Chapter 58 (Patreon)

“So…” I rub the corners of my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. I managed to snatch a few hours of sleep, but judging by how I feel, I need to hibernate for an entire season before I’ll be functional again. Like some kind of goat-bear. “Emthree, what have I got today?”

“Correspondence, meetings, classes. You were also planning to shoot yourself this evening, but I recommend against such a course of action.”

“I don’t even kno-o-ow… Who are the messages from?”

“Commander Alto sent a holovid from Shili…”

“Delete it! To the demons with it!!! Who knew he’d turn out to be such a vindictive bastard that he’d send me recordings of their vacation on Shili? Actually, no, keep it. I’ll watch it once I’ve had some sleep. Every time I see the Commander in swim trunks, the cognitive dissonance makes me want to burst out laughing. What else?”

As we spoke, I was mixing myself yet another mug of caf, half-and-half with a stamina potion. Once the workload eased up, I’d have to patch myself up a bit…

“A message from the Jedi Temple, from Master Windu, regarding a dome for the outpost on Korriban.”

“Ah, send that one to me. I’ll read it later.” I perked up a little. A job that required me to travel there in person? Yes, please, I’ll take that. Once all these bastards got back from their vacations, I’d make my escape, citing work and the need to keep building good relations with the glowstick crowd.

“An official letter has arrived from the ruler of Mandalore, Satine Kryze.”

“Mandalore? Kryze? The pacifist Duchess? What does she want?”

“In short, Lady Kryze is asking whether it would be possible to restore the biospheres of several worlds in the Mandalorian sector.”

“Restore them? Entire worlds?” A swallow of the concoction brought me absolutely no pleasure. “There’s no bringing back what was there before—millions of species of flora and fauna are gone. Creating a new biosphere is possible, but it would be expensive. For her—in credits. For us—in labor. Very expensive! Incredibly expensive and time-consuming! And that’s for just one planet. I’m not even talking about several.”

I wasn’t just answering Emthree; I was thinking out loud. Again, work that required travel was a good thing. But in Duchess Satine Kryze’s case, this wouldn’t be a short trip for me alone—it would mean regular deployments for a huge number of mages… “Repairing” one world was a colossal undertaking, and several sounded like the work of multiple generations of ordinary people. On the other hand, if we signed a contract with those… what were they called again? Arvik had mentioned them. The New Mandalorians, right.

If we could come to terms with them, and they agreed to pay—not the full amount up front, of course, and not only after all the work was finished, but in installments according to a phased project schedule… hmm… not bad. It would give us another steady stream of credits, and one that could keep flowing for years. Besides, the Mandalorian sector was supposedly independent, and we had neither students from there nor any decent clients. Sure, right now we didn’t have enough hands to meet all the demand as it was, but why not get ourselves some exposure among pacifists independent of the Republic? Might come in handy later. I’d have to discuss that angle with Alto. And the Academy was only going to keep expanding, so better to have too many people wanting in than too few.

“With good relations, there’d be a real chance to turn it to our advantage somehow… say, by opening a Guild branch there. Or, down the line, we could think about setting up libraries of Hecate, maybe even building magic schools with a light preparatory curriculum. Plus, we could send students there for field training! Huge advantage!” I perked up at the prospect of getting rid of some of those monsters with rocket engines up their asses, at least for a while. Hit-Girl, for instance, had taken off with some of her little friends, and the Academy had immediately become a much calmer place.

If only I could ship that green, tiresome Jedi off somewhere too…

No, not an option, I sigh in disappointment. We’re desperately short on chimerologists as it is. Need to recruit more people, because once my daughter flew off, all the moderately difficult cases got dumped on me too. The Knights still have plenty of room to grow.

I kept putting off my original plans for a chimerology faculty, but I’m going to have to buckle down and get it done. Otherwise I’ll just keep wasting my own time on this stuff forever. And I feel a bit awkward about Shiv, too—I promised him a while back that he’d eventually be able to get his hands on a couple of masters of flesh, but so far the whole thing has remained nothing more than a plan.

