Star Wars - Kenobi

eyebrow rose. West to Ben’s place, maybe? The Claim was back to the north. He thought to go after them, but then an approaching group of celebrants reminded him of what needed to come next. Rifle-toting Jabe was among them, receiving backslaps from the older settlers. Orrin clicked off the comlink and smiled. “You get any, son?”
    “I did, sir. Or I think so.”
    “Well, pick out a prize so we can go.”
    Beaming, Jabe stepped toward the twin tangles of metal. The vigilantes had piled the gaffi sticks and rifles separately. The boy looked back at Orrin. “You think the one that got my dad is here?”
    “Great suns, boy! I don’t know. Just pick your favorite.” While Jabe deliberated, Orrin edged back to confer with Mullen. “We need any of this junk?”
    “No, we’ve got plenty.”
    Jabe reached into the gaderffii pile and found a silvery specimen, shorter than the others and relatively clean. Veeka laughed. “Just your size, runt.” The others laughed at the blushing kid before surrounding him, offering congratulations.
    Orrin looked back at the killing ground. The Tuskens deserved every bit of this, surely. His boy Varan. Dannar Calwell. Even that Lars woman—all had gotten some justice today. But Orrin understood that squaring accounts here made for a change to the rest of the balance sheet.
    “Will Zedd be ready to go again soon?” he whispered to his son.
    “I wouldn’t count on it,” Mullen said. “Doc Mell only had a second with him, but he said he could be out for a month this time. Maybe more.” He raised a hairy eyebrow. “Why, are you afraid this thing today will mess us up?”
    “I don’t know,” Orrin said. He turned back to the crowd and locked eyes on Jabe. The boy always looked happy outside the store, but now he was positively over the suns. Jabe spotted Orrin and raised his shiny trophy, earning another cheer from the others.
    Orrin smiled back. The boy was really growing up. He joined the applause.
    “That’s it, folks,” he said, stepping into the crowd. “First the racers tried to ruin our good time, and then the Tuskens. Let’s get back to the Claim and show ’em we still know how to celebrate!”

CHAPTER TWENTY
    WITH CARE, A’YARK PLACED one rock upon another. It was important to select the right mix of stones. The pile had to last for eternity, holding the remains of A’Deen above Tatooine’s surface. Tomorrows only mattered to the dead.
    A’Yark’s clan did not bury their fallen. Nor could they, here in the shadows of The Pillars, where the ground was tough enough to snap off the end of any pick. No, A’Deen would lay atop the bed-altar, protected from wildlife by massiffs, the trained reptilians the Tuskens kept as camp guardians. His battle then would be against the suns—his spirit against theirs.
    Eventually, even the most defiant warrior’s body would succumb to the wind. Then a new level would be built over his remains, the growing mound providing a tower to support the body of that warrior’s sons, or grandsons. But the graves of A’Deen’s ancestors were far away, in a different part of the wastes.
    So here, in the evening shadows of this misbegotten place, A’Yark silently built a solitary bier for a boy who had been warrior for less than a week. No descendants would join his tower, but his spirit would last as long as the stones of his resting place did. A’Yark chose carefully. It was the work of a mother.
    A’Yark was that, and a warrior, as well. The traditional divided roles of the past were a luxury the clan could not afford. There simply weren’t enough to fill them. All had changed after a single dread day fourteen cycles earlier. Today’s losses had been bad, but they were nothing compared with what had happened the day the clan battled the Hutts.
    The day Sharad Hett died.
    A’Yark stopped sorting and wondered. It was safe, now, to pause and reflect—as safe as it was going to get. She thought about Ben’s weapon, and visualized the owner of the other she’d seen. Sharad Hett was the ootman, the Outlander of local legend—but to A’Yark, he was a real being. He was, in fact, family, because of a different human A’Yark had met first: K’Sheek.
    A’Yark had been born as K’Yark, the youngest of six children. When three of her siblings died from plague, her father Yark repopulated his household through a time-honored practice: abduction. K’Sheek, so named by the Tuskens who kidnapped her from a local settlement,