Star Wars:
The Penitent

a round robin by
Jedi Skysong, FernWithy/JediGaladriel, Vee, and Belle Bayard
with Ariana Lang, JediCallie, Kithera, and Rhui Chatar

PART TWO: CONFESSION

Chapter Six: Appearances

Three weeks later.

Dawn.

Amidala stood in the grey morning light, feeling lost inside the encompassing velvet gown, so blue it was almost black. She had almost hoped this one wouldn't be found, this judge's robe that she had always hated to wear. On her forehead, the Jewel of Zenda rested heavily between her eyes, the chain tugging at the braids that held it in her hair. Tirzé had been helping her early on, but Leia had slipped in quietly and taken over with no explanations. She'd pulled the braids tight -- Tirzé always left them a bit too loose to hold the Jewel all day -- and painted Amidala's face. They hadn't spoken, though Amidala had been glad to have her there, glad that she wanted to be there.

"It's finally here, then," she'd said as she finished. "He's going to legally acknowledge what they all suspect."

"Yes."

She'd closed her eyes, and Amidala had wrapped her in an embrace. It had taken a minute for her to think to return it, but eventually, she had. Then she'd disappeared to her rooms, to re-create her own appearance, and left Amidala alone.

Maybe for the last time in many months.

She could already hear them preparing Tashin outside. She'd asked Han to personally oversee the guards; Isabel had made enough offhand comments about "meanies" for Amidala to understand that not all the rebels were behaving honorably, or even attempting to show restraint. She had done her best to keep them seperate from Ani; her stomach turned in nauseous fear at the thought of what would happen to him later today. He was so proud, so...

She couldn't cry. Not now, not after so long without it. She smiled wryly to herself. Not now, of all times, when I have the ritual make-up on.

She glanced into a mirror. She had not worn the full white makeup since she'd retaken the throne, but she was glad of it today. It made her enough of a stranger to herself that she could hide behind her own face.

Leia was very careful with her hair. She avoided anything with that triagular drape they'd satirized, and anything that resembled a crown. Last night, in frustration, she'd taken a pair of scissors, and held them against the long tresses, just beneath her ears. She didn't know how long she'd sat like that before finally putting the scissors back in the drawer, and braiding her hair simply for the night. This morning, after helping her mother, she'd tried several different styles, each with its own unwanted implications, before deciding to simply neaten the long braid. It still had an unwanted implication -- it made her look like she was trying to look younger and not succeeding -- but it was neither pretentiously regal nor... nor reminiscent of anyone else. She put on a bit of makeup, covering up the dark circles under her eyes and giving some color to her wan cheeks, then gathered herself and went out to the hall. Luke was waiting for her, dressed, thank the Maker, as he always was, in the long brown Jedi robe and tan tunic. Han would be getting ready to escort Tashin.

Luke held out his natural hand to her, and she took it absently, then leaned against him so he would put an arm around her. He did so, and she smiled. "Thanks," she said.

"Anytime."

"Are you ready for this? I mean, really ready?"

"Yes," he said simply.

"Is it that easy for you?"

He smiled. "You saw me after Bespin, Leia. You know it wasn't. But it is now."

"I mean, having other people know."

"I can't control other people's opinions."

"I can't, either. Unfortunately, I'm in politics, Luke. I have to care."

He was starting to say something when she suddenly felt his body grow tense. His head lifted and she looked up at him, then followed his transfixed gaze to the end of the hall.

The black form was a shadow in the bright light of sunrise, standing in front of the high, arched window. The long cloak, the deep, triangular hood hiding any sign of a face, the shiny black boots reflecting the only light that came from him.

Leia's first instinct was to reach for her blaster, but she wasn't wearing it, which was just as well.

Her father came forward, his face appearing nebulously in the shadows of the hood.

"Father... that's... Palpatine wore... "

"It is Sith," Father said quietly. "It is Vader who must testify today, and Vader who must appear before them. I will offer no excuses, and accept no pity."

"Father... you are... ?"

He smiled; Leia could see the corners of his mouth curling up, though his eyes were still lost. "I am Anakin Skywalker, Luke. I'm not leaving again. But I am responsible for Vader. I am accepting that today, and forever."

He swept down the hall toward the throne room, Luke following him nervously. Leia looked after them for a moment. For the first time in nearly a month, the dread left her.

Keep moving, Anakin told himself. He was glad of the deep-hooded cloak, no matter what it represented. They wouldn't see the deep circles under his eyes, or the beads of sweat on his temples. The growing pains had returned viciously last night, and his arms and legs felt like they were caught in red hot pincers. He knew he could go to Amidala for comfort -- she had any number of potions, but the most potent comfort was simply being with her -- but that wouldn't last much longer. Already, the tension was returning. It would only get worse as he grew up. Again.

Speak slowly and precisely. Okay, that would certainly bring Vader to mind for the audience, but Anakin's worry was more concrete: When Threepio had woken him this morning, he'd tried to answer, only to have his voice crack an octave. He hadn't had a lot of trouble the first time; it was a question of not fighting the change, of feeling the range his voice wanted to be in... but today, of all days, when he was nervous, he would have to concentrate. Speak carefully.

Oh, but they were going to get more of Vader than he'd been planning to give them today. It was all surface -- Anakin knew his breaking points quite well, and he wasn't even approaching them -- but it did disturb him, the ease with which he could slip back behind that mask. He'd used the mannerisms for more than half of his life, nearly all his adult life. They were not deeply buried.

The witnesses were kept seperate from the trial until called, and Anakin waited with Luke in the anteroom. Leia had gone inside; she was sitting as Chancellor to advise on matters of Republic law. She seemed calmer than she had been; he was glad to see it.

"Father," Luke said, "are you sure about this approach?"

Anakin shook his head. "I am... unsure of many things. But it seems to me the right" -- he felt his vocal chords straining for the range, and waited for them to stop -- "thing to do. I don't wish for the court members to see me as a child needing pity, or as if I'm an adult trying to wheedle my way into their pity by adopting that image. It is... better for me to appear as they expect."

There was a knock at the door, and he looked up, wondering if it was time to be called yet.

Amidala kept her face as impassive as she could. She looked down at her hands, resting on the arms of throne. To anyone else, they would seem to be still and waxy. To her, feeling every strained muscle, they looked like claws digging for purchase.

Leia sat beside her, face drawn and serious, eyes shadowy. She had her comm-padd out, with a military tribunal law index at the ready, but Amidala was not expecting it to be needed. Tashin's trial was by the book, and she knew the book as well as Leia did.

Tashin himself sat in the defendent's box, surround by guards, including Han Solo. The wall was high, and Amidala couldn't see if Isabel was with him. Various witnesses had been spirited off to different locations in the palace, and she planned to call them. The Ka'alya priest Jelon Laryhi, to her surprise, had offered himself as a witness for the defense. Ani had paled when he'd heard the name, but not offered any explanation, and Amidala was uneasy about what he would have to say. Several Ka'alyan survivors from Zehava had come to speak about the dead, and others who weren't scheduled to testify had lined the aisles and were shooting Tashin hateful looks.

She felt a warm hand on hers, and looked at Leia, who nodded and tried to smile. It was time.

Amidala stood, a comm-padd in her hand. It had been designed on the exterior to resemble a paper scroll, with intricate metallic artwork around the screen. Silly frivolity, but old Naboo tradition. "Kyrys Tashin of Naboo," she intoned. "Stand forward to be judged."

Chapter Seven: Opening Arguments

Tashin stood forward, then knelt before her.

"You are charged with war crimes on the world of La'azum, specifically with the following incidents at Ihivizi: The deliberate attempted starvation of over one thousand Ka'alya worshippers, th restriction of medical supplies to civilians in wartime, and one thousand sixteen counts of wrongful death. Have you a plea to enter?"

"Guilty on all counts, your Majesty."

Amidala sighed. She had expected no less, as Tashin himself had provided her with the charges. She hoped that Ivva, who had volunteered to serve as his defense counsel (in accordance with Naboo law and tradition that made the royal court identical with the judicial system), had persuaded him not to confess to several additional crimes on the list. Ani had read it incredulously when she'd brought it to him, shaking his head in disbelief.

Boss Carn Gari -- an accomplished lawyer in the Gungan exile on H'rieth -- had volunteered for the prosecution, but he knew that he would have little to do. He stepped around Tashin, looked at him sadly, then bowed to Amidala and addressed the court. "This-n human confesses to des-a crimes. Yousa may think it's a noble thing, and it is, it is. 'Tis no one saying it isn't. But yousa mustn't be forgetting what it is he is confessed to." Carn Gari hit a button on a wrist command, and the holoproj in the center of the throne room came to life. Grainy pixels showed the grey sky of La'azum, with streaks of rain across it. The La'azum citizens looked at it longingly... whatever else was on that tape, it also showed the last time their world had seen rain.

The holo shifted, came into closer focus as the cam-droid neared a high mountain. The white stone road which had been built up the rocky face was running with water, and the water had a distinctly reddish tint. The camera tilted down to the water of the Ihivizi river, where the tint became a flood. It wasn't the entire river, but a rivulet that ran from the spring, seeming to send a red stripe down through the water.

The pixels dissolved into the dark interior of a cave, where bodies were piled one on top of another -- men, women, children, all bled white. Amidala could see a child no older than Isabel lying dead in her father's arms. Tashin turned away.

"Boss Carn Gari," she said quietly, "I believe you have made your point."

"Yes, yousa Majesty." He clicked off the holo with some relief. "These things you all see, they was confessed to by this man." He pointed at Tashin. "'Tis your decision, yousa Majesty. Do you follow the law, and give this man the punishment for this crime he committed? Or do you tell all that these lives don't matter much, as long as there's a little conscience after it?" He flicked the holo back on for a moment, a still shot of the bodies, then let it fade out into the silent room. "I'm thinking there is little more for me to say," he said, then looked at Tashin again. "Hisem have already said what matters: 'Guilty. On all the counts.'"

Carn Gari was seated.

Amidala glanced over at Leia, who was grim-faced and uncommunicative, then looked back out at the court. "Very well, Boss Carn Gari." She turned to Tashin. "The defendant may return to his seat."

"Yes, Majesty." Tashin followed the command immediately.

Amidala followed him with her eyes, saw him look down -- at Isabel? -- then over at Ivva Japui, who was sitting with them. Leia had given her the chalcedony necklace that identified her as a representative of Alderaan. It was a strange choice. Leia had commented bitterly that it was a theatrical gesture, using Alderaan's tragedy as a political leveraging point... but she hadn't refused it. Amidala wondered what that meant; her daughter was becoming more of a mystery to her every day.

Ivva rose, her gown gleaming white in the early morning sun. She was clearly nervous, and her voice was thin and shaky at first, but gained strength as she spoke. "Your Majesty, and members of the court," she said, coming forward, "Kyrys Tashin has confessed to the crimes you saw a moment ago. He has confessed to many other crimes as well."

Amidala's eyes widened in surprise. It wasn't usual for the defense to bring more charges into a trial.

Ivva read from a handscroll, her voice becoming smoother as she went. "Kyrys Tashin has confessed not to wrongful death in the one thousand sixteen fatalities at Ihivizi, but to murder. He has confessed to human rights violations on several planets, but chiefly human rights violations on the world of La'azum." She listed several of the minor offenses Tashin had confessed, including the one even the Ka'alyan dismissed as pointless nitpicking -- he'd set a curfew and enforced it. Ivva's voice was strong by the time she finished. "Yes, your Majesty, Kyrys Tashin has confessed to many things that weigh on his conscience, and rightly so. But the questions we must answer here, before he can be judged, are, first, is he legally responsible for the crimes with which he is being charged? and second, is he, in fact, legally guilty of the war crimes he believes he has committed... or did matters simply escape his control?"

Beside Amidala, Leia took in a sharp breath. Amidala glanced down at her, saw that she was uncomfortable with Ivva's tactics. It was fair. Amidala herself was not fond of them. But Tashin had left Ivva with few options for his defense.

Ivva didn't fail to notice their disquiet, and her face twisted momentarily in disappointment. Then she composed herself. "I have no wish to excuse Kyrys Tashin," she said quietly, then added "or anyone else."

Leia raised an eyebrow, but kept her silence.

Ivva continued. "But we cannot afford to spin comfortable lies about what happened in Ihivizi. It would be easy to see the holos and curse Kyrys Tashin and Lord Vader" -- Amidala's heart siezed up; she hadn't expected the name to be brought in so early, though she supposed she should have -- "but little in life is easy. Good and evil may be simple, but those who choose between them rarely are." She looked uneasily at Amidala and Leia, then took a deep breath. "There is little point in delaying the inevitable," she said, then swallowed hard. "The defense calls to the stand Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith."

Anakin could feel their eyes on him when the door opened, crawling across him like skittering insects, some stinging and biting. He glanced at Luke, beside him, and sighed. Luke shook his head imperceptibly. He offered strength and serenity, but Anakin could take little of it.

He entered the throne room.

At the front, he saw Amidala's eyes widen. It went unnoticed by everyone else -- even those few who were looking at her would still see only the cool, sculpted beauty of the Queen of Nabooo -- but to Anakin it screamed out. He hadn't told her about his choice to appear in court as Vader. He hadn't thought she would be surprised by it; she was the one who had taught him that sometimes a person had to present himself in the image that people expected. And he supposed she wasn't surprised, not really. Her eyes relaxed again, and she nodded slightly to him. At her left, Leia sat silently, observing with distant, unfocused eyes.

Luke touched his arm lightly, then slipped into the crowd. Anakin was left alone.

He knelt before his wife.

"Rise, Anakin Skywalker," she said, her voice low and cool, and he obeyed her. "Before this court can accept your testimony in the matter of the war crimes of Kyrys Tashin, there are matters of legal record which must be clarified."

"Yes, your Majesty."

"For the record, state your name."

"Anakin Skywalker."

"Please tell the court your age."

He nodded. "I was born forty-seven years ago."

"Despite appearances... "

"All memories remained intact when I entered this clone two years after death."

"And you accept all legal and moral obligations incurred within this previous life?"

"It is not a previous life, your Majesty. It is a continuous life. And I accept all its obligations."

Amidala nodded. "Very well. Let it be entered into the record that Anakin Skywalker of Naboo is alive, and his legal records are to be considered continuous."

"Thank you, your Majesty." He chanced a glance up at her, and noticed she was actually smiling slightly. He returned it when he realized why -- one of the now continuous legal records was their marriage. He bowed. She took a deep breath, and continued with the more difficult part of the questioning.

"You are aware that legal records show that Anakin Skywalker died twenty-six years ago?"

"I am aware."

"And yet, you mention only two years since your death. Please state -- for the legal record -- your whereabouts for the twenty-four years left unaccounted."

"After being badly scarred in the duel where I was presumed to have died, I lived under the name Darth Vader. Medical and genetic records will confirm this."

It wasn't a surprising revelation, or it shoudn't have been. The Maker knew the gossip had been going on for weeks. But the silence in the courtroom was thick and shocked and poisonous, as Leia passed Amidala the comm-pad with the information on it -- a strange ritual, as neither of them had any doubts, but one which needed to be performed in their roles as Chancellor and Queen.

"And you accept the legal and moral obligations incurred under that name as well?"

"I do."

The silence grew heavier, until it could no longer support its own weight. Someone in the back of the court yelled Killer!, then the crowd came to life.

Monster... Murderer... You killed my... You destroyed my... How could you? How can you?

Anakin bowed his head. He could see his reflection swimming in the tiles of the floor, a pale boy wrapped in shadows.

Had it been up to him, he would have simply waited for the shouts to grow hoarse and fade away, but it was not about him. This was Tashin's trial. The only purpose of coming forward was to establish his authority to speak on Tashin's behalf. The focus needed to return to that.

He glanced to Leia -- he didn't know why; Chancellor she might be, but Amidala was presiding over the trial -- and she stood. She had a strong presence, and the crowd's voices fell away immediately.

"This is neither the time nor the place to pass judgment on Lord Vader," she said firmly. "Judgment will come. But today, he is here as a witness, not a defendant. Those who refuse to respect the integrity of these proceedings will be removed from the room."

She sat down.

Ivva Japui came forward. "Please take the stand, Anakin Skywalker."

Anakin did so.

Jelon Laryhi sat quietly among the Ka'alyan, his eyes fixed on the boy taking the stand. Mother Zemai -- the Sith Master Olashya M'Traet, first apprentice after the Uprising, the Carrier of the Dead -- had seen him in a vision a millennium ago. "And the dead man, blood of my blood, will rise from his pyre," she had written to her son, Karik, first Astaya -- Seer -- of the Ka'alyan, "and he will destroy the Sith with love. It is for this that we wait, my precious one. For in the fire, we shall at last be free." There had been debate over the years -- was she referring to herself by a majestic plural, or did she believe she had enslaved her child and his children and grandchildren by her choice? And why, if she hated the Sith as she seemed to, had she willingly joined them, when all it would have taken to end the Order forever was her own refusal to be trained? But to those questions, Astaya Jelon Laryhi had no answers. Perhaps Skywalker would.

Jelon had watched Vader on La'azum, seen that there was no fighting him. But he had also seen something else in him, even then. His visions were barely clear enough to be called visions most of the time, but looking at the hulking man in the flowing black robes, the world he saw with his heart instead of his eyes had suddenly appeared. He'd seen a halo of fire, and within it, the face hidden behind the mask looked out at him, his eyes two burning suns, and Jelon had heard Mother Zemai's voice -- as clearly as if she were standing beside him -- whispering Son of the suns, and his terror had mingled with hope and exaltation. The prophecy was coming. It wasn't time yet, and he was wise enough -- or afraid enough -- not to say anything, but it was coming fast.

The pretty young Alderaanian girl who was serving as Tashin's defense swore Skywalker in, and asked him to explain what happened on the morning the Ihivizi River ran red.

"It began before that morning," Skywalker said. "After the death of Ragean Laryhi -- "

"The murder of Ragean Laryhi!" a young Ka'alya girl shouted near Jelon. He glared at her. The glare of an Astaya was supposed to be a great punishment, but she merely returned it. Ragean may have been his father, but to the Ka'alyan, he was the first martyr of the war, and no minor matter like a blood tie would overshadow it.

Skywalker paused, looked straight at her until she sat, then went on. He was as cold as Jelon remembered him; yet now, as then, he sensed the heart beneath the cold, and it puzzled and fascinated him. "After the murder of Ragean Laryhi," he said calmly, "the Ka'alyan of La'azum rose up in open Rebellion. It had not been an unexpected move, and Palpatine was ready to move against them. He ordered me to put an end to it. I went to the city of Valshir, and had ten leaders of the movement executed for treason."

Among the Ka'alyan, eyes closed quietly, and Jelon could hear the whispered litany of names. The Ten were held to be spirit guides by the more superstitious. Among the others, they were simply honored in this way, their names whispered in a sing-song chant. A Gungan bailiff moved unobtrusively up the aisle, and looked at them signifcantly: The Chancellor's order would be obeyed -- those behaving inappropriately would be removed. The chanting stopped; the glaring didn't.

"It should have ended there in Valshir. It did not."

Jelon looked down. He could see the contemptuous glares coming from the Ka'alyan. He had begged the remaining zealots to stand down, pleaded with them. For centuries, the Laryhis had watched the Sith, and waited for the end. More importantly, they had, on a few notable occasions, thwarted Sith plans. But they had lost track of the chain of apprentices a century ago. Jelon's father had put the pieces together at last when Palpatine had declared himself, but it was too late. Father had called Jelon to the ancient Tr'Astari'shal -- the Hall of Seeing -- to discuss it. Jelon was the first Laryhi in several generations to be cursed with Mother Zemai's visions (however dimly), and once he knew where to look, he knew immediately that Vader was the apprentice, that the Sith were in command once more.

And he had known that crossing them was death. He knew that because he'd watched his father put to the fire by Palpatine on Coruscant, only two months after the discovery. "He won't be rising from this fire, boy," the Emperor had said. "The prophecies have all come to nothing."

Jelon supposed he was glad for the galaxy's sake that Mother Zemai had been wrong about the dead man being of her own line, but it hadn't eased the pain, or made the lesson any less clear. He loved the Ka'alyan, as frustrating and fanatical as they could be, and he didn't want them to lose their lives needlessly in a hopeless war that was not their own. They despised him for it, but most had enough respect for his post as Astaya that they'd stayed in Valshir to seethe with resentment in the comfort of their own homes.

One woman, however, had not been content with that. Nizy Lummuo hated the Empire like poison, and had lost both her brothers to Vader's execution. She had denounced Jelon as "Korkantu" -- the Coruscantian, a derogatory accusation hurled every now and then at the Laryhi Astayas, reminding them that they were outsiders on La'azum (had they known the truth about Mother Zemai -- any more of the truth than that she was once the Mayor of Coruscant -- they would undoubtedly have banished the family long ago). She had spread fire among the Ka'alyan, exhorting them to remember the martyrs. Then she had led over a thousand to Ihivizi.

Jelon Laryhi had never held out hope for their return.

"... the siege was meant to be brutal," Skywalker was saying. "Assault on the shrine itself was logistically difficult. Further, we wished a surrender. I ordered the food source cut off. This was accomplished by scorching the mountainside. They had planned on this food source, and not supplied themselves properly to live without it. I suggested that hunger would force a quick surrender."

"Did Kyrys Tashin agree with you?"

Skywalker glanced over Tashin, then looked to the defender again. "Tashin was not offered an option."

The Gungan who was serving as prosecutor stood. "This'm is not quite answer to hersa question. When you say this plan to Tashin, howsa he acting?"

Skywalker looked down. "He did not oppose. But it was known how I dealt with those who opposed my decisions. Tashin had a young wife, and a full life to hold on to. And he had no reason to believe that the Ka'alyan would not surrender. I did."

Anakin concentrated on the cold, on the blanket of ice that he was wrapping around himself as he spoke. If he let go of it, he thought he might just start screaming.

How had he stayed sane all those years? Seen those things, touched them, even caused them, and stayed sane?

And yet, he had. As Vader, he had been many terrible things. But he had not been mad. Except, perhaps, in the years between Yavin and Bespin, those dizzying years of ascent through the Empire, and ever-increasing protests from the inner voice he'd always tried to silence. But he had not been mad at Ihivizi. He had been cruel, ruthless, and evil.

He had a strong urge to run out of the courtroom and scrub his hands. He resisted it, not just because of the impropriety, but because his hands were already raw and tender from many such scrubbings. He'd promised Amidala that he would stop.

"Am I understanding you correctly?" Ivva asked. "You had reason to believe that the Ka'alyan would commit mass suicide rather than submit to a surrender?"

"I sensed the mind of their leader. I knew she would never submit."

"An ability Kyrys Tashin did not share."

"Precisely."

"On the morning of the deaths, please tell the court of the behavior of Kyrys Tashin."

Anakin nodded. "When I arrived on planet that morning, Tashin was concerned because the Ka'alyan sentry had not arrived. But he displayed no nervousness, and when we found the bodies, he was genuinely shocked."

"Another feeling that you sensed?"

He considered lying, but thought that lying under oath was probably a poor way to begin a new life. "No. Tashin's is not a mind that has been open to me. But his behavior and expressions were sufficient to express shock. He had clearly not suspected that -- "

"Objection!" Carn Gari said, standing. "He-sa not sensing as a Jedi, then thisem just... speculation."

"Sustained," Amidala said coolly, then looked at Anakin with far-off eyes. "Please restrict your comments to direct knowledge."

"Yes, of course."

"To clarify," Ivva said, "Tashin's demeanor suggested surprise."

"Yes."

Ivva nodded. "Very well. I only have a few more brief questions. First, who ordered the pursuit the Ka'alyan to Ihivizi?"

"The Emperor ordered the use of deadly force. I directly ordered the pursuit."

"Who ordered the siege of Ihivizi?"

"I ordered it."

"Did Kyrys Tashin give any orders regarding the treatment of the Ka'alyan rebels?"

"Not that I recall."

"Thank you." She stepped aside. "Your witness, Boss Carn Gari."

Carn Gari stood. "No orders that yousa recall, is that right, Lord Vader?"

"Yes."

"No order to see to it that they-sa was fed? No order to keep da troops from hurting them?"

Anakin pressed his lips tightly together. He'd walked straight into it. "No. No order. To give such an order would have been outside his jurisdiction. Though the troops were under standing orders not to maltreat any Ka'alya who left the shrine and surrendered."

"Not Tashin's order?"

"No."

"Yousa order all these things, no?" He waved his arms extravagantly. "Why, as yousa put it, Kyrys Tashin was hardly there at all! How convenient!" Carn Gari turned back, leaned in conspiratorially. Anakin could see in his eyes that he didn't want to be doing this, but he had to. "Tell me, then Lord Vader... in all the things Kyrys Tashin didn't do, is there one thing he did do? Did Kyrys Tashin object? Did he make an attempt to, ah, alleviate the conditions?"

"He was not free to do so!"

"Again," Carn Gari said quietly, "this'm very convenient. So you say, Lord Vader, that a man who is under a command is not free to disobey it?"

"I could easily have killed him. I was... stronger."

"And, in your mind, was Emperor Palpatine stronger than you?"

From the corner of his eye, Anakin saw Leia sit up straighter. Luke's eyes widened. There was no way out of this. "Yes," he said.

"But," Carn Gari said, "yousa found a way to object, didn't you?"

"After far too many years, and under entirely different circumstances -- "

"Yes or no."

"Yes."

"Are you so much better than Kyrys Tashin, that you can make a choice, but he can't?"

Chapter Eight: Recess

Amidala called a recess as soon as Ivva released Ani from the stand, and had the bailiff bring him under guard to her conference room. She would have neither the press nor the Ka'alyan interrogate him.

Not yet. The interrogations would come.

Leia had a comm-pad in her hand, and Amidala had been able to glance at it during Ani's testimony. The charges were already coming in. And the official charges were the friendliest of the message headers that were appearing.

She leaned over to Leia as the bailiff led Ani out, and whispered, "Talk to Ivva. She looks shaken."

She half expected an argument -- she didn't know what to expect out of Leia lately -- but didn't get one. Leia just squeezed her hand, and went down to the box where Ivva was sitting with Tashin and the guards.

Amidala rose and followed Anakin to the conference room.

He was sitting quietly in the shadows of the alcove, his head leaned hard against the wall. The hood of the Sith cloak had been lowered, and Amidala could see that his face was pale, and his forehead covered with a light sheen of perspiration.

"The pain is back?" she asked, sitting across from him.

"Yes. Nothing I can't handle." He smiled. "You'd think being burned alive would put any other pain into perspective, but the memory of that doesn't seem to cut into this at all."

She took his right hand, and began massaging the joints of his fingers. "You haven't talked about that at all."

"Yes, well. The demons are visiting today."

"I noticed." She tugged at the deep sleeves of the cloak. "This gave me a bit of a start." It was an understatement. For a moment, she'd been almost physically ill, her mind dragged back to an Alderaan morning many years ago, when he'd come to her in a cloak like this. But today, as then, she'd seen his eyes deep inside the hood, and known there was no danger.

"I apologize for that. I simply -- "

The door opened. Luke slipped inside. "Father, are you all right?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Mother?"

She smiled. "We're both fine. Come, sit with us."

Luke pulled a chair from the conference table and sprawled across it, facing them. On an impulse, Amidala reached out and took hold of his left hand -- the natural one -- and squeezed it. She wrapped the fingers of her other hand through Ani's fingers. With one of their hands in each of her own, she felt perfectly safe and at ease. Luke leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Thank you, Mother," he said, then looked across at Ani. "Father, I met a man named Jelon Laryhi -- "

"What has Laryhi spoken of?"

"He had very little to say. He wanted only for me to bring you the message that 'Olashya thanks you, as do her children's children.'"

Ani fought against a pleased smile, and lost. "Odd," he said, "that I would take pleasure in her gratitude, even now."

"Who was she?"

"Zemai Laryhi, of Coruscant," Ani answered.

"The Mayor that the University is named for?"

"Yes. And several libraries. And there's even an obscure colony, though I never made it there. I knew her better as Darth Olashya M'Traet. She was a great mayor. As a Sith Lord, she wasn't quite as talented, thank the Maker. The most she ever did was silence her opposition. And -- if this isn't too strange to believe -- silence opposition to the Jedi Council." That strange, pleased smile reappeared. "She was an odd old bird. I always liked her. I often thought that, should I have taken a girl as an apprentice, Zemai would be the name I would choose. I might have given it to Leia."

Luke's hand stiffened, and Amidala gripped it tighter.

Ani's mood might have been strange, but he wasn't blind. His face paled even more, and he reached across to Luke. "I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I don't know why I would say that. I wasn't thinking. I certainly wasn't thinking of... of that last fight. Merely of... of other times. Times when Leia and I spent a great deal of time together, and I considered training her."

Amidala wondered if he would speak of this period of time, an era she had clues about, but which neither Leia nor Ani seemed willing to discuss.

He still wasn't. "I miss her," he said quietly. "She was one of the few bright spots in those years, and I miss her."

"I've missed you," Leia whispered to Han, giving him a smile as she slid into the defendent's box.

"Hey, sweetheart, I've been right here." He grinned, and kissed her cheek.

"Unfortunately, I've been everywhere but here."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"But I'll be back tonight. One way or another."

Han rolled his eyes. "Tonight."

"Tonight. Right now, I still have -- "

"Duties. So do I."

She winked. "Well, don't get all mushy on me, your Generalship."

He pinched her nose, and kissed her lightly. "I gotta go."

"Go."

He went.

Leia went further into the box, and sat down beside Ivva; beyond her Tashin sat stoicly, little Isabel beside him. The girl looked over at her curiously, blue-grey eyes wide. Leia waved.

Isabel smiled brightly.

What is it? Leia wondered. Why do I feel so much different this morning?

She didn't know. She certainly didn't feel like everything was all right in the world, and the slow-burning anger was still at the pit of her stomach. But as soon as Vader had appeared in that deep robe, she'd felt more at ease. This was the man she knew, not the strange boy she was supposed to know.

