"You looked at my notes," said Vos. This was not an unexpected turn. Mara had assumed he would know about her snooping. How could he not after she had taken his pin? It was an inauspicious place to start their talk, however. She would have hoped he might pass over that point until later. For friendship. Or something.
"Yup." There was no point in denying it. Vos shook his head and sighed. They were in his personal quarters which were much the same as the ones afforded to every Master, which was to say it was clean and small but larger than a Padawan's room. It had a cot and a desk and a wardrobe for the few sets of vestments each Jedi possessed and a table and chairs where they were now seated. Master Skywalker's room was usually scattered with parts from his many mechanics projects. He normally had about four or five in progress at one time, speeder engines, computer boards and cooling systems, even some droid chassis. Before he was a Jedi, he had told her, when he was only a small child, he had worked for a junk dealer and used to tinker with the scrap. Vos's room was pristine by comparison, though not due to its owner's having an ethos of tidiness; he simply wasn't there very often. The bed linens were rumpled, but most every other surface in the room was clear of paraphernalia, bearing instead a thin layer of dust. He was only here now because Mara had asked to speak with him alone.
"I take it you think you know something, then," said Vos.
Mara scowled. "I do. Maybe I should keep it to myself though, if that's the way of things around here."
"Maybe you should," agreed Vos. "I told you to stay out of it, Mara. Tell your Senator to go back to Naboo with her kids and go with them."
"It's not senators that are dying. You knew about the lightsaber?"
"Yeah. And now so does everyone else."
"Is that what you were afraid of?"
Vos half-laughed. "Oh, kiddo, that's just the start of it. Now people know, it just gets worse from here."
"Lay it out for me, then."
"Do I gotta do all the legwork? Think about it, Mar. Pretend you're just a regular sap who doesn't know the Jedi very well. Where would your mind go?"
Mara sighed. Pretend you don't know the Jedi? This was not such an easy ask, given that she had been a Jedi since she was nine years old. "I suppose I'd think that a Jedi did it."
Vos shook his head. "No, you're cutting down to the bones too fast. What's the meat, kid? The fat?"
"The meat? Excuse me?"
"You give the common imagination too little credit. You know the conclusion, but what about all the juicy bits? 'Bout why a Jedi or, even better, a Jedi conspiracy would do this? That's what'll burn us."
Mara thought on the accusation that had been hurled at her back at 79's two nights ago. Are we next Jedi? "All the more reason to find out the real culprit quickly, then."
Vos shook his head again. "No."
"What do you mean 'no'?"
"I mean, no, I'm not bringing you on the case, knucklehead. I mean it. Take your Senator back to Naboo. Clear out of here for a while."
"The Senator makes her own plans. And I am a Jedi, Vos," she huffed, "not a bodyguard."
"You're an apprentice," said Vos. "Go finish your training. If you won't leave Coruscant, then at least stick close to your Master. That oughta provide you with as much trouble as you can handle anyway, if memory serves."
There was a beat of silence.
"Do you still want to tell me what you know?" asked Vos.
It would have been too churlish even for Mara to refuse. "Kix says Hurc was sick. He tried to treat him at the clinic, but, well, he couldn't actually find what was wrong with him."
"But something was actually wrong in Kix's opinion?"
"He seems to think so. He says it was something neurological. Or could have been."
Vos scratched his chin, but Mara knew him well enough to recognize that the gesture was an attempt to cover the sudden, almost imperceptible stiffening of his shoulders. "Does Kix know if Hurc was ever admitted to a hospital?"
"Not so far as he knows. It doesn't seem likely, though, that a doctor would admit him."
There was another silence while Vos thought. Mara was the one to break it.
"Who was the second victim?"
"No," was Vos's reply. He waved his hand at her. "I mean, thanks, but, y'know, get lost." He cuffed her gently on the ear, his best attempt at an affectionate dismissal.
She stood up. "You'll go talk to Kix, at least?"
"I will. Thanks for bringing this to me, kid. You're a good egg even if you are a busybody."
"It could help, then?"
