Queen''s Shadow

by E. K. Johnston

“And your mysterious handmaiden is listed only as an aide,” Mariek added. She was dressed in a modified version of the Naboo uniform today, since the hat, which provided protection from both the sun and potential debris, was unnecessary for the Senate floor.

  “That doesn’t clear up who the source is,” Dormé said.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it, I suppose,” Padmé said. “I’ll just have to go out there and try not to look the fool. Maybe they’ll all remember me as the young queen who unseated Chancellor Valorum instead.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Mariek. “Now come and sit over here so that Dormé can fix your hair.”

  Padmé had done a bit of angry pacing after arriving at her office and had shaken down some of Dormé’s pins. They had elected to dress Amidala as formally as they could for her first official appearance. They wanted to present nothing of the young girl the holos seemed fixated on. Padmé wore a stiff overdress of purple brocade, with hand-embroidered violets along the hem and cuffs. The tunic she wore underneath was violet, as well, with a collar that made it almost impossible for her to turn her head. Dormé had braided her hair in four sections, two to hang down her back, wrapped in purple ribbon, and two to be pinned up on the sides of her head, supporting the beaten copper headband.

  “I feel like my skull is exposed,” Padmé said as Dormé straightened the copper piece and affixed more pins in her errant hair.

  “It’ll catch the light, I think,” Dormé said. “Anyone who glances at your pod will see you.”

  “And there are at least four representatives who will actually have their skulls exposed,” Cordé pointed out.

  “Thanks,” Padmé said dryly. Cordé grinned back at her with no trace of apology. Padmé straightened, the Amidala-mask falling over her features. Though she had deployed it at various points during the orientation, this was the first time Padmé had brought the full force of it to bear. All of her attendants straightened, suddenly reaffirmed of their directives. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  NON-3 had not yet been returned to them, so Padmé made her own way from her office to where the Naboo pod was docked. She had memorized the layout—from the technical specifications of the building, not the inane tours—and took no wrong turns, even though all the hallways looked the same. Cordé and Dormé walked behind her, clad in sober gray with their hoods pulled over their faces, and Mariek came last. She was not visibly armed, but Padmé knew her better than that.

  Padmé suppressed a surge of vertigo as she stepped to the front of her pod and took her seat. The Senate room was almost incomprehensibly large, and it was filled with what felt like an uncountable number of species, all serving members of the Galactic Republic. It made her feel small in a way she did not like. It would be very, very difficult for a single voice to be heard, even if everyone followed the rules of protocol. Yet she had done it before. She could do it again.

  A chime sounded, and Padmé looked down to where Chancellor Palpatine stood, flanked by his two aides.

  “I declare this session open,” the Chancellor said. “The floor recognizes the representative from Ithor.”

  Ithorians did not speak Basic, so Padmé turned on her translator. As the other senator’s pod detached from the side of the chamber and floated out to circle the Chancellor’s podium, Padmé watched the text scroll past, reading as quickly as she could. Just when she felt she was getting a handle on the argument—something about hyperspace lane mapping and the dissemination thereof—two new speakers began to interrupt, both in Basic. One was the Trade Federation delegate, to Padmé’s disgust, and the other was a human male from the Urce sector. Both were against sharing the maps, because they each felt they, separately, owned the rights to them. The combination of shouting and reading the translation was challenging to follow, and at the end of five minutes of what Padmé could only describe as squabbling, Chancellor Palpatine called for a vote.

  Senator Amidala had only a few moments to decide. She knew she was prejudiced against the Trade Federation, but she tried to think on their terms for a brief moment while she made her consideration. The route through the Lesser Plooriod Cluster had been partially mapped by the Trade Federation, but for the most part, the work had been done by the Ithorians. The humans in the Urce sector had a claim only to the portion of the route in their own space, but taken together with the Trade Federation claim, they could potentially block the Ithorians into a corner, and Padmé remembered all too well how that could end up. Ultimately, she came down on the side of the Ithorians. It was their system, after all, and they had been using the lanes before the Trade Federation claimed to have mapped them. Naboo had made the mistake of displacing their planet’s native population, to their eternal shame, and Padmé was determined not to be part of such actions again. She voted in favor of the motion.

