Nelani advanced. Lumiya retreated, slapping her thigh-digging her fingers through the cloth and into her thigh. She yanked, and suddenly in her hands was a whip. She flicked it back, preparatory to striking with it; its tendrils, for there were several instead of just one, spread out into something that moved like a weaponized cloud, some of them shining iron-like and jagged, some of them glowing like a lightsaber’s blade. Lumiya cracked the weapon forward; Nelani, her body language suggesting confusion as she faced this unusual weapon, twisted to one side, but one of the lashes, a metal one, grazed her face, drawing blood all along her left cheek. Nelani took a step back, shaking her head.
“I don’t just talk, Jedi girl,” Lumiya said. “And, you’ll notice, unlike you, I don’t strike at a target who doesn’t have a weapon in hand.”
“Let Lumiya talk,” Jacen said.
“Can’t you feel yourself wavering?” There was a shrill tone of desperation in Nelani’s voice. “She’s bending your mind, bending your will.”
Jacen shook his head. “No, she’s not. If I’m wavering, it’s before a presentation of fact, not mind tricks. Come on, Nelani. If mind tricks were involved, don’t you think you’d feel them?”
“Here’s the truth about the difference between Jedi and Sith,” Lumiya said.
“Shut up.” Nelani lunged forward again, spinning her lightsaber into a defensive shield.
Lumiya’s lightwhip flicked around the edges of the shield. Ends of several tendrils rapped into Nelani’s chest and right bicep, creating small blood and burn spots. Nelani cried out and danced back again, baffled by the older woman’s superior technique.
“Both Jedi and Sith gravitate toward rule,” Lumiya continued. “But the Jedi believe it’s contrary to their nature, so they create guidelines that are only supposed to govern their own actions … until the inevitable day when the secular governments fall so short of Jedi ideals that they feel they have to impose their own rules on the others, to save them. That’s what happened at the end of the Old Republic. But the rules they put together are strange, ascetic, not designed for ordinary people, and they can’t be sustained as a form of government.
“The Sith recognize from the start that they can choose to impose their rule on others … or not. If society is functioning well, a Sith doesn’t have to act. Vectivus didn’t. If it’s not, he should act. And since he knows that fixing a broken government is his mission, he can design a system of government that works, that is fair, orderly.”
Nelani gestured with her free hand. The bust of Darth Vectivus’s mother flew forward, hurtling toward Lumiya like a marble missile. Lumiya flicked her lightwhip toward it, and nine or ten tendrils converged on it. The bust exploded into countless marble shards, raining down on the floor.
“The galaxy is dissolving into chaos,” Lumiya said. “Its leadership can’t save it; they’re the leftovers of what failed fifteen years ago during the Yuuzhan Vong war. The Jedi can’t step in and fix things-you know their methods, the way they think. What has Luke Skywalker told you? Have his tactics, his recommendations fixed anything? No. As good a man as he is, he and his order are just tools of the Galactic Alliance.”
Nelani tried again, this time with the bust of the Bothan. It reached a halfway point between her and Lumiya, but the older woman reached out with her own free hand and the bust stopped in midair. Now it strained forward toward her; a moment later, it crept back through the air toward Nelani. It was a piece in a game of push-of-war between the women, and neither was winning.
The strain showed in Lumiya’s voice, causing it to hoarsen. “Vergere sacrificed herself so you could assume the Sith mantle she wanted for you. That’s the kind of self-sacrifice no Jedi would admit is possible for the Sith, but it’s the truth. Take what I have to teach you, Jacen. Take this place and the dark side power it contains. Take the knowledge that rests in its tombs on the world of Ziost. And use them against the forces that are trying to tear this galaxy apart. Restore order. Give your cousin, give the children in your family and your life the chance to grow up in a galaxy without war.”
“You’re still withholding the truth,” Jacen said. His voice was hard now, his manner uncompromising, unconfused. “You killed the security chief on Toryaz Station, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. I caught up to him too late to prevent the attack on you-it was already under way. But I could force from him an admission of who he was working for, and avenge the dead.”