Inheritance
35.
I'm perfectly fit.
Well. Enough to take Anakin for a walk, anyhow. Another minute in a closed space with my fidgeting and garrulous Padawan would surely prove detrimental to my mental stability – and so, this is just what the healers ordered. Thank the Force there aren't any of that disreputable profession skulking in the shadows here. The jabuur-weki is quite enough inconvenience for the time being.
"I don't get why I have to do it blind-folded," Anakin whines, lower lip jutting in a surly suggestion of ill-use.
"Be glad you aren't gagged as well," I advise him. A fine idea, if it were not dangerously close to violating the Code. Even Qui-Gon never went that far, and he was a master of ingenious and subtle discipline. On one occasion, as I recall, he –
But I don't wish to recall. So I don't. Anakin dutifully prances along beside me, walking backward, his eyes covered in a scrap of cloth. The exercise is all too easy, despite the rough terrain and the unexpected obstacles: rock shards and clots of earth, a dip here and a hole there.
"On your hands," I decide. He'll never work off his excess energy at this rate.
"Can I take off the blindfold yet?" he hopefully inquires.
"I think not." As though. Any Temple-raised youngling would have known the answer to that without asking. I will admit to a certain immoderate pleasure in being the one on this side of the age-old game. Anakin's pout grows more pronounced, but he wobbles up into a shaky handstand and starts forward, the tip of his tongue stuck earnestly between his teeth as he struggles to keep balance and awareness of his surroundings without the advantage of sight. I slow my gait to match his new and slightly unsteady pace. The air is frigid as ever, but the guest house was starting to grow stuffy. I believe one of the Feorian crones managed to sneak in and throw some vile-smelling herb on the fire, one with distinctly soporific qualities.
Anakin and I escaped just after morning meal, while Master Windu was occupied with the tribal council. Another delegation from the Reservations Committee and the planetary government arrived at dawn, this time to haggle over a replacement vehicle for the Feorians' wrecked tram. The dispute was petty, and therefore pitched. I have observed that those who are placed in charge of insignificant affairs often fulfill their office with a tyrannical zeal unmatched in any sovereign power with real influence. At the top levels, it is rather incompetence and selfish corruption that reign supreme, as in the case of the Galactic Senate.
"I can tell what you're thinking!" Anakin exclaims, almost over-balancing. I grab his ankle to prevent his fall. "You think all those politician guys are full of bugsquat!"
"Focus," I command. He cannot see my smile.
"I'm trying!" he protests.
"There is no try. Now straighten your spine, concentrate, and keep going. We're not yet halfway around the perimeter."
"Master, when am I ever gonna need to do this on a mission?"
Ah, the perennial challenge, issued by vexed Padawans everywhere. "When we are sent to Malastare to ratify a treaty between two warring tribes of Dugs. As you may know, they all walk upon their hands, with their feet dangling in mid-air. It is very important for a diplomat to conform to local custom."
He teeters forward a few more paces. "How come you're not practicing, then?" he wants to know. "Are you too weak right now?" Another few paces. "I'd like to race. But it's okay if you don't…. I know it would be kinda embarrassing to get beaten by your own Padawan."
"Are you so confident of victory?" And don't you dare tell me about the star-forsaken Boonta Eve Podrace, either. Not again.
"I would win," he tells me, blithely. "It's just true."
"Only in your mind, my deluded young friend." My cloak lands in a heap across the nearest structure, an emptied crate left outside a Feorian hut. The earth is cold as hard-packed ice beneath my splayed fingers, and the sharp wind cuts straight through my tunics as I roll upward into position, finding my center of gravity with the ease of long habit. I inhale deeply, ignoring the twinges and aches this provokes.
"You gotta keep your eyes shut, so it's fair, okay?"
"Fine." I'll show him fair.
"Ready, steady, go!" Tatooine's most juvenile and braggardly podracing champion hollers, and the race is on.
Blast it, if he isn't fast. The wretched imp was only pretending to have difficulty with this exercise. Who taught him such under-handed tactics, the deceptive little manipulator? That calls for a swift lesson. And besides, he has no idea what he's up against. I was trouncing Garen Muln at this game before Anakin was even born.
The contest is close, I will admit. After all, I'm not at my best. We scurry, upside down, around a good stretch of the village outskirts, neck and neck, vying for a much-coveted lead, until Anakin's over-enthusiasm carries him slightly ahead and directly across my path. Jedi reflexes or not, our race abruptly ends in a somersaulting heap, and then a most undignified sprawl flat upon our backs on Outer Gola's freezing rocky plains.
It is funny. From a certain point of view.
"You don't laugh very much," Anakin observes a minute later.. "I've hardly ever heard you before."
What? Surely he exaggerates? I haul myself upright. The morning sun glints winkingly upon the angles of the village roofs, gilding their rusting, battered contours with fleeting grace. The sting of the frosty air in my lungs is a cleansing hand, purging away the clinging dross of illness. Long shadows stain the earth purple where they lie, starkly beautiful. It is a desolate world, full of nothing but light. And dark. Like the future, like the past. Like the Force itself.
"You weren't paying attention, then," I chide. Gently.
He is not fooled by the evasion. "It's okay," he tells me. "I won't tell anybody."
I didn't want a Padawan. Not yet. Not so soon. I had an apprentice before I was Knighted, in all but formality. I would not have wished it to be so; I would have wanted time, time to learn all those things Qui-Gon so bluntly said I had still to learn. I would, in my heart, have desired the freedom to exercise that headstrong character he so openly critiqued. But in this moment, simple fact overbalances desire by a measureless weight of tolerance. And though I may be headstrong and I undoubtedly still have much to learn… I am capable of accepting what is, by the will of the Force.
"Master?"
He's taken off the blindfold without permission, but I let it go. "Hm?"
Anakin's face tightens into a comical grimace. "Um…" he informs me, blue eyes darting toward the village boundaries. "Uh-oh."
And there, on cue, strides Master Windu. His dark eyes settle upon us with a glint of disbelieving humor, and his shadow reaches us long before he does. He stops, arms akimbo.
"If you gentlemen are finished… training," he rumbles, skewering us both with the signature Windu stare, "I require your presence in the longhouse. There's been another unfortunate development."