Legacy VI

Chapter 4: A Private Word

Ferus Olin was a fetching child, by anyone's conventional standards. Neatly groomed, especially for a male youngling of such tender years, possessed of pleasant, well-proportioned features, and radiating a sincere desire to please, he was the very picture of mannerly and demure youth. The Force clearly resonated about him, too – he was strong with it, but not hampered by the counterweight of volatile temper or brooding disposition. He would doubtlessly attract a dozen or more offers of apprenticeship well before he reached the critical age of thirteen. He was patiently waiting for his visitors in the small parlor adjacent to his clan dormitory, Sifa Ko-La in attendance beside him.

Obi-Wan noticed with a strange pang of …. something… that the boy did not kick, nor fidget, nor chatter, nor sulk.

Nor roll his eyes heavenward in exasperation at the first glimpse of his rival, as Anakin most certainly did the moment they crossed the threshold.

"The Force is everywhere," Obi-Wan informed his padawan, in a growling undertone. "Not up."

"You do the same thing all the time," the boy protested.

But there was no time to issue further reprimand; they were within earshot and making a formal bow in the next moment.

The clan mistress hastened to make introductions, though none were needed except that between Obi-Wan and Ferus. The latter person gawped awestruck at the young Knight, eyes coming to rest – predictably enough – upon the gleaming 'saber hilt at his belt.

"Did you really kill a Sith?" he demanded without preamble, brows forming a sharp line of outrage.

"No." Obi-Wan crossed his arms, casting a curious and admonitory frown at his own student.

Anakin merely glowered.

"Liar," Ferus accused him.

"Am not! I said he blitzed a Sith. He cut off the sleemo's arm."

"There's no such thing as a Sith," the other boy declared, firmly. "Everybody knows that."

"Enough!" Master Sifa stepped between the warring factions, taking either boy by a shoulder and steering them none too gently onto the padded benches to either side. "We are here to resolve this matter in a dignified manner. I am sure that Master Obi-Wan agrees that braggadocio and aggression have no proper place in a learning environment." She fixed the subject of this assertion with a three-fold glare, daring him to fall short of stated expectations.

Kicking himself inwardly, Obi-Wan settled grimly upon the bench between the two disputants, falling into diplomatic mode with the ease of long habit. "Indeed not. But the love of truth is always welcome… and I think both of you younglings feel honorbound to defend it. Am I right?"

Two tight, quasi-belligerent nods answered his simple query. Ferus Olin stared right down Anakin's double-barreled blue gaze without flinching, evidence of a warrior's fierce spirit, if not the polish and poise of a full fledged Jedi. The boy had guts, certainly.

Better to start on familiar ground. "Anakin. I take it you have made several assertions which Initiate Olin finds dubious."

"I'm not a liar!"

"I did not say you were. You claim veracity for your statements on what basis? Having been eye witness to certain events?"

"Yeah. I saw it with my own eyes. Nobody calls me a liar," he added, mouth thinning.

"And you, Olin?"

"I know he's wrong, and making it up. Because his stories contradict everything we've learned. He thinks he know s more than all the masters in the Temple!"

"Well at least I've been somewhere else besides this Temple in my whole life! You've never been anywhere," Anakin fumed.

"You don't even know what you're talking about! You act like a senior padawan and all you've ever been is a slave! You should be grateful to be here, not insulting the people who saved you from-"

Obi-Wan seized Anakin by the tunic collars as he threw himself bodily at the provocateur. "Padawan!" he barked, slamming the command against his irate apprentice's mental shields, bringing the boy up gasping and shaking.

The elderly Graan looked on, scowling in disgust.

Maintaining a precautionary grip on his angry protégé, the young Knight turned to Ferus. "Your perspective is understandable," he told the boy, with perfect calm. "Perhaps in the future, if you have cause to doubt Anakin's statements, you could bring your concerns to Master Sifa, or one of the masters. I would be happy to speak to the matter also."

The dark-haired lad nodded, wide eyes still locked on Anakin's reddening face.

"Why are you taking his side?" Anakin exploded, trying to writhe free. "I'm not a liar! Just tell him he's wrong!"

"Our objective here is not to establish a victor; it is to seek peace and understanding."

"But he's wrong! And if you're trying to make peace with him then you're wrong too!" The furious padawan spat these last impassioned words at his mentor with flashing eyes and bared teeth.

Master Sifa surged to her feet, appalled. "For stars' sake!"

