by Claudia Gray
Leia squared her shoulders. “Did you know what was going to happen to Moff Panaka?”
Breha’s hand covered her mouth, and for once the queen of Alderaan had no words. It was Bail—the more even-tempered of the two, usually—who retorted, “You think we’d stoop to assassination? Leia, what’s gotten into you?”
“How am I supposed to know differently? You won’t tell me what you’re up to, which means I have to guess.”
For one of the only times Leia could remember, Bail raised his voice to her. “So you guessed we’d become murderers?”
“You’re planning on attacking the Empire!” she shouted back. “Sooner or later, that means killing people!”
“Exactly.” Breha said it calmly, looking only at her husband. Jolted, Leia took a step backward; if her mother noticed, she showed no sign.
Bail shook his head. “I can’t talk about this any longer right now. I have to—to rest, to think.”
“That would be best.” Breha brushed her hand along his shoulder, and it was as if she’d infused him with a new source of calm.
Still, he walked toward the door, pausing by Leia’s side only long enough to say, “We’re relieved to know you weren’t hurt. We love you.”
“I love you too.” It came out in a small voice. Leia felt as though there were another presence in the room with them—the unknown, or maybe the future. Something bigger and darker than any of them.
Once her father had left, Leia turned back to her mother, who said, “Let’s walk in the gardens.”
“We have to talk about this.”
“The gardens are as good a place to talk as any. Besides, I want to give your father some privacy.”
The palace offered more than enough privacy for a hundred people, but Leia understood what her mother meant. Her parents needed to feel the separation between each other for a short while.
The palace gardens, like the palace itself, had been the work of centuries. Richly designed beds of flowers and ferns painted patterns through the large central courtyard. Sculptures in pure white marble or shining metal nestled within arrangements of ivy meant to serve as frames. Leia found the gardens most beautiful in wintertime, when snowfall made the intricate designs look like a blanket of lace. Yet late spring could be lovely too, as it was now; the night-blooming candlewick flowers had opened to reveal their luminescent petals in pale orange and gold.
When she was a small child, Leia had believed that the soft glow within her mother’s chest was a bouquet of candlewicks in her heart. By now she understood the working of her mother’s pulmonodes and had met many other people with mechanized organ replacements—but the affection she felt for candlewick flowers had never faded. To her, they would always suggest magic, and love.
Breha took a seat on one of the polished stone benches. Although Leia knew she could sit too, she didn’t. She wanted to remain on her feet a while longer. Her mother began, “The report we received from Lieutenant Batten indicated that you met personally with Governor Panaka. Is that true?”
“Yes. I’m probably the last person he ever spoke to.”
“Tell me what passed between you.”
Leia’s frustration threatened to burst forth again. “I don’t think what I said to the governor matters as much as the fact that someone murdered him, and—”
“No, Leia.” It was not a gentle mother who spoke now; it was the queen, whose word was law. “I know we’ve tested your faith in us, but you must trust me tonight. It’s vitally important that you tell me precisely what you and Panaka discussed. Leave out no details. I have to understand what happened before we can proceed.”
It made no sense…and yet still Leia trusted her. So she told her mother about the miners, about Queen Dalné, about their decision to visit the chalet, even about the process of picking out a dress to wear. When Leia mentioned Panaka’s strange surprise upon seeing her, Breha tensed, but said nothing. By the end of the story, her mother was trembling so much that Leia had to force herself to look at the candlewick blooms instead. Otherwise she wasn’t sure she could’ve kept talking.
“He said he would let Palpatine know that my parents had adopted an—outstanding daughter, or distinguished—something complimentary, I don’t remember what. We said goodbye, Dalné and I started down the steps, and that’s when the explosion happened.”
“How much time elapsed from the time you parted to the time he died?”
