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“Negotiate?”

“That is correct, sir.”

The Mando regarded her for a long moment. Then, before anyone realized what he was planning, he had drawn a handheld blaster from his belt, pointed it at Kani from a distance of a third of a meter, and fired.

Kani Asari dropped without a cry, dead before she hit the stairs.

JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT

“NO!” CRIED HAMNER.

He could hear the other Masters and Knights shouting, as stunned and outraged by this grotesque atrocity, this blatant murder, as he, but he couldn’t make out their words. Blood thundered in his ears. This couldn’t be happening! Kani was just a child, coming out, unarmed, to negotiate! She couldn’t just have been slaughtered like a—

“I thought I had made myself quite clear, but apparently Jedi need things explained in the simplest terms,” said Rhal. “I am here for a single, specific purpose. And that purpose is to take Sothais Saar and Turi Altamik into custody. This,” and Rhal nudged Kani’s limp form, the hole in her chest still smoking, with his foot, “is not Sothais Saar, nor is it Turi Altamik. I am not here to negotiate, discuss, or even capture and interrogate. No one leaves the Temple until this matter is resolved. Anyone attempting to do so will be dealt with in this same manner. You now have twenty-four hours to turn over the Jedi. At the end of that time, your Temple will be leveled, your people slain, and Altamik and Saar recovered. The girl stays here, as a reminder. Any attempt to recover her body and we will open fire on the Temple.”

He turned around and descended the stairs. Kani lay where she had fallen, face up to the sky, eyes wide.

“That … ice-blooded … heartless—I’m going to get her,” said Kyp, suiting action to word.

“No!” Hamner’s voice was clear and sharp and cracked like a whip. “No one else is going to get harmed! That is an order, Durran!”

“I’m not leaving her out there!” Kyp’s eyes flashed angrily.

“It is foolish for you to join her in death,” Saba said. She radiated fury, but it was cold and controlled and focused. “Now is not the time. We will strike at Daala when we are better prepared. And strike we will.”

“Daala didn’t authorize that,” said Katarn with certainty. “This … being … is acting on his own.”

“Daala hired him,” hissed Saba. “She is responsible.”

“I shouldn’t have let her go,” murmured Kenth. “I shouldn’t have let her go.”

“We all thought it was a good idea,” said Octa, stepping up behind him. “We thought she’d be safer than anyone else.”

“No one is safe,” said Corran Horn. “No one can be trusted. Not the GA, not Daala, not anyone. We’re on our own. And the sooner we realize that, the better off we’ll be.”

Kenth Hamner stood alone, staring at Kani’s body on the monitor after the rest of the Masters and other Jedi had filed out. They were furious, raging, but they could not fight, not yet, and so were anxious to channel their energies into something positive. Ramis, a subued Seha by her side, had tried to get Hamner to go eat something, but he shook his head without speaking, and eventually she, too, had left to start organizing the apprentices.

He stood here because he realized he didn’t know where he wanted to go. Normally, he would go back to his offices, finish up the day’s work, spend some time in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and then on to his quarters here at the Temple. But today was most assuredly not a normal day.

Hamner had no wish to be at odds with his fellow Masters. But Grand Master Luke Skywalker had charged him with a duty, and that duty was to lead the Jedi as best he could. Hamner would do nothing less. It pained, and sometimes frustrated, him that what seemed like obvious, sound, clear choices to him were seldom perceived as such by the Council.

Duties awaited him, even now, even when the Temple was under siege and an innocent girl’s corpse lay stiffening on the steps. But he couldn’t move, not yet.

His comlink chimed. His eyes still fastened on Kani, he fished out his comm and clicked it.

“Hamner.”

There was a slight pause, then a voice that Hamner recognized.