There was pushing boundaries, and then there was throwing one's self headlong past the limits of a master's considerable patience. Obi-Wan had the miscreant pinned in an incontrovertible Force grip and had propelled him onto his feet and out the door in three thudding heartbeats.

In the empty corridor, Anakin's spitfire rebellion instantly melted into despair heavily laced with intimidation. As though intent upon finishing the job thoroughly, he compounded his shocking display of disrespect by bursting into hot tears. "Don't blitz me!" he pleaded. "Master, please!"

"You're going to wish I had blitzed you," his teacher threatened, wrestling his own unexpected eruption of emotion under control. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Rivulets ran freely down Anakin's cheeks. "You took his side!" he bawled. "He called me a liar and you didn't tell him he's wrong and I don't want peace and understanding I want him to know he's wrong!"

Sifa Ko La thrust her wrinkled head into the hall. "I presume you will deal with your apprentice in appropriate fashion?" she inquired, imperiously. "Now that matters have been clarified."

"You have my word," Obi-Wan grunted, jaw clenched.

"Hmmmph." The enigmatic reply was followed by the hush of pistons as the door sealed them off from the presumptive innocents beyond.

"I hate it here!" Anakin hissed between clenched teeth.

Temper stirred perilously close to the surface of self-control; Obi-Wan did not bother to soften his tongue's acidic adge. "If you think you hate it now, just wait till you get back to quarters, my little friend."

Chancellor Valorum was looking his age, Mace Windu thought – though naturally he did not voice this unprejudiced evaluation of the Republic's most emblematically important and least functionally powerful dignitary.

"Master Jedi," the soft-spoken, aristocratic politician greeted them. "My gratitude. It is very late for such a meeting."

Stumping along beside his Korun colleague, Master Yoda merely grunted a curt acknowledgement and heaved himself into one of the luxurious velvetar-upholstered chairs . "Inconclusive, was Senate session today," he remarked, ears waggling.

Valorum sighed, smoothing the front of his expensive but austerely tailored robe. "Indeed. This … request from beyond our borders has sparked the usual degree of controversy. Every constituency and partisan alliance is eager to send emissaries ; if we accommodated them all, the ambassadorial party would number in the hundreds, if not more. And that is not including Banking Clan and Trade Federation representatives. None of the systems is content to appoint only a few, nor can compromise easily be reached, I fear."

Mace exhaled. He could have predicted that outcome. It had been nearly a decade since the legislative body had actually passed an effective resolution. "If you go over their heads," he observed, bypassing all the tedious explanations and excuses which would ordinarily preface such frank discussion, "They will have a conniption."

The Supreme Chancellor nodded, lowering himself into the seat opposite. "I have referred the matter to a subcommittee, tasked with the selection of a balanced and well qualified diplomatic consulate." He folded elegant hands. "I do not expect any decision to be reached inside the next six-month, at least."

Yoda caught Mace's eye. "Wish us to send Jedi ahead of official delegation, you do."

Valorum spread his hands. "We need information. The Republic cannot afford to wait for our internecine squabbles to be settled before we send an answer…. And as protector of the Republic…"

"To authorize private intelligence mission, you wish."

"I am sure you perceive the need for absolute discretion," the beleaguered Chancellor added, posture faintly supplicatory.

"Hhhmmmph." The ancient grandmaster neatly encapsulated the complex web of objections foremost on both Jedi masters' minds.

Mace steepled his fingers, uneasy with the implications. "You know the Order will not act in a manner subversive to the democratic structure of our commonwealth."

Valorum's face fell, color rising in his hollowing cheeks. "I would never overstep my authority in such manner," he hastened to assure his two advisors. "I merely wish to convey to the High Council my tacit approval should the Order wish to investigate independently, in accord with its own prerogatives."

Silence fell , piling in heavy drifts against the walls of custom, of precedent and law.

At last, Yoda seized his gimer stick and wriggled to the floor. "Understand one another, we do," he chuffed. "Late it is; your rest, you need, Supreme Chancellor."

"More than you know," the weary man admitted. "Thank you again."

"We come to serve." Mace spoke for both Jedi; they bowed and departed, walking side by side along the hushed corridor, footfalls muffled by sumptuous carpet.

"Send someone we must," Yoda decided, hunching along with head jutted forward and white hair bobbing to the rhythm of his halting gait. "Too delicate is balance of power in Rims. Delay, we will not."