Isabel rolled her eyes, and climbed onto her father's lap. She reached across Ivva and touched Leia's face, tracing a crescent shape between her right ear and the left side of her chin. On an impulse, Leia kissed the little finger. Isabel gave her a surprised smile.

Leia returned it, then looked to Ivva. "You did fine, Ivva," she said. "You represented Tashin well, and Alderaan."

Ivva shook her head. "Not well enough, on either count."

"It's not irreparable," Leia said. "The situations Boss Carn Gari brought up are completely different" -- she saw Tashin shaking his head, but chose to ignore it -- "and I'm confident that you can prove that."

"Is it proper for you to express that confidence?"

"I'm not the judge here," Leia said. "I'm here merely as a Republic observer, to see to it that the trial is carried out by Republic laws as well as Naboo laws. I'd be remiss if I didn't make sure the defender was well versed."

"And the prosecutor?"

"Has quite a lot of experience, and is not at all in need of guidance. If he starts to need it, he's got it, all right?"

Ivva nodded.

"You're the next judge," Isabel blurted out. "At least on this side."

"This side of what?"

The girl fell silent, and looked at her hands. Leia caught a disturbing flicker of something in her eyes, a look of something beyond the grasp of a four-year-old child.

Tashin shushed her, and offered an apology. Leia brushed it off.

She was halfway out of the box when she realized that she'd only asked about half the mysterious outburst. The first half, she'd taken for granted: You're the next judge.

Judge of what?

Well, that was obvious enough. She'd kept her communications open as she sat silently at the front of the court. The charges were piling up faster than her staff on Coruscant could keep up with them.

And, Naboo or not, Mother would never preside at the next trial.

The nervousness returned in a rush, and she stood abruptly. She needed to find a way out of this. She could not stand in judgment on her father.

Kyrys Tashin was probably the only person in the courtroom surprised by the revelation that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same person.

He'd recognized the Dark Lord he'd served in the eyes of the boy who'd spoken to him of the dead. He'd found it so hard to believe at first. Yet, when he saw the sorrow and regret in the child's eyes, noticed his strangely adult manner and ways, Kyrys knew, he knew that despite the inexplicable change, this was indeed Darth Vader. And as if he needed confirmation, he saw the boy walk in, wearing the grim black robes of the Dark Lords of the Sith and looking as if he belonged in them.

When he confirmed his identity in front of the courtroom, it seemed to him that no one could doubt it, that they didn't need to see the grotesque breath mask and heavy black armor to recognize the Dark Lord of the Sith in that young, fair-haired boy.

That young, fair-haired boy who was also Anakin Skywalker.

Skywalker. Kyrys shook his head. It was an unexpected turn of events but now, looking back, it made perfect sense. It explained so much from those dark days when Lord Vader's temper had been on a lethal hair-trigger in matters concerning Luke Skywalker. How many had died from Vader's wrath when they'd failed to capture the young Rebel and his friends time and again? Needa, Ozzel...

Anakin Skywalker. Luke Skywalker's father.

And he was here to defend Kyrys Tashin.

Kyrys wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. Here was Lord Vader, with more cause to hide than any of them, with the perfect escape hatch open to him with his other name and other life, throwing it all away to defend a lowly Imperial soldier.

No. He shook his head. The thought was unworthy of him. Vader had been feared and hated for many things by his own men but Tashin had somehow always understood that the Dark Lord possessed the same sense of honor that he had, the same driving need for order and peace that had drove them both to commit the crimes that they did.

It was that same honor that made him come to this trial. Knowing that he would expect no quarter from the mob.

The boy who had once been the Dark Lord of the Sith bowed his head as he let the crowd vent their fury on him. Then, he was called to the stand.

Kyrys understood what was going on. They wanted Vader to show the rest that the deaths of the Ka'alyan were his burden alone to bear. His responsibility and his guilt. That Kyrys was only a soldier obeying orders.

But that wasn't the truth. This wasn't just.

Carn Gari had a point. Kyrys had a choice. He could have spoken against the orders -- as crazy and as foolhardy as it was. He would have done such a thing, maybe die doing it but his conscience would be clear. Ciara would have understood that. She would have sorrowed. But she would have understood

But he didn't speak out because he believed that they were doing the right thing.

And the dead, who were watching everything unfold knew that.

"The dead don't know everything, Papa."

Kyrys was startled at the sound of his daughter Isabel's voice. She had been sitting quietly there all the while. Too quietly for a child. The only time she'd actually done anything was to go over to Princess Leia and he'd shushed her for that. The Princess had left, Ivva Japui was busily going over her notes, while Isabel had been sitting quietly ever since.

He turned to look at her now and was surprised to see her appearance. The little girl was suddenly dressed all in black, her long dark hair tied loosely back from her delicate, elfin face.

"Isabel...?"

She looked at him then, and he was even more surprised to see the expression in those blue-gray eyes. There was none of his child's laughter or her innocence there. Only a sense of great power, of ancient wisdom and gentle compassion.

"It's all right, Papa. It's still me, your Isabel."

"But you -- " He couldn't find the words. His little girl had suddenly reminded him so sharply of the dark-clad boy who had just been on the stand that he found himself wondering whether he had finally succumbed to madness.

"You are not mad, Papa. I'm still your daughter." Small hands covered his own. "Please, Papa. I know I'm different now, but I'm still Isabel. Believe me." The blue-gray eyes turned imploring and for a moment, he could see his innocent little girl once more.

"I believe you," Kyrys found himself answering. "Gods help me, Isabel. You've changed in a way that I don't understand but I do believe you."

She smiled. "Then you must come with me."

"Come with you? But I can't -- " Reflexively, he looked around. To his amazement, it was as if everyone had forgotten that they were there. Not even those closest to him, the guards, General Solo or Ivva Japui noticed them.

"They do not see us. At least, not really," said Isabel.

"What do you mean?"

"It's a bit hard to explain and I know how annoying it is when people become cryptic." She grinned, mischievously. "No one can see me. What everyone else sees right now is just you and me sitting here. We'll wait for the verdict and then, we'll go away together. It won't be very far."

"Where are we going?"

She nodded at the dead, who were, Kyrys realized with horror, staring right at them.

"We are going to them. And we will seek justice."

Luke closed the door quietly behind him, and smiled ruefully to himself. He never thought he'd be given to sibling rivalry, but Father kept hinting at this long relationship with Leia, and he said he missed her, and Luke found himself unexpectedly jealous. At least he recognized it for what it was; when he separated himself from it, it amused him.

"Commander Skywalker!"

He groaned. It was the same reporter who had broken through the window three weeks ago. Lersi Gerov. "No comment," he said, before she had a chance to ask anything.

"Commander Skywalker, are you aware that no fewer than fifty charges have been filed against your father in the past hour?"

Luke's head snapped up involuntarily. "In an hour?"

"Yes. Do you have any comment?"

Luke considered it. He had never voluntarily spoken to the press, and wasn't at all sure how it was done. At last he nodded, and said, "I understand the pain of those filing the charges. And each will be addressed. But please remind people that vengeance is not justice, and the hate isn't going to help anyone."

The reporter blinked owlishly. She had not been given any comment by any member of the family up until now, and Luke realized that she hadn't really expected one. He touched her shoulder, and spoke softly. "I ask you to show respect. The people need to know what is happening, but please understand that my family is badly hurt as well, and healing is a slow process."

"I... yes... "

She was in a position where it would have been very, very easy to simply use a mind trick and get her to leave Naboo, perhaps taking several members of the press corps with her. Luke resisted the temptation. "I need to speak to my sister now," he said. "Please ask the press to let her be for awhile."

The reporter nodded vaguely, and Luke wondered if he'd tricked her accidentally. He dipped into her thoughts, and realized with a quick blush that her sudden compliance had nothing whatsoever to do with the Force.

He shook his head. "Have a nice day," he said.

"Yes, thank you... " She drifted down the hall; Luke saw her pace pick up as she rounded the corner, and realized that she'd been less than subtle. He could almost feel her heart start to beat faster in embarrassment, and he felt sorry for her.

But he didn't have time for it.

He turned on his heel, and made his way back to the throne room. Leia was sitting at the front, in the place where she'd been all morning, but the strange peace that had descended on her seemed to have evaporated. She was sunk back into the chair, her eyes closed, her hands gripping the chair arms. Luke reached out, and touched one small hand.

Her eyes opened. "It's happening," she said.

"I know. The reporter told me."

"I'm sorry. I should have come to the conference room. We should tell Mother and... and... "

"Father."

"I can't."

"All right."

She sat forward. "I can't think about this yet. Tashin's trial isn't over, and I won't begin a new one until it is. Mother can't preside. It wouldn't be right, and Maker help her if she finds him innocent of anything."

"But he may be innocent of some of it."

A wry smile. "What's legally true and what seems right to people are frequently not the same. Mother will understand that; she's been a politician all her life. If she declares him innocent -- even of something that it can be proven beyond any doubt that he didn't do -- the good people of the Republic will cry mistrial, claiming conflict of interest. Which at least gives me a way out. I can step down for the duration of his trial. It wouldn't be right, anyway."

Now her smile became nervous and distracted. Luke tried to read her mind, but was caught by a ferocious wind of energy, and thrown aside.

"Leia -- " he began, but was interrupted by a sudden surge of noise in the room. The large doors had opened, and Mother and Father were coming in. The crowd was shouting epithets.

Leia stood, as she had before. This time, she said nothing at all. The room quieted. She glanced down at Luke -- his distraught sister was gone, and Princess Leia Organa, Chancellor Organa-Solo, had returned to her place -- and he obediently drifted back to his seat. There was room beside him, and he motioned to Father to join him.

Mother returned to the throne. "The trial of Kyrys Tashin returns to session," she said in a cool, regal voice. "Ivva Japui of Alderaan, you may call your next witness."

Ivva Japui stood. "The defense calls to the stand Jelon Laryhi, Astaya of the Ka'alyan."

Chapter 9: Seer

Jelon stood slowly, feeling the eyes of the Ka'alyan upon him. They did not believe he would do what he said he would. They did not believe he would implicate the Dead themselves.

They were wrong.

Neither Jelon's position as Astaya of the Ka'alyan nor as the head of the Laryhi family would let him allow an injustice such as the Ka'alyan were demanding. As Astaya, he had Seen a hundred futures from every moment, and he knew that injustice would always come home in the end. As a Laryhi, he was sworn to know the truth about the Sith, and to try and contain them. He had done so, to the best of his ability, at Valshir, though it had already gotten out of their hands.

Ivva Japui swore him in.

"You are the Seer to the Ka'alyan?" she asked when he had taken the stand.

"I am."

"And can you describe your responsibilities in this function?"

"In theory, I am a prophet. I look into the future, and try to see the course it will take."

"Through statistical methods?"

"Through visions. Dreams." Jelon glanced at Luke and Anakin Skywalker. "The Jedi will understand. It is not an exact science."

"I see."

"In practice, I more commonly offer counsel, and perform various administrative duties."

"In the matter of the siege of Ihivizi, what was your role?"

"During the Battle of Valshir, I merely acted as a counsellor, asking the Ka'alyan to restrain themselves and save the fight for a time when the odds were more even."

"Coward!" a Ka'alya called out from the back of the room.

Jelon didn't wait for the officers of the court. "Be seated, child," he said, "and mind your tongue."

To his amazement, the young man sat down, looking chagrined. He had not expected acquiescence.

Ivva Japui paused long enough to let the embarrassment sink in -- Jelon privately thought she was starting to get the hang of this -- then continued. "And after the battle? When the leaders were executed?"

"As one might expect, there was a great deal of outrage. These were not merely military leaders; they were among the finest young minds on La'azum. Their deaths were a tragedy that I wish had been averted. But they knew when they began the war that their chances of surviving it were slim."

"They knew this? How?"

"I told them."

"You saw this in a vision?"

"No. I knew who they were going up against. The Ka'alyan saw it as a battle of a beleagered religious group against a political entity, which might allow them to win by attrition, growing weary of the battle. I knew that, when the Sith were involved, it was never just politics, and that they would never grow weary of war."

"How did you know this?"

"My family has been watching the Sith for centuries. When the Emperor and Lord Vader surfaced, we knew. I was not at liberty to discuss the matter openly, but I did everything I could to warn the Ka'alyan. Most accepted the advice."

"The 'Sith' you speak of... this is a religious order?"

Jelon considered it. "After a fashion, I suppose. Yes, it was. It no longer exists." He tapped the front of the witness stand. "I have not come to give the history of the Sith."

Ivva nodded. "Yes, of course. But you must realize that the word is not in common use, and required a definition."

"Ah. Yes."

"So, after the executions, you advised the Ka'alyan not to press the issue further?"

"Yes. But it was not easy. The Ka'alyan are a people of honor, and the Empire's actions were unbearable. Nizy Lummuo, a young woman who had lost her family, stirred the most resentful into a rebellion. I begged her not to pursue the course of action she had in mind."

"This was the noted public debate, two days after the executions?"

"If you wish to call it a debate. It was two people standing in the street talking at one another but not hearing a word." To his surprise, some of the elder Ka'alyan smiled fondly -- they remembered the arguments, and knew well the path that always seemed to be taken. "I am also referring to private conversations we had. Nizy was... disturbed. She spoke frequently of 'teaching the Empire a lesson.' When I told her she would not win, she informed me that the Empire would not control her death. And she drew her sword. I understood what she meant. And I had a vision... a vision of the spring erupting in blood. I knew then what she meant to do."

"And that was?"

"It was what she did. She took over a thousand men, women, and children to Ihivizi, and she orchestrated a mass murder and suicide there as soon as it became clear that the Empire did not intend to abandon the siege."

"Or when the people began to starve?"

Jelon raised an eyebrow. "On the matter of burning the hillside, I believe there may be a case for accusing Tashin and Vader of a human rights violation. But accusing them of the murders of the Ka'alyan in Ihivizi is both absurd and unjust. The dead of Ihivizi died on their own terms, and by their own choice, except for the children, and they were killed by the adults in the cave with them. I will not speak to military law regarding the human rights violation, but I cannot remain silent on the other charge."

"As an Astaya, and as an expert on the Sith, do you believe that the Empire was aware of this probable outcome?"

Jelon shook his head. "Lord Vader may have had a vague suspicion -- he could answer that question better than I -- but I did not sense an intention to cause this. His testimony seems to back this up. As to Tashin, he is not Sith and never was; he was merely an Imperial officer. The two are by no means identical. As I understand it, he has some knowledge of Ka'alya culture, but what Nizy did was extreme even by Ka'alya standards. Neither had reason to believe that this horrific outcome would occur."

"Thank you, Astaya," Ivva said. "Your witness, Boss Carn Gari."

The Gungan prosecutor stood, his brow raised in skepticism. Jelon was disturbed to see that, unlike his regretful cross of Anakin Skywalker, Carn Gari was genuinely angry this time.

"So," he said, "you knew quite a lot about these... Sith, do you say?"

"Yes."

"And you knew that da Emp'ror was one of them? And Lord Vader?"

"Yes."

"My apologies, yousa Holiness," Carn Gari said, with an expansive gesture, "but when was yousa planning to tell the rest of us?"

Ivva stood quickly. "Objection. Relevance?"

Carn Gari nodded impatiently, and turned on Jelon. "I was wondering... why yousa coming forward now? Yes?" He produced a comm-padd, and Jelon noted with a sinking heart that the names beginning to appear on the screen were the names of centuries of Sith apprentices. He suspected that each would have a list of crimes attached to it. And he suspected that he would be called to account for the family's lack of action. "It seems strange, don't you think -- "

"The objection is sustained."

Everyone looked up. It was the first time the Queen had spoken since the beginning of Skywalker's testimony. She had straightened her back, and her eyes were sharp and flashing a warning to all present. "This is the trial of neither Sith nor Seer," she said, "but of Kyrys Tashin. While I personally would like an answer to Boss Carn Gari's question, and intend to get one" -- she looked at Jelon significantly, and he knew she meant it -- "unless it bears on his eyewitness testimony, it does not belong in this trial."

Immediately, Carn Gari backed off. "Yes, yousa Majesty," he said. He looked to Jelon. "So, yousa Holiness," he said, "your people, they make no secret of wanting Tashin convicted. But you stand in his defense. Why is this?"

"Because I must tell the truth. I love the Ka'alyan," he said. "I love them more than they know. I loved Nizy Lummuo, and all the Dead. I may be Korkantu, but my heart is Ka'alya. But I will allow myself to be banished from them before I will allow the injustice they demand."

Anakin Skywalker was fighting an urge to fidget. It wouldn't do at all.

But his feet itched with a desire to pace around the room, his hands hands to dig at his hair. They both were amicable, and were perfectly willing to settle for mere tapping and wiggling for the moment, but even that was too much motion, and Anakin knew it. He thought back to his early padawan days, Obi-Wan trying to teach him... what had it been?

You must accept your energy, and let it inform your stillness, padawan.

Anakin glanced to his side, expecting (and hoping) to see Obi-Wan's spirit, but there was nothing. Not a real contact then, just a memory.

But a worthy one. He concentrated on letting his energy inform his stillness. Slowly, colors seeped into rich contrasts and deep shadows. Sounds took on crystal clarity. He could hear one of the Ka'alyan in the back of the room, chanting the list of the Dead. He could hear Leia, in the front of the room, grinding her teeth together. And beside him, Luke's breathing sounded like a comforting desert wind.

(Am I actually homesick? For Tatooine?)

The thought came and went in his mind like a lightning flash. He realized it was true, but there was little to be done about it. When all of this was over, if Fate permitted it, he would see the suns rise again. But not until, and thinking about it was pointless.

Instead, he let himself hear Laryhi's voice. The man had a slight, lilting accent. It reminded Anakin of something he couldn't place -- Rabé, perhaps? -- and the voice was comforting. He had never made the pilgrimmage to La'azum. Palpatine's Master had stopped those visits, hidden himself from the Astayas, and Palpatine had taken advantage of it. None of his apprentices had visited the old archives, or known the Seers. Anakin recalled being told that they were "under control," but he'd never been granted permission to test that control by going to them, as the habit had been for a thousand years. He wished now that he had done so. Perhaps everything on La'azum would have been different, if he'd taken the trouble to know the people, or see the visions of the Astayas. He had studied the history of La'azum itself, thinking that perhaps the history he had been forbidden to study would have seeped through the cracks, but he had not done so with concern for the subject matter actually before him. If he had, if he'd allowed the cold facts of the history to become real in his mind...

But what-ifs weren't any good to anyone.

Amidala's voice cut across his thoughts, defending Laryhi from Carn Gari's strange attack. Surely, even the prosecution had to understand that what happend at Ihivizi was not a question of Sith history. If it had been Sith, the massacre would have been at the Tr'Astari'shal. Laryhi's extensive knowledge of the past wasn't relevant, and it was certainly not proper to drag the Laryhi family through this gauntlet. They had stood up when no one had. They should be given medals, not questioned like criminals. He had half a mind to stand and speak in their defense.

A look from Luke reminded him that he was now merely a spectator. He could take no action.

"I must tell the truth," Laryhi said. "I love the Ka'alyan. I love them more than they know. I loved Nizy Lummuo, and all the Dead. I may be Korkantu, but my heart is Ka'alya. But I will allow myself to be banished from them before I will allow the injustice they demand."

There was silence, or as close to silence as a crowded room could know. Anakin could hear a Ka'alya child telling someone nearby that she'd told him so, that the Astaya loved all the Ka'alyan.

And he heard someone, somewhere, crying.

Amidala sighed, and spoke quietly. "Have you further evidence to present?"

Laryhi shook his head. "No, your Majesty. I thank the court for allowing me to speak in this matter."

Ivva Japui released him.

Amidala stood. "Does anyone else bear witness to the events at Ihivizi? Anyone who has not been called or come forward, do so now."

But it was an empty request. The witnesses of Ihivizi were only the Dead and the Accused.

The Dead and the Damned.

No one spoke. "Then I will consult with the Council," Amidala said, "And render a verdict in this matter."

She stepped down from the throne, and Leia fell in beside her. They made their way down the aisle of the throne room, and disappeared into the hallway. Anakin would not be a part of that Council, nor would Luke. They stood together, to find hate-filled eyes burning into them. Anakin put a hand on Luke's shoulder, as a suggestion to sit down again. Luke should never be exposed to this. But Luke didn't take the suggestion.

Anakin couldn't bear it. "Hate me if you will," he said. "I earned it. But do not look at my son in that way. He is blameless."

There was no answer.

I watched him burn.

Leia stopped in the middle of the hall, a few steps behind her mother. The old self-accusation had not recurred to her conscious mind for many years, though after the disastrous raid on the Imperial factory on La'azum, it had gone through her head at least once an hour. It hadn't really been pushed out of her until the Death Star, when it had been answered with, He watched my world destroyed.

It was just the damned La'azum business. She was sure of it. She didn't know what it was about that world that made their lives intersect there, but certainly it was just the proximity that made the thought come back.

I watched him burn.

She closed her eyes, and saw it in her mind, as if it were yesterday, even though she hadn't so much as dreamed about it since Alderaan. She'd been sitting on her speeder for nearly fifteen minutes, waiting for the attack to smoke him out. He'd run out, the Ampinuan woman with him. And she'd thought, I'll finish it now, and fired into the line of fuel she'd poured around the factory's entrance. The flames had caught the edge of his cape. And she had watched and waited for that to happen. She'd wanted him not just to die, but to burn, because he feared that most.

She hadn't learned until later that the woman had died. And she'd never known her name. She didn't have a lot of friendly contact with the Imperial military, and the Rebels just made crude jokes about her. "Engineer" had taken on a wildly different meaning in some circles. The Rebels, at least, had stopped making jokes when she died. But all Leia knew about the woman she'd killed -- an unintended side effect of attempted patricide -- was that she was Ampinuan, and an engineer. She'd had a state funeral, but by then, Leia knew better than to tiptoe close to Vader's circle. But she ought to know the woman's name. Hadn't it been in the news? Hadn't it --?

"Leia?"

Her eyes opened, and Mother was standing a few feet ahead of her, the concern showing even through the

(mask)

makeup. She was reaching out tentatively with one hand. Leia squeezed it, and gave a weak smile. "I'm all right. Just thinking about La'azum."

"It was a terrible thing that happened."

Leia nodded. "Yes."

"But I'm not sure if we can place blame."

For a confused moment, Leia had forgotten Ihivizi, and almost said, "It was my fault." Then she remembered that it was not the Rebel attack that was being questioned. "Tashin confessed."

"As Ivva rightly pointed out, he confessed to many things. Some are real, I'm sure. But I do not believe all of them, and that means that legally, I cannot accept his confession as evidence." She shook her head. "Come. We shouldn't be discussing this outside of the Council."

"Mother?"

"Yes?"

"What do you think? Not as the Queen or the Judge, and not what kind of verdict you think there should be. Just, what do you think?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I think the Empire struck too hard, as it always did. I think your Father would have boiled an ocean to find a single pearl at the time. I think Tashin was blindly idealistic and did not consider his actions in the right light. And -- and you must not repeat this -- I think Nizy Lummuo was a deranged lunatic. In other words, it was a war, in which all the elements were in place for the worst-case scenario to happen, and it did. And I feel sorry for all of them. I know Tashin has been haunted. And your father... honestly, Leia, even then I do not believe he would have intended this consequence. And Nizy Lummuo was pushed beyond the edge of human endurance. I don't know how much law is actually involved. I just want to scream at all of them. And I want to comfort all of them." She smiled bitterly. "So speaks Amidala of Naboo, whose judgment has always been wise and beyond question."

Amidala squeezed Leia's hand, then let go of it and went into the Council chamber. The Council was already assembled around the table, hands clasped tightly in front of them, eyes cast down. She took her seat, and signalled for Leia to sit beside her.

"Members of the Council," she said formally, to remind them that this was not a planning meeting, where jests would be made and nicknames bandied about, "I seek your advice in the ruling regarding the Naboo citizen Kyrys Tashin, who is accused of the war crimes you heard listed this morning. The defense and the prosecution have performed their duties admirably, but are now to return to their roles as members of this council, and advise in that capacity."

Tirzé spoke first, timidly. "Your Majesty," she said, "I see two conflicting issues here."

"Speak, Tirzé."

"In the first case, a terrible tragedy occurred, and it was ultimately a result of Imperial actions in which Kyrys Tashin had an active role. The people will want some sort of response to it. It seems... feels... that there should be. Had he proceeded in his course of action, many Ka'alyan would have died of starvation, or possibly been murdered by the Empire."

"And in the second case?"

"In the second case, your Majesty, that wasn't what happened. Can a man be convicted for what he might have done, for what might have happened, had another action not intervened? The lives of the Ka'alyan were not taken by the Empire, but by the Ka'alyan themselves. Can we hold Kyrys Tashin guilty of someone else's suicide? Legally?"

It was a question, not a speech. Tirzé was a city planner, when it came down to the line, more like Lando than like Amidala. When she was unsure of a legal issue, she asked.

"We cannot," Amidala said. There was a mixture of relief and regret in the realization. Relief, because she knew that it was a way out from under many other issues that were pressing; regret, because she knew it would not be taken well... especially not by Tashin. "Based on the testimony and evidence, Kyrys Tashin cannot be held directly responsible for the deaths at Ihivizi."

Ivva Japui relaxed somewhat. "Then there is no question of a death sentence."

"Naboo law strives for restitution, not retribution."

Carn Gari stood. "How yousa gonna get restitution for a thousand sixteen souls?"

Amidala couldn't answer that. Murder had never been a common crime on Naboo, and the law had always struggled with it. "Traditionally, it involved hard service to the families. But it is a moot point. Legally, Kyrys Tashin did not commit murder at Ihivizi."

Leia shook her head. "If he had kept -- "

"Shall we judge all people by what they might have done, had they stayed the courses they were on?"

Leia's mouth snapped shut, as if a spring had been released, and the blood drained from her cheeks.

Something is very wrong, Amidala thought. But they were both trapped in their roles. She could no more mother Leia right now than Leia could blurt out whatever it was that was bothering her.

"Nevertheless," she went on, "the actions of the Imperial contingent were unacceptable by any standard. At the very least, I will hold him guilty of human rights violations in the destruction of the food supply to the Ka'alyan. I am undecided on the matter of the justification of the siege itself. Was it a war crime, or merely a military action taken by the wrong side? Had the Rebellion besieged an Imperial stronghold under similar circumstances, what would our judgment have been?"

"The Rebellion didn't target civilians," Leia muttered.

Arphon, the quiet Gungan who had been the first to ask Amidala to resume the throne of Naboo, shook his head. "Me-sa hear that sometimes, the civilians still get caught. Me-sa even hear it on La'azum... There was an attack on a factory there -- the Empire, deysa did help and rebuild La'azum after this -- and theres-a was many peoples living nearby. Places burned. And the lady that ran this'm factory, shesa wasn't military, and she died. At least that's what I heard."

"It wasn't a remotely similar situation," Leia said coolly. "And the pilots were ordered to spare as much of the civilian area as they possibly could."

She gave that order. She was in command of that attack.

Amidala broke her role long enough to reach out and touch Leia's wrist gently. Leia looked at her icily; she didn't want the roles changed.

"We are discussing Ihivizi," Amidala said. "The question was asked not to judge the Rebellion, but to ask what standard we are applying. I find it obvious from Laryhi's testimony that Nizy Lummuo and her followers were planning to resume their attack. Was the Imperial military within its rights to try and block that? Were they operating within acceptable wartime rules?"

To her surprise, it was Carn Gari who said, "Yes. Theysa was being an army at war." He sat down again. "This'm not gonna be good, yousa Majesty. All wesa can say, with the law, is that he shouldn't have burned the food."

Old Garlien sighed. Amidala knew he would simply be glad to stop picking at the war wounds, and let them heal, let the scars form. But he knew that others wanted more radical treatments, and he knew the wounds could become infected if they weren't dealt with. "The maximum sentence under Naboo law for a human rights violation that was not directly responsible for death or injury is twenty-five years of service to those effected. The Ka'alyan will not be pleased."

The Ka'alyan were not pleased.

The Court erupted in epithets and accusations, and Kyrys Tashin and his daughter were taken from the room under heavy security after the verdict was announced. Anakin Skywalker had been convinced to stay away "to avoid incidents." Leia Organa-Solo spoke briefly, trying to explain the law to good people, whose hearts were hurting and hungry for some validation of the horrible injustice they felt -- "We cannot allow ourselves to go down a path of vengeance over the law; we cannot create a crime from a tragedy." Some may have listened, but the letter of the law was cold comfort to the bereaved.

Han Solo's priority was to get his wife out of that courtroom, before the Ka'alyan turned their anger on her. Luke could look after Amidala. It would be better if they were taken to separate places.

Lando Calrissian, Prince of Theed, did his best to calm the fears of the press and the people gathered around the palace. He spoke of the rebuilding that was going on, and begged people to try and see the larger picture.

Ivva Japui endured a pelting with rotten vegetables, from which Garlien rescued her (no one quite dared throw anything at him; he had an air about him that made him seem sacrosanct, even to the Ka'alyan).

Word spread around the galaxy, as the newsnets carried the verdict across the vacuum of space.

In the worlds where the Empire had once been welcomed, there was cautious hope that the new government might not be preparing for the reign of terror and retaliation they had been expecting since the death of the Emperor. Whispers spread among old Imperial soldiers, even among the rank and file stormtroopers, that fairness might be possible in this new world. Cautions were given by the old guard that such actions were not to be trusted overmuch, but the seed was planted. "Maybe she's like him," a former stormtrooper named Difraim N'tel said in a tavern on Corellia.

"Just what we need."

"He was harsh. But he was always fair."

"Tell it to Needa."

"Except for once."

"And Ozzel."

"Ozzel was and idiot. He -- "

And the debate returned to more familiar ground.

