by James Luceno
Anakin flung an arm back toward the Council Tower. “They’re the ones who call me the chosen one! Chosen for what? To be a dupe in some slimy political game?”
Obi-Wan winced as if he’d been stung. “Didn’t I warn you, Anakin? I told you of the … tension … between the Council and the Chancellor. I was very clear. Why didn’t you listen? You walked right into it!”
“Like that ray shield trap.” Anakin snorted. “Should I blame this on the dark side, too?”
“However it happened,” Obi-Wan said, “you are in a very … delicate situation.”
“What situation? Who cares about me? I’m no Master, I’m just a kid, right? Is that what it’s about? Is Master Windu turning everyone against me because until I came along, he was the youngest Jedi ever named to the Council?”
“No one cares about that—”
“Sure they don’t. Let me tell you something a smart old man said to me not so long ago: Age is no measure of wisdom. If it were, Yoda would be twenty times as wise as you are—”
“This has nothing to do with Master Yoda.”
“That’s right. It has to do with me. It has to do with them all being against me. They always have been—most of them didn’t even want me to be a Jedi. And if they’d won out, where would they be right now? Who would have done the things I’ve done? Who would have saved Naboo? Who would have saved Kamino? Who would have killed Dooku, and rescued the Chancellor? Who would have come for you and Alpha after Ventress—”
“Yes, Anakin, yes. Of course. No one questions your accomplishments. It’s your relationship to Palpatine that is the problem. And it is a very serious problem.”
“I’m too close to him? Maybe I am. Maybe I should alienate a man who’s been nothing but kind and generous to me ever since I first came to this planet! Maybe I should reject the only man who gives me the respect I deserve—”
“Anakin, stop. Listen to yourself. Your thoughts are of jealousy, and pride. These are dark thoughts, Anakin. Dangerous thoughts, in these dark times—you are focused on yourself when you need to focus on your service. Your outburst in the Council was an eloquent argument against granting you Mastery. How can you be a Jedi Master when you have not mastered yourself?”
Anakin passed his flesh hand over his eyes and drew a long, heavy breath. In a much lower, calmer, quieter tone, he said, “What do I have to do?”
Obi-Wan frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“They want something from me, don’t they? That’s what this is really about. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. They won’t give me my rank until I give them what they want.”
“The Council does not operate that way, Anakin, and you know it.”
Once you’re a Master, as you deserve, how will they make you do their bidding?
“Yes, I know it. Sure I do,” Anakin said. Suddenly he was tired. So incredibly tired. It hurt to talk. It hurt even to stand here. He was sick of the whole business. Why couldn’t it just be over? “Tell me what they want.”
Obi-Wan’s eyes shifted, and the sick fatigue in Anakin’s guts turned darker. How bad did it have to be to make Obi-Wan unable to look him in the eye?
“Anakin, look, I’m on your side,” Obi-Wan said softly. He looked tired, too: he looked as tired and sick as Anakin felt. “I never wanted to see you put in this situation.”
“What situation?”
Still Obi-Wan hesitated.
Anakin said, “Look, whatever it is, it’s not getting any better while you’re standing here working up the nerve to tell me. Come on, Obi-Wan. Let’s have it.”
Obi-Wan glanced around the empty hall as if he wanted to make sure they were still alone; Anakin had a feeling it was just an excuse to avoid facing him when he spoke.
“The Council,” Obi-Wan said slowly, “approved your appointment because Palpatine trusts you. They want you to report on all his dealings. They have to know what he’s up to.”
“They want me to spy on the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?” Anakin blinked numbly. No wonder Obi-Wan couldn’t look him in the face. “Obi-Wan, that’s treason!”
“We are at war, Anakin.” Obi-Wan looked thoroughly miserable. “The Council is sworn to uphold the principles of the Republic through any means necessary. We have to. Especially when the greatest enemy of those principles seems to be the Chancellor himself!”
