Chapter Text
Pale morning light streamed over the Valley of the Singing Mountain as Teneniel Djo woke, the last wisps of a dream slipping from her mind, the insubstantial images fading to from her memory as she became conscious of the world around her. Her dreams had been uneasy, as the dreams of foretelling always were, but in the light of day she couldn’t decipher the message the fragments of image and emotion had meant to tell her. They left her with a heavy feeling, the feeling of a warning unheeded.
She rose, restless, and paced to the window, eyes on the brightening sky, though it held nothing except a flock of thrillit birds that swooped across the valley, hunting gnats. Winter had been long, and spring slow to arrive; the bare branches of the trees scraped the sky like bleached finger bones. She shivered as a gust of air brushed at the heavy curtains and plucked at the robe she wore. It smelled like rain. Her husband stirred, lifting his head from the pallet to watch her, a soft, gentle look on his face that made her heart warm with approval. It was the sort of adoring gaze that looked best on a man.
"The Jai Queen comes today," she reminded him.
Isolder nodded and climbed out of bed to help her dress for the day without another word passing between them. She watched as he opened the chest that held her finest ceremonial robes, selecting clothes fit for meeting a Jai Queen, shaking them out, and holding them to the light. He helped her slip on a deep blue dress of shimmering reptile hide long enough to touch her toes, shod in boots of softened whuffa leather. Over her dress, he draped a golden mantle, so thickly embroidered that she could feel the weight pulling on her shoulders. Her arms were left bare except for the lightning scars that covered them like heavy lacework, marks of honor from many battles with Nightsisters.
Isolder brought out a stool so that she could sit as he brushed out her long hair. “As beautiful as the sand of the Red Hills,” he liked to say of the color.
“Remember when you first came to me, and you didn’t even know to make a simple braid?” Teneniel said as he skillfully wove together the strands and pinned up her hair. She turned her head slightly so that she could smile up at him.
Isolder chuckled. “I was so useless back then.”
On top of the crown of braids, she would wear her ceremonial helm, forged from metal so dark it was nearly black. It rose like the branches of a tree above her head. The antlers were hung with small silver rings that had been torn out of the breathing apparatus of the helmets of stormtroopers she had killed. Gaskets, Isolder called them. For the final touch, she selected two heavy gold bracelets to adorn her wrists, gifted to her by the people of the Frenzied River before Nightsisters had wiped out the entire clan.
Before leaving the room, Teneniel embraced her husband, running a hand down the long braid that hung down his back. "You're my favorite husband," she told him. "My fallen star."
Isolder was her third; the others had all been cut down by Nightsisters. He had fallen out of the sky many years ago, his ship crashing in the wastes not far from Teneniel's territory. There had been only a couple of survivors. The sole surviving woman had been killed by a Nightsister a few years later, and all three men had been married off to clanswomen. Isolder was the most beautiful of the men, so he was hers.
Three years before Teneniel had been born the Imperials had come to Dathomir, told the people that the planet was theirs, built a garrison on the planet’s surface, and placed their ships in Dathomir's sky. The witches had resisted, as they had resisted all invaders. They had once fought the Drackmarians who had tried to claim their land, and had even had taken down a great Jai sky ship once. They battled the Imperials, with their stormtroopers in their white shell armor and their giant mechanical monsters, in a bloody conflict that stretched out over decades, a diversion from their centuries-long war with the Nightsister clans.
Ten years ago the Imperial masters had been defeated on a planet far away, and a few years after their fall, soldiers from the New Republic had claimed the Imperial garrison as their own. They sent out shuttles to negotiate with the clans, insisting that they only wanted peaceful trade with the Dathomiri, but Teneniel didn’t trust them.
Over time the Singing Mountain Clan developed an uneasy alliance with the New Republic soldiers stationed on their planet. As both sides battled the Nightsisters, they formed a tentative alliance founded on the struggle against a mutual enemy.
It was the New Republic soldiers who had brought word that the Jai Queen wished to parley with her and had agreed to Teneniel’s terms: that the meeting would take place in her own territory with her warriors by her side. The witches had legends about the Jai, stories of powerful spellcasters from the stars, but no Jai had set foot on Dathomir in over four hundred years. In the last encounter, the witches had been victorious. Teneniel couldn’t dismiss the fear that the Jai sought revenge for that defeat.