Around the galaxy, the enclaves of people who had fled from the Empire, and stayed together because they'd found themselves with nothing to return to, reacted with puzzlement and hurt. Were they to have nothing? Would nothing be returned to them?

Some thought to join the Ka'alyan in their outspoken anger, but others found hope in the letter of the law... restitution meant that efforts would be made to return what was theirs. But for most, it was simply a dull confusion, and a sense of incompletion. It wasn't enough.

More charges against Vader flowed toward Coruscant.

Leia let Han pull her out of the throne room, feeling more in danger than she had on Hoth, but feeling oddly disconnected from it.

"I should have insisted on more," she said.

Han kissed her nose. "You didn't have a lot of choice on it. It was your Mom's call. And she had to follow the law."

"I could have changed the law, made it legal -- "

"Leia, knock it off." His gaze was sympathetic, but his words cut into her thoughts like a knife. He squeezed her hands. "The verdict is out. And it wouldn't have been any better if you'd decided to change the law just to make the Ka'alyan happy. You'd have a whole different set of problems. We'll get through this. Okay?"

She nodded vaguely. She should have changed the law before all this started. She should have seen to it that justice would be done.

Dear Maker, what am I thinking? If a Chancellor puts herself above the law, how far a step is it before... before she becomes...

Her stomach twisted, and she felt the sickness rising. She pulled her hands out of Han's, and barely made it to the 'fresher in their quarters before it came out of her.

"You okay?" he called from the other side of the door.

She shook her head, negating even the question, but called back, "I'm okay. I just need some air."

The 'fresher had a door that opened out onto the narrow balcony above the garden, which circled the whole of the second floor above the courtyard. She slipped out onto it. The late afternoon air was cool and refreshing, and she took a deep, shaky breath.

Air, she thought. I just need air. I can't breathe. I can't...

A deep breath. Then another.

The colors began to clear, her stomach began to settle. She could control this. She had to.

Han Solo was getting tired of the whole mess.

He was tired of the trial. He was tired of the zealous Ka'alyan. He was tired of wandering around like a glorified prison guard. He was tired of living in a palace, no matter how little sense that made.

Mostly, he was tired of walking on eggshells around his wife.

There was a time -- objectively, he guessed it hadn't been that long ago -- when that would have been an excuse to tell Chewie to get the Falcon ready and fly off to some half-tamed Outer Rim world where he could ignore everything that came before, but that instinct seemed to have seeped out into the carbonite. When he'd been pulled from that particular hell, something had changed, and he could no more walk out of this family than he could take his brain out of his head for the afternoon.

The flip side was, no matter what, they weren't going to kick him out of it, either.

And something had to be done. Hell, if he could actually let Vader work on his ship, then he supposed he could adjust enough to talk to his own wife.

He heard the other 'fresher door open, and saw Leia slip out onto the balcony. She leaned against the rail, and breathed deeply. The lines started to ease... her control was good -- better than Luke's, Han thought -- but she was shaken, and she couldn't make herself forget what was shaking her. And maybe she shouldn't. Anakin hadn't talked to Han much about whatever past he and Leia had shared, but you didn't need to be a telepath to know that something bad had happened at the end of it, and Han had a real strong idea that it hadn't been one-sided.

She bit her lip, and pressed her hands hard against the railing. She was fighting... hard.

That, at least, was the Leia Han knew. She'd fight the devil himself to a draw. And Han would be right there with backup; he knew that as surely as he knew his own name.

He went out onto the balcony.

She looked up, and offered him a shaky smile. "I'm not what you bargained for in this, am I?"

He draped his arms around her. "Ah, let's see... I think the terms were for this beautiful girl, with a tongue sharp enough to cut Bespin diamonds, and a temper to match it." He pretended to examine her. "Looks pretty much like what I've got."

"I love you," she said, and finished, "You know," before Han could beat her to it.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get some air." He led her up to the roof of the palace, where a walkway along the parapet had been recently rebuilt (the palace was one of Lando's quiet sideline projects; Amidala wouldn't allow him to make a spectacle of its repair, but he was bound and determined to sneak it in when she wasn't looking). The day was cool, but the air was fresh and clean. She slipped out of his embrace, and went to the low parapet to look out over Theed. He followed her, but didn't put his arm around her again. She looked like she was preparing to talk, and she always wanted to do that alone.

He stood quietly at her side, and waited.

"We were friends," she said after awhile. "We used to talk for hours. Unfortunately, both of us were very good at talking a lot and not saying anything." She gave Han a smile that reassured him a great deal; this was not the shaky, gunshy Leia of the last few weeks. She was completely... present... for the first time since Anakin had appeared on the Falcon.

"That's why they made that holotoon?"

She nodded. "You should have seen some of the others. At the time, I thought they were so ridiculous that they didn't bother me. Now, I know why my foster mother always made herself sick over them." Her eyes wandered. "I wonder if she thought... " She shook her head. "I guess it doesn't matter; there was never anything to that."

"But you were friends?" Han prompted, after a moment's silence.

"Yes... that's worse than him being my father, isn't it? I didn't choose him as my father. But I chose him as my friend."

"Well, it does kind of mess up that whole business about 'happening to like nice men,' but I never believed that anyway."

Another smile. "And here I thought you were a nice man." She reached out and squeezed his hand, then let go and turned back to the view. "We understood each other. Vader and I did, I mean."

"Leia, what are you angry at?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've been stalking around here and glowering and turning yourself inside out. Either you're scared to death of something, or you're angry."

"Or both." She sighed. "I'm angry at a lot. And at nothing. And everything. But mostly, I'm always scared now. Now, I look at my life, and I see all these places, these -- " She gestured at the sheer drop-off before her. "All these precipices. And I know how often I stumbled, but I never got scared -- well, once, I scared myself, but I got over it -- because I thought I couldn't fall. But my father... Han... Vader was my father. If he can fall, I can."

"But you haven't."

"But I could."

"Who couldn't?"

She turned to him, an eyebrow raised. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

Leia turned back around, and looked down from the parapet of her mother's palace. The view was spectacular, and some distant, undisturbed part of her mind was simply drinking it in and enjoying it. The breeze was fresh and crisp. She had a sudden, mad desire to find a speeder bike, and race across the fresh fields. Forget about the helmet, too; she wanted the wind in her hair.

But that was stupid, and she knew it. It was what she was beginning to identify to herself as "Father-thinking": Do what's immediately gratifying, and forget about possible repercussions.

But is that fair? I mean, really? Didn't you always pretty much do what felt right, and didn't it actually work most of the time?

Yeah, sure. And most times when you raced without a helmet, you didn't get your skull crushed. The problem was, it only took one time.

She settled for pulling her braid roughly out of its weave, and letting the breeze catch it. It would have to do. She couldn't remember the last time her hair had been completely loose. Even on Endor, she'd tied it back from her face. It felt good.

Han's arms slipped around her, and she leaned gratefully back against him. The breeze tangled her hair around both of their heads, and he laughed as he brushed it away. "See, that wasn't so complicated, was it?"

She squeezed his hands. "I wish everything were as easy."

"You need to talk to him, Sweetheart."

Too fast. The shortness of breath returned. She saw her long, torturous relationship with her father playing out before her eyes, the terrible ordeals, the confusing moments of tenderness... "I can't. It was too little too late. He did too much, and let other people do too much. I can't let it go."

"I'm not telling you to let it go, Leia. I'm telling you to talk to the guy. And I'm not doing it for me. I get along with him better than I figured, but if he walked away tomorrow and never came back, I wouldn't much care. It's you that you need to do it for. You gotta get this over with before it drives you crazy."

Well. There it was. She'd known Han would say it first, because he always spoke plainly. But it stung just the same, because she thought it might be true. Crazy. I guess that's what you are, when you can't distinguish between the past and the present, and you can accept your mother and your brother, but refuse to consider your father...

But I did consider him. I gave him five years. I gave him my trust. And he betrayed it, just like they said he would. Just like my mother said he would, only days before he killed her. My other mother.

"I will never trust him," she whispered.

Han didn't know that she wasn't saying it herself, that she was merely remembering Sache Organa's words, but he said only, "You don't have to. You just need to talk to him."

She shook her head mutely. She knew she was being hopelessly stubborn. But she couldn't give in. She couldn't give her heart back to him. She couldn't risk it herself, and she couldn't... she couldn't forget all those who would never have a chance to judge his transformation. She couldn't forget his restraining hand on her shoulder as he stood silently by when Alderaan was erased from the heavens.

And what's bothering you, Your Worship, is that you wanted that hand there when it happened. You knew Tarkin was going to do it, and you knew he wouldn't be doing it if you'd just cooperated, and that heavy hand was the only cold comfort in the whole mess. You didn't pull away from it, and you know damned well that anyone with a shred of personal integrity would have.

Sometimes, she wondered if Han was just telepathic enough to pick up the wrong signal. His hand on her shoulder, trying to offer comfort.

She jumped and pulled away. She was immediately sorry -- his eyes were hurt, though he just rolled them and pretended to be mildly annoyed -- but the damage was done. "I need to be alone," she said. "Please. I need to think."

He nodded, looking like he was trying to gauge whether or not she'd jump from the parapet (and, she realized with surprise, he might be; she'd never considered such a thing, and still wasn't considering it, but she guessed that her behavior had been far enough off the map to make him unsure of even that). "I'm okay," she told him.

"I'll be inside."

She nodded, and walked further along the parapet. She heard his footsteps retreating behind her. She climbed up onto the low wall, and closed her eyes, feeling the wind and the height. There was no desire to fall. She just wanted to stand here, and be one with the wind.

"Han's right, you know," a voice said behind her, almost startling her. She climbed down immediately, and found Isabel Tashin standing on the flagstones. The little girl was looking at her knowingly. "You're going to have to make the first move and talk to him, because as far as he's concerned, he's got no right to talk to you."

Chapter Ten: Bloodfire

The Ka'alyan have a word, kavenya, that loosely translates to "bloodfire." It is the utterly irrational, and completely pervasive, desire to look into the eyes of one's family, to feel their blood in your own. It is a word meant to signify warmth and understanding, and often expands beyond the actual blood to encompass the whole community. But in the end, it is not an altogether unambiguous word, and bloodfires have raged out of control more than once...
--Karik Laryhi, First Astaya of the Ka'alyan, "Letter to the Jedi Council of Coruscant, on the death of Borliash"

Luke tightened the last circuit, closed the cover, and looked thoughtfully at the new lightsaber. He'd made the crystal -- a second green crystal; he preferred the way the blade handled at that frequency -- the last time he'd been on Tatooine, without much thought of how he intended to use it, and now, it was obvious where the weapon was needed. But the complications were equally obvious.

Still, complications or no, there were certain realities approaching very quickly. Luke could feel them in the Force, like dustdevils racing forward before a sandstorm.

Father would need this, and he would not make one for himself.

Luke shook his head and picked up the weapon, then made his way toward his Mother's chambers (it had never been difficult for him to locate his father, but now he didn't need to rely on telepathy, just known habits). Outside, he could hear their voices, speaking softly to one another, in that tone that he never heard either of them use with anyone else. He didn't know why it delighted him so to learn that his parents were still in love (though of course, they both knew it was far beyond acting on at this point), only that it made him feel... the only word he could think of was "happy," but it didn't quite cover it.

"...don't want to avoid it, Amidala," Father was saying.

"Ani, there is nothing I can do to ameliorate it. With Tashin, there was nothing I could do to increase his sentence, because by the letter of the law, I charged him with all I could. But with you... Ani, some of what you did was legitimate wartime behavior. Maybe even most of it. But the business of murdering your own men..."

"I don't want it ameliorated."

"I won't judge it, Anakin. I refuse. No matter what I decide, it would never be acceptable."

"I wouldn't ask you to. And Luke, you may as well come in. Your presence is about as subtle as a Bantha in a glassblower's hut."

Luke entered quietly, and was glad to see that Father was smiling -- at least vaguely -- and that a place had been made for him. He took it, then offered the new lightsaber to his father. "I just finished this. Take it."

Father shook his head, and didn't reach out for it.

Luke didn't lower it. "I mean it, Father, really. You shouldn't be unarmed."

"I will be the defendant fairly soon. A sidearm of any sort is somewhat inappropriate in that capacity."

Mother sighed. "Ani, Luke's right. A lot of this trial isn't going to take place in the courtroom, and you know it."

"And you believe it would help my case to draw a lightsaber and strike down my accusers?"

Luke could see his reasoning, but not accept it. "Has it occurred to you that you are perfectly capable of defending yourself without striking anyone down? I noticed that before -- "

But Father was shaking his head, his jaw set stubbornly. Mother waved her hand and rolled her eyes.

"I'll have it with me," Luke said. "And I'll be close by."

"Be where you're needed, Luke."

"Meaning that you think it would serve your case better if you let them lynch you? Or maybe if, lacking a weapon, you used the Force to throw them halfway across Theed?"

Father turned and looked at him flatly, then reached out and took the lightsaber with some distaste. He hooked it onto his belt. Luke noted that, despite his professed desire not to have it, his hand came to rest easily on the hilt, and stayed there.

"I'm impressed," Mother said, an eyebrow raised.

Father smiled at her. "Luke is determined to cure me of all my irrational stubbornness."

Mother laughed at some shared memory, but did not tell Luke what it was, other than a vague image of a young Jedi, stubbornly courting an older girl who thought he was more properly her younger brother. "Let's leave some of it, shall we?"

Father laughed with her briefly, then turned to Luke. "You need to realize that this will not end happily. Whatever I do now, it will not be the right thing. And, for the sake of the family, I cannot simply act to preserve myself, nor can you re-create the Jedi order by single-mindedly defending me."

Luke put a hand on his father's shoulder, and gave a quick squeeze. "Father, if there's one thing I learned from... from going through what we went through together... it's that there is always a way through to the other side. You just have to believe in it."

General Lando Calrissian, Baron-Administrator of Cloud City and Prince of Theed, stood ankle deep in the river mud. His robes of office were folded into a trunk back at Arphon's and he wore a beaten-up old tunic that had been Anakin's years before (Amidala had found it under a broken dresser in the palace; Anakin couldn't figure out why she refused to toss it, and had given it to Lando for this sort of work, as he couldn't see himself having any use for it). It was too big, and the sleeves were cinched up to his elbows.

He was having a grand time, not only in his work, but in the relief at having an excuse to get away from the mess at the palace for an hour or two.

The Gungans had called on him to help build their part of the city. It had never been a Gungan place, and as far as any of them knew, no Gungan city had been built above ground. "Wesa gonna build it down into the river," Arphon's wife had told him. "But also up onto the banks, so that the humans can come in when theysa liking to, without all this'm... " She pointed at the diving gear Lando had carried down with him.

They had the plans, but Lando was responsible for getting what they needed and integrating this new neighborhood into the city. It wasn't going to be easy, but compared to what was going on up at the palace, it was a piece of cake. Lando was glad he hadn't been offered citizenship until after the council had been chosen. No way he wanted in on that mess.

He glanced up at the half re-built tower on the cliff, and saw two small figures on the parapet. Han and Leia. She pulled away from him, and he headed back inside. That was another mess Lando didn't want any part of, but that one, he felt guilty about. He ought to at least try to be around for them.

Arphon's wife, a short-tempered, intelligent woman named Tili, cleared her throat, a human habit she'd picked up to signal for attention. "Yousa thinking you can get all the things we need?"

Lando ticked the list off in his mind. Even when he wasn't concentrating, he always picked up the inventory lists. On a world that had literally been laid bare, lists of needed items were a constant litany, and he did his best to get them all. "I think we can get most of it. The river fish might be a stretch. It will depend on what the various zoos were keeping when the extinction happened."

Tili nodded. "This'm all was popular fish. Nothing weird. No opee sea killers. Just fish. There should be plenty."

"I saw birds in the old pictures, in the water... "

"Naboo ducks. Theysa was everywhere."

"Should I try and get some?"

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I like 'em."

"Yousa da prince. But they breed fast, and get to be a nuisance."

"Sort of like reporters."

Tili rolled her eyes (an exaggerated motion among Gungans, as the eyestalks also moved). No one who lived in Theed was terribly fond of the reporters that they were tripping over. "Her Majesty ought to make them go away."

"Her Majesty's hands are tied in the matter."

"They'll just get themselves in trouble, when trouble breaks out."

"You think trouble's coming?"

"They -- the Ka'alyan and some of the other angry ones -- they think that wesa is going to be against everything in the Empire, because of being in exile. They say things to usen. There's trouble brewing."

"Why haven't you said anything before this, Tili?"

She looked at him, honestly surprised. "Yousa didn't know?"

"Well, I suspected -- "

"Then what are yousa needing me to tell you for?"

A La'azum Interlude

Lersi Gerov stepped out of the shuttle, onto the scorched plains of La'azum. She had seen pictures of the world before the drought, and for the first time since this sorry business began, she felt her heart really twist for the people of this world. Such a lot to lose!

Her cam-droid followed on a tether, because she didn't trust the shifting winds. She looked at it, brushed her short-cropped hair behind her ears, and spoke. "This is La'azum, the world where so much pain is being felt... " She shook her head. Passive voice. A brief flick on the tether, and she heard the clicks of the chip erasing itself. "This is La'azum," she said, "the world of -- "

She stopped, flicked the tether again. Pointless. She could go back and film an opening segment later. Fact was, she had no idea what La'azum was a world of, other than crazy Ka'alyan, troubled times for the Skywalkers, and -- apparently -- a dynasty of Sith librarians.

Well, her journalism professor had told her early on -- long before she got stuck on Eye -- that the library was the best place to start any story. She only hoped that the trial coverage hadn't dragged half the galaxy to the Tr'astari'shal.

It hadn't. It would later. Lersi had seen enough stories spin out of control to figure where this one was headed. There would be intense interest in the Sith, maybe some adolescent pretenders. Then a musician or an actor would declare his allegiance to the Sith, and it would become a mark of rebellion. She wasn't interested in being part of that, and didn't intend to start the feeding frenzy. But she did want to know what sort of world this was, and why the bloody things that happened here had occurred.

The girl who greeted her at the door of the Tr'astari'shal had to be Jelon's daughter. It wasn't that she looked like him; there were some shared nuances, but the girl was a square-faced brunette, with eyes the color of ice, while the father was a blond with hazel eyes. It was just... something else. A resemblance on another plane of existence, Lersi thought, then almost laughed at herself for the pretension. The girl's voice was pleasant, aloof, perhaps a bit amused, but not condescending. It was well-practiced, and sounded absurd coming out of a teenager. "I am Rashara Laryhi," she said. "How may I help you, Miss Gerov?"

Lersi tugged in the cam-droid, then turned off the power. "Is there somewhere I can put this down? I... I'm really just here for research."

"I know. I've been expecting you."

"I just decided -- "

Rashara laughed. When she spoke again, her voice was light, with no rehearsal, and a lilting Ka'alya accent fell over her words. "My father has you convinced that we're administrators, hasn't he?" She rolled her eyes. "We're no Jedi, but we still get visions every few generations. My father sees some things, sometimes. But I pulled the lucky number. And I saw you coming here when I was meditating yesterday. What I don't see is what you think you're going to find in the Sith archives."

"I won't know 'til I see it."

"There are a lot of them. What are you looking into?"

"Why La'azum?"

"You're not going to find an answer. You may as well ask 'Why Tatooine?' Lots of worlds have... a little... " She wrinkled her nose, trying to find a word. "Just something that makes them buzz a little bit more. Things happen there. La'azum is a world like that. So's Tatooine. So's Naboo. So are a dozen others."

"But only one has Sith archives, and a Sith apprentice showing up at a bloody siege."

"There've been lots of bloody sieges. You'll see them in the records. It's true that only we have the archives. But the Sith who ran this particular bloody siege never saw them."

"Then it's a coincidence?"

"Sometimes, it just is." She shrugged. "I know, I want to to be more. My heart tells me it should be more. But there's no connection." It wasn't good enough for her. "Maybe... perhaps the Sith didn't like Astayas, and once they were out of our control, Lord Vader hit our people too hard. Maybe that's a connection. But he never came after the Tr'astari'shal. Not even a little bit. So that comes apart."

"Who are the Ka'alyan?"

The astaya-face and voice momentarily reappeared. "The Ka'alyan are many people, Miss Gerov, not just one. They are a religious order. Many are drawn to it."

"What sort of religion?"

"It's based on honor, and duty. The community is very important. When it started, they were just... just a lot of young people, coming together to a new world. Instead of letting their separate past-worlds divide them, they decided to create a culture among themselves. They made a whole language, and a way of living. They made swords... "

Rashara's eyes grew faraway suddenly, and Lersi could almost see a fog settling across them. Her voice was thin when she spoke again. "They never wanted the battles, but things were scarce at first, and there were always raiders. After awhile, they shut off, and only traded with Ampinua. But before... they had to protect themselves. But they were Ka'alya. They had to be different. It would be hand to hand. And they made metal swords, but swords with a kind of... magnetic... I'm losing it... something in them, so they could bounce blaster shots away, just like lightsabers." She smiled, and the fog lifted from her eyes. "Is it enough of a connection that they wanted to be like Jedi? Would that annoy the Sith enough?"

Lersi shook her head. She didn't think that was it. "You know more about what would annoy the Sith than I do."

"I know too much. As far as I can tell, everything annoyed the Sith." She shook her head rapidly, like she was trying to get water out of her ears. "Come on. You didn't come here to talk to a juvy-rated seer. If you wanted visions, you had two Jedi right there on Naboo, and they're a lot better at it than I am. I'll show you to the archives."

She chatted pleasantly enough as she led Lersi downstairs, through a tightly locked door, to a surprisingly bright room with a large case made of transparisteel. Lersi had expected somehow to feel the evil a millennium roosting here; instead, it felt like a med-center waiting room.

"Don't be fooled," Rashara said harshly. "And if it starts to get cold, come upstairs right away. Promise me that."

Lersi promised, not sure why.

Half an hour later, a chill crept into her joints. She tried to concentrate on the letters of the scroll of Rikkan, but she could feel eyes on her back. Something shifted in the case, and she jumped.

She tossed the scrolls back into the case, and ran upstairs.

"Han's right, you know. You're going to have to make the first move and talk to him, because as far as he's concerned, he's got no right to talk to you."

The peculiarly adult tone in the little girl's voice had caught Leia off guard, as well as the strange, knowing look in those wide blue-gray eyes. Leia caught a sense of great power, of a gentle wisdom and quiet strength that reminded her strongly of Luke.

Except that all this was coming from a four-year-old girl.

Isabel was speaking again, a small smile curving her lips. "This is getting too way out of hand. All this guilt -- hell, the angst is giving me a headache. Time for some common sense in the group!"

Leia was completely bewildered. "What are you talking about?"

Isabel chuckled. "Talking about? I'm talking about what's been bugging you ever since your impossibly stubborn, tragic and angst-ridden sire returned from the dead. You and Ani need a nice, heart-to-heart, father-daughter talk so you can get that load of emotional pain off your chest. Go off and do it."

Leia shook her head, trying to clear it. "This is not happening. I'm having an impossible conversation with a four-year-old."

"Oh dear." Isabel sighed. "Please tell me you're not going to give me the 'me: adult, you: child' spiel. I think I can credit you with a little more vision than that. Come on, Leia. I think you can tell me what I am."

"What you are is a little girl doing a damn good high and mighty Jedi Master impression and it's scaring me."

"What you are is the woman who told Grand Moff Tarkin and Darth Vader where to shove it and kicked the Galactic Empire's collective ass to hell and back." Isabel folded her arms across her chest and looked Leia straight in the eye. "Where is that courage now, Leia?"

The child's stare was unnerving. A memory came to mind: Vader's gloved hand on her cheek, him kneeling in front of her, pleading with her, asking her not to become his enemy.

She found herself leaning against the low wall for support. "You're asking too much of my so-called courage."

Isabel nimbly clambered up the wall and sat down beside her. "I'm just saying you ought to talk to him. Forgiving him, well, that's another story."

Leia blinked. "What?"

Isabel seemed to be studying her feet as she swung them back and forth. "You can't forgive him for all the crap he's pulled as Darth Vader. You're not his keeper -- it's not your obligation. As his daughter, you can only forgive him for what he did to you, personally. And you can't start forgiving him until you forgive yourself, first."

"Forgive myself?" The words were an automatic denial. Leia knew it the minute the words were out and wished she could take them back.

The child gently took her hand in both her own. "Leia. You are very much like your father, do you know that?"

Leia wanted to pull back when she heard those words. "He is -- " The denying words wouldn't, couldn't come out. Not as easily as before. Not with all her memories and every fact in place now.

"And you're so afraid to fall. So afraid that you'll end up just like him," Isabel continued quietly, not letting her go.

"Stop."

"And then, despite everything, you still love him. Then, you hate him because you remember everyone who died at his hands, everything that he destroyed. But then, there was your own revenge against him. What you destroyed. Who you killed. How are you any different from him? How do you judge?"

"Stop it!" Leia nearly screamed, finally pulling away.

The memories came back with cruel clarity.

Leia screaming her rage when she saw Sache's dead body - the woman she had first called "Mother" - in Vader's arms.

Leia firing her blaster on the ground, watching Vader burn.

The woman by his side, the one who died in his place.

"But you won that battle, didn't you?" Isabel reminded her gently. "You won over your anger, the darkness that was in you. Just as he did."

"I don't even know her name," Leia whispered. One Imperial who died among the many that the Rebels had killed in battle. Not a soldier, perhaps, but still a part of the enemy she had hated.

But now, Leia needed to know her name. Wanted to know the name of the person who could have lived if things were different. If nothing had ever changed from that last moment high above Coruscant, when Vader had knelt before her and held her in that almost-embrace.

"Then ask him, Leia," Isabel answered simply. "Ask him."

Ask him.

Leia stopped, just under the archway that led into this level of the palace.

She could just see it. Okay, well, I know I've been high and mighty and incredibly self-righteous, but as long as you're here, could you tell me the name of that woman who died when I tried to murder you?

No. No, that wouldn't work, any more than it would have worked for Luke to have brought him back to Endor alive after their battle. She'd imagined that scene. In her imagination, she always just turned her back on him and refused to have anything to do with his apologies, if he dared to make them. According to Luke, she had been subconsciously doing that during the two years he had been gone, refusing to feel his presence or hear his voice. Now, she had no choice. She could not pretend blindness. And Han and Isabel were right -- she felt a huge weight on her chest. She needed to end this.

But so much had happened, so much pain, so much destruction.

If only I had given in and let him hold me that day on Coruscant! How I wanted him to!

If only, if only... what possible good were if-onlies?

If only we could go back. Just for a little while. Even if it's only in our minds. If only we could open that door...

But she could do that. That was in her power.

She slid one foot forward, then the other one, then she was fully inside. It was time. She could do it.

If she didn't, she would lose her mind.

Anakin sat on the windowsill, watching the early sunset, breathing shallowly and trying not to concentrate on the pain in his legs. It had dulled a bit during the day, but, just like the first time, it was going into high gear at night. He'd done worse to people in his time, he supposed, but he was glad he'd never thought of this particular kind of torture.

He didn't really mind though. If the rate of growth kept up, it would stop soon. He'd be an adult again, and that was good. It was very good. He could live with the pain until then.

He looked across the wide hallway, over the rail of the grand staircase. A few levels below, Amidala was speaking with Jelon Laryhi, and he could see her shadow, cast large against the wall. He did not delude himself into believing he could be her husband again, not after everything that had happened, but maybe, someday, she wouldn't look at him as if he were her child.

He smiled to himself, and closed his eyes. That had annoyed him the first time through, too.

"Father?"

Anakin raised his head, but didn't turn toward the voice. It wasn't a voice he'd ever expected to hear using that word, and he was afraid that his face would betray his nervousness. "Hello, Leia," he said.

No answer. He took a deep breath, tried to stand and turn, but the pain in his legs sent him back to the windowsill. Humiliating, to fall in front of Leia, of all people --

A hand on his arm, then she was sitting beside him, holding his hand in both of her own. He looked at her.

She was biting her lip. Her eyes were deep and troubled, as they had been so often lately, and dark circles were etched beneath them. But her hair was loose and free, the way she'd worn it as a child (at least when duties didn't call for something more complex). Something in her heart seemed to have been freed along with it.

Her hands tightened around his, almost painfully. He didn't know what to say to her. She said nothing to him.

She took a deep, shaky breath, then drew his hand up to her face and closed her eyes. Her hand slid to his wrist, tracing the imaginary crease of a glove that no longer existed.

Coruscant. He hadn't known what he wanted to say then either.

Her eyes opened. "Until the sun sets," she said, "nothing has happened since we talked on the landing platform. No war. No questioning. No Alderaan. No... no La'azum." She glanced downward on the last.

The image of Leia on La'azum came into Anakin's mind, cold set to her jaw, firing the blaster at the ground. And Rejuo, falling... had that haunted Leia, as his own murders had haunted him? "Until the sun sets," he agreed, and ran his thumb across her cheekbone. He felt her smile under the heel of his hand, and a tear crept down his index finger.

"Lord Vader," she whispered, and Anakin did not refuse the name. "Did I ever tell you that I was adopted?"

He pulled her to him, held her head against his shoulder, stroked her hair. "No, your Highness. You never told me that. Who were your birth parents?"

"I only know my mother's name. Padmé Naberrie. I was forbidden to say it to you. My... my adoptive mother told me you hurt her."

Anakin held her tighter. Another pain shot through his legs, but he pushed it away. "To my eternal shame, I did. She was my wife."

A loud sob escaped her. "That was all it would have taken for us," she whispered. "May the Maker forgive me."

With an effort, Anakin pushed her far enough away that he could look at her, brush the tears from her cheeks. He kissed her forehead. "There's nothing to be forgiven in that, Leia. Perhaps we should have guessed. But there is no evil in not having done so."

