“I knew you would come, Magister,” Palpatine said when Plagueis and 11-4D turned up at one of the game reserve’s viewing blinds.
“How did you know?”
“I knew, that’s all.”
“And just how often are your premonitions correct?”
“Almost always.”
“Curious,” 11-4D remarked while Palpatine was hurrying away to excuse himself from the company of two friends.
Plagueis recognized the older male as Palpatine’s mentor in the youth program, Vidar Kim, and sensed that the comely black-haired female was Kim’s paramour. At the conclusion of Palpatine’s animated explanation, Kim turned his head to show Plagueis a look of disapproval before moving off with his companion.
“Your mentor doesn’t care much for me,” he said when Palpatine returned.
Palpatine dismissed it. “He doesn’t know you.”
Standard weeks had passed without any communication between the two of them. Judging by Palpatine’s mood, he knew nothing about the forced meeting in the Lake Country, and yet he was agitated just the same, possibly in reaction to something Cosinga had done to monitor or foil his son’s offworld holotransmissions. With Damask Holdings’ secret agent silenced, the royals had gained ground. Despite Tapalo’s denials that the deal with the Banking Clan had dissolved, the travel ban imposed on the Muuns had planted seeds of doubt among the electors, and the contest for the throne was becoming more heated with each passing day. Worse, the Banking Clan’s interest in Naboo was beginning to wane.
“We’ll have to keep this meeting brief,” Plagueis told Palpatine while they were following an elevated pathway that connected the viewing blind to one of the park’s rustic lodges. “Your father may have dispatched surveillance personnel.”
Palpatine ridiculed the idea. “He is monitoring my offworld communiqués — that’s why you haven’t heard from me — but even he knows better than to have me watched.”
“You underestimate him, Palpatine,” Plagueis said, stopping in the middle of the pathway. “I spoke with him at Convergence.”
Palpatine’s mouth fell open. “The lake house? When? How—”
Plagueis made a soothing gesture and explained in great detail what had taken place. Concluding, he said, “He threatened, too, to place you out of reach.”
All the while Plagueis spoke, Palpatine was storming through circles on the narrow path, shaking his head in anger and balling his fists. “He can’t do this!” he snarled. “He hasn’t the right! I won’t allow it!”
Palpatine’s fury buffeted Plagueis. Blossoms growing along the sides of the pathway folded in on themselves, and their pollinators began to buzz in agitation. FourDee reacted, as well, wobbling on its feet, as if in the grip of a powerful electromagnet. Had this human truly been born of flesh-and-blood parents? Plagueis asked himself. When, in fact, he seemed sprung from nature itself. Was the Force so strong in him that it had concealed itself?
Palpatine came to a sudden halt and whirled on Plagueis. “You have to help me!”
“How can I help you?” Plagueis asked. “He’s your father.”
“Tell me what to do! Tell me what you would do!”
Plagueis placed a hand on Palpatine’s shoulder and began to walk slowly. “You could use this incident as a means of emancipating yourself.”
Palpatine frowned. “Naboo doesn’t honor that practice. I’m in his sway until I’m twenty-one years old.”
“The legalities of emancipation don’t interest me, and they shouldn’t interest you. I speak of freeing yourself — of completing the act of recreation you began when you rejected your given name.”
“You mean disobey him?”
“If that’s as far as you’re willing to go. And without thought to consequences.”
“I’ve wanted to …”
“Uncertainty is the first step toward self-determination,” Plagueis said. “Courage comes next.”
Palpatine shook his head, as if to clear it. “What would I do?”
“What do you want to do, Palpatine? If the choice was yours and yours alone.”
The youth hesitated. “I don’t want to live as ordinary beings live.”
Plagueis regarded him. “Do you fancy yourself extraordinary?”
Palpatine seemed embarrassed by the question. “I only meant that I want to live an extraordinary life.”
“Make no apologies for your desires. Extraordinary in what way?”
Palpatine averted his eyes.
“Why are you holding back? If you’re going to dream, then dream large.” Plagueis paused, then added, “You hinted that you had no interest in politics. Is that true?”
Palpatine firmed his lips. “Not entirely.”
Plagueis came to a stop in the middle of the walkway. “How deep does your interest go? To what position do you aspire? Republic Senator? Monarch of Naboo? Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?”
Palpatine glanced at him. “You’ll think less of me if I tell you.”
“Now you underestimate me, as you do your father.”
Palpatine took a breath and continued. “I want to be a force for change.” His look hardened. “I want to rule.”
There! Plagueis thought. He admits it! And who better than a human to wear the mask of power while an immortal Sith Lord rules in secret!
“If that can’t happen, if you can’t rule, then what?”
Palpatine ground his teeth. “If not power, then nothing.”
Plagueis smiled. “Suppose I said that I would be willing to be your ally in the quest.”
At a sudden loss for words, Palpatine stared at him; then he managed to say, “What would you expect of me in return?”
“Nothing more than that you commit to your intent to free yourself. That you grant yourself the license to do whatever is necessary to realize your ambitions, at whatever risk to your alleged well-being and in full expectation of the solitude that will ensue.”
They had not yet reached the lodge when Plagueis steered them into a gazebo that occupied the center of a luxuriant garden.
“I want to tell you something about my past,” he began. “I was born and raised not on Muunilinst but on a world called Mygeeto, and not to my father’s primary wife but to a second wife — what Muuns call a codicil partner. So I was a young adult before my father was finally returned to Muunilinst and I had my first taste of the planet that gave rise to my species. Owing to Muunilinst’s regulations governing population growth, no Muun of less influence than my father would have been allowed to import a nonindigenous offspring, let alone a half-clan. And yet the members of my father’s family regarded me as a trespasser, lacking proper legality and the social aplomb that comes to those born and raised on Muunilinst. For if there is anything the Muun detest more than wasteful spending it is nonconformity, and I had it in abundance.
“They were model citizens, my fair brothers and sisters: insular, self-important, identical in their thinking, thrifty to a fault, given to gossip, and it angered me deeply to have been accepted by the galaxy’s downtrodden only to be rejected by this hive of self-serving parochial beings. Much to their further displeasure, they were forced to accept that I was a fully bonded clan member, entitled to the same share of my father’s vast wealth as the rest of them. But as is the case with all members of the elite clans, I had to prove myself worthy of the status by preparing successful financial forecasts and allowing myself to be judged by the ruling elect.