Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

Author's Note: Chapter One takes place 7.5 years after the Prologue. (Yes, Jacen and Anakin will be getting back together, in Chapter Three.)

Chapter One

When Tenel Ka went back to Hapes after spending the last month on Dathomir, the only disappointment was that her grandmother wasn’t there to cluck her tongue and look disgusted at Tenel Ka’s choice of dress. She had gone to Dathomir every year while she was growing up, to get a new suit of stitched lizard skin, but now that she wasn’t growing anymore, she only went once every two years, when the old one was beginning to wear out. The new suit was shiny and still a little bit stiff, although it had loosened a small amount during the three-day journey to Hapes and the week of running and hunting with the rest of the Singing Mountain clan on Dathomir. Even though she was the Princess of the Hapes Consortium, she still thought of herself as part of her mother’s clan, and she split her time between Hapes, Dathomir, and the Jedi groups on Yavin 4 and Coruscant. Some day, Tenel Ka hoped to make Dathomir her permanent residence, and take her young daughter with her; if only she had a son, then she could find a suitable wife among the Hapans for that son, and her daughter-in-law would rule in her place.

Jacen Solo, however, had ruined that hope. What went wrong? Tenel Ka would have liked to have laid the blame on the Hapans, either in general or in specific – she knew that her grandmother Ta’a Chume, the former Queen Mother and the mother of her father, Isolder, absolutely hated Jacen, and all the Jedi, for that matter. She had tried once to kill Jacen’s mother Princess Leia many years earlier when Isolder was courting her. But the falling-out between Jacen and Tenel Ka was nothing explosive nor with an easy source to blame.

It had taken them three months before they even consummated their marriage, and even then was an unimpressive run through the motions without much real love behind it. More than once in the first year, Tenel Ka had thought they made the wrong decision. That they had nearly been lovers once, but after their long separation, despite wanting the love to continue, only friendship remained. And they were in danger of losing even that in their insistence that they deny the changes that the Stellar Imperial war thrust on the both of them. Tenel Ka had to make concessions for the Hapan culture. Jacen had to put aside his pacifism in order to survive. Neither one came out of it the same as when they went in, and while she never doubted for a moment that he genuinely cared about her, she also didn’t believe that he really wanted to be with her.

They’d argued over everything, especially after their daughter was born. Tenel Ka wanted to name her Allya, after her Dathomiri ancestress who was the mother, many generations removed, of nearly all the witches of Dathomir, including Tenel Ka and her own mother.

“She’s my daughter, too,” Jacen had snapped. “You wouldn’t even have her without me!”

“Then what would you have her called?”

“Padme,” Jacen said firmly. “After my grandmother. Who, if you remember your history lessons, was the Queen of Naboo.”

Tenel Ka had been too tired to press the issue for long. “Very well. Allya Padme it will be.”

“Always you first. Always you and your family first. Where I come from, the men aren’t all in the underclass. I have a better idea: we’ll name her Anaya, the first part of my... grandfather’s name, and the last part of Allya’s.”

“We’ll use the first parts of both and call her Allana,” Tenel Ka said. She managed to inject some finality into her voice.

And two months later, Jacen packed up his things and went back to Coruscant, alone, saying that it would only get worse if they stayed together and he didn’t want Allana to grow up with two parents who hated each other. Better for her to grow up with one parent close to her and the other far away, but still getting along.

Tenel Ka couldn’t argue with his logic and she did agree that it would be better for Allana that way, but what she still couldn’t figure out was what, specifically, went wrong. Perhaps they just weren’t as good a match as they thought they were and the reality of the situation was that they were better off apart.

“Mother!” Allana came running down the winding staircase, long dark-red braids bouncing against her back. Her silver shoes made little click-click noises on the marble stairs, in an even pattern, and although she wasn’t running the stairs two at a time with the precision and balance of a Jedi child, Tenel Ka thought that there might yet be hope for her, especially now that she was home and would be able to train her a little bit.

Allana threw her arms around Tenel Ka, and then stepped back. “Uck, why are you wearing that? Come on.” She grabbed Tenel Ka’s hand and pulled her back towards the stairs. “There are better things in your closet.”

“How do you know what is in my closet?”

“I went looking. I didn’t touch anything, though. I know you said not to play in there and I was going to ask before I took out your dress.”