Vos smiled wearily. "No comment."
Luke was lying in wait for her when she arrived at the Amidala's. When she stepped out of the elevator, he leapt at her from the cover of a large decorative vase. It was a solid plan. The long elevator ride up to their apartments and its increasingly dizzying view of the skyline out the glass back had the power to lull one's mind into a pleasant, awed stupor. Or one could simply get bored. But Luke could never have hoped to sneak up on Mara, especially not here. She had sensed his intent fully fifty floors down and when he jumped out and grabbed at her wrist she pulled him off his balance and scooped him up, pinning one hand to his chest and holding one of his knees in the crook of her elbow.
Luke took the defeat gracefully, laughing and kicking his one free, dangling leg in playful protest.
"Almost had you!" he declared and Mara did not have the heart to disabuse him. There was, after all, a part of his efforts that was truly commendable. She had not said when exactly she was coming. If she had felt Luke's lurking presence from fifty floors below, he must have sensed her far earlier, though how much she dare not ask. It was more strength than an untrained ten year old ought to have. She knew that much.
Obi-Wan would want to know, though part of her balked at the idea of telling him. For a long time, she had understood the nature of her duty to the children and why Obi-Wan had made her the Amidala's guardian. He had not needed to explain any of the difficult truth to her. That was plain enough to those who had seen how Luke looked when he grinned and Leia when she frowned and knew also the face of Anakin Skywalker. Mara had been confident also that Obi-Wan had intended for her to know. The tricky part had been breaching the why of it with him. Why had he chosen to expose to her such a delicate secret?
"The kids are… interesting," she had commented to him none too subtly.
"How interesting?" he had asked. "For instance, I might say it's interesting that I saw a song sparrow carrying a large piece of toast or I might be interested to find a Terenta beast on the moon of Bogan."
"But you would only want to tell one of those things to the council."
"Precisely."
"I think the children are only sparrows, Master Kenobi."
"I think so too. Understand, I can give you no commands in this regard, Padawan, but if you should feel the need to unburden yourself with talk of sparrows, I would be happy to listen."
"And Master Skywalker?" she had asked.
That is… up to him, though I was brought to understand that he prefers to focus on more serious matters."
So she had watched the twins, noted their connection in the Force to each other and increasingly to the world around them. While she had never taught them to use their powers, she had prodded them at times to learn the strength of their senses. Within the past year Leia had begun to speak to Mara with her mind and Luke had told her of a dream that Mara knew described an ancient battle over Coruscant. Both could anticipate movement as well as a Jedi apprentice several years into their training.
The chicks were growing. With or without her help, they would soon learn to fly and then Padmé would not be able to hide their abilities from the eyes of the Council. What would Obi-Wan do then? The children were older than most candidates accepted into the Order but they were stronger as well. Their power would not languish without formal training, it would simply grow wild, an outcome the Masters would surely find less desirable than a couple of senescent Padawans. Obi-Wan wanted to train them, she suspected, whatever he might have promised to Padmé. Luke would want that too; Leia was a less certain matter. She might be a Jedi, Mara mused, if she thought she would be Grandmaster someday and reshape the Order into something more pleasing to her sensibilities. The girl was bright enough to see, though, that the body of the Jedi Order was largely static. She was likely to prefer something new, something she had a hand in forging and, if Leia wanted something like that, she might not lack for followers. Mara would take her as an apprentice, though, if she were a Knight.
Maybe she too wanted the children to be Jedi, and yet it was a guilty desire. If Luke and Leia joined the Order, if they became her brother and sister, brother and sister to all Jedi, they would need to forswear their blood family, their mother. They were Padmé's whole heart. And then there was Master Anakin as well. How would he feel to have the children he had never espoused, the products of his secret boyhood love, brought into the Order which that love had betrayed? Not great, probably.
Mara hoisted Luke over one shoulder into a fireman's carry and took a few steps toward the stairwell before setting back on his feet.
"Swords!" Luke requested. He always wanted to train at blade forms and sometimes she had indulged him, which only made him more expectant of further indulgence.
