"You never say that."

"I never thought the drive might land without the rest of the ship before."

Leia watched the console with a slight frown, white and green lights from the instruments reflecting on her face. Han found he was studying her for signs of dismay, as if her confidence alone would make for a safe landing. The Falcon was vibrating noticeably now: nothing spectacular, but a regular, barely perceptible movement like a missing heartbeat every five seconds or so, with a slight murmur of moving parts that a pilot would hear only if he knew the ship as well as he knew his own body. And Han knew the Falcon that well.

So did Leia. She glanced at him and winked. "It'll be fine."

"Dropping to sublight."

"Sublight," said Leia, confirming the helm order.

The Falcon murmured again. Han found his knuckles straining white under the skin of his right hand as he clutched the yoke. The more tightly he held it, the more the vibration felt magnified into something to worry about.

"Engaging maneuvering drive." The drive kicked in with its own distinctive hums and resonance. Come on, baby. Just a regular landing. You've done a million of them. Stay in one piece. "Distance five hundred thousand kilometers."

"Adjusting angle of approach."

"Make twenty-four degrees."

"Correcting to twenty-four."

"Holding steady."

The navigation display showed a neat grid of lines and numbers with the icon that represented the Falcon aligned on the course that represented a safe approach to the Galactic City landing strip. A rhythmic shiver intruded into the familiar layers of sound and vibration that Han knew without even thinking about it as normal.

"Don't say it," Leia said sharply.

"Don't say what?"

"That you've got a bad feeling."

"Never crossed my mind," Han lied.

"Crossed mine." Leia didn't even look up from the control console. "Because I've got one, too."

PLAZA OF THE CORE, CORUSCANT.

Lumiya was coming. She had answered Jacen's summons: she was heading for Coruscant, without argument or fear.

And he could feel her. He found he could track her-and her emotions-almost as if he could see her.

Ben sat beside him, unusually quiet, hands in his lap. He had taken to wearing a very small braid in his red hair, hardly long enough to plait and tied awkwardly with a sc.r.a.p of brown thread, but Jacen could see it. The boy had his shoulders hunched up a little as if he was trying to hide it.

"Bad hair day?" Jacen commented. He found more to like and admire about Ben every day. The boy had growth spurts emotionally as well as physically, and the last few weeks seemed to have literally made a man of him. But Jacen wanted him to keep his sense of humor. He'd need it in the years to come.

"I . . . er . . . thought I ought to grow it." Ben's blush almost matched his hair. "Does it look stupid?"

"Not at all. But you're not technically an apprentice, so you don't have to wear it if you don't want to."

"I want to."

"Fine. Good."

"Who are we waiting for?"

I hate fooling him. But it has to be done. "A woman who's going to do some research for us. Military threat a.n.a.lysis." He took one more risky step-but Lumiya's old name was a common one, unlikely to draw any attention, and it ruled out slips of the tongue. "Her name's Shira. You might see her around from time to time."

"But we could get a.n.a.lysis from the Security and Intelligence Council."

"I like to have an independent view, as well. You can never have too much information."

Jacen gave Ben a playful nudge. It helped him bury the shock that kept resurfacing after seeing his grandfather commit an atrocity. "Talking of which, you haven't given me your threat a.n.a.lysis."

Ben's eyes widened: he wanted to please. "Of what, Jacen?"

"I'm waiting to hear your impressions of the locations you visited."

"I didn't get much from the bomb site-not that the CSF would let me get too close-but the Corellian Sanctuary was . . . well, scary."

"Why?"

"I talked to some Corellians cleaning up the place. They really seem to hate Coruscant. I don't get it."

"Coruscant has had rifts with Corellia before."

"But they hate us and they live here."

"It's a cosmopolitan planet. Lots of worlds we might end up fighting have communities here."

"But Jacen, if they're talking about fighting us here-"

"Are they?"

"Well, a guy a little older than me. Probably just .. . bravado."

Ben's sudden lurch into sober manhood, unsteady as it was, touched Jacen. "It's always interesting to note what sparks wars. It's often something relatively small, but for some reason it just tips the situation into chaos."

"That's the real enemy, isn't it?" said Ben. "Chaos."

Jacen almost shivered. It was another perceptive wise-beyond-age comment of the kind Ben was increasingly p.r.o.ne to. It might also have been the clarity of someone too young to have his thinking muddied and corrupted by convention.

It was also almost a Sith sentiment. Ben would make a good apprentice, and for all the right reasons. His sense of duty was starting to become tangible.

"I reckon so," Jacen said. "The galaxy works best when things are certain."

Jacen kept an eye on the movement of citizens crossing the plaza. He knew Lumiya wouldn't be so cra.s.s as to turn up in her exotic triangular headdress and trailing a light-whip. He could feel her coming, and it was almost a game to spot her by eyesight alone.

He hadn't warned her that he'd have Ben with him. He wanted to see how she reacted to Ben, and also how Ben reacted to her. Ben still couldn't recall what had happened out at Bimmiel, although he'd stopped asking now.

About a hundred meters away, Jacen caught sight of a middle-aged woman in a neat red business suit-plain tunic and pants-that was so dark it verged on black. She had a matching scarf wrapped around her head that covered her entire face; her eyes were obscured by a gauzy inset of some translucent silk. It was a practical fashion common on arid, dusty worlds and it seemed to be catching on in the capital, too. He knew it was Lumiya. He magnified his presence in the Force to get her attention, and she changed direction slightly as if she had spotted him like anyone else might.

The closer she came, the stronger the sense he had of a Sith making a conscious effort to conceal her presence in the Force, and almost succeeding.

