Chapter Two

"Impatient you are, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan looked across the Council Chamber at Yoda. "Is it that obvious, Master?"

"Try to hide your feelings, you should not. Control them instead, you should."

"Yes, Master."

Yoda gave him a rare smile. He almost never offered advice on training Anakin directly, but he often offered it in the form of critiques of Obi-Wan's own behavior. "Concerned about his friendship with Siri, you are?"

"No, Master, of course not."

The smile twisted into a frown. "You are, yes you are. Worry so much, you do not, when he is running freely on Coruscant."

Obi-Wan chose not to answer that accusation. He had become stricter about Anakin's outside activities since the disaster with the garbage pit racing, but he was not as strict as the Council would have him be. Yoda was determined to stop the unauthorized visits around Coruscant; Mace Windu wanted his droids and gadgets taken away. Obi-Wan had tried both, but Anakin had become desperately unhappy. He'd tried to cover it up, but Obi-Wan could feel it through their bond, and see it in the disorientation and malaise that suddenly pervaded Anakin's work. Normally voraciously curious--almost frighteningly so--and able to grasp intellectual concepts on a single hearing, Anakin was stumbling over even the simplest things.

This had seemed to Obi-Wan to be counterproductive, so, after much soul-searching and a very uncomfortable closed conference with the Council, he had returned all of Anakin's droids, most of his gadgets, and one free afternoon a week to explore the more respectable areas of Coruscant. Obi-Wan had half-feared that his apprentice would see the limitation only, but Anakin had been overjoyed, and--despite Yoda's fears--had spent nearly half his free afternoons in museums and libraries. He had as vast an appetite for high culture as he had for low, and, like everything else to which he applied himself, he absorbed it with astonishing speed. It had surprised Obi-Wan the first time Anakin sat across from him at dinner talking about the split between Classical Gigantism and Neobrutalism in Naboo art and architecture--in the same enthusiastic tone he used to describe a particularly attractive new starship model--but it had become routine rather quickly, and now Obi-Wan took as a matter of course that Anakin knew more about those subjects than he did.

"Coming, they are," Yoda said, pointing his gimer stick toward the window. Obi-Wan could see Anakin and Siri moving out into a glass-ceilinged walkway below, headed for the turbolift. They were speaking with one another in an animated way.

When he spoke to Siri, Anakin still used words like "wizard" and "rugged." His hands moved a great deal and his face was lively. Obi-Wan recognized this for what it was--one of Anakin's weirdly sincere forms of flirtation (that was a weakness that would have to be dealt with before long) -- but it still stabbed him. Anakin never seemed quite so happy to see him.

"Jealous, you are?" Yoda asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Perhaps a bit. I… recall being more glad of my Master's company than Anakin often seems to be of mine."

"The right word, is 'seems.' Loves you, the boy does." Yoda sniffed.

Obi-Wan was gratified by Yoda's sense of Anakin's feelings--he supposed he knew, when he was not being petulant in his own mind--but didn't care for the tone of disdain that accompanied it. "As I loved Qui-Gon."

"No. This boy… " Yoda shook his head. "Confused are love and hate and joy and anger with him. All things, he feels… all too large for him." He sighed. "Think, you do, that I do not care for the boy. I do, as do all the Council members. Kind, he is, and generous. That he is talented, there is no doubt, and intelligent. But control, he must learn."

"I am trying to teach him to control his feelings."

"Mmm. A hard lesson it is for him. Impossible, I fear, for see, he does not, where the danger lies."

"I think you underestimate Anakin's self-understanding."

"Bold, you have grown, Obi-Wan."

"I'm sorry, Master. It was not my place to question you."

"Your padawan, your place is. But underestimate the danger he is in, you must not."

A soft electronic tone broke the conversation, and Yoda keyed the control to open the door. Siri swept in, her long robes swaying importantly. Anakin stayed a few steps behind her, as he would if he were her padawan, but as soon as he saw Obi-Wan, he quietly stepped away to stand at his Master's side.

"I am sorry, Master," he said quietly. "I'll… I will make an effort to… " He searched for a formal sounding phrase. "… to be more alert to my schedule."

"That is all I can ask, padawan." Had they been alone, Obi-Wan would have begun asking him about his practice session and trying to make him more at ease, since the lesson had been learned, but clearly, the Council Chamber was not the place for such a thing.

Anakin recognized it, and simply moved to stand closer.

Yoda dimmed the lights, and a holoprojector rose up from beside his chair. Blank pixels floated in midair for a moment, then resolved themselves into a grainy broadcast from a woodland world. Some solemn gathering was being held. There was no sound.

"Malkiri, this is," Yoda said quietly. "A Mid-Rim world, royalist for seven hundred years. But royalist, it can no longer be."

Siri looked up. "This is a funeral for the monarch?"

Yoda nodded. "Destroyed, was the royal family. Murdered were the king, his wife, and four children."

"Who is in line for succession?" Obi-Wan asked. "Are we to go and defend… ?"

Yoda looked at him levelly, not answering the interruption, then went on. "No line was there, beyond the children who are burned with their parents today. Pass, the world will, into the hands of all its local chieftains."

