Heads all around the table shook and I felt cold dread begin to congeal in my stomach. If Exar Kun could mask the attack on me in such a way that Luke could not feel it barely fifteen meters away, then he could have slain Gantoris and could still wreak more havoc here with impunity. We were up against something more powerful than I'd ever cared to imagine ex-isting.

I stood. "Master Skywalker, I would have a word with you, alone."

The other apprentices started to get up, but Luke waved them back down into their seats. "We will be but a moment. The kitchen?"

I nodded and followed him. Once alone in the kitchen, Luke turned on me.

"You should not have attempted to interfere with Kyp."

I blinked with surprise. "I wasn't trying to interfere. He was upset. I just asked what was happening."

"But you did something to provoke an attack, didn't you?" I rubbed a hand along my jaw and leaned back against the conservator. "It's an old interrogation technique. I drew a conclusion from what I saw earlier this evening and tried it out. I told him Exar Kun had gotten his b.u.t.t kicked by the Jedi, and that Kun was wrong. I got a reaction, a very strong one."

"Kyp is strong in the Force." Luke folded his arms over his chest. "He has a certain sympathy for Exar Kun. The reaction was not to be unexpected."

"I could buy into that, but I felt another presence. Not strongly, but it was there and it helped Kyp's next attack pack a wallop."

"And you think that was Exar Kun?"

I thought for a moment before answering. "Either it is Exar Kun or someone calling himself Exar Kun because Kyp reacted to that name. Could be it's someone just trying to wrap himself up in Kun's legend, just the way he presented himself to you as your father. Regardless, he's powerful. Kind of what I would expect from a Dark Lord of the Sith."

Luke shook his head. "You're making a mistake jumping to the conclusion that we're dealing with Exar Kun. We don't know what happened to him in the end."

'Look, I've been with Tionne as she's pulled as much information as we can from the Holocron about Kun. He was run-ning the culture here and a ma.s.sive Jedi strike wiped it out. Certain conclusions seem logical from there." I shrugged. "I think planning for the worst case scenario can't hurt."

"There might be gatekeepers in the Holocron that have data about Exar Kun that neither you nor Tionne can access. I will have to conduct my own investigation in that area."

I caught a note of hesitancy in his voice. "You're not thinking that just because you were able to redeem the last Dark Lord of the Sith that Exar Kun might have had a change of heart, are you?"

Luke's face became impa.s.sive. "That can't be ruled out."

"Wait a minute, you can't be serious." I watched him carefully. "Look, if Exar Kun was never redeemed, if no other Dark Lord of the Sith ever saw the error of his ways and came back to the light side, that means nothing concerning your father. You're letting yourself think that if you'd been good enough, if you'd done everything right, your father could have, would have survived. You're thinking that you didn't work hard enough to redeem him because, if you had, he'd still be here. And you're thinking that if another Dark Lord had been redeemed, then you could compare what you did to what happened to him and learn if you really did do all you could do."

"No, no way." Luke shook his head adamantly. "You have it all wrong."

"Could be, Master Skywalker, but . . ." I swallowed hard. "Look, I know exactly how this game is played because I did the same thing when my father died. Neither one of us can be certain that we did all we could to save them, but all the second guessing in the galaxy won't give us a second chance at saving them. The only thing we can do is accept responsibility and live with the consequences."

Luke's expression remained impa.s.sive, but even that told a story. Just for a moment I got to see him as the human being he was. Raised by relatives on Tatooine, always wondering about his parents, never learning how to properly deal with a mother or father. He had to constantly wonder why his life wasn't "normal," not realizing that everyone asks themselves that question. And then, when he discovered who his father was, it turned out that his father was the trusted henchman of the galaxy's most hated individual. His father had not only killed people, but he had been the betrayer of the most n.o.ble tradition in the galaxy. He determined he would save his father and did, just in time to lose him forever.

I walked over and rested my hands on his shoulders. "You did all you could do. You know that. Here, with this academy, you are helping erase the legacy your father left behind. What you are doing is good and vital, but you can't let your need for rea.s.surance blind you to what's going on here, right now. Kyp is out of control and under the influence of someone that is steeped in the dark side. You have to talk to him and straighten him out."

I felt a wave of peace flow down over Luke. "You've now reasoned your way to a conclusion I made before your confrontation with him. Kyp is still in a state of turmoil. I think he would see intervention right now as a confrontation, don't you?"

I nodded.

"Let him sort his head out himself? He's a smart kid, it could definitely work. If I can be of any help . . ."

"Just don't provoke him."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry for interfering, Master Skywalker. I'll gladly leave him alone. With his ally he's out of my weight cla.s.s anyway." I smiled carefully. "I don't pick fights where I know I'll get pounded."

