Chapter 19. Stratagems
The misty early morning had brightened into a warm and sunny day, but when Anakin found Padmé in her apartment she was curled up on the window seat wrapped in her favorite dark brown cloak. She was very surprised to see him. Over the few precious days they had spent together on Padmé's world they had already fallen into a pleasurable routine of spending evenings and nights together and going their separate ways during the day so Padmé could work.
It had been idyllic.
But here he was now in the middle of the morning. And Padmé wasn't working. She was huddled in her cloak.
Padmé took a long look at him when he appeared at her side.
"The last time I saw you, you were going out to meditate. I didn't know it was such a dangerous activity."
"What? Oh." He had completely forgotten how he must look – sweaty, disheveled, and with two fresh injuries. The tears had dried on the run. He gave his face a desultory wipe.
"I was sparring with Obi-Wan." Only a small part of Anakin's mind was engaged with the conversation. Most of his attention was given over to searching her energy fields and paying close attention to the effect he was having on them.
She had no way of knowing how long he had stood outside of her door, torn between running to her to reassure himself that she was all right, and hesitating because he might hurt her. After a long, heart-wrenching struggle he locked down his mental shielding as much as he was able, and forced himself to go in with a completely neutral demeanor. The effort was costing him a great deal.
Padmé smiled. "Does he look as bad as you do?"
"No." Anakin sat down on the window seat nearby but made sure he wasn't touching her. "He hasn't got a hair out of place."
Padmé laughed, although it didn't stop her from looking tired and drawn. The way she was huddled in her cloak spoke of pain, although he did not dare to let out a single tendril of the Force to find out for certain. Anakin took a deep breath, and could not prevent it shuddering.
"What's wrong?" Padmé felt him holding himself back. Usually his mere presence filled a room like sunshine. Today he seemed muted and somehow contained.
"I heard that you are ill," he finally ventured. "Really ill."
"Who told you?" She said, thinking of a number of Handmaidens with whom she would have words as soon as she felt up to it. "I'll have her head."
"But why?" Anakin was genuinely taken aback. "Why wouldn't you tell me? You always seem all right when I am with you."
"I always am all right with you." She shrugged. "It's fine. The doctor has been to see me. It's nothing you need to worry about."
Anakin was torn. With one touch he could make her feel better. But afterward….
He looked at her, seeing her with his heart rather than his eyes. Since the day she had appeared back in his life he had been faced with one agonizing choice after another: Love or duty. Go or stay. Save Padmé or save Balé. In every case he had struggled to change the terms of the choice so he could have both.
He didn't intend to give up now.
"Padmé," he blurted out, "I need to know whether you have experienced any changes since we – since we have been together."
"Changes?" The amused disbelief on her face spoke volumes. "One or two," she finally said with delicate irony. "I could begin with a story of forbidden love…"
With a little more control Anakin said, "I mean more subtle changes – changes in your perceptions, or awareness, or dreams. Anything like that?"
Her eyes said, "yes." Anakin waited.
"Well, for one thing," she said cautiously, after a while, "I seem to be able to talk to you in my head. That would be all right, but then you answer." His eyes held hers with longing, but he said nothing. "I have noticed that I'm more aware of things around me.
"Do you notice it when I am not around?"
She shot a glance at him. He was focused. Intense. Listening. "Actually, yes. I don't know how to describe it. My senses are sharper. You know – tastes. Sounds. Colors." Anakin nodded, acknowledging what she was saying. Apparently encouraged by being taken seriously, she ventured further. " I get – the most remarkable images."
He let out a breath that he didn't realize he had bee holding.
"Are they like… like visions?"
Padmé looked at him in complete surprise. "You know about this?"
Anakin finally smiled, a bit wryly. "We are taught that dreams – well, dreams are a kind of doorway to the Force. We learn to use them to find patterns, even to communicate." He swallowed. "We're trained to dream deliberately, not accidentally. That's why we say that Jedi don't dream." He looked sideways at her. "You could call it a kind of vision."
"But you dreamt that your mother was suffering." Padmé looked at him with love and sympathy.
"I know. But I wasn't supposed to." Anakin took another deep breath, looking into some unknowable distance. "Things don't happen to me the way they're supposed to."
Something has happened. Padmé thought. Something that he is reluctant to tell me about.
"Are you implying that all these things are happening to me because…because of you?"
The look of misery on Anakin's face seemed all out of proportion to the conversation. To her surprise he jumped up and began to prowl the room like a caged animal.
"I can't believe I didn't see it coming."
Padmé's fell silent. He seemed to think that she was in danger of some kind. It was the only explanation for his behavior. She had an inner impression as if a wind were rising around her, moving everything and changing all the fixed points in her life. It's all shifting, she thought, everything that is known, familiar, and safe. Anakin seemed caught up in it as he paced the room, head down, radiating silent fury.
Padmé realized with a shock that she was afraid, but not for herself. She was afraid for him. If he thought she was in danger, and that it was somehow his fault, there was no telling what he would do. She had a momentary image – like a waking dream – of powerful currents pulling Anakin away from her, and the brief vision left her feeling powerless and bereft. She got up from the window seat and went to him to put her arms around him.
He surprised her again by backing away from her.
"Something has happened since I saw you last," she said, beginning to feel very uneasy. "What is it?" Anakin kept his distance.
"Padmé, listen to me. I want you to trust me." Anakin paused, clearly choosing his words carefully. "I promise I will explain what I think is happening soon, but right now I need to spend the next two days with you away from here, preferably out in the wilderness."
