Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 03 - Paragon

areas. By the time word came in from the hinterlands, all of the Sith would be safely in their redoubt.
    Seelah saw Korsin several times in the morning as she passed through. He wanted her staff to set up quarantines for reentry to the compound. None of the Sith who had torched Tetsubal were showing any symptoms of distress, but the stakes were high. Seelah had assignments of her own in the ward, and in fact few of her medical staffers appeared in public. “We’re working on the problem,” she had told him.
    Reentering at noon, Seelah saw Ravilan standing with Korsin, monitoring reports. Korsin seemed haggard from lack of sleep—his little purple fluff wouldn’t be coming for lunch today! But Ravilan, despite his harrowing experiences of the day before, seemed rejuvenated; his bald head was a robust magenta.
    “It goes better than we feared, Korsin,” Ravilan said.
No Grand Lord now
, Seelah noticed.
Not even Commander
.
    Korsin grunted. “All your people are back?”
    “I am informed they have all just arrived back at the stables. Not much of a vacation,” Ravilan said, his facial tendrils curling slightly, “but then there is much work to be done. On our new priorities.”
    Seelah looked up. It should be about now.
    “Rider coming!”
    The herald sensed the uvak’s approach long before it appeared on the southern horizon. Waved directly onto the colonnade, the rider set the beast down and leapt to the stone surface. All eyes were on the new arrival. All save Seelah’s.
    “Grand Lord,” he said, short of breath. “It … has happened again …
in Rabolow!
”
    Seelah heard Korsin’s gasp—but she saw Ravilan’s yellow eyes bulge. It took but a second for the quartermaster to find his composure. “Rabolow?”
    “That’s on the Ragnos Lakes, isn’t it?” Seelah looked toward Ravilan and smiled primly. “That’s where your people were assigned to go yesterday, wasn’t it, Ravilan? Villages on the Ragnos Lakes.”
    He nodded. They’d all been there when it was being discussed. Ravilan cleared his throat, suddenly dry. “I—I should speak with my associate who just returned from there.” He hobbled past Seelah, turned, and bowed. “I—I really should meet them. Commander.”
    “You do that,” Seelah said. Korsin said nothing, still flabbergasted by the recent news and the coincidence. He watched Ravilan disappear from sight, heading for the stables.
    “Rider coming!”
    Korsin looked up. Seelah thought he almost looked afraid, afraid of the news the rider would bring.
    The news was of another city of death, on another of the Ragnos Lakes. A third rider told of a third. And a fourth. One hundred thousand Keshiri, dead.
    Korsin goggled. “Something to do with the lakes? That—what was it—algae of Ravilan’s?”
    Seelah crossed her arms and looked directly at Korsin, stooped over and nearly her same height. She was tempted to let the moment linger …
    … but there was work to be done. She called for Tilden Kaah.
    Her worried assistant appeared from the direction of the ward, holding a small container. She took it and dismissed him. “Do you know what this is, Korsin?”
    Korsin turned the empty vial over in his hand. “Cyanogen silicate?”
    It was from her medical stores on
Omen
—and also from the stores Ravilan kept for the creatures in his care. In its solid form, she explained, it was used as a cauterizing agent by healers working with the Massassi. She had seen it used again and again in Ludo Kressh’s service. Nothing weaker could do anything to those savages’ hides.
    “It’s bad enough on its own,” she said. “But if moisture gets into it, it breaks down—and intensifies a thousandfold. One particle per billion could do anything.”
    Korsin’s bushy eyebrows flared. “What—what could it do in a water table?
Or an aqueduct?
”
    Seelah held his hands firmly and looked directly into his eyes.
“Tetsubal.”
    She explained the story behind the death of her ward’s bearer. Beefy Gorem had been seconded to Ravilan’s team to help reach what remained in crushed sections of
Omen
. He’d apparently touched a stained deck plate from the Massassi apothecary and died outside, not long after washing his hands. Death was not instantaneous, but the victim never got far.
    Ravilan must have seen Gorem’s death, she said, and realized he had a tool against the Keshiri. A weapon that could force Korsin and the rest of the humans to forget about building on this