The day turned grey and rain swept across the valley in sheets. From a window, Teneniel watched as the Jai Queen’s ship cut through the rain, soaring in a graceful arc across the valley before coming to rest just beyond the village, in a clearing that had been paved with stones as a landing pitch for visiting shuttles.
She heard Isolder’s intake of breath beside her, and at an inquiring tilt of her head, he said: “A beautiful ship. Such graceful lines.”
“You flew ships like that one?” she asked. He didn’t speak often of his life before Dathomir.
“I flew Hapan ships, which are very different from that one. I was a good pilot once." There was a look of longing on his face for the life he had before he was hers. She didn’t like it.
Teneniel had once looked up at the stars with longing herself, holding her dreams of flying among them close. The visions she’d conjured of walking on strange planets had been so vivid, and for a time she’d been convinced that they were dreams of foretelling, but that hadn’t proved to be the case. She’d been very young then, and lonely. That was before she had met Isolder, before she had taken Talas and Rien and Isolder as her husbands; before her grandmother had been killed and she had been called to lead her people.
Allya, the mother of all Dathomir witches, had come from the stars as well. She came bearing the book of law and the book of night, the ballad went, singing the songs that called the magic of Dathomir out of the earth and into the blood. No Dathomiri witch had left the planet since.
Several hooded figures departed from the Jai ship, hurrying through the rain to meet the armed guards that waited for them at the edge of the village. Damaya, the one-armed captain of the war witches, guided the the small group toward the fortress. Teneniel watched from her window as they made their way slowly through the village. The rain began to let up as they approached the fortress.
It was time. Teneniel, carrying the staff of leadership, a rod of intricately carved golden wood with a milkstone gem at the top, took her place at the head of the great hall. She was flanked by the Elder Sisters of the clan, powerful spellcasters who were no longer capable of serving as warriors and had earned their retirement from battle. Lining the walls of the hall were Teneniel’s warriors, hard-eyed and battle-scarred, the antlers of their helms glinting in the light. Grouped safely behind them was a small crowd made up of residents of the fortress who wanted to get a glimpse of the exotic strangers from the stars. The men of the fortress took their place to one side, out of the way and close to a doorway, in case things took a violent turn. In Teneniel’s experience, things often did.
A murmur swept through the crowd as Damaya led the Jai Queen into the room. She didn’t look at all the way Teneniel expected a queen of the powerful Jai would look. Under her dark cloak, she wore the simple clothes of a peasant, cut in an off-world style of layered dark greens and browns. No embroidery at all!
Her hair was lighter and more golden-red than Teneniel’s, and held back in a simple fishtail braid. She didn't carry a blaster or a pike, only a silver cylinder at her waist like a weapon. It would be easy to hide knives in the folds of her outfit, Teneniel thought, but if she had the powers that Jai were rumored to have, she wouldn’t need them.
Teneniel had expected her to be taller.
She was accompanied by a small and peculiar entourage. Beside her walked a man made of gold, his steps stiff and arms akimbo. It was a droid, Teneniel knew, though she had never seen one like it, and it struck her as bizarre that a machine could take the shape of a man.
A young man with hair as red as the Jai Queen followed—her son, Teneniel surmised, and thus under her protection—along with a small gray alien of a species unknown to Teneniel. They both dressed in a similar style to their queen, and each wore a silver cylinder at their waists.
With an air of ceremony, the Jai Queen placed a broken spear on the floor in front of the dais where Teneniel stood. As a symbol of truce between two warring clans, it wasn’t quite appropriate, since the Singing Mountain Clan had never been at war with the New Republic and was not currently at war with the Jai, but it Teneniel appreciated the gesture, as clumsy as it was.
"Welcome to Dathomir, Queen of the Jai and Emissary of the New Republic," Teneniel called, her voice ringing through the hall with a clear, cold formality.
The golden droid bowed stiffly at the waist. “Greetings to you, Mother Teneniel Djo of the Singing Mountain Clan,” he began. “We wish to thank your majesty for so generously granting us an audience. I am C3-PO, human-cyborg relations. May I present Master Mara Jade of the Jedi Order.”
