Kae

Although the perfumes hit like a fetid slap in the face, making me reflexively diminish my sense of smell, Kae strode into the ballroom with confidence. I followed like any good apprentice, although what I really wanted to do was struggle out of the confining ceremonial robes and escape. There were so many people, all just drifting about and standing in clumps, talking in low, polite murmurs, never raising their voices above a restrained laugh. All very effete. I felt like a Gammorrean in a crystal shop. A reeking crystal shop. It was one thing to know that plenty of peoples adored scents that you couldn't stand, another thing entirely to have it invading your nose.

As oblivious as any of them, my Master led me to one of the low refreshment tables against the walls. "Revan, if you would." She indicated two elegantly-sculpted glasses and an elaborately-labeled bottle of some kind of beverage which I suspected was alcoholic. I tried my best to cut input from my olfactory system as completely as possible; my Master expected service.

As I poured, Master Kae leaned in as if supervising and murmured, "It's very confusing at first, I know. It helps to think of these people as part of some strange foreign culture. Study them quietly." She accepted one of the glasses, raised it to her painted lips, and sipped delicately.

I followed suit and almost choked. The bubbling amber liquid - it was alcoholic, and strongly so - was like a chemical-laced combination of rotted fruit, too-strong carbonic acid, and that terrible substance called "vodka" that I'd had to endure during my immunities program. I glared at my Master, who smiled slightly and sipped again before blotting her lips carefully with a napkin and explaining.

"Revan, the rich have this made at great expense. They tell themselves that they like it because it costs them so much, but poorer classes, sensibly, won't touch it. A side benefit is that its taste makes it difficult to take more than a sip at a time. I know that you are highly resistant, but even a Jedi can become inebriated." Kae smiled and sipped once more, swallowing with no apparent effort.

Copying her I tasted the poisonous liquid again, despite the fact that my precog was tingling at me not to. The innocuous-looking liquid tried to dissolve my tongue and the soft tissues of my mouth, corrupting my saliva with itself. I lowered the glass, silently vowing not to touch the stuff again.

"You can learn much about people at such gatherings," Master Kae told me, making a subtle gesture that encompassed the room. "Notice. Those in positions of higher power- the Senator's husband and elder daughter, the old general, the local Czerka executive - are all stationed where they can be seen, but not cornered. Those who have less power, but desire to be seen as stronger than they are, copy them, but some are in corners or alcoves. See how many of those with little power are near those who have more. They are drawn to authority."

"And us, Master?" I asked quietly. She seemed to expect it.

"We are other. Like the Anx envoy, we are an unknown factor, so we are ignored unless someone senses an opportunity for power to change hands. Expect us to be approached later as they feel us out. Perhaps not this evening, though. We are still new. Watch carefully when they do approach us. One always heralds the avalanche."

I stared around the room, still somewhat bewildered. It all seemed very complicated. If I'd known it was going to be like this, perhaps I- no, I still would have left Kreia. And gladly. But the less-urgent side of Kae's specialty was utterly confusing to me.

Almost every Jedi has to dabble in diplomacy at some point. Negotiations, really, with or without lightsabers. Some Jedi specialize in it - Corusucant calls these specialists "Consulars" or "Watchmen" or sometimes "Sages". Master Arren Kae was to these specialists what they were to a ten-year-old who tries to break up playground squabbles. She was good at her job, very good. Unlike most specialists, she had very rarely had to use her lightsaber or any form of subterfuge to achieve a favorable result.

I wasn't actually sure what, exactly, she did. I knew that not every planet or system in the Republic was really run by Republic officials. There were a number of smaller republics and federations and coalitions and the like within our borders. Often they self-governed, and to keep an eye on their exploits the Republic set up embassies or "diplomatic missions". I was pretty sure that they just spied and told their governments what the Republic would think or say. For some reason the Republic sent "ambassadors", some of them celebrated personages, to be extra visible, although the mission's staff was usually more permanent and quieter.

Master Kae was not an ambassador. I had found that she rarely stayed in one place for more than a standard month. Sometimes she played the usual Jedi role of appearing just in time and negotiating something that defused a conflict or helped people get along. Sometimes it looked as though she was inspecting a diplomatic mission and the region that hosted it. Sometimes she visited one person, focusing on him or her to the exclusion of all others. And sometimes she apparently took an ambassador's place for a few days to weeks.

This was one of those times.

"Ahh. Good, Gylesh Bauk is here. I was afraid that his health would prevent him... Revan, I don't think you'll be too interested in his chitchat. These days his grasp of Basic is none too strong... Why don't you run off? Try talking to a few other young people. Meet me back here in about an hour." I watched her trot off, looking less like a Jedi or even a diplomat and more like one of the courtiers, the empty-headed social flutterers that I couldn't stand.