  “Motion fails,” Palpatine announced a moment after she had pressed her selection. “The chair recognizes the member from Chandrila.”

  A slim, red-haired human woman began to speak, and Padmé didn’t have time to dwell on the failed vote. She had to move on to the new one.

  It felt like it went on for hours. Motions were raised and passed to various committees, or they were voted on. Even though she had done the background reading, Padmé felt like decisions—all of them stalls—were made before they dug into the heart of any particular issue. Several bills that Padmé thought were sound failed, and even more were bounced back to the bargaining table, only she didn’t know when or where that bargaining took place. At last, the chime sounded again, and Chancellor Palpatine called an end to deliberations.

  Padmé slumped back in her seat, as much as her dress would allow, and tried not to feel defeated. No wonder the previous senator had resigned. Cordé coughed three times behind her, and Padmé straightened at the signal just before one of the camera droids flew up over the lip of her pod and focused its photoreceptor on her face. The Amidala-mask in place, Padmé rose gracefully from her seat and led her attendants out of the assembly. She hoped the camera had gotten whatever it wanted.

  “Well, that was something,” said someone beside her. Another young senator stood there. She cast about for his name.

  “Indeed, Senator Clovis,” she said.

  He brightened. “You remember me!” he said.

  Padmé didn’t tell him that of course she remembered him. There had only been eight of them in the orientation group. Amidala said nothing, and Clovis’s face dimmed considerably.

  “There’s a reception for the new senators and some guests. Chancellor Palpatine is hosting it,” he said. “We all got notifications at the conclusion of the session through our NONs, but yours is still out, so I thought I should mention it to you.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” Amidala said. Mariek blew out a breath, indicating that she had completed her verification of Clovis’s identity and words. Amidala relaxed her mask the slightest bit. “Will you walk with me?”

  Clovis seemed only too happy to do so.

  He talked unceasingly as they went, mostly about his own planet, Scipio, and how overwhelming everything about Coruscant was. Padmé agreed with him privately but would never be foolish enough to say the words out loud, so she kept her face neutral.

  “But I suppose you know all about that by now,” Clovis finished. Padmé regarded him steadily, and, as she hoped, he floundered. “I mean, because of the holos. Not that I think you’re unqualified of course. Just new. Like me. We’ll learn. Perhaps we could learn together?”

  Padmé wished Sabé was with her. She wouldn’t need eye contact to see the sardonic look on her face. Padmé had to content herself with imagining it instead.

  “I imagine we will all learn soon enough,” Amidala said. That seemed to please Clovis for some reason.

  They reached the door. It was guarded by two red-robed and masked figures, indicating that the Chancellor was indeed within. The new guards were intimidating, a far cry from the senatorial guards she’d met on her previous
trip to Coruscant. She vaguely remembered hearing that Palpatine had created his own security force, but she had not imagined they would be so extreme. Clovis walked blithely through, without a retinue, and Padmé led her own people into the room behind him. She took a breath, held it for three deliberate heartbeats, and then let it out. She could do this.

  “See if you can find us something to eat,” she said to Cordé. “And remind me to eat more before the next session.”

  Cordé melted into the crowd. Mariek followed at a respectful distance, but Dormé stuck to Padmé’s side like glue. Clovis, mercifully, had disappeared.

  “Ah, Senator Amidala, welcome.” Chancellor Palpatine’s booming voice drew the attention of everyone in earshot.

  “Chancellor,” she said pleasantly.

  “I was so pleased you agreed to Queen Réillata’s appointment,” Palpatine continued. Padmé focused on him, knowing that Dormé would be silently cataloguing everyone in his orbit.

  “It is my great honor to serve Naboo and to serve the Republic,” Amidala said.

