So all that had been left for him was to find some way to respectfully extricate himself.

And then go find Obi-Wan.

Because he wasn't about to give up. Not in this millennium.

The Jedi Temple was the greatest nexus of Force energy in the Republic; its ziggurat design focused the Force the way a lightsaber's gemstone focused its energy stream. With the thousands of Jedi and Padawans within it every day contemplating peace, seeking knowledge, and meditating on justice and surrender to the will of the Force, the Temple was a fountain of the light.

Just being on its rooftop landing deck sent a surge of power through Anakin's whole body; if the Force was ever to show him a way to change the dark future of his nightmares, it would do so here.

The Jedi Temple also contained the archives, the vast library that encompa.s.sed the Order's entire twenty-five millennia of existence: everything from the widest-ranging cosmographical surveys to the intimate journals of a billion Jedi Knights. It was there Anakin hoped to find everything that was known about prophetic dreams-and everything that was known about preventing these prophecies from coming to pa.s.s.

His only problem was that the deepest secrets of the greatest Masters of the Force were stored in restricted holocrons; since the Lorian Nod affair, some seventy standard years before, access to these holocrons was denied to all but Jedi Masters.

And he couldn't exactly explain to the archives Master why he wanted them.

But now here was Obi-Wan-Obi-Wan would help him, Anakin knew he would-if only Anakin could figure out the right way to ask . . .

While he was still hunting for words, Obi-Wan reached him. "You missed the report on the Outer Rim sieges."

"I-was held up," Anakin said. "I have no excuse."

That, at least, was true.

"Is Palpatine here?" Anakin asked. It was a convenient-enough way to change the subject. "Has something happened?"

"Quite the opposite," Obi-Wan said. "That shuttle did not bring the Chancellor. It is waiting to bring you to him."

"Waiting? For we?" Anakin frowned. Worries and lack of sleep had his head full of fog; he couldn't make this make sense. He patted his robes vacantly. "But-my beacon hasn't gone off. If the Council wanted me, why didn't they-"

"The Council," Obi-Wan said, "has not been consulted."

"I don't understand."

"Nor do I." Obi-Wan stepped close, nodding minutely back toward the shuttle. "They simply arrived, some time ago. When the deck-duty Padawans questioned them, they said the Chancellor has requested your presence."

"Why wouldn't he go through the Council?"

"Perhaps he has some reason to believe," Obi-Wan said carefully, "that the Council might have resisted sending you. Perhaps he did not wish to reveal his reason for this summons. Relations between the Council and the Chancellor are . . . stressed."

A queasy knot began to tie itself behind Anakin's ribs. "Obi-Wan, what's going on? Something's wrong, isn't it? You know something, I can tell."

"Know? No: only suspect. Which is not at all the same thing."

Anakin remembered what he'd said to Padme about exactly that last night. The queasy knot tightened. "And?"

"And that's why I am out here, Anakin. So I can talk to you. Privately. Not as a member of the Jedi Council-in fact, if the Council were to find out about this conversation . . . well, let's say, I'd rather they didn't."

" What conversation? I still don't know what's going on!"

"None of us does. Not really." Obi-Wan put a hand on Anakin's shoulder and frowned deeply into his eyes. "Anakin, you know I am your friend."

"Of course you are-"

"No. No of courses, Anakin. Nothing is of course anymore. I am your friend, and as your friend, I am asking you: be wary of Palpatine."

"What do you mean?"

"I know you are his friend. I am concerned that he may not be yours. Be careful of him, Anakin. And be careful of your own feelings."

"Careful? Don't you mean, mindful?"

Obi-Wan's frown deepened. "No. I don't. The Force grows ever darker around us, and we are all affected by it, even as we affect it. This is a dangerous time to be a Jedi. Please, Anakin-please be careful"

Anakin tried for his old rakish smile. "You worry too much."

"I have to-"

"-because I don't worry at all, right?" Anakin finished for him.

Obi-Wan's frown softened toward a smile. "How did you know I was going to say that?"

"You're wrong, you know." Anakin stared off through the morning haze toward the shuttle, past the shuttle-Toward 500 Republica, and Padme's apartment. He said, "I worry plenty."

The ride to Palpatine's office was quietly tense. Anakin had tried making conversation with the two tall helmet-masked figures in the red robes, but they weren't exactly chatty.

Anakin's discomfort only increased when he arrived at Palpatine's office. He had been here so often that he didn't even really see it, most times: the deep red runner that matched the softly curving walls, the long comfortable couches, the huge arc of window behind Palpatine's desk-these were all so familiar that they were usually almost invisible, but today-Today, with Obi-Wan's voice whispering be wary of Palpatine in the back of his head, everything looked different. New. And not in a good way.

