A few paces behind the Chagrian were two familiar faces—those of Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo. Their eyes fell on her and they smiled reassuringly. They had been present for her arraignment, and now it seemed they intended to be here for the trial. At least, Tahiri amended, as much of the trial as they could. It was a heartening gesture.
She nodded slightly at them, then returned her gaze to the prosecuting attorney. Both sets of his horns were long and glorious. The sharp ends of his lethorns, which extended from two trailing pieces of flesh on either side of his head that reminded Tahiri of a Twi’lek’s lekku, were capped with two polished spheres of some kind of metal that gleamed in the yellowish light of the courtroom. His eyes were deeply set but clearly sharp. Now those eyes fastened on Tahiri.
“He and I have tangled before. One of my last cases.” Eramuth hadn’t looked up himself, but poured her a glass of water from a pitcher that had been set at the table. He handed it to her, giving her a good excuse to look away without appearing as if she had broken Dekkon’s gaze.
“Did you win?” Tahiri murmured, taking a sip of water.
“Naturally.”
“Great,” she said, putting the glass down. “Now he’s got a score to settle.”
“Let him try,” Eramuth said airily. He rose and extended a hand politely to the Chagrian who had, with a swirl of his dark, elegant robes, now stepped up beside him.
Sul Dekkon was much taller than the Bothan, towering over him as they shook hands. Eramuth didn’t bat an eye.
“Sul,” he said, his voice sincere, warm and rich and rolling. “You look well.”
“And you, Eramuth,” came the response. The voice was harsher than Eramuth’s, the words clipped and cool. “I see academia is treating you well.”
Eramuth smiled. His right ear flicked. “It is always an honor to pass to the next generation what one has learned.”
“Next? I’d say more than that,” Dekkon said, smiling. It did not reach his eyes. “These could be your grandchildren you’re instructing, Eramuth.”
“Many things improve with age,” Eramuth said. “The Bothan mind is one of them.”
“Perhaps,” the Chagrian agreed. “However, you’re a bit out of practice, aren’t you?”
Eramuth chuckled. “Practice means nothing when you’ve won as many cases as I have. I believe you’re up to half that number now, aren’t you?”
Both were lawyers. Neither was a Force-user, but they hid their emotions well. Still, for someone as sensitive as Tahiri was in the Force, they might as well have been screaming at each other for the hostility that was flowing between them. Or rather, Dekkon might have been screaming. Eramuth was enjoying himself, baiting the other attorney with a deftness that a dancer would have envied. Still, there was something off—something that the Chagrian had said had gotten to him.
Dekkon’s eyes flashed and he opened his mouth to retort, but movement from the back of the room interrupted the conversation. The bouncer-bailiff had opened the door, and the twelve jurors filed quietly into their seats. Dekkon gave Eramuth a brief nod and turned to his seat, pulling datapads out and arranging them on the table. Eramuth bowed, then slid back into his chair beside Tahiri.
“I think we’ve got ourselves a good jury,” Eramuth said, his muzzle to Tahiri’s ear. “Most of them are open-minded. Some of them were even somewhat sympathetic to you.”
She watched the jurors out of the corner of her eye. Humans, Bith, Chadra-Fans, Wookiees—it was almost as if every species whose planet was a member of the Galactic Alliance was represented here. She wondered if any of them were Force-users. It was, after all, supposed to be a jury of her peers. She dismissed the hope at once. It would be all too easy to argue that the Force was being misused by the potential jury member. A Mon Calamari looked at her with one eye, clearly thinking his expression was neutral, clearly kidding himself. He did not like her.
“And some weren’t,” Tahiri said, watching as the Mon Cal took his seat.
“And some weren’t, quite right, but that’s to be expected,” Eramuth said without missing a beat. “I give a little, he gives a little. The only thing Dekkon has going for him, really, is the facts.”
Tahiri couldn’t help it. She stared at him. “Wait a minute—what did you just say?”
