Fortunately, another Jedi, Azlin Rell, was working on a fix. He just needed to do it a little bit faster.

  Kevmo kept his attention split between the glow of Zallah’s cool blue lightsaber and the grass sharks just below his skimboard. They were six-legged and striped gold, with massive crunching teeth and twisting tusks. Not really what he pictured when he heard shark. One lifted its snout and screamed; the call echoed throughout the herd until Kev couldn’t even hear himself thinking.

  To his right, the little red sun was setting, a hazy glow spreading across the sky as the red dust rose from the herd. They’d forced the animals into a huge circle twice, pushing them north before the head of the herd course-corrected back south again. Kevmo was tired and didn’t know anything about this species or if they’d even stop at nightfall. The dark was not going to help them keep the herd out of the wrong canyon. “How’s it going, Azlin?” he asked into his comlink. “I’m not sure how much longer we can keep this up—and if the sun sets…”

  “The settlement should be evacuated by now,” Zallah said, her voice scratchy.

  “I’ve almost got it,” Azlin said. “Just a few more minutes and See-Nine will—”

  The rest of Azlin’s assurance cut out as Kevmo’s skimboard faltered with a high-pitched wail and pop of oily smoke.

  Kev yelped and threw himself to the side, using a burst of the Force to unlatch his boot from the board. He pushed on the Force with all his strength, shoving his body away from the herd.

  He slammed into the hard ground, which knocked the air from his lungs. Then he rolled up onto his feet and kept running, lightsaber tight in hand. The herd behind him was a roar of pounding steps, grunting, and squeals, and Kevmo had to make it to the outcropping of boulders at the foot of the red-rock ridge. Zallah was yelling something through the comlink, but he couldn’t quite make it out or stop for clarification. Kevmo finally hit the first boulder and leapt, grasping at the lichen-covered stone. He dragged himself up and into a crouch.

  The herd angled away, dodging the boulders and twisting away from the ridge. A flash of blue alerted Kev to Zallah’s presence. She whipped past on her skimboard, lightsaber out, darting down and back, startling the leaders of the herd with the saber. It was painstaking, but they angled away again.

  Kevmo’s heart pounded in his ears, louder than the herd or the vibrating boulder under his feet. He grimaced at the ache in his skull. Now that he was still, his hip and ribs throbbed with pain from his fall. That rusty old skimboard! At least it had lasted that long. He’d be fine, but he really needed to eat. When he wiped sweat off his brow, the dark blue skin of his hand came away smeared in muddy red dust. And he needed a bath.

  Suddenly, though there’d been no shift in the light or air or in the Force as far as he could tell, and no change in what Zallah was doing, the whole attitude of the herd of grass sharks seemed to change. They didn’t swarm so chaotically but took off for the western canyon as if every single one of them knew exactly where they were supposed to go.

  Kevmo stood up, stretching on his toes eagerly. He shaded his eyes from the setting sun with one hand and touched his comlink with the other. “Whatever you did, Azlin, I think it’s working.”

  “Good to hear,” Azlin said.

  Then Zallah said, “I’m going to trace the herd for a bit longer, to make sure it continues working. Azlin, will you come fetch Kevmo? My apprentice has lost his skimboard.”

  Kevmo grimaced. “I’m fine!”

  “On our way, Zallah,” Azlin acknowledged, both Jedi ignoring his protestations.

  It still took a while for all seventeen thousand grass sharks to pass, and now that Kevmo could flop down on his boulder to wait, he appreciated the proportion of what they’d done even more.

  Kevmo had been Zallah’s Padawan for nearly two years, the past four months of which they’d been working out of the new Jedi outpost at Port Haileap on a wild variety of missions. Several were the sort he’d expected: they’d escorted dignitaries and diplomats, babysat a couple of criminals, and investigated a smuggling ring trying to get in with the Hutts. Just three days earlier they’d rescued a team of hyperspace prospectors who’d crashed in the middle of a superstorm on the ocean moon of Amloch. They’d been due back at Port Haileap, but before they left the Amloch system, Zallah had hesitated and determined they needed to stay one more day. Nothing had happened in Amloch, but their delay meant they were right where they needed to be to hear Azlin Rell’s short-relay distress call and get to Tiikae just in time to divert the herd away from the settlement. Exactly where the Force wanted them.

