“I meant about Lumiya.” Mara had a way of bracing her shoulders that said she knew she’d made a big mistake but he didn’t have to rub her nose in it. “Okay, I’ve changed my mind. Jacen’s gone bad. My fault we’ve wasted a few months placating Ben. Satisfied? Now what about the root cause of this?”
“We haven’t picked up her trail again.”
“And then what happens when we do?” Mara smacked the plates down on the counter so hard they rattled. “What are you going to do, hold her hand again?” He should never have told her that Lumiya had offered him her hand when they were fighting. It was eating away at her. “Because the poor old girl doesn’t mean any harm? Lumiya? Queen of the stanging Sith?”
“There really was no ill intent in her.”
Mara rolled her eyes. “Of course there wasn’t. She doesn’t want to kill you. She wants to kill our son.” She grabbed Luke’s face in both hands and made him look into her eyes. “Luke, you could have killed her. Cut her in two. Finished the job. But you didn’t.”
Luke felt inexplicably ashamed. “I couldn’t.”
“I know. We come from different schools of justice, don’t we?”
“Sweetheart”
“She’s not your father, Luke. There’s nothing good left in her to redeem. She’s a threat that needs to be taken out, and that’s what I’m trained to do, and you’re not. Forget this take her alive if possible garbage. The only way anyone’s taking her is dead.”
Luke had had a feeling Mara might say that. He knew when she was building up to something. She might have thought she could keep things from him, but he knew her well enough by now to see the cogs grinding and the plan forming.
He’d missed his chance with Lumiya. He wouldn’t get another.
“You’re telling me you’re going after her.”
“You might tag along if you could be trusted not to go soft on her.” Mara let him go and looked embarrassed. Her cheeks were flushed. “You can have Alema. She needs a serious attitude readjustment with a lightsaber, too. It’s not as if we haven’t got enough kill-crazy stalkers to go around.”
No matter what happened, Luke knew he didn’t have that assassin’s ability to kill someone who wasn’t trying to kill him right there and then. If he had …
So Ben wasn’t the only one navigating a moral maze. Luke had been doing it for decades, but the maze was only acquiring more twists and turns each year.
“Let’s see how much Jacen perks up with Lumiya gone,” he said. Wait, did I just bless an assassination? “And with Alema out of the way, then Leia and Han can come back into the fold, and we can face this war as a family again.”
Mara patted his cheek with a regretful smile and set a droid on cleaning the dishes. She spent the rest of the afternoon assembling and checking an array of weapons that definitely didn’t come from a civilized age.
“I never knew you had one of those,” he said, pointing to a blaster that had the widemouthed muzzle of a grenade launcher. “How are you planning to use it?”
“With a flechette cartridge. Let’s see her try a lightwhip on that.”
“Do you want to take my shoto?”
“You offering?”
“Good-luck token, maybe.”
“Under-the-rib-cage token, more like. Unless that’s all durasteel, too.”
This was his wife. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of the woman she once had been, and she was a stranger for a second or two.
“How are you going to track her? She hides very-well.’”
“I can hunt very well.” Mara took the shoto hilt and spun it like a blade. “A little bait, a little investigation, and a little Force help.” She ignited the energy beam. “Plus, if Alema is trailing after her, as seems to be the case, then one of them is going to slip up and show herself.”
“Lumiya doesn’t slip up.”
“Well, she’s not running the galaxy right now, so I guess she does sometimes …” Mara spun the shoto into the air and caught it by the hilt as it fell. “And she keeps showing up lately, so I’ll be ready.”
“Just keep me informed where you are, okay?”
“You’ll know.” Mara gave him her best I-know-what-I’m-doing grin. “And who better to go after a former Emperor’s Hand than another one?”
“You did that before …”
“And that was before I had a son to worry about.” The grin faded. “I’m much more dangerous now I have a cub to protect.”
Luke had no doubt about that. But it was the first time in his life that he regretted not killing someone when he’d had the chance.