Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [43]
“Maybe because we’re too valuable to you,” suggested Den. “Up till now, anyway. Now you’ve got a chance to maybe look like a big hero to His Dark Lordliness. And maybe if we help you find this … this person, you’ll just hand him over to Vader, figuring there’s nothing we can do without putting our own lives in jeopardy. And if we don’t help you find him, maybe you just hand over Jax instead.”
That thought had also occurred to Jax and filled him with a sinking dread. To have to leave Coruscant, to run away from all he wanted to accomplish, away from the chance at finding out the truth about his father’s death …
“Oh, I don’t believe Pol Haus would do anything so dastardly.”
All eyes turned to where Dejah Duare stood in the doorway of Jax’s room, gleaming like a red sunset. She crossed back to the seating area, wafting so close to the prefect that her translucent gowns brushed his disreputable duster.
“As he noted himself,” she continued, “he’s had reason to suspect our situation here for some time and he’s done nothing. The plan he suggests might even satisfy Darth Vader and make it even less likely that we’ll be discovered. I feel we should consider his job offer.”
“Dejah Duare is absolutely right,” Haus said, smiling crookedly. “I have no reason to want to disband this group or sever my ties with it. You get results that my forces can’t. Besides, if I were to betray the Inquisitor killer to Darth Vader, you’d just try to rescue him. With all due respect, you put your lives in danger every day of the year. Your lives are in danger at this very moment. Things move out there in the dark,” he added, sweeping a broad gesture toward the city outside Den’s window casement. “You know that as well as I do. And some of them are looking for you.”
“How kind of you to remind us,” said I-Five, speaking for the first time. The sound of his voice made Den start visibly and nearly topple from his window ledge.
The Zabrak prefect laughed. “I’ve had opportunities to help them find you. I haven’t. I won’t. Your choice on whether you believe that or not.”
Jax glanced at Dejah. She could sense the emotional subtext of Haus’s message; what did she think? She gave the slightest nod, the merest glimmer of a smile.
“All right,” Jax said. “We’ll help you find your Force-user. But if he’s as powerful as Vader says he is, then he may be impossible to find … unless he wants to be found.”
The unseen listener in Jax’s quarters coiled and uncoiled, still teetering on the edge of terror.
“Understood.” The prefect turned on his heel and started for the front door, the job interview apparently at an end.
Jax moved with him, side by side, to the door and saw him out into the hall. “Tell me, Prefect,” he said, “what about my companions’ reactions hinted to you that I was a Jedi?”
Pol Haus turned to look at him, a wry almost-smile on his lips. “You’re the youngest of them, but they all look to you for direction. Even the Gray Paladin did when she was here. A question is asked, they all watch your face as if the answer is there. And though you are also the most soft-spoken, the least verbose—” A glance back through the door. “—you’re the one who makes and speaks the decisions. I can think of no one of your age who would be accorded that respect if he or she were not a Jedi.”
“Oh,” Jax said, showing some of the eloquence for which he was not famed. “I see.”
“So do I. But relax. Most people don’t notice things like that. Just avid students of sentient nature like me.” He gave a sloppy half salute with one hand and turned to go.
“Whose word?”
“What?” The prefect arrested his shambling gait and turned to look at Jax over his shoulder.
“Whose word would you give that we’d trust?”
“Now, that would be promising what I might not be able to deliver. Or it might be revealing an important source of information.