The Jai Queen inclined her head in an imperious fashion and Teneniel returned the gesture, the gaskets in her helm tinkling softly.
“And Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker and Jedi Knight Meena Clan Skywalker,” the golden man continued. The younger Jai bowed as well.
As the droid made the introductions, the Jai Queen swept her gaze across the Elder witches, as though she were searching for a particular face, in vain. Her eyes rose to Teneniel's for a brief moment before she turned her head and looked straight at Isolder, who stood to the side with the other men of the fortress. A shiver ran up Teneniel’s spine.
“...We have been sent to your planet by the esteemed Queen Mother Ta'a Chume of Hapes,” the droid continued in the same self-important tone, “to discover the fate of her son, the Chume’da Isolder, and return him to Hapes if he does indeed still live.”
Teneniel drew herself up as a murmur of surprise rushed through the crowd. If the Jai Queen had come to take Isolder from her, she would have a fight on her hands, a fight that Teneniel did not intend to lose.
Her reaction did not go unnoticed by the Jai, who watched her and her council with a canny look in their eyes. The droid nattered on in his self-important voice: “Our research indicates that he was lost on this planet approximately eight years ago—”
“Threepio,” the Jai Queen murmurred and the droid stammered to a stop. “May we speak privately?” she asked Teneniel.
That was not how such things were done at all. “If you wish to challenge me for Isolder,” Teneniel said icily, “Then we do it here, in front of the Clan. I will allow no Jai Queen, no matter how powerful, take my husband from me.”
The Jai Queen’s aloof expression shifted, surprise flitting across her face for a second. Teneniel had no idea what sort of spells this woman could wield—but she would die to defend Isolder.
“We have no wish to resort to violence,” the golden man said, alarm in his mechanical voice. “We simply wish to discover the whereabouts—”
“Threepio,” the Jai Queen said again, silencing him. “Mother Teneniel, I have no intention of challenging you now.” She gestured to the broken spear at her feet, but Teneniel didn’t miss the implication that she might do so later. “May I ask how the Chume’da Isolder ended up here, under your care?”
“Isolder’s ship crashed on Dathomir and by our laws I claimed him as my husband and rightful property.” The New Republic people liked it when you threw around talk about rights and rule of law, Teneniel knew, and she planned to back up her claim with steel and spells if it came to that.
“Was he alone? What happened to the other crew members?”
“They all died,” Isolder cried out. The other men turned to stare at him. “I was the only survivor.”
Teneniel wasn’t sure which was more shocking—her husband speaking up without her permission or the outright lie. There was something hunted about his look and it stirred a protective urge within her, at odds with the need to scold him. She turned her head away from him, back to the Jai Queen. It wouldn’t do to take him to task right now.
“The Queen Mother Ta'a Chume is eager to find him,” the golden droid prattled on. “All of her heirs have been lost under tragic circumstances and the Queen Mother hopes to return Chume’da Isolder to his home and to his people.”
Isolder had told her once that he came from a family of importance on his planet, but he’d been arrogant and wild then, and she hadn’t given his claims much thought. He had no means of calling on his people’s aid, and any claims of Hapan heritage were irrelevant on Dathomir soil anyway. Teneniel had nearly forgotten the entire incident. She hadn't been prepared for the revelation that his mother was a queen and the suggestion that his position was not insignificant. His mother had called on the Jedi for aid, after all, and the powerful spellcasters had heeded her call.
“What—what happened to Kalen?” Isolder asked, once again speaking without her permission. He stepped forward, away from the other husbands and sons.
“He died in an accident on Bottan,” the Jai Queen said. “His wife died a few months later in the Fountain Palace in Ta’a Chume’Dan.”
“Poison?” Isolder asked.
“Yes,” the Jai Queen said, and Teneniel sensed reluctance in her response. “Though there are contradictory reports on who the culprit was.” Isolder seemed unsurprised by this statement, though she could tell the news upset him.
“We have a message for Isolder from the Queen Mother Ta’a Chume,” the droid announced.
