Lost Tribe of the Sith: Purgatory

by John Jackson Miller

  “Friends. Right.” Ori rolled her eyes.

  “But our booth looks lovely. A fine job, again.”

  Reminded, Ori turned her gaze to something more pleasing—the dalsa flowers, fresh and vibrant on the balcony. Jelph of Marisota might never appear here, but at least some part of him had made the trip.

  Thunder came from below. Ori looked down to see the riders, wearing the ancient garb of Nida Korsin’s Skyborn Rangers, entering the field with their crippled uvak. Harshest of all bloodsports on Kesh, rake-riding even began with gore. The wing muscles of uvak hatchlings were cut, permanently grounding them while preserving some range of movement. With glass prongs screwed into their tough wing edges, the fully grown creatures stalked around, their flopping wings transformed into dangerous weapons.

  Squinting, Ori tried to identify the riders. Dernas and his Reds had their favorites out there, as did Pallima and the Golds. Venn had two entries, promoted by the Luzo brothers. The last to enter the field, however, was the one Ori cared about: Campion Dey, uvak wrangler from the southlands that Candra represented. Dey saluted Ori and her mother.

  “He’ll do well, I think,” Ori commented.

  “He’ll die,” Candra said.

  Ori looked back, surprised. Candra settled into her comfortable chair, indifferent to the drums beating below. Searching her mother’s face, Ori realized the truth. These sporting events were always succession struggles by proxy. The rival factions might try to win Candra’s favor by allowing her entry to win, but the newest High Lord wasn’t going to agitate Grand Lord Venn. Not today.

  “We’re going to have to win sometime,” Ori grumbled.

  “Not today,” Candra said. Campion Dey was as good as dead.

  The shell-horn sounding, the field dissolved immediately into a cloud of dust and blood. There was no strategy to rake-riding, no posturing. The riders had their lightsabers, but anyone with sense minded the reins and nothing else. Like any Saber, Ori loved a good fight—but this was nothing more than a brawl with animals: titans, lurching about, ripping into one another.

  And her family’s entry was simply there to dress the place, no better than the flowers in the—

  “Look!”

  All eyes turned to Campion Dey, whose uvak reared back suddenly on its clawed feet. It charged ahead, razor-tipped wings outstretched. But instead of goring the opponent stumbling haplessly before it, the creature leapt …

  … and flew. Wings that shouldn’t work pumped mightily, allowing uvak and rider to bound from the melee toward the grandstands.

  Dey, standing in his saddle, raised his red lightsaber and screamed something Ori couldn’t hear. He was in control, all right. Lighting her own weapon, Ori leapt atop the railing, ready to pounce if he came near. But the lumbering behemoth passed to the left, awkwardly clawing its way upward through the panicked crowd toward the Grand Lord’s luxury compartment, above.

  Ori saw Lillia Venn stand, unflinching, as the attacker scaled the stone bleachers toward her. Raising her shaking hands, the Grand Lord unleashed a torrent of dark side energy. Blue fire crackling all along its wingspan, the surprised animal fell backward onto the lower seating, throwing its rider free. The Luzos leapt from the royal box, their own weapons red blurs as they plunged toward the would-be assassin.

  “Mother, get back!” Ori yelled.

  Across the way, a Keshiri aide closed the shutters to the Grand Lord’s compartment. Ori now did the same, knocking over large vases of Jelph’s flowers in the process. She turned back to see her mother, staggering, paralyzed before the spectacle.

  “What happened, Mother?” They’d known Campion Dey for years, supporting his training. What could have caused his mad act?

  Candra simply shook her head, blood draining from a face that had looked youthful only moments before. “You … you’d better go, Ori.”

  “The other Sabers are dealing with Dey,” Ori said, guarding the entrance to the compartment.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  Ori looked at her mother, stunned. “We didn’t do this. We don’t have anything to worry about. Do we?” She took the older woman’s arm. “Mother, do we?”

  Summoning some unseen reserve of calm, Candra straightened. “I don’t know what just happened. But I will know, one way or another.” She stepped past her daughter and opened the door. Outside, Sith and Keshiri dashed madly down the Korsinata’s exterior ramps.

