[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(121)

The alien looked up as the door slid open, and it seemed to Leia that he sat up straighter as she stepped inside. The door slid shut behind her, and for a long moment they just eyed each other. “I’m Leia Organa Solo,” she said at last. “You wanted to talk to me?”

He gazed at her for another moment. Then, slowly, he stood up and reached out a hand. “Your hand,” he said, his voice gravelly and strangely accented. “May I have it?”

Leia took a step forward and offered him her hand, acutely aware that she had just committed an irrevocable act of trust. From here, if he so chose, he could pull her to him and snap her neck before anyone outside could possibly intervene.

He didn’t pull her toward him. Leaning forward, holding her hand in an oddly gentle grip, he raised it to his snout and pressed it against two large nostrils half hidden beneath strands of hair.

And smelled it.

He smelled it again, and again, taking long, deep breaths. Leia found herself staring at his nostrils, noticing for the first time their size and the soft flexibility of the skin folds around them. Like those of a tracking animal, she realized. A memory flashed to mind: how, as he’d held her helpless back at the house, those same nostrils had been pressed into her neck.

And right after that was when he’d let her go …

Slowly, almost tenderly, the alien straightened up. “It is then true,” he grated, releasing her hand and letting his own fall to his side. Those huge eyes stared at her, brimming with an emotion whose nature her Jedi skills could vaguely sense but couldn’t begin to identify. “I was not mistaken before.”

Abruptly, he dropped to both knees. “I seek forgiveness, Leia Organa Solo, for my actions,” he said, ducking his head to the floor, his hands splayed out to the sides as they had been in that encounter back at the house. “Our orders did not identify you, but gave only your name.”

“I understand,” she nodded, wishing she did. “But now you know who I am?”

The alien’s face dropped a couple of centimeters closer to the floor. “You are the Mal’ary’ush,” he said. “The daughter and heir of the Lord Darth Vader.”

“He who was our master.”

Leia stared down at him, feeling her mouth fall open as she struggled to regain her mental balance. The right-angle turns were all coming too quickly. “Your master?” she repeated carefully.

“He who came to us in our desperate need,” the alien said, his voice almost reverent. “Who lifted us from our despair, and gave us hope.”

“I see,” she managed. This whole thing was rapidly becoming unreal … but one fact already stood out. The alien prostrating himself before her was prepared to treat her as royalty.

And she knew how to behave like royalty.

“You may rise,” she told him, feeling her voice and posture and manner settling into the almost-forgotten patterns of the Alderaanian court. “What is your name?”

“I am called Khabarakh by our lord,” the alien said, getting to his feet. “In the language of the Noghri-” He made a long, convoluted roiling noise that Leia’s vocal cords didn’t have a hope of imitating.

“I’ll call you Khabarakh,” she said. “Your people are called the Noghri?”

“Yes.” The first hint of uncertainty seemed to cross the dark eyes. “But you are the Mal’ary’ush,” he added, with obvious question.

“My father had many secrets,” she told him grimly. “You, obviously, were one of them. You said he brought you hope. Tell me how.”

“He came to us,” the Noghri said. “After the mighty battle. After the destruction.”

“What battle?”

Khabarakh’s eyes seemed to drift into memory. “Two great starships met in the space over our world,” he said, his gravelly voice low. “Perhaps more than two; we never knew for certain. They fought all the day and much of the night … and when the battle was over, our land was devastated.”

Leia winced, a pang of sympathetic ache running through her. Of ache, and of guilt. “We never hurt non-Imperial forces or worlds on purpose,” she said softly. “Whatever happened, it was an accident.”

The dark eyes fixed again on her. “The Lord Vader did not think so. He believed it was done on purpose, to drive fear and terror into the souls of the Emperor’s enemies.”

“Then the Lord Vader was mistaken,” Leia said, meeting that gaze firmly. “Our battle was with the Emperor, not his subjugated servants.”

Khabarakh drew himself up stiffly. “We were not the Emperor’s servants,” he grated. “We were a simple people, content to live our lives without concern for the dealings of others.”