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It was always better to have a good idea of the lay of the land before such knowledge or the lack of it would become vital or problematic. Such had Kavar been taught, such had he taught others, and such had he believed. Ignorance of the land left one vulnerable to all the traps which enemies could lay down in the undergrowth; ignorance would lead one straight into their grave.
He had no idea where the land might lay now. No idea. She had wandered in through the open, empty gates of the High Temple. She had greeted no one, and no one had greeted her; no one had dared approach her. Kavar had watched from afar, and he did not think she had ever noticed him. It was not until one of the guards finally overcame their fright and walked up to speak to her that she seemed even to know where she was supposed to go ahead of the trial. He wondered if she had even read the summons; the Dantooine Enclave had been her home, but she had spent enough time on Coruscant that she should have been able to find her way to the specified tower on her own.
In spite of his distance from her, he had felt it. Given how all others had reeled from her, he knew it to be no trick of his imagination. The light had seemed at times to pass straight through her small, thin body, but that was not it. That was not what made Kavar feel as if she was not really here, not what made him feel as if he was looking at a hologram of Kalani Nuna, Jedi Knight, General of the Republic, what-have-you, rather than the woman herself. That was not what inspired such a feeling at all.
He had no idea where the land might lay now. Everything had been thrown into disarray, unkind earthquake leveling buildings and raising fault lines in the streets, and a thorough assessment would have to wait for when all the dust had settled. But it was for Kavar to make preliminary observations. There was no one else who both knew her well enough and who actually wanted to do it to call upon.
All was silent as he knocked on her door. The tower had been set aside in the expectation that there would be hundreds of Jedi returning from the front to be judged; the tower had been set aside to keep them separate from those who had never strayed, to keep rumor from spreading rampant, to keep bugs from being planted, to keep whatever lies might be told by whoever might choose to tell them in check. Kavar had anticipated spending weeks, perhaps even months, bound to the Council Chamber for twelve hours at a stretch, every day, as case after case after case was judged. He had been looking forward to it about as much as he looked forward to dealing with those in the Senate who looked especially askance upon those in the Order who had not followed Revan into the Mandalorian wars.
But instead, all was silent. A tower which had been expected to house hundreds of Jedi instead played host only to one, who had taken the room at the very top of the spire and not budged from it once since that morning three days ago when she had first arrived. Who, Kavar realized upon spotting the plate left abandoned outside of the door, had not opened that door this afternoon even to collect her supper. He was reminded irresistibly of all of the stories of Princess Galia, who had languished often alone in her parents’ dreary palace in Iziz, forever watching the skies, forever hoping to catch sight of her lover flying from out of the wilds of Onderon to take her away, though the truth of this situation was far less like something out of a song.
He did not think he liked this better. He did not think he liked this better at all.
Why is it that only she returned? Now, why is that?
Even as Kavar bent down to pick up the plate, the bag hanging from his shoulder swung out, striking the door in lieu of a second knock, the first having been disregarded. And before he could even rise back up again, the door slid open.
“Who is—” Once Kalani was looking up at him, rather than down, recognition dawned upon her wan face. “Oh,” she said dully. “Hello, Kavar.”
They had seen each other in the flesh a handful of times since she had left to fight under Revan’s banner, and it seemed now that the transformation which had begun as she fought in the lawless jungles of Dxun was complete. Her eyes lit up briefly to see that it was him, but there was no spark there. She breathed, but it was the only proof of life he could spy. And all around her, the Force writhed and squirmed and screamed as if in an attempt to flee from her.
And within…
He could not look at what lied within. Coruscant tilted on its axis whenever he tried.
“You haven’t eaten,” he remarked. Words were currently determined to fail him; this was all he could manage.
She blinked a few times, seeming to need to think about it before she could marshal any sort of answer. At last, she shook her head, murmuring, “I ate at breakfast.”
“And here is your supper—” the plate, he held out to her, eyebrow raised “—which you have apparently neglected for quite some time.”
Gaze straying to the hints of red light glimmering at the edges of her shut blinds, Kalani took the plate from him and grimaced. Her reflection in the glazed pottery of the plate shivered and scattered quickly. “This will be stone cold by now.”
