Slowly he nodded. “No more can we watch you struggle as an apprentice in the Temple,” he said gently.
Deafness rushed in on Scout—a numb feeling, as if she had gone stiff inside. She closed her eyes and shut out what he was saying. I won’t hear this. I won’t hear this. It’s not fair.
“—Padawan, and send you off Coruscant.”
Scout opened one eye. “Um, sorry, what was that?”
Master Yoda prodded her shoulder—very carefully!—with his stick. “Ears bruised, are they? To be Jai Maruk’s Padawan are you, and come with him on a mission beyond Coruscant.”
She gaped.
Master Yoda snickered. “Look like a fish, do you, Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy. Little pop-mouth, gulp, gulp, gulp!”
She looked wildly at Jai Maruk, the gaunt, fierce Jedi Master who had come back from his last mission with a lightsaber burn on his cheek. The burn had healed, but he still had a livid white scar running from his jaw to his ear to show for his encounter with the infamous Asajj Ventress. “You’re making me your Padawan?” She turned back to Yoda. “You’re not going to send me to the Agricultural Corps?”
He shook his old green head. “A reward for your fighting technique, it is not. Too few Jedi have I already. But even had I a crop of thousands, small one, I would not let you go without a fight. Spirit and determination you have. Between the stars, so much darkness there is. Why would I throw away one who burns so bright?”
Scout stared. All her life, it seemed, she had been trying not to let Master Yoda down. Clearly they all expected her to bubble with joy, but instead her eyes grew hot and filled with tears.
“What’s wrong?” Jai Maruk said. He turned to Yoda, mystified. “Why isn’t she happy?”
“She will be,” Master Yoda said. “A band around her heart has there been, years on years. And now she feels it loose, and the blood running back into her heart: stings it does!”
“Yes!” Scout cried between sniffles. “Yes, exactly!…How did you know?”
Yoda scrambled up onto the bed and sat beside her, letting his little legs dangle in space. His ears perked. “Secret, shall I tell you?” He leaned in close, so she could feel his whiskers rasping against her face. “Grand Master of Jedi Order am I!” he said loudly right in her ear. “Won this job in a raffle I did, think you?” He snuffed and waved his stubby fingers in the air. “How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?” he said mincingly, followed by another snort. “Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.”
Scout laughed, and now, finally, the happiness started to hum in her, and she was fine and sharp and humming, her spirit switched on and glowing like a lightsaber blade. That sharp, and singing inside.
The holomap room in the Jedi Temple was a large domed chamber given over to celestial navigation. Here hologrammic projectors created three-dimensional star maps for students to walk through. These could be set to almost any scale, so a student might examine, say, one solar system in great detail, with each planet and satellite displayed in increasing resolution, showing every mountain and sea. Or the entire galaxy might be compressed into the space of the room, so nebulae of a thousand blazing suns were only pinpricks in the deep reaches of black space.
Whie had always liked the Star Room. No place in the Temple was more magical. When he was upset, or frustrated, or just needed time to himself, he would come here to walk among the stars. This afternoon had been trying. He had walked Scout to the infirmary and stayed to hear Master Caudle say the thumb she had sprained was not a serious injury. Then he had returned to accept polite congratulations from Master Xan and his fellow students for his performance in the tournament. He had done these things gracefully and well, because that was the standard to which he held himself; but it hadn’t been easy, and he had slipped away as soon as he felt he could gracefully do so.
For a while he inspected his lightsaber, making sure it hadn’t been damaged in the sparring, and carefully taking out a blemish on the handle where a stray blow had left a char line. Then he had tried to force himself to do some studying, sifting through the news dispatches to try to form an accurate picture of the war since the Honoghr disaster. The older apprentices talked about it all the time, and some of their instructors were very direct about using Clone War scenarios for their training. Last week Master Tycho, who was teaching military strategy this term, had demanded a rigorous evaluation of what had gone wrong on Honoghr, along with a set of recommendations from every student about what could have been done to prevent the debacle.