“Not long at all. If we’d said another two or three sentences to each other, I would still have been in the chalet when it blew up.” Leia finally turned back to her mother. Breha Organa looked as though she had aged years in a minute. One hand was pressed to her chest, where her pulmonodes faintly glowed between her fingers, and the other clutched a fistful of silk from the skirt of her robe. Her skin, normally golden, had gone ashen. Alarmed, Leia came closer. “Are you going to faint?”
“I don’t think so.” Her mother shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “We came so close to utter destruction.”
“I came closer than you did.” Leia folded her arms across her chest. Her dress still smelled like smoke.
“Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it that way. You were the one in the greatest danger, more than you could’ve known.” Rising to her feet, Breha swept her daughter into her arms. “But if anything were ever to happen to you—I can’t even say it. Your father and I would gladly have taken that risk in your stead. You know that, don’t you?”
Although Leia was moved, she resisted the urge to hug her mother back. “You haven’t answered my question. Did you two have anything to do with this?”
The pause that followed lasted long enough that she thought at first their conversation was over, that she would simply be put off again. But finally Breha said, “We didn’t know this would happen, no. We wouldn’t have condoned it if we had known. Quarsh Panaka was by far the highest-ranking Imperial official we had any hopes of contacting someday, perhaps even working with. It would have been a risk—maybe one we’d never have taken. Panaka’s loyalty to Palpatine was great. Still, he was as good a man as anyone in the Emperor’s inner circle could ever be, and much better than most. Panaka was…an option I wish had been left open to us.”
“I saw that in him too. But if you wanted to talk to Panaka, then why—”
“That was the work of an associate,” Breha began, then shook her head as she gestured for Leia to sit beside her this time. “No. You deserve some measure of the truth. The bombing was the work of a group that calls themselves the partisans, led by a man named Saw Gerrera. He’s a brave man, an intelligent fighter…but his methods are becoming more violent, more extreme. Saw’s alienating some of the people your father and I most need on our side. I don’t know how we’re ever going to resolve it. You can be sure I intend to tell him how close he came to killing our daughter. If that won’t shock him into reconsidering his ways, nothing will.”
Leia was being treated as an adult and wanted to reply like one. She weighed her next words carefully. “You say you don’t approve of his methods. But when I asked about violence before, you said ‘exactly.’ What did you mean?”
It was her mother’s turn to think over her answer. “I’m a daughter of Alderaan. My mother raised me to cherish peace, as I am trying to raise you. I’m no warmonger. Yet I am also no fool, and only a fool would believe that Palpatine’s rule could be ended without violence. When he learns of an organized rebellion—as someday he must, if we’re ever to accomplish more than whispering in back rooms—he’ll demand our blood. If we aren’t ready to fight back, we’ll be doomed.”
Leia felt as though she ought to argue with this, or as though she ought to want to argue. Yet as intimidating as her mother’s words were, she knew the fundamental point was true. “Why was Dad so upset when you mentioned it?”
“He hasn’t yet fully accepted that any successful rebellion will have to be on such a large scale. After what he lived through in the Clone Wars, that’s understandable. Those battl
es scarred the galaxy for a generation, and no doubt that’s why so many people are reluctant to take on such a fight again. But others have begun to see that truth.”
“Like you.”
“Like me, and a few of our friends, and no, I’m not telling you who. Even revealing Saw’s identity was more information than I should’ve given you.” Her mother brushed a loose strand of Leia’s hair back from her forehead. “Let’s just say that we have a great deal of negotiation ahead, with many parties, representing many points of view.”
Leia would’ve thought any movement against Palpatine would be united by the pure goodness of its purpose. Instead, through her mother’s words, she glimpsed a larger, more complicated alliance, one in which the parties shared a goal but agreed on very little else. “Aren’t they all on the same side?”
“In the most important sense, yes. But there’s no one path. When it comes to the morality of what we may have to do…we have to find our way through many shadows.”
“Together,” Leia said, meaning to complete her mother’s sentence.
Breha’s smile was crooked. “We have to hope so.”