He smiled and poured a glass of water for himself. His hand shook a little, but he seemed completely calm and she had noticed the slight trembling before. Eramuth was, after all, definitely an elder.
“I said, all Dekkon has is the facts. We have something more. We can decide how the jury interprets and internalizes those facts. Moreover, my dear, we have you.” He took a long drink. “We have who you were, and are, and wish to become. And believe me, I’d rather have those things on my side than something as simplistic as cold, hard facts.”
“But … why?” Tahiri’s heart felt like it had been squeezed by a prosthetic hand. Was the Bothan crazy?
“Because, my dear, beings don’t really want things that are cold and hard. They are sitting there, most of them, bless them, really, truly, trying to do the right thing. If they find you guilty, it must be beyond a reasonable doubt. And that, Miss Tahiri Veila, is what you and I are going to give them. Many, many reasons to doubt.”
Before Tahiri could splutter out more questions, the bailiff strode forward and bellowed in a voice that almost shook the walls, “All rise for Her Honor, Judge Mavari Zudan.”
Tahiri recognized the name, though she had never seen the Falleen woman who now entered the room from the back door. For a moment, Tahiri wondered if she’d simply traded one bad situation for another. While the farce that was the Court of Jedi Affairs had been abolished, and the clearly biased Judge Lorteli had been quietly removed from the bench, Zudan was the woman who had sentenced Luke Skywalker.
She wore dark judicial robes that made her look to Tahiri more like an executioner than a judge. The woman’s stern, pinched expression didn’t help the impression. She ascended to her chair, reached for an old-fashioned gavel, and banged it.
“This court is now in session.”
“You have visitors,” the guard said. “Step away from the door and sit on the chair.”
It had been a long first day of the trial, and Tahiri was exhausted, but not too tired to be surprised and curious at the words. The only being who had been able to visit her since her arraignment had been her lawyer. She obeyed, and sat patiently while two guards entered. One had a blaster pointed at her, the other painstakingly bound her wrists and ankles with stun cuffs. The idea was, of course, that she was adequately contained as long as the door was closed and locked. When it was open, she needed additional restraints. She suffered the indignity quietly, more focused on who could possibly be coming to see her than on the inconvenience and discomfort of the manacles.
The guards stepped back. Two dark-haired humans stepped into the room, one tall and rangy and male, and one petite and female, and smiled at her.
“It took us a while, but we were able to get in to see you,” Leia said.
Tahiri indicated the manacles. “Forgive me if I don’t get up,” she said. “But … it’s good to see you.”
“Be better to see you over a cup of caf,” Han said. He glared at the guards. “Didn’t your mothers ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
They didn’t budge, nor did they reply.
Han and Leia exchanged glances. Leia straightened to her full diminutive height and looked at them each in turn. “I understand you have your duty, and that is to monitor any information that comes to the prisoner through any method other than her lawyer. The only reason we’re here is because we have some deeply personal news to deliver. I think you’d both feel very uncomfortable having to overhear it. Would it be possible to have a little privacy?”
Both of them were male and looked uncomfortable already at the thought of hearing “deeply personal news.”
“Your reputation preceeds you, ma’am,” one of them said deferentially. And glancing a
t Han, he added in a slightly harder voice, “As does yours, Captain Solo. But orders are orders.”
“You think we’re going to try to bust her out of here or something?” Han said. “Kid, she’s a Jedi, and a damn good one. These little toys you’ve got on her wouldn’t do much if she wasn’t willing to be here of her own accord. Right?” He shot Tahiri a look for confirmation. Despite the situation Tahiri fought back nervous laughter. She suspected that whatever the Solos had to say, Han was doing more harm than good.
“They’re pretty effective,” she said. “But I also am indeed here of my own accord. I wouldn’t try to escape.”
“Wouldn’t want you to,” Han continued. “We want her to stay so everyone can see how wrong they’ve been about her.”
Leia moved forward. “Gentlemen,” she said, “everything I have to tell Tahiri Veila concerns only my own family situation.”
