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“Yes, he has. I'm not questioning that. But I want to take you back a little over thirty years to shortly after he killed everyone who hadn't yet managed to evacuate Carida in the two hours he generously gave the population. Of course, the solar system he destroyed was an Imperial system, your enemy at the time, which does mitigate his crime in your eyes. Is that why you protected him, shielded him from legal ramifications, trained him?”

“No.”

“Why did you?”

“Because I could look into his heart and see that he had cast the shadow of Exar Kun out, that he was no longer an agent of the dark side, that he had repented.”

“He said he was sorry, and he meant it, and that was sufficient justice for the millions who died on Carida.”

“You're oversimplifying. I knew that he was on the right path again.”

“Because you have the power to see that. Because that's what Jedi are trained to do.”

“Yes.”

Daala sighed. “And because they're trained to do that, to see into people's hearts, sort truth from lies, see into the future where the criminal has reformed and turned to a life of picking flowers, they can decide who should be thanked and who should be cut down, who should be forgiven and who should be left for the ordinary officers of the law to convict. They protect the common citizen but do not answer to him. They do not pay for their mistakes. They obey government orders when those orders conform to their moral code and not when they don't. And that's wrong. Any other group exhibiting that degree of arrogance, that unconcern for the rule of law, would be classified as a criminal organization. That, ultimately, is what this case is about.”

She was wrong. And yet she was chiefly wrong from the Jedi perspective. Remove the Force from the equation, and she suddenly became right. That was jarring to Luke. It was so hard for him now to remember what it was like not to have the Force always contributing to his decision making.

It was then that he detected it: the evil that the Force had brought him here to see. He did not see it as a person or an object, but as a process, a trend—one that he was a part of.

Understanding things as much as he could through Daala's perspective, through the perspective of the common citizen, the one truth he could discern was that if the galaxy thought that the Jedi were above the law, abuses were sure to spring up from that notion as toxic weeds growing rapidly from a pile of manure.

Young Jedi, seeing the ease with which their Masters slid out from underneath common but inconvenient civic responsibilities, would come to think that such behavior was their right. A few, on the fringes of the border between the light side and the dark side, would discern that Kyp Durron had escaped any visible consequence of his actions at Carida … would accept Luke's assertion that Darth Vader had been redeemed, had died a Jedi instead of a Sith despite his many murders, and would not understand the true meaning of the story.

The answer settled across Luke like a leaden shroud. To prevent this evil from growing, he had to lose this case, to be punished. That was what the Force had brought him here to understand.

He met Daala's gaze again. “Will you be prosecuting Master Durron next?”

“I will not. But I could authorize extradition for him to the Imperial Remnant to face their charge of planetary genocide. Head of State Jagged Fel has rather reluctantly presented me with a proposal from the Moff Council on that very subject. But such a thing could be avoided, of course, if we had already set another decisive example.”

Luke gave her a slow nod. “I came here hoping that, face-to-face, without advocates whispering in our ears, we could negotiate a deal. Now, having heard what you have to say, I am certain we can.”

“Tell me.”

NINTH HALL OF JUSTICE, CORUSCANT

THIS REALLY WAS A COURTROOM, A PLACE WHERE JUSTICE WAS DISPENSED, and, during regimes like Jacen Solo's, injustice as well. The walls were somber wood panel; the tables and the judge's elevated bench were a dark, beautiful caf-colored antique marble