“Right, Emthree, draft a reply to the Duchess… You said ‘in short.’ Was the original message long?”

“Extremely. Duchess Kryze’s letter is overflowing with polite phrasing and remarkably ornate language, which, speaking frankly, only increases the length of the text without adding any actual substance.”

“So, courtly as hell, basically. Fine. Write something in the same vein so the ruler of Mandalore doesn’t take offense at a dry response. As for her question, tell her that ‘restoring’ the biosphere is impossible, but creating a new one is feasible. The amount of work would be enormous, though, and before anything begins, we’d need to discuss a great many things… In short, we need to talk. In detail and at length. Send me the finished version for approval.”

“Understood. I’ve sent you two versions.”

“Must be nice being a droid… Fine, I’ll look them over today. Any more correspondence?” Another swallow of caf and potion made my whole body shudder. One brief moment—and to the demons with it, I switched off my taste receptors.

“Several letters proposing that we accept students for training.”

“Pulling strings? Skipping the queue?”

“Precisely.”

“Decline politely. Say that we simply don’t have the capacity to give students beyond the enrollment limit the attention they deserve.”

“Understood. A holographic message has arrived from the Count of Serenno. In short: he has some questions about the methods in the records you sent him.”

“Fine, I’ll look at it later. Forward it to my inbox.” I downed the slop from my favorite mug in one gulp. Drinking tasteless caf was a perversion, and I was thoroughly sick of torturing myself.

“There are also more than three hundred other messages, but they fall under the category of ‘spam.’”

“Fucking assholes,” I summed up my feelings toward every bastard who sent random crap to whoever they could. I’d kill the lot of them, but spending years flying around the galaxy hunting idiots was giving them far too much honor. And I’d still have to find them first. “What’s next?”

“Your meeting with your friend is scheduled for the second half of the day. You asked me to remind you.”

“Excellent. At least something good. Set a reminder on my commlink for one hour before lunchtime.”

“Done.”

“Anything else?”

“Your good friend Villie…”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember. Hard to forget that bastard: this evening, at the cantina. He’ll be trying to sell me some crap again, that horned swindler.”

“He also sent a short message saying he has something for your daughter.”

“Not a chance,” I bared my teeth in a malicious grin. “Karray’s away traveling, so that Devaronian crook won’t get to pull what he did last time and sell me some half-dead freak while claiming it’s related to Master Yoda. By the way, how’s that thing doing?”

“He recently received Jabiimi citizenship, confirmed his qualifications as a spacecraft systems engineer, and started working at the void dock. His department head is already giving him good reviews.”

“Little guy, but sharp—and educated, too,” I nodded. “Anything else?”

“Your class schedule is on your datapad. The first class begins in forty-seven minutes.”

“Crap.”

“The speeder is already prepared and waiting for us.”

“Double crap. Fine, go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“As you command.” The droid waddled—there was really no other word for it—toward the door of my room.

I really ought to replace his chassis, I decided for what had to be the hundredth time.

That metal idiot’s “birthday” was coming up soon, so I figured I’d give him a little present. Suti was usually the one working with Emthree, so thoughts of upgrading him kept slipping my mind.

I’d just have to make sure no one wiped that tedious head of his in the process, or my dancer-secretary would be upset. She’d gotten attached to the droid. Thought he was cute.

She was also the one who started an unusual tradition for droids among our little group—celebrating their “birthdays.” Shmi happily picked it up. Her Threepio was practically Emthree’s brother—when it came to being tedious, they were practically next of kin—just the civilian protocol-droid version, built for translation, and a gift from her first son, Anakin. So Alto’s wife was very fond of her own metal idiot.

As for the Commander-in-Chief… the leader of our world had a bit of a thing about freedom—pirates excluded. And since I’d already listened to him muse several times about droids that had developed self-awareness, Jabiim might soon join the worlds where sentient machines were considered something more than mere property.

Maybe that was a good thing… Personally, I didn’t really care either way.