Kae had explained her functions to me a few times, but I couldn't seem to grasp much of her explanations. Frankly, it looked more as though she was socializing. I saw her all but drape herself over this withered-looking Bauk fellow and shook my head a little. Kae was a little strange. She could go from wise master to measured diplomat to sharp bargainer to shrill nag to coy flirt, all without much warning. I had asked, and she had told me that people responded better if you adapted to them.

I had to wonder if she adapted herself to me. Her temperament and all of her mannerisms, with or without a crowd of people around, seemed artificial. It didn't matter what she did. Smiling, making a little concentration-frown appear on her forehead, leaning forwards or back, speaking with or without interest, everything she about her said "phony" to my instincts.

It hadn't at first, of course. At first I had been too gratified at having a respectable Master to notice. Certainly I hadn't met anyone else who saw it; when I'd complained to Malak he had been taken aback. But as time went on, I picked up on the impression that she was mostly false. She reminded me subtly of Kreia, and not simply in appearance. Kae was much younger and had a more compact, less elongated face, but otherwise they looked ... similar. I hadn't heard any Temple gossip about it, but... perhaps they were related?

Well, no sense in speculating, I told myself wearily. Kae was making her rounds. Unlike with Kreia, I knew just how much deference Kae expected from me - oh, neither of them ever came out and said it, but I could feel most people out and estimate - and my current Master wouldn't take kindly to my overtly disobeying her unless I had a damn good reason. "Honor your Master" was an unwritten rule. She honored me; I had to do my best to return that.

Talk to a few other young people. Right. My Master could be extraordinarily intelligent when she wanted, but it looked as if this wasn't one of those times. What other young people? I doubted that anyone in the damned ballroom was under thirty-five. Well... maybe that Ranat over there. I'd guess that he's eighteen, nineteen. Ranats, though, rarely lived much more than twenty years, so that made this one quite elderly. Besides, I'd always found the rodent people very difficult to hold a conversation with.

She didn't tell me to stay here, I realized. I couldn't just go back to the quarters we'd been assigned - not that I really wanted to; everything had been covered in so much lace that I feared drowning in it - but I could do a little wandering.

It was difficult to make my escape hastily without appearing to be hurrying, but I managed well enough. Fleeing the room was worth passing up the fancy edibles. Kae and I had eaten some plainer fare beforehand; I could eat more, of course, but at the moment I had no desire to do so. Besides, I suspected that the frilly-looking decorative food had no actual substance. That had proved true on more than one previous experience.

The gardens were attached to the ballroom, but none of the people inside had bothered to wander out and look. Maybe the perfume was drugged, maybe they just loved each other's company too much. It was just as well. Kae and I had been given the whirlwind tour when we arrived in this massive marble pile of a governing house, but I had barely glimpsed the gardens. I honestly didn't know if they were lush or haggard, lovely or not fit to be seen, but it would be better than staying inside.

Because it was night, the flowering shrubs and such weren't as eye-pleasing as they might be in daylight. Nothing here glowed in the dark, it seemed. Dormant plants weren't very good at holding my attention. But the courtyard walls were pocketed with alcoves; in these alcoves, I saw, were statues, each with its own diffused spotlight.

Dumping the contents of my glass into the graveled path with a silent apology for anything with roots that might encounter it, I started to investigate the statues.

The first few were larger-than-life busts of local figures, some human, others not. They appeared to have been carved out of marble or a similar pale, translucent stone; very smooth and with a creamy white or pink coloring. Not wanting to run out of things to do too quickly, I forced myself to take in every detail, admiring the artistry. They looked quite expensive. I had little doubt that they had been. A metal plaque of some sort was mounted in the tall pedestal of each, but the names and dates meant nothing to me.

The glass's contents lingered acidically in my mouth, so I dug through the pockets of my ornamented robe and found a wrapped cube of the confection called "chikk". I unwrapped and started to chew it. Even though the stuff made me salivate so heavily that I had to swallow constantly to prevent drooling, the intensely sweet additives completely wiped out the taste of my drink. The confection's flavoring faded quickly, but I chewed the elastic mass like a ruminant with a piece of cud. Kae had introduced me to chikk on our first mission together and I had been partaking of it ever since.

I stopped chewing entirely as I came face-to-knee with a life-sized freestanding sculpture of a nude woman. The nudity wasn't what stopped me; I had taken more than one Artistic Appreciation class on Dantooine and knew better than to be shocked by that. What made me stop and stare, apathetic to the drool filling my mouth, was the miniature rancor that was part of the sculpture.

