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No. No. No no no no no no no. She's only barely recovered from last time they took her; she can't let them take her again.
If she draws her saber, she'll die. There's no doubt in her mind about that, outnumbered as she is and with her master right there. There's nothing she can do; he knows it, they know it, she knows it. They wouldn't do this any other way.
The flash of inspiration is more like a memory; the floating, disconnected kind that sometimes linger after... whatever it is that they do to her. It's never been quite like this before, but - she reaches into the Force, nudges it just so...
The burst of feedback - fear and rage and terror - overwhelms her; she reels, barely keeping her feet, distantly aware of the shouting, of her droid stepping forward to steady her. She ignores it as best she can, and continues nudging at the Force, carefully, carefully...
And then, suddenly, she's elsewhere.
"No pattern we've found." A pause. "Piral thinks it's the marsh. Something shifting. But he doesn't—" she stops. "He'd know better than me."
"Infirmary, mostly. Or the yard." She glances at Deskyl. "He's not — he won't be difficult. About talking to her."
Kolar doesn't stop. If anything, her corrections get slightly more precise, her voice a fraction flatter. The soldiers are very focused on being focused.
Torand fumbles a sequence he's probably done a hundred times and gets a short, cutting remark for it. He resets and tries again.
The droid emerges again a few minutes later to bring a report to Kiril: in addition to the wide (ideally copper) and waterwheel, Deskyl will need a magnet, the larger the better, to make the charger she needs. The project would also benefit from flat pieces of at least two different metals, some acid (vinegar or citrus juice will do), some scraps of leather the same size as the metal pieces, and a few containers large enough to hold everything, made of wood or ceramic, but those aren't as important.
Kiril listens, and writes it down with the air of a man who has decided that understanding is a secondary concern to having an accurate list.
"The magnet will be the difficulty," he says. "We have iron. Copper wire — some. Vinegar." He looks at the list. "Jens will know if there's anything else." A pause. "What did she say? Watching the drills."
DZ needs to think about that one for a moment; Deskyl hadn't specifically told her that that particular interaction was private but the Sith is clearly working on the assumption that the locals won't understand her signing. On the other hand, it does seem less likely that someone will end up provoking her if Kiril knows about her concerns. "She was warning me to stay away from your lieutenant, sir. She would take it as a provocation if I was damaged."
Something in Kiril's expression shifts — not surprise exactly, more like a piece settling into place.
"Vass," he says, correcting the rank absently. "Sergeant." He's quiet for a moment. "She read that from watching two minutes of drills."
It's not quite a question either.
He's quiet for a moment longer than usual.
"I see," he says, in the tone of a man making a significant number of rapid adjustments. He looks down at his list. "I'll speak to Vass."
Kiril finds Kolar after the drills, in the small armory where she goes to think.
"The droid came to see me," he says, and closes the door.
Kolar doesn't say anything.
"She reads emotions. The stranger. Passively, apparently — not something she chooses to do." He lets that sit for a moment. "Vass. I need you to be predictable right now."
"I'm always predictable," Kolar says.
"You're always consistent. That's not the same thing." He leans against the wall. "She's not a threat to how this fort runs. She's here to recover. She'll contribute while she does."
"She threw the gate mechanism."
"Yes."
"With her mind."
"Yes."
Kolar is quiet for a moment. "And you're comfortable with that."
"I'm practical about it," Kiril says, which is a different answer. "She fought through the marsh injured, alone, protecting a droid. She didn't come here to take anything. If she'd wanted to take something, we couldn't have stopped her." He picks up a whetstone from the bench, sets it down again. "I need you to give her nothing to respond to. Can you do that?"
The silence is long enough to be its own kind of answer.
"Yes," Kolar says finally.
The sunset is unhurried and extravagant — reds bleeding into orange, the Gravemarsh below turned briefly beautiful, the standing water catching the light like scattered coins. A few birds cross the sky in the middle distance, silhouettes against the color.
From up here the fort is very small. The sounds of it — Brytha clattering in the kitchen, Torand getting a correction from someone, the ordinary texture of people living in close quarters — rise and then fall away under the wind.
The stars come out the same way they did last night — all at once, it seems, once the last color drains from the horizon. The marsh settles into its nighttime sounds: water, wind, something distant that might be animal and might not be.
Jens is in the watchtower when she comes down that way. He doesn't look up from whatever he's mending.
She's already aware that they have him watching her; it's relatively inoffensive as such things go.
She takes a moment to look out over the marsh, squints in concentration, and gets the night watchman's attention to point to a particular copse of trees.