Inferno (6 page)

When Luke remained oblivious to Jacen’s presence, Kenth Hamner stepped forward and spoke in a voice of fatherly reproach.

“Jacen, you
know
you’re not a Master.” Kenth gestured toward the Jedi Knights kneeling in the front row. “Your place is with the other Jedi Knights…should you care to assume it,
Jedi
Solo.”

“I think that’s where we misunderstand each other, Master Hamner.” Jacen pulled his dark cloak aside, revealing the empty lightsaber snap on his utility belt. “I’m not here as a Jedi.”

“You’re still standing in the wrong place,” Kyle Katarn said, joining them. “This is a
Jedi
funeral.”

“A funeral I’m attending as family.” Jacen spoke in a deliberately reasonable voice, trying to create the impression that it was the Masters who were causing the disturbance. “I’m only here to comfort my cousin and uncle.”

“To
comfort
them?” Kyp Durron came forward. “You expect us to believe that?”

“It
is
the truth,” Jacen said gently.

Kyp ignored the objection and took Jacen by the arm—then Luke surprised them both by raising a hand.

“Wait.” Beneath the grief, there was an odd note of urgency to Luke’s voice. “Jacen is welcome to stand with Ben and me.”

Kyp’s jaw dropped. “But Master Skywalker, Jacen is just using the funeral to—”

“It’s fine.” Luke gestured for Kyp—and Kenth and Kyle—to resume their places. “I
want
Jacen here.”

Kyp scowled, but joined Kenth and Kyle in obeying.

Jacen watched them retreat, feeling as confused as they looked, until Luke turned and extended his hand.

“Thank you for coming, Jacen.”

“Mara was a great Jedi and a loving aunt.” As Jacen clasped arms, he took extra care to hide his feelings from the Force. It was hard to imagine his uncle having the strength to probe for guilty emotions right now, but the galaxy was littered with the body parts of those who had underestimated the strength of Luke Skywalker. “I would never have missed the chance to show my respect for her.”

“I’m glad. It’s time we healed this rift between us.” Luke returned his gaze to Mara’s body. “I think that must be what she’s trying to tell us.”

“
Tell
us?” Jacen echoed.

He looked to the top of the pyre and decided Luke must be losing touch with reality. Mara lay as dead as before, neither her lips nor anything else moving; there was no sound coming from anywhere near the vicinity of the body.

Then he noticed that Mara’s white-swaddled form was starting to grow translucent and glow with Force energy. Saba sissed in astonishment and several other Masters sighed in relief, but Jacen nearly choked on his shock. If Mara was trying to tell anyone
anything,
it had nothing to do with reconciliation—and everything to do with exposing her killer.

Luke clasped Jacen’s shoulder. “She waited until we were together,” he said. “I think there’s a message in that, don’t you?”

“Uh, yes…of course.” To Jacen’s amazement, there was no hint of deception or cynicism in his uncle’s voice or presence. Luke had clearly drawn the wrong conclusion about what Mara was trying to tell him—perhaps because she had died while keeping her activities secret from him—and Jacen was more than ready to embrace his good fortune. “I think that must be
exactly
what Mara is telling us. We can’t save the Alliance without working together.”

“Good point,” Luke said. “I’ll try to remember that this time.”

“And so will I.” Jacen sneaked a glance in Tenel Ka’s direction and was rewarded with a tiny nod, barely perceptible but distinctly approving. “I promise.”

Luke dipped his head in agreement, or perhaps even gratitude, and Jacen found himself struggling to keep his relief—his
exhilaration
—from spilling into the Force. He was going to have his fleet, and with it would come the strength to lure the Confederation into a trap and smash it, to unite the galaxy in justice and peace.

As Jacen fought to control his emotions, Luke turned toward the lectern where Saba Sebatyne stood watching them, studying Jacen but looking somewhere beyond him—or perhaps it was deeper
into
him, as though she were seeing not Jacen’s public face, but his inner one, that of Darth Caedus.

“Saba?” Luke called softly.

There was a new vitality to his voice, a note of renewed confidence that Jacen might have found alarming, but which Caedus knew would last only as long as their “reconciliation.”

“Saaaba?”

Saba’s gaze finally swung back to Luke. “Yes?”

Luke gestured at the audience. “Maybe you should continue.” He glanced at Mara’s luminous body, which had already grown so transparent that the back wall of the courtyard could be seen through it. “I’d like to finish before Mara is completely gone.”

