Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (27 page)

"Me?" Couldn't everyone leave him alone for day? For even a few hours? "What for?"

"Your Jedi senses, Anakin. Your ability to read evil intent. I have no doubt these Senators will put some virtuous facade on their plotting; with your help, we will pierce that veil and discover the truth."

Anakin sighed, rubbing his stinging eyes. How could he let Palpatine down? "I'm willing to try, sir."

"We won't try, Anakin. We will do. After all, they are only Senators. Most of them couldn't hide what they're thinking from a brain-damaged blindworm, let alone the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy."

He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers pensively. "The Jedi Council, however, is another matter entirely. A secret society of antidemocratic beings who wield tremendous power individually as well as collectively-how am I to trace the labyrinth of their plots? That's why I put you on the Council. If these rumors are true, you may be democracy's last hope."

Anakin let his chin sink once more to his chest, and his eyelids scraped shut. It seemed like he was always somebody's last hope.

Why did everyone always have to make their problems into his problems? Why couldn't people just let him be?

How was he supposed to deal with all this when Padme could die:

He said slowly, eyes still closed, "You still haven't told me what this has to do with Obi-Wan."

"Ah, that-well, that is the difficult part. The disturbing part. It seems that Master Kenobi has been in contact with a certain Senator who is known to be among the leaders of this cabal. Apparently, very close contact. The rumor is that he was seen leaving this Senator's residence this very morning, at an ... unseemly hour."

"Who?" Anakin opened his eyes and sat forward. "Who is this Senator? Let's go question him."

"I'm sorry, Anakin. But the Senator in question is, in fact, a her. A woman you know quite well, in fact."

"You-" He wasn't hearing this. He couldn't be. "You mean-"

Anakin choked on her name.

Palpatine gave him a look of melancholy sympathy. "I'm afraid so."

Anakin coughed his voice back to life. "That's impossible! I would know-she doesn't . . . she couldn't-"

"Sometimes the closest," Palpatine said sadly, "are those who cannot see."

Anakin sat back, stunned. He felt like he'd been punched in the chest by a Gamorrean. By a rancor. His ears rang, and the room whirled around him.

"I would know," he repeated numbly. "I would know ..."

"Don't take it too hard," Palpatine said. "It may be only idle gossip. All this may be only a figment of my overheated imagination; after all these years of war, I find myself inspecting every shadow that might hide an enemy. That is what I need from you, Anakin: I need you to find the truth. To set my mind at rest."

A distant smolder kindled under Anakin's breastbone, so faint as to be barely there at all, but even a hint of that fire gave Anakin the strength to throw himself to his feet.

"I can do that," he said.

The flame grew stronger now. Hotter. The numb fatigue that had dragged at his limbs began to burn away.

"Good, Anakin. I knew I could count on you."

"Always, sir. Always."

He turned to go. He would go to her. He would see her. He would get the truth. He would do it now. Right now. In the middle of the day. It didn't matter who might see him.

This was business.

"I know who my friends are," he said, and left.

He moved through Padme's apartment like a shadow, like a ghost at a banquet. He touched nothing. He looked at everything.

He felt as if he'd never seen it before.

How could she do this to him?

Sometimes the closest are those who cannot see.

How could she?

How could he!

In the Force, the whole apartment stank of Obi-Wan.

His finger traced the curving back of her couch.

Here. Obi-Wan had sat here.

Anakin rounded the couch and settled into that same spot His hand fell naturally to the seat beside him . . . and there he felt an echo of Padme.

The dragon whispered, That's a little close for casual conversation.

This was a different kind of fear. Even colder. Even uglier.

Fear that Palpatine might be right . . .

The apartment's air still hummed with discord and worry and there was a smell of oxidized spices and boiled seaweed hoi-broth, that was it. Someone in the past few hours had been drinking hoi-broth in this room.

Padme hated hoi-broth.

And Obi-Wan was allergic to it-once on a diplomatic mission to Ando, his violent reaction to a ceremonial toast had nearly triggered an intersystem incident.

So Padme had been entertaining other visitors, too.