“But that’s not what I should be thinking about right now,” I muttered, shaking my head and heading after Emthree.

I had a shitload of work to do! So thoughts about freedom and equality could be left to the Jedi and everyone else with too much time on their hands.

“Vacations are evil!” I declared yet again.

Flashes of light from clashing lightsabers. The thrill of combat. Easy condescension, heavily laced with mockery toward a less skilled opponent. The desire to show off—and, at the same time, burning frustration at being in less than ideal condition, unable to demonstrate the full extent of his power.

A mistake.

His opponent made one, and Maul bared his teeth in a triumphant grin as he went on the offensive. One more instant, and…

The leg!!!

“You’re grinning too soon,” his opponent hissed, slipping away from the line of attack with a feint when weakness in his leg ruined the strike, and knocking the weapon from his hands with a kick in the same motion.

Damn it…

He managed to force the rebellious muscles in his leg back under control and leap away before his opponent’s blade could touch him. He stretched out a hand toward his lightsaber, intending to call it back into his palm with the Force…

“Enough.” The Lady’s cold voice cut through the silence of the room where her apprentices had been sparring, making both of them freeze and then deactivate their lightsabers. “What do you think?”

She wasn’t addressing the Zabrak, or even his victorious opponent, Asajj Ventress. The Lady turned her head toward the stranger seated beside her in a deep armchair, dressed in a black robe with the hood pulled low over his face.

“Impressive dancing with glowing sticks. You can see the passion and expressiveness of the partners with the naked eye. But if you mean the Zabrak’s legs, my answer is the same as before,” the voice from the darkness beneath the hood sounded muffled and tired. “Rehabilitation is going normally, and the fact that his muscles sometimes fail him is to be expected. His lower limbs still aren’t properly conditioned. Their condition is poor overall, but for this particular case, the progress is excellent. It’s obvious your Red One is working on his recovery the way he should, and you… This kind of rapid progress is the result of Dark Healing, right?”

“I had a little hand in it,” the Teacher said, twisting the servant’s face—currently housing her spirit—into a crooked smile.

“And what about the constipation? Still haven’t decided to take the potion you need from me? Besides, the medications you can get on Jabiim work for both humans and Zabraks.”

Maul clenched his jaw angrily. He knew that the fact he still had his legs at all was thanks to this man’s skill, but the endless mockery was infuriating.

“Aren’t you tired of it yet?” the Lady sighed wearily. “The same joke stops being funny even if it was genuinely brilliant to begin with. And that one was never even slightly amusing.”

“You just don’t have much of a sense of humor,” an offended snort came from beneath the hood. “Probably went stale over the millennia.”

“Are you implying that I’m old?”

“Don’t tell me that actually bothers you. I’m six hundred years old, and I consider myself old. But at the same time—young at heart! So you’re not old. You’re ancient!”

“One day I’m going to kill you…”

“There! And someone was just talking about how repeating the same joke over and over ruins it. Threats work the same way, by the way,” the man’s tired voice was full of sly mockery. “I’ve been hearing that ‘I’ll kill you’ from you since the day we met. And I didn’t even meet you then—I met the Tomb Guardian. Come up with something new already.”

“Hmm… How about this: I’ll arrange things so that a work crisis like the one you’re dealing with now follows you around for years?”

“Khe-khe-khe! Xo, darling, have some fear of Hecate! You can’t do that to a man!” The human clutched at his chest over his heart, every trace of weariness and mockery vanishing from his voice. “You don’t like the constipation joke? Just say so—I’ll stop. What, you think I can’t be reasonable? And as for your age—with your beauty, experience, wisdom, charisma, charm, and talent, what do you have to worry about? Besides, hot girls who dream of conquering the galaxy are forever young, burning with passion!”

“Now that’s a different tune,” the Teacher said, this time smiling with satisfaction, like a well-fed predator lazily toying with its prey.

