“Lumiya’s bending him somehow. Okay, no need to tell me I was the last person to notice that.”
“I wasn’t going to. Did you … mention that?”
“Yes. I thought it was time someone dropped a hint that we’d noticed our Jacen had turned into a monster.” Mara was getting angry, and her honest inner voice told her that the only person who deserved that anger was herself, for defending Jacen while the fact that things were going disastrously wrong was staring her in the face. But Mara was human, and scared for Ben, and it boiled over onto Jaina. “Forgive me for asking, but being his twin, have you never had this out with him?”
“I tried. He responded with a court-martial charge, remember?”
“I can’t help thinking that you might have tried slugging him.”
“Suddenly he’s my responsibility? I’m the one who said he was going dark, way back.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Mara put her hands up in mock submission. She could apologize, but she couldn’t retract her acid tone, and she regretted that. “I justokay, none of my business.”
“Spit it out, Mara.”
“I just don’t get how you can be so caught up in worrying whether you want Jag or Zekk when your own brother’s going to pieces and taking others with him.”
“Whoa
“Sorry. I said it was none of my business.”
“Well, you said it, soyes, I want to be distracted by personal issues, because otherwise I’d go nuts trying to understand why Jacen’s doing what he’s doing to our parents.”
“Maybe it’s time we all faced that. Together.”
There was an awkward silence. Mara wanted to tell Jaina that she was a grown woman now and it was time to stop messing around like a teenager, and that Ben was more adult at fourteen than she was at thirty-one. It was spiteful, partly true, and partly fueled by Mara’s incomprehension of anyone who wasn’t as totally focused on the mission as she was, to the exclusion of all else.
She kept her thoughts to herself. It was a sign of weary middle age, along with gray hairs and fading stretch marks.
I spent my whole youth on duty for the Emperor. I never had the freedom that Jaina’s always had. And a little bit of me … resents that now.
It wasn’t Jaina’s fault. She was headstrong and passionate like her father, but she hadn’t quite found the silent, hidden durasteel of her mother yet.
She’ll rise to the challenge when it comes. But if this isn’t it, I don’t know what is.
Jaina had her head down, hair forming a dark curtain as she leaned over the desk, pretending to be absorbed in the chart, but Mara could feel she was hurt. It wasn’t the first time in recent weeks.
Mara would make it up to her when she calmed down. Families had spats all the time. The storms blew over.
“Change of plan,” said Luke, stepping out of the turbolift with his hair disheveled and a bag in one hand. Sometimes he had that Don’t-stop-me look, and he had it now. It always made Mara want to stop him. “I’m going after Lumiya. Enough.”
“No, you’re not,” Mara said. “You’re too close to this. She’s baiting you.”
Luke dumped the bag on the desk, disrupting the holochart. Jaina stepped back.
“Ben’s boots,” said Luke.
“And the point is … ?”
“Deposited at our apartment by Lumiya.”
Mara put her hand on the boots and felt the remnants of dark energy. Now she was mad: cold, clear, icy mad. “She’s been into GAG HQ. Or Jacen’s apartment. I don’t know which idea I like less.”
“/need to settle this with her.”
“It is, as some admiral once said, a trap”
“For her. Biting off more than she can chew.”
Jaina glanced at them both, still looking a little wounded. “Uncle Luke, I’ll stick my nose in here and say it’s better if we go after Lumiya now, because she’s clearly playing a game, and … I’ve never seen you angry like this before.”
“Luke, the question to ask yourself is this,” Mara said, pulling on her jacket and checking her personal weapons. “What will you do when you catch her?”
Luke swallowed hard. “I know what I have to do.”
“And what was that conversation we had the other day, about being fit for the role? Me trained killer, you honest guardian of right?” Lightsaber, vibroblades, hold-out blaster, flechette launcher, and the last of my transponders. Check. “Here’s the plan. You keep an eye on Jacen while I go after her.”
“I’m coming, too,” Jaina said. “I’d hate to miss Alema if she shows up.”