Bloodlines

  “But we could get analysis from the Security and Intelligence Council.”

  “I like to have an independent view, as well. You can never have too much information.” Jacen gave Ben a playful nudge. It helped him bury the shock that kept resurfacing after seeing his grandfather commit an atrocity. “Talking of which, you haven’t given me your threat analysis.”

  Ben’s eyes widened: he wanted to please. “Of what, Jacen?”

  “I’m waiting to hear your impressions of the locations you visited.”

  “I didn’t get much from the bomb site—not that the CSF would let me get too close—but the Corellian Sanctuary was … well, scary.”

  “Why?”

  “I talked to some Corellians cleaning up the place. They really seem to hate Coruscant. I don’t get it.”

  “Coruscant has had rifts with Corellia before.”

  “But they hate us and they live here.”

  “It’s a cosmopolitan planet. Lots of worlds we might end up fighting have communities here.”

  “But Jacen, if they’re talking about fighting us here—”

  “Are they?”

  “Well, a guy a little older than me. Probably just … bravado.”

  Ben’s sudden lurch into sober manhood, unsteady as it was, touched Jacen. “It’s always interesting to note what sparks wars. It’s often something relatively small, but for some reason it just tips the situation into chaos.”

  “That’s the real enemy, isn’t it?” said Ben. “Chaos.”

  Jacen almost shivered. It was another perceptive wise-beyond-age comment of the kind Ben was increasingly prone to. It might also have been the clarity of someone too young to have his thinking muddied and corrupted by convention.

  It was also almost a Sith sentiment. Ben would make a good apprentice, and for all the right reasons. His sense of duty was starting to become tangible.

  “I reckon so,” Jacen said. “The galaxy works best when things are certain.”

  Jacen kept an eye on the movement of citizens crossing the plaza. He knew Lumiya wouldn’t be so crass as to turn up in her exotic triangular headdress and trailing a light-whip. He could feel her coming, and it was almost a game to spot her by eyesight alone.

  He hadn’t warned her that he’d have Ben with him. He wanted to see how she reacted to Ben, and also how Ben reacted to her. Ben still couldn’t recall what had happened out at Bimmiel, although he’d stopped asking now.

  About a hundred meters away, Jacen caught sight of a middle-aged woman in a neat red business suit—plain tunic and pants—that was so dark it verged on black. She had a matching scarf wrapped around her head that covered her entire face; her eyes were obscured by a gauzy inset of some translucent silk. It was a practical fashion common on arid, dusty worlds and it seemed to be catching on in the capital, too. He knew it was Lumiya. He magnified his presence in the Force to get her attention, and she changed direction slightly as if she had spotted him like anyone else might.

  The closer she came, the stronger the sense he had of a Sith making a conscious effort to conceal her presence in the Force, and almost succeeding.

  “Is that her?” Ben asked.

  Lumiya was close enough now for it to be obvious that she had seen Jacen and was walking straight toward him. She must also have seen Ben, but she didn’t react at any level. She stopped right in front of Jacen, holding a black folio case in front of her with both hands almost like a shield. She had a soft, shapeless black bag over one shoulder: he suspected he knew what was in it.

  “Master Solo,” she said.

  Nice touch. And even her voice was different. “I’m not a Master, but thank you, Shira.” He turned deliberately to Ben. “This is my apprentice, Ben Skywalker. In an unofficial sense, of course.”

  “I’m sure I’ve seen you before,” said Ben. He sounded genuinely baffled, but there was no hint in his emotions that he recognized her as Brisha, the woman he had taken a dislike to at Bimmiel. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  “You might have seen me around the university,” said Lumiya.

  “I’m only thirteen,” said Ben.

  “Really? Oh, perhaps not, then.” She proffered her folio to Jacen, suddenly a very convincing academic. “I’ve assessed the current military capacities of Corellia and worlds most likely to support it. Would you like me to go through the reports with you?”