Luke returned my smile. "Unless there is a good reason."

"Right, and I can't think of one that will be good enough to deal with Kyp any time soon."

In retrospect, there were billions of reasons to confront Kyp and risk getting my head handed to me. Luke was the Jedi Master and he asked me to step away, so I did because I agreed with his plans. Even now I wish I'd tried to do something, but all the scenarios I worked out in my head turned out just as b.l.o.o.d.y as the real thing did.

Short of murdering Kyp, I could have changed nothing.

And by murdering him, I would have irrevocably changed myself for the worst.

I returned to a meal that we completed in relative silence. What comments were offered were light, often of pleasant remembrances of childhood days. I noticed that Master Skywalker and Mara Jade remained quiet during those exchanges, as did Brakiss and I. The food itself was actually pretty good. though no one seemed to notice. And no matter how small the portions, no one seemed to finish what they had taken.

After cleaning up I retreated to my room, and heard Mara eventually go to hers. I was having trouble getting to sleep and ahnost strolled over to talk with her, but the way she'd politely shut me out earlier gave me a clue that I would just be courting rejection. I clearly didn't need that, so I remained in my room, mentally reviewing and rehearsing the various moves I'd learned in using the lightsaber.

At some point the shrill bleating of an R2 unit penetrated my meditations. It took me a second to realize it wasn't Whistler. I grabbed my lightsaber and went running out of the Great Temple. trailing two silhouettes that had to be Master Skywalker and Mara Jade. As I came out into the cool night air, I saw Mara Jade's Z-95 Headhunter streaking away into the starry sky.

"He stole my ship!" Anger poured off Mara Jade in waves.

"We've got to go after him."

Luke shook his head. "We cannot."

"What do you mean?"

I cleared my voice. "We don't have any ships here."

Mara's jaw dropped. "No ships. No X-wings? You two without X- wings?"

"This is a school for Jedi, not pilots." Luke's face closed up as the other apprentices began to filter out of the Great Tem-ple. "Kyp is gone.

I don't know if he will be back or not. I hope so."

"Me, too." Mara slowly ground a fist in the palm of her opposite hand.

"Steal my ship, will he?"

Luke fixed her with a hard stare. "Mara, please, calm yourself. You're not helping the situation. I've got to deal with my apprentices and explain this to them. After I see to them . . ."

The anger pulsating out from Mara lessened, but I had the feeling she'd just shielded its output. "Go, Luke. I understand."

Master Skywalker walked back toward the Great Temple and never gave me a glance. I watched him go, but felt no inclination to follow. I didn't know what he was going to tell everyone else, but I was fairly certain I already knew more than he would share with them. Being there and questioning his motives and thinking would have been as disruptive as Mara's anger, so I remained behind.

She glared at me. "You can go, too."

I shook my head. "Kind of a chilly night. Basking in the heat of your anger seems like a good choice."

"And if I don't want you here?"

"Easy now, Mara. Your ship was stolen, that's all." I kept a light tone in my voice. "It's not like the sun went supernova."

"It might as well have."

I frowned. "Am I missing something? That was just a Z-95 Headhunter, right?"

"Right. It was nothing." She scowled and then let it melt with a sigh.

"It was everything."

"I'm not tracking."

"Of course not, you've never had to track." Mara graced me with a disgusted look. "You were incredibly lucky, you know that? Your family was part of CorSec so your life was all mapped out for you. You went as far as you could there, then joined Rogue Squadron and strung victories together there. And then you find out that you're really from a Jedi family and you end up here training to be what you've been destined to be since birth. It must've all just come very easy to you."

"It wasn't very easy at all."

"But at least you had a course plotted out for you. You had family supporting you in your decisions." She shook her head. "In a galaxy coming apart at the fusion joints, you were able to cruise along smoothly. You're even here, studying to become a Jedi while your wife has been taken away from you. You're so sure that what you're doing is right that you can set aside the anxiety and concentrate here, and you can do that because this is just one more trial in the life of a hero."

I started to protest what she was saying, but faint echoes of it rang true. They meant little to me, however, because of the chill cutting at my spine as I reversed her words and applied them to what little I knew about her. "You thought you were on the same sort of hero path, doing what you had to do to make a difference in the Empire. Then, bang, it's all gone. Everything you worked for and with vanishes, cutting you off, leaving you adrift."

"You've made your point."

"Sorry." I glanced away from her and off toward the jungle. "You're smart enough and skilled enough to take care of yourself, but you've no longer got the benchmarks you used to use to measure your performance."

"Right, and everything has been swapped black for white in the galaxy."

She turned to look off in the same direction as me, but jerked a thumb back toward the Great Temple. "I came here for instruction and to learn where I fit into the new order of things .... "

"And the ship was your escape valve. If you didn't like things, you could take off."

