Temptation of the force, p.25
Temptation of the Force, page 25
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Cair San Tekka said a little loudly, “How would everybody feel about a little lullaby? Ino will bring my dulcimer, and there are a few soothing tunes I can play one-handed.” His smile was tired but his eyes bright.
Before Avar could concur, her gaze swung to the door. Elzar.
She felt him suddenly. Nearby. Headed her way.
A lightness filled her up like carbonation, expanding in her heart. The doors to the covered patio were flung open, the real wood thumping hard against the marble wall.
But Xylan Graf filled the doorway, hands gripping the carved frame, electric-blue eyes darting around the room at every relaxed figure until they landed on one human.
“Cair San Tekka,” Xylan said. “I absolutely forbid you to keep giving me these kinds of shocks or—”
He was interrupted by a high-pitched canine whine as the mass of the snow dog Plinka heaved herself up, trying to canter nearer. Xylan’s face went big in shock.
“What have you done to my sweet baby?” he gasped as he ran for Plinka, hands out to catch her stumble. Xylan grunted as he helped Plinka lower back down, murmuring at her and stroking around her bandage.
Just as surprised, Cair’s eyes widened. “You’re here.”
Xylan ignored him, tugging his dog’s fluffy ear.
“She—she’ll be fine,” Cair said, using a cane to drag himself to his feet. His missing prosthetic had yet to be found, but he’d clearly made time to bathe so that it was only the hints of bruises and cuts that marred his features, no remaining blood spatter. “She’s resilient, and besides, I took care of her.”
With his hands dug into Plinka’s fur, Xylan stood, too. He glared at his husband. “Cair.”
“Xylan.”
Avar would have looked away, except the next instant, Cair flung himself at Xylan, and the Graf caught him with a soft oof.
They were sweet, filling her with gladness, relief, and yearning—until she realized her feelings weren’t coming from only her own heart. The pull was clear. She glanced toward the door again.
There was Elzar Mann, looking right back at her.
Avar let her own relief and yearning guide her steps as she moved with purpose to Elzar. He started to say something, but Avar reached up, took his face, and kissed him.
Just a light, quick kiss, and she lowered off her toes to smile at him.
Elzar was gobsmacked. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened into saucers.
Avar laughed. She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned in, pressing her cheek to his while he collected himself.
A moment was all it took for Elzar to hug her back, tucking his head against hers. “Avar,” he said. Avar opened up completely to the Force and thought, Elzar.
The crash of his song rattled through her pleasantly, and she heard—felt—her name again and again, in the throb of his heartbeat and the rhythm of his tide.
For a long moment they breathed together, the Force flowing through them as if sewing them together. Avar leaned back, finding his hands. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me.” Avar kept one of his hands and pulled him with her out the door into the corridor. She didn’t really know where she was taking him, but she listened to the Force and dragged him along until she found a room that seemed to be an office. Intact shelves with old-style scrolls and books—actually bound—as well as a huge desk fit with several holo stations and a soft-looking chair. The office had a balcony, as befitting Naboo architecture and aesthetics. Avar shoved open the translucent door and brought Elzar with her to the rail. Wind dragged her hair from her loose braids and snapped the edges of Elzar’s mission robes.
They stood for a moment in the darkness, in the reflected glow of stars and external security lights. Elzar leaned against her and said, “We did it.”
“We did.”
“And…I think I…I wanted to tell you, I realize it’s messy. I’m working for balance, but it’s messy.” Elzar shook his head. “I push, sometimes in dangerous directions, but it’s all I know how to do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s taken me to dark places, Avar, you know that. I…think I’m getting closer to understanding why. That dark comes with the light. What keeps me driving toward the light keeps the shadows right there, too.”
“You sound like you’ve already broken into the wine.” Avar squeezed his hand.
Elzar laughed a little. “I need my feelings. Hope. Compassion. Even if they keep me on the edge—the edge is where I do my best work.”
“Yes,” Avar agreed. “It is. Knowing that about you inspires me, El. Makes me better. You thrive when you can push and drag us with you to new places. You find the light in those edges. Your problem has been pushing without the right anchor, without something that keeps you focused on the light so that when you fall over an edge, it’s to the light that you leap first. And when you asked me to be your anchor, I wasn’t ready.”
Elzar hummed thoughtfully. “Do you think Stellan was ready?”
“He was born ready,” Avar said, because they both knew it was a joke. Ah, she missed him. It ached, and Avar looked out into the sky, craning her neck, and let go of the ache. Every time it hurt, she had to let it go. Not ignore it or pretend it didn’t hurt—only let it pass through her.
Just like love. Accept it, embrace it, let it pass through and be part of her. Oh. Avar realized Elzar was asking her to do the pushing now, into something he was almost ready for. She had to answer. It was bursting out of her.
“What’s your problem been, Avar?” he asked.
“Any guesses?”
“You bring people together, through the Force, through your charm and power…and then you forget yourself. It’s the opposite of me, maybe,” Elzar added with a light frown.
“That makes us a good balance for each other,” Avar said, and she wrapped her hands around the back of his neck to tug him closer. Then Avar kissed him again.
