was for you, Arigo.”
He would still have some explaining to do, but at least he’d taken care of the ambushers. That had to be worth something to The Exchange.
Or so he hoped.
DARTH MALGUS STRODE THE AUTOWALK, the steady rap of his boots on the pavement the tick of a chrono counting down the limited time remaining to the Republic.
Speeders, swoops, and aircars roared above him in unending streams, the motorized circulatory system of the Republic’s heart. Skyrises, bridges, lifts, and plazas covered the entire surface of Coruscant to a height of kilometers, all of it the trappings of a wealthy, decadent civilization, a sheath that sought to hide the rot in a cocoon of duracrete and transparisteel.
But Malgus smelled the decay under the veneer, and he would show them the price of weakness, of complacency.
Soon it would all burn.
He would lay waste to Coruscant. He knew this. He had known it for decades.
Memories floated up from the depths of his mind. He recalled his first pilgrimage to Korriban, remembered the profound sense of holiness he had felt as he walked in isolation through its rocky deserts, through the dusty canyons lined with the tombs of his ancient Sith forebears. He had felt the Force everywhere, had exulted in it, and in his isolation it had showed him a vision. He had seen systems in flames, the fall of a galaxy-spanning government.
He had believed then, had known then and ever since, that the destruction of the Jedi and their Republic would fall to him.
“What are you thinking of, Veradun?” Eleena asked him.
Only Eleena called him by his given name, and only when they were alone. He enjoyed the smooth way the syllables rolled off her tongue and lips, but he tolerated it from no others.
“I am thinking of fire,” he said, the hated respirator partially muffling his voice.
She walked beside him, as beautiful and dangerous as an elegantly crafted lanvarok. She clucked her tongue at his words, eyed him sidelong, but said nothing. Her lavender skin looked luminescent in the setting sun.
Crowds thronged the plaza in which they walked, laughing, scowling, chatting. A human child, a young girl, caught Malgus’s eye when she squealed with delight and ran to the waiting arms of a dark-haired woman, presumably her mother. The girl must have felt his gaze. She looked at him from over her mother’s shoulder, her small face pinched in a question. He stared at her as he walked and she looked away, burying her face in her mother’s neck.
Other than the girl, no one else marked his passage. The citizens of the Republic felt safe so deep in the Core, and the sheer number of beings on Coruscant granted him anonymity. He walked among his prey, cowled, armored under his cloak, unnoticed and unknown, but heavy with purpose.
“This is a beautiful world,” Eleena said.
“Not for very much longer.”
His words seemed to startle her, though he could not imagine why. “Veradun …”
He saw her swallow, look away. Whatever words she intended after his name seemed stuck on the scar that marred her throat.
“You may speak your mind, Eleena.”
Still she looked away, taking in the scenery around them, as if memorizing Coruscant before Malgus and the Empire lit it aflame.
“When will the fighting end?”
The premise of the question confounded him. “What do you mean?”
“Your life is war, Veradun. Our life. When will it end? It cannot always be so.”
He nodded then, understanding the flavor of the conversation to come. She would try to disguise self-perceived wisdom behind questions. As usual, he was of two minds about it. On the one hand, she was but a servant, a woman who provided him companionship when he wished it. On the other hand, she was Eleena. His Eleena.
“You choose to fight beside me, Eleena. You have killed many in the name of the Empire.”
The lavender skin of her cheeks darkened to purple. “I have not killed for the Empire. I fight, and kill, for you. You know this. But you … you fight for the Empire? Only for the Empire?”
“No. I fight because that is what I was made to do and the Empire is the instrument through which I realize my purpose. The Empire is war made manifest. That is why it is perfect.”
She shook her head. “Perfect? Millions die in its wars. Billions.”
“Beings die in war. That is the price that must be paid.”
She stared at a group of children following an adult, perhaps a teacher. “The price for what? Why constant war?