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  “She is,” Malgus answered.

  “I see,” Angral said.

  Adraas placed his wine chalice on Angral’s desk. “An excellent vintage, Darth Angral. But right at the end of its cellar life.”

  “I think so, too,” Angral said.

  “Let things linger around overlong and they can turn rancid.”

  “Agreed,” Angral said.

  Malgus missed nothing, but could say nothing.

  Adraas snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something. “Oh! Darth Malgus, I do regret that I had to refuse your woman treatment aboard Steadfast.”

  A tic caused Malgus’s left eye to spasm. His fingers sank into the arms of the chair and pierced the leather. “You did what?”

  “Priority is to be given to Imperial forces,” Adraas continued. “Human forces. I’m sure you understand.”

  Malgus had had enough. To Angral, he said, “What is this? What is happening here?”

  “What do you mean?” Angral asked.

  “The Twi’lek woman is planetside,” Adraas said, as if no one else had spoken. “I’m sure the care she receives will be … adequate.”

  “I mean what is happening here, now, in this room,” Malgus said. “What is your purpose in this, Angral?”

  Angral’s expression hardened, and he set down his glass with an audible clink. “My purpose?”

  “Who is this woman to you, Darth Malgus?” Adraas pressed. “Her presence at the battle for the Jedi Temple caused you to make mistakes.”

  “Passions can lead to mistakes,” Angral said.

  “Passions are power,” Malgus said to Angral. “The Sith know this. Warriors know this.” He fixed his gaze on Adraas, and the words came out a snarl. “What mistakes do you mean, Adraas? Name them.”

  Adraas ignored the question. “Do you care for her, Malgus? Love her?”

  “She is a servant and you are a fool,” Malgus said, his anger rising. “She satisfies my needs when I require it. Nothing more.”

  Adraas smiled as if he’d scored a point. “She is your slave, then? A mongrel harlot who satisfies you because she must?”

  The smoldering heat of Malgus’s brewing anger ignited into open flame. Snarling, he leapt from his chair, activated his lightsaber, and unleashed an overhand strike to split Adraas’s head in two.

  But Adraas, anticipating Malgus’s attack, bounded to his feet, activated his own lightsaber, and parried the blow. The two men pressed their blades against the other before Angral’s desk, energy sizzling, sparks flying.

  Malgus tested Adraas’s strength.

  “You have been hiding your power,” he said.

  “No,” Adraas answered. “You are just too blind to see the things before your eyes.”

  Malgus summoned a reserve of strength and pushed Adraas back a stride. They regarded each other with hate in their eyes.

  “That will be all,” Angral said, standing.

  Neither Malgus nor Adraas took his eyes from the other and neither deactivated his blade.

  “That will be all,” Angral said.

  As one, both men backed off another step. Adraas deactivated his lightsaber, then Malgus.

  “You should have sent her to my ship for care,” Malgus said, aiming the comment at Adraas, but intending it for both of them.

  Angral looked disappointed. “After all of this you still say such things? Very well, Malgus. The woman is in a Republic medical facility near here. I will have the information sent to your pilot.”

  Malgus inclined his head in grudging thanks.

  “As for you, Lord Adraas,” Angral said, “I accept your report of the battle.”

  “Thank you, Darth Angral.”

  Angral drew himself up to his full height. “You will, both of you, follow my commands without question or hesitation. I will deal harshly with any deviation from that order. Do you understand?”

  Angral had directed the rebuke at both of them, but Malgus understood it to be intended for him.

  “Yes, Darth Angral,” they said in unison.

  “You are servants of the Empire.”

  Malgus, stewing, said nothing.

  “Both of you leave me, now,” Angral said.

  Still seething, Malgus walked for the door. Adraas fell in a stride behind him.

  “Darth Malgus,” Angral called.

  Malgus stopped, turned. Adraas stopped as well, keeping some space between them.

  “I know you believe that conflict perfects one’s understanding of the Force.” He made Malgus wait a beat before adding, “I will be curious to see if events validate your view.”