This time it wasn’t sweet and gentle; it was filled with intent.
Avar pushed her mouth against Elzar’s, gripping his head. She tilted and did her best. It had been a long time. But Avar wanted to taste him again, to give him this piece of her that nobody but Elzar had ever come so close to. Even if it was awkward, or messy as he said. She wanted to push and take. There wasn’t anyone else alive she trusted with this.
Once, she’d refused him. More than once. Elzar had always been the one asking. Avar thought it wasn’t their duty, it wasn’t who they’d chosen to be, so she had to refuse.
But if she’d learned anything about the Force in the past years, living and cosmic, it was that the Force reached. The Force connected. This kiss, this need in her—in them—was a way of sharing that connection.
Avar had all the arguments right there at the ready, sparking in her mind as she kissed Elzar.
He drew back, gasping a little. “Avar,” he whispered.
“Elzar.”
Their names could be enough in these shadowy close quarters. The frayed ends of their friendship eager to be knotted back together, a braid of Avar, Elzar, their pasts, Stellan, the song and tide of the Force. Waiting for Elzar to welcome it back.
Avar felt incredible.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Elzar said, pushing away.
Avar blinked.
He was shaking his head. “I’ll be consumed. I won’t survive it, Avar.” His voice was so sad, so lost.
“Tell me,” she said, holding his face.
Elzar took a deep breath. He didn’t try to move away. “I already struggle so much with attachment. With fighting back the grim desperation of the dark side. I struggle with selfishness, with impulses. I want this. I want you. I always have. I don’t think I’ve known you without wanting you, Avar.”
Avar couldn’t help the little smile that flickered over her mouth at the sheer romance of his words. “But,” she prompted gently.
“I’m trying to be better. To let the Force beat a rhythm in me, like you said. Flow through me. I’m trying to lean toward the light by accepting that I have this pull to the dark. That it’s part of me. And I think I’m doing it. Coming to terms with the presence of darkness. The understanding is making me stronger. A better Jedi. I’m worried that giving in to this desire will make it harder again. What if something happens to you? I’d already be lost as it is, but if I take more, if we become…more…” Elzar’s eyes drifted shut. He took a shuddering breath. “I’m afraid of what I might do. This is why we—the Jedi—avoid attachments. I’m a case study for it.” Elzar laughed a little.
“All right, Elzar,” Avar murmured, stroking his cheeks. “I’m here for you, however you need me—or don’t. As long as you’re saying my name, that’s all I need. But it’s time for me to tell you something else. Something I just know, fundamentally. May I?”
He stared at her for a moment, almost wary. But Elzar Mann was nothing if not brave. He nodded. “Yes. Tell me anything.”
There were so many things she could say, that she wanted to explain. Her whirling thoughts, where they should go next, what the Jedi should do with this strange win, her feelings of rest, the key change in the song of the Force. She could use the moment, the battles they’d just fought. They’d changed Naboo, changed lives, injured and killed, lived and survived, the Lightning Crash was gone but the Stormwall remained. The hope here was surrounded by darkness; the change was no more than a kiss, both insignificant and intrinsic.
But there was only one thing Avar needed to tell him that he also needed to hear.
“I love you,” she said, breaking into a smile.
Elzar exhaled hard and fast.
Avar slid her hands back and gripped his hair. “I’ve struggled with it, too. Thought it was dangerous, selfish, something to be carved out. That’s a common interpretation of what we’re taught. But that’s also too easy of an answer. That love is attachment, that it’s selfish, possessive. It isn’t. I was wrong. Those things are real, and dangerous to Jedi, to anyone, but they aren’t love. In my worst moments, I’ve loved you. In my greatest grief and failure, I still loved you, and it didn’t turn me down the wrong path—it’s what got me back onto my feet. I stood back up and reached back. Loved back—people, the Force, watched hope spread and beings all over the galaxy keep fighting, keep trying. That’s love. That’s the purest form of light. How can a sliver of it here between us be wrong?”
A tremor of something shook Elzar. He didn’t look away.
She got even closer, so all she could see were the galaxies in his eyes. “I love you, so much, and it’s not a hindrance. Attachment, possessiveness—those are hindrances because they limit a Jedi’s potential. They make the galaxy smaller. But love is limitless, Elzar. Just like the Force itself is limitless. There’s no end to it!” Avar laughed a little. “If there was an end to the Force, to love, to hope, don’t you think we’d have found it in the last few years? But we’re black holes for love. Unending notes and bottomless seas. We make the galaxy bigger with love, with the Force bursting inside us.”
Avar kissed him again. His beard tickled her lips, and she brushed them along his jaw.
Then she dropped her hands and stepped back. “I love you,” she said a third time. “It’s part of me forever. The way the Force and light are part of me forever. Nothing—not distance or grief or death—could end it.” With a helpless, smiling shrug, Avar added, “That’s all I needed to say.”
“All,” Elzar said hoarsely.
Avar nodded. She reset her expression into something more neutral, simpler. But she was certain her feelings shone in her eyes.
Elzar stepped forward into the space between them that she had created. He grabbed her and kissed her, crushing them together. Avar held on to his wrists and opened up to him.