  “Mother!”

  Candra looked back with sad eyes. “I can’t talk now, Ori. Just get to the estate and make sure the slaves know I won’t be coming home tonight.” She disappeared into the crowd.

  A star fell harmlessly from the sky. Landing on a hill, it provided light through the night, causing the gardens of Kesh to flourish as never before.

  Until it rose again, setting everything afire. The stones of Ori’s home fell to dust before the hot wind, exposing her to the inferno. Charred and dying, she’d chased the star into the jungle to ask why it had destroyed her world. It answered: “Because you thought me a friend.”

  Ori had experienced the Force vision during her second day as a Tyro, the lowest level in the Tribe’s hierarchy. It had never meant anything to her. But arriving at Starfall, her mother’s country estate south of Tahv, she’d had occasion to remember it. A procession of Keshiri laborers was exiting the marbled mansion, carrying belongings to a pyre on the lawn.

  Her laborers. Her belongings.

  Leaving Shyn by the columns lining the front walk, Ori ran toward the bonfire. Drawing her lightsaber, she charged the frail purple figure directing the work: her mother’s caretaker.

  “What’s going on?” Ori grabbed the man. “Who told you to do this?”

  Recognizing his mistress’s daughter, the Keshiri looked furtively to either side before touching Ori’s wrist. He spoke in a low whisper. “This was ordered by the Grand Lord herself, milady. Just a couple of hours ago.”

  A couple of hours ago? Ori shook her head. The assassination attempt had only been two hours earlier. How was any of this possible?

  The caretaker gestured to the main entrance. There, two apprentices of the Luzo brothers stood in the grand doorway, watching the furniture-laden workers pass. They hadn’t noticed her yet, Ori saw—but she’d change that. Ori took a step toward the house.

  Clutching at her arm, the old man yanked Ori back. “There are more of them inside,” he said, pulling her behind the fire and out of their view. “They’re taking your mother’s things, too.”

  “Is she still a High Lord?” Ori asked.

  The caretaker looked down.

  Another thought struck her. “Am I still a Saber?”

  Suddenly sickened, Ori staggered closer to the flames and tried to remember what she’d heard and seen on the way out of the Korsinata. There had been so much chaos. With Campion Dey killed seconds after his failed attack, rumors were attributing his act everywhere. The Red faction claimed her mother had made a dire pact with the Golds, and vice versa. Some claimed Venn had died in her box, succumbing to her exertions and the excitement; others reported seeing the executions of High Lords Dernas and Pallima, right in their boxes at the arena. None of it made sense.

  The only thing all agreed on was who brought the assassin into the stadium to begin with: the Kitai family.

  She had to get back to Tahv and speak to her loyal apprentices with access to the High Seat. Defenders of her family’s interests, they would know what was going on now. It was important not to succumb to anger over the bonfire, an obvious attempt by the Grand Lord’s camp to provoke a reaction and reveal disloyalty.

  Looking toward the mansion, she smirked. Candra Kitai’s political skills were unparalleled. By now, she’d have successfully deflected blame and figured out who the victors were. By the time Ori reached Tahv, Candra would likely be sitting at the right hand of whoever had won out. Now was no time to fall into a clumsy trap set by the Luzos.

  “This will be straightened out,” she told the caretaker,
turning toward her uvak.

  “Good-bye, Ori.”

  Climbing atop Shyn, Ori took the reins in hand. Suddenly she stopped, calling after the retreating Keshiri elder. “Wait. You called me Ori.”

  The Keshiri looked down and wandered away.

  By the dark side, she thought. Anything but that.

  Jelph tipped the wobbly cart backward, allowing another pile of soil to spill into the trough. As summer went on, the mounds would dry out, becoming more acidic; an alkaline wash tended to refortify the stockpiles. His Keshiri customers didn’t know about hydrogen ions, but they were particular nonetheless.