  “Indeed,” Palpatine said. “Come, let me introduce you.”

  It was going to be a bit like being shown at the annual midsummer livestock fair in Theed, Amidala thought. But she would rather have Palpatine’s approval than be left at the mercy of whoever had read the newsnets, so she braced herself and made to follow him. One of his aides materialized beside them after only three steps and whispered in his ear.

  “I’m so sorry, my dear,” Palpatine said. “I must go and attend to this. You know how it is. But I leave you in the capable hands of Senator Mina Bonteri.”

  And he was gone, leaving Padmé in the middle of the room with a woman she had only barely been properly introduced to, and all eyes on her.

  “Senator Bonteri,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Senator,” said the woman. “Will you walk with me?”

  Amidala took the proffered arm, which forced Dormé to fall back half a pace—still well within earshot—and walked. It was much less stressful than walking with Palpatine would have been.

  “You did well today,” Bonteri said after a moment.

  “How can you possibly tell?” Padmé asked, letting her mask slip down a little bit. If Bonteri was going to try to be helpful, Padmé was going to encourage her to do it.

  “You’re still standing,” Bonteri said. “You’re not attacking the buffet tables. You haven’t started drinking. And you can still navigate a conversation with the Chancellor.”

  “I suppose if that’s all it takes, then I am quite suited to senatorial life,” Padmé said.

  “Ah, there are her teeth,” Bonteri said. “You do such a good job of playing a part, I was starting to wonder what kind of person was inside that dress.”

  “On Naboo, the part and the politics are the same thing,” Padmé told her. “It goes a long way to preserving faith in government. I suppose I should be open to different methodologies.”

  “Well,” said Bonteri. “No one has any faith in the Republic, so that’s a good place for you to start.”

  “I have faith in the Republic,” Padmé said automatically. And it was true. Even after that awful session, she did.

  Bonteri looked at her, searching for something Padmé wasn’t sure of. Whatever it was, Bonteri didn’t look too disappointed when she didn’t find it.

  “Senator Amidala, I think you’ll do all right here,” she said. She sounded sincere. “But I will tell you a secret: you can do all the reading you want, believe in all the truths you think the galaxy has to offer, but the real work of the Senate is done at parties like these. A conscience vote is a wonderful thing, but allies are far better.”

  “Who would ally themselves with me?” Padmé asked. “I’m so foolish I follow my own malfunctioning droid into certain death.”

  “That’s nothing to worry about,” Bonteri said. “I mean, you should definitely figure out who tried to kill you, but the newsnets are immaterial.”

  Padmé said nothing but could not quite suppress a disbelieving sniff.

  “I know it smarts your pride,” Bonteri said. “But everyone would be staring at you anyway. We all remember your speech and how your words were enough to unseat a chancellor. We’ve all heard the Trade Federation claim you are a liar in the face of, frankly, staggering evidence that you are not. We all know that Palpatine likes you. We’re just not sure if you’re someone we want to work with.”

  “Do you have a we in mind?” Padmé said, “Or are you speaking of the entire Senate?”

  “I like how you get right to the point of things,” Bonteri said. “We all have our little factions. Sometimes there is overlap, and sometimes there is not. You’ll have to figure that part out on your own.”

  “I’m working on it,” Padmé said.

  Bonteri paused midstep and looked over her shoulder directly into Dormé’s face. Dormé’s expression was politely blank, and Bonteri laughed.

  “I’ll bet you are,” she said. She took Padmé’s other hand so that they were facing each other. Padmé wondered how Mariek had managed to restrain herself from interfering. This was much more handsy than anyone usually got.

  “The newsnets went after you because you were an easy story,” Bonteri said. “Which is not the same as an easy target, so don’t get all worked up. People already know you. You already have a good reputation. You’ve done half the work, and they’re more than happy to make up the second half, even if it has no basis at all in fact.”

  “How do I combat that?” Padmé asked.