“Allana, I cannot run easily in a long dress and shoes with high heels on them. You cannot, either, and that is why your shoes are flat on the bottom.”

“I can too run in heels. Just not very fast.”

Tenel Ka sighed and hid her disappointment. “Lizard skin is the tradition dress for a girl on Dathomir. It protects all the parts of your body that have important organs inside, and stretches enough that one can move about. I brought home a set for you.”

Allana sighed. “All right, Mother, I’ll wear it if you want me to. But not when we have company because they will laugh at me.”

“Allana, nobody will laugh at you. You are the Queen Mother’s granddaughter.”

“I still don’t want to look silly.” Allana smoothed out a nearly invisible crease in her pale blue dress, which hung in neatly ironed pleats to her ankles, from a ribboned empire waist seam. Then she glanced back through the front hall towards the doors. “Did Father come with you?”

“No, he did not, because he did not go with me. You know your father lives on Coruscant and he is very busy right now.”

“I don’t like Coruscant. It’s too dirty there.” Allana wrinkled her nose and started to climb up the stairs again. “And I need a new nanny droid because Deedee doesn’t clean up my room. She said I’m big enough to do it myself. But I’m only six. I think she thinks I’m eight and that means she’s broken.”

“You are big enough to pick up your own toys,” Tenel Ka said. “What did your grandmother say?”

“I didn’t ask her. She’s busy too. I was waiting for you.”

Allana is going to be a spoiled brat if I don’t do something, Tenel Ka thought. How was she going to balance her Jedi duties with raising Allana, without Jacen around to help her? She thought briefly of sending Allana to Jacen for a little while, but rejected that idea almost as quickly as it came to her; he was in no state to raise and protect the daughter of the Hapan princess. She was surprised that he was even able to maintain his status as a Jedi Knight, as solitary and brooding as he had become, and how careless he was about his personal affairs. The last time she had seen him, it was obvious that his clothes hadn’t been anywhere near an iron or a Laundromat in a long time, and while that was perfectly acceptable if due to being on a mission, he had done nothing but poke around his two-bedroom apartment on Coruscant and occasionally go down to the refurbished Jedi Temple to help out with a trainee class.

“I will look at your droid to see if there is anything wrong with her, but if all that is wrong is that she expects you to take care of your own things, then you will have to learn to do that,” said Tenel Ka. “I will not have you depending on other people and on your droids for the rest of your life. You may not understand this yet, but you live in a very dangerous place.”

“The palace isn’t dangerous, except in the kitchen,” said Allana. “And I don’t go in the kitchen unless Deedee is with me, and I know not to play with knives or the stove.”

“Maybe I could take you to Dathomir again for a little while, and we will teach you how to use knives so that you do not cut yourself, and how to use fire so that you do not burn yourself. These are skills you should have, and it is never too early to learn them.”

“And spells,” said Allana. “I could learn some spells.”

“That might need to wait a little bit, until you can use your power responsibly. Allana, I regret that I have been away from home so much. I promise that next time I leave Hapes, I will take you with me.”

“Okay. But now we have to get dressed because it’s almost dinner time.”

“You are already dressed.”

“Everybody knows that you don’t wear light colors to dinner. It’s not polite. Your grandmother gave me a gold and purple dress and I want to wear that one. You should wear gold and purple too so that we will match.”

Tenel Ka let Allana help her pick out a sensible purple gown, one that wasn’t too constrictive but still didn’t cause Allana to make funny faces. Then Allana had Deedee help her lace up the back of her own gown, which had a jeweled golden bodice and several layers of purple silk and a top layer of synthetic microjewel strands woven together like cloth, scattering light in all directions when she moved, like the collection of miniature prisms that it was. “These aren’t real gems,” Allana whispered. “Ta’a Chume said I couldn’t have real gemcloth until I was bigger and wouldn’t outgrow it so fast.”

The fact that Ta’a Chume was playing nice to Allana made Tenel Ka more wary than anything else that had been said between the two of them that day. Ta’a Chume was the one who had killed her own son and that son’s fiancée just because she didn’t think that either one of them would be suitable as Hapan royalty, and she also had an extreme dislike of Teneniel that had never become less than at the start, not even after twenty-nine years. She had only abdicated the throne under threat of exposure; enough people in high places knew that she had Kalen and Elliar killed that could tell the rest of Hapes about it, and enough of the common folk and other nobles liked them that it could get Ta’a Chume into serious trouble. Of course, many only liked Kalen and his fiancée for the reasons that Ta’a Chume hated them; they were relatively weak and easy to influence.