  “What events?” Malgus asked, and then understood. Angral would let Adraas make his play for Malgus’s role in the hierarchy. He entended to see who would prevail in a conflict between Malgus and Adraas, a conflict conducted in the shadows, by proxy, according to all the ridiculous political rules of the Sith.

  Subtle, backhanded conflict was not Malgus’s strength. He glared at Adraas, who glared back.

  “That will be all, then,” Angral said, and Malgus walked toward the doors.

  “Adraas, remain a moment,” Angral said, and Adraas lingered.

  Malgus looked over his shoulder to see Adraas watching him.

  Malgus walked out of the office alone, the same way he had walked in. He had been made a fool and was being played for Angral’s amusement.

  Worse, the victory he had so dearly won would be for nothing, a mere lever for the Emperor to wield in peace negotiations. After negotiations were concluded, the Empire would leave Coruscant.

  In the hall outside, he slammed a fist down on the secretary’s desk, putting a crack on the marble top.

  As Vollen and Keevo approached, Aryn realized what she was doing and let her hand fall to her side. She would not fight another Jedi, not ever. Besides, she sensed no hostility in them.

  She tried to clear the emotion from her face as Vollen and Keevo avoided a train of cargo droids and approached her. Vollen’s brown hair hung loose over bloodshot eyes. He had not shaved, and the circles darkening the skin under his brown eyes pronounced his need for sleep. Aryn imagined she must look much the same. Her own emotional state made it hard to maintain her empathic shields. Both Vollen and his Padawan sweated apprehension. It came off them in waves.

  “Hello, Vollen, Keevo.”

  Both of them returned her greeting.

  “What are you doing here at this hour, Aryn?” Vollen asked.

  For a moment, she had no words. She thought it strange that she had known the question would be coming, yet she had not rehearsed an answer. Perhaps she had not wanted to lie. So she didn’t.

  “I’m doing something … something Master Zallow wants me to do.”

  Tension visibly flowed out of Vollen’s expression. Relief from both of them flooded Aryn.

  “Then Master Zallow survived the Sith attack,” Vollen said, making a fist and grinning. “That is wonderful news. I know you have remained close with him.” He turned to his Padawan. “You see, Keevo. There is hope yet.”

  The Rodian nodded. Nictitating membranes washed his large, dark eyes. The oil moisturizing his pebbly green skin glistened in the overhead lights.

  “There is always hope,” Aryn said, and ignored how false the words sounded to her. She could not bring herself to break their hearts with the truth. Let them feel some relief, even if only for a time.

  A pair of cargo droids wheeled past, beeping in droidspeak.

  Vollen stepped closer to her and lowered his voice, as if discussing a conspiracy. “So what is happening in the hall of the High Council? We heard the negotiations would continue. How can Dar’nala justify that? We should be planning a counterattack. The entire Sith delegation should be taken into custody.”

  Keevo put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber and mouthed something in Rodian that Aryn took to be agreement. The Rodian looked around as if concerned someone might have overheard.

  Aryn felt the creeping pressure of their s
uppressed anger, their disappointment. They felt betrayed, deceived. She heard in their words the echo of her own thoughts and started to utter agreement. But before the words had cleared her lips, she saw how the words, the thoughts, if given free rein, would fragment the Jedi Order.

  For the first time, the consequences of her decision struck her, but even as they did, she knew she could make no other choice. Hers was the sacrifice. Other Jedi, however, could not make the same choice or the Order would disintegrate.

  “Trust that Master Dar’nala knows what she is doing,” she said.

  Vollen made a dismissive gesture and went on as if Aryn had not spoken. “There are many of us ready to act, Aryn. If we can coordinate with the surviving members of the Order on Coruscant, we can—”

  “Vollen,” Aryn said, her voice soft but her intent sharp.

  He stopped talking, met her eyes.

  “Do as Master Dar’nala says. You must, or the Order falls. Do you understand?”

