by Claudia Gray
It occurred to Leia that her mother might not have invited Kier only as a kindness to her daughter. She might’ve intended to distract Leia from what was really going on.
If so, this was the first time Leia had gotten one step ahead of the queen.
When the banquet began, and the other guests departed along with the musicians, Leia and Kier were left all alone except for the servitor droids who swiftly brought their dinner. Although Leia took her seat and ate and drank at the appropriate moments, her mind raced toward the banquet room and what might be happening there.
It was a measure of her curiosity that even Kier Domadi couldn’t hold her attention completely.
“So you never get to attend the banquets?” he said, carefully sipping the nectar in his dark red glass. “Even though you’re a princess?”
“Princesses don’t get everything, you know.”
Leia intended it only as a joke, and was surprised when he ducked his head as if in apology. “I know that. I realize—when we met, I might’ve come across—”
“Kier. It’s okay. I am ridiculously privileged. But my family and I try to use our privileges to benefit others even more than ourselves.” That was a rote answer, the kind of diplomatic response her father might give. Never before had that reply seemed inadequate to her. It was such a thin sliver of the truth.
Her parents were doing more for the galaxy than anyone else could dream. More, even, than they should?
“I believe in the royal house of Alderaan,” Kier said sincerely. His eyes met hers with his usual uncanny intensity, as if catching the light of the candledroids floating overhead. “We’ve been served well by our monarchy for a hundred generations. That’s more than most planets can say, and a hell of a lot more than the galaxy at large could ever claim.”
That was the second time today she’d heard someone freely criticize Palpatine without looking around to make sure nobody was listening. Kier’s courage struck her even more powerfully than Mon Mothma’s had. Leia lifted her chin. “You don’t believe in the Empire.”
“Who does, besides his brainwashed cannon fodder? Palpatine’s rule is a—a mockery of what government should be. Corruption is everywhere, and they don’t even bother hiding it. His cruelty is known to everybody, but the only ones who admit it are the ones loathsome enough to praise him for it. I know the Republic had its problems, but compared to this, they were nothing.” Kier leaned back in his chair, turning his gaze toward the russet-red horizon. The first stars had become visible in the darkening sky above. “Every day I thank the Force I was born on Alderaan. At least I can be loyal to my planet and its rulers. At least I know our happiness and safety isn’t bought with other people’s misery. We’re free here in a way almost no one else in the Empire will ever be.”
A shadowy idea in Leia’s mind began to take form. Even minutes ago, she’d thought this move would be too daring for tonight—that it was something she could consider later on, weeks or even months in the future. But now…
I trust him. He’s a good person who cares about our planet and believes in my mother’s rule. Maybe he cares about me, too. And Kier would always want to do the right thing.
Maybe he can help me figure out just what the right thing would be.
She took up her own goblet of nectar, mostly to have something to do with her hands. “You know,” she said as casually as she could manage, “the most ancient parts of this palace are more than a thousand years old?”
Kier nodded. “I’ve studied the palace—even wrote a paper on it once. It’s the whole history of Alderaanian architecture in one massive building.” His smile turned shy. “What are my chances of a tour?”
Stay focused, Leia told herself. “The banquet hall is one of the oldest rooms of all. Back then, everything was lit with lamps and candles, and servants were all living beings instead of droids—”
“Only living servants? Sounds…primitive,” he said, straight-faced.
In the same dry tone, Leia replied, “Somehow we endured. Anyway, back then, if you wanted to listen to what was being said—without being seen—you couldn’t plant listening devices. They had other methods.”
Kier sat up straighter, a hint of a smile playing on his face. “Your Highness, are you considering eavesdropping?”
He was eager to play a game. For one instant, she wished that was all she was inviting him to do.
The invitation she had to offer was far more precious, and far more dangerous.
Leia sat up straight and leaned across the table, willing him to understand at least part of how serious this was. “You have to make me a promise. No matter what you hear tonight, it goes no further than this palace. You never mention it to anyone but me, ever. I don’t want to reveal my parents’ secrets. I just want to—to share them.” So someone else will know what I know. So I don’t have to carry this information alone. “You have to promise me on whatever it is you hold most sacred.”
Kier’s entire demeanor changed. Maybe he couldn’t guess what he was about to discover, but he knew this was far more than a game. Slowly he nodded. “I promise you on Alderaan itself.”
“All right then.” A shiver swept through Leia, and she wasn’t sure if it was fear or anticipation. “Follow me.”
Several hundred years before, Alderaan’s people had favored a style of architecture featuring ornately carved screens of pale stone. Sometimes these screens would be inlaid with precious gems by the rich and powerful, while the common citizen enjoyed intricate patterns carved straight through the rock. Truly fine artisans would cut spots in the stone so thin that light could shine through it, though the surface remained unbroken.
For the most part, it was this last, most finely wrought stone that lined the banquet hall of the palace. The royal family back then had conducted espionage the old-fashioned way, by eavesdropping. Their artisans had skillfully crafted the walls so that natural indentations or shadows in the stone hid tiny openings, each of which was angled to amplify sound from the room into the small passageways between these carved screens and the inner walls.
