He noted that around him, students walked in groups or pairs. This boy walked alone.
"That was pretty wizard," Anakin said, falling into step beside the boy.
"What?" The boy shot him a surprised look from intelligent gray eyes.
"The hologram. You did it." Anakin waved a hand. "Don't worry, I won't tell. I'm impressed." He gave the boy a friendly grin. "Anakin Skywalker."
The boy hesitated. "Reymet Autem."
"So how did you do it?" Anakin asked.
"It's all in the wrist." Reymet mimicked entering items in a datapad and grinned. His gray eyes glinted. "Easy for a boy genius, my friend."
They headed down the hallway together. Anakin felt rather than saw Ferus fall in behind them.
Reymet waved a hand around him. "Welcome to the comfiest jail in the galaxy. It's not much, but we call it home."
"So how do you have fun around here?" Anakin asked.
Reymet shrugged. "I make my own fun."
The noise of the students anxiously hurrying toward lunch covered their words. "Must be hard, with all the security around here," Anakin remarked. He was pushing gently, trying to get Reymet to open up.
Reymet snorted. "Security isn't as secure as the experts say it is.
There are ways to get around any system."
"It seems pretty tight to me," Anakin remarked casually.
Several students glanced at Anakin curiously as they passed by. Reymet shoved his datapad into his pocket with a rough gesture. "You'd better not be seen talking to me. Nobody talks to me."
"What about your friends?" Anakin asked.
Reymet scowled. "I don't have friends." He quickened his pace and disappeared into the crowd. Ferus appeared next to Anakin. "Interesting."
"You heard?"
"Every word. I pick up something from him…" "Me too. Not a darkness.
Maybe just… confusion."
"He has something to hide," Ferus declared. "It could be anything, though. It isn't much of a clue." "It's a place to start," Anakin said.
Chapter Four
The dining hall was a paneled room with soft, recessed lighting and thick red veda cloth hangings at the windows that muffled sound and cast a rosy glow on the diners. It was just like the exclusive restaurants Anakin had glimpsed on Coruscant — just like the spots the students were used to eating in, he was sure. And, like an exclusive restaurant, seating in the dining hall was subject to an unspoken code.
It hadn't taken Anakin long to realize that the best tables were by the windows and he was not welcome there. He didn't know why he felt a coolness from most of the students, but he definitely felt it. When he was looking for a seat at a table, an empty chair would be pushed aside to another table, or a datapad or a pile of durasheet notes would be quickly placed on the seat. It was clear that no one wanted to sit with him. There was a power elite in the school, and everyone else fell in around it.
Yet Ferus had been accepted almost immediately, and had his pick of places to sit. Was it because word had gotten out that he belonged to a powerful family on his homeworld?
You can travel to the ends of the galaxy and it will be the same — those with power do not like to share.
His Master had told him that once, in a voice of weary resignation.
But sometimes Obi-Wan seemed to forget that Anakin had been a slave. If anyone knew about power, it was a slave. He knew about the hunger for it, and he knew about the humiliation of getting your nose rubbed in the fact that you didn't have it.
He took his bowl of aromatic stew to an empty table and sat. It wasn't that he needed company. Jedi were comfortable being alone. But inside, something burned, something deep and hot that he had hoped had been long forgotten. He took a bite of stew and tasted shame and anger. It was hard to swallow, like a mouthful of sand.
He reached inside the pocket of his tunic and withdrew a small, smooth stone. It was a river rock, a present from Obi-Wan. It had belonged to Qui- Gon.
The rock was Force-sensitive, but that was not why Anakin reached for it during times of stress. When he rubbed his fingers along the smooth surface, it was as though he was able to draw on Qui-Gon's core of serenity. He thought of cool river water falling over his body, of turning his body like a fish and gliding in the deep green river, and his mind would go still. He and Ferus had to hide their lightsabers in their rooms, and the rock was the only physical connection to his real life.
A plate suddenly plunked down next to him. The same girl who had smiled at him in the General Information Contest pulled a stray chair over with her foot with the ease of an athlete. She sat down and sniffed appreciatively at her stew, then picked up her spoon. Anakin quickly slid the stone underneath the lip of his bowl, where it could not be seen.
"So, is this the enriching experience they promised you in the brochure?" the girl asked. "Students who are completely spooked snub you?"
Her brown eyes twinkled at him. They were deep and warm and reminded him of another girl, more beautiful than this one — a queen, in fact. He saw the same intelligence, the same confidence. That memory more than the girl's friendliness, more than the river stone, dissolved the knot of anger in his belly.
The girl dug into her food with her spoon and swallowed an enormous bite. "Don't worry. It gets better."
"It does?"
She grinned. "You graduate." She stuck out her hand. "Merit Dice."
He shook it. "Anakin Skywalker."
"You're in my Political Philosophies class. You don't say much."
"You do."
She took another bite. "I have opinions," she said, shrugging. "The teachers think I'm too smart for my own good. Which doesn't matter much, because they don't matter. They won't give any scholarship student a good reference, anyway."
"Why not?" Anakin asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reymet leaning against a wall. Anakin noticed that Reymet was watching as Professor Aeradin forked up a large bite of lunch. Aeradin was supposed to be patrolling the dining hall, but he had filled up his plate from the buffet. Anakin had noticed that most teachers did this. He guessed that the students' food was much better than what was given to the teachers.
"Because they only give good references to the elite students," Marit said. She tore off a chunk of bread and dipped it in her bowl, then took a bite. "You should see what happens before graduation. The fathers and mothers and benefactors come, and they give the teachers presents. I mean, real presents. Like a landspeeder. Or tickets on a resort starship. Things like that. And suddenly their little darling winds up as a Senatorial aide.
" She waved the bread in the air.
Reymet suddenly reached for a custard tart and darted out of the room.
Ferus signaled Anakin, then slipped out after Reymet.
Anakin would have liked to keep talking to this interesting girl, but he and Ferus had agreed to keep Reymet under surveillance. "That's too bad, " Anakin said. "I think I need more tea. Will you excuse me for a minute?"