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Rhinann stiffened. No Elomin could stand to have his professional integrity thus impugned. He knew that Pavan knew this, and was using it to manipulate him, but knowing that didn’t help. “I can do it. It’s just … so soon.” The Elomin moved to the HoloNet station in the living room and jacked in. “By the way,” he said as he began his egress into the Inquisitorius node, “I was monitoring the ISB traffic this morning. The droid has been made. The surviving Inquisitor sensed him during the incident yesterday.”

He saw Pavan and I-5YQ exchange glances, and felt a glow of satisfaction. “Hmm. Yes. A bit more alarming a prospect now, isn’t it?”

To Rhinann’s surprise, the Jedi merely shrugged. “I’m not surprised, but Tuden Sal might be. Let him know.”

Rhinann swung around to stare at the daft human. “So you’re still going through with it? What can you be thinking?”

“That the ISB will be looking for a Jedi with a sentient droid and what they’ll get is an Inquisitor with a garden-variety threepio.”

They left him to his ministrations then, descending into the empty art gallery—most likely, the Elomin thought, to continue the process of planning their own funerals.

Still, Rhinann reflected, it might not be an unmitigated disaster. I-Five would surely make certain that, under these conditions, Jax was the one carrying the bota. The more Rhinann thought about it, the more sense it made as a contingency plan. The bota would provide backup. If I-Five were discovered or the plan went awry in some other way, Jax would take the bota and complete the mission.

Elegant. It also clarified what Rhinann had to do. He must grease the gears for the assassins’ entry into the Imperial headquarters.

And he must make sure that he was one of the assassins.

twenty-three

Kaj liked being with the greenskined Twi’lek. She was his idea of a Jedi—stealthy as the wind, lithe, smart, brave, mysterious.

“You’re different,” he told her as they made their way together from the safe house he’d spent the night in through the maze of alleys that led, eventually, to the gallery/theater above which Thi Xon Yimmon’s sanctum was located.

“From what?”

“From Jax.”

“Jax is human. I’m Twi’lek.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Jax is male. I’m female.”

“Well, yeah. I kinda noticed that.”

“I’m green. Jax is a sickly shade of beige.”

“Now you’re teasing me.”

“I never tease.”

“You keep saying that, but you tease me. And sometimes you tease Jax.”

Laranth turned her head to look at him. “Don’t tell him that.”

Her eyes were a stellar shade of green—like the twin stars that rose in the winter evenings just after midnight in the southwestern sky over his parents’ farm.

He grinned at her. “I won’t. What I meant was you’re not what I expected a Jedi to be. Well, neither is Jax, really.”

“I’m not a Jedi. I’m a Gray Paladin.” The green eyes darkened. “So what did you expect Jedi to be like?”

“All serious. Well, you’re serious, but I mean like … like the monks in the healing orders.”

“The Silent?”

“Yeah. I mean, Jax is all into teaching me how to be still and calm and all, but he’s … Jax.” He paused a moment then asked, “How do you do it? How do you keep from letting the anger get you?”

“You’re feeling angry right now?” She swept him with her emerald gaze, and he knew she was reading him—as much as she could, considering the fact that he was wearing the Inquisitor’s taozin necklace. Rhinann had told him the Inquisitor’s name: Tesla. He’d remember that.

“No, I’m not angry now. It’s … it’s partly what they did to my parents.”

“The farm?”

He’d told her about that. Now he just nodded. “And partly it’s just …”

“Maybe it would be better if you didn’t think about it.”

“Is that how you deal with it? By not thinking about it?”

She gave him a long, disconcerting look. “I seem angry to you, do I?”

“Yeah. Especially when—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Stepping out into the intersection of four narrow corridors, he found himself knee-deep in some sort of weird fog. It lapped languorously around his legs like subliming