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Pestage glanced at the appointments secretary. “Really? I wasn’t informed.”

“You mostly certainly were informed,” Padmé said, “since the appointment was secured through your office.”

“Several of us have risked much and traveled great distances,” Eekway added.

Pestage spread his hands in a patronizing way. “Such times require sacrifices, Senator. Or perhaps you feel you’ve risked more than the Supreme Chancellor has.”

Bail spoke up. “No one is implying that the Supreme Chancellor has been anything but tireless in his … devotion. But the fact remains that he agreed to see us, and we’re not about to leave here until he honors his pledge.”

“We’re not asking for much of his time,” Terr Taneel said, in a more placating tone.

“Maybe not, but you must realize how busy he is. What with new developments occurring daily.” Pestage looked at Bail. “I understand you’ve become quite friendly with the Jedi Council. Why not visit with them while I attempt to reschedule you?”

Anger mottled Bail’s bearded face. “We’re not leaving until we see him, Sate.”

Pestage forced a smile. “As is your prerogative, Senator.”

The shuttle whose landing lights had caught Obi-Wan’s attention on Cato Neimoidia carried more than Intelligence analysts and technicians. Yoda was aboard, eager to see for himself what Obi-Wan and Anakin had discovered.

The technicians had succeeded in inducing the mechno-chair’s holoprojector to replay the image of Lord Sidious, and Republic cryptographers working with the Jedi were confident that the unique device would yield even greater secrets once it was relocated to Coruscant and examined thoroughly.

Refusing to let the mechno-chair out of his sight, Anakin had demanded to oversee its transfer to the waiting shuttle. Feeling unnecessary, Obi-Wan and Yoda decided to take a stroll down the corridor of Viceroy Gunray’s now appropriated palace. The venerable Jedi Master was pensive as they walked, the silence broken only by the sounds of distant blasterfire and the tick, tick of Yoda’s gimer stick as it struck the polished floor.

Yoda was unreadable.

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure if Yoda was pondering the image of Sidious, or the fact that two Jedi had been killed during the fighting on Cato Neimoidia. Every day saw more Jedi die. Many were as shot up as the clone troopers. Wounded, blinded, scarred, deprived of arms or legs … patched up by bota and bacta. More than a thousand Padawans had lost their Masters; more than a thousand Masters, their Padawans. When Jedi gathered now they talked not about the Force, but about their military campaigns. New lightsabers were constructed not as a meditative exercise, but to handle the rigors of close combat.

Reaching the end of the long corridor, Obi-Wan and Yoda turned and started back. Without taking his eyes from the floor, Yoda said: “Found something important, you have, Obi-Wan. That Count Dooku is in league with someone, proof this is. That in this war a greater part the Sith play than we realize.”

The name Sidious had come up only once since the war began—on Geonosis, when Dooku had told an imprisoned Obi-Wan that a Sith Lord by that name had hundreds of Republic Senators under his influence. At the time, Obi-Wan assumed that Dooku was lying, in order to persuade Obi-Wan that he was still aligned with the Jedi, although attempting to thwart the powers of the dark side by his own methods. And yet, even after Dooku had revealed himself to be Sith-trained, Yoda and others on the Council continued to believe that he had been lying about Sidious. Two Council members were convinced that Dooku was the Dark Lord, having somehow tutored himself—by Sith Holocron, perhaps—in the use of dark side powers.

Now that Sidious appeared to be real, Obi-Wan didn’t know what to think.

A hunt for Dooku’s Sith allies had been going on almost since the start of the war. Dooku was known to have trained Jedi in the dark arts—Jedi Knights who had lost faith in the ideals of the Republic, Padawans fascinated by the power of the dark side,