  Good actress. Lumiya’s skill at creating illusions extended into the physical world, as well.

  “I thought we might go to the Jedi Temple,” said Jacen. Temptation and threat in one package, for a Sith. “There are quiet areas where we can talk. Ben, do you want to come, too?”

  Jacen expected him to insist on coming; he was desperately anxious to learn, even if that meant sitting through meetings that even adults found boring. But Ben dropped his chin slightly as if about to admit something.

  “Is it okay if I visit Fleet Ops? Admiral Niathal said I could.”

  Jacen hadn’t expected that. “Of course.”

  Ben took his leave of them with a grave bow of the head and walked off across the plaza, every centimeter the young man.

  “Luke’s son is growing up fast,” said Lumiya, lifting her veil clear of her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, he doesn’t recognize you.”

  “Why have you brought me here?”

  “I wanted to discuss what we began to explore back in your home.”

  “You’ve thought about it a great deal. I felt that.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed.” Jacen got up and beckoned her to follow. He didn’t like being a stationary target: there was little—if anything—that could present a serious threat to him now, but old habits died hard. “I’ve thought of little else.”

  “Have you decided to let me help you achieve your destiny?”

  “Yes.”

  She searched his face, turning her head a little as she walked. He could only see her eyes—vivid, green, somehow permanently angry—but he felt her try quite deliberately to touch his mind.

  “I’m at your disposal,” she said quietly.

  “You’ve never been in the Jedi Temple, have you?”

  “No. It’ll be interesting.”

  “You can suppress your dark energy, I hope.”

  “Is that what you’re testing, Jacen?”

  “I need to know how safe it is to have you near me,” he said. “There’s no better way to see if you’ll be detected than to test if you can pass through the Jedi Temple unnoticed.”

  He thought she smiled. There was some movement of the fine, oddly unlined skin around her eyes, and it unsettled him. “I managed to infiltrate the Rebellion …”

  “You weren’t Sith then.”

  “I’ve hidden for decades.” She replaced the veil. “I can hide indefinitely—anywhere.”

  This was arcane mysticism on a scale that only a handful of people in the galaxy had ever needed to consider. And yet Jacen found himself hailing an air taxi and getting into it with a Sith Master, as mundane and everyday an act as he could imagine. He savored the incongruity of it. They didn’t speak at all on the way to the Temple.

  For a moment, Jacen almost saw the funny side of it. Taxi pilots being what they were, he could almost imagine this one—a Weequay—telling his other passengers, “Yeah, I had one of them Siths in my taxi once.”

  But the pilot would never know.

  What if she’s using me? Who’ll teach me the Sith way if I have to—

  Jacen caught himself thinking that he might have to remove her if she proved to be bent on vengeance against the Jedi or one Jedi in particular. He knew exactly what he meant by remove, and he was once again surprised by the ease with which he took one small step further toward doing things he had been raised to regard as evil.

  “Set us down here, please, pilot.”

  Lumiya walked beside him up the promenade leading to the Temple, and it felt as if she had cloaked herself completely. He could sense her unease, but any hint of darkness had bee
n reduced to no more than the simmering passions found in any ordinary untrained human being. She passed through the huge doors of the imposing entrance and reacted just as any ordinary person with no Force sensitivity would: she stopped in her tracks and stared. If she hadn’t been wearing a full veil across her face, Jacen thought she might well have been gaping, too.

  “It’s quite an exercise in material magnificence, isn’t it?” he said.

  “A statement of power,” Lumiya responded, wonderfully ambiguous.

  Let’s see bow much temptation you can stand.

  He led her through the few areas where non-Jedi were permitted, and nobody stopped him: he was Jacen Solo, and no one would challenge his right to invite a mundane guest. That much took no Force techniques to achieve, because a confident air of purpose often opened more doors than an ID pass.

  He took her into the Room of a Thousand Fountains. If anything would force her to show her true intentions—even a glimmer of a drive for revenge—it was proximity to a place of meditation, and he would spot it.