Family … oh no … “Is something wrong? Did something happen to Amelia? Or Jaina?” The words came quickly from Tahiri’s lips.
Han dropped a big hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “They’re fine, they’re all okay,” he said, his voice gentle. “Look—I can step out if—”
“I want you here when we tell her,” Leia said quickly. She turned to look at her husband and Tahiri could see the glitter of tears in her eyes. She had been shut down in the Force, but now she opened to the Solos. There was pain, but there was also a strange, quiet joy.
The guards exchanged glances. “We’ll leave you alone, but your conversation will be monitored,” one of them said.
“I appreciate even that much,” said Leia, gracing them with the smile that still managed to melt hearts. The guards left and the door slid heavily back in place. True to his word, the small cam focused on Tahiri continued to blink, indicating it was still active.
“Leia, Han—what’s this all about?”
They each drew up a chair to sit beside her. Han draped an arm across her shoulders, while Leia placed her small hands on Tahiri’s own. Deep concern was in her brown eyes. Tahiri thought it little short of a wonder that, barely two years after the two of them had tangled in a very violent lightsaber battle, when Tahiri had foolishly tried to arrest the Solos on Jacen’s orders, there was this level of caring between them. The Solos, as she knew they did, had great hearts. This was just one more example.
Leia gave a quick, casual gesture in the direction of the cam monitoring Tahiri. It sputtered, and Tahiri smiled a little as she realized that Leia, unable to get the guards to agree to privacy, had simply and practically Force-flashed the device.
“I have to be careful about what I tell you,” Leia began. “I’ve gotten certain information—from Ben and Luke.”
“They’re all right?”
“For now,” Han said. “They—”
Leia cleared her throat and shot him a meaningful glance. He closed his mouth with an audible click.
“They’re fine,” Leia said soothingly, squeezing Tahiri’s hands. “That’s not what I want to talk to you about. They … I suppose we can say they had a sort of … vision, except much more accurate than that. In their investigations, they made a mental and spiritual journey and came across a place called the Lake of Apparitions. There is a part of the lake called the Mirror of Remembrance. In this place … they believe you can speak with the dead.”
And suddenly Tahiri knew. She felt the blood drain from her face, knew that her blue eyes were wide and staring, her face and lips ashen. Han’s arm across her shoulders tightened. If Luke Skywalker believed this encounter with the dead was real, then Tahiri did, too. And the fact that Leia and Han must have pulled all kinds of strings in order to see her told her exactly who Ben and Luke had seen.
Tears welled in her eyes, slipped down her face. She tried to lift her hands to wipe them away, but the wrist manacles were connected to the ankle manacles and she couldn’t complete the gesture. Instead, Leia’s hand, small and soft, gently stroked away the droplets running down the younger woman’s cheeks.
“He saw Mara, and Jacen … and Anakin.” Leia’s voice was warm and calm. She had already had her shock of the news and recovered from it, though it still obviously moved her deeply and likely always would. On Tahiri’s other side, Han Solo cleared his throat. Tahiri couldn’t take her eyes from Leia’s, but she suspected that Han, who might very well have been her father-in-law by now had Fate decreed differently, was struggling to control his emotions.
Tahiri opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Is he at peace? What did he say? Does he remember me?
“Anakin was the first one who appeared to them,” Leia continued. “Luke and Ben told him that his sacrifice saved the Jedi. That there had never been a Jedi Knight like him since.”
And there never will be.
Leia smiled a little. “Anakin said that the Order couldn’t wait for a great Jedi Knight to lead it. That every Jedi Knight has to be his own light, so that the Light that is the Jedi never goes out.”
Tahiri bit her lip, but the tears kept coming. She thought back to all the times she had flow-walked with Jacen, trying to find closure, trying to make it all right for him to be dead, to be gone. And it never worked.
“He asked about you. He asked if you were well.”
“What—” Tahiri took a breath and blinked hard, forcing composure she did not feel. “What did they tell him?”