  “But negotiating with the Sith after this is madness! We are at our weakest. We must retake the initiative—”

  “Do as she says, Vollen. I should not even have to say that.” She spoke in a firm, clear voice, to break the conspiratorial spell that Vollen and Keevo had cast with their whispers. “You took an oath. Both of you did. Do you intend to break it?”

  Vollen colored. Keevo shifted on his feet and dropped his eyes.

  “No,” Vollen said.

  Aryn was swimming in Vollen’s frustration, and her own. She felt like a hypocrite.

  “Good,” she said, and touched his shoulder. “Things will work out. The Council knows what it is doing. We are an instrument of the Republic, Vollen. We will do what is best for the Republic.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Vollen said, sounding unconvinced. Keevo nodded agreement.

  Aryn could take no more of her own falsity.

  “I must go. Be well, Vollen. And you, Keevo. May the Force be with you both.”

  Her recitation of the familiar parting seemed to reassure them.

  “And you,” Vollen said.

  “Be well, Aryn Leneer,” Keevo said in high-pitched Basic.

  “You still haven’t said where you’re going,” Vollen said.

  “No, I haven’t,” Aryn said. “It’s … personal.”

  She turned and headed for her ship. As she walked, she activated her comlink and hailed her astromech.

  “Tee-six, get the ship ready for launch.”

  The droid acknowledged receipt and queried about a flight plan.

  “None,” Aryn said, and the droid let out a long-suffering beep.

  When she reached the landing bay, T6, the dome of his orange head sticking out of the PT-7’s droid socket, beeped a greeting. The Raven starfighter was already in pre-launch and the hum of the warming engine coils made the pad vibrate under her feet.

  She stood there for a time, staring at the ladder that led into her cockpit, listening to the hum of the engines, thinking that if she got in and took off, she could never come back.

  She thought back to the pain she’d felt when Master Zallow had died. She had felt it physically, a searing shock in her abdomen that burned away doubt. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, a new, clean breath, and shed her outer Jedi robes, the robes she’d earned under Master Zallow’s tutelage.

  She could not avenge him as a Jedi. She could and should avenge him as his friend.

  “What are you doing, Aryn?” Vollen called from behind her.

  She turned to see that Vollen and Keevo had followed her to her ship. Vollen wore a concerned frown.

  “Are you following me?” Aryn asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “What are you doing, Aryn?”

  She put one hand on the ladder to her cockpit. “I already told you, Vollen. Something for Master Zallow.”

  “But your robes? I don’t understand.”

  She could offer no explanation that would satisfy him. She turned, climbed the ladder to the cockpit, and pulled on her helmet. Thankfully, T6 held any questions it might have had.

  Vollen and Keevo walked toward the ship. Aryn felt Vollen’s alarm, his uncertainty. He stopped when he reached Aryn’s robes. He looked as if he were standing over a grave. Perhaps he knew what it meant that Aryn had left them there.

  “Tell Master Dar’nala I am sorry,” she called to him. “Tell her, Vollen.”

  Vollen and Keevo did not come any closer. It was as though the discarded robes demarcated some boundary they could not cross.

  “Sorry for what?” Vollen called. “Aryn, please tell me what you’re doing. Why are you leaving your robes?”

  “She will understand, Vollen. Be well.”

  She lowered the transparisteel canopy on the cockpit and could not hear whatever Vollen said in response. The engines grew louder and Vollen stood on the landing pad, staring up at Aryn. Keevo stood beside him, his dark eyes on Aryn’s robes.

  “Get us out of here, Tee-six,” she said. “Set a course for Vulta, in the Mid Rim.”

  She knew someone there, once. She hoped he was still there. If anyone could get her to Coruscant, it was the Z-man.

  The droid beeped agreement, and the Raven’s engines lifted it from the pad.

  She looked down one last time to see Vollen gathering her robes with the same delicacy he might use to bear a fallen comrade.

