The day arrived.

Sereine thought of one more way to speak to him: Music. She had stumbled across a song, upbeat and triumphant.

You run, run, run away/It's your heart that you betray/

I am the warrior/Victory is mine

Then, of course, there was this stanza:

Heart to heart you'll win/If you survive

Sereine carried her prep supplies into Palpatine's private office, hoping it wouldn't come to that. She stopped in the doorway and signaled to Palpatine's secretary that speech prep had begun. She had an ironclad rule that the hour or so before an important appearance was for her and Palpatine alone on pain of hellfire, and made sure his staff knew it.

Tomal was already there, steaming out Palpatine's robes and hanging them on a hook she had installed for that purpose. He glanced down into her clear case and grumbled in imitation of Palpatine:

"What is that?"

Sereine laughed. "This is going to be a day," she said.

The office door opened again and the Senator himself appeared, in one of his everyday Naboo frock coats. He spied Sereine's prep case immediately and walked over and peered into it.

"What is that?" he said, and gave them both a peevish look when they each burst out laughing.

"It's …" Sereine began, and sighed. She might as well be truthful. "It's a little bronzer, and a low glimmer for your hair."

"What?" snapped Palpatine. "Absolutely not!"

"Absolutely so," said Sereine. "You're the avenging angel of the Republic in the last third. You're supposed to glow."

"If I look like a clown, I will absolutely wring your neck," said Palpatine, sitting. Frowning.

Sereine walked over to him, took his cleft chin, and raised his face to look into his eyes. "You won't," she soothed. "I tried all this on little Aayla the other night. You don't need much in that low light in there. It's very fine powder, it's just going to shimmer a little in the podlights. I want this blondish hair to sort of glow, like a halo."

Palpatine snapped his eyes to the left and snorted his irritation, but he sat still and allowed her to work. She set the song on her datapad at a very low level and let it play while she sprayed the fine glimmer on her hairbrush. She swept most of it off before she brushed it over his hair, and worked very carefully with her powder brush on his cheeks and the sides of his face. She darkened his eyebrows a bit and gave his forehead and his nose a very light coating of matte. Then she blew away any excess and held his chin and kissed him.

"You want to change now, or later?"

Palpatine stretched. "May as well get it over with."

Sereine hit replay on her datapad and she and Tomal left the office to let him change. Ordinarily there was no reason for her to—she had seen Sheev naked many times over—but she wanted to let him have the few minutes alone, hoping the music would convey to him all she didn't have words for.

The day's Senate session convened.

Sereine and Tomal followed a ghostly, white-garbed Palpatine through the Naboo holding office and to the Naboo pod. She noticed Palpatine's customary aide was missing, but she didn't think anything of it until Palpatine stepped into the pod ahead of her … and then closed the gate between them.

She looked up at him, startled. Palpatine had never closed her out of a speech before.

Sheev shook his head once at her, his hand on the gate. "I must do this myself," he said.

"All right," she said. She lifted her datapad to chest level between them and tapped it. "When you get to the end of this scroll," she said, "I want to hear this Rotunda ring. You got that?"

Palpatine gave her a stony stare.

"Sheev?"

"Save the pedantic pep talk," he spat at her, and turned away.

"Dios," said Tomal, following her back through the holding office again. "What do you think that means?"

"I think he's going to throw it," said Sereine dispiritedly. "I think he's going to change it all to third person and throw it." She came out into the corridor and turned left.

"Where are we going?"

"Alderaan pod. I want to see this the way the rest of the Senate will see it. I'm sure Bail will let us watch it with him."

"Hi, can we come in?" said Sereine at the gate to the Alderaan pod. Bail Organa startled, turned, and got up.

"You're not with him?" he asked, opening the gate to let Sereine and Tomal in. Bail knew well enough, Sereine stuck with her clients during a speech as if she were a watchdog.

Sereine walked in, nodding to Alderaan's senior Senator, Bail Antilles, and receiving a nod in return. "He's been having a hard time with the middle section. He barred me out. Says he wants to do it himself." Tomal crowded in next to her.

Organa raised his eyebrows. "Is that good or bad?"

"I guess we're about to find out," said Sereine.

Antilles cast her a disapproving glare, and Organa echoed it in his own look. He gestured them to the two chairs beside him, and Sereine and Tomal sat. In front of them on the floor lay the viewscreens that were used when Senators needed to present data during the session. Sereine leaned down and picked hers up, and Tomal did the same.