When Leia went to bed that night, exhausted and scrubbed clean, she felt as if everything had been put right between her and her mother—maybe even better than before, since Breha had finally begun to reveal some details of her parents’ shadowy alliance against Palpatine. They could trust each other again. Her father hadn’t reached out to her after storming from the library, but she felt sure they’d speak again in the morning, when he’d have calmed down. Yet as she lay under the silk coverlets, despite all her weariness, she couldn’t go to sleep. She wanted answers for the moral questions her mother had raised, but they were hard to find.
Quarsh Panaka was a decent man who served the Empire out of personal loyalty rather than ambition. Murdering him and others in his household—how can that have been the right thing to do?
Mom’s right, though. Palpatine won’t surrender power unless he’s forced out. If the Imperial Senate hasn’t been able to hold the Empire in check by now, they never will.
That last thought shocked her; it was a truth she hadn’t realized she knew. Her father and his allies in the Senate worked tirelessly to ameliorate the greatest evils of Imperial rule. He and his closest political ally, Mon Mothma of Chandrila, had managed to moderate punishments levied on individuals or even entire star systems. With the help of the other Chandrilan senator, Winmey Lenz, and Senator Pamlo of Taris, they had turned down motions to punish Imperial crimes through slavery. Leia herself had helped him draft legislation that had outlawed conscription of stormtroopers, in response to rumors that some of the admirals were campaigning for such a move.
They had done so much, but it wasn’t enough.
She told herself, You can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
But this wasn’t dirt. This was blood.
The sunlight streaming through her window the next morning told her breakfast would be served on the south terrace. Simple a pleasure as that was, she needed a reason to be cheerful, at least for an hour.
Their south terrace looked out over the River Wuitho, and the smaller villages on the outskirts of Aldera. More candlewick flower vines had wrapped themselves around the terrace’s carved rails, although by morning they’d closed up into tight little buds. A flock of thranta swooped through the sky, their gray wings flapping distantly overhead. Leia brightened when she saw the table spread out with cheeses, rolls, and sweet green juice—and when she saw that her father had lingered with his breakfast. Usually he and her mother were working by the time she rose, but maybe he’d waited just to talk to her.
“Good morning.” She smiled brightly at him, but stiffened as he looked up at her, stone-faced. “I, ah, I guess you don’t have a busy day today?”
“All my days are busy, now.” His tone was solemn, not angry, but somehow that made her more uneasy. “You and I should talk about your future humanitarian missions.”
“I should probably discuss them with both you and Mom in advance.”
Bail raised an eyebrow. “You’re only now coming to this conclusion?”
Putting her hands on her hips, Leia retorted, “It’s not like you two are easy to catch up with. You never have time for me anymore.”
She’d expected him to be shamed by this, sure he would feel guilty when confronted, but instead her father said, “No, we usually don’t. Now that you understand the true reasons why, I’d expect you to be more forgiving of that.”
“I am! It’s just—I’ve become used to doing more things on my own.”
His tone gentled somewhat. “That’s only natural. But the potential cost of another mistake is too high. We have to eliminate even the slightest chance that you’ll be in harm’s way. I’ve put together a list of approved worlds from which you can choose your future missions. All of them have pressing needs that make them worthy recipients of whatever aid you can give.”
Leia told herself it should make no difference whether or not she chose her own missions of mercy, as long as the world in question needed help. Yet she felt crushed. Her Challenge of the Heart was meant to be a step toward adulthood. Instead, it was being laid out for her like she was still a child. “What if I choose my own missions, but I absolutely make sure to run it by you and Mom in advance, every time?”
Bail’s expression again became forbidding as he set a datacube in front of her, tapping the screen to display the planets he’d selected, her newly limited cosmology. To her he seemed so distant he might as well have been on one of those faraway worlds. “The list is final, Leia. We won’t discuss this again.”
With that he set down his cup and walked off the terrace, leaving her to begin her day alone.
