Lorana felt her throat tighten. “I didn’t want to just run them down.”
“You wouldn’t have,” he countered. “I’d already measured the gap between them. Neither would have needed to move aside for us.”
“Yet they did move,” Lorana pointed out.
“Because they wished to do so, out of respect,” he said.
“Understand this, my young Padawan. Someday you will be a Jedi, with all the power and responsibility that it entails. Never forget that we are the ones who hold this Republic together—not Palpatine, not the Senate, not the bureaucracy. Certainly not the small-minded people who can’t make it through the day without running to Coruscant for help. They must learn to trust us—and before there can be trust, there must be respect. Do you understand?”
“I understand that we want them to respect us,”
Lorana said hesitantly. “But must they fear us as well?”
“Respect and fear are merely two sides of the same coin,” C’baoth said. “Law-obeying citizens hold the coin one way; those who wallow in lawlessness hold it the other.” He lifted a finger. “But with neither group can you appear weak or indecisive. Ever.”
He lowered the raised finger, tapping it against the lightsaber tucked into her belt. “There are times when you’ll wish your identity to remain unknown, and at those times you’ll hideyour lightsaber and all traces of who and what you are. But when you travel openly as a Jedi, you must behave as a Jedi. Always.
Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master C’baoth,” Lorana said, only half truthfully.
Certainly she understood the words, but some of the attitude was still incomprehensible to her.
For a moment C’baoth continued to stare at her, as if sensing her partial duplicity. But to her relief, he turned away without demanding any more. “Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll go to the Temple and speak with the Council. You call the spaceport and arrange transport for us to the Barlok system. Once you’ve done that, go and pack.”
“For how long?”
“For a simple mineral-rights dispute?” C’baoth scoffed.
“Travel time both ways plus three standard days. I’ll have this sorted out in no time.”
“Yes, Master,” Lorana murmured.
“And then,” C’baoth continued, half to himself, “we’ll see to Master Yoda and his shortsighted fears.” Picking up his pace, he strode off down the corridor.
Lorana slowed to a halt, watching as the messengers and bureaucrats walking along on their own business moved hastily out of the way for the tall, white-haired Jedi Master.
C’baoth, for his part, never even slowed, as if he simply expected others to make room for him.
When you travel as a Jedi, you must behave as a Jedi.
She sighed. It didn’t seem right to her, this firm belief in the inherent superiority of Jedi over all others.
Still, C’baoth had studied long and hard through many years, delving deeply into the mysteries and subtleties of the Force as he grew in power. Lorana, in contrast, was a young Padawan learner, barely started on her own path. She was hardly in a position to challenge him on any of these things.
In any event, her Master had given an order, and it was her task to obey him. Stepping to the side of the corridor, out of the way of the bustling pedestrians, she pulled out her comlink.
She was about to key for the Jedi Temple’s transportation service when, across the corridor, an all-too-familiar face caught her attention.
She froze, her breath catching in her throat, her eyes and mind and Jedi senses stretching out through the crowd of people between them. She’d seen this man many times before in the past few years, generally in the public areas of the Senate chamber but occasionally other places as well. He was young, probably a year or two younger than her, of medium height and build with short-cropped dark hair and a strangely bitter set to his mouth. She’d never gotten close enough to see what color his eyes were, but she assumed they were dark as well.
And every time she’d seen him, she’d had the distinct sense that he was watching her.
He was doing so now, studying her out of the corner of his eye as he pretended to work with a wiring panel he’d opened.
She’d often seen him at wiring panels or fiddling with droid modules, but whether he actually knew his way around circuit boxes or whether he just used them as a pretext to hang around, she’d never figured out.
At the beginning, she’d assumed it was all coincidence.
Even now, she had no actual proof it was anything else. All she had was the fact that, as her Jedi skills had grown, she’d been able to stretch out even through crowded corridors like this one to sense his mind.
And as she did so now, she found the same simmering resentment that she’d always felt before. Resentment, and frustration, and anger.
Directed at her.
Someone she’d harmed or slighted in a past so distant she couldn’t even recall the incident? But she’d been in the Jedi Temple since she was an infant. One of the non-Jedi employees at the Temple, then? But surely her instructors would have taken action if they’d sensed any threat from him.
The man looked in her direction. Then, deliberately, he turned his back on her and gave his full attention to his wiring panel. Lorana watched him work, fighting against her own flurry of discomfiting emotions. Should she go over and try to find out what he had against her? Or should she go first to the Senate records and see if she could track down his identity, holding off on any confrontations until she had more information?
Or should she let it go entirely, and assume that the meetings were a coincidence and that his anger was merely directed at Jedi in general?
She was still trying to make a decision when he closed the panel, collected his tool kit, and stalked away. He glanced back once as he reached the corner, then disappeared around it.
There is no emotion; there is peace. Lorana had been taught that dictum from her earliest days in the Temple, and she’d tried her best to incorporate it into her life. But as long as the question of that man remained unresolved, she knew somehow that she could never have complete peace.
She also knew that now was not the time. Taking a deep breath, lifting her comlink again, she keyed for the spaceport.
The door closed behind the two Jedi, and for a moment Kinman Doriana gazed at the spot where they’d exited, a sour taste in his mouth. As a general rule, nearly all Jedi struck him as pompous and arrogant and obscenely sure of themselves.
But even with that head start Jorus C’baoth was in a class by himself.
“You really don’t like him, do you?” Palpatine asked mildly.
Setting his expression carefully back to neutral, Doriana shifted his attention back to the Chancellor. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. And he meant it. Whatever his personal feelings, it was bad policy to let emotions of any sort rise to the surface.
Especially where Jedi were concerned. “I just think that with all the other problems facing the Republic, a massive exploration and colonization project should be relegated to the bottom third of the priority list. And for Master C’baoth to insist that you personally do something about it—”
“Patience, Kinman,” Palpatine interrupted soothingly.
“You must learn to permit people their passions. Outbound Flight is Master C’baoth’s.”
He looked across the office toward the door. “Besides, even if they find nothing of real value out there, it may be that just the news of their expedition will spark the imaginations of people across the Republic.”
“If they ever do actually announce it,” Doriana said.
“The last I heard, the Jedi Council still had the whole project wrapped in secrecy.”
Palpatine shrugged. “I’m sure they have their reasons.”
“Perhaps.” Doriana hesitated. “But I’d like to apologize to you, sir, for speaking out of turn during the meeting.”
“Don’t concern yourself about it,” Palpatine assured him. “Actually, it was an inspired suggestion. Master C’baoth is quite good at the sort of mediation the Barlok situation so sorely needs. I should have thought of it myself.”