"When are you going to use a sword? Suriko."
"We haven't done swords in ages, though," he protested. "You don't want us to get rusty. All your good work will go to waste."
"You sound like Leia."
"Leia always gets what she wants."
"Leia wants me to teach Qi'ra and Qi'ra needs to train at hand-to-hand."
"Yeah, but you can just teach me and Leia swords while you two–"
"Sounds exhausting. So long as Qi'ra's with us, it's Suriko all around, small."
"Well, maybe Qi'ra can't train with us tonight."
"Maybe," said Mara, brightening a little at the prospect. She was starting to see Qi'ra around even more than she had resigned herself to these days, once in the Jedi Library and once in her dream. "Go tell your sister I'm here and we'll see."
Qi'ra was available, it happened, so Mara and Luke could at least be in accord at being disappointed. Her three students appeared to her in the handmaidens' training room, the twins clad in matching plain white cotton shirts and gray trousers. Qi'ra, in the fashion of the Naboo, was brighter in linen of light and dark blue. The Senator had always dressed her staff more finely than her own children. Perhaps that was subconscious, Mara reflected. Perhaps she meant for beings not to look too long at the twins. She kept them from the public eye as much as she could. They were privately and rigorously educated by the handmaidens and an array of tutors in Padmé Amidala's trust, among whose number was Mara herself. No loudmouth school kid was going to blab about the weirdo Amidala twins. But then, there were no chipper little friends at their birthdays either.
Even I had kid friends on Nar Shaddaa. And Heliost clan and Reva.
The twins had each other, at least, and seemed for now contented with their sheltered upbringing. Mara wondered though if Luke would have climbed into a speeder with a stranger if he had lived more of his life outside of his mother's home. Even that startling introduction to the galaxy's darker corners had not seemed to make him more wary. He did not, for instance, act perturbed that his mother had appointed an accessory to his kidnapping to be one of her closest sworn protectors.
Mara herself had given up trying to wrap her head around that choice. Amidala's nature was gentle and forgiving, true, but she was cautious as well. It was unlike her to be cavalier with Luke and Leia's safety. Why not set the girl up in some job not-in-her-house, like she had done for Han?
She would not question Senator Amidala either openly or any further in private, but Qi'ra's appearance in her vision still bothered her like sand in her porridge. Had it been a mere distortion of her mind as she slipped from sleep to wakefulness or had the Force meant for her to see it? And if the latter, why? Why show Qi'ra in the place of her dream man? Was it a sign that she was supposed to work together with Qi'ra? Or perhaps it meant that the dream man could not be trusted. Mara knew what answers she preferred but not which ones were correct.
They set about their training. Mara instructed them to drill the sequences they had practiced last time and was begrudgingly gratified to see that Qi'ra appeared to have practiced on her own time, her movement certain if not yet fluid. She was not a terrible hand at this, truth be told. The former worm lacked many fundamentals, but she was not so very slow with her hands or feet or mind and strong enough. Under the Senator's care she had grown less pallid and thin and there was a healthy luster to her hair now. In time, she likely could acquire the requisite skills of a handmaiden; it was only how she might trade on those skills that Mara doubted.
She took a moment to insist to her pupils on the importance of recovering back into a balanced ready stance after throwing a sequence of strikes and they practiced that for a few minutes. Luke always let his feet get too far apart, almost like he was trying to stand astride a stream. Leia was the opposite, tending to pull in tight to herself like she was an ancient spring wound clock that ran on tension. It didn't matter so much for now; neither had much weight or strength for a sloppy stance to undermine, but by the time they were grown Mara would have built them into steady fighters, she was determined.
"Qi'ra is doing it correctly," commented Leia.
"A little stiff in the elbows," said Mara, "but yes, the footwork is correct."
Balanced like she's spent her whole life ready to pounce or to run, Mara thought and realized that these were words Master Skywalker had said about her once, though in laughter rather than scorn. It had been one of the first times she had heard him laugh and some of the initial icy chill between them had cracked that day. Her dour Master could smile and sometimes he could even joke. She had not initially believed Obi-Wan when he had promised her that it was so.
