They must have come further south and west than Vette had thought, for a patrol of Republic soldiers found them close to midday. Vette had come slowly awake at the sound of the arming of blasters, and her head pounded as she squinted at the white-armored figures standing, silhouetted, in the cave entrance. Their murmuring fell to silence when she raised her head.
“You, Twi’lek,” said one of them. “Who are you? What are you doing out here?”
Vette turned to see Merce still lying sprawled, half-naked, beside her. Tracks of pus and infection had made it past the edges of her bandaging job, and his dark hair was dripping with sweat. Though he carried no visible insignia of the Empire, she realized his Sith’s robes were making the Pubs nervous, and Vette didn’t want to ruin their best chance of a rescue.
“I’m Vette,” she said, not seeing any reason to lie — her name wasn’t even in Imperial databases, let alone the Republic’s. “This is… er. He’s a Jedi Knight. We were hunting a Sith who had come into the desert…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Some, uh, Darth Merce.”
“I’ve heard of him,” growled one of the soldiers, a Cathar. Vette silently blessed the Republic’s penchant for employing aliens: humans tended to all look the same to them, and Merce was in less danger of being recognized.
“I’m just a serv — I mean, a friend,” she added. “So I can’t tell you much more than that. Jedi business… you know.”
The cover story of Merce being a Jedi seemed to soften the soldiers’ demeanours, and one kneeled next to Merce, running a gentle hand over the edges of his wound. Merce sucked in a breath, but he didn’t wake, and the soldier tsked. “He looks to be in pretty bad shape.”
“We were ambushed by Tuskens.” That, at least, was true. “I didn’t think he was badly hurt until… well, just a few days ago, when he collapsed in fever.”
“Their blades carry poison,” said the Cathar. “We have the antidote, but it can take a few days to really take effect. He’d be better off if we were to get him to shelter.”
“Would you?” Vette breathed, and she laid her head back on the sand. She hadn’t been drinking enough herself, she knew, with the excitement of the past couple days, and it was getting hard to think. “I know he wouldn’t like to admit it, but we’re lost… Shelter would be… really, really good.”
The Cathar nodded. “Aye, we can help. You should drink some water, but not too fast.” The others withdrew from the entrance, letting in the light. The kneeling soldier offered her a hand to sit up, then gave over a canteen.
“Get about half of this into you, then one of these. It’ll help re-balance your body’s minerals.” He handed her some kind of thin green wafer. She nibbled on it before drinking the water and was surprised to find the food was salty-sweet.
As she drank and nibbled, the soldier then turned to Merce. He was apparently the team’s medic, and he took the Sith’s vitals and then injected several shots into his wrist and thigh. Vette thought she scented kolto, but Merce didn’t stir, not even to snarl when the medic pulled off the bandages and re-opened the wound to let it drain.
“When was the last time he was awake?” asked the medic grimly.
“This morning, maybe,” said Vette, “but he hasn’t been very lucid. Last time he was really okay was, um, maybe three days ago? When we got attacked.”
“That’s not good.” The medic withdrew to speak to the other Cathar. Vette tried dribbling the last of the water from the canteen on Merce’s lips, but she couldn’t tell if they moved or if that was just an illusion of the trembling waterdrops before they ran down his chin.
The soldiers soon returned to gently haul Merce out and hoist him up between them. His eyes stared, glittering and half-open, into the distance as the soldiers carried him to a sand sled that had been hidden just behind the curve of the nearest dune. The medic enticed her to sit on the sand sled with him, and after the drink, Vette’s head was considerably less spinny, and she felt she could manage that, at least. The sled rose a few inches off the sand and began to coast along, the soldiers jogging along on either side. The vehicle bumped slightly whenever they hit a dune, and Merce’s head would slump oddly from side to side.
Once, when it left his neck at a particularly uncomfortable-looking angle, Vette reached out to adjust it. Otherwise, she didn’t move or speak. Her mind had gone blank; her life was in the hands of the soldiers now, and wondering about the future was useless. They might find out they were Imperials; even then they might take mercy on them. Then again, they might not, and Vette and Merce both were too sick to resist whatever would be done to them. So, to some extent, it was useless to wonder.
There were still a few things she could confirm for sake of her own curiosity, though. “Where are you taking us?” Vette asked.
“To Master Yonlach,” said the nearest Cathar. “He is closest to our location, and we don’t interfere with Jedi business as a rule. Your friend should be well taken care of there.”