The giant whorl in the floor opened like a great metal flower, and the central podium rose high into the air. The general hubbub quieted as Vice Chair Mas Amedda opened the session. He read out the date and time and welcomed all Senators, guests, and interested parties.

"This session of the Great Congress of the Republic will now come to order."

Chancellor Valorum stood up. Bail Organa was scheduled to give the name of the bill and its number, and to draw the Senate's attention to the film that dramatized what had happened over his home world.

"As our first item on today's agenda," Valorum intoned, "the Chair recognizes the junior Senator from the sovereign system of Alderaaan."

Organa got up, cast a quick and dubious glance at Senator Antilles, and touched the approach button. Sereine felt a sort of drifting jolt as the pod lifted and floated to the central podium.

"Supreme Chancellor, Delegates of the Senate," Bail began. Sereine stopped herself from wincing. His voice simply did not carry the authority Palpatine's did, and she suspected it never would. Not without voice lessons, which she recommended every other month, and Bail always put off.

Now for the touchy part. Senators did not introduce issues with short films. Either this would go well, or … not.

"The Supreme Chancellor and the Delegations of Alderaan, Naboo, Corellia, and Chandrila wish to introduce into the record for consideration by this body the First Republic Emancipation Act, the text of which will be transmitted to your datascreens," said Bail. "Also transmitting to your screens is a short history of the slavery issue in the Republic, together with an explanation of a regrettable incident which took place over the sovereign space of Alderaan several weeks ago," and he named the star date.

The text of the bill downloaded. The short film began.

They had decided in the studio to leave off an opening title for this version. Instead, a haunting, fluid reed note sounded, and everyone's screen faded in slowly to snaps of artwork depicting scenes of slavery in the Republic in centuries past. Garm Bel Iblis's voice came in, supplying a short historical lesson.

Sereine looked around. From the faces around her, her instincts were right; people would much rather be shown a history lesson in pictures than be told it in a dry speech. Then Mothma's voice came in, discussing the state of slavery in the modern era to whatever bootlegged and pilfered footage Arias and Logane had been able to beg, borrow, or steal, cleaned up to as near professional holofilm quality as they could get it.

Then the simulation began of the standoff over Alderaan, and Garm took up the story. Sereine had had to coach him to read the Dooku lines with a bit more expression, but his voice was perfect for that part of the story. Then Mothma finished with the aftermath, forty kidnapped people frozen to death in space. Yet another tragedy of slavery in the Republic. Where were stronger laws against the kidnapping and the sex trafficking? Where was any degree of leadership from the Jedi Order, the Republic's sworn guardians of peace and justice?

And, most importantly, where were the Jedi when a member of their own Order needed them in a life or death matter of slavery and trafficking?

Valorum, who had sat for the duration of the film, stood once more. He let silence reign in the Rotunda for just the right duration, and then he said, "The Chair recognizes the Senator from the sovereign system of Naboo."

Well, now for it. Tomal gripped Sereine's arm and whispered, "Good luck."

Alone in the Naboo pod, Palpatine stood, walked forward, and pressed the approach button. The pod floated to the Box, and Palpatine began.

"Supreme Chancellor, esteemed visitors, Delegates of the Senate," he said. "I encourage each and every one of us to ponder that exact question. Just where were the Jedi in this instance? Where is any degree of leadership from the Jedi Order on the question of slavery in our great Republic? And worst of all, where is our own? For we must not build a great society on the backs of the least of its citizens; we must build it for the least of its citizens."

Palpatine paused; this next sequence was something Sereine had insisted on and rehearsed him with. She watched him on her screen. The holocams caught the silent movement of his lips perfectly preparatory to his next line, as if he had just thought of it and was working it into the speech on the spur of the moment. His tone lowered; his chin lowered. He cast his eyes down. Naturally, not mannered, she had told him at least fifty times. Don't overdo it. If you look rehearsed, I'm going to 'withhold' for an entire month.

Apparently, he had taken her seriously, because the gestures were so natural and unforced she had trouble believing they'd rehearsed them.

"In fact, I believe I have misspoken; in truth, I know I have. For a society built upon the suffering of enslaved beings can never become a great society at all.