“It would not have been cold if you had taken it when it was brought to you. Now, come, you need sustenance as much as any other."
It was easy, Kavar thought as he followed her inside her dark, quiet room, to fall back into the pattern they had occupied years ago—that of a worried teacher scolding a child who was far too prone to forgetting her meals in favor of pursuing some lesson or another, or independent study, or fulfilling a request made by one of the locals in the town nearby the Dantooine Enclave. It was so easy to pretend that no time had passed, when he denied his own perceptions. She appeared scarcely any older than she had the day she had left, and her hair, left long and loose and dark, fell about her shoulders like a cowl. It was too easy, and it was dangerous, and here he found himself having to consciously remind himself not to fall into such a trap.
There were few furnishings in the room, little more than a bed, a low table, and a few cushions for sitting on. It had been part of the arrangements made, that none of the Jedi who were to be housed in the tower while the trials were ongoing have any ready means at hand to harm themselves, or anyone else. There was the Force, of course, but the Force was… was not a factor for Kalani, not anymore. It made it all the more mystifying to him that Kalani had made no attempts to leave the room, not even for a walk around the bounds of her empty tower.
And it seemed also as if she had been content to live in the dark, for it fell to Kavar to light a lamp for them to see by while she ate her congealed supper. Kalani winced visibly as the lamp flared into life, raising a hand to her brow. “Did you have to?” she asked faintly.
“If your head pains you, use the comm to ask for someone to bring you medicine.”
She had always been stubborn about admitting when she was in any pain, too. Sometimes a little too eager to do proper warm-up exercises before training, sometimes a little too eager to go to her next batch of lessons do to the proper cool-down exercises, and even when paying the price for it afterwards, would never admit to the sore muscles, even when she came to him the next morning visibly pale and tired and sore, she would never admit to the pain, always do all that she could to avoid acknowledging that she had overestimated her own capabilities. When she was a child, he had thought it pride, yes, but there had always been something else to it as well. Something which carried the edge of desperation.
She did no such thing. She only shrugged, ducking her head to avoid his gaze, though she made enough of a show of suddenly being interested in her supper after all that he saw little use in commenting on it. Kavar sat opposite her at the low table, setting his bag down on the floor, considering.
He looked at her, and he could smell the humid air of Dxun, thick with the scent of rain and the aroma of rotting vegetation and rotting flesh and the hair-raising suggestion of blood. It hit him in such a heavy wave that he reeled, almost gagging on the stench, shutting his eyes and expecting to open them to find the ferns and vines and close, dense trees of Dxun before him—probably harboring more than a few cannoks and boma which would have liked nothing more than to make a meal of his bones.
He looked at her, and he could hear the screeching of bulkheads being torn apart under the massive gravity of… It wasn’t just tearing metal. No, not just that.
Kalani reached for a dumpling, only to flinch suddenly, her arm seeming to spasm before she let it fall limp in her lap. She reached out with the other hand instead, but she ate only fitfully from there, her face visibly strained.
“I…” At Kavar’s questioning look, she straightened slightly, frowning. “I spent about a week in a kolto tank after…”
No need to elaborate, no need to ask her what she meant by after. There was only one thing which it could be, for everything came back to that.
“I know,” he told her, voice crumpling with something dangerously close to the tenderness he could not afford when he did not know why it was that she had returned. “There were many who thought that you would die.”
It had been all over the reports passing back and forth on Coruscant, had been the hushed, horrified whisper on the lips of what felt like everyone he encountered in Senate chambers. Impossible to avoid—her renown as a general was on a level with Revan and Malak’s, and though she seemed to have interacted with the Senate only rarely, she’d apparently made a good impression on them. And on everyone else who had relied upon the Army and the Fleet and the Jedi who had aided them to save them from the specter of conquest.
