Qi'ra reaped her own consequences of her and Mara's outing and run-in with Quinlan Vos the following day. Mara left her at the apartment tower only a little before midnight, at which point, apparently, the handmaidens still assumed she was only returning from a normal day off. But by breakfast, the jig was up. She could tell by the way the others looked at her. They at least maintained enough courtesy to let her finish her meal before starting in on an interrogation.
"What were you doing in the Crimson Corridor yesterday?" Lane demanded as soon as all their dishes had been passed off to the kitchen droid.
"A girl can't just go have a quiet drink these days?" she retorted.
She saw Jaen wince and felt a little regret. Her tone was icier than she had meant it to be. She was making a bad start.
"If that was all you were after, you wouldn't have needed to go so far. And I'd hardly call the Corridor 'quiet.' If you'd stayed near the Senate district, you would've had a much smaller chance of stumbling across a random corpse."
"That must have been dreadful," Camilla offered, but the softness of her words was not reflected in her expression.
"And what were you doing with Mara Jade?" Lane continued.
So, Mara's involvement is of secondary interest, Qi'ra noted. It's the location that bothers them most. That together with my being there, a criminal in a criminogenic part of town. Lane thinks I've corrupted their Jedi somehow.
"Mara and I were just talking," she said. That excuse was beginning to feel flat the more she repeated it.
"About what?"
"I can't see how that's any of your business, really."
She was making it worse. She should have thought of answers to all these questions, but she had never thought that the Amidala house would find out about their trip to find Hurc's girlfriend in Civé. She had been too tired last night, in the aftermath, to prepare a repertoire of likely excuses and now all that she could do was deflect.
"Well, I can see that Jade wants nothing to do with you," said Lane.
"Oh, Lane, don't—," Jaen tried to intervene, but her punctilious sister-at-arms would not heed her.
"So, I think that liaison merits an explanation."
Qi'ra heard herself saying, "are the two of you friends? Did we hurt your feelings by excluding you?"
Tysal, who was lingering by the door, gave out an exasperated sigh.
She knew that she should try to keep her words gracious and not give Lane an excuse to escalate, but after months of enduring the handmaidens' thinly veiled suspicion and dislike, it was all she could do to not answer Lane's starched contempt with outright bile.
I mean, "liaison?" Seriously? Fuck you.
Lane was out of patience as well. "Do you know what position you're in? Who it is that you serve? Senator Amidala is one of the most respected people in the Republic—in the galaxy. Pedestals like that are precarious. We are her hands and ears. Everything we do at all times represents her. So, if you, Qi'ra, have a fondness for shady slums, lose it now. I won't stand for your low hobbies to stain our lady's reputation."
Qi'ra managed not to say that if the Senator's reputation had already been sullied by the birth of her twin bastards, Lane could hardly blame Qi'ra for it.
She gripped the back of one of the mess hall chairs, tapping her finger agitatedly.
"You're right," she said, and for half a moment Lane was thrown. "I am responsible to the Senator. And much like yourself, I answer to her directly. You can brow-beat me as long as you like; I don't owe you an explanation for anything that I do, no matter how sordid you suspect it may be."
Lane's mouth tightened into a thin line, which was impressive considering the fullness of her lips.
"Well," she said, "we'll see about that."
With that, she exited their mess hall in a graceful huff. The rest of the handmaidens, who had all stayed to observe the confrontation, followed after her with the exception of Camilla. Ever Lane's faithful companion—and, Qi'ra suspected, possibly more than a mere friend—she could not guess whether Camilla wanted to placate or further chide her.
"Some free advice?" she offered, once they were alone.
"If you absolutely must."
"The six of us have been together for years now. I know that must make it difficult for you, being late to the party, but what you have to understand is that we're used to sharing everything. There are very few secrets between us. I don't mean that it's been easy; I know more about Tysal and her husband's courtship than I ever cared to learn. Just that we've established trust that way. It helps to know the person who fights beside you. That starts with honesty."
