Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 03 - Paragon

world—and recommit to leaving it.
    And now every city that members of the Fifty-seven had visited in the previous day had gone the same way as Tetsubal.
    Korsin spun and shattered his bridge chair against a marble column. He didn’t use the Force. He didn’t need to.
    “Why would they do this?”
He grabbed Seelah. “Why would they do this, when it’s so obvious I’d trace it back to them? How stupid—how
desperate
would they have to be?”
    “Yes,” Seelah said, curling around him. “How desperate
would
they have to be?”
    Korsin looked into the sun, now beating down on the mountain. Releasing her, he looked into the faces of his other advisors, all waiting and wondering.
    “Bring all the others in,” he said. “Tell them it’s time.”

Chapter Four
    Seelah had already set her mind on leaving Ludo Kressh before he executed her family. It was trivial; his ankle had been injured in a battle, and she had failed to stop the infection. He’d killed her father the first night, and his leverage lessened considerably after that. Seelah found her chance to go a few days later, when one of Sadow’s mining teams stopped on Rhelg to refuel. She didn’t have anybody left by then, anyway
.
    Devore Korsin had been her escape. She saw his immaturity and recklessness, but she also saw something there to work with. He, too, strained against the invisible chains limiting his ambition. He could be her ally. And in Sadow’s service, at least, something could happen—as long as Devore didn’t foul it up
.
    And if he did, well, there was always their son …
    Lightsabers flashed in the night on the mountain—but not on the main plaza. Seelah walked calmly along the darkened colonnade, now festooned with added decorations: the tentacled heads of the Fifty-seven, staked at even intervals.
    There was the young sentry from the tower, trapped and killed. He’d never abandoned his post. To the right was Hestus, the translator; Seelah had been involvedpersonally in his takedown. Korsin said they’d come back to Hestus in the morning to remove the cybernetic implants. Who knew, there might be something they could use there.
    She could sense Korsin and his chief lieutenants beyond the outer wall now, driving the remnant to a last stand beside the precipice where
Omen
nearly met its end. No quarter would be offered; she could see Korsin hurling any who surrendered over the side.
    Well, he has experience with that
.
    The stone silo of the stable master loomed before her. Uvak enclosures stretched out in all directions from this central hub, where Keshiri aides would wash the stinking beasts. The Keshiri were gone tonight, she saw as she entered the round room. At the center, watched only by a guard in the shadows, hung the limp but breathing body of Ravilan. Strong cords of Keshiri-woven fiber lashed his splayed arms to cornices high on either side of the structure. The arrangement was designed to keep uvak from bolting during their baths. Now it was doing the same for Ravilan, his feet dangling mere centimeters above the ground. Seelah stepped back as a rush of water poured from slots high in the tower, gagging the prisoner.
    The flow stopped after a minute, but it was longer before the weary Ravilan registered the presence of his visitor. “All gone,” he choked. “Right?”
    “All gone,” she said, stepping into his sight. “You are the last.” Ravilan had been caught early, his bad leg failing him once and for all.
    Ravilan shook his head. “We only did it one time,” he said, his throat a gravelly trail. “In Tetsubal. These other cities—I don’t know. We never planned—”
    “—for
me
,” Seelah said.
    It had been surprisingly easy, once she’d realized Ravilan’s ploy in Tetsubal. The only element was time.She’d returned to the mountain retreat in the night and summoned her most trusted aides from the ward. Soon after midnight, her minions were in the air, propelling their creatures toward the lake towns of the south that Ravilan’s people had been instructed to visit the day before. Her ward had held the only other surviving supply of cyanogen silicate; now it was in the wells and aqueducts of the lake cities—and in the bodies of dead Keshiri. Time was the key element—but she’d had help coordinating it all.
    “Y-you did this?” Ravilan coughed and managed a weak chuckle. “I guess that’s the first time you liked one of my ideas.”
    “It did the job.”
    Ravilan’s crumpled grin