The Jai boy stepped forward, holding up a device. There were gasps through the assembled crowd as the holographic image appeared in the air in front of him. The New Republic envoys had brought holos to the valley before, but they were still rare enough to be a novelty. A woman’s ghostly form, in elaborate and beautiful robes that spoke of a luxury that Teneniel could barely comprehend, began to speak in a language Teneniel had never heard before, the foreign syllables musical and solemn. There was a short silence after the holo of the Hapan Queen had completed her speech and vanished again, broken by the occasional whispered comment in the crowd.
“She implores me to remember my duty to Hapes and return to take my place as the Chume’da,” Isolder said, his voice flat. He did not seem pleased to see his mother again. He looked at the Jai Queen. “Are things as bad as she says?”
“The Consortium has been in a state of political unrest for the last three years,” the droid said. “There is terrible infighting among the High Houses of Hapes.”
“Two Houses are gone,” The Jai Queen replied. “The House of Olanji poisoned the entire House of Thane and were banished from the Consortium. The House of Lis instigated a failed revolt six months ago, and the Per’Agthra Palace burned to the ground.”
“No,” Isolder gasped, the color draining from his face.
“Your mother’s grip on the Consortium is tenuous, and without an heir, she will soon lose any remaining support she has. It means civil war, Chume’da.”
“I don’t care what this Hapan queen says,” Teneniel said sharply, glaring at the Jai Queen. “The troubles on Hapes means nothing to us on Dathomir.”
“It’s his decision,” the Jai Queen said.
“Nonsense,” Teneniel said. “Men don’t make decisions.”
“The Hapan mi—” Isolder began.
“Isolder.” Teneniel silenced him with a single word.
She addressed the Jai Queen again. “I already told you: I will not let you take my husband from me. Do you really want to test the strength of the witches of the Singing Mountain Clan? We have brought down your Jai ships before, and if you attempt to steal my husband from me, we will do so again.”
It was true that witches had torn a Jai ship out of the sky once—Teneniel had seen the rotting wreck with her own eyes. But that had been before the rise of Nightsister clans, before Gethzerion united them and turned the Nightsisters against the witch clans, devastating the tribes. There were so few of them left now. She simply didn’t know if they could hold their own against the unknown power of the Jai.
There was a tense pause, and then the golden man said timidly: “Perhaps—a short recess?”
Teneniel nodded in brusque acquiescence as the Jai Queen murmured, “Thank you, Threepio.”
“We have set aside a room for you and your entourage,” Teneniel told her. “To rest until the talks resume.”
One of the men stepped forward with a deep bow, indicating that he would guide the Jai through the fortress. The Jai followed without protest.
As everyone filed out of the great hall, a group of clan children passed through the corridor in front of them, and the children turned to stare curiously at the Jai strangers. Teneniel could see the lips of the witch leading them move in a spell of protection.
“Mama!” Tenel Ka broke away from the other clan children, her braids flying behind her as she ran. She leapt up into Teneniel’s arms.
Teneniel tsked. “You’re getting too big for that, little bird.”
In spite of her words, she smiled and spun the child around, raining kisses down on her plump cheeks. Tenel Ka shrieked with laughter. Teneniel had hoped that Isolder would give her many strong and powerful girls, but there had only been Tenel Ka, and Teneniel loved her more fiercely for it.
“She’s not my child,” Isolder spoke up suddenly. “Teneniel’s husband Rien gave her Tenel Ka.”
Teneniel turned to stare at Isolder. It was such an obvious lie that the Jai wouldn’t even need magic to sniff it out. Why lie at all? Why did it matter if the Jai Queen knew who Tenel Ka’s father was? It was irrelevant information.
“She isn’t mine,” Isolder insisted.
“I understand,” the Jai Queen said, her face expressionless.
Teneniel did not understand, and she felt her anger flare up, hot as witchfire. She put Tenel Ka down and sent her off with the other children.
“My quarters,” she snapped at Isolder. She left the Jai behind and swept off to her private rooms, Isolder trailing in her wake.
As soon as the door shut behind him he began to speak in a rushed, anxious tone. “I think we should honor the Jai Queen’s request for a private council—”
“How dare you speak openly to the Jai?” she hissed.