I am the dour master now, she reflected. It was true; she was working on a nice little crease in her forehead from all this frowning. She had never intended to become that sort of Jedi. Indeed, she had concertedly resolved not to be that for Luke and Leia. For all the pleasant spring warmth that had in time blossomed between her and Master Anakin, she still would rather not have suffered that initial winter nor inflict its like on anyone else. She had never done so to Luke and Leia, but the atmosphere had changed since Qi'ra had joined them.
She does not deserve my trust, but if I must be her teacher I may as well do it right.
When she dismissed the twins for the evening, she asked Qi'ra to stay on for a moment. Leia shot her a look that seemed to say, be nice! and Mara returned her own look that said, you are very leery for someone so small and my heart is as soft and warm as mashed potatoes.
When the twins were gone and she and Qi'ra were alone, Mara said, "Indulge me for a minute." She sank into her ready stance, torso turned side-face, knees bent, one gentle palm extended. "Attack me." Qi'ra looked momentarily wary or confused. "Try and throw me to the floor. However you think you can.
She could see Qi'ra mulling over these instructions as she said, "alright."
They had never sparred before, only practiced the movements, and the other girl looked duly uncertain of herself.
She wonders if this is an excuse for me to hit her.
Qi'ra tried a few strikes, testing the waters, before suddenly throwing her shoulder into Mara with her full weight. It was a logical move, considering the parameters that had been set to her, though not an elegant one. Mara could appreciate that, but she was not about to reward it further than it honestly earned. She planted herself, and her superior height and weight prevailed in sending her opponent reeling back from her block. Mara did not press a counter attack. Qi'ra seemed to understand from that gesture the purpose of the test. The handmaiden tried several more strategies, employing leverage, speed, and force. She executed a leg sweep once in which Mara recognized the movements of Lane. It was never enough, though Qi'ra could be credited with having elevated her skills above the rank of amateur. She told too much of her thoughts with her eyes. This was fixable.
When they broke after several minutes, Qi'ra commented breathily that, "in a real fight, I think I'd just run."
Mara was willing to allow that this was neither flattery nor self deprecation. Run away was a valid, respectable, smart tactic and even becoming a Jedi had not made her too honorable to admit it. Perhaps this was the quality which Senator Amidala had sought in Qi'ra, the wily capacity to run when the noble hearted would stand and fight. If she could be counted on to not abandon her charges in her own flight, and Mara still considered that to be a very large if, then perhaps she could have value to the handmaidens' cadre after all. Did the Senator anticipate needing to run from something soon? Vos had suggested that she ought to.
Mara sank to sitting cross-legged on the mat. "Just mind you don't glance where you're going first, or I'd cut you off."
Qi'ra slumped down herself, grasping her knees. "What?"
"Your eyes, they're too obvious with what you're thinking. Hold your opponent's gaze, if you can. Learn to see in your peripheral vision."
Dammit, I do sound like Master Anakin.
"Where would you run?" she asked, just to be contrarian.
Qi'ra looked at her uncertainly, like she couldn't parse why someone would ask such a forwardly suspicious question. "On Coruscant?"
"Sure."
"I don't really know, I suppose."
"No ideas? No likely places at all? I came up with a whole list when I was first brought to the planet."
"When you were brought to the Jedi?"
"Yeah.
"Why?"
"Just for safety. I'd always picked places to run to on Nar Shaddaa, new places whenever we had to move, so I knew where to go if the Exchange or the Hutts came to turn over the camp. Couldn't sleep otherwise." She had not told Qi'ra about being an abandoned kid on the smuggler's moon before, she realized. She had not talked about it with anyone for a long time.
"You sound like you were a prudent child. I had a safe house made out on Corellia, but not 'till I was about thirteen. Where did you decide you should run here?"
"I never got much further than 'down,' to be honest. I figured there had to be some waste and ventilation systems on the lower levels that I could use to lay low or get out if I needed."
