To find herself lying on a rough pallet in a corner of the Noghri communal bake house. Exactly where she’d been when she’d fallen asleep the night before.
She sat up, feeling relieved and a little ashamed. What with that unexpected visit last night by the Grand Admiral, she realized she’d half expected to wake up in a Star Destroyer detention cell. Clearly, she’d underestimated the Noghri’s ability to stick by their promises.
Her stomach growled, reminding her it had been a long time since she’d eaten; a little lower down, one of the twins kicked a reminder of his own. “Okay,” she soothed. “I get the hint. Breakfast time.”
She tore the top off a ration bar from one of her cases and took a bite, looking around the bake house as she chewed. Against the wall by the door, the double pallet that had been laid out for Chewbacca to sleep on was empty. For a moment the fear of betrayal again whispered to her; but a little concentration through the Force silenced any concerns. Chewbacca was somewhere nearby, with a sense that gave no indication of danger. Relax, she ordered herself sternly, pulling a fresh jumpsuit out of her case and starting to get dressed. Whatever these Noghri were, it was clear they weren’t savages. They were honorable people, in their own way, and they wouldn’t turn her over to the Empire. At least, not until they’d heard her out.
She downed the last bite of ration bar and finished dressing, making sure as always that her belt didn’t hang too heavily across her increasingly swollen belly. Retrieving her lightsaber from its hiding place under the edge of the pallet, she fastened it prominently to her side. Khabarakh, she remembered, had seemed to find reassurance of her identity in the presence of the Jedi weapon; hopefully, the rest of the Noghri would also respond that way. Stepping to the bake house door, she ran through her Jedi calming exercises and went outside.
Three small Noghri children were playing with an inflatable ball in the grassy area outside the door, their grayish-white skin glistening with perspiration in the bright morning sunlight. A sunlight that wasn’t going to last, Leia saw: a uniform layer of dark clouds extending all the way to the west was even now creeping its way east toward the rising sun. All for the best; a thick layer of clouds would block any direct telescopic observations the Star Destroyer up there might make of the village, as well as diffusing the non-Noghri infrared signatures she and Chewbacca were giving off.
She looked back down, to find that the three children had halted their game and formed a straight line in front of her. “Hello,” she said, trying a smile on them.
The child in the middle stepped forward and dropped to his knees in an awkward but passable imitation of his elders’ gesture of respect. “Mal’ary’ush,” he mewed. “Miskh’hara isf chrak’mi’sokh. Mir’es kha.”
“I see,” Leia said, wishing fervently that she had Threepio with her. She was just wondering if she should risk calling him on the comlink when the child spoke again. “Hai ghreet yhou, Mal’ary’ush,” he said, the Basic words coming out mangled but understandable. “The maitrakh whaits for yhou hin the dukha.”
“Thank you,” Leia nodded gravely to him. Door wardens last night; official greeters this morning. Noghri children seemed to be introduced early into the rituals and responsibilities of their culture. “Please escort me to her.”
The child made the respect gesture again and got back to his feet, heading off toward the large circular structure that Khabarakh had landed next to the night before. Leia followed, the other two children taking up positions to either side of her. She found herself throwing short glances, at them as they walked, wondering at the light color of their skin. Khabarakh’s skin was a steel gray; the maitrakh’s had been much darker. Did the Noghri consist of several distinct racial types? Or was the darkening a natural part of their aging process? She made a mental note to ask Khabarakh about it when she had a chance.
The dukha, seen now in full daylight, was far more elaborate than she’d realized. The pillars spaced every few meters around the wall seemed to be composed of whole sections of tree trunk, stripped of bark and smoothed to a black marble finish. The shimmery wood that made up the rest of the wall was covered to perhaps half its height with intricate carvings. As they got closer, she could see that the reinforcing metal band that encircled the building just beneath the eaves was also decorated—clearly, the Noghri believed in combining function and art. The whole structure was perhaps twenty meters across and four meters high, with another three or four meters for the conical roof, and she found herself wondering how many more pillars they’d had to put inside to support the thing.
Tall double doors had been built into the wall between two of the pillars, flanked at the moment by two straight-backed Noghri children. They pulled open the doors as Leia approached; nodding her thanks, she stepped inside.
The interior of the dukha was no less impressive than its exterior. It was a single open room, with a thronelike chair two-thirds of die way to the back, a small booth with an angled roof and a dark-meshed window built against the wall between two of the pillars to the right, and a wall chart of some sort directly across from it on the left. There were no internal support pillars; instead, a series of heavy chains had been strung from the top of each of the wall pillars to the edge of a large concave dish hanging over the center of the room. From inside the dish—just inside its rim, Leia decided—hidden lights played upward against the ceiling, providing a softly diffuse illumination.
A few meters in front of the chart a group of perhaps twenty small children were sitting in a semicircle around Threepio, who was holding forth in their language with what was obviously some land of story, complete with occasional sound effects. It brought to mind the condensed version of their struggle against the Empire that he’d given the Ewoks, and Leia hoped the droid would remember not to vilify Darth Vader here. Presumably he would; she’d drummed the point into him often enough during the voyage.
A small movement off to the left caught her eye: Chewbacca and Khabarakh were sitting facing each other on the other side of the door, engaged in some kind of quiet activity that seemed to involve hands and wrists. The Wookiee had paused and was looking questioningly in her direction. Leia nodded her assurance that she was all right, trying to read from his sense just what he and Khabarakh were doing. At least it didn’t seem to involve ripping the Noghri’s arms out of their sockets; that was something, anyway.
“Lady Vader,” a gravelly Noghri voice said. Leia turned back to see the maitrakh walking up to her. “I greet you. You slept well?”
“Quite well,” Leia told her. “Your hospitality has been most honorable.” She looked over at Threepio, wondering if she should call him back to his duties as translator.
The maitrakh misunderstood. “It is the history time for the children,” she said. “Your machine graciously volunteered to tell to them the last story of our lord Darth Vader.”
Vader’s final, self-sacrificial defiance against the Emperor, with Luke’s life hanging in the balance. “Yes,” Leia murmured. “It took until the end, but he was finally able to rid himself of the Emperor’s web of deception.”
For a moment the maitrakh was silent. Then, she stirred. “Walk with me, Lady Vader.” She turned and began walking along the wall. Leia joined her, noticing for the first time that the dukha’s inner walls were decorated with carvings, too. A historical record of their family? “My thirdson has gained a new respect for your Wookiee,” she said, gesturing toward Chewbacca and Khabarakh. “Our lord the Grand Admiral came last eve seeking proof that my thirdson had deceived him about his flying craft being broken. Because of your Wookiee, he found no such proof.”
Leia nodded. “Yes, Chewie told me last night about gimmicking the ship. I don’t have his knowledge of spaceship mechanics, but I know it can’t be easy to fake a pair of linked malfunctions the way he did. It’s fortunate for all of us he had the foresight and skill to do so.”
“The Wookiee is not of your family or clan,” the maitrakh said. “Yet you trust him, as if he were a friend?”
Leia took a deep breath. “I never knew my true father, the Lord Vader, as I was growing up. I was instead taken to Alderaan and raised by the Viceroy as if I were his own child. On Alderaan, as seems to also be the case here, family relationships were the basis of our culture and society. I grew up memorizing lists of aunts and uncles and cousins, learning how to place them in order of closeness to my adoptive line.” She gestured to Chewbacca. “Chewie was once merely a good friend. Now, he is part of my family. As much a part as my husband and brother are.”
They were perhaps a quarter of the way around the dukha before the maitrakh spoke again. “Why have you come here?”