Whie had done well on the assignment—he always did well; that, too, was a standard to which he held himself—but in his heart, he wasn’t sure that implementing his suggestions would have saved the day. He had the uneasy feeling that the reality was both more complicated and more simple than even Master Tycho wanted to believe. More complicated, because the lesson of the catastrophe was that no plan, however beautiful, long survives the harsh chaos of war.
More simple because Whie was coming to believe that situations, like people, could give in to the dark side: and once the dark side had one in its grip, it never, ever let one go.
After an hour of inefficient studying he had given up and come here, to the Star Room. The last person to use the room had been studying the Battle of Brentaal—with key terrain color-coded by which side currently controlled them, watery blue for the Republic, and gleaming machine silver for area the Trade Federation’s battle droids had held at the decisive moment of the conflict.
Whie deleted Brentaal and set the chamber’s projectors to show the whole galaxy, running at a million years per second. Through these deeps of history he paced, watching stars form and burn and go out, feeling the wheel and swing of the whole spinning galaxy around him. From this view, none of it mattered—not his dream last night, not the war today, not the whole long watch of the Jedi Order. Indeed, the rise and fall of sentient life passed in an eyeblink, a barely perceptible ripple in the grand pavane: comets and constellations dancing in the dark; the Force the music and the dancing, too.
The door of the Star Room cracked open, and a voice disturbed the great impersonal whirl of time. “Whie?”
“Master Leem.” So much for his private time. Even so, Whie smiled. Master Leem was fond of him, and he of her. She was older and wiser than his fellow apprentices, of course; she was the only one he dared complain to about the difficulties that came with being enormously talented. The responsibility. The pressure.
“I thought I might find you here.” In the darkness she, too, was swimming in stars. The constellation of Eryon, which on Coruscant was called the Burning Snake, spun slowly across her shoulders and drifted away. “I hope you don’t feel bad about that last match. You were perfectly right to stop.”
He shrugged. “Was I? But maybe that’s the difference between the dark side and us. So long as they allow themselves to do things we will not, they will always have an advantage.”
He faltered at the end of the sentence, struck by an overwhelming sense of recognition. He had been here before. Said this before…
Ah—last spring he had dreamed this moment. Did that mean that even now, the self from last spring was trapped inside his head somewhere, watching the conversation unfold? Whie felt cautiously inside himself, but it was like putting his hand down a snake hole—a panicking dreaming Whie, locked up in his skull like a boy being buried alive, was the last thing he wanted to find.
“Ah, but the dark side eats its young.” He listened as Maks Leem said, word for word, all the things he had already heard her say. “After all, if you and Scout were to fight again right now, who would be better able?”
“Oh, that doesn’t signify,” Whie said. To himself, his voice sounded perfectly calm and reasonable, but it felt mechanical, as if he were producing the lines of a play. It was almost as if his current attention was mingling with his dreaming self, leaving him nothing but a spectator of the present, unable to change what was about to happen. “What If is a game you
can always win. In the real encounter, the one that mattered, she wanted it more, and she won.”
“Perhaps,” Master Leem said. “But I’m just as glad not to be patching up your thumb. Speaking of which—”
“Master Yoda wants to see us in the infirmary.”
Master Leem blinked all three eyes. “How did you know?”
“I dreamed this moment last year. Just recognized it now. I wondered for months who we would be talking about; who it was that would have bested me. Now I know.”
And that was two dreams, now, in which Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy had figured. A fragment of last night’s dream came back to him—Scout staring at him, blood running like tear tracks down her face. Eyes bright with longing.
He forced his mind away. The dark side lay down that path; he could feel it there, waiting for him like a beast in the jungle.
Maks Leem’s three brows furrowed, and her long, thin jaw began its customary chewing motion. “We should go, Whie. I don’t want to keep Master Yoda waiting.”
“End program,” Whie said, following her. At his words the whole galaxy of stars like birthday candles flickered and went out.