  Hearing a sound, Jelph dropped his trowel and stepped around the hut. There, in the waning rays of evening, stood his visitor from the day before, facing her uvak and gripping the bridle.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” Jelph said, approaching her from behind. “Nothing wrong with the dalsas, I hope?”

  Turning, she released the harness. The brilliant brown eyes were full of hurt and anger.

  “I’ve been condemned,” Ori of Tahv said. “I’m a slave.”

  Chapter Three

  Jelph poured more of the gritty mixture into her bowl. A Keshiri pauper’s dish, the tasteless cereal became something else in his hands, seasoned with spices from his garden and the tiniest morsels of salted meat. Ori didn’t know what animal it came from, but now she devoured the meal hungrily. Two days of prideful restraint had been enough.

  It was still so strange to see him, here, outside the fields. Each of the past two mornings, he had risen before sunrise, beginning his chores early to have more time for her. He washed in the river before she rose. When it was her turn, he retreated to the corner of the hut that served as his kitchen to preserve her modesty. Ori didn’t think she had any, but again, that strange meekness crept in. He was no Keshiri plaything, but a human, even if he was a slave.

  As she was.

  For some reason, she hadn’t told him anything that first night. There was so little he could do, and it was all so far beyond his frame of reference. She’d sat in silence in the doorway of the hut, watching for nothing until she collapsed. She’d awakened the next morning inside, on the bed of straw he used himself. She had no idea where he’d slept that night, if he’d slept at all.

  The second evening, after an untouched dinner, she’d let it all spill out: everything she’d learned in her trip to Tahv. The leaders of the two factions that could never agree on a Grand Lord had indeed fallen to their elderly compromise candidate. The event had given her minions cause to decapitate—literally—the leaderships of the Red and Gold factions.

  Ori’s mother still lived, her sources assured her, though in the clutches of the vengeful Venn. It was too late for Candra to save her career, but she might yet save her life, if she said the right things about the right people. Like Donellan, Candra had waited too long to choose a side and to put herself forward as a successor. A year had seemed like so little time to be a High Lord. But for Venn, whose every breath was a miracle, the need to outlive her rivals was paramount.

  On learning that she’d been condemned to slavery, Ori had dashed to her hidden uvak and flown immediately to the only safe place she knew. After a long moment’s hesitation, Jelph had welcomed her—although he’d been less sure of what to do with Shyn. As slaves, neither of them could own an uvak. Remembering the composting barn that had once served as a stable, Ori had urged him to hide the creature there, behind the stalls storing manure. Initially uncertain, Jelph had relented under her pressure. Already feeling sick, she’d heaved as soon as the door to the vile place was opened. She did it again the second night, after relating the full tale of her tiny but important family’s downfall.

  Jelph had been caring and helpful those times, with his cool river water and washrags handy. Now, in the twilight of the third evening, she was really testing the limits of his hospitality. Feeling better, she’d spent the entire day stamping around the farm, going over the events in her mind and plotting her family’s return to power, even if the family now was just her. At supper, she’d tested both his knowledge and his patience.

  “I don’t understand,” Jelph said, scraping the bottom of the orojo-shell bowl. “I thought the Tribe expected people to want each other’s jobs.”

  “Yes, yes,” Ori said, cross-legged on the floor. “But we don’t kill to take them. We kill to keep them.”

  “There’s a distinction?”

  Ori dropped her empty bowl to the floor of the hut. Some dining table, she thought. “You really don’t know anything about your people, do you? The Tribe is a meritocracy. Whoever’s best at a job can have it—provided that a public challenge is made. Dernas never made a public challenge to the Grand Lord. Neither did Pallima.”

  “Nor did your mother,” he offered, kneeling to retrieve her bowl. He looked slightly startled when she used the Force to levitate it into his hand. “Thanks.”

  “Look, it’s really simple,” she said, standing and making a futile effort to brush the dirt from her uniform. “If you get to your rivals before they’re ready, you can do anything you want—including assassination.”

  His brow furrowed as he looked up at her. “It sounds like a bloodbath.”

  “Normally we keep it low-key, for order’s sake. Poisonings. A shikkar blade in the gut.”

  “For order’s sake.”

