[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(33)

PLAZA OF THE CORE, CORUSCANT.

Lumiya was coming. She had answered Jacen’s summons: she was heading for Coruscant, without argument or fear.

And he could feel her. He found he could track her-and her emotions-almost as if he could see her.

Ben sat beside him, unusually quiet, hands in his lap. He had taken to wearing a very small braid in his red hair, hardly long enough to plait and tied awkwardly with a scrap of brown thread, but Jacen could see it. The boy had his shoulders hunched up a little as if he was trying to hide it.

“Bad hair day?” Jacen commented. He found more to like and admire about Ben every day. The boy had growth spurts emotionally as well as physically, and the last few weeks seemed to have literally made a man of him. But Jacen wanted him to keep his sense of humor. He’d need it in the years to come.

“I … er … thought I ought to grow it.” Ben’s blush almost matched his hair. “Does it look stupid?”

“Not at all. But you’re not technically an apprentice, so you don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

“I want to.”

“Fine. Good.”

“Who are we waiting for?”

I hate fooling him. But it has to be done. “A woman who’s going to do some research for us. Military threat analysis.” He took one more risky step-but Lumiya’s old name was a common one, unlikely to draw any attention, and it ruled out slips of the tongue. “Her name’s Shira. You might see her around from time to time.”

“But we could get analysis from the Security and Intelligence Council.”

“I like to have an independent view, as well. You can never have too much information.” Jacen gave Ben a playful nudge. It helped him bury the shock that kept resurfacing after seeing his grandfather commit an atrocity. “Talking of which, you haven’t given me your threat analysis.”

Ben’s eyes widened: he wanted to please. “Of what, Jacen?”

“I’m waiting to hear your impressions of the locations you visited.”

“I didn’t get much from the bomb site-not that the CSF would let me get too close-but the Corellian Sanctuary was … well, scary.”

“Why?”

“I talked to some Corellians cleaning up the place. They really seem to hate Coruscant. I don’t get it.”

“Coruscant has had rifts with Corellia before.”

“But they hate us and they live here.”

“It’s a cosmopolitan planet. Lots of worlds we might end up fighting have communities here.”

“But Jacen, if they’re talking about fighting us here-“

“Are they?”

“Well, a guy a little older than me. Probably just… bravado.”

Ben’s sudden lurch into sober manhood, unsteady as it was, touched Jacen. “It’s always interesting to note what sparks wars. It’s often something relatively small, but for some reason it just tips the situation into chaos.”

“That’s the real enemy, isn’t it?” said Ben. “Chaos.”

Jacen almost shivered. It was another perceptive wise-beyond-age comment of the kind Ben was increasingly prone to. It might also have been the clarity of someone too young to have his thinking muddied and corrupted by convention.

It was also almost a Sith sentiment. Ben would make a good apprentice, and for all the right reasons. His sense of duty was starting to become tangible.

“I reckon so,” Jacen said. “The galaxy works best when things are certain.”

Jacen kept an eye on the movement of citizens crossing the plaza. He knew Lumiya wouldn’t be so crass as to turn up in her exotic triangular headdress and trailing a lightwhip. He could feel her coming, and it was almost a game to spot her by eyesight alone.

He hadn’t warned her that he’d have Ben with him. He wanted to see how she reacted to Ben, and also how Ben reacted to her. Ben still couldn’t recall what had happened out at Bimmiel, although he’d stopped asking now.

About a hundred meters away, Jacen caught sight of a middle-aged woman in a neat red business suit-plain tunic and pants-that was so dark it verged on black. She had a matching scarf wrapped around her head that covered her entire face; her eyes were obscured by a gauzy inset of some translucent silk. It was a practical fashion common on arid, dusty worlds and it seemed to be catching on in the capital, too. He knew it was Lumiya. He magnified his presence in the Force to get her attention, and she changed direction slightly as if she had spotted him like anyone else might.

The closer she came, the stronger the sense he had of a Sith making a conscious effort to conceal her presence in the Force, and almost succeeding.