"No, I meant me learning to use one."

Jax considered the idea, his eyes roving around the studio for some suitable surrogate for a lightsaber. He found a long piece of duraluminum about two and a half centimeters thick and only a bit shorter than a standard blade. Taking a remote, which he'd packed earlier, from his bag, he entered the cage of light, activated the droid, and tossed it into the air where it hung, humming, awaiting his instructions.

"Is that a toy?" Kaj asked.

"Not exactly. It's a practice droid-a remote. It's what every Padawan starts out with. It shoots EM beams at you, and you try to parry them before they hit you." He gestured Kaj to a place along the sidelines. "Watch," he said.

He closed his eyes, took up the duraluminum rod, and faced the bobbing sphere with it. He gave the activation command, and the little ball shot away from him.

He followed it with the Force, circling, moving as the remote moved. He felt it dart in for an attack, felt the tiny neural net about to trigger a sizzling beam of energy. He moved easily to intercept it with the rod and felt an answering fizz of energy run up the ersatz lightsaber to his hands. It tickled, but not unpleasantly; the metal diffused the charge. He continued the exercise, showing Kaj the basic postures and moves of Shii-Cho, not opening his eyes until he had deflected a dozen shots.

Meanwhile, Laranth prowled the perimeter of the light cage, even going up to walk the gallery, scanning for leaks.

"Wow," breathed Kaj when Jax at last deactivated the remote. "That was amazing. You never even looked at it."

Jax stared at the boy in disbelief for a moment, then burst out laughing. "After what I saw you do, you're impressed by my fencing with a remote?"

"When I use the Force in defense it's all instinct and desperation," Kaj said earnestly. "I can't control it like that-I just strike our. Even when I use it to do other things like get food or clothes or find a safe haven, I'm never sure of it. I never know quite what it's going to do."

"I understand. Every Padawan goes through that. Every Padawan has to learn his own technique." Jax held the ersatz lightsaber out to the boy. "Try it."

Kaj looked wistfully at the real lightsaber hanging from Jax's belt. "Couldn't I..."

"Not yet. As you pointed out, you don't really know your own strength."

"Yeah." Kaj took the rod. "Do I need to close my eyes?"

"Try it with them open for a while. Then maybe we'll try a mask."

Obediently, Kaj mimicked Jax's stance and waited for the remote to engage him. He deflected the thing's salvos well enough from the outset, never letting them touch him. But Jax could see what he meant about the desperation. He wasn't antic.i.p.ating the remote's attacks using the Force. Rather, he was using the extraordinarily quick reaction times the Force granted him and moving when the blink of the remote's tiny weapons port gave it away. There was a difference, and it could mean life or death in a battle situation.

Jax halted the practice after several minutes and found a sash in Ves Volette's wardrobe that he used to cover Kaj's eyes. Below the makeshift mask, the boy smiled. Jax could feel his eagerness. He wanted a chance to challenge himself, prove himself.

Not waiting for Jax to start the drill, Kaj spoke the activation command.

The remote bobbed into the air and immediately zapped Kaj with a bolt of energy.

"Ow!" the boy yipped and spun around.

"Stand by," Jax instructed the remote, struggling to keep a straight face. "Think of the s.p.a.ce around you as a field-a fabric woven by and of the Force. That field joins you to everything else in your environment: Me, the rod, the droid. let the Force guide you."

"But the remote is a mechanism-it's not alive. How can the Force read the intentions of a mechanism?"

"It's not a matter of intentions, Kaj. Yours or the remote's. The Force exists everywhere-in the present, and also in the past and the future. And the Force can move you in the right direction."

"But the speed..."

"I've been watching you move, Kaj. With the blindfold off, you were reacting to the sight of the beam port opening, and it didn't hit you once. The Force can affect your reflexes so that you can be even faster. Feel the Force, Kaj. Let it guide you..."

A slow smile spread across Kajin Savaros's face. He slashed the air with his practice lightsaber. "Let me try again, Master."

Jax felt a warm flush of gratification at the words. Maybe he did have something to teach, after all. He stepped outside the wall of light, called the remote back into action, and watched Kaj dance with it.

It zapped the sleeve of the youth's tunic once, and another time caught his vest. But with a growing smile, the boy parried its bolts, at first hesitantly, than with increasing confidence, dancing this way and that within the circle of kinetic light.

Laranth returned silently to Jax's side. "He's getting c.o.c.ky," she murmured.

She was right. Jax could tell by the swagger in Kajin's mostly graceful movements. Probably a good time to end the practice, though it might be beneficial for the kid to get zapped once more.

Even as he had the thought, Kaj made a bad parry. A flourish brought his hand too high, and the little floating sphere stung him on the wrist. He cried out and spun after the thing-it dived and got him again on the neck and a third time on the b.u.t.tocks.