The ten thousand star systems traced out the immutable complexity of their knot, a ceaseless carillon of lights, of bodies fashioned of gross matter, luminous with unsullied fire. The astro-map's orbital calculator had been enabled by its present user; as the planets whirled dervish-like about their suns, an invisible hand scribed out the course of their past and future in glimmering cords of green, yellow, blue circle upon circle, spiraling and interlacing– a geometry so immense, so perfect, so double and triple reticulated, that it rendered the observer vertiginous.

"I knew I would find you here," he remarked, casting his eyes down from the giddying spectacle and addressing the dark chamber's single brooding occupant.

Obi-Wan's face was highlighted by a hundred moving constellations, reflected points of light sliding over furrowed brow and sharply dimpled chin, well-defined features and pair of eyes that had been old even barely past childhood. They remained fixed upon the exquisite cosmic dance now, not deigning to meet the visitor's quiet gaze. "Am I so predictable?" he said, tightly.

Qui-Gon waved the reeling universe to a standstill with one hand, leaning against the observation rail beside his friend and former pupil. "No…. but you'll need to try harder than that, if you wish to shield from me. You've been projecting fairly loudly all evening. Obviously something is amiss."

The younger Jedi raised one brow in an ironic arch. "Stars forbid I be afforded any privacy."

Such jibes served as opening salute and formal challenge, as they both understood. The Jedi master replied in kind, resigning himself to the inevitable battle of wills and words. "Likewise, may I be spared any corresponding measure of courtesy."

Opening formalities having thus been completed, they fell to with alacrity, striking and parrying in a pattern as familiar as breathing, the prescribed cadence of a kata, of long mutual practice.

"Courtesy is reciprocal; as is respect. I have never and will never enumerate your flaws and shortcomings to my padawan, Qui-Gon. Why you should regale him with tales of my youthful folly is beyond me, if you are so devoted to such virtues."

The tall man cocked his head to one side. " Every mistake is a lesson. You know this."

"My mistakes are my lessons; you were once fond of saying that we cannot tread another's Path, nor learn from any but our own."

"Ah – but teacher, student, the Force: these are one."

"How odd. Anakin and I seem to have picked up a fourth wheel somewhere along the way."

"There was a time when you humbly begged counsel and assistance. "

"This isn't counsel! It's interference."

Qui-Gon sighed. "But the hard truth, Obi-Wan, is this: teaching does not occur in a void. You are, whether you like it or not, whether it is amenable to your preferences or not, part of a whole tradition and the living voices which constitute it. You cannot train a padawan in isolation from those who have in turn formed you; you are essentially tied to every master in this Temple."

"Some more than others, apparently ," the younger man fired back, dry as dust.

"The first year is the most difficult. You are learning more than your apprentice, and thereby suffering many a blow to the pride."

"Is that supposed to be encouraging?"

"No; merely a confirmation that what you are experiencing is natural and to be expected."

Obi-Wan's knuckles whitened as he gripped the railing's smooth edge. "I don't require your reassurance. Any more than Anakin requires to know every sordid detail of my past. He threw Bruck Chun in my teeth this afternoon – spurred on by one of the living voices of the tradition. The same one that would have disciplined me for trespassing upon hisprivacy in the same manner."

"Not at all. I would have assigned you meditation on the nature of this privacy to which you display, by the way, an unbecoming attachment."

"I fail to see how that is relevant to my point. You have no right to preempt my teaching role. End of discussion."

"As you wish." The contest ended in a premature surrender; the Jedi master turned to depart, cloak rustling at his heels. "But I am always at your service, when and if your pride will permit it."

His fingers were poised above the door's control plate, ready to brush the surface with a soft nudge of the Force, when the tension burst and dissolved like dew upon a gossamer web.

"Wait. Qui-Gon."

He turned, suspended upon the threshold, anticipating an apology or perhaps a lighthearted jest.

But the younger man did not turn to meet his gaze. "The first year is the hardest?" he said, still leaning heavily against the rail, addressing the starmap spangled across thin air above both their heads.

A wistful smile tugged at the master's mouth. "And the most … inspirational." When he received no reply, he lingered but a moment longer, attuned to the softer, melancholic tones resonating in the Force, the first blunting of his young companion's pique.

Obi-Wan thrust the fingers of one hand through his hair, leaving the strictly combed and severely disciplined swath standing in disarray, according to its natural propensity. "Good night," he muttered.

"Good night," the tall man made answer, and tactfully took the hint – and his leave.