She put her head against his chest, wrapped her arms around him. It was awkward, sitting like this, but he held her as close as he could. He could feel her fingers burying themselves in his hair. "Would you have turned for me?"

"Would you have asked?"

"Would it have made a difference? Would Alderaan still be there, if we'd known?"

"Who would you have been, if we'd known?"

"Who was I, anyway, Father? Who am I?"

He kissed the crown of her head. "You are my daughter, whom I love, and always have."

She cried for a moment more, then leaned back, and took his hands again, and, to his surprise, kissed them. "I wouldn't have asked," she said. "I loved you as you were. I was willing to compromise with it."

"As was I."

She laughed, and wiped her face. "Imagine that. In the end, Luke was less willing to compromise than I was. I'm supposed to be the absolutist in the family."

"And here I imagined we were even." Anakin smiled at her. She was beautiful, perfect. If he could have chosen a daughter from any woman in the galaxy, he would have chosen Leia. Fate had done him many more kindnesses than he deserved.

A bright ray of sun reflected caught the shell of a boat on the river, and they both glanced out at it. The sun was low in the sky, nearly cut off by the horizon. "It's almost sunset," Leia said.

"I know."

They turned back to each other, and Leia looked at their intertwined hands. "I want to forgive you, Father. But what right do I have to forgive the wrongs you did to other people?"

"None at all."

She looked up, surprised. "You agree with me?"

He nodded. "Leia... " Unable to help himself, he leaned forward and kissed each of her cheeks. "Leia, I don't ask your forgiveness. I wouldn't presume to. But I carry the dead with me; they will never leave me -- you don't need to carry them yourself. Their forgiveness is not yours to give, and can never be mine to receive. But their anger is not yours to wield, either. What is between us is what is between us. Let me bear the weight of the dead. I owe that."

She nodded, clasped his hands tighter. "I have my own dead to bear," she said, looking down again.

He reached for her mind, and for the first time, found it before she pulled it away from him. He saw himself on La'azum, the fire consuming his cloak. Then, in the corner of the vision, the wall collapsing. The insignificant creature who fell beneath it. Then the horrible knowledge, when she realized. He put a finger under her chin and raised her face. "Her name was Rejuo," he said.

"Thank you. I was... I've been... afraid."

"Afraid?"

"I knew what I had done. And why. Father, I... " She held his hand tighter. He hadn't thought she could, but she did. He sqeezed back. "I was trying to kill you. I mean, really trying. Not just over the war. Maybe not over the war at all."

"I know that, Leia. I knew it then."

"I wanted to burn you because I knew you were afraid of fire."

Anakin looked down at their intertwined fingers. She wasn't telling him anything he hadn't at least suspected. He had put her in a small cell because he knew she hated being confined. "We can hurt those we know best most of all," he said. "And that brief moment of anger, Leia, was more than balanced by the horrors I inflicted on you in retaliation. And the most important thing you need to remember, Leia, is that you came back." He pulled their hands up and kissed her fingers. "You came back, and you never fell again. I know what you're afraid of. I know it because I live with it every day now, and I have a lot more reason for the fear than you do. But I will not let you fall. I will never let you fall."

A strange shadow passed over her face, followed by a peaceful light. She leaned toward him, looked at his eyes. "It was you," she whispered, without explaining herself. "It was always you."

He drew her back to him; he didn't know what she meant, and didn't care, except that whatever it was seemed to make her happy and at peace. The pain was beginning again in his legs, and now his arms were joining the chorus of it. He paid them no heed, and held his daughter to his heart. "I loved you as you were," he said. "And as you are."

She nodded against his chest, then pulled away, still holding his hands.

The sun dipped beneath the horizon.

"Sunset," she whispered. Her fingers flexed. "I can't seem to let go."

"I'm not in any hurry."

"Maybe we could talk about -- "

He never heard what she meant to ask.

In the courtyard, far below, a statue came toppling down, marble shattering against the flagstones.

She let go without any problem this time, and ran for the stairs. He willed himself to ignore the pain, and followed her.

Amidala was out of the front arch in seconds after the statue fell across it, climbing its bronzed sides and reaching the top less than a minute after the Ka'alyan arrived. "What are you doing?"

A rock sailed through the air, and glanced off the statue's arm. A second whistled past her ear.

The chant of "Justice! Justice!" began somewhere in the mob, and somewhere else, the chant was "Give us Tashin!"

Another rock came flying, but it never reached her. A green light lit up the night sky, flying in a boomerang arc from a second story window. It hit the rock cleanly, then flew back. She looked up, and saw the small figure leap from the window, the still lit saber in his hands, black cloaks flying around him. He landed neatly beside her -- no small feat if his legs were hurting as badly as they had been all day -- finding his footing on the uneven surface of the statue without even trying. To her astonishment, he handed her the lightsaber. She let the blade disappear.

"Get inside, Am."

"No!"

"There is no way to win this. They want you dead, but if you strike out at them, you will be painted as the villain. Get inside."

She should have known what was coming, but too much had happened, and she was too tired to think. The statue suddenly rocked, and she was thrown back toward the palace. Her first, confused thought, was a dull anger that Ani would simply make the decision for her, then she saw that he had lost his footing as well, and was falling the other way. The Ka'alyan were at the bottom of the statue, pushing it. They grabbed him. She heard the shouts of "Murderer!"

And she still had his lightsaber.

All this, in less than a minute.

Leia reached the bottom of the stairs, her hair streaming out behind her, blaster drawn. Han was coming in from another side.

Leia looked around the hall. "Where is Father?"

"Out there."

She listened to the chanting, then shook her head. "I don't think so." She headed for the door. Amidala followed; she didn't have time to look for a blaster, so Ani's lightsaber would have to do. She had used one before, much to the displeasure of the Council, and thought she remembered how. Han was a step behind.

They ran around the end of the statue -- a more practical approach -- only to be met by twenty Ka'alyan who formed a silent line with their ancient steel swords. Beyond them, Amidala could see Ani. He was kneeling quietly in the center of a circle, not flinching at stones that were being thrown at him. He might have been using the Force to deflect some of them, but Amidala couldn't tell; the stone-throwers might simply have bad aim.

She raised the lightsaber and charged at the line. One of the swords was raised, and to her shock, it met and pushed back the lightsaber blade. She pushed forward again.

"Amidala, stay back!"

"Ani!" She screamed his name, not really knowing what she meant to say. What she meant to do was easy enough, though. She let the blade of the lightsaber slip into the hilt, and she threw it, with all her strength, over the line. She saw it land at his feet. He did not pick it up.

Beside her, she could see Leia and Han struggling against the line as well. Either Leia had seen that the swords could repel laser, or she realized that as Chancellor, she simply could not fire here; she was was simply trying to find a way around them. Han was being a bit rougher, but also not firing.

Suddenly, there was a commotion near the back of the mob, and Amidala saw a second light coming up from the river. Luke rose into the air, jumping about five yards over the heads of the startled rioters. He reached Ani's side.

Amidala allowed herself a moment of hope.

Luke landed in the center of the circle that had been made around his father. The mob seemed unwilling to get any closer than ten feet... as if that miniscule distance would have been enough to stop him if he decided to retaliate.

Which was a big "if."

"Father!"

He looked up. There was a thin line of blood on his face, coming from a cut on his forehead. "I want no blood on your hands on my account, Luke. Go inside."

"Not alone." A stone glanced off his arm. He deflected a second one with the Force, and a third that was coming at Father.

There was a commotion near the palace, and Luke glanced up involuntarily. A line had broken, and Leia was running toward them, Han and Mother following. They came into the circle, taking up points around Father, facing out toward the mob. Mother was unarmed, and Han and Leia had both holstered their blasters. Luke took the hint, and turned off his lightsaber. He did his best to turn away the flying rocks... though he noticed that they were coming more slowly. He could feel a confusion growing in the crowd, as they realized that they were stoning unarmed people against whom they had no particular grudge.

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement near the base of the statue. Someone was trying to get into the palace. But he couldn't leave to follow right now.

A burst of laser fire lit the sky -- just flare, but the crowd fell silent. Luke looked beyond them. In the darkness at the edge of the pavilion, new shapes had come into view. The Theed guard... he hadn't paid any attention to Lando's local politics, and he had only the vaguest idea that such a group had been organized. But they were there: Gungans, Alderaanians, and Naboo, all in the traditional battle gear of Naboo, surrounding the courtyard, armed and waiting for orders.

Lando Calrissian stepped forward. "You are disturbing the peace of the city. As Prince of Theed, I order you to disperse."

"You have no authority over us!" a Ka'alya youth shouted, but with little conviction.

Lando looked at him pointedly, and the closest guard members moved in.

"There will be no arrests in the next five minutes," Lando said. "And no recriminations. But anyone who is still here at six minutes will be in custody of the city of Theed, and will face serious charges."

At first, Luke didn't think it was going to work, but he could feel the strange confusion in the crowd again -- they were not bad people; they had been hurt, and they wanted to stop hurting, and they had allowed their anger to rule them... but they were feeling...

He couldn't put a finger on it.

"Dishonor," Father said quietly, and Luke knew it was the right word. They had sought justice and honor, and found themselves bullying an adolescent boy and his unarmed family.

They dispersed.

A few stayed, and Lando was as good as his word -- they were arrested, and taken into custody. Which meant they were housed in the palace... Luke was beginning to understand the practical necessity of a jail, though he didn't much like the idea of spending resources on one.

But the riot, such as it was, appeared to be over.

Father was still on his knees, his face pressed against his hands. His hood had fallen away, and Luke could see blood in his blonde hair. Mother noticed it at the same moment, and knelt beside him, using the wide sleeve of her gown to dab at the wound.

To Luke's surprise, he reached over to her, wrapped his arms around her neck, and kissed her cheek. Mother also looked surprised by it, and pulled away a second slower than she normally would have. "Do not endanger yourself for me," Father whispered. "I couldn't live if something happened to you."

Mother's voice was cross. "In that case, Anakin, you'll have to fight your own battles, because I will not allow you to commit suicide again."

He looked at her sharply, but did not argue with the characterization.

Leia bent to him. Luke could see a change in her face, and was not surprised when she touched Father's arm gently and smiled. "I'm not going to let you leave me again, either."

Luke was trying to think of a way to join the conversation (and Han was trying to look in any other direction), when a high pitched scream came from the prison wing of the palace.

Luke paled, remembering the motion under the statue.

Tashin.

He picked up his lightsaber -- this time, he heard Father do the same -- and ran inside.

The sight of his sister's arms linked with their father's as he helped him hobble inside comforted Luke. He reached for Anakin's other arm when they stumbled in, guiding him as gently as possible, letting his father's blood trickle down his sleeve.

His eyes locked with Leia's, and he recognized the look in them--the wild fright he saw in them when he had said good-bye to her on Endor, and he realized: she felt that same fright for their father now.

He'll be all right, he whispered to her through the Force. He's got us--all of us.

She gave him a subtle nod--probably unnoticed by their parents--and he saw her swallow hard as another deafening scream tore into the air.

"It's coming from the prison wing," Leia whispered. "Luke-"

Before she could even finish, he had already turned towards the sound instinctively. Something was there, all right.

"Stay here," he said, then turned to face her again and shook his head before she had a chance to protest. "Please," he told her, "stay here with them. I'll take care of it."

"Luke!"

He had already ducked out into the hall when her voice pleaded after him...

Justice had to be done.

They had wasted their time on foolish words, on the twisted and circuitous routes of galactic law. It had gotten them nothing in the end.

Now it was their turn.

Facio L'zari cocked his head,listening to the Dead. It was his gift that he could hear their voices and know their wisdom and strength, born out of the true power forged out of mind and spirit.

He could hear them singing now. A dark and sorrowful dirge begging justice, restitution -- a plea that their lives had not ended in vain.

Justice, L'zari...give us justice...

The others looked at him, waiting for his command. He, in turn, waited for the Dead to show him the way. The singing in his mind grew louder, fiercer, giving him the knowledge.

He nodded at the others and ran silently through the halls, sure of his quarry. They turned a corner, entering a corridor that didn't seem any different from the others. But the Dead told L'zari all he had to know.

He was standing there all alone except for a little girl in his arms.

Kyrys Tashin.

The Dead had arrived.

Tashin had come out of his rooms when the riot began, his first concern only for his daughter. He'd been startled to realize that his guards had disappeared when he stepped out the doors. The corridor was completely empty.

"Papa!" Isabel suddenly appeared from the corner and came running to him.

Tashin picked up his daughter. "Isabel, where have you -- ?" His voice failed as the Dead slowly appeared in the corridor, surrounding them. They chose to appear in the guises of how they died, gaunt from hunger and thirst, their wounds fresh and bleeding still.

"What do you want?" Tashin said hoarsely. "Tell me and I will give it to you gladly. But do not hurt my child! She is innocent!"

And what of my child? Was he not innocent as well?, one of the Dead demanded, a pale young mother who cradled her small son. The child looked blankly at both of them, one small hand on the large wound on his throat.

Your life, Kyrys Tashin for ours, spoke another young woman, her eyes bright with a mad and unholy joy. That is what we seek in payment. Honor demands it.

"No!" Isabel cried, struggling against her father. "Leave my father alone! You cannot have him!"

The woman smiled. We shall see, Witch Child.

The assassins came rushing at them.

Isabel screamed.

Too late. Too late!

The voice echoed in Luke's mind, full of malicious satisfaction. He didn't know where it had come from but he understood the moment he had reached the corridor leading to Tashin's rooms.

Just behind him came the others with Father in the lead, adrenaline shaking off his momentary weakness.

"No," he heard Father whisper as they all saw Tashin take up a protective position in front of his daughter as an assasin struck down at him with his sword. To their amazement, they saw him catch the blade in his bare hands. His tactic failed, however and the assasin struck again. He fell, his blood spraying like fine red mist over Isabel's face.

Isabel screamed again, a cry of anguish and overwhelming loss.

It might have been Luke's imagination but he could have sworn that the shadows along the corridor seemed to be alive, taking on human shape, watching the events taking place.

Too late! Too late! The voice chanted again, sounding like a demented child.

And then, the shadows lifted and Luke could finally see.

All of them, men, women and children, bearing the wounds that had brought their end.

The Dead.

And then, he had just enough time to bring up his lightsaber as the first assasin attacked.

Luke hadn't had time to wonder how his opponent's metal sword could hold its own against his lightsaber. The Ka'alya swordsman was good, keeping Luke constantly on the defensive, every swing and thrust coming at him with lightning, lethal swiftness. Finally, Luke saw an opening and took it, thrusting through his opponent's stomach. The man fell dead without even a whimper, only to be replaced by another.

"Aw, shoot!" Han cursed as his own blaster fire was deflected by another Ka'alya assassin. "These guys fight like Jedi!"

"No, Solo," Father hissed, barely dodging a blow that would have taken his head clean off. "They fight like Sith." He went down low and struck at the man's legs. He too fell silently.

And it was true. Luke could feel the savage, fiery energies of the Dark Side of the Force, fed by the Dead's pain and hatred, nourished by their fury. It lent the swordsmen a strength and speed that easily matched their own.

So far, the swordsmen had only gone after him, Han and Father, leaving Leia and Mother in the clear. Luke could hear Leia calling the rest of the Palace guard and he briefly wondered why there weren't any sign of Tashin's guards. He saw Mother making a move towards Isabel but stopped as one of the Ka'alyan swordsmen stepped in front of the little girl.

"This is not justice," she said clearly, her hands spread in an open gesture. "The child is innocent of her father's crimes. Let her go."

"Our children too were innocent," said the swordsman, bringing up his sword. "That did not protect them from filth like you!"

"We too have suffered under the Empire," Leia spoke up now, also making the same open gesture as Mother, keeping her hands away from her blaster. "You are not alone."

"You lie, daughter of Vader," hissed the swordsman. "You are of one blood with him. You too shall die. All of Vader's clan shall die."

"No," answered Father grimly. "This is my punishment to bear. Not my family's."

The swordsman shook his head. "All of you will pay the price. Honor demands it."

He brought his sword down on Isabel's unprotected head.

All of them were already moving to stop him.

Amidala raised her blaster to fire but jumped back as a swordsman slashed at her, barely missing her throat. Han swore and fired off a shot but it was bounced back at him by another Ka'alya, grazing his shoulder. Leia was luckier, she managed to dodge the blaster bolt that was bounced back to her.

My fault. My fault. A part of Anakin's mind was screaming its own litany of guilt and recriminations over and over again. He shut it out.

Anakin could hear the Dead howling with joy and shut that out too.

No. Ignoring the protests of his mind and his body, Anakin focused on saving the small child who was about to be punished for the sins she never committed. He met Luke's eyes as they desperately fought their way through the swordsmen to get to Isabel. A sort of silent agreement passed between father and son and Luke nodded. The young Jedi swung his lightsaber, clearing the way for Anakin, who was smaller and more agile in his boy's body.

Anakin dodged another fatal blow and dove low, just as the swordsman standing over Isabel brought his sword down --

And met cold, hard steel.

"Honor does not demand this," said a voice in soft, icy tones that were completely unrecognizable from the high, childish treble of the child they knew.

The scene looked absurd, the small girl who'd somehow picked up one of the dead assassins' fallen swords, holding it high above her head to block the blow. But the tiny hands gripping the hilt did not waver and for one brief instant, Anakin saw someone else in place of the child -- an older version of Isabel, hovering between childhood and womanhood.

With surprising strength, Isabel pushed the assassin's sword back and swung at his belly. He jumped back just in time to avoid being disembowelled but there was a long ragged tear on his tunic, revealing a long thin line of blood.

Isabel screamed again, a banshee howl of rage and fury, releasing a dark power to match the Dead's own. Anakin shuddered, sensing in it a terrifying promise of retribution, remembering all too well the utter destruction this power could wield.

The assassins slowly began to move away from them and Anakin could see the Dead moving with them, their pale faces wary and watchful. The two groups stood separate on either side of the corridor, Tashin's limp form between them, along with Anakin, Isabel and the swordsman who nearly struck her down. He stared at the child, eyes wide with...recognition?

"Keysha'li," he whispered. "Keysha'li Isobel."

The Dead hissed in anger.

Isabel raised the sword in her hands in challenge. Her eyes were a cold, frosty gray, still caught in the grip of her anger. And Anakin found the scene all too painfully familiar and he pushed away the wave of dark memories in its wake.

"Isabel," he called her. "Isabel, whatever you are planning to do, don't -- " His voice broke and he swallowed down a curse. "Don't do it."

Isabel blinked, as if trying to wake from a deep sleep. But her hands still held the sword tightly. "Ani?" The voice had returned to its high, childish tones.

"Please, Isabel," Anakin answered, knowing he had to reach her, pull her back. "Stop it now. It's hard, I know, not to make them hurt as you do. But you don't have to do this."

Beside her, Tashin groaned, painfully. He was still alive.

Anakin found himself sighing in relief. "Your father lives."

"Papa?" The sword clattered down on the floor. Isabel went to kneel by her father, sobbing.

Anakin looked at the remaining Ka'alyan swordsmen, at the man who was their leader, and at the Dead.

"Leave," he said quietly.

"For now," the swordsman answered.

And then, just like that, they were gone.

Amidala crossed over to pick Isabel up, wipe her face clean of blood. Whatever else she had been before, whoever she had been, Isabel was a child again, a badly frightened little girl.

"Papa?" she said piteously.

"Isabel..." Tashin slurred. "All right?"

Anakin was already kneeling beside him. The wounds were bad -- they should have been fatal -- but it seemed to him that they were...healing?

"It's her, Father," Luke murmured, looking at Isabel. "She's keeping him with us."

Anakin shook his head, remembering what Isabel had become a few short minutes before. "She's doing that and more."

The child held out her arms for her father. "Papa!"

"He's okay," said Amidala reassuringly. "We'll get him to the medi-droids and have him all fixed up, all right?"

"Okay." She sniffled.

"The guards," murmured Leia, looking down the corridor. "Where are they?"

"That's what I'd like to find out," answered Han grimly. That was when they heard the shouts and the sound of running from around the corner.

The Palace guards had finally arrived.

Chapter Eleven: Healing Hands

"Astaya!"

The girl ran into the museum, hair twisted by the wind, eyes wide in the nightglow. Jelon turned away from the tapestry he'd been studying, and fell to his knees to face her -- it was a common Ka'alya practice when speaking to children (provided that the conversation was not one of discipline, in which case the parent stood tall), to help create the sense of equality, and he did it without thinking about it -- then took her arms. "What is it, child?"

"The traet-ami'rit," she said, and he knew who she meant despite never hearing the name before -- the Dead-talkers. "They're throwing rocks," she said in the Ka'alya language, slipping into her native tongue in her hurry, "and saying awful things, and I think some of them took swords inside." The world she chose for swords -- tiranit -- filled Jelon with a deep dread. Not merely war swords. Tiranit were the same ceremonial swords that Nizy Lummuo had carried to Ihivizi. If the Dead-talkers were carrying tiranit, they were waging a religious war... and they had already rejected his counsel in the matter.

"You stay here."

The little girl did as she was told -- she was from one of the older families, which did not believe in defying the astaya -- and Jelon ran toward the palace, wishing he was younger and faster.

By the time he got there, it was over. People were regathering after leaving the plaza, grouped on the riverbank and looking cold and miserable. He went among them, talked to the few who were able to explain what had happened, then, climbed up onto a rock and held up his hands for their attention. He couldn't decide what to say to them, but he had to say something. Quickly. If he did not create a rallying point the traet-ami'rit would. "Have you all tasted vengeance tonight?" he finally asked, cold and quiet.

Someone cried out wordlessly.

Jelon tried to soften his tone, and he spoke in Ka'alya. "M'tra, b'traet nemitev," Of death, the Dead know. "Mar anitru s'div," But we live.

He had their attention, and they were looking up at him. He would have preferred to come down from the rock, to face them eye to eye rather than as a disciplining parent, but he had a job to do. He looked from one to the next.

"What do the living know?" he asked in Ka'alya. "The living know how fragile life is, how much it needs to be nurtured and protected. The Dead have forgotten."

"Shall we forget the Dead?" someone called in the crowd. It was not a challenge, just a pained, heartfelt cry.

"We shall not. They will be remembered with honor. But what they wish... it is not honor, but vengeance. And you felt tonight -- I see it in your troubled faces -- that vengeance and honor are not the same. We are free of the Empire and the Sith at last. Will we use our freedom to destroy all our former enemies without mercy? Or will we use it to create a new world, a world of plenty? To teach those things we value to the galaxy, and to learn the things our neighbors have to teach us?"

"They have nothing to teach us!"

Jelon looked up. A young Ka'alya man carrying one of the tiranit was standing on an upturned flagstone. One of the Dead-talkers. Jelon's heart sank.

The Dead-talker raised his sword. "The astaya would have you believe that the past no longer matters. That a man can commit the most vile of crimes, and yet be allowed to go on with an 'I'm sorry,' like a child who broke his mama's favorite vase."

"Anakin Skywalker gave his life for his crimes once already!"

"To save his bloodline. He cared nothing for the rest of the galaxy! Now, we'll take them all away. We'll wipe them from history, as our people were wiped from history at Ihivizi."

Jelon raised his own hand, which bore the ancient, violet-stoned ring of the astayas (there were tales of it as the original "seeing-stone," but Jelon had never seen anything but the work of a skilled jeweller in it). It flashed in the glow of the streetlight. "Listen to yourself! You would become as they were, by your own admission!"

This was met only with a derisive laugh. "It is not murder to cure the plague."

The cold tone crept back into Jelon's voice, and he used it like a knife. "The family is not a plague, and what you suggest is a crime by Republic law... and by Ka'alya law." He raised his head, and spread his arms wide. He didn't want to do what had to be done. For a thousand years, the Ka'alyan had lived at peace with each other. But this could not be allowed to continue. His role as Astaya required him to take this stand. "All who follow the Dead's path are cut off from our people. Should they return to the Living, we will welcome them with open arms, but they must return in truth. So speaks the Astaya."

For a moment, there was only silence. Then, some movement. A few people were moving toward the back of the crowd, toward the Dead-talker.

But not many. Twelve, maybe fifteen, all told, of the group by the river. Jelon didn't know how many he might lose at home. He would have to call Rashara and have her...

No. He would wait until he returned. It would put Rashara in danger.

He felt a tug at the bottom of his robe, and looked down, expecting to see a small child. Instead, it was a middle-aged woman. She was crying. A rock was still clutched in one hand. "I return," she whispered. "I return in truth."

Jelon Laryhi stepped down, and knelt beside her. "I welcome you, child."

The others began to come.

He welcomed them as well.

He only saw a few more slip away into the night.

Han took Leia's hand, and pulled her to her feet. She stretched her legs and gave him a smile. Damn, he thought. She's back. I've missed her. He kissed her hand.

The palace guard was arriving, looking flustered and nervous, but Han could tell by their faces that they had been neither negligent nor corrupt.

"We went outside when the noise started -- "

" -- we thought we were needed there -- "

" -- we heard someone come in, but we thought they went -- "

Han threw his hands in the air and shook his head. "Is there somebody around here I can yell at without feeling guilty about it?"

Leia laughed. "I don't think so, your Generalship."

"Just perfect."

A groan beside him reminded him that this hadn't ended without consequence. Luke was already bending over Kyrys Tashin, picking him up. The little girl Isabel (Han decided not to think about what she'd been doing a minute ago, with that sword) took her father's hand.

"Come on," Luke said, looking over his shoulder at Amidala. "Let's get them to the surgeon droids."

Amidala nodded. Keeping her sleeve pressed against a nasty cut on Anakin's head, she led him out, following Luke and the Tashins.

Leia looked after them, but stayed in the hallway. She turned to the guards. "There is no blame -- we've been remiss in guarding the palace -- but in the future, you'll need to stay your post, whatever happens outside. It's obvious that the verdict is not going over well. And it's going to get worse."

Murmurs of Yes, ma'am and muttered apologies, but neither resistance to her commands nor shamefacedness. Han loved watching the way people responded to her when she was on a roll. Even at her low points, she never questioned her own authority, and -- with one noticeable exception who would remain unnamed, since that had been a long time ago anyway and Han had never been good at accepting anyone's authority -- no one else questioned it either.

"Now that Tashin has gone to the medical area, I need you to fan out through the palace," she said. "My brother and father are both with Tashin right now, and he and Isabel should be well-protected. I want to make sure that none of the assassins is still in range, and shore up security around the construction areas. I'll speak to the Prince about getting the open walls closed soon."

The captain of the guard saluted her, then delegated the sweep of the palace through the troop. They fanned out into the palace.

"Welcome back," Han said.

She smiled and nodded. "It's good to be here." She started to push her hair behind her ear, but her fingers tangled in it. "Oh, yeah," she said. "That's why I started wearing it up. It might take me awhile to brush this out tonight."

A strange thought crossed Han's mind -- he thought he might like to brush it out himself. But then again, he'd probably botch it and she'd end up bald. Maybe better to let her do it. "Come on," he said, "let's go check on your family."

She nodded, and they left the passage to the wind.

Anakin had bumped his head, but Amidala had seen him in worse shape physically after a practice duel. She would take care of him herself, as she always had. Tashin was more seriously injured; the surgeon droids were working on him diligently while Luke held Isabel's hand and spoke soft and calming words to her.

The strangely jaunty phrase, We did all right, didn't we? came into her mind, and she looked over to see Anakin giving her a grin. He nodded across at Luke.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Come on. We need to get that cut cleaned up."

She led him to a small examining table, and took a sterile cloth out of a med-kit. She began dabbing at the cut. It might need a little bacta, but it was nothing serious. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"A little twisted ankle from falling off that statue, and I'm glad I won't have to be sitting on a hard throne for hours tomorrow, but nothing serious."

He looked away from her, as much as was possible while she was fussing at his forehead. "I... I apologize for that... indiscretion outside."

It took her a minute to figure out what he meant, then she remembered his arms suddenly being around her and his lips pressing desperately against her cheek. It had been a child's kiss to her -- a frightened child after a bad nightmare. But she should have realized that it had been something different to him. "It's all right, Ani," she said. "I wasn't angry. But -- "

"But it was still improper."

"Yes."

"Am, if I keep growing..."

She shook her head, then smiled ruefully. "Don't ask me that now, Ani."

His voice was carefully controlled, and he was modulating it at a slightly lower pitch. "As you wish."

"I didn't say never ask it, Ani. I'm no longer fourteen and unable to think of the future as being essentially different from the present. But the present is what it is."

"I understand."

"And in the future... I'll be so old." She smiled. "You'll grow up again, and I'll be a decrepit old crone..."

"I will love every wrinkle on your face, and wish that I was old with you."

He said it with such passionate sincerity that for a moment, she could see them together, old and happy. Possibly pleasantly retired in a house on the river. For good measure, she imagined some children... grandchildren, of course... playing in the parlour.

"I like that," he said. "But we should get them a pet."

Their eyes met, and his smile was sad. She felt it mirrored in her own face. "How I would have liked to grow old with you, Ani," she said. "But it's too late."

"Yes, I know."

"We need to talk about what happened out there."

He nodded. "I'll find a way to deal with the Ka'alyan."

"They are determined to -- " But she couldn't finish the thought. She'd managed to put aside the scene in the hall. "Ani, they want the twins dead. They will keep coming."

"I'll fix it."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

"You don't know, because you can't fix it. No matter what you do, they will turn it around and create a reason to hate you from it. We need to think more practically."

"Luke and Leia are both capable of defending themselves if necessary, though it is my sincere hope that they won't need to do so."

"Do you suppose the astaya would help us?"

"I don't imagine our friends from the hallway would listen to him. But the sense I got from him is that he would be willing to try."

"Ani, how do we fix this?"

Anakin looked across at Isabel, now becoming calmer, almost relaxed as the droids stabilized her father's condition. "I don't know," he said. "But I think she might."