Her mood remained dark even days later, as the Tantive IV swooped into the soupy green atmosphere of Chal Hudda for her to begin her first paternally sanctioned mission of mercy. This planet might need her help as much as any other, but it would be easier for her to act charitably than to feel that way.
Chal Hudda was an Outer Rim world of interest to virtually no one. Its marshy surface made landings difficult for all but the lightest spacecraft, and its natural resources held use for almost no life-forms except the ones who had evolved there. It was a stubbornly independent, self-sustaining society—or it had been until recently, when a fearful disease had begun to affect the Chalhuddans’ young. The sickness incapacitated adults for a short time, but the children often died. Reports indicated that the disease had reached epidemic proportions, and Chal Hudda’s relative poverty meant they could import very little medical treatment.
The vaccines Leia had brought would inoculate nearly half a million Chalhuddan young, and yet fit into a set of cases that wouldn’t even have filled her bedroom at home. She’d had to bring the Tantive IV instead of the yacht, however, because only a ship that large could carry the landing craft.
She walked into the launching bay in her pale blue all-clime suit, fastening the high neck as she headed toward Captain Antilles. It took her a moment to recognize him in his own all-clime, formfitting and slightly shiny, instead of his usual uniform. “Are we ready, Captain?”
“Ready to launch on your word, Your Highness. If you’ll join me?” He gestured to one of the bubble-shaped landing craft, and she hopped in. They took with them only two other crewmembers and a protocol droid. As Captain Antilles took his seat next to her, the transparent plasma door shimmered back into being. Ress Batten’s voice came over the speakers: “Ready to launch on five, four, three—”
The landing bay doors slid open, allowing milky green fog to swirl inside.
“Two, one.”
Antilles hit the controls, sending the bubble forward through the doors—and then plummeting downward. Leia sucked in an involuntary breath as she saw the water beneath rushing toward them, until they plunged below the surface. As the last sunlight from above faded into the gloom, the captain hit the searchlights and sent them forward.
�
�How does anyone live in this?” she muttered. An ocean world was one thing—but this muck was too opaque to even be called a swamp.
“Different worlds for different lives,” Antilles said cheerfully. It was an old aphorism, one she’d rarely found so difficult to believe.
Their craft slipped into a grotto, then surfaced into one of the underground pockets of air in which the Chalhuddans lived. Leia had seen members of this species before—they did travel and trade, however sparingly—but was still caught off by the sheer size of them. Chalhuddans stood nearly as tall as a dewback, with shimmery olive-toned skin, two tall hornlike protrusions on either side of their heads, and black manes that were neither tentacles nor fur but somehow in between the two.
The protocol droid, designated C-3PO, piped up, “In case you were unaware, Your Highness, Chalhuddans have five different genders and shift through them throughout their lives. Their native pronoun cases are rather complex—indicating not only current gender but two or three previous ones, and occasionally the gender they feel most likely to be next, but as our language has no equivalent words, ‘you’ or ‘they’ can be used in all cases.”
Leia didn’t think she’d be needing that many pronouns, but protocol droids never knew when to stop—this one in particular. “Thank you, See-Threepio.”
This mission promised to be brief, very nearly rote. She would drop off the vaccines, accept the Chalhuddans’ thanks, and leave. The next session of the Apprentice Legislature would begin soon, and she was eager to return to Coruscant. Partly this was because it would be good to get back to work, but she was also looking forward to seeing her friends again—Kier most of all.
This won’t even take five minutes, she thought as they drifted to the disembarkation point. If my father has to pick out my missions, at least he chose quick and easy ones.
Or so she thought, until five minutes later, when she stood in front of the Chalhuddan leader and repeated, “You refuse to accept the vaccines?”
“We refuse your pity. We refuse your condescension.” Their leader, Occo Quentto, puffed out the air sac under their lower lip, rendering them even more intimidating. “Always, we have supported ourselves, and we always shall.”