Footsteps hurried across the infirmary, and a moment later Master Leem joined Jai Maruk beside Scout’s bed. “This is fun,” Scout said giddily. “Like being a languishing princess and having my courtiers come stand attendance around my bed.” Whie appeared a moment later, standing at Master Leem’s side. He was Leem’s Padawan, of course—just as Scout was Master Maruk’s. The thought made her absurdly happy. Truthfully, she hardly knew Master Maruk, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was going to be a real Jedi after all. Now all I have to do is go on missions, battle against terrible odds, and carve my way through the armies of the Trade Federation! Nothing to it!
Scout found herself grinning so hard her face ached. She laughed.
Master Leem looked dubiously at the bandaged girl lying on the infirmary cot. She turned to Jai Maruk. “Is she drugged?” she murmured to the Master.
“No, ma’am!” Scout chirped. “I’m just a little beam of sunshine.”
Master Leem’s shaggy eyebrows climbed slowly toward her hairline.
“Glad you are here, am I,” Yoda said. He shifted around until he was sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the bed. “News for you I have, Tallisibeth and Whie. Master Leem and Master Maruk, going on a mission for the Temple, they are. As their Padawans, you will go with them.”
“Already?” Scout said, shocked.
“They made you a Padawan?” Whie said, no less shocked.
“Where are we—” Scout checked herself, and glared at Whie. “What did you mean by that?”
“I mean, congratulations!” Whie said smoothly.
Jai Maruk’s mouth quirked in a little smile. “Your boy is agile,” he murmured to Master Leem.
Yoda snuffed and waved all bickering aside with his stubby old hand. “This may you tell your friends, when they see you making ready for the journey. What you may not say, is that Master Yoda with you also will be coming.”
“You wouldn’t be leaving the capital unless it was for something extremely important,” Scout said.
“Something to do with the war,” Whie added.
Yoda’s ears drooped. “True it is, what you say. Better things than fighting, should a Jedi Master be doing! Seeking wisdom. Finding balance. But these are the days given to us.”
“Where are we going?” Whie asked. It seemed to Scout there was something strange in his voice—as if he knew the answer already, and was hiding his fear of it.
Yoda shook his head. “Tell you that, I will not yet. But a problem I have for you. Yoda must leave Coruscant—but in secret. No one must know.”
In the silence that followed, a little medical droid rolled out from Master Caudle’s dispensary and approached Scout’s bed, bearing a tray with a pot of the healer’s cut and burn ointment.
“It can’t be done,” Master Leem said. “The Senate and the Chancellor’s office expect to hear from you every day.”
“Make a feint,” Whie said. The Jedi Masters turned to look at him. “Tell everyone you are leaving. Make a show of it, Master. Show pictures of you getting into a Jedi starfighter.”
“—But the pictures are a deception,” Jai Maruk said, picking up the boy’s thought. “While the world watches you go on a very public mission, in reality you will slip onto a different ship with us. A clever idea, boy.”
“But…” Scout waited for someone else to say the obvious. The little medical droid pulled up to a stop at her bedside and handed over a pot of Master Caudle’s balm.
Master Yoda’s green moon face tilted toward her. “Yes, Padawan?”
“Well, Master, it’s fine to say you should sneak off in secret, but the truth is, you’re, um, very recognizable.”
Master Leem nodded. “What the girl says is true. Everyone on Coruscant recognizes the face of the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Your addresses to the Senate have been broadcast many times, and pictures of you conferring with the Chancellor are routinely produced by every journalist in the capital.”
“As a child, disguise me, could we not?” Yoda asked. “Perhaps Masters Leem and Maruk, traveling as a family with their three children—Yoda a sweet stripling of five or six?” His old face crinkled into a hideously unconvincing childish smirk. The others involuntarily recoiled.