Anakin’s eyes narrowed and turned hard. “Why didn’t the Council give me this assignment while we were in session?”
“Because it’s not for the record, Anakin. You must be able to understand why.”
“What I understand,” Anakin said grimly, “is that you are trying to turn me against Palpatine. You’re trying to make me keep secrets from him—you want to make me lie to him. That’s what this is really about.”
“It isn’t,” Obi-Wan insisted. He looked wounded. “It’s about keeping an eye on who he deals with, and who deals with him.”
“He’s not a bad man, Obi-Wan—he’s a great man, who’s holding this Republic together with his bare hands—”
“By staying in office long after his term has expired. By gathering dictatorial powers—”
“The Senate demanded that he stay! They pushed those powers on him—”
“Don’t be naïve. The Senate is so intimidated they give him anything he wants!”
“Then it’s their fault, not his! They should have the guts to stand up to him!”
“That is what we’re asking you to do, Anakin.”
Anakin had no answer. Silence fell between them like a hammer.
He shook his head and looked down at the fist he had made of his mechanical hand.
Finally, he said, “He’s my friend, Obi-Wan.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said softly. Sadly. “I know.”
“If he asked me to spy on you, do you think I would do it?”
Now it was Obi-Wan’s turn to fall silent.
“You know how kind he has been to me.” Anakin’s voice was hushed. “You know how he’s looked after me, how he’s done everything he could to help me. He’s like family.”
“The Jedi are your family—”
“No.” Anakin turned on his former Master. “No, the Jedi are your family. The only one you’ve ever known. But I’m not like you—I had a mother who loved me—”
And a wife who loves me, he thought. And soon a child who will love me, too.
“Do you remember my mother? Do you remember what happened to her—?”
—because you didn’t let me go to save her? he finished silently. And the same will happen to Padmé, and the same will happen to our child.
Within him, the dragon’s cold whisper chewed at his strength. All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out.
“Anakin, yes. Of course. You know how sorry I am for your mother. Listen: we’re not asking you to act against Palpatine. We’re only asking you to … monitor his activities. You must believe me.”
Obi-Wan stepped closer and put a hand on Anakin’s arm. With a long, slowly indrawn breath, he seemed to reach some difficult decision. “Palpatine himself may be in danger,” he said. “This may be the only way you can help him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am not supposed to be telling you this. Please do not reveal we have had this conversation. To anyone, do you understand?”
Anakin said, “I can keep a secret.”
“All right.” Obi-Wan took another deep breath. “Master Windu traced Darth Sidious to Five Hundred Republica before Grievous’s attack—we think that the Sith Lord is someone within Palpatine’s closest circle of advisers. That is who we want you to spy on, do you understand?”
A fiction created by the Jedi Council … an excuse to harass their political enemies …
“If Palpatine is under the influence of a Sith Lord, he may be in the gravest danger. The only way we can help him is to find Sidious, and to stop him. What we are asking of you is not treason, Anakin—it may be the only way to save the R
epublic!”
If this Darth Sidious of yours were to walk through that door right now … I would ask him to sit down, and I would ask him if he has any power he could use to end this war
“So all you’re really asking,” Anakin said slowly, “is for me to help the Council find Darth Sidious.”
“Yes.” Obi-Wan looked relieved, incredibly relieved, as though some horrible chronic pain had suddenly and inexplicably eased. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”
Locked within the furnace of his heart, Anakin whispered an echo—not quite an echo—slightly altered, just at the end: I would ask him to sit down, and I would ask him if he has any power he could use—
—to save Padmé.
The gunship streaked through the capital’s sky.
Obi-Wan stared past Yoda and Mace Windu, out through the gunship’s window at the vast deployment platform and the swarm of clones who were loading the assault cruiser at the far end.
“You weren’t there,” he said. “You didn’t see his face. I think we have done a terrible thing.”