“Threats of endless overwork are, surprisingly enough, scarier than threats of violence, and I have complete faith in your talents,” the hooded man said with a shrug. “Anyway, anything else? I’d gladly sit here with you, chat, knock back some caf, but I’ve got monsters waiting for me out there. All kinds of beasts sitting in classrooms—and one horned, sneaky son of a bitch waiting for me at the cantina tonight.”

“Good old Villie?”

“Damn it, even you’ve started calling him that?”

“Your stories about that Devaronian left an impression on me. Some things don’t change even after thousands of years. Like the sheer audacity of rogues whom fortune keeps favoring,” the Lady snorted. “But yes, that was all I wanted. Thank you for stopping by.”

“Don’t mention it. It was good to see you.” Maul could hardly believe those words, but both the voice of the man beneath the hood and the Force told him he was sincere.

“I imagine you were delighted to escape work for a while?” The Lady could sense the sincerity in the black-robed man’s words as well.

Perhaps that was why her voice sounded… a little less threatening than usual. The otherworldly whispers were still there, and the possessed woman’s eyes were still unsettling, but the exchange between the Sith Lord and this “sorcerer” sounded almost like banter between two old acquaintances… who had no particular desire to tear each other’s throats out. Again, surprising. Maul had once been convinced that a Sith Lord, when not hiding their nature, could speak to other sentients only from a position of superiority. A Sith Lord either accepted another’s reverence and groveling—or punished them for failing to provide it.

“Can’t hide anything from you,” the tired note returned to his voice. “Still, about those expressions—I’d recommend working on that with your apprentices. You can practically feel the villain aura coming off them from a mile away. Both the Zabrak and the Dathomiri witch lay the whole… Sith-ness on a bit too thick, if that’s even a word.”

“There are no Baneite rats here,” the Lady replied with a satisfied smile. “No need for hypocrisy.”

“That’s not quite what I mean. No offense, but right now they look like kids trying very hard to seem grown-up.” The sorcerer rose from his chair and stretched, then turned toward the apprentices listening to his conversation with the Lady. “You’re not a Baneite either, but in everyday life you act perfectly normal. At least I’ve never seen you constantly scowling like this girl or grinding your teeth like your horned boy. That’s bad for you, by the way. She’ll get wrinkles, and he’ll wear down his enamel.”

Maul remained silent. Not that it came easily.

Calling him a “boy”… Comparing him—a man who had killed a Jedi Master—to a child. The Zabrak clenched his teeth, barely stopping himself from grinding them in fury. Every time he remembered his triumph, he also felt the immeasurable bitterness of his defeat. To kill a Master, only to fall at the hands of a Padawan… And then, quite literally, end up on a scrapheap, left to rot in obscurity. It was so humiliating. Disgusting to remember, but the shame was impossible to forget. Lady XoXaan had made sure of that. His new Lady. His Mentor.

He could never have imagined that one day he would be taken under the wing of someone who had stood at the very origins of the teachings of the dark Gifted. Of all Dark Side traditions, in fact, because the rest of that rabble were nothing more than failures who had splintered off from the Sith. She might have stripped him of the title “Darth,” leaving him simply Maul; she might have cast him down from Lord to apprentice once again—but it was worth it.

Yes, when his memories returned, in those first few moments the Zabrak had nearly plunged headlong into the abyss of Darkness from sheer rage. A sea of memories flooded back into his mind, and most of them were disappointment, shattered hopes, and ruined aspirations. The revelation that he himself was a failure. A defective, broken tool discarded by his former Master. By the hated Sidious.

The first thing he heard, after managing to hold his mind at the edge of the abyss beyond which Dark Side madness awaited him, was the Lady’s voice. Oceans of contempt and mockery filled her words… all of it directed at his former Master. The Lady laughed at the narrow-mindedness of that “Baneite rat,” who had failed to recognize Maul’s potential, failed to make proper use of his talent. She mocked Sidious for fearing Maul—and for that reason discarding him so easily. Leaving him to drown in madness, expecting his grievously wounded apprentice to die.