  Kevmo sprawled back, leaning on his hands, and grinned. He loved the Force, and he loved this work. The rumble of the herd filled the whole prairie valley, the little red sun cast hazy light against the edges of the ridge, and the sky turned a gorgeous violet. He was worn-out, hungry, and filthy, but it felt great.

  The frontier was fantastic. He didn’t think he’d mind if he was out there forever.

  The hum of an engine warned him the herd was truly moving off, their noise fading, and he turned to see Azlin’s shuttle buzzing toward him. He stood up and waved both arms, laughing. The shuttle slowed down and hovered near the boulder. The landing gear lowered with a huge rattle, and Kevmo hopped down, then dashed for the ramp. He waved red dust out of his face and jogged inside, calling out, “Thanks, Azlin! I’m on board!”

  The ship moved under him, and Kev reached out to steady himself on the bulkhead. It was a standard single shuttle, smaller than the one he and Zallah worked out of—and often lived in. But Kevmo knew the way directly to the cockpit. He nearly tripped over a short astromech droid with green markings, double tread rollers, and a funny little pincher sticking directly off the top of its dome that definitely wasn’t typical.

  “You must be See-Nine,” Kevmo said, bowing slightly.

  The droid beeped and turned easily in the tight space, leading Kevmo around to the cockpit.

  The sun shot brilliant red through the viewscreen, lighting up the controls.

  As Kevmo stepped in, the human Jedi with tan skin and short dark hair who could only be Azlin Rell glanced over his shoulder. “Thanks for your help,” he said, then directed his attention back to the controls. The ship tipped as it picked up speed. “Zallah messaged me that she’d meet us at the port where your ship is.”

  Kevmo took the copilot chair, resisting the urge to sprawl into a relaxing stretch. Zallah wouldn’t let him get away with such a thing, so he’d better not embarrass her in front of another Jedi. But Kevmo did smile. “This was really incredible. I can’t believe we just did that! How did you move them?”

  “We determined they use the magnetic field of the planet to choose their migration path, and the field has changed enough since the last mass migration that they shifted too close to the settlement.”

  Kevmo sat up straight. “You did not change the whole magnetic field of the planet.”

  Azlin slid him a look, as if he was embarrassed. “No, of course not. See-Nine helped me reconfigure a comms beacon to trick them.”

  Kevmo laughed brightly. “Trick them!”

  C-9 beeped with a tone so clearly proud Kevmo didn’t need to be good at binary to understand it. But Azlin shook his head. “It’s our job,” he demurred.

  Instead of snorting, Kevmo just smiled. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But still pretty incredible.”

  “It’s just like a trick we used on Alderaan,” Azlin said. “Used to keep night-lether flocks from flying into the tallest buildings.”

  Nodding, Kevmo leaned forward to get a good look at the settlement’s lights, coming up around the ridge. He hadn’t had a chance to see anything on this planet yet—other than seventeen thousand grass sharks and a whole lot of red dust. “So what’s the best thing to eat around here?” he asked Azlin.

  An hour later Kevmo was warm, clean, and ensconced in a booth in a smoky tavern with flickering lights, eating a bright red stew with tiny boiled seeds that popped when he chewed them. Azlin ate the same, and Zallah had finally joined them, having taken her turn in their shuttle head after Kevmo. She was Soikan, and her short white hair was slicked back after her shower. Zallah was tall and elegant and seemed to have been carved from ice—from her high brow and thin features to her silver skin, lilac eyes, and impeccably cool demeanor. But as she sat, she shot Kevmo a slight smile, which he took as total approval and grinned back at her.

  Early on, Kevmo had not understood at all why she’d wanted him for her Padawan. He was gregarious and unable to stand still, ran hot, accidentally flirted with nearly every life-form he came across, and was overly tactile. Zallah did not like to be touched. Kevmo knew how to keep himself to himself and had only gotten better at soothing his own sparking nature, but he was a lot for most people.