“We don’t always have the right answer,” Mace Windu said. “Sometimes there isn’t a right answer.”
“Know how important your friendship with young Anakin is to you, I do.” Yoda, too, stared out toward the stark angles of the assault cruiser being loaded for the counterinvasion of Kashyyyk; he stood leaning on his gimer stick as though he did not trust his legs. “Allow such attachments to pass out of one’s life, a Jedi must.”
Another man—even another Jedi—might have resented the rebuke, but Obi-Wan only sighed. “I suppose—he is the chosen one, after all. The prophecy says he was born to bring balance to the Force, but …”
The words trailed off. He couldn’t remember what he’d been about to say. All he could remember was the look on Anakin’s face.
“Yes. Always in motion, the future is.” Yoda lifted his head and his eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits. “And the prophecy, misread it could have been.”
Mace looked even grimmer than usual. “Since the fall of Darth Bane more than a millennium ago, there have been hundreds of thousands of Jedi—hundreds of thousands of Jedi feeding the light with each work of their hands, with each breath, with every beat of their hearts, bringing justice, building civil society, radiating peace, acting out of selfless love for all living things—and in all these thousand years, there have been only two Sith at any time. Only two. Jedi create light, but the Sith do not create darkness. They merely use the darkness that is always there. That has always been there. Greed and jealousy, aggression and lust and fear—these are all natural to sentient beings. The legacy of the jungle. Our inheritance from the dark.”
“I’m sorry, Master Windu, but I’m not sure I follow you. Are you saying—to follow your metaphor—that the Jedi have cast too much light? From what I have seen these past years, the galaxy has not become all that bright a place.”
“All I am saying is that we don’t know. We don’t even truly understand what it means to bring balance to the Force. We have no way of anticipating what this may involve.”
“An infinite mystery is the Force,” Yoda said softly. “The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know.”
“So you both feel it, too,” Obi-Wan said. The words hurt him. “You both can feel that we have turned some invisible corner.”
“In motion, are the events of our time. Approach, the crisis does.”
“Yes.” Mace interlaced his fingers and squeezed until his knuckles popped. “But we’re in a spice mine without a glow rod. If we stop walking, we’ll never reach the light.”
“And what if the light just isn’t there?” Obi-Wan asked. “What if we get to the end of this tunnel and find only night?”
“Faith must we have. Trust in the will of the Force. What other choice is there?”
Obi-Wan accepted this with a nod, but still when he thought of Anakin, dread began to curdle below his heart. “I should have argued more strongly in Council today.”
“You think Skywalker won’t be able to handle this?” Mace Windu said. “I thought you had more confidence in his abilities.”
“I trust him with my life,” Obi-Wan said simply. “And that is precisely the problem.”
The other two Jedi Masters watched him silently while he tried to summon the proper words.
“For Anakin,” Obi-Wan said at length, “there is nothing more important than friendship. He is the most loyal man I have ever met—loyal beyond reason, in fact. Despite all I have tried to teach him about the sacrifices that are the heart of being a Jedi, he—he will never, I think, truly understand.”
He looked over at Yoda. “Master Yoda, you and I have been close since I was a boy. An infant. Yet if ending this war one week sooner—one day sooner—were to require that I sacrifice your life, you know I would.”
“As you should,” Yoda said. “As I would yours, young Obi-Wan. As any Jedi would any other, in the cause of peace.”
“Any Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, “except Anakin.”
Yoda and Mace exchanged glances, both thoughtfully grim. Obi-Wan guessed they were remembering the times Anakin had violated orders—the times he had put at risk entire operations, the lives of thousands, the control of whole planetary systems—to save a friend.
More than once, in fact, to save Obi-Wan.
“I think,” Obi-Wan said carefully, “that abstractions like peace don’t mean much to him. He’s loyal to people, not to principles. And he expects loyalty in return. He will stop at nothing to save me, for example, because he thinks I would do the same for him.”