"What? Now? Why?"
"Listen," he said, actively not touching her. "You are developing a strong connection with the Force – probably through me, but I don't really know. Without training, that makes you vulnerable for – well, vulnerable." He frowned, evidently not liking his own choice of words.
What? What is he talking about?
"I'd like to teach you some things that might help you cope with it," he finished lamely.
"Are you telling me that you want to train me as a Jedi in two days?" In spite of himself, Anakin smiled a little. He seemed to have lost some of his dangerous edge.
"If I only could. But I can teach you some mind blocks and some techniques that will help you to control what happens a bit more."
Padmé thought about it, puzzled. She hadn't thought that it needed coping with.
"So why the wilderness?"
"The Force is strong in nature. Where it has not been corrupted, nature can be a powerful ally in learning the ways of the Force."
Padmé smiled. "You sounded just like Obi-Wan then."
Anakin sighed. "I have my own ways of teaching," he said. "Let's just go. Now."
Before something happens? Padmé thought. But she never once considered not trusting him, not going away with him. Maybe she just wanted the extraordinary pleasure of his company for two uninterrupted days. She sighed. "You had better disappear for a while I make the arrangements."
"Hurry," Anakin said, backing toward the door. Then he turned and fled. Padmé realized that he had not touched her once the whole time he had been there.
* * * * *
"No!" Sabé was livid. "She can't just have disappeared."
Dormé handed her a memorandum. "This was just sent out through all the usual channels. I only picked it up because the Queen's office called demanding an explanation. Imagine my embarrassment at not being informed of my own Mistress' plans."
Sabé snatched it and read it through quickly. "This is a lie," she said. "There is no such meeting. I'm almost sure of it." She read it again. "Two days? Where is she going for two days without any of us…?" She looked up suddenly. "He's gone, too, isn't he?"
"It is almost impossible to tell," Dormé said, "but no one has seen him today. Not even Balé."
Sabé thought for a moment and then said, "Wardrobe check." The two handmaidens sprinted toward the Senator's apartment and began systematically to look through her wardrobe and belongings for missing items that might give them a clue to their Mistress' whereabouts.
"What is she doing?" Dormé worried out loud. "She is too ill to be running around somewhere."
Almost nothing was missing. The entire luggage was in its place. They consulted the detailed lists that were always kept and checked them against the items in the wardrobes.
"Sleeping sack?" Sabé finally said, puzzled. "Walking boots? Rain gear? They are all missing."
Dormé looked up in dismay. "Are you telling me she set up a clumsy meeting decoy to go camping? Now? Why would she do that?"
Sabé thought fast. "This means absolutely no one else on staff is involved. Any one of us could have come up with a better cover story!"
Dormé reached for the COM link and spoke to Captain Typho briefly. He was not aware of any changes in the Senator's itinerary but offered to verify the movements of all the official transports immediately.
Sabé reached for the link when she was done and put through a call to a certain guesthouse near the Spaceport. Master Kenobi had of course been offered accommodation in the Palace, but had declined for reasons of his own. He was not in.
"She has no right to do this," Sabé growled. "She has no right to change everything. I'm going to find her if it's the last thing I do."
* * * * *
It was mid-afternoon before a still-furious Sabé was able to locate the Jedi Knight and inform him that Senator Amidala had ostensibly left for an emergency meeting on the other side of Naboo for two days, and that she had gone unaccompanied except for his Padawan. Then she explained about the camping gear.
It was too late to stop them. They were long gone by now. He has slipped though my grasp again, Obi-Wan thought with real annoyance. But this is the last time.
"There is no logic to this," he said to his companion.
Tec Andros looked thoughtfully out the window of Obi-Wan's room toward the Spaceport. He was wearing the dress uniform of a mid-level officer in the Republican Army, but his light saber was securely clipped to his belt under the tunic-length jacket. It was necessary to continue to give the impression that there was only one Jedi on Naboo.
"Now are you ready to act more aggressively?" Tec asked, still sorting out the known facts in his incisive and highly experienced mind.
"I have given him every opportunity," Obi-Wan said. "He has run out of chances to make the right decision on his own."
"Good." Tec followed a particular train of thought to its conclusion and turned around.
"I think he is trying to train her," he said. "I think he is trying to change the existing parameters to fit the outcome he wants." He smiled briefly. "It is an approach I have seen him use before."
"I'm glad you're here, Tec. This thing has gotten completely out of hand."
"I serve," Tec said briefly. "Between the two of us he won't get far." Some Padawan, he thought, to require two Jedi Knights to haul him home. The boy was trouble the likes of which he had never seen.
Obi-Wan sighed deeply. He had really wanted to avoid this.
"What's our next priority?" he asked.
"I'm certain the palace staff are doing everything in their power to locate the Senator," Tec said. "For the time being, let's turn our attention back to our D'laian friends." He looked out the window again. "Let's take a walk. And while we are walking you can tell me everything you know about the impression left by the Sith."
Obi-Wan agreed readily. Tec's strategy was right. Anakin's disappearance, however ill advised, gave them their best opportunity to draw out the assassins. He didn't mind being used as bait if Tec had his back. There were few shrewder or fiercer fighters in the Galaxy. The two Jedi Knights headed out into the streets of occupied Theed, confident that their combined skills were more than enough to handle whatever trouble lay ahead.