After interrupting Yoda once, Obi-Wan chose not to break the silence this time. Siri also appeared to have learned that lesson. But Anakin couldn't bear silence, so when it had spun out for longer than seemed natural to him, he bent his head respectfully and asked, "Are they any good?"

Yoda looked at him gravely. "While existed the monarchy, mainly concerned with trade were the local governments. When weak was the economy, invited were experts."

Understanding dawned. "The Trade Federation," Obi-Wan whispered.

Just as he said it, the pixels resolved to a closer shot of an overweight Neimoidian in shimmering red robes. He was standing at the head of the gathered crowd, speaking.

"Mayor of the capitol, he is," Yoda said. "And now, essentially, leader of Malkiri."

"Do you suppose the Trade Federation assassinated the royal family?" Siri asked.

"Guesses, I do not make, Siri Tachi. But our interest here, it is not, to oppose the Trade Federation. Warn you only, I do, that they will be present, and in command of this world, when you arrive."

Obi-Wan furrowed his brow. "Master, what is our interest?"

The holo cleared, and a new one formed, a sharper one--a young human male in padawan dress, his long braid draped over one shoulder. "Zio Shapoi," Yoda said. "Knighted, he was, shortly before you became padawan to Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan."

"I see…"

"Born on Malkiri, he was, and chose to visit, he did, when he learned his past."

"Was he also killed?" Siri asked.

"Killed, he was not. Arrested, he was."

"Arrested?"

Yoda turned off the holo altogether and sighed deeply. "With a lightsaber was the royal family killed."

"There must be a mistake," Siri said.

"Agree with you, I do. But tried he must be."

"Then we're not rescuing him?" Anakin asked.

"That limitation, the Council does not impose." Yoda squared his shoulder. "Violent, has the response been. Poison, it is, and spread, it has, from Shapoi to all Jedi."

"What?"

Yoda nodded. "Yes. Not wanted, are the Jedi on Malkiri. Think, I do, that such things have been said and felt there before this. The murder has kindled a flame, but dry are the woods of Malkiri, and burn quickly they will."

The holo came back on, this time with sound. It was Malkiri again, and a crowd again, but this crowd was not somber--it was enraged. An effigy of a Jedi was hanging from a wooden pole, and it was burning. A banner read, "Malkiri, break free from Jedi mind control." The crowd was throwing stones at the burning effigy and chanting a slogan that Obi-Wan couldn't quite make out.

He could think of nothing to say. He'd known that there were people who disliked or envied the Jedi, and of course there had been worlds that associated them with an unpopular negotiation, but this kind of violent rhetoric was new to him.

"He's not going to get a fair trial there," Siri commented dryly.

"That is why go there, you must," Yoda said. "Watch the trial. If unfair it becomes, bring Shapoi to Coruscant you must."

Anakin's eyes were glued to the holo. "We're going there?"

Obi-Wan put a calming hand on his padawan's arm. "Perhaps we can use the opportunity to teach… "

"Teach, you will not," Yoda said firmly. "One Jedi, we may lose. Care, we do not, to lose others. Go, you will, posing as a family."

"To what end?" Siri asked.

"To observe, to rescue if necessary," Yoda said. Then he turned, an intense look in his eyes. "And to learn from where they have learned this hate. An enemy of the Jedi, we know there is in the galaxy."

"You think the Sith are behind this?"

"Make guesses, I will not," Yoda repeated. "But observe them, you will, from within. Siri's own name, may she keep, but Anakin and Obi-Wan are known to the Trade Federation, though changed are both your faces. Names, you will be given."

"How will we fit into this society?" Siri asked. "It looks… small."

"News for the Republic this will be. Obi-Wan will pose as one gathering it for broadcast."

Obi-Wan looked nervously at the rioting crowd, and, though he knew his padawan would resent it, said, "Perhaps Anakin should stay here."

He saw Anakin's jaw clench, but the boy did nothing. He was gaining some control.

It hardly mattered. Yoda was shaking his head energetically. Undercover you will be. Siri knows how, and you can learn, but home life, neither of you has familiarity with."

Anakin straightened up. "You want me to… help them?"

Yoda nodded solemnly. "Know, you do, of the rhythms of the home."

Anakin looked at him incredulously. "And you… I mean, Master Yoda, do you believe I am properly suited to this mission?"

"Otherwise, suggested it, I would not have."

Anakin just stood blinking in the sunlight for a moment, clearly not daring to believe that Yoda had believed him capable of any responsibility. It frankly startled Obi-Wan as well, but then, Yoda had always had that capacity. "Thank you," Anakin said at last, stepping back into Obi-Wan's shadow.

Yoda raised the lights again, and hobbled over to his chair to sit down. "Go, you will, tomorrow morning."

He dismissed them.

They rode down in the turbolift in confused silence, and were walking slowly through the glass walkway when Anakin finally spoke. "So… mostly, we're just pretending to be a family. Then we get this Shapoi."

Obi-Wan nodded. "If it is necessary. There is a slight possibility that he will receive a fair trial on Malkiri."

"Not likely," Siri muttered. "I say we skip the preliminaries and pull him out."

"We can't do that," Anakin said unexpectedly.

"I happen to agree," Obi-Wan said. "But why do you say so?"

"Well… " Anakin shrugged. "I guess I just wonder, what if he actually did it?"