  There was one more test beyond that, but he had to work toward it a little more carefully. And that was to put Lumiya within striking distance of Luke Skywalker.

  There was nothing like seeing an old love who was also an old enemy to unlock someone’s true emotions.

  They walked in the vast greenhouse of exotic plants that had been collected from across the galaxy. Lumiya still exuded curiosity and a little surprise. There were only a few Jedi meditating there, but Jacen found a convenient bench between two assari trees whose branches swayed gently despite the absence of any wind. Water rushed over a huge granite boulder and tumbled into a stream that disappeared under a cover of bhansgrek bushes.

  “I’d prefer you to stay on Coruscant,” said Jacen.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I’ll arrange a safe house for you.” This wasn’t the place to carry on a conversation in any detail. “And I’ll want to discuss what my further instruction might consist of.”

  “Speed will be important,” Lumiya said.

  Oh, I know how fast events are moving. “Why?”

  “I feel what you can feel—that we’re on the brink of another war, and there are some wars from which people might never recover.”

  “I don’t think there’s ever been a time in our recorded history when there wasn’t a war going on somewhere.”

  “All the more reason for changing the future, then.”

  Jacen took her around as much of the rest of the Temple as he could access with a visitor, but no Jedi reacted to her. She didn’t betray a single emotion that indicated any agenda beyond what she claimed she had: to help him fulfill his destiny as the supreme Sith Lord.

  He checked his chrono. A wild idea occurred to him, and he was getting used to listening to those as suggestions from the Force. The scheduled high council meeting would be ending soon.

  All his study in a hundred different ways of harnessing the Force had come to a single point of fruition now. The only gaps in his knowledge of the Force were those of the Sith.

  Sith techniques are just another weapon.

  And they weren’t inherently good or evil: they just existed, like a blaster, and you could just as easily use a blaster to murder as to defend. It all depended on who held it, and who stood within its range.

  That much he knew.

  “All right. How do I change the future for the better?”

  “The next few weeks will determine what more you need to learn,” said Lumiya.

  “Did you arrange for that bombing to happen?”

  Lumiya laughed, one of those little indignant snorts of disbelief.

  “I don’t need to create chaos, Jacen,” she said quietly. “People are only too willing to do it for themselves. No, I had nothing to do with that.”

  He checked his chrono again. Yes, he had to do it now. It was time for her final test of sincerity.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  He led her through the corridors to the main lobby through which the passages to the high council chamber passed. Lumiya should have been able to detect Luke’s presence, but it was essential that Luke not detect hers. Jacen concentrated on forming a Force illusion around her, not to make her appear as anyone else but to simply erase her presence as a Sith, in case her own subterfuge wasn’t powerful enough to deceive Luke.

  You’re insane, he told himself. What if you’re wrong? What if Luke can sense her? Who’s going to help you attain full Sith knowledge if Lumiya is killed or imprisoned?

  Jacen had thought of this test of Lumiya’s intentions and so it was meant to be. He had to get used to that. He had to trust his reactions not as impulses to be doubted, but as decisions.

  Steady. Trust yourself.

  Jacen cloaked Lumiya in a Force illusion and projected his own unconcerned calm as Luke approached. It was an exhausting maneuver, nothing beyond him when dealing with ordinary people, but something that took all his strength when deceiving a Jedi Master of Luke’s stature.

  Luke strode toward them and glanced back over his shoulder a couple of times as if someone were following him. He acknowledged Jacen stiffly and paid Lumiya no more than polite attention, as if his mind was more on what was down the corridor.

  Jacen strained to hold the Force illusion steady, like a ball of heat within his chest that he had to balance to keep it from touching his rib cage. That was exactly how it felt. And Lumiya … Lumiya, somehow nestled in miniature within that ball of heat, felt not vengeful or trying to disguise her intentions, but genuinely worried about being discovered before her work was complete.

  Luke seemed baffled.

