Free Clone Wars Gambit: Siege by Karen Miller

don’t forget that things can always be worse
.
    Obi-Wan sprawled in a sleeping heap next to him, his breathing soft and regular. No cause for concern there, even though dried blood discolored his beard and his face was marred by cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Slivers of shadow striped him where light from the new day slid between the warped shutters covering the storeroom’s single small window.
    The new day
. Going by Lanteeban time, that meant they’d slept without stirring for nearly twenty local hours. The good news was he definitely felt refreshed. The bad news—there always had to be bad news—was that his empty belly was rumbling like a rockslide. With luck there’d be breakfast.
    But we can’t stay here after that. We have to get back in the fight. So the question is, what’s next?
    Obi-Wan opened his eyes. “Well? How are your bruised bruises this morning?”
    “Surly,” Anakin said. “Yours?”
    “I’ll live.”
    And so would he, but not comfortably. Everything hurt. And in the unfortunate absence of pain meds… “Hey. Don’t suppose you could—”
    “Sorry,” said Obi-Wan, sounding genuinely regretful. “Miraculous overnight healing is likely to raise eyebrows.” Wincing, he threw back his blanket and rolled untidily to his feet. “Never mind. We’ll manage. Now, what are your impressions of this village?”
    Anakin watched Obi-Wan tug the window’s shutter aside and stare through the scratched and warped transparisteel at the dwellings beyond. They were even more dilapidated than Gardulla the Hutt’s Mos Espa slave quarter, where he and his mother had lived before being sold to Watto. Small, featureless boxes with flat roofs and shuttered windows. No grass to soften the hard ground, or flowers to give even the illusion of cheer. What a sad place this was. But despite its sunken, sunbaked sorrow—
    “I think we’re fine,” he said. “At least for the moment. Obi-Wan, we have to get a message to the Temple.”
    “You’re reading my mind,” said Obi-Wan nodding. “With the mine active and supplying damotite, the village must possess some kind of comm center. The question is—”
    “Will they let us use it?” He shrugged. “Probably not. So I say we don’t even bother asking. We can just—”
    Prompted by muffled footsteps outside the storeroom door, Obi-Wan turned. “It appears our hostess is up and about. I suggest we go and make friends. We’ll need her support while we’re here.”
    “And if we don’t get it?” said Anakin, slowly getting up off his mattress. His scrapes and bruises really were surly. “What then? You try a little gentle persuasion?”
    “I’m not certain that would work,” Obi-Wan said at last. “This Teeba has a very
definite
personality. If she’s unprepared to offer further hospitality, we’ll have to see if someone else will take us in. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll simply have to find another settlement where the natives are friendlier.”
    “Except we’re in the middle of nowhere already and I can’t sense another village anywhere close by. Can you?”
    Obi-Wan grimaced. “Right now I can’t sense much beyond the need for a ’fresher.”
    Good point. His own unhappy body was making urgent demands, too. With elaborate courtesy he opened the storeroom door and stood back. “After you, Cousin Yavid.”
    They found Teeba Jaklin in her small kitchen, slicing a rough loaf of mixed-grain bread. Putting the knife down, she considered them with her wary, pale blue gaze. “So. There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you’d died.”
    Her demeanor was odd. Not hostile, but not exactly friendly, either. More than anything, Anakin sensed a resigned resentment in the woman. As though their arrival on her doorstep was just one more burden in a long and disappointing lifetime of burdens.
    Undaunted, Obi-Wan pressed his hand to his heart and offered her his most polite bow. “We certainly slept like the dead, Teeba. Again, you have