There was a moment of silence behind her. Teneniel spun around to face him.
“I lost my head, Mother Teneniel,” he said, his body gone hunched in a man’s submissive posture. For the first time, it felt like a performance that rang false.
“You lost your head?” Teneniel gritted out, “Repeatedly? So insolently?”
“Mother Teneniel, please, I beg you, let me speak to the Jai.”
“You never told me that your mother was the Queen Mother of Hapes. You kept things from me.”
Isolder kept his head lowered, and when she stepped close, refused to meet her eyes. There were aspects to this story he still wasn’t sharing with her, secrets like the roots of a tree burrowing deep into the earth. Whatever he was hiding from her sent waves of fear and distress rippling off of him.
It was at times like this that she keenly missed Talas’s steadying influence—he and Isolder had been very close and he’d always been able to convince all of them to speak reasonably with each other. It was Talas’s memory that made her reconsider her approach.
“Why are you keeping secrets from me?” she said softly. Perhaps gentleness would draw him out. Teneniel slowly lifted a hand and traced the line of his perfect jaw. He really was alarmingly handsome.
“It may not even matter, if—” he began, and then stopped.
She cupped his face in her hands. “What's going on in that head of yours?” she murmured.
Teneniel knew he had a stubborn and willful streak and she'd be lying if she didn't admit that it had been one of the things that had attracted her in the first place, but she thought that she had tamed that wildness out of him. She had thought, after all the years that he had been hers, she had his absolute loyalty.
“Do you want to go with the Jai Queen?” she asked.
“I—don’t know. I need to speak to the Jai.”
“If I were to let you go, you would never come back.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “My mother has named me the—the Chume’da. The Prince of the Hidden Worlds. If I go, I will be wed to a woman of a high house—a woman of my mother’s choosing. I will give her children, and our daughter will become queen mother one day. This is my duty to my people: to give them a queen. There’s a saying: Hapes is only as strong as its Queen Mother; it perseveres through the blood of her line.”
“You have a duty to me.” Teneniel felt her anger rising again. “You are my husband.”
A pulse of rage rippled through her, followed by the urge to strike out at him. She gasped and stepped back. When she was younger, before she’d learned to control herself, she’d had a terrible temper. That sort of anger let the darkness take root in your heart, and in giving in to her rage she would give herself to the Nightsisters.
“Teneniel,” Isolder said softly. The gentle tone of his voice pulled her back to herself. He—and Talas and Rien, before they had been killed—had always been able to turn her face back to the light.
“I’m not giving you to the Jai Queen,” she said, but the certainty had slipped out of her voice. “How can I do this without you? After all we’ve lost?”
“Yes, Teneniel, my love,” he soothed. As a man, he had no magic, but nonetheless, he had an uncanny ability to gauge her temperament. He dropped to his knees, one hand at her hip, rubbing gentle circles, the other fingering the edge of her gown. “May I?”
She shouldn’t let him distract her with sex, but she nodded, suddenly unable to find the words to speak to him around the knot in her throat. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. She had already lost Rien and Talas.
“Let me speak to the Jai queen,” he said softly, his hand sliding slowly up her thigh.
“I’m too lenient with you,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer as he kissed her knee, hands and mouth moving further up. He still hadn’t explained himself to her. She knew this was only a distraction technique, one that men used to gain the sympathies of their wives, but she could never resist it. She let her head loll back and dug her fingers into his hair, letting his lips drive any thought of Hapes and the Jai Queen out of her head for a few blissful minutes.
They were ushered into a small guest room, and as soon as their Dathomiri hosts had left them alone, Mara flopped gracelessly onto one of the four pallets that ran in a row along the far wall. She closed her eyes, drawing on the Force to push away the sharp edge of a forming headache. It took a certain amount of concentration to use the Force to translate the local language, and paired with the level of tension that leaked from every Dathomiri in the hall, her head was beginning to throb.
Diplomacy. It had never been her strong point. Time and again, she wished that a Jedi’s duty to the galaxy didn’t involve diplomatic missions, or that there was someone else who could take her place as negotiator. But there wasn’t anyone else. She had been the only Jedi left in the wake of Palpatine’s purge, and the new order was still small enough that she didn’t have enough fully-trained Jedi, capable of handling every crisis that came up.
