4

It didn’t surprise Corran Horn to find Iella Wessiri in the Corellian Sanctuary, but the expression on her face threatened to crush his heart in his chest. Her light brown hair had been pulled back into a single braid and her broad shoulders were hunched forward. She sat on the front bench in the small chamber, leaning over and balanced precariously enough that he expected her to fall at any second. The way her grief pulled at her face, arching the corners of her mouth downward, made it seem as if gravity would, in fact, tug her to the floor.

Corran hesitated in the doorway of the small domed building. Because of the hostile relationship between the New Republic and the Corellian Diktat, repatriating Corellians who died away from the planet of their birth had become impossible. The Sanctuary had been created by exiled Corellians to give their dead a resting place. Unlike Alderaanians, who often sealed their dead in capsules and shot them into orbit within the Graveyard, allowing them to float forever amid the debris that marked where their planet had once been; Corellians cremated their dead exiles and used industrial-grade gravity generators to compress the carbon residue into raw synthetic diamonds. This imparted a physical immortality to the dead. The diamonds were then brought to the Sanctuary and imbedded in the black walls and ceiling to create a glittering series of constellations as seen from Corellia.

The sheer number of diamonds glinting in the ceiling sent a shiver through Corran. We’ve given a lot to the Rebellion, though other worlds have given as much or more. As beautiful as this display is, it is also horrible. The Imperials who wished to make the galaxy over in their own image have, in fact, created here a small galaxy that is entirely given over to mourning.

Corran walked forward and slid onto the bench next to Iella. She didn’t look over at him, but melted against his shoulder and chest as he put an arm around her. “It’s going to be okay, Iella, really.”

“He never hurt anyone, Corran, never.”

“I don’t imagine Kirtan Loor would agree, but I’ll concede the point.”

He felt her chest convulse once, then she looked up at him with red-rimmed brown eyes. “No, you’re right.” Her mouth made a weak attempt at twisting itself into a smile. “As much as he admired your drive, Corran, Diric really appreciated your sense of humor. He said it marked your resiliency. He thought that as long as you could laugh, especially at yourself, you’d always heal from any trauma.”

“He was a wise man.” He tightened his embrace a bit. “You know he’d hate to see you like this, to think he was causing you this much pain.”

“I know. That hasn’t made it any easier, though.” She dabbed at tears with a handkerchief. “I keep thinking that if I’d seen something there, I could have prevented what happened. He wouldn’t have been a traitor.”

“Whoa, wait, Iella, that is not your fault. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could have detected or done to help him.” Corran shivered and felt his flesh pucker. “I know what Isard did to those she wanted to warp and convert into her puppets. I resisted, I don’t know how. It could have been personality or genetics or training or anything. Tycho and I both proved unsuitable for her—as did a few others, but I think she would have had an easy time of breaking Diric down.”

“What?” Iella’s hissed question carried with it undercurrents of betrayal. She tried to pull away from him, but he held on.

“That’s not a strike against Diric, honestly it isn’t. Diric was a victim, and you have to know that he resisted her mightily because even after his capture Imperial Intelligence didn’t find you. I think he built a mental reserve around you and was willing to sacrifice everything to protect you. Even altering her orders at the end was designed to protect you, and in his mind, sacrificing himself to do so was not too much to pay.”

Corran frowned. “The one thing about Diric that characterized him was his curiosity. We both saw it in the way he’d ask us about cases and push us to look at other explanations. He was thoughtful and thorough—espionage was a natural place for him. You said yourself that Isard first placed him in Derricote’s lab to spy on the General. She probably suggested to him that his success in that role determined whether or not she’d let you live. She undoubtedly told him that lie concerning any actions he took after he rejoined you.”

Iella’s defiance melted into despair. “Great, now you’re telling me that he’d not have been in that position except for me.”

“No! You had nothing to do with where he ended up—that was entirely due to Isard and no one else.” Corran sighed. “Look, think about the good Diric did. Aril Nunb pointed out that he was the only person in Derricote’s lab that was kind to her and who helped her through her recovery from the Krytos virus. And after he came back, he was a great comfort to Tycho through the trial. He even pushed you to look for evidence to break the frame Isard had settled around Tycho. And, like it or not, he did kill Loor, and I can’t fault him for that.”

“He thought he was shooting Derricote but knew it wasn’t him. He was happy he’d gotten Loor.”

“Well, I did kill Derricote and I’d have been more happy to kill Loor myself.” Corran brushed a hand along her cheek and wiped tears away with his thumb. “Diric wasn’t happy existing the way he did, but he regained himself in defying Isard and doing all the little things that sabotaged her plans. In the end he won. He’d often complained his life had no meaning …”

“But it did.”

“Agreed, and at the very last he finally got to see how much it meant. He’d saved you, he saved Aril, he saved Tycho. He’s at peace, and he’d want you to be at peace with his death, too.”

“I know, but it’s just not going to be that easy, Corran. I was there, I held him as he died from wounds I’d inflicted.” Iella sniffed, then swallowed with difficulty. “Your father died in your arms. How did you get through it?”

Corran felt his own throat thicken. “I won’t kid you, it wasn’t, isn’t, easy. There are things you expect, like seeing him again in the morning or at night or being able to call him to tell him about your day or to ask a question, and then he’s not there. You know you feel hollow inside, but you don’t know just how hollow until things like that help you define the edges of the void.”

She nodded slowly. “There are things I see or hear and I think, ‘Diric would like that or would be intrigued by that,’ then his death comes crashing back in on me. It seems to me that such things will never stop happening.”

“They won’t. They go on forever.”

A tremor shook Iella. “Great.”

“The thing of it is, Iella, they become transformed. Now you feel the loss and the grief, and part of that will always be there. In addition to it, though, shining through it will be the triumph of having known Diric. When I hear that stupid Lomin-ale ditty or eat part of a ryshcate, I remember my father. I remember his booming laugh and that secret smile of contentment he could flash you when things were good.”

“And the way that smile would carry on up into his eyes and how, with a slight shift, it would harden into something that would make the most fearless of Black Sunners begin to tremble in interrogation.” Iella gave out a little sigh. “I can see it with your father, but not Diric.”

“Not yet.”

“No, not yet.”

“But you will.” Corran kissed her forehead. “It won’t be easy, but the only way I got through it was because of you and Gil and my other friends.”

“You didn’t have any other friends.”

“Yeah, well, that may be, but you do. Mirax and Wedge and Winter and all of us, we’re here to help you. You’re not alone. We can’t feel the same depth of pain you do, but we can help you bear it.”

Iella nodded. “I appreciate that, I really do.” Her brows arrowed in toward each other as she concentrated. “I have decided I can’t remain here on Coruscant. The memories are mostly bad and overpowering. I have to get away—even if it means leaving all my friends.”

“I understand. I wanted to run after my father’s death, too.” Corran smiled. “The trick of it is, for you, that your running doesn’t mean you lose your friends.”

Iella’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

Corran looked around the Sanctuary, then lowered his voice into a whisper. “We’re leaving Coruscant, and we want you to come with us. You’re part of our family, part of the squadron. We’re going after the monster who warped Diric. We’re going to make sure she doesn’t do that to anyone else. We need you to come along and help us get her.”

Iella pulled back and sat up straight. “The odds against success are astronomical.”

“About the same as taking Coruscant from the Empire.”

Iella nodded coolly. “Odds are for those who want to minimize their own risks. I want to maximize Isard’s risks. Count me in.”