Chapter Three

"This is all too strange, Mi'Lady. He's sitting right outside your door and can probably hear everything we're saying!"

"It's worse than that," I explained to my First Handmaiden who was comfortably lying next to me on my bed. "He can supposedly read my mind, spy on my dreams, and will give his life to save mine if he has to."

"Any of us would do that," Sabé reminded me.

I smiled and patted her hand where it pressed into the mattress. "I know that. This is very unusual. I don't like it. I don't know him and just because he's a Jedi, doesn't mean that he's not…you know..." I couldn't come up with an appropriate term.

"A weirdo?" she finished for me.

"Exactly," I agreed with a smile. "I have all the protection I need. I have you all, my security force.."

"Who weren't actually able to help you out of that Nute Gunray deal, if you recall. You called on the Jedi then."

"That was different," I replied. "Somebody else is behind what the Trade Federation did here. Gunray is too much of a coward to have created a blockade and try to kill two Jedi all on his own. There has to be more to it."

"Maybe," Sabé thoughtfully suggested, "he thought he was protected."

"Protected from the Jedi?" That didn't seem likely. Although they worked in sync with the Galactic Judiciary System, the Jedi were an independent unit who had the right to choose when to become involved and when to walk away.

"Who's over the Jedi?"

"Chancellor Valorum is in a way," I informed my assistant. "Although the Jedi Council has the final say. They don't really have a boss, so to speak."

"Then the motivation had to come from somewhere else. Someone outside of the influence of Valorum or the Jedi Council."

I thought over Sabé's words for a moment. "There's so much evil in the galaxy these days, there's no telling what enemies we have or for what reasons. I'm sure we'll discover the truth someday and it most likely will come as a surprise."

"Perhaps Obi-Wan will be able to figure it all out," my handmaiden suggested.

"If he's around," I told her, forgetting that he was standing just outside my door. Not that it mattered. According to our research, he already knew what I was going to say anyway. "I'm undecided whether I want to go through with this or not. I'm going to have to sleep on it."

"Well, if you want my opinion – not that you asked - I say refuse. I think it's creepy the way he's always skulking around spying on you. Maybe he's the one in cahoots with Gunray! Did you ever think of that? Maybe he's using this crazy sobatí idea to get close to you, possibly to even assassinate you!"

"I doubt that," I chuckled. "If he wanted to kill me, he could've done it a hundred times already, and plus, I don't think Master Jinn would take on an assassin as a Padawan learner."

"Poor Master Jinn," my friend said sorrowfully. "He's in the med unit all by himself. Obi-Wan never even goes to see him! I don't understand Jedi at all. Don't they have any feelings? Don't they care about each other?"

"I think they do," I argued. "Although they seem to put duty in front of everything else. Take Obi-Wan for instance. He's convinced that this is his fate. He has no choice. He's willing to walk away from everything he's been working for, of being a Jedi to basically be another handmaiden to me."

"Surely, it's more than that," Sabé chuckled warmly. "Besides, I don't think the dresses will fit him."

I joined her laughter after picturing Obi-Wan wearing the skin-tight orange gowns all the handmaidens wore today.

"A personal bodyguard, then. I guess that's what he's supposed to be. But why me? Of all the systems in the galaxy, why Naboo?"

"The Force works in mysterious ways," Sabé quoted a saying I'd heard all my life, although I never had understood it.

This Force everyone spoke about – the so-called power behind the Jedi; I didn't understand it, couldn't see it, or feel it, so what use was it to me? No, I didn't need this type of disruption in my life. I appreciated Master Jinn and Obi-Wan's help in the Trade Federation fiasco, but I wanted them gone. My people and I were doing fine before this mess, and we would be fine after.

"So, we're in agreement then," I told my handmaiden. "I'm going to refuse to be his sobatí, Obi-Wan can return back to Coruscant and resume his life as a Jedi, and then everything will return to normal."

"Sounds like a great plan to me," Sabé agreed before hopping up to head to her own room.

If it was such a great plan, then why did I feel so lousy about it?