Inferno by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online

having the strength to probe for guilty emotions right now, but the galaxy was littered with the body parts of those who had underestimated the strength of Luke Skywalker. “I would never have missed the chance to show my respect for her.”
    “I’m glad. It’s time we healed this rift between us.” Luke returned his gaze to Mara’s body. “I think that must be what she’s trying to tell us.”
    “ Tell us?” Jacen echoed.
    He looked to the top of the pyre and decided Luke must be losing touch with reality. Mara lay as dead as before, neither her lips nor anything else moving; there was no sound coming from anywhere near the vicinity of the body.
    Then he noticed that Mara’s white-swaddled form was starting to grow translucent and glow with Force energy. Saba sissed in astonishment and several other Masters sighed in relief, but Jacen nearly choked on his shock. If Mara was trying to tell anyone anything, it had nothing to do with reconciliation—and everything to do with exposing her killer.
    Luke clasped Jacen’s shoulder. “She waited until we were together,” he said. “I think there’s a message in that, don’t you?”
    “Uh, yes…of course.” To Jacen’s amazement, there was no hint of deception or cynicism in his uncle’s voice or presence. Luke had clearly drawn the wrong conclusion about what Mara was trying to tell him—perhaps because she had died while keeping her activities secret from him—and Jacen was more than ready to embrace his good fortune. “I think that must be exactly what Mara is telling us. We can’t save the Alliance without working together.”
    “Good point,” Luke said. “I’ll try to remember that this time.”
    “And so will I.” Jacen sneaked a glance in Tenel Ka’s direction and was rewarded with a tiny nod, barely perceptible but distinctly approving. “I promise.”
    Luke dipped his head in agreement, or perhaps even gratitude, and Jacen found himself struggling to keep his relief—his exhilaration —from spilling into the Force. He was going to have his fleet, and with it would come the strength to lure the Confederation into a trap and smash it, to unite the galaxy in justice and peace.
    As Jacen fought to control his emotions, Luke turned toward the lectern where Saba Sebatyne stood watching them, studying Jacen but looking somewhere beyond him—or perhaps it was deeper into him, as though she were seeing not Jacen’s public face, but his inner one, that of Darth Caedus.
    “Saba?” Luke called softly.
    There was a new vitality to his voice, a note of renewed confidence that Jacen might have found alarming, but which Caedus knew would last only as long as their “reconciliation.”
    “Saaaba?”
    Saba’s gaze finally swung back to Luke. “Yes?”
    Luke gestured at the audience. “Maybe you should continue.” He glanced at Mara’s luminous body, which had already grown so transparent that the back wall of the courtyard could be seen through it. “I’d like to finish before Mara is completely gone.”
    “Yes, please forgive this one,” she said. “She was…distracted.”
    Saba turned toward the courtyard again, but did not return immediately to her speech. Instead, she studied the audience for a moment, ruffling her scales, then glancing from them to Luke to Jacen and finally back to the courtyard. Jacen could feel her struggling with a decision, fighting to swallow her outrage at how he was taking advantage of Luke’s grief, and he realized she was about to make this a very unpleasant funeral for him.
    “Surely,” Saba began, “this one speakz for everyone here when she sayz how glad she is Colonel Solo could spare a few minutes to honor his noble aunt.”
    The opening was enough of a shock to tear most eyes in the audience from Mara’s rapidly vanishing form. A chorus of confused murmurs and indignant gasps arose from the audience, but Jacen maintained an expressionless face and continued to gaze politely at the lectern. Whatever