  Of course, Zallah was perfectly suited to guiding him as he learned how to engage with the Force—and people—with delicate precision instead of just overwhelming enthusiasm. And she’d known that. She said to him once, when he’d been struggling to rein in his tendency to fling himself directly into the Force, that she needed him, too. She said Kevmo reminded her that sometimes surrendering completely to the Force was the right thing to do.

  Kevmo wouldn’t really mind if he was her Padawan forever.

  Zallah sat and signaled the server for a portion of the stew. Azlin slid her a mug of local sour tea, and she thanked him, took a sip, then said, “After the meal we need to go, Kevmo.”

  “Already?”

  “We’re needed on Hynestia. Someone stole an artifact from the queen there—it’s already been five days, while the message bounced around.” Zallah paused, her displeasure at the decrepit communications of the frontier obvious. “The Hynestians are demanding Jedi involvement, and we’re closer than Oliviah and Vildar.”

  Kevmo swallowed a mouthful of stew and asked, “Why do they want us?” He didn’t know much about Hynestia, except they were very established on their homeworld and in its surrounding system, so more in contact with the Jedi and the Republic than a lot of the planets on the Outer Rim with less access to credits and tech. “Do they just want outsiders?”

  “The stolen item is apparently a Force artifact of some sort.”

  “Oh!” Kevmo nearly knocked over his mug.

  Zallah sipped her own tea and raised an eyebrow at him. He settled himself and glanced at Azlin, who was doing his best not to smile at Kevmo’s enthusiasm.

  “Azlin,” Kevmo said, leaning toward the slightly older Jedi. “You should come with us.”

  “I need to finish up some reports and repairs here, and head back to Jedha to check in with the outpost,” Azlin said calmly.

  While Kevmo couldn’t imagine passing up a chance to chase thieves in favor of filing reports, which could surely be done during transport, he supposed everybody was different—even Jedi. “That’s too bad,” he said. “I wanted to hear more about what you’ve been doing out here for the last couple of years.”

  Azlin shrugged. “Same as you, I guess.”

  Kevmo peered through the reddish light at the human, trying to decide if he was teasing him somehow—but no, Azlin seemed earnest. So Kevmo nodded and said, “Yeah. Same as me.” Then he raised his mug in a salute.

  Marda Ro closed her eyes before dipping three long gray fingers into the pot of brikal-shell blue. She touched her fingers to her forehead and pulled the blue across in a gentle wave.

  The pigment smelled faintly of the chalk they used to give weight to the crushed brikal shells, and a little sweet from the binding agent. Marda breathed it in and smiled at her reflection in the slightly tarnished mirror. She had only recently grown into her majority and been recognized as a fully fledged member of the Path of the Open Hand. She could finally wear the symbol of the living Force in threefold: freedom, harmony, and clarity. The waving blue lines filled her with a sense of rightness.

  She stood, complete and ready for the day ahead. Her personal cell was small, only used for sleeping on the floor mat and holding her sparse belongings: two long undyed tunics and undergarments, a thick wool cloak, hair sticks, the pot of blue, a crystal-dust file for her sharp nails and teeth, and a shallow bowl of water in which floated three vivid purple leaves.

  Marda touched one leaf to set them all spinning and opened her door with a glancing touch of the panel. Her sandals awaited her at the threshold, and she walked out into the reddish dawn. It was late spring on this side of Dalna, and the sky glowed violet as the first sun rose behind the triplet of snow-capped volcanoes. Marda’s cell was one of several clustered like honeycomb at the southern edge of the Path of the Open Hand’s commune. From her doorstep the meadow fell away toward the river and the sunlight shone against purple-red leaves of the willowy trees. Crickets and grass frogs sang, and the lompop flowers were just beginning to snap open along the road toward the main compound, making their namesake pops as Marda walked past. Because she had time, Marda took the long way around to the commune’s central garden, enjoying the easy beauty of her world.