From a pocket on his equipment belt he pulled a flimsi of Palpatine's list of suspect Senators. He scanned down the list, looking for names of Senators he knew well enough that he might recognize the Force-echoes of their presence here. Many he'd never heard of; there were thousands of Senators, after all. But those he knew by reputation were the cream of the Senate: people like Terr Taneel, Fang Zar, Bail Organa, Garm Bel Iblis-He began to think Palpatine was just imagining things after all. These beings were known to be incorruptible.

He frowned down at the flimsi. It was possible . . .

A Senator might carefully construct a reputation, appearing to all the galaxy as honest and upright and honorable, all the while holding the rotten truth of himself so absolutely secret that no one would sense his evil until he had so much power that it was too late to stop him . . .

It was possible.

But so many? Could they all have accomplished that?

Could Padme?

Suspicion leaked back into his mind and gathered itself into so thick a cloud that he didn't sense her approach until she was already in the room.

"Anakin? What are you doing here? It's still the middle of the afternoon . . ."

He looked up to find her standing in the archway in full Senatorial regalia: heavy folds of burgundy robes and a coif like a starfighter's hyperdrive ring. Instead of a smile, instead of sunlight in her eyes, instead of the bell-clear joy with which she had always greeted him, her face was nearly expressionless: attentively blank.

Anakin called it her Politician Look, and he hated it. "Waiting for you," he replied, a little unsteadily. "What are you doing here in the middle of the afternoon?"

"I have a very important meeting in two hours," she said stiffly. "I left a document reader here this morning-"

"This meeting-is it with the Chancellor?" Anakin's voice came out low and harsh. "Is it his last meeting of the afternoon?"

"Y-yes, yes it is." She frowned, blinking. "Anakin, what's-"

"I have to be there, too." He crumpled the flimsi and stuffed it back into his equipment belt. "I'm starting to look forward to it."

"Anakin, what is it?" She came toward him, one hand reaching for him. "What's wrong?"

He lurched to his feet. "Obi-Wan's been here, hasn't he?"

"He came by this morning." She stopped. Her hand slowly lowered back to her side. "Why?"

"What did you talk about?"

"Anakin, why are you acting like this?" One long stride brought him to her. He towered over her. For one stretching second she looked very small, very insignificant, very much like some kind of bug that he could crush beneath his heel and just keep on walking. "What did you talk about?"

She gazed steadily up at him, and on her face was only concern, shaded with growing hurt. "We talked about you."

"What about me?"

"He's worried about you, Anakin. He says you're under a lot of stress."

"And he's not?"

"The way you've been acting, since you got back-"

"I'm not the one doing the acting. I'm not the one doing the pretending! I'm not the one sneaking in here in the morning!"

"No," she said with a smile. She reached up to lay the palm of her hand along the line of his jaw. "That's usually when you're sneaking out.''

Her touch unclenched his heart.

He half fell into a chair and pressed the edge of his flesh hand against his eyes.

When he could overcome his embarrassment enough to speak, he said softly, "I'm sorry, Padme. I'm sorry. I know I've been . . . difficult to deal with. I just-I feel like I'm in free fall. Free fall in the dark. I don't know which way is up. I don't know where I'll be when I land. Or crash."

He frowned against his fingers, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut to make sure no tears leaked out. "I think it's going to be a crash."

She sat on the wide-rolled arm of his chair and laid her slim arm along his shoulders. "What has happened, my love? You've always been so sure of yourself. What's changed?"

"Nothing," he said. "Everything. I don't know. It's all so screwed up, I can't even tell you. The Council doesn't trust me, Palpatine doesn't trust the Council. They're plotting against each other and both sides are pressuring me, and-"

"Surely that's only your imagination, Anakin. The Jedi Council is the bedrock of the Republic."

"The bedrock of the Republic is democracy, Padme-something the Council doesn't much like when votes don't go their way. All those who gain power are afraid to lose it-that's something you should remember." He looked up at her. "You and your friends in the Senate."

She took this without a blink. "But Obi-Wan is on the Council; he'd never participate in anything the least bit underhanded-"

"You think so?"