Ta’a Chume had behaved the same way towards Tenel Ka for a long time, too. She remembered the gifts and the compliments, and the distinct feeling that Grandmother was trying to win her over. Tenel Ka never felt at home on Hapes, though. Her real home was Dathomir, and if she wasn’t there, then she liked to be with the Jedi, working on honing her skills and learning how better to use her body as a protective agent for herself and those around her. To use it as a finely tuned weapon for keeping the peace.

Allana was too easily distracted by pretty, shiny things.

Tenel Ka might have worn the gown and even at Allana’s insistence a small pair of purple earrings, but she made sure that the sleeves of her gown were arranged so that their bottom hems ended high enough to expose the stump of her left arm, which she would make no attempt to hide. If Ta’a Chume came to the royal dinner, she would see that her granddaughter was the same as ever, only a little older, and hopefully a little wiser. And that her great-granddaughter was not a token to be purchased with false words and ill-spent money.

She sat down with her parents at the solid wood table. Allana, now more subdued because she was in the presence of the Queen Mother, quietly took her place next to Tenel Ka, and pushed her booster chair onto the floor so that she could sit normally. Allana was tall enough to reach the table and be able to see over everything fine, although she was noticeably shorter than everybody else. Tenel Ka realized that Allana was not, in fact, much smaller than her aunt Jaina – only about a quarter of a meter, at any rate, and that would be quickly made up for in the next couple of years. Allana still had a lot of growing to do and she was already a little bit big for her age, looking more like she was eight than that she was six. Perhaps there was something to Allana’s claim of Deedee’s confusion after all; Tenel ka had never really liked the idea of having droids help look after her daughter, and she had never had nanny droids when she was small, although the situation was a little bit different then and she also had lived with both of her parents most of the time.

Tenel Ka reassured Teneniel that Augwynne Djo, Teneniel’s grandmother and the leader of the Singing Mountain clan, was still alive, and still in fair health, although it was impossible to deny that she was getting older and that it was starting to show. The spells that they cast on themselves for good health only did so much, and without delving into the deeper and stronger powers of the Nightsisters, were not entirely effective at holding back time. And those powers always came with their own costs and ultimately caused more destruction to the body than would their absence. Augwynne probably had another good fifteen to twenty years, though, and Tenel Ka thought, but did not say, that Allana might have been better off with her than at home. Wild rancors and clan raids were one kind of danger, and political intrigue was something else entirely, something far more insidious and not as straightforward. With a hungry rancor, one always knew where one stood. With a hungry rancor in a dress, one never could be very sure.

The palace servants came around with crystal water jugs and wine bottles, filling up each of their goblets with a mix of the two, although for Allana it was mostly fruit juice. Although she had complained about this in the past, Isolder had put a stop to her whining by simply allowing her to have a sip of his wine. Allana didn’t like it and didn’t ask about it any more. Now she was happy to have her own drink, and she even pointed out that it was a brighter shade of blue than the icky stuff that Tenel Ka was drinking.

They had steamed and seasoned tubers with lightly broiled fish, a local delicacy that wouldn’t have even been possible to obtain on any other worlds without some sort of stasis field, because the delicate flavor of the yellow-fleshed fish quickly deepened into something stronger and meatier if left out even an hour after the fish was caught and killed, and other methods of preservation, such as carbon-freezing, regular freezing, or packing in a vacuum seal, invariably caused slight changes in the outer layer of the skin that was not quite agreeable and led to an imperfect dish. There was also a feather-light red vegetable with a liquid center and a faintly fruity flavor that they almost had with their meal, but Queen Mother Teneniel was served first, and declared after a few bites that there was something wrong with the seasonings because it tasted too strongly of Bakuran tree-nuts. She sent the entire bowl back, and nobody was able to have any.

After dinner, Teneniel declared that she was tired and not feeling well, so she excused herself and went to bed. Allana, too, yawned, and Tenel Ka tucked her in for the night before going back downstairs to talk to her father.