Qi'ra decided to test her commitment to this ideal.
"Are you and Lane sleeping together?" she asked.
"Sometimes," said Camilla. "Mostly, though, we just have sex."
That was almost funny enough to make Qi'ra laugh despite the cloud of angst that had settled over her heart.
"Is it serious between the two of you?"
"Oh, I shall make her mine." Camilla shrugged. "When the timing is right."
"I wish you the best of luck," said Qi'ra. Then she changed tack. "You know the adage about trust being a two-way street."
"I do," Milla confirmed, "but we have already made the first gesture in that regard."
"How is that?"
"That you are here. Living in this house."
Qi'ra decided that she hated Camilla's modest reproach worse than Lane's scorn. It made her feel very small.
Indeed, she felt withered by their interaction for the rest of the day. The trouble was, Camilla was wrong. Qi'ra could not just be honest with them. She could not afford it. What, after all, had happened in the handmaidens' lives that they should be so ashamed or wary to confess? Had Yadorra gotten a little too drunk at a formal affair once or twice? Had Biallé been a little rowdy in her teens? Had Jaen forgotten the name of the ambassador from Mon Cala? Oh, may the heavens forgive them! She was not like them. The secrets of her past would not be endearing. There were no little faux pas there for her to relate. She could not build their trust by telling them; she could only lose it.
Even now, of her involvement in Mara's investigation, what could she say but that she had advised the Jedi to seek information among the low people of the galaxy? That would go over swimmingly.
Han had been right, she decided. It was pointless to stay here. She would never belong. She would never get a real foothold to climb from. As soon as she could, she would tell him so and they would leave. Han would not object. He had hinted at wanting to go nigh constantly and this way their schedules and the laws of decorum would not separate them any longer. They could be together as much as they pleased. They would have enough money to start out and, if Qi'ra could chance it, they could make off with a few of the Senator's more valuable treasures as well.
It would hurt the little girl Leia's feelings if she disappeared like that, she considered. She would be sorry for that much. Leia alone in the house had offered Qi'ra something like real care, but at least she would be spared from having to look her in the eye as she went.
It was late in the afternoon as she was thinking such things and half-reading notes on budgetary estimates for commissioning a new class of naval cruisers when someone down the hall screamed. Qi'ra jumped up from her chair. She was almost certain that it had been Leia's voice. There had probably only been some small accident, but she rushed into the hall to check nonetheless. She found Leia and her brother in the natatorium, which she noted immediately as odd. The door to the pool should have been kept locked so that the children could not enter without supervision. It was one of the first details of the household's security that had been impressed on her. Luke and Leia were alone and not attired as though they had come for a swim. Luke was wide-eyed, backed against the wall. His sister stood at the pool's edge, her worried expression dramatically underlit by the submerged lights in the otherwise dark room.
Lane entered the room only a few moments behind Qi'ra.
"What's going on?" she asked, casting around. "What—"
She stopped mid-breath, doubtless having noticed the same thing that Qi'ra had just seen. The two of the walked briskly to the pool's deep end where the twins were. There was something in the water there, near the bottom, a cloud of blood-red wafting gently in the pool's artificial tide.
"Is that…how long…"
Lane seemed only able to articulate haltingly and for once Qi'ra sympathized. The horrifying likelihood of what they were seeing had struck her too.
"Let's get her out," she said and Lane nodded.
They stripped off their outer layers as quickly as they could and dove. It was only a little deeper to swim before they could each hook one arm under either of Mara Jade's and pull her up to the surface and then onto the lip of the pool in a great slosh. The Jedi's clothes were heavy with water and her mane of hair that had been floating so ethereally was now plastered to her face, head, and neck. Lane brushed the soaked red hair away from her eyes to try and get a look at her.
Unnervingly, Mara's eyes were open, though they only stared out glassy and unseeing at the rippling surface of the water. She sat there, upright under her own power, and yet she seemed totally asleep to the world, reacting to no movement or touch.