Its ugly head, seen from behind was slightly lower than the woman's waist and one of its long, slender arms disappeared around her hips as if clutching her close. The other arm, outstretched and straining, had its long clawed fingers wrapped over the woman's left breast. The pedestal that bore the statue was tall enough that it was difficult to see the higher-up details, but I saw that although her arms suggested surprise, her face did not seem to indicate displeasure. In fact... My eyes dropped and I noticed from the positioning of the head's muscles that the rancor's maw was open. That meant- no, surely they weren't-

"Thirty years ago the previous High Father had this piece cast in gold and displayed at the palace. To this day we do not know why." The voice had a slight, congested-sounding Grosnikkan accent, the "w"s sounding like "v"s and the "r"s slightly rolled. Aware of myself again, I swallowed and used my sleeve to rub the saliva from my chin, then turned slowly.

The speaker was a human boy, smallish and slight with very large eyes and a pocked, pitted face that looked like the scars of some kind of disease. Maybe a year or two older than me; fifteen at best and enduring early puberty. He wore what looked like a dress uniform, encrusted with enough medals and shiny embroideries and gold braids to shame a war hero. He was looking at the statue, not me.

I relaxed. It didn't look like he was here to shoo me back inside. I hadn't sensed him approaching in the Force, but that was understandable, as he was not a Sensitive and I had been... preoccupied. The chikk was forcing me to divide my attention, so I turned half away to spit it into my palm and wrap it in the scrap of paper it had come in before dropping it into a pocket.

Then I faced and studied the statue, cooly, as I had been taught. Analytically. The sculpture had been carved from one singular block of stone, rather than two which had been completed and then fitted together. Where they touched, rancor and woman merged, although the stone had been skillfully carved between them to make them appear otherwise. It was a very finely carved piece, really. Texturing was good; I could see the positioning of muscles, the straining of the rancor's wrinkled arm, the way the woman's flesh was dimpled where it met the rancor's claws. My artistic appreciation teacher would have loved it, I was sure.

After I had waited a moment more, I decided to introduce myself semiformally. "Fine evening to you. My name is Revan."

He surprised me by sketching a sort of bow-salute. "Bai rekerho, Revan. I am called Dom. Domitri." Yep. He's definitely Grosnikkan. Picking up on the idea that he was hoping to impress me, I raised both of my eyebrows and was pleased to see him back down a bit.

"I can see that it's a well-made statue, sure. But the subject matter... Cast in gold, you said? Where in the palace was it displayed?" Dimly, I could remember one of my teachers, probably Vrook, saying that my curiosity was probably my biggest flaw. 'You do know, Revan, that inquisitiveness killed the ixtec,' he'd said once after a class. And I had told him 'But satisfaction brought it back,' and Vrook had turned his face away to hide exasperation and the smallest of smiles...

Dom's voice pulled me out of the memory. "The landing of the Grand Staircase, in the Entrance Hall, where anyone coming through the Great Ceremonial Doors can see it." Using a pained voice, he said it as if each name was some kind of title. I could almost hear the capital letters. "It is shameful, but the previous High Father was well-regarded. To take it away would be... unthinkable."

The boy brightened, the corners of his eyes twitching and the pockmarks stretching. "Although this same sculptor first carved this as a companion piece to another. One with the same pose, the same rancor, but using a male human instead of a female. I have seen it. I think it to be possibly the most embarrassing artwork ever displayed, but that is difficult to judge."

Dom glanced over in time to see me shake my head and say, "No accounting for tastes, I guess. And trust me. There are many, many sculpts out there which are worse. There's one in the middle of Central Station on Selonia..."

Inspired, I suppose, by the statue, we talked for far longer than the hour which Kae had alotted me. The topic went from statues and other artworks to travel. Domitri proved to be attached to the embassy of the Grosnikkan Empire; with it, he had traveled a fair amount, usually staying in one place for a year or more. He was describing the facilities on Skako when Kae appeared and extricated me.

When we had returned to our quarters and the sea of frothy lace within, I expected my Master to chastise me. I had, after all, not met her back near the refreshments table within the hour. Instead she seemed pleased.

"You have good taste," she told me, eyes bright in a way that seemed far more genuine than most of her expressions. "When I was only a little older than you I was the same. I really don't think you'll be following my course, though; my life has rather too little excitement for you. Padawan, I want you to befriend that boy, and perhaps his brightest sister, if you meet her. Every Jedi needs a network of allies, and Grosnik is an excellent place to start."

"You didn't know?" Master Kae's eyes tightened in what might or might not have been contempt. "I see. It must have been an unconscious choice, then. Domitri is of royal blood and part of the line of succession; he is certainly not the heir, but he and the sister I mentioned are the most promising of the current batch. The others show their inbreeding too strongly for my comfort..."

"Is there anyone you don't keep tabs on, Master?" I had heard about the allies system. Many Jedi used personal connections on missions and assignments. Sometimes they were friends, at other times they simply owed favors. Of course, bringing in allies meant not being entirely neutral to a situation, but they could be helpful. Kae had many such allies.

"Perhaps," she told me, smiling with a good humor that I felt, all too strongly, was insincere. "Maybe you can help me with that."