Atris, who had been defensively and viciously adamant in her condemnations of Kalani’s decision to fight under Revan’s banner ever since she had made the decision in the first place, had frozen and fallen silent when Kavar had broken the news to her. Spending time around Kalani when she was a girl had inevitably entailed spending time around Atris. He knew her, or he thought he did. Better that it was someone who knew her—or thought they knew her—who told her of the condition Kalani had been in after being pulled from the crushed ruins of her ship, rather than letting her find it out randomly. At least the fallout of it would be easier to track, easier to contain. She had nodded once, and then turned on her heel and left the Archives behind her. When found her crying hysterically in her quarters an hour later, he wasn’t even surprised.
Perhaps he should tell her that. When Kalani had resolved to leave, she and Atris had chosen as the venue for that last, savage argument the latter’s quarters in the Dantooine Enclave, fair enough. They’d had it behind closed doors, and if he had to guess, out of the hope that whatever relationship they had had—all of that had been conducted behind closed doors as well, and far more successfully—disintegrating could at least disintegrate in private. Whatever their hopes might have been, the actual result was that there was not a single soul in the entire Enclave who did not know exactly what Atris and Kalani had said to each other before Kalani had left Dantooine behind her. Perhaps he should tell her that Atris had wept over her anyways.
But there was no point to it, not now. The power such words had to change anything had ebbed into nothing long ago.
Maybe it would have been kinder if she had died, after all. She was alive, but after what she had done to herself, he was not certain that clinging to life was the gift that it might have been. But there was yet a part of his heart, the part that had loved her as a sister as he had never had, which cried out against such a thing, no matter what the alternative might be.
“You should have waited until you had recovered to come here.” But why he would have expected her to wait, why he would have expected that of her for even a moment, he had no idea. “It could have waited, Kalani; we would not ask you to risk your health to come here.”
She shook her head choppily, her wide, shadowed eyes flitting over his face as if trying to read a lie in his skin. “I…” The hand which she’d let fall into her lap earlier was raised to pinch the bridge of her nose, before her arm spasmed again and it fell limp. She hissed between clenched teeth, muttered “I just want it to be over.”
Kavar sighed heavily. And he wanted to know why it was that of all of the Jedi who had followed Revan and Malak, only she had returned. He wanted to know for what purpose. But neither of them were likely to come away with what they wanted. For Kalani, the chances of it ever being over were slim to none, and for him—
“I wonder if you still play chess,” Kavar said abruptly.
The silence that followed this was resounding.
“I’m… I’m sorry?” Kalani stammered. Her eyes flickered to the bag he had brought in with him, something like understanding sparking there, but any light in her eyes must die, and this light was snuffed out like a candle flame between wetted fingers.
Whatever state she might be in now, she had never been a fool and was unlikely to have become one over the course of her tenure as an officer of the Republic. The Force might not be hers to call upon any longer, but there were other tells she could have picked up on, and thus it was that he put a little more effort into injecting the cheer he did not feel into a jocular tone. “It was all the rage among the children in the Enclave when we first met. I seem to recall that card games had been banned in the Initiate and Padawan dormitories after the gambling had gotten so bad that one of the Padawans lost her lightsaber over a game of pazaak; I’ve always assumed chess was still allowed because none of the masters associated it with gambling. Not that they ever took into account just how competitive you and your peers could be over the game. If memory serves, I once found you and Cariaga—”
The blood drained out of Kalani’s face. Pressed hard into her lap, her veins stood out like rivers on the maps of her clenched hands.
Kavar set a hand on her shoulder reflexively. “What did I say?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.” After a long pause, “Cariaga’s dead. Set up the board.”
“Kalani—”
She met his gaze squarely. Far, far too calmly. “Set up the board, Kavar.”
The set was old, though not nearly as old as the game itself. He remembered suddenly, uselessly, her once asking him why it was that the pieces were named as they were. He had no answer to give her, no idea why it was that a bishop was a bishop and a rook was a rook, and research had availed them both nothing, and they had both decided to let a small mystery rest. Some of the pieces had obviously been made well after the rest, the pieces they replaced having been lost at some point which no one could now recall. But they played well enough not to stand out too much, and none of them were likely to fall apart in their hands now. These game pieces had never been flung out into the maelstrom of war.
“Black or white?”
“Black.”
