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“Really, Laranth—sarcasm is so human an attribute.”

Laranth ignored him. “Is Jax coming?”

“Jax is here. Good to see you again so soon, Laranth.”

Den looked up to the gallery again. Jax was the creature of light and shadow this time as colors danced across his face and set his drab clothing metaphorically aflame. The Sullustan felt a little more secure now that two Jedi were in the immediate vicinity. Not much, but a little.

In the aftermath of Kaj’s hasty removal, Haninum Tyk Rhinann sat at his workstation feeling as if someone had immersed him in icy water. They had come that close—that close—to being discovered. Oh, he was sure that Pavan would deny this—if he ever returned from wherever he’d gone so precipitously. He would no doubt claim everything had been just fine, under control, and that there had never been any great danger of discovery. But in the proximity of that Inquisitor, Rhinann had felt the cold gaze of his erstwhile master.

He turned back to his workstation, desperately trying to herd his scattered neurons back into some semblance of order. He didn’t have the bota. Perhaps he was no closer to knowing who did, though he strongly suspected the little Sullustan. All that foot-dragging and naysaying was most likely just a smoke screen.

But suspicions did him no good at all. The Sullustan was currently out of reach, Inquisitors prowled the streets nearby, and the droid was preparing to put them between a rock and a rancor.

He tried to list his options. Rhinann truly believed that any crisis must be answered with a good list. Creating lists ordered the mind, calmed the blood, lowered the chaos level.

He could run now. That would be safest. But nearness to yet another Force prodigy had reminded him viscerally of what he was missing. That boy—that mere child—had killed an Inquisitor and had even caused Jax Pavan some concern. If he could experience but a fraction of what it was like to be possessed of such power …

He could bide his limited time and continue to press Den Dhur about the bota. He had already decided he would ask I-Five. He supposed a direct approach might yield better results.

He turned these ideas in his head for a moment, then blew another high note of exasperation through his tusks. What was he thinking? They had zero chance of remaining hidden from the dark gaze of Darth Vader. Certainly not with that boy radiating the Force every which way, and not with that obnoxious mech evidently determined to make a martyr of himself for Jax Pavan’s cause. One way or another, they were going to end up in Vader’s parlor, and when they did it would not be pretty. Vader would have Jax Pavan, Kajin Savaros, the sentient droid, the Sith Holocron, the pyronium, and the bota. Rhinann wasn’t sure what all that added up to, but he knew it wasn’t good. Vader held the winning array, any way he looked at it.

There was only one conclusion that made sense, unpalatable though it was. Rhinann reluctantly realized that he was simply on the wrong side.

fourteen

At 0350 hours, Den and I-Five prepared to retrieve Dejah and tend to the removal of the Togrutan female from Coruscant. In such cases, Dejah’s twin talents of telempathy and pheromone production were especially effective. She could not only create an atmosphere of emotional safety that would ease the client’s passage offworld, but also knew when that atmosphere needed to be bolstered and when it could be withdrawn.

It was agreed that Jax should stay with Kaj and work on the field generators of Volette’s light sculptures. To his surprise, Laranth elected to stay and help him.

Just before he left, I-Five took Jax aside. “I expect my part in this will be completed by roughly twelve hundred hours. I have thus arranged to meet with Tuden Sal late this evening at the Sunset Cantina to give him our answer to his proposal.”

The words twisted Jax’s gut and made his lungs feel suddenly starved for air. “And what are you going to tell him?”

The droid tilted his head to one side and looked at Jax quizzically. “I said our