Mara clenched her teeth. “I’ll have his help, C’baoth. Whether you like it or not.”
There was no doubt this time that the Jedi Master had smiled. A thin, ghostly smile. “Oh, no, Mara Jade,” he murmured. “You are mistaken. Do you truly believe that simply because you stand in the middle of an empty space in the Force that I am powerless against you?”
“There’s also this,” Mara said, pulling her blaster from its holster and aiming it at his chest.
C’baoth didn’t move; but suddenly Mara could feel a surge of tension in the air around her. “No one points a weapon at me with impunity,” the Jedi Master said with quiet menace. “You will pay dearly for this one day.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Mara said, retreating a step to put her back against the X-wing’s soard S-foils. Above and to her left she could hear the R2 droid chirping thoughtfully to itself. “You want to stand aside and let me pass? Or do we do this the hard way?”
C’baoth seemed to study her. “I could destroy you, you know,” he said. The menace had vanished from his voice now, leaving something almost conversational in its place. “Right there where you stand, before you even knew the attack was coming. But I won’t. Not now. I’ve felt your presence over the years, Mara Jade; the rising and falling of your power after the Emperor’s death took most of your strength away. And now I’ve seen you in my meditations. Someday you will come to me, of your own free will.”
“I’ll take my chances on that one, too, Mara said.
“You don’t believe me,” C’baoth said with another of his ghostly smiles. “But you shall. The future is fixed, my young would-be Jedi, as is your destiny. Someday you will kneel before me. I have foreseen it.”
“I wouldn’t trust Jedi foreseeing all that much if I were you,” Mara retorted, risking a glance past him at the darkened building and wondering what C’baoth would do if she tried shouting Skywalker’s name. “The Emperor did a lot of that, too. It didn’t help him much in the end.”
“Perhaps I am wiser than the Emperor was,” C’baoth said. His head turned slightly. “I told you to go to your chambers,” he said in a louder voice.
“Yes, you did,” a familiar voice acknowledged; and from the shadows at the front of the house a new figure moved across the courtyard.
Skywalker.
“Then why are you here?” C’baoth asked.
“I felt a disturbance in the Force,” the younger man said as he passed through the gate and came more fully into the dim starlight. Above his black tunic his face was expressionless, his eyes fixed on Mara. “As if a battle were taking place nearby. Hello, Mara.”
“Skywalker,” she managed between dry lips. With all that had happened to her since her arrival in the Jomark system, it was only now just dawning on her the enormity of the task she’d set for herself. She, who’d openly told Skywalker that she would someday kill him, was now going to have to convince him that she was more trustworthy than a Jedi Master. “Look-Skywalker-“
“Aren’t you aiming that at the wrong person?” he asked mildly. “I thought I was the one you were gunning for.”
Mara had almost forgotten the blaster she had pointed at C’baoth. “I didn’t come here to kill you,” she said. Even to her own ears the words sounded thin and deceitful. “Karrde’s in trouble with the Empire. I need your help to get him out.”
“I see.” Skywalker looked at C’baoth. “What happened here, Master C’baoth?”
“What does it matter?” the other countered. “Despite her words just now, she did indeed come here to destroy you. Would you rather I had not stopped her?”
“Skywalker-” Mara began.
He stopped her with an upraised hand, his eyes still on C’baoth. “Did she attack you?” he asked. “Or threaten you in any way?”
Mara looked at C’baoth : and felt the breath freeze in her lungs. The earlier confidence had vanished from the Jedi Master’s face. In its place was something cold and deadly. Directed not at her, but at Skywalker.
And suddenly Mara understood. Skywalker wouldn’t need convincing of C’baoth’s treachery after all. Somehow, he already knew.
“What does it matter what her precise actions were?” C’baoth demanded, his voice colder even than his face. “What matters is that she is a living example of the danger I have been warning you of since your arrival. The danger all Jedi face from a galaxy that hates and fears us.”