She had been a strictly average chess player, Kavar recalled, though she had always enjoyed the game. She’d improved somewhat as she’d grown older, but even as the woman she had been when she left, she still did not always think through all of her moves. To be fair, they’d usually had an audience to any games they might play, and the friends who would gather at Kalani’s shoulders would make suggestions for how she should move her pieces that were… not always tactically sound. Kavar pretended he did not know about the competitions the Padawans held in their dormitories after lights out had been called at night, and pretended he did not know that Kalani was a regular part of those competitions, and could be prevailed upon to ignore the fact that the distributions of chores seemed to follow far more closely the results of these competitions he knew nothing about than they did the chores roster. Easy to pretend that these days were still those days, in spite of all of the reasons that it shouldn’t be.
The opening move mattered little for a game such as this—Kavar knew exactly what the outcome would be, one way or another. He selected a pawn at random and moved it up two spaces, leaving his queenside rook free to follow it.
Now, what opening might you be trying to exploit? he wondered heavily, as Kalani contemplated her own move, her eyes scanning the ranks of her pawns.
“I appreciate,” she murmured, selecting a pawn and moving it up a single space, “that the Council has been put in a difficult position.”
“Oh?” They were moving a little more quickly now, moving pawns up to come face each other, though neither had touched the backrow yet. “How so?”
Kalani shrugged. “I think…” Her fingers paused over the cap of her bishop, before they fell away, going to a knight instead. “I think I know what the outcome would have been for me, regardless of how many others came here alongside me.”
Kavar took a deep breath. More restraint was required of him than he might have thought to keep from responding, from just asking, but he kept his silence. Best to let her lay down the tracks where she would. He could—he hoped—glean what he needed to from that without needing to skew the results.
Her mouth spasmed unhappily. It might have been a smile she attempted, but if so, she seemed to have sense enough to let the attempt remain a failure. It took on the aspect of a grimace of pain soon enough, anyways; she kept forgetting not to use her injured arm. “We flouted the Council’s authority, each and every one of us. I know there must be consequences for that.” She lifted her head just high enough to meet his gaze; in her eyes, Kavar saw reflected the glittering shards of shattered transparisteel viewports. “I knew,” she told him, quietly and deliberately, “when I left, that there would be consequences.”
“You have said as much to me.” Which still raised the question: why come back? At whose behest, really, had she returned, if she knew that there could be only one outcome?
“You remember.” Another unhappy quirk of her lips. “Good. Sometimes I feel as if I dreamed those conversations. I never expected much leniency on my own behalf, Kavar. Not after I rose through the ranks, not after Jedi began following me to war, rather than following after Revan or Malak.” She scanned the board, trying to pick out the ideal next move for her by-now scattered pieces. A handful of her pawns and one of her bishops sat in the cell, just as one of Kavar’s knights and three of his pawns kept company alongside them. “But if any of them had come back with me, if I had come at the head of a complement of Knights and Padawans who had fought in the wars, if I was one of two or three dozen, things might have been different. It would not change the outcome of my own trial, but things would be much easier for the Order as a whole if there were others in this tower with me, those who had joined the war effort in the last few months before it was all over, if some of them were Padawans who had followed after Masters now dead. Things—” she picked up her king for just a moment, dangling it up in the air between two fingers, before setting it down just where she had left it “—would be much easier for you if you could afford to show leniency.”
Kavar shut his eyes. He could not concentrate on his next move just now. Better just to… “Kalani, what would you have me do?”
He had a wealth of contacts outside of the Order, many of them on Onderon. In Iziz in particular, where young Queen Talia was still attempting to solidify her rule—unfortunately called into question, just a little bit, after her cousin won such acclaim to himself in repelling the Mandalorians from the planet—Kalani would find that her reputation as the liberator of Dxun preceded her, with or without the Force to call upon. A few words in Talia’s ear would almost certainly have been all that was required to see her accept Kalani as an advisor. She likely would have been relieved for a moderating voice on her council, someone who could begin to balance out the power Vaklu wielded.