She had a feeling that something was dreadfully wrong, though, and this feeling came through the Force, not through her ordinary senses. Tenel Ka first ran upstairs to check on Allana, but Allana was sound asleep, breathing rhythmically, with her dark red hair spread out in nearly neat curls over her pillow, and the silk-lined blanket pulled up to her chest. There was no other motion and the only light in the room came from the soft pulsing light in the middle of Deedee’s chest, as the droid, even when silent and still, was always on alert for anything that would come in to harm its charge. Tenel Ka felt the feeling of danger heighten, though, elsewhere in the building, and she reluctantly left Allana alone with Deedee to find its source.

She found herself outside the Queen Mother’s bedchambers, and even without permission, thrust the door open and ran inside. She passed the main room, which was a suite full of writing desks and decorations, and into the room behind it.

Teneniel Djo, in contrast to Allana, was not even breathing, and her face was a ghastly shade of whitish gray. No! Tenel Ka thought, and she put her hand over her mother’s heart. No beat came from it, and a quick probe through the Force confirmed her initial fear: the Queen Mother was dead.

Teneniel had no wounds, and whatever had taken her was apparently an illness – or a poison. Tenel Ka felt fine, and rushed again to see Allana; there was nothing wrong with her, either, and she wasted no time in getting down the stairs – running three steps at a time, and she would have skipped even more of the stairs if her mind wasn’t going a hundred ways at once and keeping her from entirely focusing on the task of getting to her father. It was a clean, neat job, one that she had to get to the bottom of quickly. At least that kept her from feeling the full brunt of the sadness that was just centimeters away.

Tenel Ka had just caught up with Isolder in the library and told him what she found when Allana appeared in the doorway, looking sleepy, with a doll in one hand. She rubbed her gray eyes with her other hand and trudged over on the carpet with bare feet, almost hidden by the long hem of her iridescent white nightgown. “What happened, Mother? I heard you running around.”

“Allana...” Tenel Ka held out her whole right arm, and Allana ran up to it and let it curl around her in a tight hold. “Your grandmother died this evening.”

“No, she didn’t,” said Allana. “She’s asleep.”

“I went to see her and she is gone. Her body is here but her spirit went to be with the Force.” Tenel Ka squeezed her eyes closed and took a deep breath.

“We have to find out who did this,” said Isolder.

“I have my usual suspicions,” Tenel Ka replied.

“I don’t think anybody did anything,” Allana said. “Sometimes people just die when they get old, right?”

“My mother is not old. She was not yet fifty.”

“That’s a lot of years.”

Tenel Ka sat down, suddenly feeling too weak from emotion to stand and maintain her composure at the same time, and she pulled Allana onto her lap. “Someone wanted to hurt the Queen Mother and they did. We do not yet know how it was done, but I will promise you that nobody is going to hurt you. You must do your part and stay in the palace and do as you are told to do, whether you like it or not, because we are going to keep you safe but can only do that if you follow the rules. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Allana. “Are you sad?”

“Yes, Allana, I am very sad.”

“Oh. I forgot. Grown-ups don’t cry.”

“Yes, they do,” Isolder said. His back was to the two of them, and he faced the window, although the red brocade curtains were hanging down in front of it, obscuring the view of the hills and waterfall outside, instead of being tied up by golden cords with jeweled tassels.

“But we’ll see Grandmother again, won’t we?” Allana asked.

“I do not know, Allana. I do not know what happens after a person dies. I know that some of them have returned to speak to those of us who remain, as a Force ghost, but I have never seen a Force ghost myself.”

“I don’t like ghosts,” Allana said, and she hugged Tenel Ka more tightly.

“Your great-grandfather was a ghost once,” said Tenel Ka.

“Really?”

“Yes – your father’s grandfather, Anakin Skywalker. That is who you get the last three letters of your name from.”

“I was named after a ghost?” Allana’s eyes got wide. “I thought I was named after my uncle Anakin. Father’s little brother.”

“I will have to explain it more to you later. Now is not a good time for it,” Tenel Ka said gently.

“Oh. But Grandmother might be a ghost now? And she’s a good ghost?”

“If she is a ghost – and I do not think she will be – then yes, she will be a good one.”

“That’s okay, then. I wouldn’t be scared of her, I don’t think.”