Mace and Yoda gazed at him steadily, and Obi-Wan had to lower his head.
“Because,” he admitted reluctantly, “he knows I would do the same for him.”
“Understand exactly where your concern lies, I do not.” Yoda’s green eyes had gone softly sympathetic. “Named must your fear be, before banish it you can. Do you fear that perform his task, he cannot?”
“Oh, no. That’s not it at all. I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything. Except betray a friend. What we have done to him today …”
“But that is what Jedi are,” Mace Windu said. “That is what we have pledged ourselves to: selfless service—”
Obi-Wan turned to stare once more toward the assault ship that would carry Yoda and the clone battalions to Kashyyyk, but he could see only Anakin’s face.
If he asked me to spy on you, do you think I would do it?
“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s why I don’t think he will ever trust us again.”
He found his eyes turning unaccountably hot, and his vision swam with unshed tears.
“And I’m not entirely sure he should.”
NOT FROM A JEDI
The sunset over Galactic City was stunning tonight: enough particulates from the fires remained in the capital planet’s atmosphere to splinter the light of its distant blue-white sun into a prismatic smear across multilayered clouds.
Anakin barely noticed.
On the broad curving veranda that doubled as the landing deck for Padmé’s apartment, he watched from the shadows as Padmé stepped out of her speeder and graciously accepted Captain Typho’s good night. As Typho flew the vehicle off toward the immense residential tower’s speeder park, she dismissed her two handmaidens and sent C-3PO on some busywork errand, then turned to lean on the veranda’s balcony right where Anakin had leaned last night.
She gazed out on the sunset, but he gazed only at her.
This was all he needed. To be here, to be with her. To watch the sunset bring a blush to her ivory skin.
If not for his dreams, he’d withdraw from the Order today. Now. The Lost Twenty would be the Lost Twenty-One. Let the scandal come; it wouldn’t destroy their lives. Not their real lives. It would destroy only the lives they’d had before each other: those separate years that now meant nothing at all.
He said softly, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She jumped as if he’d pricked
her with a needle. “Anakin!”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled fondly as he moved out from the shadows. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She held one hand pressed to her chest as though to keep her heart from leaping out. “No—no, it’s all right. I just—Anakin, you shouldn’t be out here. It’s still daylight—”
“I couldn’t wait, Padmé. I had to see you.” He took her in his arms. “Tonight is forever from now—how am I supposed to live that long without you?”
Her hand went from her chest to his. “But we’re in full view of a million people, and you’re a very famous man. Let’s go inside.”
He drew her back from the edge of the veranda, but made no move to enter the apartment. “How are you feeling?”
Her smile was radiant as Tatooine’s primary as she took his flesh hand and pressed it to the soft fullness of her belly. “He keeps kicking.”
“He?” Anakin asked mildly. “I thought you’d ordered your medical droid not to spoil the surprise.”
“Oh, I didn’t get this from the Emdee. It’s my …” Her smile went softly sly. “… motherly intuition.”
He felt a sudden pulse against his palm and laughed. “Motherly intuition, huh? With a kick that hard? Definitely a girl.”
She laid her head against his chest. “Anakin, let’s go inside.”
He nuzzled her gleaming coils of hair. “I can’t stay. I’m on my way to meet with the Chancellor.”
“Yes, I heard about your appointment to the Council. Anakin, I’m so proud of you.”
He lifted his head, an instant scowl gathering on his forehead. Why did she have to bring that up?
“There’s nothing to be proud of,” he said. “This is just political maneuvering between the Council and the Chancellor. I got caught in the middle, that’s all.”
“But to be on the Council, at your age—”
“They put me on the Council because they had to. Because he told them to, once the Senate gave him control of the Jedi.” His voice lowered toward a growl. “And because they think they can use me against him.”
Padmé’s eyes went oddly remote, and thoughtful. “Against him,” she echoed. “The Jedi don’t trust him?”