Some indefinable gloom shrouded everything, as though the orbital mirrors that focused the light of Coruscant's distant sun into bright daylight had somehow been damaged, or smudged with the brown haze of smoke that still shrouded the cityscape. The light of the Chancellor's lampdisks seemed brighter than usual, almost harsh, but somehow that only deepened the gloom. He discovered now an odd, accidental echo of memory, a new harmonic resonance inside his head, when he looked at the curving view wall that threw into silhouette the Chancellor's single large chair.

Palpatine's office reminded him of the General's Quarters on Invisible Hand.

And it struck him as unaccountably sinister that the robes worn by the Chancellor's cadre of bodyguards were the exact color of Palpatine's carpet.

Palpatine himself stood at the view wall, hands clasped behind him, gazing out upon the smoke-hazed morning.

"Anakin." He must have seen Anakin's reflection in the curve of transparisteel; he had not moved. "Join me."

Anakin came up beside him, mirroring his stance. Endless cityscape stretched away before them. Here and there, the remains of shattered buildings still smoldered. s.p.a.ce lane traffic was beginning to return to normal, and rivers of gnat-like speeders and air taxis and repulsor buses crisscrossed the city. In the near distance, the vast dome of the Galactic Senate squatted like a gigantic gray mushroom sprung from the duracrete plain that was Republic Plaza. Farther, dim in the brown haze, he could pick out the quintuple spires that topped the ziggurat of the Jedi Temple.

"Do you see, Anakin?" Palpatine's voice was soft, hoa.r.s.e with emotion. "Do you see what they have done to our magnificent city? This war must end. We cannot allow such . . . such ..."

His voice trailed away, and he shook his head. Gently, Anakin laid a hand on Palpatine's shoulder, and a hint of frown fleeted over his face at how frail seemed the flesh and bone beneath the robe. "You know you have my best efforts, and those of every Jedi," he said.

Palpatine nodded, lowering his head. "I know I have yours, Anakin. The rest of the Jedi . . ." He sighed. He looked even more exhausted than he had yesterday. Perhaps he had pa.s.sed a sleepless night as well.

"I have asked you here," he said slowly, "because I need your help on a matter of extreme delicacy. I hope I can depend upon your discretion, Anakin."

Anakin went still for a moment, then he very slowly lifted his hand from the Chancellor's shoulder.

Be wary of Palpatine "As a Jedi, there are ... limits ... to my discretion, Chancellor."

"Oh, of course. Don't worry, my boy." A flash of his familiar fatherly smile forced its way into his eyes. "Anakin, in all the years we have been friends, have I ever asked you to do anything even the slightest bit against your conscience?"

"Well-"

"And I never will. I am very proud of your accomplishments as a Jedi, Anakin. You have won many battles the Jedi Council insisted to me were already lost-and you saved my life. It's frankly appalling that they still keep you off the Council yourself."

"My time will come . . . when I am older. And, I suppose, wiser." He didn't want to get into this with Palpatine; talking with the Chancellor like this-seriously, man-to-man-made him feel good, feel strong, despite Obi-Wan's warning. He certainly didn't want to start whining about being pa.s.sed over for Mastery like some preadolescent Padawan who hadn't been chosen for a scramball team.

"Nonsense. Age is no measure of wisdom. They keep you off the Council because it is the last hold they have on you, Anakin; it is how they control you. Once you're a Master, as you deserve, low will they make you do their bidding?"

"Well . . ." Anakin gave him a half-sheepish smile. "They can't exactly make me, even now."

"I know, my boy. I know. That is precisely the point. You are not like them. You are younger. Stronger. Better. If they cannot control you now, what will happen once you are a Master in your own right? How will they keep your toes on their political line? You may become more powerful than all of them together. That is why they keep you down. They fear your power. They fear you."

Anakin looked down. This had struck a little close to the bone. "I have sensed . . . something like that."

"I have asked you here today, Anakin, because I have fears of my own." He turned, waiting, until Anakin met his eye, and on Palpatine's face was something approaching bleak despair. "I am coming to fear the Jedi themselves."

"Oh, Chancellor-" Anakin broke into a smile of disbelief. "There is no one more loyal than the Jedi, sir-surely, after all this time-"

But Palpatine had already turned away. He lowered himself into the chair behind his desk and kept his head down as though he was ashamed to say this directly to Anakin's face. "The Council keeps pushing for more control. More autonomy. They have lost all respect for the rule of law. They have become more concerned with avoiding the oversight of the Senate than with winning the war."

"With respect, sir, many on the Council would say the same of you." He thought of Obi-Wan, and he had to stop himself from wincing. Had he betrayed a confidence just now?