Tenel Ka slept in Allana’s room that night, on the floor, even though the droid was there. It was more for Tenel Ka’s peace of mind than Allana’s safety, and she was used to sleeping in less than comfortable environments. In fact, she preferred spartan accommodations to the pointless luxury of the palace, and sleeping on a thick carpet in the room of the princess’s daughter could hardly be considered harsh.

By morning, the news had broken, and there were many mourners and well-wishers near the palace. They were mostly not allowed to come inside, but Ta’a Chume did come over, veiled as always, with only the ends of her now dyed hair showing at the bottom of the veil. “My sympathies in your time of loss, my son,” she said to Isolder, who wore a simple suit of black, and stood next to the open casket that carried the body of the former Queen Mother.

“You never liked Teneniel,” Isolder pointed out.

“That does not mean that I am completely unable to see that you are in a time of sorrow and to feel a little bit sorry for you. After all, I am your mother.”

“You were Kalen’s mother, too.”

“That is not the point, but it does bring up something important. Hapes is now left without a Queen Mother, and that is a situation that cannot be tolerated. You cannot rule the Consortium and your daughter has made it very clear that she does not want to. Your granddaughter is, unfortunately, far too young. Something must be done about this. You will have to find another wife, and do it quickly.”

“Have you gone mad?” Isolder asked.

“No. But never mind; I might have lost my mind for a moment when I asked that you would do anything directly to help the Consortium. You are a man and cannot be trusted with that decision on your own. I have had enough of being under the rule of one of those Force witches and I do not trust you not to choose another.”

“Did you have someone in mind for me, then?”

“No, but I can look. In the meantime, I suggest that the nation is turned over to your own daughter, and I will find a replacement for her quickly.”

“You know that Tenel Ka will not agree to that,” said Isolder, “and that must be why you’re asking me to put her in that position. Knowing that the only other choice is to let you come back and take the throne for yourself. That’s what you really want, isn’t it?”

“I would not turn it down if offered to me.”

Isolder narrowed his eyes and looked away from both Ta’a Chume and the dead body of Teneniel Djo. “I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t have something to do with the deaths,” he finally said.

“Do not go around throwing baseless accusations. If you have something to say, some proof, then say it, but I will not allow you to use me as a target for your anger.”

“She and Allana were the only ones who ate any of the kahl-stalks,” Isolder said after a moment. It was a terrible lie, but one that had been concocted by himself and Tenel Ka for Allana’s temporary protection. In truth, only Teneniel had eaten any of the tainted vegetables. “The ones that were supplied by my cousin Alyssia, who lives with you.”

“Circumstantial evidence and a stretch at that.”

“And they were meant to be eaten by not only Teneniel, but myself and Tenel Ka as well. You would have guessed that Allana still did not care for them and not touched even one.” Now he did face the former ruler and he folded his arms and looked down directly at her. “That would have left only Allana alive. And, as you said, she is too young to rule. And you are too old to bear a child. She would be your only living descendant and as good as a child to you.”

“I think you have gone completely insane in your grief,” Ta’a Chume snapped, but as she spoke she tugged at her golden veil as though a little bit nervous. “I will not stand here and be accused of an assassination when this could well be nothing more than an allergic reaction. Those things can run in families and who knows what witchcraft your daughter has picked up to alter her body. And you should know that I do not want the Solo brats as part of my family. That includes their spawn. I am sorry that you have lost a granddaughter as well as your wife, but I had no hand in it.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I came here to see how you were and to see how the rest of the family is holding up. Where is Tenel Ka? She is the one that I really must talk to.”

Tenel Ka heard most of the conversation as she was coming down the hallway. She had spent that morning alone, eating breakfast by herself and thinking about what she was going to do about the situation that had been thrust upon them. All of the choices appeared to be equally bad. She could not let Ta’a Chume take the throne again, because she had no doubt that it would be used for evil instead of for good. Ta’a Chume would not do anything to help the New Republic, nor did she care one whit about the people of the Consortium, apart from what they could do for her.

“I am right here,” she said. She was wearing her lizard skin suit again, carefully chosen to make a point, and she held her head up, even though she wasn’t sure that the redness in her eyes had completely faded.