Before Jax could shut the remote down, Kaj roared in incoherent rage and let loose an explosion of Force energy. The hapless remote was blown dear out of the circle of light and the duraluminum rod shot straight at Jax.

If he had not practiced what he'd preached about gauging intention, he would have been skewered. As it was, the rod flew past him, narrowly missing, pa.s.sing through the exact spot where his heart had been an instant before, and buried itself fifteen centimeters deep in the plasticrete wall of the studio. He turned to sec the light bowls supporting Kaj's "safe room" shake violently.

"Kaj!" Jax shouted, reinforcing the verbal command with an application of the Force as he dashed through the veil of light and into the circle. The boy tore the blindfold from his eyes and stood facing Jax, panting and rigid with anger, a hand raised to defend against attack.

Outside the circle, Laranth had her blasters trained on the boy.

"It's just a drill," Jax said. "Just a drill. Calm down." Slowly the red rage melted from the boy's eyes, to be replaced by miserable fear. "I'm-I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I just lost it. I'm so sorry."

"That," said Jax, "is what we have to work on, Kaj. You can't use the Force out of anger or hatred. You draw on the dark side when you do that. Remember: There is no pa.s.sion; there is serenity."

Kaj's shoulders slumped and he nodded. "There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. I need knowledge."

"No kidding," muttered Laranth, holstering her weapons.

Fear flickered again in the boy's eyes. "I don't want to go to the dark side, Jax. I don't want to be like that Inquisitor. I felt him. When he came after me. He was all cold hatred like . . . like a frozen methane lake. He wanted to kill me and he didn't even know me. I don't want to be like that. Teach me not to be like that, please." He looked from one Jedi to the other in naked entreaty.

"We'll try," Jax said, looking to Laranth for accord. If we survive the lessons, her expression said.

"The good news is that nothing leaked out," Jax continued. "I saw what was happening, but I didn't sense it."

"Lucky you," added Laranth drily. "If you'd been blindfolded, you'd be dead now."

And if anyone bad told me two days ago that that would he a comforting thought, Jax thought, I'd've called them crazy.

They moved to more gentle pursuits after that, the two Jedi putting Kaj through a scries of meditative exercises geared to feeling the textures of the world around him, using only the Force. That was far more successful, and Kaj seemed to have left the shadow of his explosive first lightsaber practice behind. They ate and then the boy slept on a couch Jax pulled into the light cage.

"He looks even younger when he's asleep," Jax commented. "Makes me feel ancient."

Laranth said, "You'd never suspect he was capable of blowing this entire building apart, would you?"

Jax chuckled, realizing suddenly how much he'd missed the Gray Paladin. He glanced at her, sprawled with feline grace on a low couch in the upstairs living room, and wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to let her leave. A couple of thoughts collided in his head on their way to his mouth: Ask her to come back to the team and help train the boy. Ask her what she really thinks of Tuden Sal's plot.

He opened his mouth to speak-and at that moment, the door in the foyer chimed, then glided open to admit I-Five, Den, and Dejah.

Laranth came to her feet in one whip-like movement. Gone was the relaxed pose; the atmosphere of warm contentment fled with it.

Confused, Jax rose. Clearly, he couldn't ask her anything now. "How did it go?" he asked I-Five.

"It went well. The female is on her way to Orto, where a highly placed family is waiting to embrace her. I note that the building is still standing, so I a.s.sume things also went well here?"

Jax glanced at Laranth, but she had retreated from them, her facial expression as impenetrable as a duracrete wall.

"Mixed bag," he admitted. "The bad news is that Kaj had another episode. He got frustrated with the practice droid and destroyed it. The good news is the sculptures didn't let any of that out."

Now Laranth met his eyes, silently noting his obvious omission-how close he'd come to dying.

"You modified them, then?" Dejah asked, sorrow etching her voice.

"If we hadn't," Laranth said coolly, "there wouldn't be a chance that Kaj would ever get trained. Oh, and this place would be crawling with Inquisitors right now." She turned to Jax. "I should go. I'll take Thi Xon Yimmon your message."

"Uh, sure," Jax said. "Let me know when I can see him. It needs to be soon. Today, if possible."

She nodded curtly and left.

"You're meeting with Yimmon?" I-Five asked.

"I need to resolve a couple of things with him." He told them about Pol Haus's message, the unsubtle this-is-not-a-threat speech, the hint that he and Laranth both felt pointed to the Whiplash leader. The reactions were varied. Dejah seemed eager to get at the truth. Den looked dyspeptic but said nothing. It was I-Five who made a most disturbing observation.

"Has it occurred to you," he asked, "that perhaps this is Pol Haus's way of gaining access to Thi Xon Yimmon? Access he does not already have?"

