez rose and put a hand on Reath’s shoulder. “Listen, the Force is about balance, right? Ideally it’s about finding balance within each and every individual Jedi. But that’s not the same as finding balance within the Order, which is just as important. We need Knights who crave adventure and Knights who don’t seek it out. Each individual brings different gifts to the Jedi Order. Our job is to appreciate the value of those gifts, including our own.”

Reath gave him a lopsided grin. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Good,” Dez said, inwardly adding, I’ll try, too.

“Hey, Dez, I have this one question—”

“Okay. Hit me.”

“Did Master Jora ever ask you—do you know why no Jedi can cross the Kyber Arch alone?”

Dez frowned. “No, she never asked me that. And people cross it alone all the time. It’s not like some insurmountable challenge, just a meditative practice, like walking a labyrinth.”

“I know!” Reath breathed out in frustration. “But Master Jora insists nobody can cross that archway alone, and she wants me to tell her why.”

“I’ve got nothing.” Dez shrugged. “All I can tell you is, Master Jora is wiser than both of us put together. If she’s given you a riddle to solve, it’s worth solving.”

Later, once she’d gotten herself cleaned up and freshened up and returned to the cockpit, Affie was disgruntled. “You’re defending the Aytees?”

“They’re gardeners,” Leox said, stretched out in his chair, feet propped on the cockpit console. His eyes were closed, as though he could chat and nap at the same time. Maybe he could. “Stewards of the soil. You threatened their very reason for being.”

Affie sighed and let it go. Of course the droids were only following their programming. Didn’t mean she had to like them.

Besides, she had more important things to tell Leox.

“Listen,” she began. “Out there on the station, up in the higher rings—I’ve found some lines written in code.”

“Code?” Leox didn’t open his eyes. “Tell me more.”

“It looks like some kind of…of smugglers’ code. Handwritten symbols that give them hints about directions they can travel through hyperspace, that kind of thing.”

Leox finally turned his head and looked at her. “Why would they write that down instead of recording it the usual way?”

“I don’t know,” Affie said, flexing her still-sore wrist. “They just did.”

“That question wasn’t rhetorical. Think about it. Hardly anybody actually writes symbols with their hands anymore—not anywhere in the galaxy, so far as I know, at least not on planets advanced enough to have technology. So why are space pilots scribbling important information on the walls?”

It felt good to have the answer even before he was finished with the question. “Because they’re skimming stuff off the top, and hiding it from Scover.”

Leox sat up straight then, his beads swaying back into place. “Wait. How does Scover come into it?”

“One of the symbols is this.” Affie pointed to the star shape on her coverall pocket. “It’s got to be pilots in the Byne Guild talking to each other, but in a way and in a place my mo—I mean, a place Scover doesn’t know about.”

He weighed her words for a few long moments. Affie couldn’t wait to see him light up with the same astonishment and anger she’d felt. If only Geode were there instead of recrystallizing in his bunk! She wanted her discovery witnessed and confirmed.

But then Leox shook his head. “Not much goes on in the Guild that Scover Byne doesn’t know.”

“Of course not—but she can’t know about this!”

“Why can’t she?” Leox’s pale blue eyes met Affie’s with unaccustomed directness. “The coordinates for this station were preprogrammed into the Vessel, as part of the standard nav download every ship gets when joining the Guild. That’s not coincidence.”

Frustration tugged at Affie’s temper. Why couldn’t he see this? “These thieves inside the Guild, they could’ve tampered with the download. Put in the information they’d need to operate behind Scover’s back—”

“And share it with every single new ship in the Guild, even if they’re not part of this so-called conspiracy?”

Affie folded her arms across her chest. “So how do you explain it?”

Leox took several moments before he answered, his voice low and patient. “I know, and you know, that not every Guild haul is what you would call, in the strictest sense, legal. Scover’s got plenty to hide from the authorities. This seems like a pretty good place to hide it.”

“She wouldn’t hide it from me!” Affie insisted.

There was no reply. Leox just gazed at her, his expression melancholy and yet kind. It was the kindness that infuriated Affie the most—the idea that she needed kindness, that she was some simple gullible fool Scover coddled and humored, instead of a true pilot and Guild official in her own right. So many other pilots looked down on her. Leox never did—or at least he never had, not until that moment.

Without another word, she stalked off the bridge, half hoping Leox would follow her to apologize, but he let her go.

Orla Jareni watched Affie storm down the Vessel’s main corridor, practically trailing black smoke from her rage. Through the cockpit door, Orla caught a glimpse of Leox watching her go, concern written all over his sun-bronzed face.

Not a good time for a chat, she decided.

For the moment, Orla had little else to do. She didn’t intend to venture back toward the ancient idols until Cohmac could go with her. Dez was still strategizing a new way to penetrate the lower rings of the station, and Reath was handling things with the fellow refugees—most particularly Nan, it seemed.