She’d been working on the Hapes Issue for three years, a long process of one-step-forward-two-steps-back, and it looked as though this particular mission was no exception. And in exchange for the Jedi’s help, Ta’a Chume had finally agreed to speak out against the Ni’Korish—the fanatic anti-Jedi faction that had gained traction in the Consortium and threatened the Jedi Order—but her cooperation was contingent on the Queen Mother maintaining power on Hapes, and for that she needed an heir, and she needed Isolder to provide her with one.
It was clear that Ta’a Chume had a personal distaste for the Jedi, and Mara suspected her of secretly encouraging the Ni’Korish, though they’d never been able to find any proof that the Queen Mother was enabling them. Mara didn’t trust her, but there was no higher power on Hapes to appeal to, and the amount of influence a strong Queen Mother could exert over her people couldn’t be overstated. For the protection of her own people, Mara had a vested interest holding up her end of the agreement.
When she took the mission for the Queen Mother, she’d half expected to be returning to Hapes with Isolder’s remains. Instead, they’d found that Isolder hadn't died—he was married to the kriffing leader of the clan. As much as marriage—essentially a form of slavery on Dathomir—meant anything on this backwater planet.
She sensed that Isolder himself was torn—he still cared about his home planet and felt a duty towards the people there, but he also felt a sense of loyalty, perhaps even love, toward his wife and new home. And they had a daughter too, though he'd tried, badly, to hide that fact. He’d formed emotional bonds with the clan that he couldn’t easily leave behind when he returned to claim his birthright, if Mother Teneniel permitted him to leave at all. If she didn’t, they’d have to find some sort of leverage against the Dathomiri Witch. If they could prevent a war by returning Isolder to his mother, restoring the royal line of succession, then Mara would do whatever she could to make it happen.
What a nightmare.
“That didn’t get us anywhere,” Ben complained.
“We know Isolder’s alive and well,” Mara said. “Though returning him to Hapes is going to be a mess.”
Even with her eyes closed, she could tell that Ben and Meena were still talking, using the smuggler’s sign language they’d learned when they’d worked for Talon Karrde. If Mara had had her eyes open, she would have rolled them. Both her children were inordinately smug about their apprenticeship with Talon.
“Stop that,” she told them. “Or I’ll have Threepio translate for me.”
“I am proficient in twelve thousand sign languages—”
“Yeah, thanks, Threepio,” Ben cut him off.
Threepio had been Leia’s idea, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Sending a protocol and translator droid along on a diplomatic expedition made logical sense, but neither the Hapans or Dathomiri were accustomed to droids (if for very different reasons) and they tended to be dismissive of his presence rather than impressed. Mara had thought he’d appreciate the diplomatic aspects of the mission, but he’d never enjoyed being hauled off to obscure planets, and she wished they’d left him behind. He was miserable and wore out everyone's patience. When they got back to Coruscant she'd return him to the Senate offices, where he always seemed the happiest, fussing over every detail of senatorial protocol.
“Observations?” She kept her eyes shut, speaking blindly to the room. Though Ben and Meena had both been officially knighted, they still had much to learn about the diplomatic aspects of the Jedi’s service, and she’d brought them along for the experience as much as anything else.
“She sure didn't like us much,” Ben said.
“Something a little less obvious please, Ben.”
“Mother Teneniel was angry every time Isolder spoke to us,” Meena said.
“They don’t let men speak out of turn,” Ben returned sourly.
“That’s not it,” Mara said thoughtfully. “She was annoyed that he was lying to us.”
“Why?” Ben asked.
“The people here value being straightforward,” Mara said. “It’s not like Hapes.”
Ben and Meena both made a low rattling growl that was a Noghri expression of disgust. Ben added a colorful Bocce expletive for emphasis. Mara swallowed a smile. No one had enjoyed the trip to Hapes.
“Master Ben!” Threepio’s voice was shocked. “Such language! And in front of your—”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Threepio,” Mara waved blindly at the droid. “It’s a lost cause.”
“If you say so, Mistress Mara.”