"'Down' usually is solid starting point," Qi'ra agreed. "You have to be careful with ventilation systems, though."
"Oh, sure. I pinched a breath mask back on Nar Shaddaa that I thought I could use to traverse the vents if I needed. Never did, though. Probably for the best; I don't think that mask woulda actually fit me."
"I always told the kids never to try things like that. The little ones would listen to me, but the teens seemed to think I was being a fussing nanny about it. One boy, Geph, tried to get into a CEC office suite through some vents once. He might have even had a mask, but it didn't matter. The offices were connected to the foundry and there must have been some metal fumes in there because they said he was seizing when some workmen found him."
Mara winced. "He was lucky anyone found him."
"I suppose so. I never saw him again. Some of his friends learned that he had been taken to a hospital, but we didn't learn what happened after, whether he died or the police took him or… anything else."
A thought struck Mara amidst the pity for the boy she had never known. "What would you do if you needed a doctor?"
"On Corellia?" Qi'ra only looked a little taken aback by the question. "It depended if you were wounded or ill and how old you were. There was a policy of free treatment for human kids under the age of fifteen for a while. It changed to thirteen a few years ago. Either way, you needed some government identification, but we could usually falsify that. For wounds," she shrugged, "the White Worms had connections to some back-alley sawbones. Why?"
"Just thinking," said Mara glumly. It was not as if Qi'ra would know who the underground doctors were on Coruscant. She was not sure why she had thought as much, even for a moment.
"You're not in any trouble, I hope."
Mara snorted. "Not yet."
"And your friends?"
Mara looked up from her own toes, meeting Qi'ra's eyes. The Other girl's face was set in an expression of perfect innocence. "What's that?"
"Reva said you were friends with the clone brothers. I just thought, maybe…"
"What?" Mara demanded. "You thought what?"
"I know they're facing some trouble lately," Qi'ra said a little softly. "I just hope that everything's alright."
Mara stood up. "Everything is fine, thanks for asking. I had better go." She did not know which burned more: that Reva had confided about her in one of her professed enemies or that Qi'ra had been bold enough to pry about Mara's personal concerns. It had taken less than five minutes from her dropping her guard for the former Worm to try and wheedle her. That was a lesson learned. She would have to have a chat with Reva, though. She loved Reva, but her friend had taken on an unwelcome custodial attitude towards Mara since she had been elevated to the higher rank of Knight.
She ought to let all of that go, she reflected as the elevator carried her the long ride down to the speeder bay. Every way she wanted a relationship to be, the proper attitude was to accept that it was out of her hands and that what was most important was curating her own inner balance. If she wanted Reva to be less overbearing, Vos to be more forthcoming, her Master to be more doting, and for Qi'ra—well, she could not begin to encompass how she wished things might be between Qi'ra and herself. She wanted to either trust the other girl or for her to go away, but given that neither of those states seemed imminent, she was stuck wallowing in petty resentment.
For so long as she was the Amidala twins' protector, she would have to endure seeing her about, but there was a real question now, Mara felt, as to how much longer Luke and Leia could remain as ordinary children in their mother's house. And if her custody of the children was threatened, how might Padmé Amidala fight for them? Would she send them away, perhaps in the care of a servant who had no great respect for the Republic or the Jedi? That would be rash, yet Obi-Wan and Anakin had sometimes insinuated that she possessed the capacity for such boldness. Was she that resistant to the idea of her children becoming Jedi? How hard was Obi-Wan ready to test her resolve?
Mara pondered it all the way back to the temple, well and truly embroiled in a secret controversy to which she had no personal claim. She fell into bed thinking about all her friends and mentors and enemies and somehow feeling very alone.
She dreamed again of her man with the dark eyes and low voice. They spoke of battle and of trust. As she was waking, clining to the dream feeling of loving him and being excited for their plans, Mara became enough possessed of herself to fear that he would morph into Qi'ra again. He did not, but Mara rose feeling unsettled anyway. The mood worsened when she checked her terminal and saw that Qi'ra had left her a message