The kiss lasted only an electric moment before Elzar stumbled away. “I…” He put his hand to his mouth, “I have to go.”
Before Avar could reply, he fled. She was alone on the balcony, but it was all right. She felt Elzar solidly even as he ran away from her. He had to leave her, too, so that he could come back.
Avar leaned onto the rail with her eyes closed, listening to the Force, to the song of light filling her—and the whole galaxy—up.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Gaze Electric, Inside the Occlusion Zone
It was morning somewhere. A sun—or two—were rising, burning off fog from a lake. Birds flocked to tall grass, while rodents shuffled in the detritus. Predators were quiet, waiting—patient, ready for blood.
There wouldn’t be blood on the Gaze Electric today, but Marchion Ro remembered the smell of it permeating the walls.
He glanced at the chrono to confirm that yes, it was finally morning somewhere in particular. Theed. The capital city of Naboo.
Standing before his throne in the vast dark hall of the Gaze, Ro stripped off his cape and draped it over the jagged back. His helmet propped near the foot, he dropped his jacket and then his shirt over it. He reclined, naked to the waist, and activated the control panel in the thick left arm of the throne. Rather lazily, he tapped in his oldest security code, then brought up the Stormwall controls. The holomap shivered to life all around him, a necklace of tiny stormseeds, the slice of his galaxy right in his lap.
With a satisfied but tiny smile, he commanded the ship to give him access to the tangle of Paths. This slippery tech looked like nothing but a wild batch of numbers, a cluster of chaos—all of it the deeply layered result of Mari San Tekka’s strange, brilliant mind.
Ro’s code turned one string of numbers into a bloody line. Mari’s home key. The Path that tied the rest together.
Well, one of them.
Deactivating the Stormwall holo, Marchion opened the compartment in the right arm of his throne. One of several, this one always housed a blaster, sometimes a lightsaber or two, and a small platinum mirror.
He took the mirror and held it out, catching the dull bluish light from the arcing ceiling, pulling it to him, though he hardly needed it to see clearly with his Evereni eyes.
The Gaze shuddered around him.
Exiting hyperspace didn’t usually cause so much internal distortion, but with most of the ship’s capacity aimed at powering the Stormwall, such things were bound to be bumpy. Fortunately, Ro didn’t mind getting a little rough.
His orders were to orbit Hetzal and get up-to-date information on the edges of his territory as well as drag the Nihil in charge of the new crystal array up here to answer his questions in person. Then his Tempests were to ready themselves for new Stormwall codes and stand down until they received them. But that would take a few minutes. Time enough for his little surprise.
Ro angled the mirror toward his torso.
Silvery lines decorated his gray skin, stretching in lines like webs, arcing constellations. Star charts carved into his flesh.
He remembered the day when he was held down, his jaw clenched so hard he thought his teeth might crack. He’d refused to scream even as the pain built and grew, the sensational burning never quite going numb, never quite flipping over into adrenaline or euphoria. Lines were etched and numbers needled in, an array of the galaxy with a few very important codes. The sinews of his own body built into the foundation.
His father had watched. Mari San Tekka had been propped up against Asgar’s side, her hand gripping his shoulder until her already pale fingers whitened. Asgar’s hand was inexplicably tender under Mari’s elbow, holding her. Marchion hated Asgar even harder for it. But Mari’s eyes had been all on him, on Marchion, so focused that she saw nothing but math and possibilities in him—on him. “There,” she whispered. “This.” She murmured words from languages Ro never knew—or couldn’t quite grasp through the searing pain.
Back then, the design had blurred under the smear of his dark blood—the most he had ever shed. The lines had been raw. Angry.
In the mirror now, the result was beautiful.
Sometimes Marchion Ro wished that instead of his father or grandmother or great-great-grandmother, he would be visited by Mari.
He found the lines he needed, the numbers cut into his skin, just for him: a pretty bouquet of a star chart, of coordinates, a Path. The oldest Path.
Marchion Ro had the Gaze bring back the holo of the Stormwall Paths, and stared at the thin bloody line of Mari’s home key.
He used a claw to erase it, and then carefully, one little number at a time, inputted the new one from his body. When it was finished, Ro touched the command restart. With not even a momentary blip, the Stormwall seamlessly rearranged its Path codes around the new key—the original Path—and in the next moment, the central relay sent out its fractal impulses.
The Jedi had found Mari’s secret somehow—treachery, hope, luck—but this new one could be discovered only on his dead body.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Naboo, Inside the Occlusion Zone
Cair woke up the way he’d woken up for the past two years, give or take a week: alone. At first it didn’t strike him as out of the ordinary. He was used to it. Then a rustling from the other side of the room and a familiar quiet scoff reminded him that yesterday his husband had shown up with a fleet of Republic ships and Jedi in order to rescue him.
Propping himself up on his elbows, he glanced over at Xylan, fully dressed and coiffed, going through Cair’s wardrobe. It was the one he’d gathered in the past couple of months while playing the lazy San Tekka scion, so most of it was brightly colored silkensteen or the sort of fancy fellwool that glimmered—not the clothes he kept tucked away here and there for his real work. “Xylan? What are you doing?”