“Yes, please forgive this one,” she said. “She was…distracted.”

Saba turned toward the courtyard again, but did not return immediately to her speech. Instead, she studied the audience for a moment, ruffling her scales, then glancing from them to Luke to Jacen and finally back to the courtyard. Jacen could feel her struggling with a decision, fighting to swallow her outrage at how he was taking advantage of Luke’s grief, and he realized she was about to make this a very unpleasant funeral for him.

“Surely,” Saba began, “this one speakz for everyone here when she sayz how glad she is Colonel Solo could spare a few minutes to honor his noble aunt.”

The opening was enough of a shock to tear most eyes in the audience from Mara’s rapidly vanishing form. A chorus of confused murmurs and indignant gasps arose from the audience, but Jacen maintained an expressionless face and continued to gaze politely at the lectern. Whatever Saba said, it was not going to make Tenel Ka change her mind.

Jacen even found himself wondering whether it might be possible to keep his promise to Tenel Ka, to truly reconcile with Luke and work together to save the Alliance—but of course that was impossible. Sooner or later, someone would discover the identity of Mara’s killer, and the Jedi had to be either firmly under Caedus’s control by then—or eliminated.

After a moment, Saba continued. “And it iz good that Colonel Solo arrives at this point in our remembrances, because the greatest gift Mara Jade Skywalker left us is the lesson of her life—a life that began under the darkest of shadowz.” She half turned to face Jacen, Luke, and Ben. “As a young child, Mara was taken from her parentz and shaped into pure spy and assassin, and her keeper set her to doing terrible thingz when she was barely old enough for the hunt. She did them because she believed they were right, because she believed in the dream of a single galaxy with one justice, a galaxy bound in peace by a single fist.

“That fist belonged to Emperor Palpatine, and his dream was one filled with darkness.” Now Saba locked gazes with Jacen, her face-scales ruffling in rebuke. “It meant the deathz of billionz and the enslavement of trillionz, the end of freedom and the silencing of dissent. It brought fear to those it claimed to protect and misery to those it pretended to serve.

“As Mara’s missionz carried her farther afield, she began to see the evil in her master’z dream. For a time, she tried to carry on, telling herself that evil was necessary to bring peace, that some must suffer before all could live in harmony.”

When Jacen still had not looked away, Saba finally broke gazes and turned back to the audience. “We all know how
that
ended.”

A chorus of soft chuckles rolled through the courtyard, and Jacen could feel in the Force that the audience’s mood was shifting, that even some of his supporters were growing more thoughtful. He allowed himself to glare at the Barabel darkly—nothing threatening, but with enough indignation to express the proper outrage at such a comparison.

Saba ignored him, of course. “After the Emperor died, there were those who would not relinquish his dark dream, who attempted to keep the Empire alive and even restore Palpatine’s clones to power. Mara was not one of them. After the Emperor’z death, she wandered the galaxy for many years searching for a new life, and she began to see more clearly what she had been, the evil
she
had done. Then fate placed her life in the handz of a man she had once considered an enemy—a man whom she still felt compelled to kill—and during their difficult journey together, she began to understand that there was another way, a way filled with freedom and love and trust.

“Mara once told this one that all it took to lift the Emperor’z veil from her eyes was a long walk in the forest with this man.” Saba extended her arm toward Luke. “That after she had come to know Luke Skywalker, it was easy to step into the light.”

Tears welled in the eyes of both Luke and Ben. Ben at least had the pride to turn away and wipe his face, but Luke merely let his tears flow, his gaze never straying from the top of the pyre as Mara’s body paled from a radiant ghost to a shimmering blur of light.

When it had finally vanished altogether, Luke closed his eyes and let out a soft breath, then laid an arm over Ben’s shoulder. “She’s with the Force now, son,” he whispered. “She’ll be with us always.”

“Yeah, Dad.” Ben’s voice did not even come close to cracking, and Jacen was proud of him for that. “I know.”

Jacen reached over to give Luke’s shoulder a comforting squeeze—then felt the weight of Saba’s gaze and looked up to find her glaring at him, her eyes filled with anger and sorrow and warning.

“And
that
is the lesson of Mara’s life,” the Barabel said. “If we wish to live in goodness, all we need do iz open our heartz. If we wish to bring justice and peace to the galaxy, all we need do is step into the light.”