Lersi Gerov had brought her cam-droid into the streets of Valshir, expecting some kind of riot to follow the sentencing of Kyrys Tashin. There were, indeed, several protests going on, one of which had burned Queen Amidala in effigy, but so far, the rioting hadn't occurred. Probably they couldn't think of any good reason to tear down Valshir again, so soon after rebuilding it from the war.

She got footage of the protests, and dutifully reported on them -- it was what people watching would be most interested in -- but her heart went out in another direction. She saw older people, and some younger people, wandering the streets looking dazed and hurt. An old woman came wandering past a protest, eyes glazed. Lersi turned off the cam-droid and tethered it into the case she carried on her back, then went over to help.

She led the woman to a small bench.

"Are you all right?" she asked in Basic. (She'd thought about asking in Ka'alya, but didn't want to spend time establishing that "Are you all right" was one of only five phrases she knew how to say in that language.)

The woman nodded, but said. "They're all gone, now."

"Who's gone?"

"All the young ones, the venyatan..."

Lersi searched her mind, came up with the word kavenya, and understood that the woman had something about fire, which was the venya part, because ka had something to do with blood, because the word Ka'alya meant something like "One with freedom in his blood/veins/lifeforce," and the alya part meant freedom. She satisfied herself with translating venyatan as "Fiery Ones," though she suspected it had other nuances. The old woman was mourning the hotheads who had gone off to their deaths. Lersi felt awful for her. "Is there some way I can help you, Ma'am?"

A gnarled old hand patted hers. "No. You're a good girl, and I thank you for putting your camera away -- I watch Eye, and I know who you are -- but this... this storm must pass."

"Do you think it will pass?"

"It always does," she said. "And you go ahead and quote me on that. It always comes past. We've had our tempers before. And the storm passes. It always passes." She sniffed. "But there's a lot of burning first. There's always burning..." Her voice and her eyes drifted again. "I think maybe I won't see the end of this storm."

"I'll get you home safe, Ma'am," Lersi said.

The woman smiled a ghost smile at her, but let herself be pulled up. "I'm not going home, girl," she said. "I will go to the Tr'astari'shal. I will hear the visions of this. I will hear the end."

"The astaya is still on Naboo -- "

"Rashara sees well. She saw Tashin coming back before the astaya did. They see many things." The woman started leading Lersi toward the edge of town. It was all right; Lersi was still staying at the Tr'astari'shal anyway. "They used to see more. They say that the First Astaya saw all the way to the end of our troubles." She surprised Lersi by snorting derisively. "Of course, there's never an end, is there? He saw the end of them -- " She made a warding sign with her fingers, and noted Lersi's surprised look. "Oh, yes, the old folk knew about the Sith and the bad room before all this came about. It was all right. We'd made our peace with it. And my mother was just a slip of a girl when the last one came here, anyway. But as I was saying, he saw the end for them. But the rest of us are still here. What is good, when evil becomes slippery and shapeless?"

Lersi expected her to go on. Instead, she simply waited, and Lersi was finally forced to simply change the subject. "It's quite a distance to the Tr'astari'shal," she said.

"Oh, I know. You don't need to see me there."

"No, I'm going anyway. I just thought that it might be easier for us to talk if I knew your name."

The old woman laughed. "Oh, of course, of course. I know your name, but why should you know mine? Just an old Ka'alya woman."

"Ma'am?"

"I'm sorry. No, you have no reason to know me, child. I've spent my life here, and never done anything worthy of note. If you wish my name, it is Maisha. If you had not wished it, it would have been Z'mai-tashay Talyasha, but you did wish it, so you need only remember Maisha."

"I thank you for that, Maisha."

Maisha gave her a smile, and Lersi felt better. She felt more productive leading one old woman to the Tr'astari'shal than she had felt broadcasting to half the known galaxy an hour ago.

"You see?" Maisha said, pointing to a large building at the side of the road. "The way that great red sign is painted on the side? The winged one?"

Lersi nodded. She'd seen the symbol and asked Rashara about it. "It's a representation of the rising of Justice... of the Judge god, right?"

"That's what the books will tell you. But I never learned that until late in school. That sign, it's been around a very long time. It is to ward off the dark things." She opened her hand, and Lersi saw with no surprise that the sign had been tatooed into her hand. "No one believes it works, not really. But it's a comfort to us."

"If you don't believe in it, why is it a comfort?"

"Ah, that is an interesting question, isn't it?" Maisha paused. "We do not believe that the sign protects us from somebody else coming to bring darkness. But perhaps we bear the sign to remind ourselves not to carry the darkness ourselves." The bitterness crept back into her voice. "Then again, Nizy had it as clear as I do. Seems not to have reminded her of much."

Maisha began moving again, down the road toward the Tr'astari'shal. There were many others on this road. Not enough to be called a pilgrimmage, but enough to need to keep moving. Valshir, it seemed, was seeking Sanctuary.

"Over there," Maisha said, pointing vague at a withered tree that jutted up from the dry plain, "that was where Nizy led them from, after her fight with the astaya. They followed the road along the river to the mountains."

Lersi could only barely see the river from here, but she could see the depression in the dust, and knew that once, it would have been a clearer view. "Were you with them?"

"Ah, the reporter does ask the right questions. You should ask more of the right questions on Eye, child. The ones you ask there don't go deep."

The thought of asking deep questions for Eye made Lersi almost laugh. She'd covered hard news for them, but they only wanted the surface, sensational aspects. "Were you with them?" she repeated.

"Yes," Maisha said. "At the beginning. I left with them. I saw the Empire burn Valshir. Saw Lord Vader execute the martyrs. It was an awful thing, though he did not make them suffer. Don't let anyone tell you he made them suffer."

"I won't."

"I saw it, and I couldn't stand it. I was... oh, I am younger than I look. Nizy Lummuo was a classmate of mine when we were children. I followed. Yes. I followed..."

Her voice trailed off, and she looked toward the dry riverbed.

Lersi didn't push her, simply kept a hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling.

"It rained a lot then," she said, as if she hadn't stopped talking. "It rained and we were cold. But Nizy kept the fires in our minds. Her own most of all."

"Was she insane?"

"We all were. So was the Empire. So were the Rebels. The whole galaxy was living in a nightmare, and nightmares are not sane places to live. But Nizy was, perhaps, a bit crazier than most."

"Why weren't you at Ihivizi?"

"I'd almost gotten there. I could see it, up there on the mountain, the river springing down from it. It looked cold. I was hungry. And for a split second, I woke up from the nightmare. I just wanted to go home."

"So you stayed awake?"

"No. But I never found the same nightmare again. You know how it is when you wake up from a dream... you can't just call it back."

Lersi nodded.

"The new nightmare was different. In it, my whole world was torn right through its soul, and there was no one to blame for it, and no one to fix it. Can you fix it, Miss Gerov?"

"I wish I could."

"As do I." They'd reached to door of the Tr'astari'shal. "I couldn't stay with Nizy, because she'd begun to seem more demented than the Empire. I couldn't go to the Empire, because I am Ka'alya, and I have standards. I couldn't really go home, because all I loved had been burned in the war. So I came here. And I listened to visions. And I keep hoping one will come, to tell about healing." She opened her hand again, and showed the rising of Justice. "And maybe one will come that will make me believe in this again."

Maisha disappeared into the crowd, leaving Lersi stunned in the doorway.

After awhile, she went inside.

Her touch on his forehead was deft and gentle, and Anakin briefly -- and ridiculously -- wished the cut was a little bigger. Just to keep those hands there a moment longer.

She finished cleaning the wound, treated it with bacta, and heat-sutured it, then, to his surprise, began wiping the blood out of his hair with the sterile cloth. He wanted it to continue indefinitely, but he also thought it might drive him crazy very quickly, so he took her wrist to pull her hand away, then took the cloth himself.

She didn't need it explained. She just pulled herself up onto the examining table beside him. He wondered if her eyes were focusing on the same pattern in the marble wall across the room. He thought they might be. He put the cloth to his head and wiped away a bit of the grime (with a grimace; he'd developed a loathing for being dirty and he just couldn't shake it... except for when it had been good, honest engine grease... ).

"What was it you said out there, Ani? To Isabel, I mean?"

"Keysha'li," he said. "I'll let her explain it. I believe she knows the word."

He chanced a sideways glance. Amidala was chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip, her eyes faraway. Thirty years ago, he thought, this was a moment that he would have tugged on that stray shank of dark hair beside her ear, then leaned around to kiss her nose. A more serious kiss might or might not have followed, but it was the first one that would have made her smile. It would still make her smile, but the smile would have that unbearbly sad taste to it, and her eyes would hold pity, not longing.

He looked down at his new body and hated it. He was willing to punish it with the agony of the growing pains -- which responded eagerly to the thought by twisting down his legs like poison spiders weaving acid webs -- if he could just get back the body that was his own.

He let out his breath explosively. He was being given a chance that no one had any right to ask for, and yet he dared to complain about it... no wonder Palpatine had seen early on that he was corrupt, that he was...

"Young and foolish," a voice said at the door. "But only that, padawan. Reckless wishes are a symptom of youth. Do not blame them for later events." Obi-Wan floated there, unnoticed by anyone else, though Anakin thought Luke sensed something. The old Master grinned. "Oh, don't worry, you're not going crazy. I simply have nothing to say to Luke at the moment. Come, padawan."

Anakin looked at Amidala, then settled for patting her hand. "I have to leave."

"Why?"

He grinned. "Three guesses."

"Kenobi."

"I knew you wouldn't need all three."

"Someday, someone else will interrupt us, and I'll be very surprised."

But she offered no resistance. Anakin followed Obi-Wan out into the dark hall, onto a balcony that hadn't yet been repaired. The blue edges of his form didn't light the night around him at all. "Do you need something of me, Obi-Wan?" he asked.

"Need? No. Nor is there anything I particularly want from you. But I feel I should... "

He faded into silence. Anakin had never been able to abide silence for long periods of time, so he prodded, "You feel you should what?"

"At this rate of growth, the clone will exhaust itself rapidly. It is the will of the Force -- or more properly, the will of the Jedi -- that you remove yourself from the trials of the living. You may enjoy your family, Anakin, for whatever time you have been given. But you must return to the Force."

"You came to proclaim a death sentence on me?" Anakin didn't mean to sound quarrelsome; if anyone had a right to do such a thing, it was Kenobi.

"No!" Kenobi's voice was adamant, and for a moment, his image shifted... from tired, wise old man to fiery padawan in an instant, then back again. His voice was kind. "Anakin, this situation is unusual... and unnatural. We certainly aren't causing the degeneration of the clone, or suggesting that you destroy it now that you've inhabited it -- though it has been suggested that you ought to have destroyed it before you allowed Luke to talk you into it."

Anakin nodded. That was the Jedi Council he remembered, passing pointless resolutions on matters after those matters had gone out of their control. "Qui-Gon's advice was to do what I felt was right."

Obi-Wan smiled faintly. "I've wondered why he has maintained his silence through this." The smile disappeared. "Anakin, you have done more to shorten this clone's life than we would ever ask you to -- it was a reckless risk you took, out there with the Ka'alyan..."

"I had to do something."

"Yes, of course. You always had to do something." His voice was bitter, but he didn't linger on the subject. "All this judgment asks is that you take no steps to stabilize the clone, and accept your passing into the Force when the time comes. There are debts that need to be paid."

Amidala didn't stay in the infirmary long after Anakin left. She had little to do there, but that wasn't why she left.

At first, there had been the warmth of the shared fantasy, then a smile at the old shared joke. Memories had come back, memories of playfully ducking Obi-Wan's interruptions and stealing time and kisses in the shadows. She had never forgotten them, but for a moment, the images and feelings had come back to her with a power that made them more real than the present. Angry, cheated tears threatened -- what happened to my life? -- and she left abruptly, without trying to catch Luke's attention.

She slipped into the hallway, and might have gotten away, but Han and Leia were coming around the corner. Before they saw her, he leaned down and absently kissed her head.

The tears were about to come out, and they would be loud.

But Amidala of the Naboo had not survived twenty-five years in an Imperial prison camp, had not kept her secrets, had not endured Palpatine's taunts, by giving in. She locked the tears inside a secret place in her heart, and managed a brief conversation with them -- she wanted only to know how everyone was, and Amidala was genuinely glad to see her concern for Ani -- and managed to get past them without letting anything on (why she felt the need to avoid telling Leia about this was something she didn't question).

She went deeper into the hall, felt the breeze from the unrepaired hallway. She could hear Ani's high, soft voice, but couldn't make out the words. She sank into the darkness of the handmaidens' quarters, still blasted from the Desolation. She had spent many happy hours in these rooms. She sat on a burned sofa, and drew her knees to her chin.

Anakin frequently complained that Luke maintained a false dichotomy about him, treating Vader as an entirely distinct entity, standing in stark opposition to some paragon of virtue that lived in his imagination. "Obi-Wan's point of view," he'd said. "Somewhere in Luke's mind, I think he sees the end of Vader as the defeat of a man who betrayed and murdered me."

"And you don't?"

But of course, he didn't. He'd proved it this morning by legally accepting responsibility for all of Vader's acts. She had accepted it gladly. She had not hated Vader... an odd truth, she supposed, which she wouldn't begin to know how to express, but she had accepted the title of Lady Vader because she had simply never considered her marriage to be null and void. He'd been the one who'd given up, thinking her dead... yet he said he'd never cheated on her anyway, even in his heart, and she believed him. There had been many problems between them, but adultery had never been one of them.

Nevertheless, she, like Luke, held a perfect dichotomy in her mind, and had even less basis for holding it. She knew it would hurt him to know that she held it. That Vader was Anakin and Anakin was Vader did not faze her. But that her husband Ani was the same as the sweet little boy Ani... that was more than she could really wrap her mind around, despite her statements to the contrary. It had always been that way. When one existed, the other couldn't. And right now, little Ani existed... and Amidala missed her husband painfully.

She sat in the dark, and waited for the wave to pass.

Anakin stayed on the balcony after Obi-Wan left, feeling the gentle breeze coming up from the river, pulling through his hair and caressing his scalp with a hundred intimate fingers. Naboo was a kind world; he loved it, though he was increasingly homesick for the desert.

I will probably not live to see Tatooine again. I have work to do, and time is probably short. Accept it.

His legs responded with a surge of pain, the clone almost gleefully responding to Obi-Wan's sentence with another incipient growth spurt. He took measure of himself in relation to the doors -- when he'd first arrived, he'd been about half the height of an average balcony door. He was closer to two-thirds now. And, as to the only measure that really mattered to him, the top of his head was now above Amidala's chin. He'd grown perhaps seven inches in six weeks; it couldn't be good for the cloned heart.

I can count on a year, he thought. I can put up with a lot of pain and operate under unstable physical conditions. After a year, it will get dicey.

He sighed. It was possible that when he reached his natural size, the obscene rate of growth would stop, and his heart would stabilize on its own. He would hold on to that. A year wasn't enough to do... everything he needed to do to fix it.

He went inside, meaning to head back to the infirmary, but he saw soft footprints in the dust. He followed them, knowing without question that they would lead to the handmaidens' quarters. He'd followed this path many times in happier days.

He saw her from the door, sitting among the ashes as she'd once sat in the morning light. The moonlight glowed against her hair and her gown, giving her an aura no less pronounced than Obi-Wan's. She looked desperately unhappy. He went to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and squatted down beside her.

She closed her eyes. "Hello."

"Come here," he said, and wrapped his arms around her.

She turned into his embrace, her eyes still closed against the sight of the clone, and she clung to him. He shifted to hold her more comfortably. He didn't try to make her talk about what was bothering her. He just smoothed her hair, and whispered comforting nonsense into her ear. He would not remember later what he said, and neither would she.

After awhile, she pulled away from him, and opened her eyes. "Thank you, Ani," she said, squeezing his hands. "I needed that."

"As did I."

She smiled faintly, regretfully, and sighed. "I'm going to go back up to my quarters now, Ani. I think maybe you should... go back to the infirmary or something."

"I understand."

He watched her leave, the glow of the moonlight fading as she dropped into the shadows.

I'll fix this room, he thought. I'll start there, fix something for the person I owe the most to first. I'll give her something that will make her happy.

He smiled in the darkness, and stood to return to the infirmary.

Lando had things mostly under control in the temporary prison he'd made in the basement of the palace. It was close enough to the hot springs that he could hear the water bubbling enticingly in the echoing hallways. He could use a long, leisurely soak, truth to be told.

But he had other work to do now.

Tili, the Gungan woman who'd first warned him of the coming attack, had organized half of the city guard to keep watch on the prisoners -- the windows and doors weren't actually secure, so the place was starting to take on the look of an Imperial fortress, with guards at every entrance -- and her husband, Arphon, was using the other half to clean up the courtyard. The Alderaanians and the Naboo didn't so much as blink at taking orders from them, and that, at least, was an improvement over what Naboo had once been known for.

"Hey, Tili!" he called.

She came over, looking distractedly over her shoulder at a group of guards that wasn't as strongly at attention as she thought they ought to be. "Yes, Prince Lando?"

"Will you just call me Lando? You saved my royal butt today."

"If you wish it, yousa Highness."

Lando shook his head. The Naboo and the Gungans had one thing in common -- they both were stuck like glue on form. "Look, you've had a long day. I can hold down the fort here."

She looked uncertainly at the guard. "Theysa never done this before. Theysa nervous."

"Me, too. But we'll get by. You get some sleep. Tell Arphon to give the reins over to someone he trusts outside. Then the two of you go home and relax."

It was a measure of her weariness that she acquiesced after only a few minutes. Lando kissed her cheek. She gave him a surprised look, but didn't say anything about it before she left.

"You!" one of the prisoners shouted.

Lando turned. "What do you want?"

"We all want to talk to the Astaya."

"I'll send for him in the morning."

"Now. Whisper's going around that he had a vision."

Great. Whispers about visions. It was like being surrounded by a hundred Luke Skywalkers. One was fine. He liked one. But all these vapors and dreams were going drive him nuts pretty soon. "All right, all right," he said. He gestured to an Alderaanian man -- what was his name? -- "Hey, umm... Serian... you want to go find Laryhi? He's probably in the thick of it somewhere."

"Yes, sir."

Serian bowed smartly -- add the Alderaanians to the Naboo and the Gungans on the matter of form; Leia was positively freewheeling, comparatively -- and ducked out into the night.

"Happy?" Lando asked the prisoner.

"Not even close."

He rubbed his eyes. "Look, it's been a long day. Will you try to calm yourself down and get some rest?"

The prisoner looked at him dully, and Lando knew the chances were slim.

Jelon Laryhi made his way through the palace, a young Alderaanian man leading him through the increasingly dark hallways. There was little talk, and none of it of significance; pity, Jelon would have liked to get an Alderaanian view on the matter, other than young Ivva's.

They arrived at the makeshift prison, and Prince Lando himself met them at the door. He dismissed the Alderaanian guard, with strong instructions to go home and get some sleep. "Good evening, Astaya," Calrissian said. "Your people are asking about a vision."

Jelon shrugged. "I have none to give them; only advice."

"They may be real disappointed with that, and with the mood in there -- "

Jelon raised a hand, and gave him a smile. Calrissian gave him an odd look, then shook off whatever had struck him. Jelon dismissed it. "I will speak to them. The Ka'alyan are weary. I am weary. It is time for everyone to rest."

He went into the room. There were only about ten Ka'alyan here, ten who had refused to leave the square earlier. He didn't know if the offshoot group had been here yet.

"Astaya!" a woman called. "It was whispered through the window that you'd seen a vision."

"I wish I had. Come, children." Jelon sat down on a low stool, and the Ka'alyan sat around him. He took the hands of the two closest. "There's been no vision, other than what we can all see. We are in pain, and there is anger and fear. Some of us have split off. But I must ask you to respect the law of the land. Seeking revenge... it is an unproductive course. You are free to leave -- at least to leave the way of the Seers; it is a matter for the Theed guard if you are free to leave this place tomorrow -- and you are free to come back. But that is the term. You must make peace with the galaxy as it is, and not give in to the hatred of your former enemies."

A few stood, and stalked back to the wall. The young woman who had first spoken looked stricken. "No vision, then?"

"No vision."

"Then how do you know you're right?"

"Some things don't require a vision."

She began to cry, and Jelon realized for the first time that she wasn't a young woman, but an older girl, maybe Rashara's age. Young enough, as the Ka'alyan elders said, to have never seen the rains. "I'm tired," she said. "I'm so tired."

Jelon smoothed her hair. "I know. I know."

He called back the remaining few. "You don't need to decide tonight," he said. "You will, the judgment is coming. But for tonight, just rest. Sleep. Be at peace."

Perhaps it was his voice, or some quiet gift of the Force. Or maybe it was just a measure of their weariness. But, one by one, they sat, then stretched out on the floor, and dropped off into a thin sleep. Jelon stayed with them, keeping vigil with the moon.

Around them, Naboo at last quieted, and slipped into the dreams that follow an endless day.

INTERLUDE: GROWING PAINS

In the week following Tashin's trial, many other things happened in the galaxy.

A tidal wave crashed the last part of the ithsmus of Fazon into the oceans of Ampinua. The city itself had been nearly deserted since the last wave had swept across it; there was enough warning this time that only a very few people were caught in the destruction. Still, it got people talking about lost cities and hidden secrets that had nothing to do with the trial on Naboo.

On Malastare, a new racing champion took a lot of attention from any political news.

On Bespin, the Guild and the local miners finally met with one another, and were in negotiations. Arguments raged, both in the local nets and the industry nets, about the wisdom of a self-sufficient outpost joining the Guild, and Lando Calrissian's advice was sought on the matter without thought for his current situation.

On Coruscant, a dazzling new opera had opened, using the old Alderaanian myths of the warrior queen Gerah and the angels Uali and Voj as a base. General Han Solo and Chancellor Leia Organa-Solo were guests of honor at the premiere, and, though neither had felt much like attending an opera, the trip and its frivolity had left them in relatively good spirits, and Leia approved strongly of the opera. She and Han opted to remain on Coruscant for a time after the performance. She had work to do, sorting through the charges that were filing in against her father, but for a little while, she let other business occupy her.

On Tatooine, of course, there was personal interest in matters of the Skywalker family (most had conveniently forgotten that one favorite son had been a slave when he lived there, while the other was an unknown farmboy) but on the matter of the trial of Tashin, Tatooine had no fixed opinion. It had simply been a chance to advance the opinion that something in the desert made people strong. That week, a year-long vogue of rough-camping began, and the local rangers went on harder duty rescuing the inexperienced fools who got themselves lost in the Wastes.

In other words, life went on for most people in most parts of the galaxy. It always did.

But on La'azum and Naboo, those who remained were acutely aware that they were poised between two trials, standing in the eye of a storm that would sweep the two worlds into a deadly dance with one another. Tashin's trial had been a rehearsal (that was a generally accepted opinion for all concerned, including Tashin in the few moments when he regained consiousness enough to have an opinion on anything); Vader's trial would be the real thing. None of this one-day-of-testimony business. There was preparation.

Lando -- when not blessedly sinking himself into the less complicated politics of Cloud City -- finally put his foot down and insisted that at least the outer shell of the palace would become a priority in the repairs. Amidala, for a wonder, gave in without much more than a token argument.

"I just don't want to live like a despot," she said, watching the throngs of workers arriving on the scaffolding on a morning a week after the verdict. "I don't want to aggrandize this place while there are still people living in Theed in temporary shelters."

Anakin nodded. His lips were pressed thinly together, and his eyes felt like they'd been blacked and pushed back into their sockets. He hadn't slept for two days. The clone had gained an inch and a half in a week. He'd gritted his teeth, and worked on cleaning out the rubble in the handmaidens' quarters, keeping his mind busy and off the growing pains. "They know that, Amidala," he said. His voice was still not a man's voice, but it was not a small boy's voice, either. "They know where your priorities are. But the palace is a public refuge as well as your living space. You can't guard it when nearly a quarter of the outer wall is shattered."

Luke nodded. "He's right, Mother."

"Oh, I know it. I just... I don't like the way it looks." She turned and smiled at them. "My knights must forgive me. I've been in politics too long." Her comm link beeped, and she excused herself to speak with an ambassador newly arrived from Anoat.

"Are you going to tell her about the handmaidens' quarters?" Luke asked.

Anakin shook his head. "It's a surprise. I have Lando getting what I need, and he's sworn to secrecy."

"Father, there's something I've been meaning to ask you... "

"What is it?"

"Twice now, I've seen you throw a lightsaber. How do you do that?"

The question surprised Anakin. But of course, Luke had very little formal training. The more dangerous tricks would have been skipped. Especially the ones he himself had been fond of. "It's a simple modification of the ignition," he said. "A question of turning off some safeties."

"Will you show me?"

Anakin sighed. "No."

"Why not?"

"It's dangerous. With the safeties off, you need... very precise handling. Lightsabers don't counterbalance the way ancient metal swords would."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "And I'm not precise enough?"

Too late, Anakin realized where the conversation was going. He thought Luke had given up on the idea of training together. He supposed he could just lie, but he'd had enough lies to last a lifetime. "No," he said. "You're very good, Luke. Good enough to defeat any enemy you're at all likely to come across. But, no, you're not precise enough to make me comfortable showing you that."

"Well, then, I guess I could use some practice."

"Luke..."

"Father, please."

He felt a presence in his mind, expected for a moment that it would be Kenobi, and hoped that he would be called away. But it wasn't Kenobi. The voice was the faint, gentle voice of Qui-Gon Jinn. It is all he's asked of you, Ani. What you wanted to teach in darkness, you can teach better in the light, because you know where the paths to the darkness are. And he will teach you as well.

Anakin closed his eyes, then opened them again. He took five steps back, banished images of the past from his mind, and drew his lightsaber.

Luke smiled, and met the parry.

Morning on Coruscant.

It was messy and smelly, and not all that different from noon, evening, or midnight. But there was something, Han thought, some trick of the light, that made everything seem just a little bit newer and brighter.

Leia was sitting out on the balcony. She'd taken to wearing her hair down nearly all the time, parted on the side, the smaller section lifted above her ear with a comb. Han liked it, and had gone to the market plaza and bought her several combs from many places around the galaxy. This morning, she was wearing one made from a clear green stone -- somthing like an emerald, but easier to shape -- that came from a world far in the Outer Rim, across the galaxy from Naboo and Tatooine. It caught the morning sun and arced it back like a laser.

She was buried in a report of some kind, her comm pad on her one knee (the other was draped casually over the arm of the chair; she looked more comfortable than Han remembered seeing her for awhile). She looked up over the top of it. Her eyes were weary. Han wondered if she'd gotten any sleep after he dropped off; she'd been wide awake when his own eyes shut of their own accord. "Good morning."

"Morning."

"I have to get to this."

Han sighed. "The charges against Anakin?"

She nodded. "A lot of them won't stick, and that's going to present its own problems."

"So we've seen."

"But enough of them are true... he'll be the first to admit it... "

"So was Tashin. He confessed to so much that none of his confessions could be accepted."

"He won't make Tashin's mistake. He never makes a mistake he's already seen or made once." She grinned wearily. "He just seems to have an unending supply of original mistakes to choose from."

Han sat down across from her, grabbing a bit of bread and cream for breakfast. "They going to try him here?"

"Mother will never extradite him."

"She'll sit in judgment?"

Leia looked up hopefully, then shook her head. "No. She won't. She knows better. She'll have the Republic come to Naboo. There's precedent."

"Yeah, I know."

"And that's going to leave it in my lap."

"The Chancellor doesn't need to preside at every trial, Leia... "

"I tried that argument already." She sighed and put the comm pad down, then stood to look out over the city. "I've been communicating with my colleagues by computer for several hours now. The consensus -- though I find it hard to believe -- is that the Chancellor should preside over a trial of this magnitude. To judge in the name of the Republic."

"But he's your father. You can't... "

She shook her head. "I could beg off on that technicality. I've thought about it. I don't want to do this. But... "

"But you don't trust anyone else to do it, either."

"Exactly, I... " She turned to him, leaned against hte balcony wall. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her eyes were deep and intense. "I get messages from people. About half are screaming for blood. The others want total absolution. The Senate is not that different from the people it represents. There's very little middle ground."

"And you're on it?"

"No. But I understand both extremes, and they average out." She turned away again. "I can judge him fairly because I've loved and hated him equally, and I can see everything because of it. I can't be like the Ka'alyan anymore, reaching for revenge. But I can't be like Luke, either, just chopping off the parts of him I don't like and leaving myself with some perfect image. I have to see him as a whole. And I'm not convinced that anyone else technically qualified to judge this trial even wants to do that. So I'll sit in judgment on my father."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. I don't want to, Han... I really don't... but I have to. And I will."

Naboo.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" Lando demanded of no one in particular.

Arphon shrugged. "Yousa was da one wanting Naboo ducks. Here they are."

"I didn't want them in the hangar!"

The ducks were roosting everywhere, lining the guns of Luke's X-wing, burrowing in the great locks on the doors, simply camping on the smooth floor. Lando reached for one near his foot, but it flew away.

Tili was climbing a rickety ladder to try and get a duckling out of a crack in the wall. Amidala had simply climbed the scaffolding, where two adult ducks were nesting in a construction crate. Anakin was standing at the base of the scaffolding holding it steady. About twenty ducks had congregated around his feet, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. He paid no attention to them.

Luke was... Lando couldn't see him. Maybe he hadn't heard the commotion yet, though it seemed inconceivable. Ever since the shipping canister had been opened, the whole ordeal had been a noisy mess. He, Arhpon, Tili, and Amidala were the only adults, though he supposed he could count Anakin (who was looking about fifteen now, but acting about eighty). Excited children were making the problem worse, chasing the birds deeper into the palace.

"How did this happen?" Lando bellowed. "Who opened that canister up here?"

He heard a sniffle and turned. An Alderaanian boy and a Gungan girl were holding hands like they were lost in the woods and scared.

"Mesa doing it," the girl said. "Just wanting to see da birds."

"I made the lock pop," the boy said. "I'm sorry."