“You must realize the position you are in,” Ta’a Chume said. “You have resisted aligning yourself with the Hapes Consortium all your life, but it appears that now you have no other choice. Or rather, your other choices would be highly irresponsible. First, you could keep gallivanting around the galaxy with no thought of anybody but yourself and the cult of the Jedi, and let the Consortium crumble without a strong leader. None of the nobles that your father could marry would have any hope of being able to keep the other nobles from warring with her and with each other, not the way that you could keep them quiet. Therefore it is necessary that you stay here and become the Queen Mother yourself. You will also find it necessary to locate a more suitable partner than that bit of rebel scum that you disgraced your bed with seven years ago, and have another daughter. I am asking you to take the crown in your mother’s place.”

Ta’a Chume smiled triumphantly behind her veil. It was a perfect gambit; she was offering the throne to someone who could claim it, but whom she knew would not take it. The stage was perfectly set for Ta’a Chume to return to power. It was not as good as if Tenel Ka and Isolder had perished as well, but almost; Tenel Ka would refuse the offer and then Ta’a Chume could claim that she was only trying to protect her grieving son and not force the poor, weak man into a marriage against his will, to a woman who probably would not want to be with him anyway.

“Very well,” said Tenel Ka. “I will do it.”

Ta’a Chume nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but then she realized exactly what it was that her granddaughter had said. “Oh,” was all she could manage. “That is... that is good. You have grown up more than I thought you had.”

Fuming, Ta’a Chume pushed past Isolder and made her way back towards the front door to go home and think about what she was going to do next.

“Tenel Ka, daughter, you cannot really mean to do that,” said Isolder. “You will be playing right into Ta’a Chume’s hands.”

“No, Father, she expected me to say no,” said Tenel Ka. “I did what she did not expect, and she is confused. And she was right. There really is no other choice, not if I want the people to stay out of a civil war that would kill thousands. Ta’a Chume has no interest in keeping such a war from happening, as long as she can control it, and any wife for you that she chooses would be a weak pawn who can be controlled again by herself.”

“What about the Jedi, though?” Isolder asked. “What about Allana?”

“I will do what I can.” Tenel Ka finally let her shoulder sag. “I have not thought through what I will do about my training. Perhaps I will take a short break and pick it up again when I am able to. It is not about me, though; my desire to continue training as a Jedi does not matter. I have reached knighthood. Those lessons will stay with me.”

“I hate to see you giving up something that’s been your very life because of a tragedy that has nothing to do with you.”

“It does have something to do with me. As for Allana – Father, I need you to do something for me.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to take her to Coruscant.”

Isolder blinked. “To join the Academy there?”

“Nobody except for a few palace servants and you and I know that she is still alive. For now, she is protected, but we cannot hide her forever. She must go and live with her father and take a new name, so that she will not be part of the political games here.”

Isolder nodded slowly. “You want me to send her to Jacen.”

“Not exactly that. I want you to deliver her to him personally. I will talk to her first and tell her what is happening.”

“And if she doesn’t want to go?”

“Not going is no longer an option.”

“And if he doesn’t want to take her?”

“Jacen is still my friend, and he knows that he has responsibilities to his daughter. He does not like Ta’a Chume any more than I do and he will do what he needs to do to protect Allana – even if that means finally taking on the duties of a father instead of just coming to visit once a year.”

Allana had just finished getting dressed, in yet another of her many outfits, when Tenel Ka found her in her room. “Allana,” she said sadly, “come here. I have to talk to you.”

Allana obeyed immediately, and sat down on her bed, next to Tenel Ka.

“I am going to have to be the Queen Mother now, because there is not a Queen Mother, and we do not want Ta’a Chume to have that much power. She would not use her power to help people, but only to hurt them and to help herself. So I will take the crown and use it well so that she does not have it. Do you understand that?”

“I think so,” said Allana. “That’s like taking a knife away from somebody who might cut somebody with it, right?”

“Yes, a bit like that. But there is something more that is also important. If you stay here, people might try to hurt you. Ta’a Chume wants to make you a bad person, like her, and if she finds out that you are still alive, she might try to hurt me and take you away.”

Allana frowned and leaned against Tenel Ka. “I don’t want her to do that.”

“She will not have the opportunity. But you will not be able to stay here on Hapes.”

“But I don’t want to live on Dathomir,” Allana pouted. “I want to stay with you.”