Orla still hoped to have a conversation about spacecraft purchasing. Both Affie and Leox appeared to be distracted at the moment. As for Geode—well, a Vintian probably had different needs for a spaceship than a humanoid would. Orla had to put that conversation on hold.

Besides, she and Cohmac had plenty to talk about besides the idols.

Orla found him on the Vessel’s “observation deck”: a grandly titled meter of corridor that happened to have a small window. Cohmac saw her enter but didn’t speak.

“You’ve got your hood up again,” she said. “Never a positive sign.”

Generally she got Cohmac to sigh within five minutes. This time she’d had him right off the bat. “I suppose asking for privacy on this ship is futile.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. What is futile is expecting old friends not to understand when you’re having trouble.”

“The many problems on this station—”

“Spare me,” she said, not unkindly. “What I’m talking about has been hanging over you since long before the hyperspace disaster.”

Cohmac and Orla’s bond had formed during their Padawan years because of the Eiram–E’ronoh hostage crisis. The mistakes they’d made then—not being cautious enough about responding to signals, not doing enough research before diving into action—had been redeemed at a terrible price.

Sometimes she reminded herself to see the good that had come from it all. If the mission had turned out any other way, would that part of the galaxy ever have trusted the Republic, much less chosen to join it? Would Starlight Beacon have been built? Orla doubted it.

Still. Neither she nor Cohmac could look back on those events without regrets. That was something Orla understood without having to ask. They’d grown up to be two very different individuals—but their bond endured, and always would.

Orla knew her decisions to become a Wayseeker might separate her from many in the Jedi Order. Not from Cohmac.

“I’ve never kept secrets from you,” he admitted.

“You’ve tried,” Orla said. “I just never let you get away with it.”

“Don’t remind me.”

She intended to remind him at regular intervals throughout their lives, but she could drop it for a day. “Are you going to make me interrogate you?”

“Do you have to?” Cohmac’s dark eyes searched hers. “Coming back here, on our way to a place so close to E’ronoh and Eiram—finding ourselves imperiled again, having to guess at the dangers that lie ahead—”

“It’s a very different situation,” Orla hastened to say. The vibrations of that long-ago event were strong enough without delving deeply into it. She wasn’t sure she was ready to bear that.

“I sense that there will be further parallels,” Cohmac said. “There are…other resonances, all around us. Their forms remain unclear, but before this mission is over, we will see them true.”

“Got it.” No mystic, Orla figured it was time to change the subject, but then she felt it. The same shiver of terrible cold that had seized her before—the same bleak place so far away—

“Cohmac!” she called, but he couldn’t hear her. They were both lost in the petrifying vision.

Reath strolled along the perimeter of the arboretum level, almost idly, as if he weren’t keeping a sharp eye on the Mizi, the Orincans, and some of the others who’d tried looting earlier. (He, personally, would’ve waited longer to allow everyone to board freely again, but this was not a point on which he felt comfortable challenging a Master.) While Leox had ably calmed them down and the tunnels to the lower rings provided their own deterrents to entry, it seemed possible that a loner from any of the groups might try something. If they took some equipment from the station—Reath honestly didn’t care. Anybody who needed spaceship parts badly enough to pilfer centuries-old ones could have them. But if they stole one of the ancient idols, they’d just sell it for the precious metals or jewels without even bothering to study it. Sacrilege.

Worst of all would be another kidnapping attempt. Reath again remembered the moment his lightsaber had severed the man’s arm, the faint thump through the blade that told him he’d hit and destroyed bone. He shuddered. Dez’s kind words had helped, but this wasn’t something he could ever totally put behind him. The act of attacking another person with a lightsaber was horrifying, and Reath hoped it would always remain so.

Let me never forget, he thought, that it is another living creature standing opposite my blade.

He looked up into the dark forest arches within the atrium.…

They were gone. Everything was gone. Reath stood alone amid the plants and trees—but not the same ones, or were they just altered somehow?—his lightsaber in his hand, already ignited. Slithering, rustling sounds filled the air on every side, setting him on edge.

Fog, almost steamy in the sudden heat, coiled around him. Reath looked around wildly, trying to understand how the scene had changed. Had he been transported to another part of the station? To another planet? Or had he somehow failed to see the true danger around him all that time?

Ahead of him, he knew, lay the greatest threat of all. Reath didn’t understand how he knew it, but he was as certain of it as anything else he’d ever known in his life. He shifted his body into battle stance, took a deep breath, and tried to brace himself against the threat he couldn’t see.

Then, amid the fog, only steps in front of him, came a sudden streak of blue light. A lightsaber blade.

One that would be used to kill him.