“Master Yonlach…” The name lit a flame inside her. That was the name Merce had cried out in his delirium: the Jedi they were hunting, Vette was sure. “Thank you,” she said distractedly to the soldier, and he saluted and moved off again. Vette bent over Merce. “Did you hear that?” she whispered in his ear. “They’re taking us to him, to your mark. Maybe this whole trip wasn’t in vain after all.”
Merce didn’t reply.
The journey took some hours more as it was. During the hottest part of the day, the soldiers stopped briefly, to siphon drinking water from the sled’s generators and to raise a kind of tarp, like a roof, over Vette and Merce, though Vette had to lie down to fit under it. The sky was finally turning a pale yellow-orange when the sled hummed to a stop and she poked her head out.
Nestled in between two dunes, with a long curved roof to keep the sand from swamping it, was a little hut. An old human was emerging from it, his steps strong and certain even though his face was as wrinkled as a sand-prune. He spoke with the soldiers for some minutes, and then they lifted the tarp over Vette and Merce for him to see.
Master Yonlach took one look at them, and his breath sucked in and his pale face went even paler. Vette’s heartbeat pounded hard under her jaw: was this the moment they would be found out? She gave Merce a hard poke, but the Sith still didn’t stir.
“I’ll handle him from here,” the Jedi finally said to the waiting soldiers, and Vette couldn’t read his suddenly closed expression. The soldiers dutifully saluted him and reached in to lift Merce and carry him into the hut. Vette slid off the sled and stood awkwardly to the side. She eyed the Master hard, but he only gave her a pensive look, then nodded at her to follow Merce in.
The hut was humble but clean, with a short tunnel connecting a bedroom to the main area, and there was a kind of kitchen built into one wall. Another man, whom Vette assumed was another Jedi by his robes, was stirring something in a pot there. She had been fairly certain Yonlach’s Pada’wan had been a she, not a he, so Vette only stared and said nothing. The man looked up with cursory interest, but he did not move to interfere as Merce was taken into the bedroom and laid out on one of the cots there. The soldiers then took their leave, the medic giving Vette a friendly pat on the shoulder, and soon Vette was left alone in the bedroom with Merce — and with Master Yonlach.
“This is no Jedi,” said the Master once the others had left. “This man is a Sith, and if I were to guess it, he is the very Darth Merce I was warned would hunt me down.”
“Yes. You’re right,” said Vette in a small voice. She and Merce had faced down Jedi before, but this was a Master, someone far beyond even Darth Plothar’s powers, or so she guessed by the way he carried himself. She didn’t move as Master Yonlach crept up to Merce, bending over the Sith, head cocked slightly as if he was listening to Merce’s breathing.
“Will you kill him?” asked Vette when she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“It is against the Jedi Code to strike the defenseless,” said the Master, huffing a sigh as if he wished it weren’t so. “Just as it is in the Code to offer succor where we can. This man suffers… the Sand People’s poison has gone deeper than just the flesh. If I don’t tend to him, he will die.”
“He wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you if the roles had been reversed,” said Vette.
“I know,” said Yonlach.
They didn’t speak as the Jedi performed some kind of divining over Merce, running his hands up and down the Sith’s body, hovering just inches over his fevered skin. Yonlach nodded when he concluded the spell, though in response to what, Vette didn’t know. The Master Jedi passed out of the bedroom to exchange words with the other man in the foyer. Vette stood awkwardly, not sure whether to defend Merce, or to simply stand in the corner and act like she barely knew him… Master Yonlach soon came back, ending any internal debate as he bid her stand near the wall and remain silent. He was bearing several small earthen pots, each filled with goo of various colors, and a roll of new, clean bandaging draped over one arm.
It was the work of several hours for Yonlach to strip Merce down and tend his wound, slathering the goo thickly on the most inflamed parts of his flesh, directing Vette at various intervals to move his unresponsive limbs this way or that so he could better reach the difficult spots. Once Yonlach was done, Merce’s color seemed… better, though the Twi’lek couldn’t be sure. The human’s brown had turned a red brown instead of a gray brown, at least.
“He can stay here until he can walk, but then he must leave,” said Master Yonlach. “If he refuses, we will do battle. You are free to go or stay as you wish, so long as you bring no arms to bear against me or my Pada’wan.”
