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“Yes.”

Luke scratched his jaw and thought about it. “They're saying to the Imperial Remnant, We're putting a leash on the people who gave you so much trouble over the years. It's safe to come back.”

“I believe so.”

“And they're telling the Confederation, You and the Jedi had a mutual enemy during the war, but now we control them, which is another good reason to rejoin.”

“My thinking matches yours.”

“Also another good reason to exclude the Hapans this time around. Queen Mother Tenel Ka would not react favorably to the action against me. If she doesn't participate until the next summit, this situation could be resolved by then and she'd have time to cool down.” Luke stood and began pacing. His stomach fluttered, either from tension or from the fact that he'd had no meal since his arrest, and he drew on inner reserves of calm to settle it. “Nawara, I'm not sure we can change the way we operate within the Alliance, or should. We serve a higher cause. Life, calm, progress toward a fair and serene future. Self-interest and the kind of pragmatism that sacrifices innocent lives don't motivate us the way they can the civilian and military authorities.”

Nawara offered him an unhappy smile. “History, as interpreted by non-Jedi, demonstrates that you're wrong. In the records, Jedi often demonstrate these self-serving and destructive impulses. They just stop calling themselves Jedi. Like Jacen Solo did.”

“Ouch.”

“Your arraignment's in two hours. I can have a different set of clothes delivered if you'd prefer to appear before the judge in something fresher or more cheerful.”

Luke glanced down at his black Grand Master robes. He winced, considering how they might remind a judge of the garments preferred by Jacen Solo. “Send for my white and tan robes, would you?”

“Done.”

COURT CHAMBERS, CORUSCANT

At the arraignment, Leia, Han, and Ben waited in the audience, which otherwise seemed to be made up entirely of the press, all with holocams running.

A gray-skinned Duros judge, chosen out of the standard rotation of Alliance judges, turned out to be sympathetic to the Jedi. He listened to the charges, ignored the prosecutor's assertion that Luke was a flight risk, ordered Luke to appear at hearings that would proceed from this event, and released him on his own recognizance. Minutes later, Luke, his family, and Nawara Ven exited the building through a portal Nawara knew but the press did not. They emerged at the fortieth-story walkway level into fresh air and nighttime darkness alleviated by pedestrian lights and traffic streams.

Luke opened the bag Captain Savar had given him at arraignment's end and began pocketing his personal effects. “That was a bad day. I look forward to some meditation.”

Grim-faced, Leia handed him his lightsaber. “I don't think you'll get that chance. Things just keep getting better and better.”

JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT

The Jedi Temple's medical center was a complete, if compact, hospital facility—operating theater, private recovery rooms, common ward, bacta chambers, therapy chambers, sealed atmosphere rooms to simulate various planetary environments, laboratories—and Valin Horn was now the centerpiece of the neurology lab. Strapped to a deactivated repulsor gurney that was resting on a platform built to accommodate it, he strained against his restraints, not speaking. There was no one present for him to speak to.

They watched him from an adjacent chamber through a sheet of transparisteel that was reflective on the lab side, transparent on the observer side. Luke stood with Master Cilghal, the Mon Calamari Jedi Master who was the Temple's foremost medical expert. Also on hand were the three other members of the Horn family, Leia, and Ben. Jysella Horn, Valin's sister, a lean woman in her midtwenties, wore a look of resolute calmness appropriate to a Jedi, but redness around her large, expressive eyes suggested that she had been crying. Her mother, Mirax, looked grimly determined and seemed unable to turn away from watching Valin.

Cilghal, her voice as gravelly