"We must ask ourselves to what we aspire in this modern age. Let it be that all of us enjoy freedom; that all of us anticipate opportunity; that all of us may trust that we can live our lives as we will, rather than crushed under the torture of having our very souls conscripted and constrained under the ownership of another being who truly is our equal.

"If we cannot create such a Republic, then the shame of that failure will stain our hearts, and taint our souls forevermore."

Palpatine paused, looked down with gravity, and held up a hand to forestall a smattering of applause that was starting. "In support of so glorious a vision, our Chancellor, my esteemed colleagues from Alderaan, Corellia, and Chandrila, and I present our legislation, written to that effect."

The next section of the speech would be smooth; he was simply explaining the contents of the bill, which Sereine had presented as honestly and succinctly as she could. He had made little alteration to her summary; she had encouraged him to move about the pod a bit, since he was body-miked, and to drop his voice into a softer, lower, rounder, more conversational style. Pretend you're a grandfather explaining it to your grandchildren, she'd said. Senators normally did not move or pace while speaking, so she'd hoped the movement would help hold attention during this most boring section, as well as loosen him for the most difficult part to follow. She watched the holocam coverage; if the cams had trouble following this, they'd have trouble with the last part, too, which would be unfortunate, since it was meant to stir controversy and attention.

But the cams followed Palpatine flawlessly, and the cadence of his voice, low and pleasant, up and down, carried her along simply on his tone quality, his pleasant expressions, and his movements, which she had known would be dignified and graceful when she first suggested it. When the cams pulled back into body shots, she saw that she had chosen well in that white robe and the glimmer in his hair. In the low light of the Rotunda, onscreen, Palpatine seemed to glow.

But this section, too, drew to a close. Tomal gripped her arm again. "Here we go …" he whispered.

Sereine gripped back. "I hope he doesn't wreck the whole speech," she whispered back. "He's done so well."

Palpatine came back to the center podium, gripped its edges, and paused. In a clear, steady vibrato, he began the new paragraph he had written, explaining that the following were personal stories from actual rescued slaves and detailing who they were.

"He was right," said Sereine. "That one paragraph flows so much better than the way I had it."

And then he was there. Nothing else stood between him and the first-person stories that had spooked him and given him so much trouble; the stories he hadn't even been able to speak in any rehearsal. Sereine gripped the edges of her screen so hard her fingers turned white. She closed her eyes and tried to will the words out of him.

Silence. Afraid to look, Sereine opened her eyes and forced herself. Palpatine gripped the podium, his head down, absolutely still. A hush descended, as if the whole Rotunda held its breath.

Palpatine looked up. When he did, his whole face seemed changed. He began the Froz story, about the Quarren who was whipped and salted. The boy had been fifteen; Palpatine's entire face looked younger somehow. His voice slipped up the scale and lost its throaty vibrato. He spoke the lines with a halting sort of slowness and the barest trace of a drawl that suggested poverty and lack of education. He made it all the way to the end, and lowered his head and paused again.

He began the story of the Human slave, Dack, who had been deprived of water and forced to eat salt. Palpatine's voice grew older, his face grew older. The passage obviously bothered him. He flinched visibly at one point, and when he got to the salt he stopped and snapped up his glass of water for a quick sip. But the reading was affecting; she could see the character in Palpatine.

On the other side of Alderaan's pod, Senator Bail Antilles whispered, "He is captivating." Sereine glanced over, and Antilles looked back at her. "Well done."

"I can't take much credit for this," Sereine said. "I've never seen anyone have so much trouble with a speech before in my life. He couldn't get through it at all in rehearsal; he pushed us out of the pod this morning. Tomal and I have been shaking in our shoes this entire time over this. We didn't know what he was going to do."

Bail Organa glanced over at her. "Why?" he said.

Sereine shook her head. "I don't know. I think something very, very bad happened to Palpatine when he was young. I just don't know what."

Palpatine finished the second story, paused, and lowered his head again. His brow shone with sweat despite her careful application of matte. "He is really holding it together here," she said.

"Come on, Senator," Tomal whispered under his breath. "One more. You're almost there."

Then Sereine remembered. The last story was from Cantonica, the prostitute. Oh, no, she thought, trying to envision Palpatine attempting to play a young female Twi'lek. I didn't know he was going to play it this way. Why did I put a girl in here?