“Thank you,” said Vette, “but I really have no other place to go.”
“We could find you a place, but it is as you wish,” said Master Yonlach; then he left them alone.
It was sometime in the middle of the night when Merce stirred finally, hiking himself up on one shoulder, blinking blearily around, then sinking down to doze on his side. Vette would have thought he was sleepwalking, except his eyes were open, flickering towards her when she moved closer, but not meeting her gaze. After a few minutes, the Sith’s eyes closed and his chin dipped, but there was something about the tension around his brow that told Vette the man was still awake.
Vette found herself thinking back to their time in the desert. Like then, she was seeing a very different side to the Sith now, and she felt uneasy at the same time she was feeling a little bit of hope. Merce was calmer, his dark eyes not blazing in wrath or in bloodlust, and Vette wondered if the crazy specter that had awoken in him at the Evocii’s slaughter had been cleansed from him, same as the Tusken Raiders’ poison. His blue eyes had become the color of an overcast sky, and they seemed almost… sad.
Vette dozed through the second half of the night, only waking when the other Jedi — the one who was not Yonlach — came in to entice Merce to down a dipper full of a medicine of some kind. The man’s movements were gentle, and Vette suspected Yonlach hadn’t told him Merce’s true identity. She wondered at that bit of mercy, as Merce swallowed a few sips and then tucked his chin again, refusing to finish the drink. The Jedi patted his head, told him he was healing well, then left.
Vette rolled over onto her elbow and squinted at Merce’s face in the gloom of the shaded lantern the Jedi had left in one corner for light. The Sith’s eyes were open again, still gray, still empty of emotion. It bothered her on some deep level, like she had come across a beggar who didn’t care enough about themselves to even wash.
“Merce?” she asked.
He looked her way, said nothing.
She reached out to give his forehead a comical poke, and when he frowned, she relented and instead gave his head a pat. “We’re safe, but they know who you are,” she said.
“We have to kill him,” said Merce, voice hoarse. Probably from all the yelling he had been doing lately, Vette thought.
“I know. It’s your mission.”
“It’s either him or me,” said Merce, and so saying, slipped his eyes shut.
Despite his declaration, he seemed disinterested in doing anything of the kind. A day or two passed, and he was able to sit up to take a meal and a proper glass of water, wincing anytime something brushed his chest, but he never snarled or threatened the clumsy culprit, even when that culprit was Vette. He spoke little to anyone, declined to try walking when Vette or even the male Pada’wan invited him, and after another day, Master Yonlach came into the room again, alone.
Vette stiffened as the Jedi Master crossed over from the door and laid a lightsaber in Merce’s lap. The Sith looked down at it, then squinted at Yonlach.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Pick it up,” said Yonlach.
“Why?”
“Because I have an idea I would like to test. Pick it up.”
“No,” said Merce, after a moment. “It’s a Jedi weapon.” He then sighed tiredly. “Why play this game, old man? Why not simply strike me down? You know what I am, why I came here.”
“As I explained to the Twi’lek, it is not the Jedi way to attack the defenseless,” said the Master.
“I’ve killed many Jedi who’ve said just such a thing,” answered Merce, and finally Vette detected the old murderous gleam in his eyes, but he still didn’t make a move towards the lightsaber. “I watched them writhe in agony as I slaughtered them for their stupidity…”
“You are well enough,” said Yonlach clippedly. “If you wish to have your battle, then strike at me. I doubt it will get you what you truly desire, however.”
Merce twitched, but he only continued eyeing the Jedi sourly. “…and how would you know what a Sith would want?”
“Many of you are terribly predictable,” said Master Yonlach dryly. “Passion, power, destruction, then death… all the Sith seek such things, blindly believing the pursuit of each will reveal the ultimate secret to freedom.” He glanced at Vette, but briefly. “But you will never be free until you can unhitch yourself from your own fear and greed, Sith.”
Merce’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t respond.
Yonlach abruptly snatched the lightsaber back and ignited one end of it. The bright blue blade hummed as it extended between Jedi and Sith, casting both their faces in shadow. Vette gasped, but Merce remained still, eyeing the Jedi coolly over the lightsaber, as if daring him to plunge it home.
“I knew the old master of this blade,” said Yonlach. “She was one of my closest friends… With this lightsaber, she braved countless battles and saved thousands of lives. She never lost her bright demeanor, even in the darkest of times, and I believe some of her spirit has passed on into the blade. Sith, when this lightsaber finally chooses a wielder, you should know that such a weapon does not do it lightly.”
