“Because you think about it too much.”
The impenetrable wall went up again. Lumiya felt it as he lapsed into silence.
“It’s Ben,” he said at last. “It has to be Ben.”
Now she understood. “You’re fond of the boy. Perhaps he’s the child you don’t have. This will be hard, and that’s probably why it has to be him.”
For a moment, Jacen’s gaze flickeredtoo brief, too insignificant for any ordinary observer to spotand she knew she’d hit a nerve. That was it: conscious of his own mortality, he wanted a son, and there was a little subconscious desire to possess what was Luke’s as part of the overthrow of the Jedi dynasty. Now that he had it, and Ben looked to him as a heroic father figure, he had to throw away that prize.
It was an odd sort of love, but if it was powerful enough, it would do fine.
“That’s probably it,” Jacen said, and looked down at his clasped hands. “And it’s hard to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“But you don’t know how it’ll happen.”
“Exactly.”
“You can’t see yourself taking a lightsaber to a fourteen-year-old boy.”
“Maybe it won’t be so literal. I’m sending him to assassinate Dur Gejjen when he meets Omas to do his deal. It’s a job that needs doing, it tests Ben’s skills and commitment, it’s far easier for a teenage boy to get past Gejjen’s security, and … perhaps it will put him in real mortal danger.” Jacen reached out to the low table nearby, leaning on one hand to stretch and pick up one of the candles in its transparent blue holder. “Now, is that a consequence of the task, or is that why I’m sending him? Am I sending him to his death?”
“Let it play out,” Lumiya said. “Stop rationalizing and let it happen.”
She stood up to take the candle from him. She could see he wanted to play that brinkmanship game again of how long he could hold his hand in the flame. Some men would do it out of bravado after too many drinks, but Jacen was testing himself, a private struggle rooted in his experience of pain at Vergere’s hands and his lingering doubts that he could stay the course and make himself do something he wanted to run from.
“I need your help,” he said. “I need you to distract Mara for a while.”
“Whatever you wish.”
“She’s taken the Brisha story to heart. Nothing like killing someone’s child to guarantee a blood feud, is there?”
“I thought that story might tie her up and explain my presence. In an ideal world, I would have avoided all contact with the Skywalkers.”
“So … why did you offer your hand to Luke instead of taking his head off?”
Lumiya was still considering that. She might not have meant Luke any harm, but she didn’t have to hate someone to kill him in the line of duty. Did it matter that he still thought all her actions were dictated by an old romance, and by a trauma that had been her destiny anyway? Why did she feel the need to show him they weren’t?
“It certainly had its shock value in the fight,” she said. “And killing him would have changed the course of events for all of us.”
“And you wanted to put him in his place. Show him he had no leverage … that you were over him?”
Jacen sometimes seemed to understand and then he’d say something banal like that, which made her think he had missed the point of passing through powerful emotions to become stronger.
“The Skywalkers are too mired in their domesticity to be effective Jedi, Jacen,” she said. “It’s a warning to us all. Luke can’t see what’s in front of him because he thinks my motive is lost love and revenge, because that’s the level he thinks atfamily and friends. It would never occur to him that I want to see a Sith-controlled galaxy and that the personal issues we had are trivial by comparison.”
“You taught me that anger and passion are what make Sith strong.”
“There’s anger, and then there’s being controlled by itnot seeing the forest for the trees.” Lumiya had a moment of self-doubt and decided to meditate on it later. “So what about Mara?”
“She’s hanging on to that GAG connection she found to track you. Keep her occupied elsewhere.”
“I’ll let her find me. That should do the trick. Can you give me a possession of Ben’s, something that would prove to Mara that I could get at him easily, without being traceable to you?”
“I’ll get you a pair of his boots. He keeps several pairs in his locker, and Mara already suspects a GAG connection.” He gave her a little frown of concern, but she felt nothing emanating from him. “What if she actually catches you?”