Neither was quite looking him in the eye, and the boy looked like he was about to cry. "Aw, forget it," he said. "I got in worse trouble when I was your age. But let's get the birds out of here, okeday?" He winked at the Gungan girl. "They belong down by the river, and they don't know the way."

"Ani could show them," the boy piped up. "They'll follow Ani."

The girl nodded enthusiastically, apparently not needing any convincing.

Lando thought, Darth Vader: Jedi duck-herder.

Still, he couldn't help but notice that the crowd around Anakin's feet had grown. He shouted over the din. "Hey, Anakin!"

Anakin looked over his shoulder, but didn't turn.

"Think you can get your friends there to follow you down to the river?"

Anakin looked down, apparently noticing the ducks around his feet for the first time, then looked back up at Lando. "You're kidding right?"

"Nope. Can you do it?"

"Sure he can," Amidala said, leaning over a support on the scaffolding and giving him a smirk.

Anakin's eyes rose to Lando's in an expression that very clearly said, Don't make me do this.

Lando's only answer was an evil grin. He wasn't out for Anakin's blood, but a little harmless payback wasn't out of the question.

Anakin nodded in a resigned way, and let go of the scaffolding. He stood in the center of the room. And Lando's amusement dried up.

For a moment,nothing happened, except that the group of birds who had been with him at the scaffolding walked, hopped, and flew to remain with him. One particularly brave specimen landed on his shoulder. Then he raised his arms, palms up, spreading them like he was stretching before a dive. The room became perfectly still, as children fell silent to watch and adults stared in half-frightened fascination.

Then the whirring of wings began. Ducks emerged from their hiding places in the walls, flew over from the X-wing and cargo boxes, skimmed across from the open areas of the floor. Feathers floated lazily in the air. They surrounded Anakin Skywalker.

His voice was calm -- it was becoming the voice Lando remembered -- when he said, "Let's go." His eyes had not opened. He walked slowly from the hangar, headed out for the river. The ducks waited for him to pass, then fell in behind him (except the shoulder-perched duck, who turned as if preparing to relay orders to the feathered army). After a moment, they disappeared, and the childen clapped their hands and followed.

Amidala made her way down from the scaffolding. Tili had gotten off the ladder at some point during the commotion. Tili was nonplused by the whole ordeal. "I told you you didn't want ducks," she said.

Anakin walked into the river without stopping. It was shallow here, and the current was fast. He wished his feet were bare; he thought it might be refreshing to feel the water running over them.

The ducks took a few tentative steps in, and Anakin sent them images of flying and skimming in on the surface. It was supposed to be instinct, but these ducks had been scrounged from zoos all over the Republic, and Anakin wasn't sure how many instincts were left to them.

The one on his shoulder made an unpleasant sound and fluttered its wings as if ready to leave, but changed its mind and settled back down. It didn't have much of a mind to read, but its feelings were clear enough. In whatever zoo it had come from (Anakin could only see a small pond and a few visitors of various species throwing food), it had roosted in a tree, and somehow, it had decided that Anakin was its new tree. It needed to be disabused of the notion. Anakin did not dislike ducks -- in fact he was glad, despite his reticence in front of the crowd, that animals still came to him when he sang to them through the Force -- but there were limits. He simply could not live his life with a duck nesting on his shoulder.

"Here," Amidala said, appearing beside him, seemingly out of thin air and picking the bird up off his shoulder. He must have been distracted by the ducks not to feel her approach. She put the duck down in the water. It looked up at them, wondering what it was supposed to do, then flapped its wings twice, and promptly flew back to its original place.

Amidala laughed. "I think you've found a friend."

He smiled at her. They were eye to eye now. "I am open to suggestions."

"Let's try again. I'll put him down, you show him what he's supposed to do." She gently put her hands under the bird's wings -- for a breathtaking second, her touch lingered against his neck -- then picked it up, and knelt at the water's edge. Some of the other birds had already flown down over the cliff, and were splashing in the water on the plain. Anakin showed his "friend" an image of it, then showed him flying, and showed him the trees that lined the river downstream a bit. They weren't trees that a Naboo duck would have any instinct for, of course; they were Alderaanian species that Leia had planted. But they would provide a home and some nutrition, and Anakin tried to convey it. It wasn't easy to communicate, but eventually, the duck pulled away from Amidala's hands, rose into the air... and headed downstream. The flock was settling now. Anakin felt a deep satisfaction at it.

"Well done, Ani," Amidala said. "I'm sorry I goaded you into it in there, though. I just thought... "

"That it would be good for me?"

"Pretty much."

He laughed and sat at the river's edge, pulling off his boots to soak his feet. "You were right. It was. They're very simple, ducks. They want to keep their feet cool, and they want to eat and sleep and make more ducks. Not a bad priority system, I guess."

He'd expected Amidala to chuckle, and when she didn't, he turned to look at her. Her face was serious and sober. "Ani," she said, "you do realize that, even if... "

He shook his head. He couldn't read this, and had no idea what she was talking about.

"Even if... you grow up and we... fix this... I'm fifty-two, Ani. If that happened, I'd be even older. I... " She cast her eyes down. "No ducklings," she said. "Just an old hen."

The thought hadn't even crossed his mind -- the miracle of the twins had been more of a blessing than he thought he deserved -- but she was looking away as if she'd... "Am, give me your hands."

She lowered herself to the bank, and obediently gave him her hands. He kissed her palms, though he knew she would say later that he shouldn't. She answered by kissing his cheek chastely.

He smiled at her. "We've done that already. We have our ducklings. And even if we hadn't, I'd still want you." A warning stare. "Eventually." Rolled eyes. "For now, I'm glad to have my best friend back. And maybe we should be working on eating and sleeping... " He stood suddenly and pulled her into the water. It splashed up, soaking both of them, and she laughed in surprised delight. "And keeping our feet cool."

She stopped laughing, but Anakin could see the corners of her mouth twitching. She bent at the waist, and swept her arm across the surface of the water, sending up a fan of it that hit him in the face.

He winked. "Oh, so now I'm duelling with you, too?"

"Watch your back, Jedi-boy."

He joined the water fight with abandon, and laughed long and heartily for the first time in years.

Neither of them saw Luke on the plains below, looking up at them with the indulgent smile of a permissive parent.

Leia's eyes were bleary, and the letters were all beginning to run together. From literate in twenty languages to completely unable to read any of them in -- she checked her timepiece -- seven-and-a-half hours. Astounding.

And she was only partway through the file of charges. Not even halfway.

The expected charges from La'azum had been filed first; the Ka'alyan in the courtroom had them ready and sent them off the second he acknowledged his identity. They had been quickly followed by charges from a dozen worlds, then by an apparently unending string of personal charges.

The widow of Captain Needa and the sister of Admiral Ozzel had filed standard wrongful death suits (which would be very hard for anyone to defend against, since it hadn't even been standard Imperial policy to execute officers over mistakes, and the laws of the Republic wouldn't give much here.

From Corellia, a "traders'" union (Han laughed for a good half-hour at the list of names; most, he said, were "as honest as Lando and as respectable as me") was filing unlawful search and siezure charges. Was it unlawful when it was done? She couldn't accept charges on crimes that weren't crimes at the time they were committed, unless those crimes were so blatantly amoral that any sentient being would know to avoid them. Had Father broken Imperial law? No, not in that case... maybe this one could be removed. Maybe...

"Chancellor?"

She looked up. One of her aides, a young Rodian woman whose name she could never remember, was standing tentatively in the doorway, holding a datapad. Leia groaned. "More?"

The Rodian nodded. "Chancellor, I have been researching... "

"Yes?" Leia prodded. The woman's accent was thick, and she always hesitated before launching into a complex idea, but Leia had learned to value her input (which was why forgetting her name was so embarrassing).

"With the sheer volume of the charges... the charter -- the charter of the Old Republic, which you said we might consider using if there is something unaddressed? -- made a provision to keep trials from running indefinitely. You can, as Chancellor, move to consolidate the charges."

"I'll never get these people to agree to that -- "

"You need to convince only the Senate."

"A single trial, a single verdict? All or nothing."

"Yes."

"What if he's only guilty of part of it?"

The woman shook her head. "No, no... it isn't a trial on any specific charge. You create a charge, in which all these offenses are included. You hear testimony from the witnesses who have filed, on each issue. Then, at the end of it, you render a verdict on the charge created. He need not be guilty of all charges to receive a guilty verdict, nor innocent of all to be not guilty. The accumulation of the crimes determines the charge and the balance would determine the sentence."

Leia considered it. It wouldn't make some of the filers happy -- that was certain, though she'd see that they had their days of testimony -- but it would prevent literally years of trials on each specific charge. The business of the government could get back on track more quickly, and the costs of the trial would not be --

She blinked rapidly. This is my Father! Am I really making decisions based on how much it will cost to prosecute him?

"I'll consider it," she said. "I thank you for giving me the option."

The Rodian woman nodded and left. Leia called Naboo.

Mother listened carefully to the idea, biting her lip. "It seems the best solution," she said. "Though... I am afraid. I am afraid that in the end... "

Leia shook her head. She didn't want Mother to talk about her fears for Father. She couldn't bear that weight. Mother understood this, and stopped. "I just... " Leia sighed. "I feel strange, making a decision about my father based on taxpayer interests and court time. What kind of person am I?"

"You're the Chancellor," Mother said simply, her tone vaguely surprised. "You need to base your decisions in that role on matters larger than your immediate family. Ani understands that. And the Maker knows that I do. You have always been a responsible leader, Leia. Learning what you have learned shouldn't change that."

"Is that advice from my Mother, or from the Queen of Naboo?"

"The Queen of Naboo. Your Mother just wishes you would come back and see the marvelous new things our Prince has wrought lately." She grinned. "It's been lively."

Leia laughed. Lando had called Han, and told them both about the ducks. "I understand it has." She grew serious. "I will return, Mother. But I'm afraid that... that it will be because I won't even ask you to extradite. I'll return as a judge."

"I know. And I know your mind is fair." She looked down, then up again, now both Mother and the Queen. "May the Force be with you, Leia. You have difficult decisions ahead."

Father might have been hesitant to start training with Luke, but the hesitancy didn't seem to make him hold back. Luke was out of breath and exhausted, and he was backed into a corner of the large room in the palace that he'd taken over for practice.

Father was regarding him calmly, lightsaber held easily in one hand. He hadn't even broken a sweat. "You're working too hard," he said. "Putting too much physical strength into the blows. My fault, I know. It's the way I required you to fight before. But responding with brute strength is never an effective long term strategy."

"Yeah, I remember." Luke turned off his lightsaber and hooked it onto his belt. He was beaten for today. "If it's such a lousy way of fighting, why did you use it?"

He shook his head, put his own lightsaber away, and sat down on the base of a pillar. "Aside from the fact that for twenty-odd years my entire strategy consisted of pushing people around?"

"Father."

He rolled his eyes, and didn't bother arguing. "My limbs were steel, Luke," he said. "Surprisingly agile for what they were, but that doesn't change what they were. They didn't bend and respond as well as I would have liked. The major benefit in duelling was physical strength. I used it, and that forced you to learn it as well. By the last time, you were learning. You used your agility in a way I no longer could. But you never had a practice partner, and that's where it showed."

"Well, I have one now."

"Enough for today."

"Agreed." Luke sat down on the cool stone floor, not bothering with a pillar-base. He took water from his canteen, to drink, and to cool his face. He closed his eyes to just feel the relief of it.

"Luke... may I ask you to instruct me about something?"

He glanced up. Father was looking at him oddly. Luke smiled. "I can't think what I know that you'd need, unless you have a wild desire to try moisture farming. But if there's something you need -- "

"Yes. There is."

It was obvious that Father was serious, so Luke sobered. "What is it, Father?"

"Why did you decide to save me?"

"I sensed that there was still good in you."

Father shook his head, frustrated, and Luke knew that he hadn't answered the right question. "I don't know what you sensed, Luke. Whatever it was, I'm glad you did. But... I suppose what I'm asking is, so what?"

"I don't understand the question."

"You know, I actually believe that."

"Good. It's true. Will you explain your question?"

Father nodded. "It's the question Carn Gari raised in his opening statements at Tashin's trial. So there is remorse. So there is admission of guilt. That doesn't erase the crimes; the things I did were still done. Why did it matter to you that I might have had some speck of regret?"

"You were my father..."

"What if I hadn't been? What if I really had betrayed and murdered your father?"

"You didn't."

"What if..."

"Stop it. No what-ifs." He sighed. "Father, I don't know what I would have done, for real, if that had been the case. I can easily say that I should have done what I did -- "

"Why?"

At last, Luke understood. It wasn't a specific question about their own history. It was a general question, and it was about what was happening around him now. Why shouldn't the murderous Dead-Talkers have their way? Why should he get the fair trial that he had denied his victims? He'd been receiving constant notices of the charges as they came in; Luke should have realized what was troubling him. "I'm sorry, Father," he said. "I understand what you're asking. I don't know if I can explain."

"Please try. It is... obviously something I never adequately learned."

Luke quelled his own self-consciousness about trying to teach philosophy. If he was ever going to start training Jedi, he'd need to get over it anyway. "It's not complicated, Father. It's just... something I felt."

"Compassion."

"Yes. And... a need. I can't explain it any more than that. You were lost. I had to find you. Why did you save my life?"

"You were my son. I didn't want you to die."

"See? It's like Yoda said, 'There is no why.' It just is. If I'd done anything else, I would have become lost myself." He smiled. "So you see, it was a purely selfish gesture."

Father nodded. "Mine, too."

Isabel silently crept out of the infirmary as her father slept on. The guards never noticed the tiny child as she slipped into the palace hallways and effortlessly weaved her way through them, keeping to the shadows.

She knew precisely where she was going.

She had listened to the guards and she especially paid attention to Prince Lando. It was the "cleaning-up" details she needed to know. Things like what happened to the assassins, the Dead-talkers current whereabouts, the evidence.

Especially the evidence.

She stopped outside a locked room, a storeroom, really, one of many in the Palace. She closed her eyes for a moment and then, simply punched in the code that would let her in.

The room was actually an armory -- housing a mix of archaic weapons and modern blasters. But Isabel was interested in the items that were neatly stacked and tagged on the table in the middle of the room.

The dead assassins' swords.

Isabel picked one sword up and slid it partially out of its sheath. She tested its edge and a thin ribbon of blood grew on one tiny thumb. She slid it back inside and cradled the sword close in one arm like a treasured toy, while she sucked on her wounded thumb.

She slipped out the room again, content, a little girl who just found security in an object much more lethal than a ragged old blanket.

Amidala sat at her terminal, taking care of the mundane details of the administration of Naboo -- standard trade treaties, the mounting debt from rebuilding, creating the organizational infrustructure -- and trying not to let her mind slip into a daydream.

They had started this morning, and she couldn't seem to stop them. She'd woken up, and looked out the window. Ani had been working with Luke outside, but now Luke was gone, and he was bending over the river, splashing water onto his chest to cool down. She had two perfectly simultaneous thougts. One was, He is beautiful. The other was, He really is almost grown up again.

She retreated from the window almost in time to miss the third thought -- Sixteen's not so bad -- but not quite, so instead, she chastised herself with a fourth: Sixteen's not bad, except that you, dear girl, are fifty-two. Put it out of your head, right now.

Easier said than done. Once the daydreams started, they became more difficult to put away. And they weren't even precisely daydreams. More like unexpected moments of total recall, perfectly realized memories that suddenly welled up and became more real than the world around her.

Memories of Ani's hands. Of his lips. Of the smell of his skin.

She forced her eyes to focus on the screen, where a message from Nal Hutta, of all places, proposed a trade plan, in which they would supply certain raw materials in return for Naboo artisans. Amidala crafted a response that informed them, as diplomatically as she could, that citizens of Naboo were not trading commodities.

Which didn't solve the problem of what they were going to trade. The planet had been stripped bare. The trials -- Maker forgive her for noting it -- had at least brought in a temporary mercantile economy, but it wasn't sustainable. Eventually, she would have to find an economic partner, a world with many resources but no one to refine them. She'd already been investigating on Yavin and Tatooine

(he touched her face, so gently that she almost wept, then pressed his lips to hers, moving slowly as he tasted her for the first time)

and Bespin, which had rich resources but few buyers (Bespin had been cut off sharply after the Imperial occupation). A few of returning exiles had money, and had approached her about building factories and art studios (not a frivolous pursuit; Naboo had always been known for its crafts, and there would be an immediate market). But always, in the past, there had been at least some native resources; being wholly dependent on other worlds would be logistically difficult, as well as demoralizing.

She wondered if any of the metal and jewel

(his hand was warm over hers, as he strung the bracelet around her wrist, tiny links glittering in the firelight, with blue gems twinkling on the clasp; then he pressed her hand to his chest, and she felt his heart beating, and the night was cold beyond their circle and)

mines in the south had been missed in the general destruction. She doubted it. Palpatine was quite aware of where Naboo's resources were, and he would have crippled her chances of economic return early on. Still, she should send someone to investigate.

"Am I disturbing you?"

She jumped a bit in her seat, and turned to find Ani standing in the light beside the window. "How long have you been there?

He grinned. "Oh, long enough to catch most of that last one."

She straightened and tried to look prim. "It's rude to listen in on other people's daydreams."

"It's okay, Amidala. They come and go. Trust me."

She smiled. "All right. But warn me before you start eavesdropping again."

"Acceptable." He pulled himself up onto the windowsill, and turned so that his legs stetched across it. Well, almost across it. He had to bend them now, and press his feet against the far sill. "You don't need to worry. I'm not interpreting them as... meaning anything. In terms of our future, I mean."

"Just the musings of a frustrated old woman?"

He pushed it off with a dismissive wave. "You need to get past this business about your age. You are still the most beautiful creature in the universe, and you always will be."

It might have been the simple tone he used, as if stating a self-evident fact, or way he shrugged when he said it, as if he couldn't conceive of anyone doubting him. Whichever it was, it flooded Amidala's mind with more memories, memories she couldn't even sort one after another, because before one formed completely, another would be halfway through.

He looked up. "Am?"

"I'm okay. Could you do me a favor, though?"

"Anything."

"Please go outside. Go for a nice long walk. Fix something. Fly Luke's X-wing."

He slid down off the windowsill. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

He came close enough that she could feel his breath, and she closed her eyes, wondering if he would kiss her. He didn't, though she could feel him wanting to. She smiled. "Just go, all right?"

When he spoke, she could actually feel the air around his lips moving. "All right."

When she opened her eyes, he was gone.

And she realized that she wasn't altogether certain he had actually been there at all.

She sighed, and went back to work.

Anakin dove deep into the river, cooling his blood in the current. Normally, he had a moment of revulsion when he put in the portable breathing mechanism, but today, he hadn't even bothered thinking about it.

How did I survive being sixteen the first time, anyway?

He wasn't sure that he was really sixteen physically. He'd have to go to the surgeon droids and run some scans to find out, and they would insist on trying to stabilize his heart -- sometimes he could feel the strain as his body pushed it to its limit -- and that would require saying no. In the Empire, that wouldn't have been a problem. If he told an Imperial droid to do something, it did so without asking questions. Rebel droids, apparently, argued. (Anakin sometimes wondered just how discipline was achieved, at least long enough to plan battles, within the Rebellion.)

At the moment, though, such thoughts were a mere distraction. Any distraction would do, he supposed, but it would be better if he could spend some energy in the process of being distracted. So he'd run from the palace to the river, donned diving gear, and slipped down into the Gungan construction area. They were having trouble securing the foundation of the amphibious tunnel that would allow humans to enter the city without diving gear. Anakin had gone to look over the site and see what he could see (without stopping to talk to anyone about it). The water was cold that far down, but clear -- there was no pollution, and life forms were still fragile and scarce.

Several times, he needed to fight off the urge to swim to the surface and return to the palace, to stand in the powerful waves of desire that were coming from her, to give in to them, to lose himself in the fire between them. But she would regret it later -- she already regretted wanting it -- and he had given her more than enough to regret over the years. So he stayed under water, exercised his body and his mind, until at last his soul had cooled enough for decent company.

He stopped briefly in New Otoh -- as the Gungans were none-too-creatively calling their new city -- to tell the construction crew that he'd spotted a small trench in the riverbed that he thought was causing their difficulties, then swam to the surface and went to the gear-room to trade the diving suit for his normal clothes.

"Master Anakin!"

He looked up. Threepio was standing near the purifiers, where used breathers were cleaned. He had no reason to be here, so Anakin guessed that he'd probably been sent, but he still addressed Threepio as if the droid were here voluntarily. He was still, in his own way, a great pal. "Hey, Threepio. What brings you down to the river?"

"Master Luke has been looking for you. He went to the palace, but Mistress Amidala suggested that we look here as well."

"Has something happened?"

"Not that I know of, sir. But I am rather poorly informed of such things and -- "

"Threepio, why was Luke looking for me?"

"Oh, yes. I was just gettig to that. The astaya has invited you, along with Master Luke and Mistress Amidala, for refreshments in his quarters. It is my impression that he means to discuss something of some importance."

Anakin nodded, pulling on his tunic -- a deep blue Naboo-style; he still couldn't bring himself to regularly masquerade as an untouched Jedi -- and heading out. Threepio clattered after him.

"Master Anakin, might I come along? There is little use for me, I'm afraid and -- "

Anakin smiled. Some relationships, at least, were simple. "Sure, Threepio. I don't know how much translating there's going to be, but unless the astaya has a problem with it, you're welcome."

Luke wasn't sure what to expect in the astaya's quarters -- an administrator? a prophet? a Sith librarian? -- so he decided to go in with no expectations at all. Mother was with him, arms crossed against a slight breeze, looking a bit anxious for reasons she wouldn't identify.

"I wonder if Threepio has found your father," she said. "I've looked where I could think to look."

"He's found. He's on his way. Right around -- "

A clatter of metal on stone accompanied Father around the corner. He was actually modulating his absurdly quick stride so that Threepio could keep up. Every time Luke thought he had his father figured out, he did something unexpected. "Am I late?"

"No, not quite."

Father turned to Threepio. "Record what he says, unless I tell you otherwise. I'm not at all certain about this."

The door opened, and Jelon Laryhi gestured to them. "Come in, come in. Please. I didn't mean for it to sound like a summons, though I suppose it must have come off that way."

"Not at all," Mother said, "we were delighted to accept your invitation. I can't speak for my husband and my son, but I'm intrigued by your offer of information."

Laryhi stepped back from his door, and ushered them in. "Yes, of course, you asked for information at Tashin's trial. It is your right to have it. And I have heard something about which I have some curiosity as well. Please, sit down."

They all sat in a comfortable area in Laryhi's room, where four small couches formed a semi-room beside the fireplace. Threepio stood between Mother and Father. Luke could sense that Laryhi was troubled, but it was a distracted, distant trouble. He was uncomfortable with the subject, not the audience. It would ease his mind to simply begin speaking, so Luke simply asked, "How did it begin? The records, I mean."

Laryhi exhaled, relaxing immediately with the door open. "It was Mother Zemai, of course. She did it all."

Luke shook his head. "I'm lost. I know there are buildings on Coruscant with her name on them, but that's about it."

"Have you enough time to listen? It is a long and twisted tale, and it has brought your family pain in the end."

Father looked at him with a species of tired anger that Luke didn't like at all, then looked away. No one else said anything.

"Zemai was raised in the Jedi Temple," Laryhi said. "She was a promising student, very strong, able to block even Masters from her thoughts by the age of eight."

"An unusual skill," Father commented. Luke wasn't sure why -- he knew plenty of people who were blank. Even Leia could block people.

"Yes," Laryhi said. "It first came to light during the initial uprising of the Sith. I won't go into details; they don't matter anymore. Suffice it to say that she did not have an easy time during the first war, and gained the name 'Carrier of the Dead' -- she used the Ampinuan version, Olashya M'Traet, because it was given to her by an Ampinuan Temple librarian and she understood it to be her name -- not by any dark action, but by the merciful action of carrying the body of a Jedi Master who had died to save her for two miles through a burning forest. Later, it took on its other meanings. She was plagued by terrible visions. She tried to get them out of her mind by light-painting, but they never went away."

Laryhi leaned forward and flipped a switch on his holoprojector. A dark, frightening image appeared -- a human skeleton, with a violet ring on its finger, wading through a river of blood and lost souls. The souls were weaving themselves through the bones.

"I can see why she wanted to get rid of that," Mother said.

"Yes, well she never quite succeeded. But look, here."

He pointed to the base of the light-painting, and Luke saw a funeral pyre. At first, he couldn't see what was odd about it, then he drew back. The figure on top of the pyre was sitting up amidst the flames that were consuming him, holding out one hand in a conciliatory gesture. And on either side of his head, a sun glowed.

Father stared at it, then turned away. "So it is her prophecy."

Laryhi shrugged. "Many spoke of the Son of the Suns. Only Zemai, as far as I know, associated you with the end of the Sith, and she had no idea who you would be, only that we were to, how to put it, contain the Sith until you arrived."

"You seem to have failed."

"Yes. She warned us from the start to keep the Sith out of politics at all costs. But they slipped away from us."

Luke was confused. "I thought she was Sith."

"She allied herself with the Sith, and she kept her promises -- she took and trained an apprentice, and he killed her -- though we aren't entirely sure why. There is another Sith prophecy -- this one about the descendents of a redeemed Sith named Karik Otonna, who had saved her life when she was a child, and after whom she named her son -- that says that the descendents of Karik Otonna would be a thorn in the side of the Sith forever. There is fairly strong evidence that Zemai's son, my forefather Karik Laryhi, is in fact also the son of the Jedi Jastiss Otonna... Karik's son. She refused to reveal the information. What has always puzzled us is why she chose to apprentice herself to the Sith, rather than refusing them and letting the line die."

"Because it wouldn't have," Father said. "As the apprentice, she was in a position to always know where they were."

Laryhi raised his eyebrows. "That makes sense. It's something like what she told us about the archives. We were to keep them, and keep track of the apprentices who came to use them. To be the prophesied thorn when we needed to be, though she referred to it as being a conscience for those who have lost their own. Which of course reveals the real reason she didn't simply destroy the Sith. In a corner of her mind, she loved and pitied them. She wanted them redeemed. But all she had to hold on to was this horrible vision of the burned man. So she tried to find a way to keep... a holding pattern?... for as long as it took. For many generations, we stood when we needed to. We found weak spots."

Mother spoke coolly. "But when you realized that you had lost control, you did nothing, you warned no one."

"Warn them of what? And on what grounds?" He shook his head. "No, no. I am creating an issue that is not the root of it. The truth is, we were messengers who lost our message. We knew we were supposed to do something, but the subject of just what was a matter of debate. My father followed family tradition and confronted Palpatine directly. It did not end well. Once he was in the position as Chancellor -- which was the first time we were able to definitely identify him -- it was too late to act to contain him. And we were... complacent. We were also busy. Please understand that, while this is our family tradition, we also have a position of responsibility for the Ka'alyan. We have never made the two dependent on one another. The Sith -- the Ka'alyan called them litri'ka, the blood-stained -- who came were considered enemies of the worst sort."

"And yet, until Palpatine's master, they kept coming back."

"Until things started breaking down, they believed at least nominally in being part of a tradition. We encouraged that. The records encouraged it. There was a hunger to know and understand. A hunger which I suspect you know, Anakin Skywalker."

Father looked up sharply. "I know what history I need to know."

"Yet you studied Zemai's writings regularly on Coruscant, at least those that were present. And during the brief time you spent on La'azum, your ears were apparently unusually keen. Which brings me to the second issue I want to discuss."

"Yes?"

"Some of the Ka'alyan who were involved in the attack on Tashin have repented of it. I wish all of them would, but that is not my point. Those who were there have all reported that you used a word not generally known to off-worlders. You looked at the Tashin girl, and you called her Keysha'li. Where did you learn that word?"

"I heard it on La'azum. Many times. And it was in the hearts and minds of the Ka'alyan that night. More importantly, it was in Isabel's mind."

"How very strange. Do you know anything of Keysha'li?"

"The goddess of justice, isn't she?"

"Not exactly, no. She is... responsible for many of the beliefs the Ka'alyan have about justice -- including, unfortunately, the Dead-Talkers. But she isn't a goddess. Simply a wayfarer, I think is the right word. Symbolically. She's a concept, I think, more than an actual person who has lived. She tends to be represented by a young girl-child in artwork."

Father looked at Luke, but Luke couldn't get the gist of what he was thinking.

Laryhi went on. "Keysha'li was there before the astayas, maybe even before the migration to La'azum. The idea began as justice, but at some point, it took on the idea of the avenging angel as well. Every now and again, she reappears. What puzzles me in the association is that the Ka'alyan, even the Dead-Talkers, associated her with young Isabel as much as you did. And Keyshal'i taking the side of mercy is not usual. The few times the Ka'alyan opposed a Sith -- one or two tried to make La'azum their home base -- they did so in the name of Keyshal'i, picking some poor little girl to serve as the current version, and they won rather, shall we say, thoroughly. Nizy Lummuo prayed to Keysha'li. That's why the Ka'alyan who returned to me were confused. They confirm that Keysha'li's presence seemed to be there, and they were drawn to the girl Isabel... but she was plainly on the other side."

"Are you saying that Isabel is immortal?" Luke asked.

"We're all immortal," Laryhi said, and at the same time, Father said, "Luminous beings are we."

"I find it hard to believe -- " Mother began, but stopped, because she did believe there was something strange about Isabel.

"Oh, no," Laryhi said. "I'm not saying she really is Keysha'li. I'm not sure there was ever a real Keyshal'i. But it is the name we give to this justice sense. And when she shows up, it tends to be a bloody show."

Father looked once more at Luke and this time, Luke knew what he was thinking. Tiny little Isabel, who stood defending her fallen father with a Ka'alyan sword in her hands. The quick strike she made with that blade that would have been fatal for the Ka'alyan assassin had she only been just a little taller, just a little older. The sense of great power that Luke felt around her, the same power that somehow kept Kyrys Tashin alive.