Jacen lowered his hand and returned Saba’s glare with a tight smile. The embarrassment she had caused him here did not matter. He had won Tenel Ka’s fleet, and now he would have the strength to lay a trap and crush the Confederation—and once he had done
that,
the public would not care what Saba or any Master thought of him. They would realize that it was Caedus, not the Jedi, who was the true guardian of the Alliance.

Saba slipped out from behind the podium and—making a point of ignoring Jacen—bowed to Luke and Ben, then stepped to the foot of the empty pyre. Instead of setting the wood ablaze, as she would have done had there still been a body, she simply faced the other Masters, and together they began the traditional recitation of the Jedi Code.

T
HERE IS NO EMOTION; THERE IS PEACE
.

T
HERE IS NO IGNORANCE; THERE IS KNOWLEDGE
.

T
HERE IS NO PASSION; THERE IS SERENITY
.

T
HERE IS NO DEATH; THERE IS THE
F
ORCE
.

As soon as they had finished the recitation, Jacen left Luke’s side and went straight for Saba.

“A touching eulogy, Master Sebatyne.” He kept his voice angry, but not quite menacing. “Very instructive. I’ll remember it for a
very
long time.”

“Good,” Saba replied evenly. “This one only hopes you come to understand it, as well.”

A series of gasps and titters betrayed the eavesdroppers in the front rows of the audience, and Jacen realized he was in danger of looking weak. He dropped all pretense of civility and glared at Saba in open hostility.

“Your humor has always been a mystery to me, Master Sebatyne,” he said. “It’s a wonder I haven’t taken offense before this.”

“And I hope you’ll forgive us now.” Luke stepped to Jacen’s side, then said, “None of us are quite ourselves today. Please don’t let that stop you from joining Ben and me after the ceremony. I meant what I said about healing the rift between us.”

“That
would
be best for everyone,” Jacen said. His gaze slid toward Ben and lingered there. “We must think of the future.”

Ben only shrugged and looked away.

The hostility was painful, though hardly surprising. Jacen had known when he killed Mara that he was sacrificing his cousin’s devotion—but that should not have occurred until
after
Ben learned the identity of her killer. So either the boy was taking his mother’s death harder than Jacen realized, or he suspected the truth and was telling no one.

Caedus wondered whether it would prove necessary to kill Ben to protect the secret of Mara’s death a few days longer. Jacen hoped not; he still saw potential in his young cousin, and a part of him believed it might be possible to make a proper apprentice of him yet.

Deciding that it was best to let Ben mourn in private—for now—Jacen assumed a grave air and turned back to Luke. “I’m afraid I can’t join you today, Master Skywalker,” he said. “I’m due topside earliest.”

Luke’s brow fell in confusion. “Maneuvers?”

“No, I’m accompanying the Fourth Fleet into action.” Jacen cast an accusatory glance toward Kenth, Kyle, and the other Masters. “I’m surprised the Council didn’t tell you. I
requested
Jedi StealthXs.”

Luke frowned at Saba, who could only nod and say, “We didn’t think you should be disturbed.”

The irritation in Luke’s eyes changed to comprehension. His face clouded with something that might have been shame, then he frowned at Saba and the other Masters.

“You can fill me in later.”

It was Kenth Hamner who answered. “We’ll be happy to.” He glanced in Jacen’s direction and added, “There are a
lot
of things you need to know.”

Luke narrowed his eyes, but turned to Jacen. “I understand—duty calls. But I hope you’ll think about what happened here today.”

“I will be thinking about it,” Jacen said. “You can be sure of that.”

“Good. May the Force be with you.”

“And with you.”

Jacen turned and strode down the aisle, driving his boot heels into the sturdimoss and using the Force to gently move people aside. Luke watched him go in equal parts hope and dread. If anything remained of the gentle-hearted boy he remembered from the Jedi academy on Yavin 4, he could no longer find it. Jacen was swaddled in a darkness deeper than any he had felt in recent memory—perhaps since the days of Darth Vader and the Emperor—and it was not at all clear that he could be drawn back into the light. Yet Luke had to try—if not for Jacen, then for Leia and even the Alliance…but most of all for himself. After the mistake he had made with Lumiya—after his erroneous vengeance killing of her—he could not bear the thought of making such an error with his own nephew. If there was still a way to reach Jacen, he had to try.