Or had Obi-Wan been doing the Council's bidding after all? . . . Be wary of Palpatine, he'd said, and be careful of your feelings. . .

Were these honest warnings, out of concern for him? Or had they been calculated: seeds of doubt planted to hedge Anakin away from the one man who really understood him?

The one man he could really trust . . .

"Oh, I have no doubt of it," Palpatine was saying. "Many of the Jedi on your Council would prefer I was out of office altogether-because they know I'm on to them, now. They're shrouded in secrecy, obsessed with covert action against mysteriously faceless enemies-"

"Well, the Sith are hardly faceless, are they? I mean, Dooku himself-"

"Was he truly a Lord of the Sith? Or was he just another in your string of fallen Jedi, posturing with a red lightsaber to intimidate you?"

"I . . ." Anakin frowned. How could he be sure? "But Sidious . . ."

"Ah, yes, the mysterious Lord Sidious. "The Sith infiltrator in the highest levels of government.'' Doesn't that sound a little overly familiar to you, Anakin? A little overly convenient? How do you know this Sidious even exists? How do you know he is not a fiction, a fiction created by the Jedi Council, to give them an excuse to hara.s.s their political enemies?"

"The Jedi are not political-"

"In a democracy, everything is political, Anakin. And everyone. This imaginary Sith Lord of theirs-even if he does exist, is he anyone to be feared? To be hunted down and exterminated without trial?"

"The Sith are the definition of evil-"

"Or so you have been trained to believe. I have been reading about the history of the Sith for some years now, Anakin. Ever since the Council saw fit to finally reveal to me their . . . a.s.sertion . . . that these millennium-dead sorcerers had supposedly sprung back to life. Not every tale about them is sequestered in your conveniently secret Temple archives. From what I have read, they were not so different from Jedi; seeking power, to be sure, but so does your Council."

"The dark side-"

"Oh, yes, yes, certainly, the dark side. Listen to me: if this 'Darth Sidious' of yours were to walk through that door right now-and I could somehow stop you from killing him on the spot-do you know what I would do?"

Palpatine rose, and his voice rose with him. "I would ask him to sit down, and I would ask him if he has any power he could use to end this war!"

"You would-you would-" Anakin couldn't quite make himself believe what he was hearing. The blood-red rug beneath his feet seemed to shift under him, and his head was starting to spin.

"And if he said he did, I'd b.l.o.o.d.y well offer him a brandy and talk it out!"

"You-Chancellor, you can't be serious-"

"Well, not entirely." Palpatine sighed, and shrugged, and lowered himself once more into his chair. "It's only an example, Anakin. I would do anything to return peace to the galaxy, do you understand? That's all I mean. After all-" He offered a tired, sadly ironic smile. "-what are the chances of an actual Sith Lord ever walking through that door?"

"I wouldn't know," Anakin said feelingly, "but I do know that you probably shouldn't use that . . . example ... in front of the Jedi Council."

"Oh, yes." Palpatine chuckled. "Yes, quite right. They might take it as an excuse to accuse me."

"I'm sure they'd never do that-"

"I am not. I am no longer sure they'll stop at anything, Anakin. That's actually the reason I asked you here today." He leaned forward intently, resting his elbows on the desk. "You may have heard that this afternoon, the Senate will call upon this office to a.s.sume direct control of the Jedi Council."

Anakin's frown deepened. "The Jedi will no longer report to the Senate?"

"They will report to me. Personally. The Senate is too unfocused to conduct this war; we've seen this for years. Now that this office will be the single authority to direct the prosecution of the war, we'll bring a quick end to things."

Anakin nodded. "I can see how that will help, sir, but the Council probably won't. I can tell you that they are in no mood for further const.i.tutional amendments."

"Yes, thank you, my friend. But in this case, I have no choice. This war must be won."

"Everyone agrees on that."

"I hope they do, my boy. I hope they do."

Inside his head, he heard the echo of Obi-Wan, murmuring relations between the Council and the Chancellor are . . . stressed. What had been going on, here in the capital?

Weren't they all on the same side?

"I can a.s.sure you," he said firmly, "that the Jedi are absolutely dedicated to the core values of the Republic."

One of Palpatine's eyebrows arched. "Their actions will speak more loudly than their words-as long as someone keeps an eye on them. And that, my boy, is exactly the favor I must ask of you."

"I don't understand."

"Anakin, I am asking you-as a personal favor to me, in respect for our long friendship-to accept a post as my personal representative on the Jedi Council." Anakin blinked. He blinked again. He said, "Me?"

"Who else?" Palpatine spread his hands in a melancholy shrug. "You are the only Jedi I know, truly know, that I can trust.

I need you, my boy. There is no one else who can do this job: to be the eyes and ears-and the voice-of the Republic on the Jedi Council."