Tahiri sensed nothing untrustworthy about her, and she swallowed hard then nodded as she took Karla's hand. This was possibly insane, possibly reckless, possibly a half dozen things she could hear Corran or Kam yelling about now. That . . . didn't deter her. "Okay. Okay," she said shakily, and brought the bottle to her lips to drink the brew.

Force, she did not want to relive this, but if there was a chance in hell to figure out how to deal with Riina . . .

The first thing she remembered, after regaining consciousness, was waking up on a cool, hard floor of some living material, being observed through a transparent membrane by two . . .

Well, they were female. Their faces were mutilated and tattooed in a more delicate fashion than the Yuuzhan Vong warriors who'd captured her, but the intense interest of the way they were looking at her worried Tahiri even more and absurdly, it was right about then that she realized her lightsaber was gone. Her observers spoke to each other in the guttural snarls of their own language, though Tahiri could pick out the word Jeedai every now and then.

"You're crazy if you think you can keep me here," she yelled, pounding on the surprisingly unyielding membrane with both fists as she sent out a desperate mental cry for Anakin. "He wouldn't leave me behind again, just watch!"