CHAPTER SIXTEEN – THE SEED OF BANQUO KINGS!

LUX

I wake up with a booted foot buried in my ribs.

"Lux," Tandin whispers. "Lux!"

I groan and turn over, my neck very stiff. "I'm up, I'm up…"

Once my eyes are open I glance around the room, trying to get a better handle on the situation. Tandin's sitting up next to me and next to Ahsoka, who's still unconscious and being kicked by Tandin. My hands are tied behind my back, and so are his, which explains why he resorted to kicking Ahsoka and I awake.

"Ahsoka!" I wriggle upright and scoot around so I can see her better. "Ahsoka, wake up."

Ahsoka moans and opens her eyes somewhere around the third or fourth kick. "Oh, that headache's not going away for a while…"

"Keep your voices down. Cree is in the back of the office with the artifacts and our weapons," Tandin whispers. "Ahsoka, can you get them with the force?"

She shakes her head. "Not without him noticing. In the time it would take me to grab one object, he could grab the knife and be long gone with the rest of the relics."

"What if you grab the knife?" I suggest.

"Then he puts the ring on and lunges for it with limitless luck on his side," She explains. "We have to distract him and get him to move away from the relics."

"I can do that," I say and thunder as deeply as I can, "Advisor Cree!"

Cree looks over his shoulder at me. "You're awake."

"Advisor Cree, what is the meaning of this?" I demand.

Cree shakes his head and turns from the artifact. "This is a mistake, on General Tandin's part. You thought that because I was on Rash's advisory council, I would forget about the artifacts and their power.

"Well General, you're not the only one with a memory. Or with ambitions."

"What do you mean by ambitions?" Ahsoka growls.

Cree takes a second to place her. "The king's Head Advisor and the head of the Royal Milita occupy the same rung in the palace's hierarchy: second from the top. When you're second from the top, all you can think about is taking that final step."

"You, a king?" Tandin snorts. "The people of Onderon -."

"The people of Onderon are all animals at heart, and animals are ruled by power."

"You knew I took the artifacts," Tandin says. "Why didn't you make your move earlier?"

"We had probe droids after you defected," Cree says simply. "Most of them didn't make it past your perimeter, but one did. One that captured an image of Steela Gerrera holding this music box."

"You knew he divided the relics and you couldn't steal them all at once."

Cree ignores me, which just confirms my statement. "After I saw the footage, I told Kalani to send out the gunships. And I had said gunships altered a little, adding emergency batteries to the guns which were independent of the main power system."

It takes a second for that to sink in.

Guns…independent of the main power system.

"You killed Steela," I realize.

"I didn't set her up on the cliff; she did that all herself," Cree says. "I was just going to shoot the girl."

Ahsoka's mouth falls open. "She was never concerned with you, Advisor!"

"Why?" Tandin demands. "Why would you kill her? She didn't have anything to do with this!"

"If she died, then the artifact would be returned to the palace," Cree shrugs. "After her death it would be only a matter of time before her brother followed her lead. A barfight gone bad, something like that. And with the bond between him and Senator Bonteri…"

"You planned to knock them down like dominoes!" Ahsoka rages.

"And the relics would all be back in the palace," Cree says dismissively. "If Dendup didn't notice they were gone now, he wouldn't notice later."

Tandin lunges against his restrains, a vein popping out of his forehead. "He would have noticed, if only because I warned him!"

"You're a traitor," Cree points out. "What's keeping you from switching sides again? General Tandin, treasure hunter who conspired to raid the tomb for his own gain."

"You're sick," Ahsoka hisses.

"I'm not. I'm just a politician."

"So what now?" I demand. "You can't kill all of us without raising major red flags, and you don't have all four artifacts."

"You mean the glass?" he deadpans, holding up a piece of swirled glass in a gold frame. "You really think I didn't find out the combination to Tandin's blaster safe? Next time, don't use your mother's birthday."

The chronometer on the wall makes a shrill alarm. It's high noon.

"There are people meeting us at Tandin's for the barbecue," I say, thinking quickly. "They'll notice we're missing and they know we're in the palace."

Cree sets the glass down and picks up something out of our field of view. He turns around and levels Tandin's blaster at us.

"Too bad Tandin killed you when you tried to stop him from raiding the tomb."

The batteries in the blaster charge and I do the smartest thing I can think of: I scoot away from Ahsoka so she has the greatest amount of space possible to work with. She gets ready to lunge or do Unifar-knows-what to Cree with the force. Tandin looks ready to rip Cree limb from limb. I'm ready to join them in whatever they decide to do to him.

But before carnage, rage, or a cold-blooded execution can begin, Cree's interrupted by a door opening and a call of "Advisor Cree, I brought your lunch."

The palace cupbearer walks in holding a tray. A tray containing Cree's lunch.

Cree freezes. For all his plans and backup plans, it looks like he forgot about the servants.

The cupbearer turns in our direction and drops her tray in shock, her eyes going wide when she sees the three of us tied up on the floor and Cree holding a blaster.

Tandin and I also freeze when she walks in, our mouths agape.

Ahsoka does not freeze.

She summons the blade from across the room and releases it in front of the cupbearer, who clumsily catches it as it falls.

"Show that to the king and bring him here, now!" she yells. The cupbearer doesn't need any more instruction; she nearly slips in spilled egg salad in her rush to bolt out the door, the knife clutched in her hand.

Cree hesitates for a second trying to decide whether to shoot us or the cupbearer, and in doing so makes his fatal mistake. Tandin body slams him to the floor.

I scramble for the table and kick Ahsoka's lightsabers to her. The blades flash to life and slice though the binders on her wrists, then the ones on mine.