Jax went cold to the core. "You think it's a setup? That he's hoping to use us to lead him to Yimmon?"

"I don't think that, necessarily, but it is a point of consideration."

"Then we have to make sure that when I meet with Yimmon. I'm not followed."

"I believe we can manage that," I-Five said. "I also believe we have an important matter to discuss as a team." He turned to Den, who was hunkered in the chair before the upstairs HoloNet terminal. "If you'd be so kind as to contact Rhinann?"

Den jumped, startled. He'd clearly been lost in his own thoughts. He glanced from Jax to I-Five, then turned to establish the connection. In a moment the Elomin appeared in a life-sized hologram above the holoprojector next to the terminal.

"What's happened?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"Plenty," mumbled Den.

"Nothing," said I-Five. "We need to consult. I promised to deliver Tuden Sal an answer to his proposition tonight. While that is still hours away, I don't have a firm answer for him. I'd like to know where everyone stands."

"I choose to sit," said Den. He looked up at the droid. "You know my opinion. I haven't changed my mind. This is too dangerous-to you, to us, to Jax, to the Whiplash and everything it represents. I vote no."

"I could not have put it better myself," Khinann agreed. "I am, for once, in complete agreement with Den. I vote no."

"And I," said Dejah, "vote yes."

Den and Rhinann both reacted to that with stunned disbelief, and Jax had to allow he was equally shocked, though he managed not to show it.

"I realize this is a radical change of mind for me," the Zeltron went on, "but I've thought about this a lot in the last few days and I've come to realize that all we've gone through-the running, the hiding, the concealment of Kaj's talent, now the fear about Pol Haus using us to expose Thi Xon Yimmon and destroy the Whiplash - none of that would have happened if the Emperor was not in power. This Empire is strangling the life out of its people. It must fall, and the sooner, the better."

"Jax?" I-Five was looking at him, expecting an answer.

Jax didn't have one. "That's one of the things I need to talk to Yimmon about, because Dejah s right-what we decide to do will have an impact on the Whiplash and everyone it touches. It will have an impact on everyone we touch. After I meet with Yimmon I'll have an answer, I promise."

"Do you really need to do that, Jax?" Dejah asked earnestly. She rose from her chair and came to take his hands in hers, to look up into his eyes. "Don't you know your own heart? Don't you feel what's right? Can't you see that the Emperor has to die?"

He did see. He saw it very clearly. Felt it viscerally, but he also knew how seductive the idea of revenge could be. How it could insinuate itself into the heart, and look, sound, and feel like logic, or justice, or righteousness.

He heard Den murmur something acerbic under his breath as he pulled his hands from Dejah's grasp. "I need to talk to Yimmon," he repeated.

Dejah turned and left the room, moving out onto the gallery, where she paused to look down at Kaj through the shimmer of his screening light field. Then, with a glance back at Jax, she went into the kitchen.

Jax pulled his eyes away from her with an effort, returning his attention to I-Five. "Can you wait for me?" he asked simply.

The droid inclined his head. "As you wish."

"Well," said Rhinann gustily, "that's a reprieve, I suppose. Before I go, I have a couple of things to report. One is that there have been Inquisitors in the neighborhood again today. Two or three of them-it's hard to tell. I believe we must abandon this location ..."

"Yes," said Jax. "I agree. Do you need help?"

"I think I'm capable of managing on my own, thank you. I know how to cover our tracks."

"And the other item?" I-Five prompted.

"A message for Den from an Eyar Marath. Shall I forward it?"

"Don't," said Jax. "It might be traced. Encrypt it, crystallize it, and bring it with you when you come. If that's all right, Den?"

The Sull.u.s.tan had gone incredibly pale and his dewlaps quivered. He said nothing, merely nodded.

Jax opened his mouth to ask if he was expecting bad news, but before he could say anything, Den slid from his chair and left the room. They heard him take the lift down into the studio.

A moment later. Dejah appeared in the broad entry to the living room. "The kitchen's empty and I feel like cooking something. I'm going down to the marketplace," she announced.

Jax was relieved to see her go, hoping that doing something creative might settle her nerves and make her more kindly disposed toward his decision that was not a decision.

Chapter Sixteen.

Jax met Laranth in a corner of the Grotto Room of Sil's Place. Cut out of the ferrocrete substructure of the commercial block above it and fashioned to look like a natural cave, the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt was the only quiet spot the cantina possessed.

Jax got there first, took a corner booth with a table made to look like a squat, fiat-topped stalagmite, and ordered a daro root beer. Then he huddled over the pale golden beverage watching the fizz die out of it. It was not alcoholic, but looked as if it could be. He sipped it slowly, savoring the creamy flavor and wondering if Laranth would even show.