"Mara?"
Lane pressed two fingers into Mara's jugular. Luke was inching forward from the wall, chewing his fingernails. He reached a hand out for his sister and she took it.
"Is she going to be OK?" he asked.
"She has a pulse," Lane declared. "She… is breathing. I think. Yes."
Qi'ra checked for herself and found that Lane was correct. She could feel a pulse, if a sluggish one, thumping beneath her her fingertips in Mara's neck.
"Luke, Leia go and get Tysal. Go and see if your mother is back yet—Oh, Shiraya's breath!" Lane exclaimed suddenly.
Qi'ra had felt it too. Mara's flesh had suddenly gone cold beneath their hands. The change set Lane to panicking in a way Qi'ra had never witnessed before.
"What's happening! I don't… Qi'ra!"
Qi'ra had finally had enough. She had enough of Mara's bitter efforts to train her, her unapologetic recklessness, and now of the spectre of the murderous Jedi she had brought to loom over Qi'ra's life. She straightened up and with all the force of her frustration, she slapped Mara Jade across the face.
Mara was sent reeling back and she reached to catch herself with her arms. As she pushed herself back up, her languid eyes were wide and alert and she let out a soft "oh." She looked around at Lane and Qi'ra and then let out another noise that sounded almost like a sob. Lane leaned over and took a hold of the Jedi's shoulders.
"Steady on, woman. What's all this about? What are you doing here?"
Mara was fully sensate now, but she refused to look either of them in the eye. Her shallow breaths had resolved into gasping and coughing, which was somewhat comforting. At least it was a lively sign. Lane patted her on the back. Qi'ra, for her part, held off. She felt a tiny twinkle of remorse for having struck Mara like that. Though, then again, she had succeeded in bringing her back to consciousness.
When she had regained just enough breath and composure to speak, Mara said, "I tried to reach him. But it wasn't him. It was someone else."
Lane gave Qi'ra a questioning look, to which Qi'ra could only shrug. She thought back to the other night at Dex's Diner and what Mara had told her about her effort to meditate on the non-echoes in the Force, but she could not see how any of it might pertain to Mara trying to drown herself. Or, were dangerous stunts part of the meditative process?
There appeared to be no getting through to the girl while she was in this state. They should move her, let her dry off and settle down. Qi'ra remembered that Mara had said she was not supposed to leave the Jedi Temple anymore. It was doubtful that command had been reversed since last night, and yet here she was. She could not find it in her heart to turn Mara in to the Jedi. Not even to her could she do that. The Senator was Mara's friend; they would ask her what to do. She would find something.
Someone, she was also certain, needed to try and comfort the girl. She was teetering on the edge of trying herself but felt that such an attempt would be taken badly. For one, she still did not understand what had happened to make Mara go all funny. And whose role was it, she wondered, to comfort a Jedi?
"Pip?"
The voice was too gentle to startle her. Qi'ra twisted around to get a look, careful not to lose her balance and tip back into the water. There was a tall human man standing behind her. He wore Jedi robes, though their browns were styled darker than any other Jed she had met, seeming almost black in places. Loosely curled golden-brown tressed hung down to his shoulders and his cheeks bore a matching short beard.
"Master," Mara rasped, "I tried to find him."
"He's gone, Mara," the man replied. "I'm so sorry. I should have been there when you heard."
And now Qi'ra realized that she had met the man before, though only once, briefly, and many months ago. This was the shadow from the tunnels of Corellia, Mara's Master. Anakin Skywalker. He was far less intimidating when you could see his face, which she thought was soft and boyish. Indeed, she could not recall meeting a Jedi Master who looked this young, though she had met only a few.
He knelt beside his apprentice and moved a wet lock of hair out of her face. All of a sudden, he seemed to notice that there were also other people in the room. He looked around at Lane, Qi'ra, Luke, and Leia, then addressed the latter two.