Very small passageways.
“Were humans smaller back then?” Kier whispered as they crawled along the floor. Shadows and dim light played in patterns along their bodies as they went.
“Probably.” The passage wasn’t as uncomfortable for Leia, but even she found it a squeeze. Then again, maybe the royals of old wanted espionage to be difficult.
They reached one of the tiny chambers large enough for someone to sit down. It was barely big enough to fit both her and Kier, and they could only manage by sitting side by side, shoulders and legs touching, their faces very close.
Leia didn’t mind.
“The soup is delicious,” said Cinderon Malpe. “Really, Breha, your chefs have outdone themselves.”
“Why, thank you.” Leia’s mother spoke in her most queenly voice. “I shall be sure to share your compliments.”
Kier raised an eyebrow. “Scandalous.”
“Just wait, all right?” Doubt nagged at Leia for an instant. What if she was wrong about the purpose of these dinner parties? What if it was really all rich food and conversation?
No. I’m right about this. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t already done talking about their plans for the night.
“Do you hide down here all the time?” Kier murmured. The light filtering unevenly through the thin-carved stone painted half his face in shadow. “Storing up secrets?”
“I used to sneak around in here when I was little. Not so much anymore.” The last time she’d ventured behind these screens had been about seven years prior, when her parents were dining alone a week before her Name Day. Leia had been young and self-centered enough to assume they’d probably talk about her presents. Instead, she’d heard them laughing softly and flirting…and she’d wound up scurrying out, red-faced, just in time to avoid a very unwelcome lesson about exactly what spouses did together in their private hours. That had been enough to keep her from ever ventu
ring back here until this night.
“Was it lonely, growing up in the palace?”
Kier’s question caught her off guard. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s not like I have much to compare it to. Sometimes I wished I had more playmates, but—it’s not like I didn’t have fun.”
He looked up and around, clearly indicating their secret chamber. Obviously he was about to speak—but then one of the servitor droids rolled closer and they both fell silent.
“—and so I said, if that’s the shortest route you can find, never mind.” Senator Pamlo sighed, a touch melodramatically. “It’s not like traveling around the various restrictions isn’t hard enough already.”
A thump on the table, and then Vaspar said, “And the situation’s only gotten worse after that fiasco on the moon of Naboo.”
Leia sucked in a sharp breath. She hadn’t told Kier about her trip to Onoam; she’d known her parents wouldn’t want her to. But from the way he looked at her now, she knew he’d heard the news about Moff Panaka’s death—and at the least understood that the situation was even more complex than the murder of a provincial governor.
“Saw Gerrera has gone too far,” Senator Malpe said, his reedy voice growing louder by the word. “This isn’t the way we intended to operate!”
“We have to put a stop to it,” agreed Pamlo.
Breha spoke next. “Gerrera’s partisans were horribly out of line. They murdered innocent people, and perhaps the closest thing to an ally we’d ever have found in the higher echelons of the Empire. But—I would ask you to consider—we cannot expect our struggle to remain bloodless forever.”
“That’s a slippery slope,” came a voice Leia didn’t recognize. “You’re dangerously close to condoning an assassination, Your Majesty. Where do we go from here?”
“To war,” said Breha.
A silence fell. Leia stole a glance at Kier, whose lips were parted in astonishment, but he was listening too raptly to notice her observation.
After a few long moments, Cinderon Malpe said, “May that day be far in the future.”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” Bail replied, “but we must begin to steel ourselves. Darker days are coming, whether we act or not. If we do act, however, we can hope for a better dawn.” He showed no hint of the doubts that plagued him, the arguments he’d had with his wife. Either he’d finally been convinced, or he understood the importance of presenting a united front.
“Those are considerations for the future.” It was Mon Mothma who spoke next, as calm and steady as any queen. “For now, we must find a way to get Saw Gerrera’s partisans in line. His use of violence is indiscriminate and premature, and therefore just as dangerous to us as it is to the servants of the Empire.”
“If not more,” Bail said.
“Do you hear yourselves?” It was the man whose voice Leia didn’t know. “We hate the Empire’s cruelty and violence. How can we claim to be morally superior when we stoop to violence ourselves?”
Mon Mothma answered him. “There comes a time when refusing to stop violence can no longer be called nonviolence. We cease to be objectors and become bystanders. At some point, morality must be wedded to action, or else it’s no more than mere…vanity.”
“If you mean—” Senator Pamlo’s voice trailed off as the great doors to the banquet hall swung open.
“Esteemed gentlebeings!” announced one of the protocol droids. “We will now present a musical interlude for your enjoyment.” The soft shuffle on the floor was the sound of Kitonak footsteps.
Just great, Leia thought, and knew her parents felt the same way. They’d hired living musicians for the night instead of droids. Living musicians were harder to dismiss without suspicion, which meant any rebellious talk was over for the time being, if not for the entire evening.
She and Kier shared another wordless look. Instantly understanding her, he began to crawl backward out of the passageway, and Leia followed.