Scout struggled with the lid of the pot of ointment and then gave up; it was screwed on too tightly for her to manage with her damaged hands. “Open this for me, would you?” she said, handing the jar back to the medical droid. Its gears and servos whined as it extended its metal claws and popped the lid smartly off the jar. The smell of beeswax and burned oranges stole into the room. “I can’t imagine how we could smuggle you off the planet. Unless…” Her eyes flicked over to Yoda. An idea bloomed in her eyes, and she choked back a snort of laughter.
“Unless what?” Jai Maruk, her new Master, said impatiently.
Scout choked back another laugh and shook her head. “No. Nothing. It’s a terrible idea.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Master Maruk said, his voice gone alarmingly soft.
Scout looked pleadingly at him, then at Master Yoda. “Do I have to say?”
The ancient green-faced humpbacked gnome was staring at her with narrow eyes. “Oh, yes.”
It was raining again on Vjun, harder than usual. A wind had come up, shaking the blood-and-ivory rosebushes in the gardens of Château Malreaux. Ugly weather. Count Dooku watched the acid raindrops hurl themselves against his study windows, like the Republic troops who every day flung themselves against his battle droids and computer-controlled combat installations across the length and breadth of the galaxy. Each little splotch leaving the imprint of its death on the glass, then dissolving into a featureless wet spill and trickle.
The half-mad old woman Dooku had found haunting the château when he moved in claimed to be able to read the future in the fall of broken plates, the spill patterns of drinks carelessly overturned. An amusing mania. He wondered what she would see in the pattern of raindrops. Something ominous, no doubt. Beware: one you love is plotting your betrayal! or You will soon hear from an unwelcome guest. Some such claptrap.
Outside, the wind picked up another notch, shrieking and groaning among the eleven chimneys, as if to announce the arrival of a hideous guest.
Dooku’s comm console chimed. He glanced over, expecting the daily report from General Grievous, or perhaps a message from Asajj Ventress. He reached over to open the channel, recognized the digital signature of the incoming transmission, jabbed the channel open, and snapped to his feet. “You called, my Master?”
The hologrammic projector on his desk sprang to life, and the wavering form of Darth Sidious regarded him. As always the picture was oozy and unclear, as if light itself were uneasy in the presence of the Lord of the Sith. Dark robes, purple shadows—a patch of skin, pale and mottled under his hooded cloak like a fungus
growing under a rotten log. From under heavy lids the Master’s eyes, snake-cold and serpent-wise, regarded him.
“What would you have from me, Master?”
“From you? Everything, of course.” Darth Sidious sounded amused. “There was a time when I wasn’t sure if you would be able to overcome that…independent streak of yours. After all, you were born to one of the wealthiest families in the galaxy, with gifts and abilities far, far greater than any amount of wealth could bestow. Your understanding is deep; your will, adamant. Is it any wonder you should be proud? Why, how could it be otherwise?”
Dooku said, “I have always served you well and faithfully, my Master.”
“You have. But you must admit, your spirit was not made for fidelity. After all, a man who will not bow to the Jedi Council, or even Master Yoda…I wondered if perhaps loyalty was too mean, too confining a thing to ask from so great a being as yourself.”
Dooku tried to smile. “The war progresses well. Our plans are on schedule. I have dealt out your deaths, your schemes, your betrayals. I have paid for your war with my time, my riches, my friends, and my honor.”
“Holding nothing back?” Sidious asked lightly.
“Nothing. I swear it.”
“Excellent,” Darth Sidious said. “Yoda came to the Chancellor’s office this morning. He is going on a very special mission. Top secret.” He laughed, a harsh sound like the bark of a crow. The wind rose again, shrieking around the mansion like a creature in torment. “When he arrives, Dooku…see that you treat him as he deserves.”
Darth Sidious laughed. Dooku wanted to laugh along, but couldn’t quite manage it before his Master cut the connection and disappeared.
Dooku paced in his office. With the end of Sidious’s call, the storm had slackened, and the shrieking wind outside now only sobbed quietly under the gables of Château Malreaux.
He paused by his desk and examined the small red button he’d had installed the day after he first heard Yoda was intending to come to Vjun. It held a very considerable importance for such a small button. A last card to play.