  Malgus replayed the exchange with Adraas and Angral again and again in his mind. His anger remained unabated when he stepped off the lift onto the roof of the Senate Building and strode toward his transport, ignoring the guards who saluted him as he stalked past. The transport pilot waited on the lowered landing ramp.

  “You received a location from Darth Angral?” Malgus asked the pilot. “A hospital?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Take me there.”

  He boarded the transport, the doors whispered closed, and the ship soon lifted off into the hazy destruction of Coruscant’s night sky. They did not have far to fly. In under a quarter hour the pilot’s voice carried over the intercom.

  “Coming up on the facility now, my lord. Where shall I set down?”

  Below, Malgus saw the multistoried rectangle of the medical facility. Swoops, aircars, speeders, and medical transports crowded the artificially lit landing pad on its roof. Dozens of people moved among the vehicles—doctors, nurses, medics, the wounded. Bodies lay on gurneys here and there.

  On the ground level the scene was much the same. Vehicles and people clotted the artery of the road and a mass of people thronged the main entrance to the facility.

  “Set down at ground level,” Malgus ordered.

  Some of the people on the roof noticed the transport’s Imperial markings. Faces stared skyward, uncertain, frightened, and a few people ran for the lifts. One tripped over a gurney and fell. Another ran into a medic and knocked him flat.

  “Darth Angral temporarily commandeered this hospital to triage Imperial wounded,” the pilot said over the intercom. “They’ve all been moved to Steadfast by now.”

  “Not all of them,” Malgus said, but not loudly enough to be heard over the intercom.

  “There are a lot of people down there, my lord. I don’t see a clear spot to land.”

  Malgus stared down at them, his rage bubbling. “Land. They will move.”

  The transport wheeled around, hovered, and began to descend. The crowd below parted as the ship neared the duracrete. Malgus could hear the shouting of the crowd through the bulkheads.

  “My lord, should I send for some troops? To guard you?”

  “I do not require a guard. Keep the ship secure. I will not be long.” Malgus pressed the switch that opened the side door of the transport, and a cacophony of sirens and angry shouts poured through the opening.

  Malgus, his own anger more than a match for that of the crowd, discarded his cloak, revealing his scarred face and respirator, and stepped out onto the landing ramp.

  U
pon seeing him, the crowd fell mute. Only the sirens continued to howl. A sea of faces stared up at him, pale in the streetlights, frightened, smeared with dust and blood, but above all, angry. Their collective rage and fear washed over him. He stood before it, eyeing one of them after another. None could hold his gaze.

  He walked down the ramp and into their midst. They gave way before him. The moment he put his foot on the road the shouting renewed.

  “Monster!”

  “Murderer!”

  “We need medical supplies!”

  “He is alone. Kill him.”

  “Coward!”

  His presence among them focused their rage. As the tumult grew, he could not distinguish individual words. He heard only a single, prolonged, hate-filled roar, a wave of fists and bared teeth. It echoed his own emotion, fed it, amplified it.

  From somewhere ahead, a fist-sized piece of duracrete arced over the crowd toward him. Without moving, he stopped it in mid-flight with the Force. He let it hang suspended in the air for a moment, so the crowd could see it, before he used the Force to crush it to pieces.

  The crowd went silent again as the pebbles and dust rained down on the road, on their heads.

  “Who threw that?” Malgus asked, the heat of his anger stoked.

  Sirens wailed. A cough from somewhere. Fearful eyes everywhere.

  Malgus raised his voice. “I said who threw that?”

  No response. The crowd’s anger turned to anxiety.

  “Disperse,” Malgus said, his own anger building as theirs receded. “Now.”

  Perhaps sensing his anger, those near him started to back away. Some at the fringe of the crowd turned and fled. Most held their ground, though they looked uncertainly at one another.

  “We have family inside.”

  “I need care,” someone else shouted.

  Malgus fell into the Force as his brewing anger bubbled to the surface. “I said disperse!”

  When the crowd did not respond to his demand, he slammed a fist into his palm and let anger-fueled power explode outward from his body. Screams sounded as the blast shoved everything away from him in all directions.