  “You don’t,” Bonteri said. “Not directly, at least. You come to work and you do your job, and you try not to give them anything to sensationalize. They’ll sensationalize you anyway, of course, but then you just ignore them.”

  “Thank you,” Padmé said. “I didn’t expect to get such usable advice from anyone, to be honest.”

  “The orientation brings out the very worst in all of us, I think. We’re not so bad once you get to know us,” Bonteri said. She looked ahead in the crowd and spotted someone she was searching for. She changed direction, pulling Padmé along with her. “Ah, Senator Organa, allow me to introduce Senator Amidala.”

  “A pleasure,” Organa said, making no indication they had ever crossed paths before, even briefly at that dinner. “Welcome to Coruscant.”

  Welcome to Coruscant, indeed.

  The gathering dragged on for another hour. Bonteri introduced her to even more senators, until they became a blur of faces and names. Padmé hoped Dormé and Cordé would be able to help her fill in the gaps in her memory. Most of the senators were as politely dispassionate as Senator Organa had been. A few were openly curious about her, for novelty’s sake. All of that was preferable to what happened when Padmé met the senator from Targappia, a humanoid woman nearly eight feet tall, with webbed fingers and iridescent hair.

  “Ah, Senator Amidala,” she said. Her voice was lilting and musical, but there was an atonal note beneath her words that more than carried her disdain for Padmé’s presence. “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you in person after reading so much about you in the newsnets.”

  Padmé nodded politely, of course, already composing lists of senators to avoid, based on those who chuckled at the Targappian’s remarks.

  At last, she followed Mariek into their transport, and before long they were all delivered back to the blessed quiet of the senatorial residence, where Versé was waiting for them.

  “So,” she said. “That bad, eh?”

  “Later,” Mariek said. “Give the senator some time to rest.”

  “No,” Padmé said. “Not later. The four of us need to discuss a few things.”

  “We can talk while we’re putting away the dress,” Cordé said. “Come on.”

  While Dormé pulled pins and ribbons from her hair and began to brush it out and Cordé returned the purple dress to its spot in the wardrobe, the three of them recounted the day’s events to Versé, who duti
fully recorded every word.

  “I didn’t make any progress on my end,” Versé said. “Though I would request that you promise me you’ll never read the editorials from TriNebulon News. Or anywhere, actually.”

  “I don’t imagine I’ll have time for it,” Padmé said. “But I promise.”

  “What are we going to do?” Cordé asked. She sat down on the foot of Padmé’s bed, and Versé put her portable desk away.

  Padmé turned and looked at all three of them.

  “We knew that senatorial politics were going to be different,” she said. “But I don’t think any of us truly appreciated how much difference there would be until today.”

  “I could barely follow along, and I did all the preparatory reading,” Cordé said. “Though the party was a bit easier to keep track of.”

  “That’s what Senator Bonteri told me,” Padmé said. “That the real work gets done at functions, not on the floor.”

  Dormé made a face, realizing what Padmé intended to do. A soft chime sounded, and Versé looked up.

  “It’s your schedule for tomorrow,” she reported.

  “I shudder to think of it,” Padmé said. She paused, and then continued. “The strengths I cultivated to be queen of a planet are going to trip me up as a senator.”

  “Not all of them,” Cordé said loyally.

  “But some of them.” Dormé’s loyalty was characteristically blunt.

  “I can’t be so distant,” Padmé said. “I can’t rely on people’s faith in tradition. I have to be more approachable to my colleagues.”

  “You didn’t exactly have colleagues as queen.” Versé called up a new personnel profile, projecting the image so they could all see it. “So I suppose that would be the easiest place to start. It’s an addition, not a replacement.”

  “We can rework the Amidala persona from there,” Padmé agreed. “How she interacts with her fellow senators, and how the handmaidens operate, as well.”

  “I was thinking about new protocols while I was wandering at the party,” Cordé admitted.

  “And I can tell you what to avoid,” Versé added.