But he had no choice. His ongoing and very private dealings with Yiv had already put him dangerously far over the line. If the Benevolent decided his tame Pathfinder wasn’t useful anymore, Qilori would again find himself on the short track to destruction.

And certainly getting Thrawn out of the way would be a good thing. The Nikardun were ultimately unstoppable, and the less death and destruction they left in their wake the better for everyone.

Yes, Qilori decided. Whatever Yiv wanted him to do, he could certainly handle it.

Chapter Twelve

Ar’alani had seldom known General Ba’kif to be angry. At least, she’d seldom known him to be angry with her.

He was more than making up for it now.

“What in hell’s name were you thinking?” he snapped, glaring as if he was trying to melt her into slag by eyeflame and willpower alone. “Allowing a sky-walker to be separated from her caregiver is bad enough; actually engineering that separation takes matters to an entirely new level of illegality.”

“Never mind that,” Syndic Zistalmu ground out, doing his best to aid in Ba’kif’s fire-starting efforts. In contrast with the general, Ar’alani was quite familiar with Zistalmu’s anger. “Those are minor military matters, and they’re not why Syndic Thurfian and I are here. What we want to know is how you could let Senior Captain Thrawn insert himself—again—into Garwian politics.”

“Indeed,” Thurfian seconded. Unlike the heat radiating from Ar’alani’s other two interrogators, his tone and face were the frozen shell of Csilla. “Did the Aristocra somehow fail to make ourselves clear?”

“Captain Thrawn wasn’t inserting himself into politics,” Ar’alani said, keeping her voice even. She’d never found much credence in the old saying that soft words eroded hard ones, but she certainly didn’t want to make Ba’kif or Zistalmu any angrier than they already were.

Especially with Zistalmu a nanosecond away from demanding that the entire Syndicure convene to consider charges against her. Unlike her first officer, Ar’alani didn’t have a conduit into the sort of family intrigues that could provide her with a counterattack or an exit strategy.

“Really,” Zistalmu said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “He travels aboard a Garwian diplomatic ship, in the company of a Garwian envoy, to a world we ourselves have no political ties to; and that has nothing to do with politics? Have the Garwians converted their diplomatic corps into a knitting club?”

“The mission was one of reconnaissance,” Ar’alani said. “Captain Thrawn is trying to determine where else the Nikardun may have established themselves—”

“Have these Nikardun attacked the Ascendancy?” Thurfian interrupted. “Have they shown any indication that they might attack the Ascendancy?”

“They destroyed a refugee ship within one of our systems.”

“So you claim,” Zistalmu said. “The Syndicure has yet to see solid evidence that the Nikardun are the ones responsible.”