Leia’s smile widened. “That you would be,” she said. “And then he said … tell her that I still love her.”
Tahiri’s composure shattered. She had held her emotions in check for so long, too long. The flow-walking, the dance with the dark side, the trial that was going to force her to revisit some of the ugliest and most painful moments of her past—she had suppressed all the emotions they had stirred up, but now she found herself no longer able to.
He still loved her. He always would, and she would always love him. This, this was the closure her lonely, broken, lost self had sought. Even as she wept broken sobs, and as Leia and Han both wrapped arms around her, she could feel things inside her that had been jagged and raw beginning to mend and heal, a terrible cold knot she hadn’t even realized was there starting to melt.
He would always love her, and he would always be with her. She could let go, now. Let go of the dream of Anakin, let go of the self-hatred of what she had done and become since then. After a few moments, she lifted her head from Leia’s shoulder and looked first at her, then at Han.
“I’m going to be all right,” she said. “They’re going to find me not guilty. They’re going to find me not guilty because I’ve got too much to do, too much to set right, to fix. Too many bridges to repair. And I’m going to do that.”
“For Anakin,” Leia said quietly.
Tahiri shook her head, her golden hair moving softly with the gesture. “Not just for him. For me.”
“Good call, kid,” Han said, his voice a little rough. “That’s the way our boy would have wanted it.”
And Tahiri knew that it was.
JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT
KENTH HAMNER SIPPED A CUP OF CAF AND GLANCED AT A PILE OF datapads on his desk. So many things were getting neglected, but that was the nature of command, of leadership—one had to prioritize, practice a sort of political triage. Not everything was going to get accomplished. Hamner’s job was to make certain that if something had to slide, it wasn’t the important things.
To that end, taking a cue from the woman who was starting to become the chief thorn in his side, he had promoted one of the most promising apprentices, a young woman named Kani Asari, to the role of an assistant. It was, like many decisions he had been forced to make recently, not a very popular one with some of the other Masters. He had heard grumblings, especially from the more outspoken people like Kyp Durran and Han Solo—who wasn’t even a Jedi—who hadn’t bothered to try to hide their displeasure. Luke, the Grand Master, the creator of the new Order, hadn’t had to have an “assistant.” Couldn’t Hamner get his own caf and read his own datapads? D
id he need pillows fluffed for him, too?
None of them quite understood the volume of activity that passed across his desk on any given day—any given hour. He did not think even the intrepid Han Solo would be able to juggle everything. And of course, everyone who had any kind of an issue with him or the Jedi felt that his or her problem was the single most dire thing in the known universe.
Hamner ignored the grumblers, and only hoped that the fair-haired, rather petite human girl who was doing a superb job was either ignoring them, too, or, better yet, hadn’t overheard them.
He sensed Kani on the other side of the door and called, “Come in,” rising and going to a small sideboard.
She poked her golden head in with a bright smile that belied the circles under her eyes. Again, Hamner felt a stirring of resentment on her behalf. It seemed that only he understood how hard she worked.
“Good morning, Master Hamner,” she said, taking her usual seat.
“Morning, Kani. Care for some caf?”
“Oh, yes please,” she said, thankfully. He warmed up his own cup and poured a fresh one for her, bringing it back to his desk. She took a sip, then put the cup down and retrieved her datapad. She looked up at him expectantly, peering out from a fall of bangs that had escaped their comb.
His eyes narrowed. He took in her robe, her hair, the fading makeup. “You didn’t get to sleep last night, did you?” She had promised to leave shortly after he did, right before midnight. Apparently, she had not kept that particular promise.
“Um … no Master. But it’s fine. I’ll try to leave early today if I can.”
“I’ll see that you do,” he said, frowning. “It is important to take time to rest. At the very least, meditate.”
“Yes, Master,” she said. “I’ll go to the fountain room this afternoon for a bit.”
“Good. Now, bring me up to speed, since you stayed later than I did.” He settled back, sipping the hot caf.
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