They didn’t speak until they were back on the terrace. The servitor droids had already cleared away the table, though one instantly rolled out with two more goblets of nectar. Leia accepted hers without even looking at it. Studying Kier’s reaction was more important.
Finally he said, “How long have you known about this?”
“Not very long.” Leia had chosen to trust him, but she already knew that giving him specifics would endanger him just as much as her parents and their allies. “I want to support them, but after what happened in the Naboo system…I don’t know what to think.”
“Someone has to take action against the Empire.” Kier breathed out sharply and said something she hadn’t anticipated: “But I wish they’d have this conversation on any other planet in the galaxy.”
She frowned. “What difference would that make?”
He turned back to her and briefly touched her hand, maybe trying to soften the impact of his words. “You have to realize that your parents being involved in this puts our entire world at risk. If Emperor Palpatine ever learns about this, we could be bankrupted. Put under blockade. Younger people could be conscripted, or we could even be put in work camps. Who knows what else?”
Leia’s worst fears for her parents flickered feverishly in her mind. Would they be executed publicly, graphically, as an example to other rulers? The thought made her feel seasick and weak. Almost as bad was the thought of Alderaan reduced to the devastation and desperation she’d seen on Wobani.
Yet she summoned the nerve to say, “Alderaan is a key Core World, which means we have power, money, and influence. We shouldn’t hide behind those things. We should use them for the common good.”
Kier considered that for a while before answering. She liked the way he thought through things carefully before he spoke. “It’s not just your family ‘hiding’ behind Alderaan’s status. It’s not just people like me, either. It’s millions of children, and elderly people, including countless settlers and refugees from hundreds of troubled planets. Alderaan may be the one truly safe place in the entire Empire. Protecting that place isn’t cowardice, Leia. It may be the greatest gift we could ever give the galaxy.”
“I have to think about that,” she said. “But you do agree…something has to be done?”
After another pause, he nodded. “Your parents are brave, and they’re strong. We’ll need a lot of people like that if the Empire’s ever going to fall. But the bickering around that table—I can’t tell whether that’s a political movement or a disaster waiting to happen.”
As much as she would’ve liked to argue with that, she couldn’t. The lack of unity among the potential rebels against the Empire was even worse than Kier could know only from what he’d overheard in the dining hall.
He continued, “What if they’re being led astray? Deceived, even entrapped?”
“My father fought in the Clone Wars, Kier. He knows how to tell friend from foe. If he couldn’t, he would never have survived.”
Kier inclined his head, acknowledging her point. “They’ve got to cover their tracks. Make it possible to deny their involvement if the Empire ever learns about this. Your parents are clever enough for that, surely.”
“They’re clever enough.”
They were. However, Leia knew that her parents were at the core of this movement; any revelation of the rebellion’s existence would necessarily condemn them. Even if her parents could think of a way to conceal their involvement and protect themselves, they would scorn to do so if it meant it left their allies in jeopardy.
But telling Kier that would only worry him. Better to let him believe that some kind of safety could still exist. At least he was on their side.
Leia stepped closer to him. “You already promised never to say a word. But I need you to promise again.”
“I swear on Alderaan itself,” he repeated. His eyes met hers with that intensity she was coming to know so well. “Our secrets stay between us. Always.”
She wanted to hug him in thanks—or maybe she just wanted to hug him—but t
hen the terrace doors swung open, revealing her parents and their guests. A few paces behind them rolled more servitor droids with glasses of Toniray. If Leia hadn’t felt so tense, it might have amused her, watching all of them pretending to have nothing more substantial on their minds than the beauty of the night and the sweetness of the wine.
Leia sent 2V to get recharged so she could ready herself for bed in silence. As she sat in front of the window, absently brushing her hair, she thought about what Kier had said. Were her parents being irresponsible to risk their world? Or would it be more irresponsible not to use the power and wealth of Alderaan in the service of good?
A rap on her door made her turn. “Yes?”
Her mother stepped in, her black hair hanging loose around her shoulders with the one lock of silver tracing the side of her face. What struck Leia the most was the mischief in her mother’s smile. “Well,” she said. “I thought I should mention—your father and I liked Kier Domadi very much.”
Someday, Leia hoped, she would be too old to blush. She wished that day would hurry up and arrive. “Oh. Um. He’s—” At the last minute, she decided to try a different tack. “Thank you for asking him.”
“We thought you should have some company for a change.” Breha spoke so sincerely that Leia felt bad for having suspected her mother of ulterior motives. “He’s intelligent, he carries himself with poise, he obviously thinks the world of you.”
How do you know that exactly? Leia wanted to ask, but kept her mouth shut.
Breha concluded, “And he’s very handsome, which a young man should be if at all possible. You’ve chosen well.”
Leia wasn’t sure she’d made any choices for sure yet, but something about her mother’s tone distracted her. “So what’s the problem?”
With a deliberately melodramatic sigh, Breha put one hand to the front of her scarlet silk wrapper. “I suppose a tiny bit of me hoped that my daughter’s first romance wouldn’t be so…suitable. Sometimes it does a girl good to fall for a bit of a scoundrel, now and then.”