But Kalani would need to ask him for help in finding a place outside of the Order before he could extend any aid to her. He could not be seen to offer that aid unsolicited. He was already considered a biased judge where she was concerned, and there was no need for him to confirm it further. It would only weaken his own position, leaving him in less of a place where he could actually do good, for him to alienate himself from the rest of the Council on her behalf.
And there was still the matter of Revan. There was still the matter of just who it was that Kalani was reporting to. He could not confirm either way if she was reporting to anyone, and the lack of information was dangerous. Wherever it was that she might be inserted after the war, if she made of that post a pipeline of information sent over to her masters…
Part of his own education when he was a young man taught him that nothing, absolutely nothing, was as simple as it might seem at first glance. Everything was complicated, and if he chose to treat it as though it were simple, that would only complicate it further. When she was a child, he had, in defiance of everything he had been taught, tried to treat the issues which led so many of the older members of the Order to regard her with caution and with doubt (and with fear, though it was not an assertion he could ever make without having every point he could have tried to make drowned in defensiveness) as if they were simple. He had tried to ignore them, in favor of teaching a child he had found a promising student in need of guidance and, as she had grown older, being a friend to a woman he had once thought had the potential to be one of the guiding lights of the Jedi Order, if ever they could seek and find greater understanding regarding those issues which had seen her passed between skittish, uncertain Masters so often as a child.
But Kalani had never been simple. It had been a mistake to think of her, or her strange, unconscious aptitude for Force bonds, as simple. He had watched as children brought into the Order either hated her on sight or else fell in line behind her, giving her words and her instruction far more weight than one would have expected of those who had just met her. He had watched as the few friendships she had managed to form with her peers, for there almost always seemed to be something there, some hitch in trust or companionship that prevented the more lasting camaraderie from forming, perhaps even Kalani doubting the true nature of their relationships, for she had sometimes made oblique admissions of such doubt to him, grew so intense that when all of those friends save one eventually left the Order to follow her into battle, Kavar could not even say that he was surprised. Regardless of whether or not those friends had particularly believed in the war effort itself, they had believed in her.
If the reports were correct, all of those friends who had followed her were now dead. Cariaga, Nisotsa, Talven, Xaset, and others. Imagine everyone’s shock when even Vrook’s apprentice Liorit, who had been one of Kalani’s favorite “debate” partners as a teenager, had, barely a week after being knighted, declared to all that she intended to go off to fight in the wars, citing Kalani as an example. Liorit had died at Malachor V after the Mass Shadow Generator was activated. Kalani was unlikely to find any forbearance from Vrook’s corner come tomorrow.
She had never been simple. Her situation had never been a simple one. And it was not simple now, and thus Kavar found himself constrained. Whatever aid he did or did not offer her, it could be used to effect great good—or terrible destruction.
Kalani set both of her hands down on the table, on either side of the chessboard. She sucked in a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “Do not—“ her fingernails scraped against the wood “—make me a martyr to Revan’s cause.”
And it was for Kavar to take a long, deep breath of his own. “You’re neglecting the game. Do you forfeit, or do you wish to go on?”
She looked at him long and hard, eyes narrowed, face otherwise unreadable. After a long moment, so long that Kavar began to think that she really would forfeit and that would be the end of that, she tore her gaze away, and returned to examining what pieces remained at her disposal.
Kavar could not remember a time when she had forfeited. Even when she was called away from a match to attend her lessons she would demand, even from the doorway or the hall outside, that they simply pause the game and return to it later—and had been none too pleased if she came back later and found that her opponent had put the board away while she was gone. He could not bring himself to be surprised that she would cling to the game even now, when she had lost so many of her pieces that victory was looking less and less likely with each move.
“Everyone will be watching to see what happens tomorrow,” Kalani remarked, as her hand flitted from her remaining bishop, to her queen, to each of her knights, considering.
Kavar had some options for his next move himself, but he was waiting to see what she would do, first. “I imagine they will. After all, you are the only Jedi who has returned from the war front as of yet.”
She went for a knight. “And after I have been cast out of the Order, no one else will answer your summons.”
The rook, now, or perhaps a bishop.
