They stopped at Sereine's offices after dinner; her staff, working late, wanted to show her an ad they had just finished for the campaign tour she'd be leaving to start in the next two weeks. If she approved it tonight, it could go to Senator Via's staff on time, and if she didn't, it would be delivered late.
It would only take a few minutes to watch a campaign ad a couple of times through, and it would permit her most important client—as Sith, Palpatine outranked Valorum, though Sereine could hardly be expected to know that—to wander through her private office for a bit. Something he never had the opportunity for, and something that would be prudent to do now and then. Pestage's office with all its nooks and crannies had never escaped his inspection for long.
The new offices of Lumisol and Associates made a sort of ring arranged around a bullpen, with the door to her new holofilm studio opening to the far left. Palpatine had seen that before, while she was working on the Emancipation Act film. Apparently each associate had their own private office on the periphery, with a wide door opening onto the bullpen, where all could congregate to work. What he didn't see was any sort of formal conference room for meeting clients; unusual since she repped many well-known names in the Senate. Sereine usually came to him; but did she really present campaign strategy to Bel Iblis and Organa in the middle of this bullpen?
Garish colors emblazoned the walls, repellent to the eyes, along with apparent test posters for the Via campaign; overstuffed, comfortable couches and chairs abounded among the myriad viewing screens and computer desks, and … small dishes and boxes of sand on the floor? Did she allow pets in here?
Sure enough, a ground weevil eased itself from under a plush, neon green couch, stretched, and wandered over to the group, now including Sereine, who clustered around the viewing screen closest to the studio. With a last glance about the walls at artwork, obviously done by staff, bad enough to make his eyes bleed, Sheev wandered from cubicle to cubicle, peering through windows, trying to decide which was Sereine's.
He stopped at one whose walls sported large paintings and holos of Theed, and … he blinked. He had made a trip to Convergence and taken her with him. Some of those holos were scenes of the river, of his lake shoreline and grounds.
She had no holos of her famous and royal clients, but she did have these. He touched her doorplate and slipped in. More comfortable and colorful couches and chairs met his eyes, and a messy desk with her computer terminal and plastic flimsies everywhere. She had a low table full of more flimsies and several datapads.
He walked behind her desk. Her computer terminal was shut down and did not respond to his touch, but—he noticed a tiny hologenerator just beside it. He tapped it, and there he was, standing on his patio overlooking the lake at Convergence, a relaxed smile on his face. He remembered the day clearly—that many orgasms, one didn't forget—yet he'd had no idea she had shot a holo that brief hour they'd dressed and walked outside.
He frowned, wondering what other holos from that trip she may have made.
Something on the wall caught his eye. Behind her desk, she had posted long clear strips of plastic flimsy that extended halfway across the wall, at her eye level when she sat in her chair. Four of them. He bent down and saw his name, Valrorum's, Mothma's, and Bail Organa's. Year markings, from this year up until seven years from now … when Valorum would be expected to step down.
The Emancipation Act was clearly depicted in the segments for this year; of course, all four of them had worked on it. She had stenciled in Tonight Show in several locations for the remainder of this year. Election years and midterms she had clearly marked out, along with a number of symbols—circles, triangles, question marks—that clearly meant something to her, but didn't to him. Carcahre—the Naboo word for declare—appeared on Valorum's strip in the past month, and on his six months ago … when he had let her in on the fact that he intended to claim the Chancellor's podium for himself in eight years.
Farther down the other two strips, the word appeared again, several months prior to Chancellery primaries, which she had clearly marked in red … with question marks. Above the strips: holos of likely competitors. Teem was up there. Bel Iblis: Odd, because he was also a client of hers. Antillies, and a few other faces Sheev would not have guessed were thinking of a run for the Chancellor's box. But obviously, Sereine knew.
She wasn't prepping to run him in a Chancellor's primary, but any of them. Two years from now, and four years from now.
Fury clenched his fists and burned in his breast. Only one thing had earned her of all women an ongoing place in his bed: her loyalty. He had not imagined himself as interchangeable to her.
She had earned herself a grave in the lower levels, rotting in some foul corner.
Her door slid open and she was there, folding her arms and giving him a tilt of her head.
"I see you found my thought wall."
"I see you're thinking of running Bail Organa! Mon Mothma? After all your lip service, I hadn't imagined you would run any other candidate for the Box besides me. What is this, 'Reine?" His tongue practically tripped over the words. She glanced at his fists, and he realized belatedly that his hands shook. He briefly pictured them wrapped around her throat.
No one played Lord Sidious for a fool.
