Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [207]
Obi-Wan accepted this with a nod, but still when he thought of Anakin, dread began to curdle below his heart. “I should have argued more strongly in Council today.”
“You think Skywalker won’t be able to handle this?” Mace Windu said. “I thought you had more confidence in his abilities.”
“I trust him with my life,” Obi-Wan said simply. “And that is precisely the problem.”
The other two Jedi Masters watched him silently while he tried to summon the proper words.
“For Anakin,” Obi-Wan said at length, “there is nothing more important than friendship. He is the most loyal man I have ever met—loyal beyond reason, in fact. Despite all I have tried to teach him about the sacrifices that are the heart of being a Jedi, he—he will never, I think, truly understand.”
He looked over at Yoda. “Master Yoda, you and I have been close since I was a boy. An infant. Yet if ending this war one week sooner—one day sooner—were to require that I sacrifice your life, you know I would.”
“As you should,” Yoda said. “As I would yours, young Obi-Wan. As any Jedi would any other, in the cause of peace.”
“Any Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, “except Anakin.”
Yoda and Mace exchanged glances, both thoughtfully grim. Obi-Wan guessed they were remembering the times Anakin had violated orders—the times he had put at risk entire operations, the lives of thousands, the control of whole planetary systems—to save a friend.
More than once, in fact, to save Obi-Wan.
“I think,” Obi-Wan said carefully, “that abstractions like peace don’t mean much to him. He’s loyal to people, not to principles. And he expects loyalty in return. He will stop at nothing to save me, for example, because he thinks I would do the same for him.”
Mace and Yoda gazed at him steadily, and Obi-Wan had to lower his head.
“Because,” he admitted reluctantly, “he knows I would do the same for him.”
“Understand exactly where your concern lies, I do not.” Yoda’s green eyes had gone softly sympathetic. “Named must your fear be, before banish it you can. Do you fear that perform his task, he cannot?”
“Oh, no. That’s not it at all. I am firmly convinced that Anakin can do anything. Except betray a friend. What we have done to him today …”
“But that is what Jedi are,” Mace Windu said. “That is what we have pledged ourselves to: selfless service—”
Obi-Wan turned to stare once more toward the assault ship that would carry Yoda and the clone battalions to Kashyyyk, but he could see only Anakin’s face.
If he asked me to spy on you, do you think I would do it?
“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s why I don’t think he will ever trust us again.”
He found his eyes turning unaccountably hot, and his vision swam with unshed tears.
“And I’m not entirely sure he should.”
NOT FROM A JEDI
The sunset over Galactic City was stunning tonight: enough particulates from the fires remained in the capital planet’s atmosphere to splinter the light of its distant blue-white sun into a prismatic smear across multilayered clouds.
Anakin barely noticed.
On the broad curving veranda that doubled as the landing deck for Padmé’s apartment, he watched from the shadows as Padmé stepped out of her speeder and graciously accepted Captain Typho’s good night. As Typho flew the vehicle off toward the immense residential tower’s speeder park, she dismissed her two handmaidens and sent C-3PO on some busywork errand, then turned to lean on the veranda’s balcony right where Anakin had leaned last night.
She gazed out on the sunset, but he gazed only at her.
This was all he needed. To be here, to be with her. To watch the sunset bring a blush to her ivory skin.
If not for his dreams, he’d withdraw from the Order today. Now. The Lost Twenty would be the Lost Twenty-One. Let the scandal come; it wouldn’t destroy their lives. Not their real lives. It would destroy only the lives they’d had before each other: those separate years that now meant nothing at all.
He said softly, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She jumped as if he’d pricked her with a needle. “Anakin!”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled fondly