“You cannot do that, but I will not send you either to Dathomir, because that is one of the first places that someone who suspects you would look. It would bring great destruction to the Singing Mountain clan if it was discovered that you were hiding within it. However, I think that the Jedi will be able to hide you as well and they have access to more places where you can stay.”

“I’m going to be a Jedi?”

“I do not know, Allana. You have the ability, although you have to want to be a Jedi and you will have to work very hard at your studies. I want you to go to Coruscant and live with your father, and you will have a new name, and you will pretend that you are not from Hapes. This is very, very important. Nobody can know who you really are, except for Jacen, and those that he trusts enough to tell himself. You must not tell anyone.”

Allana burst into tears and shook her head. Tenel Ka set her own mouth in a firm line to keep her emotions at bay, and she said nothing for a few minutes until Allana had calmed down a little bit. “I don’t want to go!” Allana cried.

“The decision has been made. I am sorry that it had to be made, but you will understand this when you are older. I will come to Coruscant when I can.”

“I don’t even remember what he looks like,” wailed Allana.

“Yes, you do. He is tall, but not as tall as your grandfather, and he has brown hair. He is the one who carries green lightsaber.”

“Oh, him. Okay. But I still want to stay here.”

“I am finished discussing that part with you. This is a very sad time for everybody but if we just sit here then the bad people will win. You must go to Coruscant, and if you want to, you can train in the Jedi ways that will make you stronger and will make the Force stronger. And Jacen will protect you, and keep you far away from Ta’a Chume.”

“But she likes me,” Allana protested.

“She wants you to be mean like her, and she wants to make you someone who will kill other people. Is that what you want to be like?”

“No.”

“Then you will need to stay far away from her, and this is the only way I know that will keep you that far. It will not be forever, Allana. It will only be for a little while, and then you can come back home.”

“So it’s like a vacation, then?”

“Yes, it is like a long vacation. And you will get to meet your cousins, and Jacen’s cousin Ben, and you will have fun playing with other children. Your aunt Jaina has a little girl and a little boy who are just about your age and they will probably have a lot of fun things for you to do. Now we will pack up your clothes, and tomorrow morning your grandfather will take you to your father’s home.”

Allana insisted on taking most of her wardrobe with her, and when they were done, they had six large trunks packed full of clothes and toys, as well as her bedspread. Tenel Ka told her that she had to fit everything into two trunks, and Allana threw a fit, but finally sorted through her belongings and stuffed the things she wanted most into two cases. Isolder had to come in and jump on the second case while Tenel Ka wrestled with the clasp to get it closed and locked, but they were done.

Two servants carried the trunks into the small Hapan transport ship – making two trips, because of how heavy they were, and they were ready to leave, but since Tenel Ka had promised Allana that she would not be leaving until the morning, they stayed in Allana’s room that night. In the morning they had breakfast, and Tenel Ka even let Allana have cake instead of nourishing food, because she wanted it.

Allana put on another synthetic microjewel dress for her travels, even though Tenel Ka told her to pick something sensible, and tried to convince her to put on a nice pants suit. “I’ll get her to change when we’re on the ship,” Isolder said, and Tenel Ka agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea to push Allana too much when she was leaving behind the only home that she really knew. Yes, it was true that she had gone to Dathomir a few times, but only to visit, and it wasn’t a comfortable and familiar place to her the way it was for Tenel Ka. And her experiences with Coruscant were largely the same, except that Allana liked it even less, because it really wasn’t much cleaner and was a lot noisier.

“Goodbye, Allana,” Tenel Ka said. “Be good for Jacen.”

“I will,” said Allana, and she hugged Tenel Ka. “I just wish I didn’t have to go.”

“I wish that as well. But there are some things that we cannot control and this is one of them. I would rather you be safe somewhere else than in danger here.”

Allana waved goodbye as she climbed up the boarding ramp, and then Isolder followed her and pushed the button that made the ramp retract back into the transport. Without another word, the ship lifted off and departed from Hapes, on its way to Coruscant. Tenel Ka returned to the palace, alone, deeply regretting her decision, although she knew that it was the least awful of several bad choices presented to her in the aftermath of Teneniel’s death.

They always catch you unawares, she thought. We cannot be caught that way again.

Yes, it was better for Allana to go to Coruscant, and become a Jedi without Hapan troubles to hold her back, and follow the path that Tenel Ka was never really able to.