Free Clone Wars Gambit: Siege by Karen Miller Page A

our most humble thanks. I think my cousin and I were ready to lie down in the road.”
    From the look on her face the Teeba wasn’t sure whether to believe him. She sniffed. “I think you were too, Teeb. But likely you’d have been safe enough. There’s no convoy due for a few days yet. Still…” She wrapped the remaining uncut bread in a cloth and dropped it into a bin on the bench. “Better safe than sorry.”
    “Indeed,” said Obi-Wan. “Ah—Teeba—”
    She pointed through the kitchen’s other door. “The ’fresher’s down the corridor there. Can’t offer you the tub today. No body bathing till tomorrow.”
    Anakin swallowed a groan. His skin was tacky with dried sweat and blood and grime.
We might as well be back on Tatooine
. “Your water’s rationed?”
    “That’s right,” she said, indifferent to his dismay. “First, second, and third priority’s the mine. Then beasts and crops and drinking. Washing bodies and clothes comes a long way last.”
    “That’s quite all right, Teeba Jaklin,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “You’ve given us shelter and sustenance. We don’t expect you to launder us as well.”
    Teeba Jaklin stared at Obi-Wan, steadfastly refusing to be softened by his charm. “You get a splash of wet in the bottom of the ’fresher basin for the worst of the stink. No more than a splash, mind. I’ll know otherwise. There’s a gauge.”
    “A splash,” said Obi-Wan. “Yes, of course.”
    She frowned at his cuts and bruises. “Not brawling each other, were you? We don’t hold with brawling here.”
    “No, Teeba,” said Obi-Wan. “As we said last night, there was an accident. We’re not trouble, my word on it.”
    “In that case there’s a pot of salve in the cupboard over the basin. Use what you need of it. I make it myself.”
    Obi-Wan bowed again. “That’s very generous. Thank you. Markl—you go first. But don’t dawdle.”
    “I won’t, Yavid,” Anakin murmured, the obedient younger cousin, and left Obi-Wan to his closer reading of the Teeba and their current predicament.
    Like the dingy, cramped kitchen, the cottage’s refresher was run-down and hardly big enough to turn around in. As he washed his flesh-and-bone hand and his face at the tiny basin, using no more than the requisite miserly splash, he stared at his wobbly reflection in the cracked mirror. Could be worse. A thin cut along his hairline. Bruising along his left cheekbone and under his eye. A scrape on his chin. Tugging his shirt open, he counted more bruises. His right collarbone ached viciously, as did two of his ribs and both knees. Perhaps it was for the best that the tub was denied him. He had the feeling he was a patchwork of purple and green bruises and red blaster blisters, which would make for a depressing sight.
    Still. If looking awful makes us seem less threatening… more vulnerable… that’s all to the good
.
    He daubed himself liberally with Teeba Jaklin’s stinking, sticky green salve. It stung like fire. Then he returned to the kitchen. Upon his arrival Obi-Wan withdrew, leaving him alone with their hostess.
    Obi-Wan’s right. Her mind’s about as pliable as durasteel. Whatever we need from her we’ll have to get with old-fashioned cajolery
.
    And hadn’t his mother always told him he could coax the stars down from the sky if he put himself to the trouble? Didn’t Padmé say the same, not always so admiringly?
    He offered the plain, tough woman his most winsome, winning smile. “Thank you, Teeba Jaklin. It’s very good of you to help us like this. If we hadn’t come across your village when we did, or if you’d turned us away as vagabonds, I’m not sure how we would’ve survived.”
    With an unimpressed glance the Teeba fired up her kitchen’s clunky old stove. “We keep ourselves to ourselves in Torbel, young Teeb, but that don’t make us cruel. I took you in for it was the right thing to do.”
    “And the right thing for us to do is be grateful for it,” he replied,