Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [91]
“Then what is the issue?”
What was the issue? He wasn’t afraid for Kaj, really; the boy’s gut instincts had so far proven themselves effective at self-preservation. The issue was Laranth. It was for her safety that he feared.
He responded, somewhat lamely, “I just think two heads are better than one.”
Laranth opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head. “We’ll be fine, thank you.”
And so he’d sent them off to Thi Xon Yimmon while Dejah arranged for the removal of the light sculptures to the gallery in the Port Sector—with an escort of hand-picked police droids from among the Zi-Kree Sector security contingent, led by Pol Haus himself. The sculptures would take some time to arrive and to set up; until then Kaj would be warded by more low-tech means. Based on the boy’s certainty that the Inquisitor pursuing him had lost his taozin artifact in the fall of debris on Gallery Row, Laranth had dispatched a swarm of the youngest Whiplash mudlarps—waifs who lived by pilfering and whose presence poking among the rubble would thus not be remarked upon—to find it. The dried and powdered taozin skin nodule wasn’t sufficient to cloak a power like Kajin’s from Vader if the former should have a major tantrum, so to speak, but Laranth was satisfied that it would do until she could remount the light sculptures.
Jax saw her and Kaj off with a sense of foreboding, and told himself it was merely because he and Laranth had something unfinished between them. He was experiencing the irrational human fear that he’d never get the opportunity to finish it.
He glanced at I-Five as the two walked side by side through Ploughtekal Market’s lowest level on their way to a meeting with Tuden Sal. A continuously shifting rainbow of neon splashed over the droid’s metal sheathing as they walked. A being of many colors, Jax thought philosophically. A being who was at the moment, he knew, also suffering from unfinished business. Den Dhur had left behind no message, no explanation, no indication of what he’d been feeling in the days before his departure. Even Laranth had said farewell from her medcenter bed before she’d left.
No, he told himself, you’re wrong on both counts. Neither Den nor Laranth had been reticent about expressing their feelings about the course things were taking. He and I-Five had simply been too busy, too focused …
Who was he kidding? He’d been too blind to notice. And too muddled by Dejah’s veil of pheromones. That knowledge ate at him now, seeping into his soul. What must Laranth have thought—for him to go in moments from that intimate touch they’d shared in the medcenter, to practically forgetting she existed.
He recalled the moment now and suspected he knew what had happened. Dejah had entered the waiting area outside Laranth’s room. With her telempathic abilities she would have felt that strong flare of sudden awareness, of emotion, when he’d entered the room, moments later …
He’d seen the look on the Zeltron’s face when he and I-Five had left for their assignation just now. She had been hurt and puzzled because she could feel him blocking her aggressively, allowing her to get no sense of his emotions. He’d felt some remorse for that back at the studio. Now, twenty minutes and several kilometers away, he no longer did.
That bothered him. It hinted that, though he blocked her with a strong and trained will, she was still able to affect him. He felt a tickle of anger, as much at himself as at Dejah’s meddling, and turned it aside.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
Right.
They reached their destination—a seedy dive that billed itself as an “inn.” Jax followed I-Five to the end of the main corridor where it took a left turn and opened onto a broader hallway flanked by what the proprietor termed “conference rooms.” The one in which they found Tuden Sal had just enough room in it for a low table and four hassocks. The table was arrayed with a selection of food that looked not at all appetizing to Jax, who was glad he’d remembered to eat something on their way through Ploughtekal.