"Is that her?" Ben asked.

Lumiya was close enough now for it to be obvious that she had seen Jacen and was walking straight toward him. She must also have seen Ben, but she didn't react at any level. She stopped right in front of Jacen, holding a black folio case in front of her with both hands almost like a shield. She had a soft, shapeless black bag over one shoulder: he suspected he knew what was in it.

"Master Solo," she said.

Nice touch. And even her voice was different. "I'm not a Master, but thank you, Shira." He turned deliberately to Ben. "This is my apprentice, Ben Skywalker. In an unofficial sense, of course."

"I'm sure I've seen you before," said Ben. He sounded genuinely baffled, but there was no hint in his emotions that he recognized her as Brisha, the woman he had taken a dislike to at Bimmiel. "Nice to meet you, ma'am."

"You might have seen me around the university," said Lumiya.

"I'm only thirteen," said Ben.

"Really? Oh, perhaps not, then." She proffered her folio to Jacen, suddenly a very convincing academic. "I've a.s.sessed the current military capacities of Corellia and worlds most likely to support it. Would you like me to go through the reports with you?"

Good actress. Lumiya's skill at creating illusions extended into the physical world, as well.

"I thought we might go to the Jedi Temple," said Jacen. Temptation and threat in one package, for a Sith. "There are quiet areas where we can talk. Ben, do you want to come, too?"

Jacen expected him to insist on coming; he was desperately anxious to learn, even if that meant sitting through meetings that even adults found boring. But Ben dropped his chin slightly as if about to admit something.

"Is it okay if I visit Fleet Ops? Admiral Niathal said I could."

Jacen hadn't expected that. "Of course."

Ben took his leave of them with a grave bow of the head and walked off across the plaza, every centimeter the young man.

"Luke's son is growing up fast," said Lumiya, lifting her veil clear of her eyes.

"Don't worry, he doesn't recognize you."

"Why have you brought me here?"

"I wanted to discuss what we began to explore back in your home."

"You've thought about it a great deal. I felt that."

"Oh, yes, indeed." Jacen got up and beckoned her to follow. He didn't like being a stationary target: there was little-if anything-that could present a serious threat to him now, but old habits died hard. "I've thought of little else."

"Have you decided to let me help you achieve your destiny?"

"Yes."

She searched his face, turning her head a little as she walked. He could only see her eyes-vivid, green, somehow permanently angry-but he felt her try quite deliberately to touch his mind.

"I'm at your disposal," she said quietly.

"You've never been in the Jedi Temple, have you?"

"No. It'll be interesting."

"You can suppress your dark energy, I hope."

"Is that what you're testing, Jacen?"

"I need to know how safe it is to have you near me," he said. "There's no better way to see if you'll be detected than to test if you can pa.s.s through the Jedi Temple unnoticed."

He thought she smiled. There was some movement of the fine, oddly unlined skin around her eyes, and it unsettled him. "I managed to infiltrate the Rebellion ..."

"You weren't Sith then."

"I've hidden for decades." She replaced the veil. "I can hide indefinitely-anywhere."

This was arcane mysticism on a scale that only a handful of people in the galaxy had ever needed to consider. And yet Jacen found himself hailing an air taxi and getting into it with a Sith Master, as mundane and everyday an act as he could imagine. He savored the incongruity of it. They didn't speak at all on the way to the Temple.

For a moment, Jacen almost saw the funny side of it. Taxi pilots being what they were, he could almost imagine this one-a Weequay-telling his other pa.s.sengers, "Yeah, I had one of them Siths in my taxi once."

But the pilot would never know.

What if she's using me? Who'll teach me the Sith way if I have to-Jacen caught himself thinking that he might have to remove her if she proved to be bent on vengeance against the Jedi or one Jedi in particular. He knew exactly what he meant by remove, and he was once again surprised by the ease with which he took one small step further toward doing things he had been raised to regard as evil.

"Set us down here, please, pilot."

Lumiya walked beside him up the promenade leading to the Temple, and it felt as if she had cloaked herself completely. He could sense her unease, but any hint of darkness had been reduced to no more than the simmering pa.s.sions found in any ordinary untrained human being. She pa.s.sed through the huge doors of the imposing entrance and reacted just as any ordinary person with no Force sensitivity would: she stopped in her tracks and stared. If she hadn't been wearing a full veil across her face, Jacen thought she might well have been gaping, too.

"It's quite an exercise in material magnificence, isn't it?" he said.

"A statement of power," Lumiya responded, wonderfully ambiguous.

Let's see how much temptation you can stand.

He led her through the few areas where non-Jedi were permitted, and n.o.body stopped him: he was Jacen Solo, and no one would challenge his right to invite a mundane guest. That much took no Force techniques to achieve, because a confident air of purpose often opened more doors than an ID pa.s.s.

He took her into the Room of a Thousand Fountains. If anything would force her to show her true intentions-even a glimmer of a drive for revenge-it was proximity to a place of meditation, and he would spot it.

There was one more test beyond that, but he had to work toward it a little more carefully.

And that was to put Lumiya within striking distance of Luke Skywalker.

There was nothing like seeing an old love who was also an old enemy to unlock someone's true emotions.

They walked in the vast greenhouse of exotic plants that had been collected from across the galaxy. Lumiya still exuded curiosity and a little surprise. There were only a few Jedi meditating there, but Jacen found a convenient bench between two a.s.sari trees whose branches swayed gently despite the absence of any wind. Water rushed over a huge granite boulder and tumbled into a stream that disappeared under a cover of bhansgrek bushes.

"I'd prefer you to stay on Coruscant," said Jacen.