“You realize that, don’t you?” Kalani pressed. “There are those who joined Revan and Malak who now wish to lay down their weapons and return to a life of peace. I’ve spoken with them, Kavar; they would come here in a heartbeat if they could be certain of their welcome.” She reached a little too quickly with her injured arm—or was it her shoulder that had been injured? Some of the reports had been rather confused; the only thing they had all agreed upon was that she had been so badly wounded that there were several days when the physicians and the surgeons and even the Jedi healers assigned to her case had despaired of her life—and drew back with a hiss, spending several moments just sucking in ragged, rattling breaths before she seemed to find it in herself to go on. Slightly stilted, slightly strained, “When they see what has been done with me, none of them will dare break from Revan’s side, for they will feel that there is nowhere else for them to turn. That there is no safe haven for them but the one they find at her side.”
Every Jedi in the galaxy could find a safe haven in the Force. But it was, perhaps, not a surprise that she would not look that way for the sort of safe havens that those who were uncertain of their loyalties and their place in the galaxy now could have sought out.
(Ulic Qel-Droma had lived years without the Force before being shot down by a spacer who recognized him as the infamous former Sith Lord, but Vima had been clear enough: those had not been good years. They had not been years which she thought Qel-Droma had ever really felt worth living. How long before Kalani began to feel in earnest the weight of living the same way as Ulic Qel-Droma? How long before the weight of what she had done, what she had done to herself, became too great for her to bear? Was she to spend the rest of her life in ignominious seclusion, or was she to find that even that would be too much?)
“Not,” she went on pointedly, “that I think they would have been too certain of reconciliation even had they come to Coruscant at my side. Kept in this tower, sequestered away from the rest of those present in the Temple, they would most likely have thought it more probable that they were being imprisoned here, or else that it was not trusted that they were not here simply to spy on the Order for Revan.”
Kavar chose not to tell her that it was he who had insisted that such arrangements be made for any Jedi who returned to face judgment. If she had thought long enough to realize just why it was that this tower had been set aside for returning Jedi, then she had probably also drawn a few conclusions about just who it was who might have thought to make such a suggestion in the first place. If she hadn’t realized it already, she would, soon enough. And he had followed the reports about her since she had entered the war—it had felt like the least he could do, sometimes felt as if it was the only thing he could do. He knew she had made decisions which ran along the same lines as the one he had made which had seen her taking up residence in this room at the top of the tower in the first place. He knew she would be able to follow the logic of it, even if the heart might struggle to come to terms.
“I have seen ample evidence that Revan understands the value of placing operatives where they might glean the most information.”
She nodded unhappily. “As I said—” and so quietly that her voice could scarcely be heard over the hum of the air conditioning unit that kept this room at a balmy cool “—I appreciate that your position is a difficult one. Though I hope that you have at least thought through the consequences of your decision.”
He had. It seemed as if the Council could not help but play into Revan’s hands one way or another, no matter what path they took. But it remained to be seen if the path they had chosen was the one which would most minimize their losses in the weeks and months and years to come. He hoped so. He hoped, too, that she was wrong, and that others would come, regardless of what became of her. It was as of yet unclear to what path even Revan would take, now that the war she had devoted years of her life to was over and done with. Perhaps she, too, would wish to put down her lightsaber in favor of a life of peace, though she certainly would never again be accepted into the Jedi Order, and the constraints which were now upon her as a salient hero of the Republic made it unlikely that she would ever have the freedom to pursue a life of obscurity.
They played in silence a little while, their remaining pieces slowly dwindling. Kalani managed to get her sole remaining pawn to the other side of the board, forcing Kavar to divert his bishop from its original course to deal with the newly-crowned queen. Kalani made a face at him, he smiled in turn, and once again Kavar was left feeling as if he had been reeled some fifteen, perhaps even twenty years into the past—
—Only to be left reeling when she let her mouth fall open silently to go over the moves available to her, and a scream echoed from the depths of her throat, though she never lifted her voice into even the barest of speech.