Palpatine raised his head, found his place in the speech, and began the story, wisely reading it in his own voice, a tone Sereine called his low round, rather than attempting to sound feminine. Still, the account of solitary confinement clearly bothered him. His voice cracked once, and toward the end of the story, he stopped dead for a few perilous seconds. He lowered his head, squeezed his eyes tight shut for a second, then he continued.

And finished.

Tomal gripped her arm and shook her. "Dios, Sereine," he whispered. "He was fantastic!"

"We're not done yet," said Sereine, aware of Bail Organa looking over at them.

Palpatine stopped again and put his head down once more. The motion of his shoulders caught Sereine's attention on her datascreen; a quick, subtle up and down, as if he were heaving for breath.

She grabbed her datapad and typed him a message and sent it to the Naboo pod:

SHARP TENOR. RING.

Palpatine batted the message away and found his place in the speech. His head came up, his shoulders came up. His posture lifted and broadened beautifully. Sereine saw that angry furrow between his eyes, and he reached for the control that would start the programmed movements of the pod.

The Naboo pod crossed the chamber to the Ord Mantell Delegation, where they had planned to start his rant.

"Here he goes," said Sereine. "Now he's got it."

"Ord Mantell," he said, in his sharpest tenor vibrato that cut across the Rotunda like a knife. "Home to an infamous open-air slave market, and the worst offender on the issue in the entire Republic." He launched into the tirade they had worked on together, listing the system's offenses in detail. By the time he was done, he literally quivered with indignation.

The pod jumped to the Kessel Delegation. "Kessel," Palpatine intoned. "Home to the disgraceful spice mines and a hotbed of danger for those kidnapped to work the mines as slaves."

At the podium, Mas Amedda tapped the Supreme Chancellor's arm and waved at a screen.

"Senator, I must interrupt," said Valorum. "What you are doing is against procedural rules. If you wish to speak, you must come back and address the Chair."

Palpatine glanced over his shoulder as if Valorum were a pesky fly buzzing his ear; then he turned back to the Kessel Delegation and continued.

"Senator, you must desist or risk formal censure," said Valorum.

Palpatine glanced over his shoulder again with an anger and an insolence in his face that was priceless. He continued speaking, and both Bails and the delegates of a few other pods surrounding them rose and applauded.

The Naboo pod moved, this time to the Tattooine Delegation.

"Let the record show that Senator Palpatine has received formal censure for the banned practice of 'flitlining,'" said Finis. Palpatine continued his speech, tearing into Tattooine and the Hutts this time, and didn't even turn around. Another smattering of applause grew loud enough that he had to stop for a few moments.

"Senator, you are risking fines under procedural rules," shouted Valorum.

Palpatine ignored him and continued. After haranguing the Hutts at top volume, the Naboo pod rose and flitted over to its next stop.

"Senator, your fines are rising as you speak," said Mas Amedda. "Three hundred ditaries … six hundred ditaries …"

The end of the speech became a volume contest between Palpatine and Amedda. Quivering with righteous anger, Palpatine kept stopping as applause drowned out both Amedda and himself. Amedda kept announcing the rising amount of his fines, and Palpatine held up a palm for silence as he closed in on his last paragraph.

"Ten thousand ditaries, Senator!" Amedda boomed, and Palpatine flashed him an obscene gesture.

Sereine bent forward over her datascreen, laughing. "We didn't rehearse that!"

Chancellor Valorum could only be but so stern, since it was, in fact, his bill. He sat and let Amedda announce the fines, smiling and shaking his head.

Tomal looked up a news channel on his datascreen, and flashed it at Sereine. It was a picture of Palpatine, flipping his gesture at Amedda, and the caption read, "Shut up," and an expletive. "I'm speaking!" Sereine shook, trying to muffle her laughter.

At last Palpatine returned to the central podium to finish his last few lines. An instanteous holo flashed across Tomal's news channel. The angle made the Box look huge and Palpatine look tiny, facing down Mas Amedda with his two long horns in the foreground.

Both Bails looked over at them, frowning. Bail Organa said, "What is going on?"

Tomal passed him the datascreen, and Organa regarded it with a sort of cross between annoyance and amusement. He passed it to Antilles, who raised his eyebrows at Sereine and Tomal as deafening applause rose around Palpatine's final line.

"It isn't often that new legislation turns into high theater around here," said Antilles.