Luke remembered her fear, the way she'd clung to him as the med droids treated her father's wounds.

An immortal. A child. Which was which?

"Too many questions," Father murmured. "I'd meant to ask her before but it wasn't the time."

"Now, I think, is the time to ask them," Laryhi answered.

Luke had wanted to go with him after they had come back from Laryhi's rooms but Anakin had said no. He didn't want to make it seem like they were ganging up on Isabel. And she'd seemed so fragile after the incident, just a tired little girl, scared out of her wits and reluctant to leave her father's side even for just a moment.

(will i ever see you again?)

(what does your heart tell you?)

He understood her fear of losing the only family she had left. He remembered that Tashin had tried to commit suicide before. And now, this. Any child would be as frightened as Isabel was now.

But then, there was the power that had flared like a nova on that night. A power that had shielded them from the Dead. A power that somehow even kept Kyrys Tashin from the grave.

Keysha'li Isobel.

It was the perfect name to give to the strangeness that had hovered over the tiny girl ever since she arrived. One minute, a smiling, happy child, playing with the other children, the next, giving a good Jedi Master impression that would make old Master Yoda proud.

Keysha'li Isobel. Anakin heard the name whispered among the Ka'alyan during that time on La'azum. He'd sensed that they invoked the name as a protection against him and it had been vaguely amusing then.

Now, Jelon Laryhi had told him a little more but not enough. Keysha'li Isobel was a fireside tale even to the Astaya. A goddess with the face and form of a little girl. A stern judge, passing sentence on the guilty. An avenging angel, merciless executioner of dark and evil things. And apparently, judging from what Laryhi had told him when the Ka'alyan fought against the Sith in her name, she really was a bane on the Sith.

A memory came to mind -- Isabel's Name Day. An infant in her mother's arms, her proud father hovering protectively near. Just a baby, waving chubby fists in the air,

(he asked her, "Our child -- where?" And she told him that their son was lost, lost, lost...)

cooing and gurgling, blissfully content. She'd smiled, even at the Dark Lord of the Sith

(and her smile was a benediction)

too innocent to know how to fear the dark mask.

Anakin stopped at the door of the infirmary.

And sensed that power again.

For the past several days, he and Luke had made sure that no one else would be dropping uninvited into the infirmary. The guards were stationed with Amidala's strict orders that they were NEVER to leave Kyrys Tashin or his daughter unguarded. Every day, he or Luke would go to the infirmary to check on Kyrys Tashin's progress. By all rights, the man should have been dead that very first day but...

The power was there, finally out in the open for any Force-user to "see". It was incredibly strong, a bright current in the Force that at the same time, cast a peculiar shadow of darkness. Anakin wondered how in the worlds he and Luke could have ever missed it, even when Isabel began giving hints about it when she chose to really speak to them. Then again, he shook his head as the realization sunk in.

Palpatine managed to hide himself with a couple of hundred Jedi breathing down his neck. Why do I even bother to ask?

Anakin opened the door --

-- and stopped short just as the long and wickedly sharp edge of a Ka'alyan warblade came to rest mere inches from his throat.

Han never felt more out of place than when he sat in the spectators' area in the Senate chambers. He knew all the goings on of the Senate, but he couldn't talk about them with the eagerly speculating viewers, neither could he pretend not to know, because everyone knew who he was and what business he had there. Leia knew how he felt about it, and she rarely asked him to come along, so he knew when she'd given him a guarded look and asked mildly if he'd mind "just being there today," he'd known she really needed him there.

Even if she didn't even look at him.

Han wished heartily that Chewie hadn't decided to go back to Kashyyk for awhile. When he came along, he was usually free to grumble away in Wookiee, as so few people understood it, and he at least kept the proceedings entertaining. But Han wasn't the only one with a family, and Chewie needed to get to his own every now and then. Han didn't begrudge it. He just wanted some company.

The Chancellor's podium rose up from the floor, and for a second, the out-of-place feeling was worth it. Leia stood in the middle, her loose hair catching a stray air current and bobbing gently in the breeze. She was wearing a long, dark green gown with a chalcedony belt, looking like a forest goddess. Her arms caught the pale light like alabaster.

Han smiled to himself. She looked like one of those statues in front of Amidala's palace. Except a lot prettier.

And that, folks, he thought, is my wife. Eat your hearts out.

She called the Senate into session, going through the motions as if she'd been doing it her entire life, then took a deep breath, and -- briefly -- glanced down at Han. He gave her a smile and she looked back up.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate," she said, "I have called this special session to discuss the matter of the war crimes trials that will continue to spring from our recent conflict."

There was a murmur in the chamber (not of surprise -- most of them knew what she had planned to speak about -- but of assent; the matter was one that many wanted to discuss in one way or another), then Leia raised her hands for silence.

When quiet reigned again, she took a deep breath. "As many of you are aware, a great deal of the controversy on this issue has begun to center around the charges against Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader. While legally, these charges are not different from charges against other Imperial officials, because of the level of publicity and public emotion, his case will necessarily set a precedent for future trials. We can ill-afford to mishandle it."

There was complete silence in the Senate chamber; Han could see people around him squirming for a better view of their senators. No one knew how she planned to handle this, and Han wasn't sure how they'd take her suggestion.

She regarded the Senate calmly, in complete control, and said, "The Republic is fragile. We must make peace... not by appeasing tyrants, but by pursuing justice."

More silence. Han knew what she meant -- and who she considered tyrants in the current situation -- but there was much confusion about it among the strangers, and no one knew exactly what she meant by "pursuing justice." It was the part about "making peace" that confused them -- the other two would have seemed normal without it. They could have assumed she meant to go after the Imperial criminals with all the power of her office. But that first part... that could mean that she didn't mean to do that, that she meant to let at least some of them get away with it.

Han tried to gauge the reaction around him, but found only puzzled faces and questioning eyes.

"We cannot afford -- financially or emotionally -- to have a never-ending string of trials. We must set a precedent whereby an accused war criminal -- on either side, for I will hear cases on Alliance abuses as well -- " (None had been filed, and she knew it; Han liked the touch, but didn't figure it would have any practical outcome.) " -- an accused war criminal will be tried once, for all his crimes, and held to the decision of the court."

"But what about redress for crimes not listed in the initial charges?" someone called. "What if -- "

"Sufficient time will be allotted for the filing of charges. It seems not to take people long to find the accusations." Han was not the only one who heard the slight, bitter humor, and a few senators laughed uncomfortably, knowing exactly how fast people had found their voices here.

"But what if someone gets off on the big charge even if he really did something?"

Leia pulled a data pad up from the Chancellor's podium, and punched the keys that sent text to all the Senate boxes. "If you look at this section of the old Code, you'll see that such trials provided for differing levels of retribution."

"But this says that the person gets tried on his home planet!"

"Yes. It is the precept we have already set in several trials."

"Naboo doesn't have the death penalty!"

Leia was quiet. "Neither does the Republic, and that is the only other choice. War criminals may be tried by the Republic or by their home worlds. It is my recommendation that that all trials for officials ranking Captain or above in the Fleet or Colonel or above in the Army should be the sole purview of the Republic, as the crimes are likely to have been widespread."

There was no argument with this. Politicians knew that if they started squabbling for criminals to be sent to world after world to answer to every new section of the government, nothing would get done.

"Very well," Leia said. "We will begin compiling a charge against Anakin Skywalker after this session disperses."

Grumbling, but no argument.

"On the second matter of this trial, due to its magnitude, it would be customary for the Chancellor to act in a judiciary capacity. I am confident in my ability to be objective, but I realize that, because of the personal connection between myself and the defendent, some may question my allegiance. I put myself forward as judge. But I will call for a vote of confidence among you."

In answer to this, there was stunned silence. Han hadn't even expected it, but it was brilliant. She could still get out of this mess... and if she didn't, she'd have the authority of consensus behind her.

The next three hours were filled with tests and questions, some ridiculous (had Vader fixed her first election?), some serious but misguided (did she love her father, as if that were the determining factor in deciding his guilt), others genuine concerns (would all evidence be taken into consideration, or only evidence related to named charge?). It boiled down, in the end, to asking her whether or not they could trust Anakin Skywalker's daughter as much as they trusted Leia Organa-Solo.

In the end, they decided they could.

When they went home that evening, Leia did not look particularly relieved.

"Isabel."

Anakin had never seen it coming. He'd been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn't registered the oddly distant nudging in the Force that told him there was danger

(Was it deliberate?)

and hadn't even time to curse himself for being caught so off guard. Just the blade, so close to his own neck that he could almost feel the cool metal and then the frosty gray eyes of his opponent set so incongrously in that delicate, elfin face.

Gray eyes shifted to blue as recognition set in and the sword was thankfully put down.

"Ani!" Isabel began to cry. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

It was strangely easy just to pick the little girl up and soothe her. Never mind if said little girl had just been pointing a sword at his throat. Anakin found himself wishing, just briefly, that he had a chance to do that for the twins.

Another regret that he could file away somewhere within that mental file that already held an infinite number of them.

"My fault," murmured Isabel, sniffling into his shoulder. "All my fault."

"Nothing here is your fault, Isabel."

The child lifted her head and looked at the still-sleeping form of her father. "Yes, Ani, it is."

She is responsible for many of the beliefs the Ka'alyan have about justice -- including, unfortunately, the Dead-Talkers...

"Keysha'li Isobel." Anakin hadn't meant to say it aloud but at the words, Isabel turned to look back at him. The sorrow was still there in her eyes but this time, Anakin could see that the child was no longer there.

"I guess, it's time to take my mask off, huh, Ani?" she asked, tiredly.

He gave her a crooked smile. "I guess so."

Isabel took Anakin's hand and led him outside to the balcony, unwilling to stray far from her father's bedside and equally unwilling to disturb him. She held the heavy Ka'alyan sword easily in her other hand, safely tucked back in its sheath, of course.

Anakin raised a brow. "You don't really need that thing, you know."

She gave him a wry grin and glanced pointedly at the lightsaber hanging from his belt. "You're carrying a lightsaber. I carry a sword. Same thing."

"Not when the sword's practically bigger than you," Anakin pointed out.

The grin became mischievous. "Watch." Isabel held her sword in both hands. There was a brief glow and in an eyeblink, the sword was gone.

Anakin started. "How -- where is it?"

"It's in hammerspace(tm)," Isabel chortled. "Ready for instant recall anytime I want to."

"Hammerspace?" Anakin sweatdropped.

"Inter-dimensional repository of monster-sized mallets, buckets of water and other interesting stuff." She flashed him a saucy wink and began to clamber up the balcony railing. "Trust me. It'll keep until I'm tall enough to wear that thing on my back."

Anakin helped her sit on the railing and he leaned comfortably beside her. They sat in a companionable silence for a few seconds before Isabel spoke again.

"I was a Storyteller."

"Not a goddess?" Anakin couldn't help teasing.

She snorted. "I've got enough problems without getting delusions of godhood into the mess. I'm a Storyteller, first and foremost. I listen to stories and I tell 'em. I love stories. It's the best part of my job."

"So far, you've been doing damn good Jedi Master impressions and some pretty interesting tricks with a sword," Anakin pointed out. "Maybe you can tell me something more about this 'job' of yours?"

"Oh." She seemed to be studying her feet as they swung back and forth. "I've been around for a long, long time, Ani. I'm what your old fairy tales would call a sorceress." Again, the wry grin. "Or to be more precise -- The Sorceress Child, at your service."

"A grand title," Anakin observed. "But what have I done to deserve such an honor?"

"You asked to be forgiven, that's what," she answered simply. "So I'm here."

"I don't understand." Anakin rolled his eyes. "And please, I'm begging you, don't be cryptic. We'll be here all night if you keep that up."

She smiled briefly and then, grew serious. "All right. I don't just wander from place to place, Ani. I also wander from life to life. I'm born, I live, I die and then, after a time, I'm reborn again into a different life. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Reincarnation?"

"Right you are. Most of the time, I can go through one mortal lifetime without EVER remembering that I used to do magic and swords and stuff. I'd be a bit fey, but that's all there would be to it. Then again, stuff happens that makes me remember. That 'stuff' usually means trouble. When trouble comes, and there's no one who can fix it, then it's usually up to me to do so."

"Like the Sith on La'azum?"

She grew grave. "Oh yes. Them."

The grimness in her tone startled him and once more, he saw that her eyes had shaded to that frosty gray.

"It was long, long before Bane set down the rule of two. The Sith were numerous and deadly and they had the ancient knowledge of dark magic that the Jedi had tried to destroy." Her voice grew soft in the telling. "The Sith on La'azum raised such terrible creatures from the darkest of the nether realms to aid them. Creatures that they thought would help them gain more power. They sought to forge the blackest of covenants and alliances with them. And the people of La'azum were always the ones who suffered."

In his mind's eye, Anakin caught a brief glimpse of the world that Isabel described, a world that took every childhood fear and shadow and brought them into nightmarish, unholy life. Even in his time as a Sith lord, he had never known that these things were possible -- he'd dismissed them as fairy tales, the morbid distortions of the ignorant.

"Oh yes, they were real," Isabel continued. "And if you had dabbled in such things, even Luke could not bring you back." She shook her head. "The Sith were slowly bringing us back to the time when we had to even sell our souls to defeat those demons. It was my task to see them all destroyed.

"The Ka'alyan were a people whose memories extended to that old, old time. I told them the stories so that the memory would never be forgotten. I fought for them so that dark past I told them about would never come to life again. The Sith spared no one -- the old, the young, the ugly, the beautiful. It didn't matter." Her eyes glittered. "They were without mercy...and so was I."

"And they named you Witch Child, Keysha'li Isobel," Anakin murmured, seeing it in her mind.

She nodded. "That was the first meaning of that name. Just a darker aspect to my old title. The justice part came much later." She sighed. "We could turn to no one, we were still backward compared to the rest of the galaxy. The Jedi Knights were far away. If we wanted justice, we had to take it into our own hands. To avenge our lost ones. To punish those who sought to do us harm. It was...how we could deal with our loss. Our honor was all we had left."

Tears slid down her cheeks. "I meant well, Ani. I really did. We couldn't live in fear of the dark forever. We had to live. If we died, then we died fighting. At least, we never gave in to them. I taught them how to fight for themselves. I was no goddess, no matter what they began to call me later. I couldn't stay there forever. I would be gone one day, and what then?"

Anakin put his hand on her shoulder. "They survived. They fought for their freedom and they lived. They are still here, Isabel. And they are magnificent. You taught them well."

"Too well," she whispered. "They love life so much that they can't bear it when it's taken away from them. That is why the Dead hate you so much. They've sworn revenge, Ani. Blood for blood. Life for life. That is the justice they understand. I taught them that."

"If that is the justice that you know, Isabel," Anakin asked quietly, "then why are you helping me?"

"Because you seek forgiveness. You've turned back and the intent is sincere." Isabel answered almost automatically.

"You show mercy simply because I can sincerely say I'm sorry?" Anakin couldn't believe it. "That's not justice, Isabel. I've done worse, with just as much ruthlesness."

"The difference between you and those Sith that I destroyed long ago was your regret." She bent her head. "Even at the end, when I had them screaming for their lives, they never showed a speck of remorse for the people they killed. Those people meant nothing to them. Nothing at all."

She wept again. "They took the people I called parents then. My mother for one of their rituals, my father struck down for being so foolish as to defend her. They were my family then, Ani. They took countless children's parents too. And in the end, they couldn't grasp what exactly they destroyed. You, Ani, you could. You know now what you took. You can regret. And it makes every difference to me."

"Enough that you wouldn't want to see me punished?" Anakin challenged.

"Penitence, Ani, not punishment." She smiled through her tears. "That is justice."

"The Dead do not see it that way," Anakin sighed. "I know what I owe them and I will pay it gladly. But the debt is mine. Not my family's."

The pain took him by surprise. Anakin nearly bent over double at the tearing pain in his chest. He had the sense of being torn away and he fought back --

"Ani!" Isabel hopped down from her perch to help him.

Around them, the shadows began to take up a life of their own.

The shadows twisted and turned and assumed human shape. Faces came into light, sharper, more clearly defined, every cut and scrape and bruise in place.

The Dead.

One of them, a young woman, spoke. "He is ours, Lady. Ours by right and by justice."

"Not by justice," Isabel protested, cradling Anakin's head on her lap. He was frighteningly still, his skin nearly corpse-white. Isabel aware that he was hovering between life and death, just barely hanging on. Silently, she lent him her strength, the mental equivalent of a hand reaching out to hold on to his own, anchoring him back to his physical form.

The Dead howled.

"How can you abandon your people, goddess?" cried the young woman. "How can you betray us?"

Isabel shook her head. The name of the young woman came to her mind, with a sense of desperation, of overwhelming loss shielded by powerful hate. "Nizy Lemmuo, I am not your god. I have never been your god or anyone else's. But I do not betray you. Please, listen to me!" She stretched her hand out, a plea. "It is all I ask before you choose to act. Please!"

"Nothing this serves," said a new voice. "Warned you I did, Sorceress Child, that this should not be."

The Jedi had finally arrived.

In stark contrast, their faces were calm and composed, their forms outlined with light instead of darkness. Yoda led them, the little Jedi Master stopping to stand beside her, leaning on his walking stick.

Anakin moaned and Isabel was relieved to hear it. He was still there, within his physical form, but he was struggling towards consciousness but unable to wake.

"It is a warning of things to come." This time, it was Obi-Wan Kenobi who spoke. "The clone body will not last long. He has been asked to return to us. And he will, soon enough."

"He is ours, Jedi," hissed Nizy Lemmuo. "You may not shield him any longer! He will answer to our justice."

"Wonderful," Isabel snapped. "Each and every one of you out for blood! Fighting over him like a pack of wild dogs over a bone!"

"We're not out for his blood," Kenobi looked pained. "Anakin should have never returned to the living." He shook his head. "He's only come back for the rest of the galaxy to find out who exactly was the man behind Darth Vader's mask. And then they'll send him back to us right after they execute him for his crimes!"

"Let us not decide this now, Jedi," Isabel said wearily. "I ask for time. I ask to be heard. I ask for all of us to speak and to be heard. Surely, you accept the justice in that?" She looked at Nizy Lemmuo. "Time. You have an eternity of that and more to spare. Please."

The Dead, all of them, Jedi and otherwise looked at each other. After what did seem like an eternity, they nodded in silent agreement.

And were gone.

Isabel bowed her head. She felt for Anakin's pulse, which was now strong and steady. She sat there with him and waited for the others -- the living -- who were already coming to help.

Amidala walked beside her son, holding his arm and mulling over what they had just heard from Laryhi. A thousand years... they'd known everything, but shared nothing. Mother Zemai. Olashya. She found their reasoning frustrating and mindbogglingly picayune, but because of that, it struck her as true and non-malicious. It was just the way the mind was put together.

"She really is, you know," Luke said. "Isabel, I mean. Whatever the Astaya thinks."

Amidala shook her head. That was one oddity more than she had the resources to consider right now. "I believe it. But I'd prefer not to think about it too closely."

"All right." Luke lapsed into silence.

Amidala's aide, Tirzé, had often joked about the lack of conversation in Luke and Amidala's conversations, and Amidala suspected that there was a grain of truth to the jokes. There wasn't even much telepathic contact, which was good, since Amidala had never gotten terribly good at it. They simply walked together, or sat together, or looked out at the plains together, and enjoyed fitting comfortably in one another's presence.

She opened her mouth to ask Luke what he thought of the rest of Jelon Laryhi's story, but before it could come out, a wave of panicked energy flew through her, and Luke gasped clutching at his chest.

"Luke!"

"I'm okay," he said. "It's not me."

He didn't need to finish the thought. She was already on her way to the infirmary.

She would later only piece together her entrance from scattered fragments of the memory. The light coming in from the high window. The shadows cast from the balcony near Tashin's bed. Ani, lying on the ground with his hands to his chest, and Isabel yelling at thin air. She could see herself, as through a camera far away, rushing across the room, kneeling beside Ani on the flagstone floor. When her mind began registering normally again, she was holding his head against her chest, rocking him, whispering, "Ani, my Ani, my beautiful Ani, don't leave me again..." Nonsense words, but they spilled out of her in terror, between frantic kisses placed on his forehead and his cheeks.

She felt a hand on her own, looked down, and nearly wept with relief. It was Ani's. He squeezed her fingers and smiled slightly, whispering, "You're not helping slow down my heart."

She froze, not rocking, wondering if she dared let go.

He squeezed her fingers again. "Joking," he said. "Sorry. My timing has not improved."

She laughed in relief, though it didn't slow the panicked tears. "Ani..."

She registered another hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see Luke, looking pale and tired. "He'll be all right. Let's get him inside."

Ani shook his head. "No. Out here is better."

A thin, high voice spoke firmly, and Amidala remembered that Isabel was still present. "You are not going to die, Ani," she said. "So lose the romantic notion of it and let your wife and son get you inside where the surgeon droids can get you stabilized. I will hold you stable until you do so."

"No."

Amidala sat straighter. "Ani, please..."

"I can't, Amidala. I -- "

Isabel finished. "He's put himself at the mercy of Yoda and Obi-Wan, and they think he should go back to where he started this little voyage."

Amidala was shaking her head. "Are they here?"

Luke nodded, and gestured toward the rail.

Amidala could see nothing, but she looked at the empty space Luke was pointing toward, and didn't feel foolish when she said, "I will not allow it. Do you understand that? I played by your rules before. Not this time."

Ani squeezed her hand again. "This was not meant to be a long voyage, Amidala."

Her own heart was slowing, her breathing becoming even, and the old mantra, the one she had chanted to herself so often through the years in prison, came back to her: I am Padmé Naberrie Skywalker, Amidala of the Naboo. I do not give in. She looked down at Ani as sternly as she could. "You're not leaving me, Ani. You're not leaving Luke. Surely, the Jedi do not wish to deprive the last of their number of a teacher?"

No answer that she heard, but Isabel raised an eyebrow in an arch way. Gone was any pretense at childhood. Amidala was sitting on a balcony with an immortal, and she felt no surprise or unease at it. "A good tactic," Isabel said. She looked to the rail. "Come, show yourselves," she said. "Amidala can see you if you choose to allow it. She saw Ani before."

The air shivered, and a form appeared. Obi-Wan. He showed himself as she had first known him -- a brash young padawan -- then slowly aged himself until his beard was white and his skin wrinkled from years under the Tatooine suns. "Amidala, this is not your choice."

"Nor is it yours."

"Mine," Ani whispered.

"At the moment," Isabel corrected, "mine. I will allow neither the Jedi nor the Dead to take him. If by default, that places me on the Queen's side, I can only come to the conclusion that the Queen is right." She knelt beside Ani's head. "And before you start thinking I'm being bossy, Ani, I should add that I wouldn't be able to do this if you really wanted to go. Your choice is made; it was made when you took the clone. I am simply holding you to it."

"Thank you," Luke said. He bent down and put his arms under Ani, picking him up in an easy motion. Amidala followed them back into the infirmary, and Luke put Ani down on an empty bed. The surgeon droids came at a signal, and jostled the family out of the way as they began to work on him.

Ani said nothing. He looked ashamed as the machines began prodding at him, and Amidala understood that, at least. She led Isabel and Luke to a respectable distance. Obi-Wan drifted along with them, and when they settled, a second form appeared from the nothingness. Amidala wondered if Yoda had been there all along. "Your concern, this is not," he said to Isabel. "Among the Jedi, it should remain."

"We are not out for vengeance, Amidala," Obi-Wan said. "Merely restoration of equilibrium."

Amidala sniffed. "And the Ka'alyan don't want revenge, they want justice. And the families of Ozzel and Needa want compensation."

"And they should all be heard," Isabel said. "All of them have claims. Amidala herself has claims on him. The claims of the Jedi don't always take precedence."

"What do you propose?"

Amidala looked up, surprised and delighted at the new voice. The form came into view behind Obi-Wan, long hair glowing against the shadowy recess in the wall. "Qui-Gon," she whispered.

He nodded solemnly. "I disagree with the my master and my apprentice. But that has never surprised either."

"Then you will be his advocate?" Isabel asked.

"I always have been."

"I mean it it in a more formal sense, Qui-Gon Jinn. I would give him a full span of years. The Jedi disagree. I propose to try him, as he will be tried among the living. And I will keep him alive until this is granted."

"A long time, that could be, Sorceress Child," Yoda said.

"I'm about angry enough at the lot of you to curse him with immortality just to spite you."

Anakin awoke in the dark, an uncomfortable sense of deja vu as he saw the shadows of tubes and smelled the acrid, sterile air of cold healing. He was alone except for Tashin's soft breathing.

No, not alone. Isabel was curled up on a small couch that Luke had brought in for her to sleep on. But she was deeply asleep as well, and Anakin had no desire to wake her. Her mind might be immortal, but her body was four, and needed its sleep.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on exploring the cloned body. He'd heard the panic in Amidala's voice and didn't care for being the cause of it, so he'd allowed the surgeon droids to inject him with a hormone of some kind and hook up a high-protein I.V. drip. Apparently, the heart failure earlier had come from a lack of proper amino acids. He had been sternly lectured about actually eating. He was supposed to eat six to eight meals a day until the growth stopped, and continue with the regimen of hyposprays and the occasional pill. The other option was, he was told, the implantation of a computer chip to regulate his heartrate. He knew the technology, and refused it without allowing debate.

What's next? My lungs?

Isabel had threatened to make him immortal, and he had an awful vision of living forever, each organ giving out and being replaced by cybernetics in turn, and losing everyone he loved.

Losing Amidala.

Again.

Isabel had rolled her eyes and said, "Ani, I wouldn't make you do it alone."

But that was hardly a comforting answer. It didn't make him happy to think of Amidala going through the very same hell for all eternity.

The truth was, he didn't know what to make of Isabel. She was immortal, sure, but she wasn't omniscient. There had been a gap of almost 2000 years between the Sith she remembered on La'azum and the rogue Jedi who had come across their teachings, taken their name, and started the bloody uprising, but to her, it was continuous... or irrelevent. He genuinely liked and respected her, but he could not assume -- as she apparently did -- that she was automatically right.

"You are growing in wisdom," someone said beside him. "You are learning that no one person will be right, or wrong, about everything."

"Qui-Gon."

He smiled. "Hello, Ani."

"I thought I felt you here before."

"I'm afraid I'm unable to communicate as long or as clearly as Obi-Wan. But I shall be your advocate, Ani. I need only to know what that will actually entail."

"I need your help, Master. I don't know what's right. My judgment has proven... somewhat faulty in the past."

"As your mother once told you, this path has been placed before you. The choice is yours alone."

"What do you think Mom would want? And don't say 'What does your heart tell you?' I don't think I could take that right now. I miss her."

"I know. I think it's safe to say that your mother would want you to remain with your family, but we both know that ultimately, she would tell you that it was not her choice."

Anakin considered this. He knew it to be true. "I feel all the places where they're reaching for me," he said. "I felt... guilty. Before. When I was within the Force, at least when I focused myself enough to feel myself as an individual. I hadn't done enough to make up for everything. I want to try and fix what went wrong. I want to fix my family. I... " He looked down. "I want to stay."

"Good," Qui-Gon said. "Then you have told me how to be your advocate. And, for the record, that is the advice I would have given you, were I prone to giving plain answers."

He smiled again, then faded, leaving the room in darkness again.

Anakin turned his head toward Isabel. Her blue gray eyes were open, catching the moonlight, and glowing in the shadows.

"Isabel?" Anakin called out.

A tendril of power gently touched him, sending a healing warmth through the cloned body.

"Better?" she asked, smiling.

"Much better," he answered. "Thank you. But what are you doing?"

"Besides making my eyes glow in the dark?" she laughed. "I'm getting ready for what I'm supposed to do. Planning, if you like."

"Why do I NOT like the sound of that?"

"You silly," Isabel chided. "Do you SERIOUSLY believe that I'm going to let you end up half-machine again?"

"For justice, maybe?"

"Oh, ye suffering gods bear witness!" Isabel raised her eyes to heaven. "The true menace of Darth Vader is actually in his demented sense of humor."

"Hey!" Anakin gave her a mock-injured look. "I just need to work on my timing."

"Work on it some more. I'm not going to turn you into an immortal without your permission. Now for heaven's sake, go to sleep."

"Yes, mother," he retorted.

"AUGH!!"

Anakin chuckled quietly to himself and slept.

A light fog had spread over Theed in the night, and when the sun rose over the plains, it caught in the mist and turned the air itself golden.

Amidala watched it from a seat beside Ani's bed in the infirmary. She'd been unable to sleep, panicking every time she began to drift off that his heart would stop beating, and she had finally found peace by coming downstairs, placing her hand on his chest (taking care not to wake him), and lying her head beside his on the pillow. It wasn't a comfortable position to sleep in. She hadn't slept more than a few hours, and there were crimps in her spine that would take days to work out, but she'd awakened rested.

She stood and stretched, reluctantly pulling her hand from Ani's chest. He reached up sleepily to catch it, but missed and fell back into his medically enforced rest. She slipped out onto the balcony, moving quickly so that not much of the still-chilly spring dawn air could get inside. Theed was coming back, and she loved it fiercely in the morning's privacy.

"My father is getting better."

Amidala turned. Isabel was standing by the door, looking somber and serious. "When did you follow me?"

"I was already out here. It's nice out. I didn't want to wake them up."

"Me, either." She came to the railing. "My father is still going to be sick for a little while, but he is going to get better. Have you decided what happens to him next?"

Amidala sighed. "I will meet with the Astaya this morning. Normally, his sentence would involve labor to pay back those he has wronged -- in other words, I would send him to work among the Ka'alyan -- but the situation is difficult. I won't send him to his death."

"Thank you." Isabel looked over her shoulder. "He's not strong, but he can do work when he needs to do it. If the Astaya can protect him, then that would be... I think it will work, in the end."