She unfolded her arms and stepped a little closer. "You want the Box, but right now I have it—" He spluttered, and she cut him off. "Yes, through Finis Valorum, my client, the first Supreme Chancellor in some two hundred years that hasn't been repped by Tappan or KWE. In terms of Coruscant campaign and political consultants, right now the Box is mine and I intend to keep it, whether you actually end up running or not."
He spat the words at her. "You're expecting I might get hit by a speeder, perhaps?"
She put one hand on her hip. "Well, I don't know. But if you didn't run for some reason, I have several other clients in my stable who are in a good position to do well in a Chancellor's primary. The difference is as far as I know, they don't want it and you do, but that could change. In my opinion each of you would make an excellent Chancellor, when you're ready."
"Hah!" Palpatine shouted, loud enough that the staffers crowded around the holodisplay in the bullpen probably heard him. "You don't think I'm ready!"
She picked up a remote and closed the blinds inside her large, double-paned office window, then turned again to face him. "I think you can do the job," she countered. "I don't think you can win. I don't think any of you can win in two years, which is why I'm going to discourage all of you from running then even if somebody gets a wild hair over it." She folded her arms again and gave him a pointed look.
"If I decided to run against Valorum in two years, whose campaign bid would you accept?" he demanded.
"His," she snapped. "You've got good name recognition right now, but if you run now, you'll be perceived as a young hotheaded upstart, trying to beat the Valorum name with barely one full term under your belt and a bunch of fluffy publicity. If you do it, you'll lose, and it would be against my strongest objection."
Sheev glared at her, breathing hard.
"You do not want to battle the curse of a losing run at the Box, Sheev. Nobody's overcome that one in two hundred and thirty years." She stopped and swallowed. "Two hundred and thirty-four, to be exact."
He swallowed.
"That's why I have eight years taped up here." Her voice grew silky and conspiratorial. "Of course, if one of them decides to try it, then let them." She gave her head a dismissive toss. "Then they're out of our way."
Sheev eyed her and threw her a test line. "You wouldn't be trying to bait one of them to get them out of our way, would you?"
"Garm might fall for it, but not Bail or Mon Ane. They're too green right now and they know it. It's you I'm worried about, Sheev. Don't do it. Not this election cycle. Let me run Finis again and let him serve his time out. I need the practice, and then I'll have two Chancellery campaigns under my belt. Then, we play our cards well, and it's your turn."
Consternation clouded his brain. His eyes shifted to the wall on their own accord. She had brought up running in two years, not him. Although, it was tempting, and she knew he wanted it.
Still, other elements needed to be brought into place, things Sereine Lumisol, with her many holos of home on her walls, was better off not knowing.
She lowered her head and stepped closer. "If somehow you weren't on the ballot in six years and one of them is, what good does it do me or them not to mentor them, too?" Almost exactly his height, she came within three meters and stared directly into his eyes. "I have to come to school prepared, Sheev. You know that."
Then she smiled. "And, of course, we have to watch the competition, don't we?" A sweet look crept into her eyes, and she closed the distance between them, put her hand out, and stroked his cheek.
He had felt certain for some time that Sereine believed she loved him. He of course knew it was nonsense; the Sith alone knew that love did not exist. He had laid his fingers over her lips and barred her from ever speaking the word again the night he first heard it from her. Yet, a healthy aversion to being had sent fingers of doubt into his soul.
The Force was no help to him here; Sereine was as Force-blind as a Toydarian.
"If you thought I could win in two years," he said, "who would you run?"
She glanced behind her at the closed blinds. Walked up toe-to-toe with him in her natty shaak boots and laid her palms on his chest.
She gazed into his eyes and a warm, proud, fond smile came over her face, the one he was used to seeing just before they undressed for the night. Her voice dropped to a coy whisper, and she raised her russet brows in a tease. "I can't talk about that, because you won't let me. You don't like that word."
She slid her arms around his neck and pressed her slender body to his. Lord Sidious allowed her to kiss him. Her fingers ruffled the curls at the back of his neck.
"All this time, all we've been through, and you still don't trust me, Zora Sheev."
His hands settled at the curves of her hips, all of their own accord. "Occupational hazard." She would never know the truth of that statement. "One thing I do see, here; you know your business at least as well as I know all of mine." And she would never know all the truth that contained, either.
"Sheev, enSheev," she whispered, smoothing his hair back with one hand, soft eyes searching his. "You're not alone, Eder. I'm with you. Don't you know yet, that I'm all yours?"
"Hmm. How many hapless humanoid males have fallen for that line?" he murmured.
Yet, he lowered his lips to hers anyway.
Their datapads beeped at the same time. He broke the kiss, and they dove into their pockets.
"Interesting," he said. "Bail Organa is inviting me to Alderaan next week to discuss—"
She looked up at him from her pad and cut him off. "Iridium mining?"
He took her pad and read. "It appears we've received the same invitation."