"Sir—erm—young man and lady," he said, which was an awkward way for even a Jedi to address a child, "could you run and see if you can find your mother for me. I'd like to speak with her if she's home. Tell her that Mara Jade and Master Skywalker are here."
Luke, looking as though he had been endowed with a sacred mission, intoned, "yes, Master Jedi," and, hand-in-hand with his sister, marched from the natatorium. Lane murmured something about getting some towels and removed herself from Mara's side. Qi'ra stayed where she was. She was intruding, she could tell, on this scene now, but had to learn what exactly was going on. Also, not for nothing, if she had left she would have had no idea where to take herself.
"I won't leave your side again," Anakin Skywalker said to Mara. "Come back to the Temple with me. You should rest. Then, we should talk."
"I surrendered my lightsaber," Mara told him.
"Well, we'll see about that." He smiled confidently.
"If I am not a Jedi anymore, then you c—"
"Then I will stay with you anyway. But I doubt that it will come to that. We'll figure all of that out. First, we need to say goodbye to Vos."
Mara's jaw was set. "They won't give him a funeral, Anakin. They said they wouldn't."
Anakin snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure they said that. They'll still do it. There are too many of us who loved him, just like you. We need to remember him. The Council won't be able to tell us no."
Anakin's eyes flicked over to the door and he stood up, leaving one hand outstretched toward Mara, hovering over her shoulder, at the ready to reach out and hold her again at a moment's notice. Qi'ra had to crane her neck around again to look. Lane was standing at the far end of the pool holding a pile of fluffy white towels and between her and them, at the door, was Senator Amidala, taking in the whole scene, her brow furrowed with concern.
"Senator," Skywalker bowed his head to her, "I am sorry for intruding like this."
"Is Mara alright?" Amidala asked.
"She's not hurt," said Skywalker, which was a good, politic answer. Accurate, comforting, while allowing for the broader truth that Mara was not exactly alright. "She, um, used your pool."
Mara muttered in a voice so low that Qi'ra doubted anyone but herself could hear, "sensory deprivation."
"Master Vos was found this morning," said Skywalker. He shifted on his feet. Qi'ra guessed that he was trying to see around the Senator to spot if the kids had followed her back. They had not. "He was…"
"I heard," said Amidala. "The Planetary Security Council just had a meeting. Grandmaster Mundi has dispatched Jedi all across the planet, including, apparently, Temple Sentinels. Everyone is arguing over whether the Jedi should be censured or CorSec assault teams should be assigned with them to search for this killer."
"The Sentinels too?" Skywalker frowned. "Mundi must want this over quickly."
"But not quietly. CorSec and the local office civic engagement have been getting non-stop complaints all evening."
"Any fights?"
"Not yet. Are… will you be sent out there?"
"Obi-Wan may ask, but I have to see to this one." Skywalker jerked a thumb at his dripping apprentice. "Um, Senator, could we possibly borrow—or use your…"
"Oh! Yes, we can get that dried in a few minutes. Mara?"
Mara Jade stood up. Qi'ra thought she might look sheepish, but she still looked dazed. A huge puddle of water pooled at her feet. Qi'ra stood up too and was abruptly aware that she was nearly naked. Then she felt sheepish, even if they were all at the pool. No one had come for a jolly swim. Context was so important. Then Lane threw a towel at her and she was begrudgingly grateful.
Senator Amidala stopped her at the door as they all dispersed.
"Are you alright, Qi'ra?" she asked in a low voice.
"I'm fine."
She thought that she could tell by Padmé's expression that she could hear how hollow those words were, but she let Qi'ra pass nonetheless.
It did not matter. She was fine. She did not have to care that Quinlan Vos was dead, that Mara was distraught, or that the Jedi were hounding the city for a killer who had, it sounded like, now slain one of their own.
He had seemed kind. Vos.
But she would be gone soon. This planet and all of its politics, the handmaidens, and, stars willing, the Jedi would all be behind her. It could all fade away.
What had Mara meant by "it wasn't him?"