  As she went, Marda picked up a few stray petals and leaves and a pretty pink marcrow feather, taking only what had already fallen. Having come to the Path as children, Marda and her cousin grew up foraging for food and goods, farming under their own labor, and accepting gifts freely given from their neighbors in the nearby town of Ferdan. This way of life had instilled within Marda the habit of collecting anything that seemed either useful or simply lovely. She enjoyed finding value in what others discarded and beauty in the refuse of the natural world. It all served a purpose, even if that purpose was putting a smile on Old Waiden’s face with the gift of a feather.

  Marda had a small bouquet by the time she reached the garden where several other members of the Path had already gathered to share breakfast. She scattered the petals along the end of the long table and tucked the feather into Old Waiden’s wiry black hair. The human Elder gave Marda a bowl of porridge in return, along with a soft smile. Marda perched on the bench and listened as her fellow early risers discussed the acolytes who’d gone out foraging before dawn, how the newest dedicants had settled in, and the progress of construction on the Mother’s great venture: a ship to take the Path throughout the galaxy. The Gaze Electric was nearly complete, and Marda hid her eagerness in the last of her porridge. She longed to step into the ship and go with the Mother and her closest acolytes, the Children, up into the stars. Marda’s cousin Yana was one of the lucky Children. Plucked from among the rest of the members before she’d even worn her own blue free Force icon, Yana had served the Mother for the past three years. At the same time, the Mother had chosen Marda to oversee the Littles, the actual children of the Path’s members, who needed to be taught the basics of the Path’s philosophies and farming techniques—not to mention reading and writing. Now that Marda was fully of age, she wanted to join the Children and her cousin, too. Take her skills at teaching and her pure understanding of the Path of the Open Hand to proselytize across the Outer Rim. To act on behalf of the Force.

  That was Marda’s calling. She knew it. She could feel it.

  “It will be nice to see Ferize and her partners again,” said Efrik, one of the adult humans in the outer circle of acolytes. “Nobody is as good at finding sarroot as Er Dal.”

  Marda spoke up. “I believe the hatching will be today.”

  Efrik grinned, and the anticipation rippled down the entire table. Ferize and her partners had been isolated in their nesting cell for nearly six weeks. “That’s wonderful,” Efrik said. “What an auspicious day for it—Ferdan’s day of rest is today, and the Herald and the Council of Elders suggested we invite those newcomers from the refugee ship from Eiram that landed two days ago here for shelter.”

  “It will be a good way to welcome new siblings,” Jezra’lin added—they were a Mon Calamari child, and their bulbous eyes blinked as they spoke.

  “We need the people after this winter,” Mykge said sourly. His pale, sallow skin clung to his bones, and Marda lowered her gaze so as not to let him see her disapproval at his attitude. It had been a very difficult winter for the Path, thanks to an awful streak of freezing weather and a too-wet summer before. They’d been very hungry and very cold for months. But that was the way of life in harmony with the Force. That was the freedom of the Open Hand. And the Mother provided for them better than they’d provided for themselves before she arrived.

  “Refugees won’t have much to bring,” Efrik told Mykge.

  Marda took a fortifying breath. She needed to be willing to defend the Path even from its own members if she wanted to be chosen to work at the Mother’s side. “What they have will be enough, if it is freely offered.”

  Silence followed her words. Efrik grimaced but nodded, and Jezra’lin leaned toward Marda. They said, “May I go with you to check on the hatching?”

  “Please,” Marda said, and finished her porridge.

  Someone else brought up gathering sphere vines from the branches of the river trees to string up around the garden to make it more festive in honor of the hatching and welcoming new refugees. As they all considered the best decorations and if they had enough honey left to make string candy, Marda washed her bowl and returned it with the others, kissed Old Waiden, who minded the communal pot, and beckoned Jezra’lin to follow if they still wished.

  Together they walked deeper into the compound, under six arching water pines, toward the entrance to the underground complex housing the Path’s storage rooms, communal winter cells, and nesting cells. Jezra’lin chatted the entire time about nothing much at all, which Marda found endearing. The Mon Calamari was like a happy little bird, hopping several steps for every one of Marda’s, their movements jerky but filled with life.