the name and face of Master Zallow’s murderer. She wanted to see him. She had to see him. And if she could see the Sith, learn his name, then she could avenge Master Zallow.
The more she pondered the notion, the more needful it became.
But she could learn nothing on Alderaan, as part of a peace negotiation. She knew what Zym, Dar’nala, and Am-ris would decide, what they must decide. They would put up a show of negotiating, then they would accept whatever terms the Sith offered. They would betray the memory of Master Zallow, of all the Jedi who had fought and fallen at the Temple.
It was obscene, and Aryn would not be party to it.
Unable to contain her emotion, she shouted a stream of expletives, one after another, a wide and long river of profanity of the kind she had not uttered since her adolescence.
Moments later, an urgent knock sounded on her door.
“Who is it?” she called, her voice still rough and irritable.
“It is Syo. Are you … well? I heard—”
“It was the vid,” she lied, and powered off the vidscreen. “I want to be alone now, Syo.”
A long silence, then, “You don’t have to carry this alone, Aryn.”
But she did have to carry it alone. The memory of Master Zallow was her weight to bear.
“You know where to find me,” Syo said.
“Thank you,” she said, too softly for him to hear.
She passed the hours in solitude. Day gave way to night and no word came from Master Dar’nala or Satele. She tried to sleep but failed. She dreaded what the morning would bring.
She lay in her bed, in darkness, staring up at the ceiling. Alderaan’s moon, gibbous and hazy, rose and painted the room in lurid light. Everything looked washed out, ghostly, surreal. For a moment she let herself feel as if she’d stepped into a dream. How else could matters have transpired so? How else could the Jedi have failed so?
Master Dar’nala’s voice replayed in her mind, over and over: I fear we will have no choice.
The pain of the words came from the fact that they were correct. The Jedi could not sacrifice Coruscant. The Republic and the Jedi Council would accept a treaty. They had to. All that remained was to negotiate terms, terms that must be favorable to the Empire. In the end, the Empire’s betrayal, the Sith betrayal, would be rewarded with a Jedi capitulation.
While Aryn recognized the reasonableness of the course, she nevertheless could not shed the feeling that it was wrong. Master Dar’nala was wrong. Senator Am-ris was wrong.
Such a thought had never entered her mind before. It, too, brought pain. Everything had changed for her.
Her fists balled with anger and grief, and she felt more shouts creeping up her throat. Breathing deeply, regularly, she sought to quell her loss of control. She knew Master Zallow would not have approved it.
But Master Zallow was dead, murdered by the Sith.
And soon he would be failed by the Order, his memory murdered by political necessity.
Her mind walked through memories of Master Zallow, not of his teachings, but of his smiles, his stern but caring reprimands of her waywardness, the pride she knew he’d felt when she was promoted to Jedi Knight.
Those were the things that had bonded them, not pedagogy.
The hole that had opened in her when she’d felt his death yawned still. She feared she might drain away into it. She knew the name of the hole.
Love.
She’d loved Master Zallow. He’d been a father to her. She had never told him and now she never could. Losing something she loved had ripped her open in a way she had not expected. The pain hurt, but the pain was right.
The Order had wrought a galaxy in which good capitulated to evil, where human feelings—Aryn’s feelings—were crushed under the weight of Jedi nonattachment.
What good was any of it if it brought matters to this?
Her racing thoughts lifted her from bed. She was too restless for sleep. She put her feet on the carpeted floor, hung her head, tried to gather the thoughts bouncing chaotically in her brain.
She realized that she still wore her robes, not her nightclothes. She crossed the room and stepped through the sliding doors to her balcony. The brisk wind mussed her hair. The scent of wildflowers and loam saturated the air. Insects chirped. A night bird cooed.
It would have been peaceful under other circumstances.
A hundred meters down, the Alderaanian landscape unrolled before her, a meadow of tall grasses, shrubs, and