Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 03 - Paragon Read Free Page A

young girl’s chin. Seelah looked left and right, inspecting the child like livestock. “High cheekbones,” she said, mashing her index finger against the youngling’s face. The child didn’t flinch. “I know your parents, girl. Are you a source of despair to them?”
    “No, Lady Seelah.”
    “This is good. And what is your duty?”
    “To be like you, milady.”
    “Not the answer I had in mind, but I won’t argue,” Seelah said, releasing the child and turning to Orlenda,her aide. “I don’t see any flaring of the skull, but I’m concerned about her coloring,” she said. “Too florid. Check the genealogy again. She might yet have a family, if we choose properly.”
    With a pat on the rear from Orlenda, eight-year-old Ebya T’dell returned to play in the outer yard, momentarily safe in the knowledge that her life might not be a genetic dead end.
    It was an important matter, Seelah thought as she watched the younglings duel with wooden staffs. Every child there had been born since the crash landing. Apart from the infusion of youth to the Sith population, it appeared that very little had changed. Every color from humanity’s spectrum had been represented in the original
Omen
crew, and that continued to be the case. None of the casual pairings with Keshiri had produced any offspring whatsoever—Seelah thanked the dark side for that—and, of course, there was the problem with Ravilan’s people. The number of relatively pure-blooded humans had been steadily increasing. So had the purity of that blood.
    She had seen to that—with Korsin’s full approval. It was sensible. Kesh had killed the Massassi. If it had not killed humans yet, then the Sith needed more humans.
Adapt or die
, Korsin had said.
    “There were several more younglings on the list for this week,” Orlenda said. “Did you want to see them today, Seelah?”
    “I’m not in the mood. Is there anything else?”
    Orlenda rolled up her parchment and shooed the remaining children to the exercise yard. “Well,” she said, “we’ll need a new Keshiri bearer for the wardroom.”
    “What happened to the last one, Orlenda?” Seelah smirked. “Did you finally kill him with your kindnesses?”
    “No. He’s dead.”
    “The big one? Gosem?”
    “Gorem,”
Orlenda said with a sigh. “Yes, he died last week. We’d loaned him to Ravilan’s team breaking down one of the decks of
Omen
, looking for whatever it is they look for to use. Gorem was, well, you remember, so
strong
—”
    “Get to it.”
    “I guess he’d been moving heavy plates, and it’s hot up there under that roof. He keeled over right outside the ship.” Orlenda clicked her tongue.
    “Hmm.” She’d thought the Keshiri were made of stronger stuff. Still, it was a good chance to rib her lusty friend. “I imagine you wept at the funeral pyre?”
    “No, they tossed him over the cliff,” Orlenda said, straightening her flaxen hair. “It was that day with the high winds.”
    Just before dusk, Seelah found Korsin again on the plaza. The Keshiri woman was gone, and Korsin was looking at himself—or, rather, at a pretty bad replica. Crafters from Tahv had just delivered a four-meter-tall not-very-likeness of their savior, sculpted from an enormous slab of glass.
    “It’s … a first pass,” Korsin said, sensing her arrival.
    “Clearly.” Seelah thought it would befoul the killing fields of Ashas Ree. But her Keshiri aide thought it was marvelous. At a minimum.
    “It’s positively
stupendous
, milady,” Tilden said. “Something truly worthy of the Skyborn—I mean, the
Protectors
.” He corrected himself quickly in the presence of the Grand Lord, but still seemed to swallow hard at the new word, so recently added to the religion of his birth.
    Ravilan’s cousin, the cyborg Hestus, had worked for years with other linguists from the
Omen
to plumb the oral histories of the Keshiri. They’d sought any hintthat anyone had ever happened by—anyone who might return to