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“You do have a point,” he allowed, shifting her slight weight on his lap. “I’m sorry that Judge Lorteli wouldn’t permit Nawara Ven to represent her, and that Mardek Mool didn’t work out, but what do you expect me to do about the situation?”

“You know people. You have a lot of connections. You could find someone.”

He blinked at her. “Jaina, I can’t use my connections to influence the outcome of a trial.”

“I’m not asking that. I’m just asking that you see if you know anyone who’d be willing to tackle the job. You know she’s not going to get a fair trial otherwise.”

Jag sighed and leaned his head back against the soft leather of the chair for a moment. Jaina knew better than to press her attack, and just nestled against him quietly. Probably because she knew, like he knew, that he usually did his best to do the right thing within the constraints of his duty. And the right thing in this situation was to get someone who was accused of murder a lawyer who actually cared about representing her fairly and was capable of standing up to what was sure to be an ugly trial.

“It will have to be completely unofficial,” he said at last. “It won’t be through the offices of the Empire.”

“Of course not.”

He opened his eyes and looked down at her and his breath caught for a moment. She was smiling gently at him, her face soft, her eyes warm. It wasn’t an expression most of the world ever saw. She reserved it for family, and for him, and it was as rare and as lovely as a Krayt dragon pearl. At this moment, she wasn’t the “Sword of the Jedi,” or the daughter of a perhaps-too-famous couple, or the woman who at the cost of ripping up her own heart had slain a Sith Lord who also happened to be her twin. She was just Jaina now, open and vulnerable. He felt his own heart soften to look at her, and lifted a hand to tenderly brush away a stray lock of dark hair from her forehead.

“All right. I promise you that I will find her the best, most decent, most honest, hardest working lawyer I can,” he promised her.

“Oh,” Jaina said. “I was trying to get her someone who’d win.”

Cell 2357

Galactic Justice Center

Coruscant

Tahiri Veila, seated in her very clean and very bright GA cell deep in the bowels of the Galactic Justice Center, her head in her hands, found that she was surprised at what she missed.

She’d expected to miss her freedom, of course. The ability to putter as she wished in her own small, private space. The choice of whether to stay home or go out, perhaps even to visit the Temple. The comfortable, familiar weight of her lightsaber at her hip.

And she did miss those things, but above all else was an odd pang at something else she probably ought to have anticipated—how terribly much she missed the feel of soft grass beneath her bare feet. She had carpeted her apartment with grass, and now, deprived of it, it was the thing she missed most.

She could take her shoes off here, of course. After all, this was a Galactic Alliance prison cell, not a primitive cage. But there was only the cool tile of the too-antiseptic, too-well-lit cell to walk on. And the tile was cold, and hard, and unpleasant, and made her miss everything else just a little bit more.

So Tahiri kept her shoes on, stared at the incredibly white-and-black décor, and thought about how things sometimes just weren’t white-and-black. She sighed and rubbed her face for a while, ran her hands through her blond hair, then rose and paced the cold tile floor. Like a caged animal, she thought. Which, just maybe, I am. With the additional irony of knowing that the Jedi Temple was close at hand. The Justice Center was just across Fellowship Plaza from it.

She could have escaped all of this. All she’d have had to do was do what she had done once before—turn her back on people who cared about her and do something reprehensible. Then, it had been to fall under the sway of Jacen Solo, of her own achingly lonely yearning for a boy long dead, of her own wants. She’d killed a decent old man. Not in combat. Not in self-defense,