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She grasped his arm and spun him around, aiming him at the apothecary. “Walk,” she murmured, then slipped her arm around his shoulders.

“There’s one right above us,” Kaj told her.

They were passing the apothecary, still shielded from the two Inquisitors behind them by the lorry, when a figure in a shimmering, scarlet robe dropped out of thin air to block their path.

Kaj looked up into the face and felt as if a shaft of ice had been driven through his heart. The pale, burning eyes that stared back at him, triumph in their chill depths, belonged to a man he thought he had killed.

His reaction was swift and involuntary. Even as Laranth fired her blaster, Kaj flooded the street with a dam-burst of Force energy, throwing the Inquisitor a dozen meters. The blast from Laranth’s weapon sizzled past the spot where he’d been standing and burned through the cargo compartment of the hovertruck. The lorry burst into flames.

Someone screamed, and the street scene dissolved into chaos.

nineteen

Jax’s first view of the scene on Gallery Row was from inside the first-level entrance of their building. What he saw—and felt—made his blood run cold. People fled something that was going on farther up the block near the corner with a main cross-street—Rainbow Parkway it was called, though it had no park, and no rainbow had been seen by the citizens of this level of Coruscant for uncounted centuries.

Until now.

Now they saw a display of the Force that shot brilliant ribbons and pinwheels of power in every direction—an explosion of variegated energy near the corner of Rainbow Parkway and Gallery Row—an explosion being generated by more than one Force adept.

He hesitated, checking the street for angles of egress. He did not want to be seen coming out of this building or sensed coming from this direction. Pol Haus and I-Five caught up with him as he was considering his options.

“I take it we have a situation,” Haus said.

“There’s a Force battle going on down there,” Jax said.

“Our rogue adept?”

“Yeah. And at least three others, maybe four. Hard to tell when some of them are wearing taozin.”

“And you need to get there without being noticed.”

The eaves and buttresses of the buildings were his best chance of that. Maybe if he worked his way down a back alley toward the corner …

“We’ll take my speeder.” Haus was already on his way toward the rear of the building, along a corridor that housed a warren of small studios and conapts.

Jax turned and sprinted after him, leaving I-Five to bring up the rear. “You can’t be seen with me.”

Haus let out a dry laugh. “No kidding. I’ve no intention of it. But I can lend a hand … or an airspeeder.”

With the three of them squeezed into a speeder built for two, Haus darkened the windows and darted the vehicle down a long, dank alley that roiled with greasy fog. He came out on Rainbow Parkway and turned a sharp right, then stopped his speeder at the corner, tucking it skillfully beneath the buttressing of a tower that housed three restaurants and a purveyor of artist’s supplies.

“This is as close as I dare get,” he told Jax. “But if you like I can at least keep the Imperial goons out of it. Tell them the Inquisitors are on it and don’t need their interference.” He grinned, showing sharp white teeth. “I try to run interference between the Inquisitorius and the Imperial regulars whenever I can. It’s good for department morale.”

Jax popped the canopy and leapt out of the speeder. “Thanks. I-Five, why don’t you stay—?”

“As if that would ever happen,” the droid retorted, extricating himself from the small cargo area behind the passenger seat.

Jax threw him a grim smile and darted to the corner, drawing his lightsaber as he ran. The street was emptying quickly of its last few inhabitants, leaving as audience only the people trapped within the businesses on either side. He took in the scene at a glance: Kaj was about twenty-five meters distant on the right side of the street. Jax realized with a jolt that Laranth