She could not stay. It did not matter what role she had played in the wars, did not matter what she had done on those battlefields. She could not stay. He knew that. He sat here and played chess with her, but he could not make himself feel as if she was really here. She was a creature of her battlefields now, and no matter where it was that she walked, she would always be in the places where she had waded in rivers of blood up to her neck, gone deeper and deeper until totally submerged, and all of the light above was snuffed out by the shadows of the Mandalorian ships above. Eres III, Serroco, Dxun, Duro, Malachor V, she existed there, but not here. Her eidolons had pieced out her soul until there was nothing left for her body.
She was not really here, and he mourned a death which had not happened yet.
The evening outside, distilled to searing lines of red around the edges of the blinds drawn down over the window, gradually gentled to a deep purple typical of overcast evenings on Coruscant. It would rain tonight, he thought, though he’d not checked a forecast to be certain. It would rain, but that would not be enough to soften the edges of the decisions which had brought them to this point, nor the decisions which had yet to be made. They’d slowed in making their moves, for each step was now too precious to be wasted on petty feints or even pettier missteps.
“You’re flying blind, Kavar,” Kalani told him abruptly.
The silence had grown so overpowering that to hear her voice break it so suddenly was as jarring as a blaster shot in the depths of the Temple would have been. He started a little, irresistibly, before willing himself to focus on her face once more. “Oh?”
She drew her robes closer about herself, as if cold. “You have no idea what lurks in the shadows beyond the fringes of known space. What now might prey upon a weakened Republic whose ability to defend itself is limited, and whose sight has in many respects been blinkered and mutilated. I myself have only seen the shadows these things cast, and even that was enough to convince me of the threats they might pose.
“And you have no idea of what Revan might do, Kavar.” Her fingernails were back to scraping against the table, so deep and so hard that he was surprised not to see scratches scored into the wood. “I can’t remember the last time any of the Council actually communicated with her. You have no lines of communication to her; when she and Malak are out of the public eye, they are free to do whatever they please, completely and utterly without your knowledge, or that of anyone upon the Council.”
He left the pieces to their own devices for a time, quirking a brow. “And what is it that you think Revan might do?” If she was willing to inform on Revan in some attempt to alter the course of what tomorrow would bring…
It would change nothing. But Kavar was hardly above using the information she might be willing to pass on to him. When they knew so little about Revan’s planned movements, when they knew nothing about what she might plan to do next, he could hardly afford not to. And even had it not been of such vital importance, he still would have done it. They must always know the lay of the land. If that meant sending someone to lure out the cannoks and the boma, then so be it.
She shrugged. “I have no idea.” Eyes glassy-hard and glassy-bright, the last strip of evening’s light cutting a diagonal line across her face, “I’ve not seen nor heard from her since I was given my orders at Malachor V. We were not close, even before Dxun.”
Yes, Dxun. Rumor had it that Kalani and Revan had fallen out badly after some incident on Dxun which was so completely and utterly buried in redactions that Kavar sometimes wondered if even the Chancellor was allowed an unimpeded look at the report. But both Kalani and Revan understood the value of a strategy which was long in the culmination. And Kalani had never been what Kavar would call a gifted liar, but if Revan was not even here for her to feign antipathy towards…
It was after Dxun that Kavar had begun to notice the way she was changing. He could well believe that something really had happened there, something beyond the bitterly entrenched war of attrition which had taken months to break through, something beyond the wanton bloodshed, something which might have caused the distance between Kalani and Revan to sharpen and grow hungry, gnashing teeth. But the vision was clouded, and though he could guess at a general outline, he was too lacking in the finer details to be sure of what it was that really went on.
Whether or not she was aware of his doubt, she progressed, voice taking on an almost sibilant anger, “It’s always something with her. There’s always some other plan; she’s always looking ahead, sometimes too far ahead. I don’t believe she doesn’t have any plans; she always has some plan for the future, some way she can use…” A long, gasping breath, eyes snapped shut, and restraint somewhat restored. “I know there is some plan germinating in that mind of hers. And I know that after all that has happened, she bears no love for the Jedi Council.”