I felt a hint of resentment from her. "I'm not one to quit a project I start."

"Didn't say you were. It's just you might find that what you get here isn't actually what you want or need." I turned to face her. "You're not wholly wrong about my life, but you're not right about it, either. When my parents died, I was left without knowing how to calibrate my moral compa.s.s. I found others who stepped in and helped me, but the search for that sort of support is one that goes on forever. You'll continue to do it. I'll continue to do it. Even Master Skywalker will do it."

"Is that so?"

"It is." I found my hands had knotted into fists so I willfully opened them. "You and I are lucky in that we've got someone like Master Skywalker around to help us figure out where we are and where we're going."

Her voice hardened. "But you don't think he's handling this Kyp Durron thing correctly."

"He's not doing it the way I would, but that doesn't mean I think Luke's heart isn't in the right place. It is. He knows where he wants to go and where he wants to take the Jedi. I'm just not sure he's navigating as smooth a course as he would like for the journey."

Her head nodded, but she said nothing for a bit. I remained quiet, listening to the hunting cries of stintarils split the night. For all the turmoil of the earlier evening, once Kyp had left, things seemed to settle down. I let the evening's growing peace slowly seep into me.

"I don't like losing my freedom like this."

"I understand, but it really isn't a critical loss. New supply ship is due in a week, and it took Kyp at least that long to get as good as he is." I gave her a quick smile. "Allow yourself the chance to see if what Master Skywalker offers really is what you need."

"It's as good a plan as any."

"Considering there's no alternative."

Mara Jade let a little laugh slip out. "You're destroying this image I had of you as a dumb fighter jock."

"Serves you right. You've been listening to things Booster Terrik has to say about me."

"True enough." She turned and started walking back to the Grand Temple.

"I understand you get up early and run in the morning."

"With the dawn."

"Mind company?"

"You'd go running with me?" I trotted over and fell into step with her.

"I generally take a pretty nasty course."

"You set it, I'll run it."

"Good enough," I smiled. "Welcome to the Jedi academy, Mara Jade. I hope you'll enjoy your stay."

Enjoy her stay she did, at least as measured by the purely pleasurable expressions she wore when showing me up on our runs, or holding off one more remote than I possibly could at lightsaber practice. She might have been little accustomed to smiling, but she had a triumphant smirk down perfectly, and I got to study it enough to be able to etch it into stone from memory.

This fact is made all that more d.a.m.ning because we actually saw very little of each other. In the mornings we would run together, then Luke would concentrate on working with Mara much as he had Kyp. That left Kam instructing the rest of us. After lunch we would listen to more Jedi lore from the Holocron, then Mara and I would practice with the lightsaber.

While I was not her equal with the shimmering blade, we would have been closely enough matched to seriously hurt each other, so Kam just pitted us against remotes.

Kyp's disappearance left the apprentices a bit uneasy. The arrival of a new apprentice, the Mon Calamari Amba.s.sador, Cilghal, both brought relief from the dismal mood that had fallen over the students and linked us back to the rest of the galaxy. She told of Admiral Daala's a.s.sault on Mon Calamari and the loss of one of her Star Destroyers, which was good news.

The fact that pro-Imperial forces still existed out there also reinforced our resolve to become Jedi Knights, since the need for our presence was very clear.

Early one afternoon I sat in the common room, listening to Tionne practice her ballads and Mara Jade interrogating Cilghal for details about the Imperial a.s.sault on Mon Calamari, when Artoo rolled over and tugged on the shoulder of my robe with his pincer. He tootled briefly at me, then spun around and headed back out of the room. I followed him and, not surprisingly, he led me to Luke's chambers.

Inside the door I caught the acrid scent of melted electronics. A blackened puddle of melted plasteel on the room's table was the source of the stink. It still smoked and some of it appeared to still be liquid. I looked over toward where Luke sat on his bunk, his brows knotted with concentration. "What happened?"

Luke glanced at the little droid. "Artoo, close the door." He waited until the droid had complied with his wishes before con-tinuing. "You remember I said I'd check the Holocron for more information on Exar Kun?"

"I do."

"There was. Vodo-Siosk Baas was modeled on the Jedi that trained Exar Kun. I used him as a vector for my inquiries about what happened to Kun."

Luke fell silent for a moment. "Baas went to Coruscant, to speak to his disciple, to get him to return to the way of the Jedi. Kun killed him in the Senate Chamber."

I drew in a deep breath through my nose. "That's not good news."

"No, it isn't. When I asked what happened then , he pointed mutely at the melted device. "In the resulting fire and bright light I thought I saw the shadow of the dark man and heard his laughter."

I stared at the black mess again and felt my mouth go dry.