  She stood in the doorway and glared. “Are you going to criticize, or are you going to help me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jelph said, rising. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” He shook his head. “It’s just that the thought of having rules for this sort of thing seems, well, odd. There are rules for breaking the rules.”

  Ori walked to the bank and looked west. The sun appeared to be sinking into the river itself, setting the water ablaze with orange. It was a beautiful place, and she’d fantasized about stolen nights here before. But this wasn’t what she had imagined at all. She wasn’t going to be able to plot her return from this place. And she’d need more help than a strapping farmhand.

  “I have to go back,” she said. “My mother was framed. Whoever did this to us will pay—and I’ll have my name back.” She looked back at him, gnawing on a stalk of something he’d pulled from the ground. “I have to go back!”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said, joining her at the riverside. “I suspect your Grand Lord did all of this herself.”

  Ori looked at him, amazed. “What would you know about it?”

  “Not much, I’ll grant you,” Jelph said, chewing. “But if your mother was the key to selecting Venn’s replacement, I could see the old woman wanting her out of the way.”

  Incredulous, Ori looked into the growing shadows. “Stick to fertilizer, Jelph.”

  “Look at it this way,” he said, edging into her field of view. “If Venn didn’t stage the assassination and really suspected your mother, you wouldn’t have been condemned. You’d be dead. But the Grand Lord doesn’t have to kill you, because she knows you didn’t do anything. You’re more useful as an example.” He tossed the stick into the river. “By making slaves out of a High Lord and her family, she’s got living, breathing deterrents in front of people for as long as you live.”

  Ori looked at him, stunned. It made sense. Dernas and Pallima had died out of public view. The bonfire at the estate had attracted the attentions of humans and Keshiri alike. If she had stayed in Tahv, she might already be at work, doing hard labor in full public view.

  “So what do I do?”

  He smiled, softly, his scar invisible now. “Well, I don’t know. But it strikes me that, as long as you still don’t sense your mother suffering through your Force, the way to thwart Venn is … not to be an example.”

  He didn’t say the rest, but she heard it. The way not to be an example is not to be there. She looked up into his eyes, reflecting the starlight hitting the water. “How does a farmer know about these things?”

  “You’ve seen my job,” he said, putting a hand on her
shoulder. “I deal with a lot of things that stink.”

  She laughed, despite herself, for the first time since she arrived. As she took a step away from the river in the darkness, her footing faltered in the soft ground.

  He caught her. She let him.

  Standing in the doorway of the hut after midnight, Jelph looked in at her sleeping form on the straw bed. It had been wrong to let Ori stay this long, he thought—and certainly wrong to let things go as far as they had in the last nine days. But then, it had been wrong to encourage her visits to begin with.

  Stepping outside, he tightened his tattered robe. After so many sultry days, there was an unseasonable chill in the air tonight. It matched his mood. Ori’s presence put everything in jeopardy, in ways she could never imagine. So much more was at stake than the fortunes of one Sith family.

  And yet, he’d taken her in. It was a different Ori Kitai that had come to see him, one he couldn’t resist. She’d seemed so proud on her earlier visits—full of the noxious entitlement of her people, certain of both her status and herself. With the loss of one, the other had gone. He’d seen the person underneath: tentative and unsure. As angry as she still was over what had happened, she was also sad over the loss of a vision she had once had of herself. And lately, sadness had been winning out, her days limited to walks from his hut to the garden.

  Humility in a Sith. It was an amazing thing to witness, an impossibility. Her armor melted down, the impurities seemed to boil away. Was it possible that not every Sith on Kesh was born venal? Her anger over being dispossessed seemed … no more than normal. No more than how he would feel, and had felt, in similar situations. It wasn’t the kind of fury that destroyed civilizations for sport. It wasn’t Sith.

  It struck him as wrong that the greatest misfortune in Ori’s life had only made her more attractive to him. The reserve he’d worked to develop had fallen away after that night on the riverbank. She had needed him, and it had been so long since anyone had. There wasn’t much market for nonentities, in the wilds or anywhere else. But the risk was always there, accompanying the happiness.