“Have you never felt the call to quit your seat on the Council and go out and actually do something about the Mandalorians? I know you have, Master Kavar, for we all know of your battles with the raiders before the Council deemed it better to sit back, watch and wait, watch and wait while the Rim burns and countless innocents perish to Mandalorian guns. For how much longer will you be content to watch and wait?”
“But no, Kavar, I have no insight into what any of these plans might be. As I told you, I have had no word from Revan in a… a while.” She broke his gaze, staring down at her lap. “When I announced my intentions to return here, it was Malak who came to see me. I’ve no idea why. Malak is Revan’s creature through and through, and Revan—” bitterness dripped from her tongue like venom from a serpent’s fangs “—has finished with me. I was still bedridden when he came; I couldn’t very well refuse to see him. He tried to convince me to change my mind, but when he saw that there was no convincing me, he left. He said nothing of what Revan might or might not do.”
If she was to return to Revan after the trial was over and done with, it would certainly show her hand. The truth of her words would be proven or disproven in whatever it was she did after leaving the Order behind her. But nothing would be proven until after she was cast out.
“So.” Kavar drummed his fingers against the table. “Neither of us have any insight into Revan’s next steps.”
She nodded choppily. “That seems to be the case, yes.”
“And neither of us has any means of gaining such insight.”
“Yes.”
And she could not stay. She could not stay, and he could not follow her. He could not offer her aid without first accepting her plea, and she… she would not make such a plea, no matter how badly aid might be needed for one who had no family outside of the Order, and was soon to have no family at all, one whose entire life had been dedicated to being a Jedi, and who had never conceived of a life outside of such a path as that.
She was not really here. She was on Eres III, watching the Xoxin plains burn. She was on Serroco, watching the cities turn to molten glass. She was on Dxun, choking on blood. She was at Malachor V, giving the order that had ended the war, and doing such mortal harm to herself that he could not imagine how she had survived. And to think that he had once believed her too gentle to survive the path she had determined to set upon.
In a way, she hadn’t.
Kalani’s gaze strayed back down to the chessboard. It was her move, if Kavar remembered correctly. Neither of them had so much as glanced down at the pieces in the past several minutes; Kavar had not even thought about the move he was going to make. It might still be his move, but… He’d let her have it. If he could not even remember, it might as well be her turn to move.
But Kalani never did make that move. She stared at her piece placement for a few moments, then she sighed long and hard. “If I didn’t know better, I would say that the Force was laughing at us both.”
Kavar blinked, feeling suddenly as if his mind was clouded by a kolto tank full of liquid sedatives. “What… do you mean?”
“Haven’t you seen the board?” She frowned at him. “We’re both in stalemate. Neither one of us can make any moves without putting our king in check.”
He looked down to examine the chessboard, and soon found that she was correct. He’d not even noticed that she was already in stalemate during his last move, nor that he was putting himself in the same position with… with whatever that move had been.
Once again, Kavar found it his turn to let out a long, harsh breath. The game was over, and his pretext for coming here had run its course. He dared not find another reason to stay longer. He dared not give voice to some of the thoughts which were running through his mind. It would only make it more difficult to leave her to her fate when the time came.
He packed the board away in silence, double-checking that all of the pieces were where they ought to be before sliding it back in his bag—it would only complicate things further if he found he had to return, perhaps complicate them past his ability to extricate himself from. (He was a biased judge where she was concerned. Affection could so easily lead him astray where judging her case was concerned.)
As Kavar made to leave the room, Kalani called out to him, softly, “Kavar, what time is the trial supposed to be tomorrow? No one’s said.”
Well, he’d not exactly been looking for proof that she hadn’t even read the summons, but it seemed he’d gotten that proof nonetheless. “0900,” he told her, just as softly. He didn’t look back to see how she digested this information. He did not turn back to get one last look at her before they must meet again as judge and judged.
“0900,” she repeated, and her voice was like a breath of wind through the husk of a drexl’s discarded skin.
Outside, the hallway was dark and quiet. With the door shut, all evidence of her presence there was lost. Kavar thought briefly that he could have at least told her that he’d miss her. But he already missed her. The words would have been wasted on someone who wasn’t really here.