Because it's not for the record, Anakin. You must be able to understand why.

He shook the memory away. "It doesn't matter. Obi-Wan's on his way to Utapau."

"What is this really about?"

"I don't know,'' he said helplessly. "I don't know anything anymore. All I know is, I'm not the Jedi I should be. I'm not the man I should be."

"You're the man for me," she said, leaning toward him to kiss his cheek, but he pulled away.

"You don't understand. Nobody understands. I'm one of the most powerful Jedi alive, but it's not enough. It'll never be enough, not until-"

His voice trailed away, and his eyes went distant, and his memory burned with an alien birthing table, and blood, and screams.

"Until what, my love?"

"Until I can save you," he murmured.

"Save me?"

"From my nightmares."

She smiled sadly. "Is that what's bothering you?"

"I won't lose you, Padme. I can't." He sat forward and twisted to take both of her hands, small and soft and deceptively strong and beyond precious, between his own. "I am still learning, Padme-I have found a key to truths deeper than the Jedi could ever teach me. I will become so powerful that I will keep you safe. Forever. I will."

"You don't need more power, Anakin." She gently extricated one of her hands and used it to draw him close. "I believe you can save me from anything, just as you are."

She pulled him to her and their lips met, and Anakin gave himself to the kiss, and while it lasted, he believed it, too.

A shroud of twilight lowered upon Galactic City.

Anakin stood at what a clone trooper would have called parade rest-a wide, balanced stance, feet parallel, hands clasped behind his back. He stood one pace behind and to the left of the chair where Palpatine sat, behind his broad desk in the small private office attached to his large public one.

On the other side of the desk stood the Senate delegation.

The way they had looked at him, when they had entered the office-the way their eyes still, even now, flicked to his, then away again before he could fully meet their gaze-the way none of them, not even Padme, dared to ask why the Supreme Chancellor had a Jedi at his shoulder during what was supposed to be a private meeting ... it seemed to him that they already guessed why he was here.

They were simply afraid to bring it up.

Now they couldn't be sure where the Jedi stood. The only thing that was clear was where Anakin stood-Respectfully in attendance upon Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

Anakin studied the Senators.

Fang Zar: face creased with old laugh lines, dressed in robes so simple they might almost be homespun, unruly brush of hair gathered into a tight topknot, and an even more unruly brush of beard that sprayed uncontrolled around his jaw. He had a gentle, almost simplistic way of speaking that could easily lead one to forget that he was one of the sharpest political minds in the Senate. Also, he was such a close friend of Garm Bel Iblis that the powerful Corellian Senator might as well have been present in person.

Anakin had watched him closely throughout the meeting. Fang Zar had something on his mind, that was certain-something that he did not seem willing to say.

Nee Alavar and Male-Dee he could dismiss as threats; the two stood together-perhaps needing each other for moral support-and neither had said anything at all. And then, of course, there was Padme.

Glowing in her Senatorial regalia, the painted perfection of her face luminous as all four of Coruscant's moons together, not a single hair out of place in her elaborate coif-Speaking in her Politician Voice, and wearing her Politician Look.

Padme did the talking. Anakin had a sickening suspicion that this was all her idea.

"We are not attempting to delegitimize your government," she was saying. "That's why we're here. If we were trying to organize an opposition-if we sought to impose our requests as demands-we would hardly bring them before you in this fashion. This petition has been signed by two thousand Senators, Chancellor. We ask only that you instruct your governors not to interfere with the legitimate business of the Senate, and that you open peace talks with the Separatists. We seek only to end the war, and bring peace and stability back to our homeworlds. Surely you can understand this."

"I understand a great many things," Palpatine said.

"This system of governors you have created is very troubling-it seems that you are imposing military controls even on loyalist systems."

"Your reservations are noted, Senator Amidala. I assure you that the Republic governors are intended only to make your systems safer-by coordinating planetary defense forces, and ensuring that neighboring systems mesh into cooperative units, and bringing production facilities up to speed in service to the war effort. That's all. They will in no way compete with the duties and prerogatives-with the power-of the Senate."