Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 3 by Jude Watson

except—I’m alive.” He chuckled again, but this time ruefully. “Obi-Wan spoke too soon. I doubt I have help
to give you. But if you’ve come to be Erased, I can put you in touch with the right channels. I can find you a place to stay for a bit—not too long, because the Erased have to keep
moving. Some of us keep track of one another, some of us disappear. There are no judgments down here. Whatever you do to survive, you do.”
    Ferus glanced over at the long metal bar. The group that had followed the Whiphid outside were lined up against it, their backs to the bar, their eyes on him. The Whiphid stood behind the bar,
moving a dirty rag back and forth and watching, too.
    “Now, don’t worry about them. They’re just looking out for me. It’s best to intimidate any visitors. Creatures come down here looking for thrills, and we send ’em
back to where they came from. A little worse for wear, but alive. Ha! Ha! If I say you’re all right, you’ll be welcome enough.”
    “Who are they?” Trever asked curiously.
    “A mixed lot, I’d say,” Dexter answered. “Any-one the Empire was hounding. Heroes and villains. Some journalists, some former Republic army officers. Maybe some criminals
mixed in.”
    Ferus gave a sidelong glance at the slythmonger. “I noticed that.”
    Dexter slapped both knees with four hands. “Hah! You’re speaking of Keets.”
    “Yeah, the one who couldn’t wait to run us through with a vibroshiv,” Trever said.
    “Ah, his growl is worse than his chomp,” Dex said. “And he wasn’t a criminal in the old days. He was a journalist, writing for the
Coruscant Holo Net.
One of the
first to ask why Palpatine was grabbing all the power even while he was smiling at us, telling us he was protecting us.”
    “Not Keets Freely?” Ferus asked, astonished. He had read Freely’s commentaries during the Clone Wars.
    “The very same. And the Bothan fellow with the tangled mane—that’s Oryon, one of the best spies the Republic ever had. The human female with the spiked hair-horns? Rhya Taloon,
the Senator from Agridorn. Can’t go back to her homeworld—she’s got a death mark on her head. So she escaped. See that Svivreni? He was a Senate aide. And the tall humanoid? An
officer in the Army of the Republic. Not a clone. Don’t ask about the brothers—the ones standing next to each other who look alike? They haven’t told us who they are.”
    Ferus looked around the room again, this time in surprise. “Here it is,” he said, excitement underneath his words. “Right here, in this room. Seeds for the rebellion. Here is
where it will begin, in places like this.”
    Dexter laughed. “We’re a long way from rebellion, young Olin. We’re just trying to survive. Coruscant used to be a decent place to live, if you didn’t mind a billion
beings breathing your air. Things have changed. There are spies around, of course. But even ordinary Coruscanti just trying to get by are having a real hard time. Bribes and
intimidation—that’s a way of life now.”
    “We were just at the Jedi Temple,” Ferus said. “We’ve seen the damage there.”
    “They say there are Jedi imprisoned there.”
    “There aren’t.”
    “Didn’t think there would be. That’s why I warned the other one.”
    Ferus’s alertness sharpened. “What other one?”
    “She didn’t give me her name.”
    “A Jedi—a human woman, with a small facial marking on her forehead—”
    “That’s the one. She heard I’d been a friend to the Jedi and sought me out. That was before I Erased myself. I couldn’t give her much—I was surprised that any Jedi
was alive at all. But I did tell her not to go to the Temple. She went down below instead, into the deepest sublevels.”
    “Do you know where, exactly?” Ferus asked.
    “No idea, my friend. But recently I got a message. If I ever need her, she said, I should look for Solace.”
    “Solace?”
    “A word I’ve been hearing more and more