He found the exact curve they’d taken before, found the circular door. Opening it again seemed both foolhardy and necessary. Since he knew about the helix rings, he reasoned, he could avoid setting them off.

Then Reath froze as he saw, through the small slits in the door, a faint, flickering light.

This wasn’t the burning blaze that had forced his eyes closed when Dez had been…lost. It was dimmer, smaller. It was also unfamiliar, unauthorized, and severely suspect. If someone was tampering with Dez’s death scene—or if it turned out that this wasn’t Dez’s death scene—

With one hand on his lightsaber, Reath slowly pushed open the door until he heard a bloodcurdling scream. A small figure scrambled back through the tunnel. “Get away from—Reath?”

“Nan?” he said. She sat on the floor, heavy with relief that it was only him. “What are you doing down here on your own?”

“Investigating.” She pushed her chin forward and folded her arms. “Since everyone else seems like they’re ready to write Dez off as dead, when there’s no body—”

“No proof, nothing!” Relief eased him, and he sat down beside her. “I thought I was the only one who wasn’t ready to accept it.”

Nan measured him with a look and apparently found him more interesting than before. “Okay. So at least some of you Jedi can think for yourselves.”

Reath didn’t think there was any shortage of that, really, but there would be time later to talk to her about the traditions of dissent within the Order. “What have you found so far?”

“Just got here, really. Where should we start?”

“We move forward through the tunnels, watching out for the rings, and see if we can find evidence of what this area was used for. Knowing its purpose might give us some answers. Maybe Dez was transported somewhere else, or taken farther down to an even lower level than we’ve found yet.”

“That’s more or less what I was thinking.” Nan got to her feet; she seemed to have been studying the rings’ fastenings at the floor level, but to no avail. “Let’s move.”

The tunnels stretched into what seemed like an infinite darkness. Reath kept his glow rod steady, as did Nan, but the sound of their footsteps echoing into the unknown got undeniably creepy after a while.

To break the silence, he said, “How did you come to be Hague’s ward? If it’s upsetting—”

“A person’s growing up without their parents, and you wonder if it’s upsetting?” But Nan seemed more amused than offended.

“Sorry. I realize that parents are important, but Jedi are raised in the temples together from early childhood. They take most of us in when we’re only toddlers, and that’s all we’ve ever known. So I don’t assume people come from families. Maybe I should.”