"And what about you?"

"I'm his daughter, whatever else I am. I'll do as he wishes when he wakes up."

They were quiet together for a long while, and the fog started to lift, the curtain of gold parting to reveal the partially rebuilt city, one gleaming building after another.

"Isabel?"

"Yes?"

Amidala had a question in her mind, but she couldn't find it. She shook her head. "I'll speak to the Astaya about your father. If... I don't understand entirely what it is you are planning to do. Perhaps you should talk to him yourself at some point."

"He believes I'm a figment of Nizy Lummuo's imagination."

"I'm sure you can disabuse him of the notion."

Isabel just shrugged and looked out over Theed. "It's really pretty," she said after awhile, and she sounded sad. "I wish I could stay."

Amidala smiled at her. "You'll always be welcome here, Isabel."

"They all say that at first."

Coruscant.

There would be no kindly, semi-regretful Boss Carn Gari as prosecutor this time.

Leia supposed she'd realized that, but when the petition came in, her heart still sank, even as she approved it (having no legal grounds on which to refuse it). Vali Umbuimi had made her reputation as a ruthless prosecutor within the Empire, managing even to successfully prosecute a case against one of Palpatine's pet crime lords, though of course the sentence had been commuted, and Vali Umbuimi herself transferred to the far reaches of the Outer Rim. There, on the world of Yhanubi -- once one of the most crime-ridden parts of the galaxy -- she had set herself up as sherriff and judge, and had cleaned house quite efficiently. She did it without being brutal, and she improved the standard of life for all of Yhanubi and most of the surrounding systems. She was not only tough, she was good at what she did, and she was popular with the public.

And she was giving up her position, returning to the prosecutor's role for the sole purpose of pressing the case against Anakin Skywalker.

Leia had a horrible thought that Father would insist that poor little Ivva Japui would serve as his defense, and as soon as she thought it, she knew it would be true. Ivva would blow away like a leaf in a cyclone.

Her desk beeped, and a holo of her aide -- a Twi'lek man named Frehlik today -- appeared in the air. "Counsellor Umbuimi has arrived."

Leia nodded. "Send her in."

The door slid up, and Vali Umbuimi swept in like a rainstorm, grey robes flying behind her. She was a tall human -- almost as tall as Father used to be -- with flashing eyes and high cheekbones. Her hair was pinned into a complex style that added a little to her height, but mainly consisted of cascading curls that made her look like a sculptor's dream of a noblewoman. She smiled and extended her hand. "Chancellor," she said, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

Leia shook the proferred hand. "Likewise, I'm sure, Counsellor. Please, sit down."

Umbuimi sat, drawing a data pad from her waistband as she did so. She handed it across to Leia. "This is my preliminary witness list," she said. "I'm reserving the right to call others as the trial progresses."

"Of course."

"How much latitude will be granted?"

Leia looked at the list of witnesses. Not much latitude would be needed; the names she recognized were people who had firsthand knowledge of one sort or another, and she supposed the others would be of a similar sort. "The charge is a broad one. Latitude is inevitable. Or were you asking how much I personally plan to give?"

"I see you like to cut to the heart of it. Yes, of course, I was asking the latter."

"I will treat this trial no differently than any other war crimes trial."

Umbuimi nodded. "Yes. Your reputation is as a fair woman. I will prove my case to you. Clever, though..."

"What?"

"You are the best witness to his behavior on board the Death Star. But I can hardly call you to testify."

"It didn't occur to me. Then again, I hardly need to testify to before myself."

The counsellor's laugh was high spirited and genuine. "I think I will like you, your Honor," she said. "Though I suspect you will not feel the same about me for quite a long time." She stood and dipped her head in the remnants of a bow. "Now, I will leave you to review my witness list. A second copy is available for the defense, whenever it materializes. I will, of course, need the defense witness list as well."

"Of course."

The woman left, and Leia began to review the list in earnest. The families of Ozzel and Needa would testify as character witnesses. An apparently endless string of low-level Imperial officers and stormtroopers -- she would have to pare that down; neither she nor the court needed to hear fifty people testify to the same thing -- would appear to stand witness to his crimes within the Imperial armed forces. Several high ranking rebels -- many of them Leia's friends -- would report on his behavior as an enemy, though Leia wasn't sure what they planned to say; on the battlefield, Father had been ruthless, but he'd played by the rules. It was only off the battlefield, in the detention blocks, where he was likely to be guilty of crimes... and most of the witnesses were unavailable.

She scanned further. Crime lords complaining about the decimation of their organization (under accusations of mistreatment of "perfectly legitimate business associates"). A series of reports from Bespin in which --

Her eyes widened and her hand went to her heart.

At the bottom of the screen, almost an afterthought, was a final name among the Bespin witnesses, with the note "Under subpoena, no response, hostile witness."

There, flashing before her like all the other names, but so different, were the words "General Han Solo."

Han was beginning to think he might wriggle out of it. He'd spent most of his life learning to dodge people he didn't want to see, and avoiding a few reporters and court officers seemed like nothing compared to slipping Jabba's bounty hunters for three years.

But the reporters had caught him twice, and he should have known that he couldn't get away from the process servers forever. He just hadn't realized that they'd be using a droid to do it. He'd gone down to the Fleet headquarters, and was working with a couple of pilots on one of the old tubs they were trying to refurbish when an astromech droid reached out an arm to give him what he was expecting to be a hydrospanner. Instead, it was a subpeona.

Just great.

He thought about tossing it, but figured the droid had been programmed to record him getting it. Instead, he found a small holo-communicator, and dropped it in. Vali Umbuimi -- somehow still looking tall at six inches -- appeared on the workbench. "General Han Solo, you are required to appear as a witness for the prosecution in the case of the New Republic versus Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader, on the world of Naboo, in regards to your experiences with the accused on the world of Bespin. Further details will be provided as they become available. Failure to comply will be treated as contempt of court."

The image smiled pleasantly, then disappeared.

Han's first instinct was to call Leia, but she'd be talking to Umbuimi now, and probably knew. They'd talk about it later, at home. And Leia... well, she wouldn't like it, but she'd get it. There were other people he wasn't quite so sure about. He took the communicator into a private office, and called Naboo.

Luke just looked at him blankly. "What are you going to say?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll say I don't remember much."

Anakin Skywalker appeared beside Luke, the holo swimming up out of thin air as he entered the projection area. He'd grown. A lot. And he didn't look real healthy, in Han Solo's opinion. Some kind of tube was in his arm, and Han realized that they were projecting from the infirmary. "Tell the truth, Solo," he said. "There have been enough lies without you adding to them."

"Father -- "

"Would you have your friends perjure themselves?"

Han shook his head. "Look, if I tell them what I saw... I didn't see everything... "

"No one saw everything."

"What I saw was you... " Han double-checked the security of the transmission. "I saw you stand there and order me tortured. I saw you do the same to Chewie. And I saw you setting up the carbon freezing chamber and order them to put me into it. And I'll give good odds that they call Lando to add that you were planning on doing the same thing to Luke. I know the rest, and even I didn't care much when I heard it first. But I don't want you going down on my say-so."

"Leia will understand."

"It's not about Leia."

Luke sighed. "I'll understand, too."

"Thanks, kid, but that's not what I meant."

Anakin looked confused. "General Solo..."

"It's just..." Han sighed. "I've been thinking about something Lando said. And that ought to tell me I got a little too much time on my hands, but I have been. When you first showed up, I couldn't figure out why he was treating you the way he was. He said that Leia gave him a chance after he screwed up. And your whole damn family gave me a chance. I guess I'm thinking maybe you should get one."

"I am getting a chance, Solo." His voice was thoughtful, slow... it was Vader's voice. It had finished changing. Han fought the urge to shudder. "Luke gave me that chance once, and anything beyond it is a miracle. Keep your integrity, Solo. It was hard-bought. Tell the truth."

INTERLUDE 2: SUMMONS

Prosecution.

Vali Umbuimi pulled the pins out of her hair, relishing the sense of freedom as each section fell heavily to her shoulders. The ends of the curls finished their cascade down to the base of her spine, where her gown was open under the X around the shoulders. They caressed her skin, and she took a deep breath, enjoying the feel of it. No one would have recognized her, but no one was there.

"All right," she whispered to herself. "Enough girl stuff. Let's move."

Her face took on its more usual determined set, and she strode to her computer terminal, hair and gown billowing behind her. She had summons to issue.

NABOO.

Lando Calrissian couldn't claim surprise when the summons came, and he didn't bother to try and duck it. He had been instructed by Anakin Skywalker to make no effort to avoid it, and he'd obeyed by habit.

It was the voice. The damned voice. You just didn't say no to it.

He was in the Alderaanian quarter when he was served, walking with old Garlien and talking about a problem with the drainage at the makeshift museum -- the courtyard was badly canted, and every rainstorm flooded the east end of the basement. Lando was arranging for labor and a few supplies, but in truth, the work was mostly done. Politically, that was a bad thing... he would not have a flashy project to show off during the trial, something to distract people from the fact that he was testifying against Anakin... no, Ani. Here in Theed, he was Ani -- Ani who helped build the Gungan city, Ani who tirelessly told stories to any child who caught up with him, Ani who could talk to the ducks, Ani who was lying sick in the infirmary. The children brought him flowers fairly regularly. Even the adults of Theed, who knew, had tacitly accepted him.

And I can put him away in five minutes of testimony.

The process server wasn't bothering to hide his purpose when he swept into the building. He was an off-worlder, and, Lando thought, not terribly versed in current events. He smiled when he held out the summons chip, and saluted him on the way out.

Garlien looked at it distastefully, then pulled a small holo-communicator from his pack. Lando popped the chip in, and played it.

Vali Umbuimi. Lando had met her only once on Yhanubi, found her un-charmable, and moved on to easier targets. She wanted him to talk about the deal on Bespin.

"No surprises there," Ivva Japui said from the balcony.

Lando looked up; he hadn't realized she was there, but of course, she was almost always here, working on the tapestries and paintings. "How you doing, Ivva?"

"I ducked him as long as I could, but I felt guilty staying out of the hospital. He told me he wanted me to defend him."

"You could say no."

"I don't know why he trusts me."

"He doesn't trust you, at least not as a lawyer; he thinks you'll lose. And he's planning to lose."

She smiled. "Maybe. But I'm not planning to lose. And I think he knows that on some level. And I have to try. I have to... to prove I can."

Lando nodded. "All right. But you get Carn Gari to help you."

"Already on it."

"And make sure to remind the court when I'm up there that they're listening to a half-baked con man who sold out one of his oldest friends for a tax cut."

"Already on that, too."

She smiled, and went back to whatever she'd been doing to the old tapestry.

Lando shook his head. Ivva was going to get squashed.

TATOOINE.

Kit Binai -- who still often thought of himself as Kitster, though a pack of mad banthas could not have drawn this fact from him -- awoke to the incessant buzz of the doorbell. He really needed to change that tone, before it drove him crazy. He'd only been asleep for forty-five minutes, and it was still the hottest part of the afternoon.

He shuffled out into the main hall, where the children of Sanctuare were tucked into their favorite cool shadows, most sleeping, some quietly reading or playing cards. Vertash G'lahter, who was nominally in charge while Kit napped, was sketching Kerea Morlana as she slept. She would take him to task for it later. Alderaanian girls, she often said, did not put up with any activity about which they were not consulted. Vertash took it in good grace and went on about his business.

The door. Someone is at the door.

Kit rubbed his eyes and forced himself all the way awake. The buzzing at the door had stopped. Whoever it was had either given up or been admitted. Kit decided tha the'd better find out which.

He heard the pleasant, low tones of a woman's voice before he could quite make out the words she was saying, and saw a faint glow from the comm-station in the entry hall. Had someone been foolish enough to risk the glaring heat of the Wastes just to deliver a message?

Any sympathy he might have had for the messenger evaporated when he came around the corner and saw the face illuminated by the light.

Dritali Neral.

Kit knew that he shouldn't play favorites, and he really did love all of the thirty or so children who'd found their way to Sanctuary over the years. He doted on the little ones, and frequently called the grown-up ones to come visit. But he did have his special ones. Gilisa Fre, now over twenty, came to stay when he was sick or when one of the children needed an escort somewhere. Vertash had declared himself Kit's "senior assistant" at the ripe old age of eight, and had been determined to prove it for the last seven years. Kerea... Kit had found her in a slave auction six months after the destruction of Alderaan, and had bought her immediately (using a trust fund that he almost never touched, even when times were tight). He'd "betrayed" the trader to the Empire as soon as they were safe and away, and, as he'd expected, the situation was resolved rather efficiently as soon as word got to the right ears. And there had been no doubt about whose were the right ears.

That was because of Dritali. If he had a general cadre of favorites, Dritali was certainly his favorite of the favorites, the one people often mistook for his natural daughter. She'd come to him on a stormy night, a cut on her face -- now long-scarred -- still fresh, and a bracelet bracing a broken arm.

Shmi Skywalker's bracelet.

And she told him that Lord Vader had sent her. That he'd saved her from a probably fatal beating from her father (Kit later learned that her father had been sliced in half in front of her, but she'd been too upset to say so the first night; she'd simply kept saying that Lord Vader saved her -- she considered him her greatest hero, and nothing Kit could say could convince her of anything else). And that he'd sent her to Sanctuary, and given her that bracelet to identify herself to Kit.

He'd wondered why there was an Imperial trust fund for Sanctuary in his name. Dritali's appearance answered the question. But it was more than the simple proof that Anakin Skywalker was still alive -- somewhere, anyway. It was Dritali herself. After awhile, she'd found a place here. She was of an age with Vertash and Kerea, and the three made Sanctuary a much better place. She was the kind of girl who Kit would have been proud to claim as a daughter.

And now, she looked as if someone had been beating her again, this time from inside her head. She looked up over the holo, and bit her lip. "Kit..."

He went to her and put an arm around her, then looked at the message. It was Vali Umbuimi. Word had gotten around. She was the prosecutor in Ani's trial.

"I've been summoned," Dritali whispered. "As a witness to my father's death. I'm supposed to testify against him."

Kit's heart sank. He'd known what was happening on Naboo, of course, and had planned to contact Amidala, but things had gotten in the way, and time had passed and... He hadn't wanted the first contact to be like this. "It's all right, Dritali," he said. "I'll get Gilisa to stay here, and I'll be with you. Do you understand? I will be with you the whole time. You tell the truth, and whatever happens after, I'll stand by you."

She nodded, and squeezed his hand.

The summons played over and over in the quiet afternoon.

TELOS.

Elshava Ozzel sat at the kitchen table in a moment of quiet exultation, playing the welcome message in a continuous loop. She knew it was as far as she would get -- the trial judge was not only Vader's daughter, but a leader of the Rebellion, and what was a nearly-nameless Imperial admiral to such a person? -- but at least she would get this. She would speak for her brother. She would do him that favor.

Across from her, Hillo Needa was turning a cup of Chandrilla tea in thoughtful circles. She had only been married for eight months when her husband was killed -- and he'd been on active duty for three of those months -- and she said that she sometimes woke up in the night, terrified because she couldn't remember his face. Elshava patted her hand. "You can speak for him," she said, then shook her head. "My brother at least was a bad strategist. Not a capital crime, but something I can hold on to as a reason. Your husband was blameless. You've seen the security tapes. You speak for him."

"I'm tired," Hillo said. "Maybe I can... " She wiped a hand across her face. "Shavi, I believe he's turned. I really believe it."

"And?"

"I know, I know. The present doesn't change the past. But I think of his wife. I think, if I had the chance to have my husband back... how would I feel about some other woman threatening it with crimes from a former life?"

"Your husband," Elshava said again, patiently, "was blameless. Hers is not."

"I know. And I guess she knows. And I know that... " Hillo sniffed, then seemed to make a sudden decision. She gulped down her tea in a single swallow, and sat up straight. "If he really has turned back," she said, "he couldn't live with himself if he's not punished. And that won't help either of them. And if he hasn't really turned, I want him put away. So I'll do it. I'll speak for my husband."

Elshava smiled. "Good. It may be all we get, Hillo, but we will make the best of it. Their names will be remembered."

THE TR'ASTARI'SHAL. LA'AZUM.

Lersi Gerov was with Maisha when the summons came, as she usually was in the afternoons now. The old woman had an endless supply of information about La'azum, and, as long as Lersi remembered to be patient with repetition and meandering, she was an invaluable resource.

The afternoon of the summons, however, she was not expounding on the history of La'azum. She was teaching Lersi how to do a textile craft that involved twining yarn around metal loops of various shapes and sizes. It would, when finished, create the pretty window hangings Lersi had noticed in some of the older houses. Unfortunately, Lersi had ten thumbs when it came to this sort of thing, and Maisha was the one being patient today.

"No, no, my girl. Wind it to the right, or you will twist the sheet."

Lersi nodded, and unwound the last two feet of yarn. The loop she was working with was a wavy triangle, and the pattern ended up as a brilliant, tri-point starburst with a reverse image of it on the other side. Lersi's looked like... knotted yarn. "I can't really do this."

"Nonsense, nonsense. You've got hands, haven't you? You can do it, just -- "

The door to the small room opened, and Rashara Laryhi led in a Wookiee. The Wookiee was carrying a metal case.

"This is Goroga. He'll not tell me his business," Rashara said, not bothering with the formal, Core Worlds accent. "Except that he must see Maisha."

"Did you see anything?" Maisha asked, and although she didn't emphasize the word, neither Lersi nor Rashara assumed she was asking about normal sight.

Rashara shrugged. "Awhile back. I saw you on ship. You stood with Nizy Lummuo and the others, then they fell back and you remained. I saw... a big creature lead you away. It didn't seem a Wookiee at the time, but I suppose it is, and I suppose we know where they are leading you."

Maisha squinted at Goroga. "Aye, yes. Of course. I have been wondering if they would ask. Which side?"

The Wookiee barked twice and held out the box.

"I suppose it doesn't matter. In either case, they will expect me to go to Naboo and leave my loop-weaving behind. Very well, Goroga. I'll take it."

Goroga put the box into her hands, and made a series of sounds that Lersi couldn't begin to interpret. Maisha shrugged; Rashara rolled her eyes and held out a small holo-comm unit. Lersi, who had been a somewhat less than diligent journalist of late, perked up her ears and took notes as Vali Umbuimi's message played.

Maisha gave a disdainful sniff. "Well, I'll go. Lersi, child, you need to finish covering this trial at any rate. Will you help me? I'll give you... what is it they call it? An exclusive. I can hear the promotionals now."

Lersi smiled weakly. She had never been less interested in an exclusive.

Defense.

Ivva could tell as soon as she went into the infirmary that Anakin Skywalker planned to be obstinate, so she turned on her heel and went back for reinforcements. The Queen had been turning the budget over, and was only too glad to take a short break from it. "Though I really do need to finish it. I need to create money that doesn't exist."

Ivva sighed. She was on the Council. She'd seen the figures, and she knew. "Everyone's broke after the war. But no one wants to be the first to ask the Senate to forgive war debts."

Amidala smiled bitterly. "It's not a war debt. Palpatine was Naboo. He did this to his own world. It's our own mess to clean up. Come on. Take me to my stubborn husband."

Anakin grimaced when they appeared, and for a moment, Ivva could clearly see Vader in him -- not Vader as the evil Sith apprentice, but Vader as the inflexible military commander known for getting his way. But Ivva knew he couldn't pretend not to be glad of Amidala's company -- no matter what the situation -- for long. The grimace melted into a resigned smile and he shook his head. He didn't bother arguing; he knew Amidala's position on the matter of his defense. "All right," he said. "I'll give you some names."

NABOO.

Isabel Tashin took her father's summons in his stead. "Put him near the end," she told Ivva. "He should be more well by then."

Ivva didn't bat an eyelash at the adult tone. She was perceptive, and had figured out that Isabel wasn't always what she seemed to be. "All right. I can work with that. The prosecutor's list has the La'azum witnesses near the end." She smiled. "Don't pay any attention to the bit about it being a crime not to answer. I know he'll answer. It's just... "

"Formality. I know. He knows. He'll speak."

In the next bed Ani laughed a little, and Isabel shot a glare at him. He was supposed to be fighting this. He had to stop feeling guilty about anything that involved people defending him.

She waited for Ivva to leave. "Ani, you need to improve your attitude, or I'll stop helping you."

"I will fight for myself. I don't want to ask these other people to... perjure themselves."

"That would be why defense witnesses are people who can truthfully say good things. And the fact that you think they're lying is what I mean about your attitude problem. You need to get up out of that bed and go for a run with Luke. Hell, take the X-wing up for a spin. Just get out of here and get your head straight, Lord Vader."

"That's a sentence I never thought I'd hear."

"Do you want the surgeon droids to unhook your needles, or do you want me to do it?"

He started working on the I.V. tubing. "Trust me," he said, "I can disconnect myself from all sorts of wiring."

"So disconnect and get out of here."

Isabel held his vein steady as he pulled out the needle, and knit it back together enough for it to heal quickly. "You might want to change."

"I figured that much out for myself."

Isabel waved him off. Ani was extraordinarily compliant about being ordered to do things that he wanted to do anyway. She thought about ordering him to Amidala's chambers, then figured that was probably overstepping her bounds.

Father coughed, and opened his eyes just a little bit. "Isabel?"

Immediately, all other concerns faded. She ran to his side and took his hand. "I'm here, Papa. Isabel's here. Ivva gave you a summons."

He nodded, using what little energy he had. "Yes... good... here... " He opened his hand, and Isabel put the small chip into it. His fingers closed around it.

Kyrys Tashin had been served.

GAMORR.

Fineal Merlor never wanted to have anything to do with the Empire again.

Not after the Death Star.

No way.

So why was he opening his hand to take a chip that he knew was a summons for Vader's trial?

He pulled his hand back. The server-droid stared at him and made no move away from the door. "Fineal Merlor," it repeated, "this is a legal proceeding."

"Yes, yes. I know." He wished that they'd sent something sentient. "All right. I don't know what they want me for, but all right."

He took the chip and played it.

The woman who appeared, hovering over his kitchen table, was small and pretty, with light brown hair and large blue eyes. She was dressed in white and --

Is she Alderaanian?

Of course she was. What else would she be?

For a moment, Fineal had a flash of total recall. He'd been two decks below the battle bridge, but it had been broadcast. He'd been Tarkin's personal secretary for two months at that point, and knew about the less-than-subtle rivalry with Vader. They had argued earlier about a demonstration Tarkin had planned; Fineal didn't know what it was. Vader insisted that it would be ineffective in persuading the prisoner to talk. Tarkin had dismissed his arguments with a wave of his hand. He was eager to use his new toy. Vader had simply said, "You will regret this, but I have been given orders to defer to you and I shall."

Fineal had wondered casually if there would be an argument on the bridge before blowing up a wandering asteroid or something. But the images were still, except for the young Alderaanian prisoner, who first looked arrogant, then frantic. Then Tarkin gave an order, and Fineal looked casually toward a porthole to see which asteroid or satellite he was going for, then the unthinkable monstrosity... the planet...

The Alderaanian lawyer was smiling sweetly and apologetically, though the words she said were standard legalese. "Lietenant Fineal Merlor, you are hereby summoned to appear in the royal court of Naboo, to give testimony in the matter of the Republic versus Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader."

Vader. Fineal whispered the name in his mind. What good would this do? What possible aim did she have?

"As a survivor of the battle of Yavin, your testimony is required in presenting the chain of events that led to the destruction of Alderaan, and to your own escape from the destruction of the Imperial battle station known as -- " Fineal noticed the tight tone of her voice " -- as the Death Star. Failure to comply with this summons..."

She followed it with the usual string of blessings and cursings, and Fineal tuned out. He would go. Of course he would go, and there was no need for threats. It was Vader who had allowed him off the station, Vader who had reprogrammed the shuttle to carry him safely through the field of asteroids that had been a living planet only a few moments before. Fineal had thought himself clever to make up a lie convincing enough to fool the Dark Lord -- it had been something about reporting on the "unfortunate incident" to the Board of Imperial Governors -- but he'd suspected for several years that no one at all had been fooled. He'd gone AWOL. No one had come after him.

Until now.

Fineal allowed himself a few hours of self-pity -- his AWOL life had been good, and now and forever, it was over, and he wasn't looking forward to being interrogated by an Alderaanian lawyer in front of an Alderaanian judge who knew the events he was narrating better than he did -- then packed his bags for the journey.

AMPINUA.

Bezya, daughter of Hafda, stood at the small but dignified monument that marked the final resting place of her aunt's ashes. Lord Vader had commissioned it and stood quietly as the small urn was lowered into the dirt. He had been with her when she died. It didn't surprise Bezya, who had been privy to Aunt Rejuo's private thoughts for several years. The man she had seen inside the robotic beast that was Vader was exactly the sort who would pay her this respect in the end.

He had fought more battles for her than Bezya had been able to keep track of -- she was only eighteen at the time Aunt Rejuo died, and had only listened to all the stories because she adored spending time with her iconoclastic aunt. No delicate Ampinuan beauty with jewels on her wingtips -- Aunt Rejuo had been an engineer, and she had found a kindred spirit in Vader. As a result, when Bezya had finally met Vader, her expectations were quite different from those of anyone else in the galaxy. She'd been looking for a true noble, a hero who fought for what he believed in, a brilliant mind, and a devoted heart.

She'd found all those things.

That there were other, less pleasant things, was something she was aware of -- as Rejuo had been -- but somehow, they seemed not to be the defining points of the man. The defining point was the small red obelisk rising from the salt flats of Ampinua. This was the man Aunt Rejuo had come to love -- though it had not been reciprocated as she'd wished -- the man who wanted to make the galaxy a better place for everyone.

If only he hadn't missed his footing so many times!

Bezya sighed. That was how Aunt Rejuo put it, every time something happened that confused her. "He loses his balance sometimes," she would say. "He misses his footing."

The results were almost universally disastrous for anyone in the general vicinity.

But the deep good in the man... that somehow always came out, even when he was actively fighting it. Most of Bezya's knowledge was hearsay, but she was known to be a reliable witness, and she had seen the improvements here on Ampinua. She'd been thirteen when Vader took down Mol Zokusa and freed all his Ampinuan slaves. Bezya had been there for that, at least. And she was the only one who could even begin to talk about what had happened with Aunt Rejuo. No one else understood it. And she was glad Anakin Skywalker had remembered her name, and asked for her help.

She put a small mud sculpture on Aunt Rejuo's grave -- it would return to the clay by morning -- and smiled. "He has a chance to be the man you saw, Auntie," she said. "Maybe between us, we can give him a hand."

NABOO.

Luke didn't wait for his summons, though Ivva promised that she would eventually issue him one.

"They'll say you're prejudiced," she said. "They'll say that your testimony is skewed."

"They're right. I tend to be prejudiced and skewed when I talk about how someone saved my life and destroyed the Empire at the cost of his own life. My uncle always said I had no sense." He grinned. "Ivva, I'm going to do this. I'm glad to do it. I want people to know what he did in that throne room."

"There've been fairly accurate rumors about it since the beginning... "

"I'm going to confirm them as an eyewitness."

"All right." She still looked dubious.

"I just want to speak for him."

"I know. I'll put you on the list. But I'm afraid that Vali Umbuimi will have you for lunch. She'll try and break your image."

"So did other experts."

"You're as obstinate as he is."

"Yes."

And that was it. Ivva left the hangar, shaking her head.

An hour later, the arrival alert lights flashed, and Luke stepped back into the alcove while his X-wing docked. The top popped open, and Father swung himself the side. The color was back in his face, and he looked more rested than he had in the infirmary. Luke wondered if Isabel had been a doctor in one of her former lives.

He gave Luke the sunny grin that had charmed him the first time they worked on the X-wing together, and Luke returned it. "Welcome back."

"Thanks. Just a spin around the system."

"Isabel's orders. She told me."

"Your mother will have a good laugh about it, at any rate."

"Why should she? She knows she married a pilot."

"Yes. Yes, she does."

His eyes went far away, and Luke didn't try to guess what he was thinking about. There were distinct discomforts in telepathy with one's father.

"I spoke to Ivva."

His eyes came back. "I guessed as much. I... hope that Umbuimi will not treat you badly." He sighed. "You know my wish is that you would have never been exposed to this at all. You should not be punished for my actions."

"I know your wish, Father. And I appreciate it. But I'm still going to testify."

"Yes. I know."

A final summons.

Isabel waited for night. They would come in the daylight -- they'd certainly never hesitated to do so before -- but she would have fewer questions to answer in the wee hours, when fewer people would be up and about.

She slipped out into the garden, where a few plants were trying valiantly to make a go of it. Obi-Wan and Yoda shimmered into form at the center of the courtyard.

"Certain you are that you would do this, Sorceress Child?"

"If I back off, will you?"

Their silence was all the answer she required.

She walked between them, taking care not to brush through them. It wouldn't hurt anyone present, but it seemed less dignified. She had no desire to insult them right now.

Just to beat them.

She took a few steps to the ruined fountain, and stepped up onto the block at the middle. "Nizy Lummuo!" she called. "You are summoned to appear here and only here, until your grievances have been heard."

The wind picked up, but no other answer came.

"All in the world beyond, I call to you! Those who have business here, be ready for my call."

"They hear you," Obi-Wan said.

She gave him an irritated squint. "Of course they do."

"Then you are finished."

"No," she said. "There is one more summons."

Yoda understood first, and waved his ethereal hand. "Unwise, this is. Unpredictable."

"Not all of us need everything predictable. But in this, I know more than you do, because I know La'azum, and you don't." She raised her arms. "Zemai Laryhi, Olashya M'Traet, Carrier of the Dead! The time of your redemption is upon you. Do not forsake it. The promise must be kept!"

The wind died suddenly, leaving the night in silence.

Obi-Wan and Yoda faded away.

Isabel stood alone in the moonlight.

They would come now.