Ahsoka expertly cuts the bonds on Tandin's wrists, but he doesn't thank her. He doesn't acknowledge she's there. He doesn't even stand up.

Instead his face twists into an inhuman mask and he wraps his beefy hands around Cree's thin neck.

"I want you to know something, Advisor," he hisses. "House Tandin's sigil is an anooba with three heads. Most believe that it's for loyalty, but they forget that the three-headed anooba guards the gates to Hell!" And so help me Unifar, it sounds for all the world that Tandin wants to put Cree there.

"I gave those specific rebels the artifacts for a reason, and the reason was that I love those boys and I loved that girl." His voice drops an octave into a ringing, terrifying bass. "She was brave, and kind, and you killed her like a coward!"

Cree gasps for air and Tandin tightens his grip as if the sound offends him. I grab Ahsoka's arm before she can get any ideas about interfering – never in my life, not even when we were breaking into his house, have I seen General Tandin so angry, and I don't want to get in his way.

"The only reason I haven't snapped your neck already is because I'm trying to decide whether to turn you over to Saw Gerrera or just feed you to my anooba!" he roars.

Cree's eyes bulge, whether it's from lack of air or the prospect of being turned into Sprinkles chow I'm not sure.

"Stop this!"

A throng of militiamen charge into the room, followed by Saw, and King Dendup holding the hand of the very freaked-out cupbearer.

Tandin makes a disgusted sound and releases Cree's throat, glaring hard at him while he draws lungful after lungful.

Dendup hands the cupbearer off to Saw and fixes all three of us with a hard look.

"This cupbearer just charged into the room where Saw and I were playing dejarik half in tears and babbling about a gunfight in Advisor Cree's office. She handed me this." He holds the blade high in the air.

"And once I arrive here, I find the room in chaos, Senator Bonteri holding Padawan Tano back from what I can only fathom would be a fight, and my best general choking my top advisor!" He waves his blade-holding hand around in the air. "What in the name of Unifar are you doing here -." His gaze falls on the table and his jaw drops. "Are those the forbidden artifacts?"

"Your Highness, I can explain. I was attacked -," Cree gasps.

"Stop your lying!" I shout and lunge at him. The guards stop me before I can so much move my feet.

"So I'll give you one last chance to explain yourselves to me, gentlemen and lady," Dendup interrupts. "What are you doing with the forbidden artifacts?"

The explanation was not pretty.

Cree wanted to get his side of the story into King Dendup's head.

Ahsoka very calmly informed him that she would remove his head and use it to play bolo-ball before that happened.

In the end, Dendup made everyone go stand in each corner of the room to minimize the odds of our ripping each other's throats out. Then one by one, and going in alphabetical order, we each told him our story.

Since "Okalin" comes last in the alphabet behind "Ahsoka," "Gregory" (Tandin), and "Lux," then he has to go last.

"I'm not sure why this is happening," Cree tuts, his big eyes flickering back and forth. "I was simply doing some paperwork in my office, when suddenly these three came in and -."

"This is Lux, Ahsoka, and Tandin you're talking about here, Advisor," Saw scoffs. "They're not the bloodthirsty types."

"Power corrupts, Mr. Gerrera. I didn't ask to be choked within an inch of my life."

"Tandin grabbed you because you killed our friend for a music box!" I rage.

Silence falls.

"Steela had a music box," Saw remembers.

I shoot Dendup a look that says stop him but the cupbearer gets the message first. "Mr. Gerrera, I think the nurse said it's time for your -."

Saw pushes her aside and limps forward on his bad leg. "He said you killed someone for Steela's music box. Who?"

Cree swallows hard. "I didn't kill anyone, Mr. Gerrera. A-all I did was a-alter the artillery for the gunships, as was my d-duty."

"A cannon caused Ahsoka to drop Steela off a cliff. You killed her." He turns bright red. "You killed my sister!"

The militiamen guarding Cree forget all about him and move to block Saw from attacking their prime suspect. Saw squirms and thrashes in their grip, his pain forgotten and replaced with white-hot rage.

"Saw, stop!" I order and try to pull him back from the screen of militiamen.

"I'm not stopping until that son of a bantha's nothing but a bloody stain on the floor! He killed my sister!" He somehow finds a hole in the Great Wall of Militiamen and worms his upper body through. He would have gotten farther if Ahsoka and I didn't grab his legs, count to three, and pull with all our might.

With his legs held up but his upper body unsupported, Saw unglamorously belly flops onto the floor. His chin knocks into the rug, giving him a good whack, and the blow knocks him from his stupor.

"Give me a blaster," he moans. "If you're not going to let me at him then at least give me a blaster. Oh God…" An animal noise tears itself from his throat; whether it's from grief or rage I can't tell.

Dendup shoots Cree a very black look.

"Take him to the dungeon," he seethes. "We'll deal with him later."

The militiamen march Cree out and I fall to my knees to gather Saw into my arms.

"Saw -." I start speaking until I realize that there are no words to say. If I had a sister and someone killed her, I don't know what I would do.

So I let Saw rest his head on my shoulder, hold him close, and don't say anything. We let the silence fill the hall.

"Your Majesty?" The poor forgotten cupbearer squeaks from across the room.

"Yes?" Dendup half-snaps.

The girl swallows as if she thinks he'll take her head. "M-may I go home for the rest of the day?"

Dendup's face softens. Ending shootouts certainly wasn't in this girl's job description.

"Why don't you take tomorrow off too?" he negotiates and helps her to her feet.

After excitement like that, the poor cupbearer probably deserves a raise as well.

We have the identity of the treasure hunter, but fear not! There are still some threads that we need to tie before story's end.

Thank you to Starwarshobbitfics, TessaFred, and RoseRavenclaw for your review. And speaking of which, please review.

Until next time,

LS