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“But you knew I would be here, even after what happened to Kani,” Thul said. His face was shiny, almost artificial looking, and stretched in an odd way as he smiled.

“I did,” Dorvan said.

Thul and Dorvan stepped out into what passed for sunlight on Coruscant. There was a strange sound, and Dorvan realized it was the noise of hundreds of weapons being trained on them. He swallowed hard, but Thul appeared unperturbed. He went to the first step and sat down. Several more steps down, almost to the bottom, lay Kani’s body. Thul regarded it for a moment, then he reached for the small satchel he carried. Dorvan moved to stand in front of him, lest any of the Mandos decide that the satchel held something more dangerous than the sandwich Thul now produced.

Dorvan let out a sigh and dropped to the step beside Thul.

“You didn’t bring anything for lunch?” Thul asked.

“I was … in a bit of a hurry.”

Again, Thul smiled. “Here,” he said, and handed half of the sandwich to Dorvan. He took it, not hungry at all, and gazed at Kani’s body.

Thul ate methodically, as he always did. Dorvan knew the man intended no disrespect to Kani, and in fact, suspected that one of the reasons he was here right now was to honor her sacrifice.

Oh, no, despite what Rhal had done, the Jedi weren’t cowed. Kani hadn’t been, and Thul wasn’t, and as Dorvan broke off a piece of crust to feed to Pocket, who had stuck her head out at the smell of bread, he wondered just exactly how the Jedi were going to get out of this one.

Because for all the show of force Daala had made, for all the Mandos who still kept careful aim on them both, if Dorvan were a betting man, he’d be betting on the man beside him rather than the soldiers in front of him.

“Han? You might want to take a look at this.”

Leia’s voice floated to Han, who was in the office of their safe-house apartments cleaning his blasters. They were in perfect condition, but it gave him something to do that at least marginally cheered him up.

“I don’t want to take a look at anything, unless it’s Daala’s head on a pike.” Hopefully, he added, “Is it Daala’s head on a pike?”

“No, not quite, but it is her chief of staff running up the steps of the Temple at top speed.”

Han rose and went to look at the holovid. “Huh …?” he said, baffled at the sight of the normally calm, almost emotionless Wynn Dorvan running full tilt.

“And we have confirmation that it is indeed Chief of State Daala’s right-hand man, Chief of Staff Wynn Dorvan, who is racing headlong up the steps of the besieged Jedi Temple,” Javis Tyrr was saying. “He did have a Mandalorian escort as he fought his way through the crowd, and I don’t see anyone taking aim at him, so one must assume that he is here on official Galactic Alliance business. Looks like the Jedi must have agreed to—”

Han’s mouth fell open. “Thul?”

Leia didn’t quite gape, but her brown eyes were wide.

“Why, it’s Raynar Thul,” said Javis Tyrr. The cam focused in on Thul and Dorvan shaking hands. “As our viewers of Episode 14 of The Jedi Among Us: Where Are They Now? know, Raynar Thul has been rehabilitated and has kept a kind of vigil every day at this time, having lunch on the steps of the Temple. I’ve conducted a few interviews with him. It looks like nothing, not even a Mandalorian siege, is going to keep Thul from enjoying his regular lunch break.”

“What the hell is Dorvan doing there?” Han demanded. “You think he’s trying to strike a deal with Thul?”

Leia shook her slightly-gray-streaked head slowly. “No, neither of them works that way,” she said. “I think he may have been trying to save Thul’s life.”

“Well, that’s noble of him, but he could have saved K. P’s—aw, blast it, Kani’s—life and maybe a whole bunch of others if he and Daala would just back off.”

As if on cue, the cam left the two lunching men to linger on Kani’s body and the pool of drying blood in which it lay.

“I don’t know how either of them can eat, sitting there looking at her,” Han continued, his voice growing angry