“That’s a funny way of saying you’re so brave and strong to possess it,” said Merce, but he was too tired to make the remark into more of a jab.
“I am not its wielder.” The Master searched his face. “Put out your hand.”
One of Merce’s eyes twitched, and suspiciously he raised one hand to the Jedi, who said nothing, but laid the lightsaber hilt into it. Vette couldn’t be sure which pushed the switch, but the other end of the blade suddenly extended, and Merce held the double-ended lightsaber horizontally between them. His blue eyes reflected the bright blue of the blade — wide and surprised, almost frightened.
“I always thought your name was a peculiar one among Sith,” mused the Master, nodding. “Most take their names from such things as domination, malice, or tyranny, yet yours is from a Jedi virtue.” He held up a staying hand when Merce began to speak. “I know you did not pick it. Your master has given it to you, as a kind of prophecy: to invoke the thing in you that would be feared the most by all whom you would face: mercy.”
“Mercy makes our order weak,” snarled Darth Merce. “It is a curse. Nothing but a joke.”
“But it is what your master fears,” repeated Yonlach softly. “Listen to me, for I am taking a very great chance, but I trust in the Force. No matter how loyal the apprentice or generous the master, Merce, there always comes a time when Sith rebels against Sith. Your acceptance of this blade is already one such rebellion. Will you continue down that path and fulfill the true purpose of your name?”
“And what, let you live?” Merce sneered. “Your emotions betray you. You’re thick with fear, you old dog.”
“No, it is not my life I would ask you to spare,” countered Yonlach. “I am old, and my time is near. I know of the one your master ultimately seeks: the reason he sent you here. If you failed, you were to die, and remove a potentially powerful rival in his quest for power. Yet if you were to succeed, you would torture me and draw out information about my Pada’wan’s whereabouts. In doing so, she would sense my suffering and begin to crack, so that you might turn her to the Dark Side, if not ruin her mind so much she could no longer use her powers. Is that correct?”
“Yes…” Merce snarled reluctantly.
“So kill me you must, for I will not break,” said Master Yonlach, “and I sense that, sick as you are, your strength in the Force outweighs my own.”
Merce didn’t reply, only lowering the blue lightsaber slightly, and the upper half of his face and Yonlach’s was lost in darkness.
“Search your feelings, Merce,” said the Jedi. “Your true path awaits you. This blade would grant you the courage to walk it. It is yours, now. It has chosen you, before ever I laid eyes upon you. I merely served as the vessel to bring you both together, and long in this desert have I waited. Your Master does not know the depths of which he has struck, the great powers in you and in others that will soon be aligned against him.”
Merce stiffened. Vette felt down her hip for her blaster, but she knew the Force-users would move too quickly for her to be of much help once they entered combat. Merce was rousing finally, his tension and anger sharp enough to cut like a vibroknife, and she imagined Master Yonlach plucking at his nerves intentionally like a viola’s string.
“Yes,” said the Master softly. “I have played my part, and I now meet my death willingly.”
That, like a provocation, was all that was needed. Merce jumped up from the bed, slashing at him with one end of the lightsaber. The Jedi Master was instantly gone, and Vette might’ve believed he had dodged away, but then his robes were fluttering to the floor, empty, scorched through as the bright blade leaped through them, parting them in half. Only Darth Merce remained, heaving angry breaths as he stared at it.
Then his deadly eyes snapped up to hers. “We go.”
“My lord, the Jedi outside–”
“–will die if he tries to stop me!” shouted Merce, and then he was kicking his way through the robes and towards the door. Vette heard the igniting of another lightsaber on the other side, and she quickly ducked down and turned away.
She had seen Darth Merce slay Jedi before, of course, as well as many other enemies that Plothar had thrown him at over the years. This was the first one that had caused her some sorrow at his death, though.
…or perhaps her sorrow stemmed from the death of that little crack she had seen in her Sith master’s demeanor: the small hint of humanity he had displayed as he had struggled through the desert.
She wished she could have seen Yonlach’s face before he had disappeared; she thought for certain he would be smiling, gentle and forgiving, like the virtue he claimed would guide Darth Merce’s fate. Vette shivered, as she was not sure why she should be so afraid of that.