  Suddenly Jacen realized that it wasn’t anything in the office at the end of the corridor that was distracting Luke: he could sense something amiss and wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

  Luke was sensing Lumiya, but very faintly. Jacen knew it.

  “Good morning, Uncle.”

  “Hello, Jacen.” Luke’s gaze rested briefly on Lumiya, but he concentrated on Jacen. “Morning, ma’am. Where’s Ben?”

  “Admiral Niathal is showing him around the Fleet Ops center.” Jacen knew Luke was in a hurry to see Omas, the way he always was after a council meeting. “Have you time for a caf?”

  Luke shook his head, as Jacen expected. “Sorry. Perhaps later.” He was making an effort to disguise his uneasiness with Jacen in front of a stranger. He nodded politely at Lumiya, and then glanced briefly behind him again. “Ma’am.”

  They watched him go. Eventually Lumiya let out a breath.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Jacen kept the Force cover in place. “I think I did.”

  “My issues with Luke Skywalker are long over, Jacen.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. If I wanted to get to him, I wouldn’t need you as a route. Please understand what’s at stake here. This is beyond our own little personal grievances.” She picked up her folio case. “I should go now.”

  He felt a surge of real anger in her. He believed her. Events were unfolding as they were because it was his destiny. He grew more accepting of it by the hour.

  “I’ll see you out,” he said.

  They walked back through the main entrance and paused halfway down the promenade to look back at the Temple. “So how does it feel to have walked in your enemy’s camp?”

  “I don’t see Jedi as the enemy now,” said Lumiya. “That’s far too simplistic.”

  “What, then?”

  “They’re people with only half the picture who believe they have all the facts. It makes their decisions flawed.”

  “It’s hard to want to see the rest of that picture.”

  “You already do.”

  He watched Lumiya walk away toward the taxi pad until he could no longer see her, only sense her. He was so engrossed in exploring the ripples she left in the Force and searching them for signs that he was startled by what touched his mind then, almost as if someone h
ad tapped him on the shoulder.

  He felt his mother. She was in trouble.

  His future as a Sith Lord was very easy to lay aside for a moment while he reached out to find her.

  CORELLIAN QUARTER, GALACTIC CITY, CORUSCANT.

  I should have told Jacen where I was going.

  Ben hadn’t exactly lied to Jacen: he really had visited the Fleet Command Center, and Admiral Niathal really had showed him around the ops rooms. It just hadn’t taken as long as he had expected. And now he was still desperately curious about the Corellians who lived on Coruscant and who were now quite possibly what Niathal called the enemy within.

  Ben was having trouble working out what was truly Coruscanti on a world of a thousand species. But they were at war with other humans. What was them? What was us? How could Coruscant be both a separate world and the embodiment of the galaxy, all of it?

  Maybe that was the problem.

  Ben found himself in one of the Corellian neighborhoods near the heart of Galactic City, wandering along the catwalks among shops and homes and businesses. He was looking for an engineering workshop called Saiy’s, owned by Barit’s family. This looked like any other neighborhood: the names on the stores didn’t look any different from those on the rest of Coruscant. The people looked like him. The more he saw of nonhuman species, the more Ben was intrigued by the ease with which beings could fight among themselves. It was as if the small differences mattered more than the really big ones—like you had to recognize something before you could hate it properly.

  No wonder Jacen wanted to bring a bit of order to the galaxy.

  Jedi weren’t exactly invisible, but there was something about wearing a brown robe that gave you a certain neutrality, as Jacen called it. Ben ambled along the catwalks, taking in the detail; and although people glanced at him with vague curiosity, nobody bothered him.

  Maybe they’re seeing a kid and not a Jedi.

  Ben was passing in front of a small grocery store when he heard the distinctive thrum of a large vessel behind him. He looked back to see a Coruscant Security Force assault ship, the kind the police used for patrols, making slow progress down the skylane with its side hatches open. Maybe the officers were looking for someone. But then he heard a booming voice from the vessel’s public address system.