"At least the food was good," she murmured, thinking of Hapes. There were sounds of agreement from Ben and Meena; the food had been good. But the quality of the food hadn’t disguised the heavy feeling of desperation that lurked under the veneer of Hapan hospitality.
“She’s definitely his daughter,” Meena said, who could always be trusted to keep them on task. “They have the same familial smell.”
Ben wrinkled his nose. “It’s creepy when you say things like that.”
“A Jedi uses every tool at her disposal,” Meena said primly.
“Of course, Miss Meena,” Threepio said. “We must be mindful of local etiquette—”
Mara interrupted them before the conversation strayed too far. “Isolder doesn’t want us to know he was a daughter, or at least, pretend we don’t know he has a daughter,” Mara prompted the two young Jedi. “Why would he hide that fact?”
“We’re here on behalf of Hapes,” Meena said slowly as she thought it over. “He doesn’t want Hapes to find out.”
“Good,” Mara said. “Why?”
“He doesn’t want them to know he’s already married?” Ben picked up the thread. “Mother Teneniel is definitely not what the Queen Mother had in mind for Isolder’s wife.”
Mara rubbed her forehead. “It’s not that, exactly,” she murmured. That felt close, but not quite right, though the thought of the Queen Mother facing Mother Teneniel Djo as her new daughter-in-law made her smile.
It wouldn't come to that. Once they were able to convince Teneniel to let Isolder go, he could simply abandon whatever local vows he'd made (or had been forced to make) here on Dathomir. Who would know? It would be the easiest solution to their problems.
And in doing so, Isolder would be forced abandon his daughter. Mara wasn’t unsympathetic—it was a choice that she herself had faced once, and she’d chosen Ben over the Rebellion and turned her back on the fight. But she wasn’t in Isolder’s shoes, and comparing the two situations wouldn’t get her anywhere. She led the Jedi now, and had to keep her sympathies out of it.
“In the long run, the destabilization of Hapes could lead to it joining the New Republic,” Meena pointed out.
“That thought had occurred to me,” Mara said with a grimace. It was a solution, but not one she wanted to entertain. “It’s not something we could count on, and we’d be gambling the lives of everyone in the Consortium.”
It could also be said that she wasn’t exactly wild about championing a hereditary monarchy after all the years she’d spent fighting for the New Republic, but letting the system fall into chaos was worse.
“Even though the Jedi are allied with the New Republic, we’re meant to be impartial judges. We’re here to represent Hapes, and we must fight for the best solution for the people we represent. That means bringing Isolder home and ending the conflict as soon as possible. If we can convince Isolder to—”
She broke off as she felt a disturbance in the Force, a dark ripple that brushed across her mind. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up. “Did you feel that?”
Ben was in the middle of a sign as he and Meena looked over, guilty expressions on their faces. They shook their heads.
“It’s gone now…” Mara said. Or it had been cloaked, somehow. She’d read the New Republic brief on Dathomir, which had claimed that Dathomir was crawling with dark siders. Nightsisters. She didn’t know if Nightsisters could cloak their dark side intentions, or if the Force was warning her of some impending danger that had been diverted, or—
There was a tap at the door, and a man entered with a tray. “Mother Teneniel sent these refreshments, honored guests,” he said.
“Thank you,” Mara replied, offering him a smile that he did not return.
“For the Jai Queen and her entourage,” he said with practiced formality as he placed the tray on a low table and bowed out of the room.
“So polite!” Threepio said. “Some people on this planet have manners!”
It wasn’t politeness. It was subservience. Mara didn’t sense any signs of obvious abuse from him or any other the men in the fortress, though she didn’t know how other clans operated. They seemed well cared for, and no more anxious than any other the members of the tribe.
But their dutiful subservience had a familiar feel to it. She herself had once been content to be shackled to the Empire, happy with her lot and ignorant of the sweetness of freedom. The fact that the issue of male servitude wasn’t Jedi business and she couldn’t get involved tugged at her conscience like the sharp teeth of an akk-dog.
The issue of Hapes took precedence, and putting a stop to anti-Jedi groups like the Ni’Korshi was Jedi business. First, the matter of Isolder. Then, she was going to have a long talk with Mother Teneniel, about many things.