Apparently a true Council was appointed, which could vote the next leader. But the current leader, old and frail as she appears, does not want to be replaced, so she sets up a contest in the gladiator arena where the one most favored to be elected will sponsor a combatant who will attack her. So Ori's mother is disgraced, and is stripped of her titles and lands, and becomes a slave. Ori's mother is shrewd enough to realize what is occurring, and sends Ori, a Sith Saber, on the run before she can be captured.

I liked Ori as a character. She was Sith, but seemed very human, too. She was interested in things, including politics and human behavior. She didn't interact with any Keshiri (in fact, I don't remember a single Keshiri character in the story), but she had many thoughts about them.

But her best interactions were with the title-less man named Jelph. Ori visits him to get some of the best flowers for the gladiatorial celebration. Apparently it was because of the fertilizer he dug up in the jungle a ways from here. So when her family is disgraced, she takes refuge with Jelph, whether he likes it or not. And he does kind of like it. In separate scenes, before and after her mother's disgrace, Ori admired his muscles, and he definitely had some interest in her.

As he knew, he should have never left her alone, because that was when she got into trouble. Old Saber bullies she had known showed up and killed her uvak, and took her lightsaber -neither was permitted to people without status in Sith society. In her anger, she destroys Jelph's farmstead, and discovers his deep-buried secret -or at least part of it.

It turns out that Jelph was not born among the Sith society on Kesh, as everybody assumes. He crashed on Kesh just like the Sith did, and he still has his starship, buried in manure. He was actually a Jedi, who was searching the galaxy for remnants of the Sith after The Sith War.

The book ends on a cliff-hanger, as Ori simply sees a way back into high standing with the Sith Council, and Jelph might now be on the run -certainly he will be hunted.