He listened to her and heard exactly what he wanted to hear. In that, the Lady was no different from Sidious… but how good it felt to lay all the blame on someone else. To convince himself that his failure was the fault of a poor Master, one who had cowardly wanted to get rid of someone who might one day grow stronger and become a threat.

But that was not what drove Maul to kneel before Lady XoXaan and acknowledge her as his new Master. Her words about his former Teacher had only slightly calmed the ocean of rage raging inside the Zabrak. They let him stop thinking about rushing off right then and there to prove that he was worth something. To whom? Who was he supposed to prove it to? Sidious? Himself? The galaxy? That Padawan—Kenobi?

There would be time for that later.

Looking into the eyes of the servant possessed by the spirit of his Lady, Maul saw the abyss of space, with amber sparks of Dark Side power drifting through it. And in the depths of that boundless expanse, he saw… EVERYTHING. Wisdom. Power. Passion. Cunning. Grandeur. A promise.

A promise that he would be given the chance to take revenge. The strength to take what was his. A chance to claim everything he wanted—everything he deserved.

He couldn’t bring himself to refuse. Not because refusal would have meant instant death—no. If that had been the case, he would have accepted the Lady’s offer for appearances’ sake and slipped away the moment an opportunity presented itself. Or tried to kill everyone here as soon as he regained his strength. But that wasn’t why Maul had bowed his head and accepted the role of apprentice again. Not yet, at least. For now, he wanted everything his Lady chose to give her apprentice. And after that… he would decide depending on how events unfolded.

“Tch,” his recent opponent clicked her tongue almost inaudibly in displeasure. The one who had taken him from the junkyard planet and brought him to the Lady. Not that Maul felt even a shred of gratitude toward her. Baldy would have finished him off without a second thought if that had been what she needed.

Asajj Ventress—a Dathomir-born witch, former apprentice to a Jedi who had left the Order, and, after his death, a woman who had turned to the Dark Side for revenge—remained silent too, aside from that barely audible expression of displeasure. She only twisted her lips into an angry grimace and bored into the hooded figure with a furious glare.

This sentient… was unbelievably infuriating. The Zabrak even felt a certain sense of solidarity with the Dathomiri. That, too, was a surprising feeling.

There was just one problem: neither of them was allowed to openly show their displeasure toward the sorcerer Siith. Both Maul and Asajj, after seeing how the Lady treated the red-eyed human, had already tried. An unpleasant experience. That time, Lady XoXaan had shown her apprentices something new when it came to punishment. Neither he nor the Dathomiri had enjoyed it, so the Zabrak had no desire for a repeat. Learning that particular method himself, however, he would have had absolutely no objection to.

“I know that without you telling me,” the Lady snorted, giving her companion an unfriendly look. “And don’t compare me to rats.”

“All right, all right.” The sorcerer raised his hands in a placating gesture. “You know best.”

“I suggest you repeat those words more often,” the possessed servant said, stretching her lips into an ominous smile.

“Every evening before bed and every morning as I greet the gloomy dawn? Admit it, you just want me thinking about you more often!” A chuckle came from beneath the sorcerer’s hood as arcs of Force Lightning began dancing between the Lady’s fingers. “All right, all right, why do you have to go straight to that? I’m leaving.”

“Fuck you.”

“As Representative Binks said at a recent Senate session: how rude!” The sorcerer chuckled softly and finally left, followed by three pairs of eyes. Two of them—Maul’s and Asajj’s—were filled with barely restrained fury. The third, the Lady’s… held something the Zabrak couldn’t quite understand.

He couldn’t tell what the Lady truly felt toward this man. There was too much in Lady XoXaan’s eyes. Anger. Cold calculation. And something… Maul had never once seen in the eyes of his former Master.

“Now then, apprentice.” The Lady’s voice turned utterly cold, chilling to the bone and nearly making the Zabrak flinch. Her gaze, fixed on the Dathomiri, was now filled with unmistakable displeasure. “Who gave you permission to make a sound?”