Chương 11: Mace’s Absence

60 BBY – 940 ARR – Coruscant Attachment is not the chain, but the weight. The chain is forgetting to let go. — Codex of Cala Brin ~*~*~*~ A month later, T'ra Saa came for Mace at morning bell. She stood at the threshold of the salle, her stillness the patience of roots sunk deep into the earth. Huyang beside her gleamed in the pale light, bronze plating catching like sunlight through branches. Mace bowed to Rann, to Zucul, to the room.

He said nothing, but Rann felt the pull in the Force as cleanly as a cord drawn tight. T'ra Saa inclined her head, a slow, inevitable motion like the sway of a tree in wind; Huyang's photoreceptors dipped once in acknowledgment. Then the three of them turned and went. The doors closed with their usual hush. It sounded final. Rann was left behind. The Temple had always been orderly. Without Mace at his side the order pressed down like weight.

He rose when the bells sounded, ate when the refectory called, and sat through lectures on history and philosophy where his answers were no longer given out of eagerness but from habit. He knew when to quote the Archives and when to keep to summaries. Masters marked his work with quiet approval, and the ink on their notes dried without comment. In the salles he sparred against partners who lacked Mace's intensity. Their forms were passable but without edge. Strikes met guards and ended neatly.

Bouts finished too quickly. More than once his blade stopped on a shoulder where Mace would have turned the line and demanded a better answer. Rann began to imagine Mace at the margin of every exchange: the foot he would have set, the breath he would have held, the angle he would have punished. The salle felt larger and emptier for it. Silence multiplied in the spaces between activities.

He had not noticed before how often he and Mace had spoken without words, how the current of the Force ran between them in quick recognitions and corrections. Now the corridors stretched long and bright and without conversation. The steady hum of the Temple's vergence filled everything. It was the same chord it had always been, yet the sound had grown dull. Meditation filled the void, or was meant to. His mandalas drew the attention of Masters outside the Crèche, now.

They moved the Force, or the Force moved through them in unique ways. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always differently. Building them stretched his ability to passively perceive the Force, while taking them apart grew his telekinetic abilities. But none of this distracted him from the fact Mace couldn't distract him into leaving one half-done. He obeyed, sitting with the rest of the clan, repeating the Code until his mind slipped toward stillness.

Instruction was consistent: guard the tongue, watch the mind, control the self. It was not enough to still one's words; thoughts, too, were to be pruned into shape. Curiosity voiced too often could become arrogance. Anger, however small, was danger. Wonder, if indulged, could bend toward attachment. Each lesson was precise. Each repetition wore smooth the roughness of thought. He did as he was told. He also felt the walls close. To control was to be safe. To control was to be trusted.

Yet the more he forced his Visions into silence, the more insistent they became, pressing at the edges of his mind with patient pressure. Some days he pictured himself lowering a heavy lid over a bright light and fitting the clasps; he could feel heat building under the seal. Other days he felt as if he were holding his breath under clear water – seeing everything, touching nothing – until his lungs ached.

When his focus slipped, the image of the Citadel rose without permission: black towers, sulfur mist, corridors where silence was not the absence of sound but pressure in the skull. If Temple quiet was discipline, Citadel quiet was suffocation. The difference mattered. The likeness worried him. The refectory meals were the same as always. Bowls of bland broth, steamed grain, vegetables with no name. Spoons on trays. The soft, constant murmur of Initiates repeating lessons under their breath.

He noticed now how often correction followed laughter and how quickly laughter disappeared when correction arrived. It was no surprise that he drifted outward. The markets of Coruscant were noise made visible. Vendors shouted in half a dozen tongues, voices crossing and tangling. Repulsors whined. A child's toy spun rings of light. Someone sang out of tune. Smells layered: sharp spice, frying oil, copper, dust, something sweet burning a little in the pan.

Stalls crowded the walkways with fabric and fruit and salvaged parts. The Force felt scattered here, woven into the business of beings who were not recorded in the Archives and did not wish to be. Ryuni kept close, lekku twitching as she tried to catch meanings in the rush. A Gran vendor listed prices in Bocce, three eyes narrowing in practiced injury when Tina countered. Ryuni leaned in, frustrated.

"What did he say?" Rann reached for the words, found them slowly.

"Double. And he called you stubborn." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Ryuni answered in Ryl with a string of syllables that needed no translation. Tina laughed, bright and practical, and placed credits in the Gran's hand with a movement so smooth it looked like courtesy. The vendor's injured pride vanished. He wrapped fruit in waxed paper and pressed it into Tina's palm with both hands.

"You overpaid," Rann said softly.

"Of course I did," Tina said, already moving.

"Now he will think I am generous. Tomorrow he will keep the best back for me." Barter, Rann saw, was not numbers alone. It was reputation and timing and the angle of a smile. In the Temple, standards made obedience simple. Here, people made choices and lived with them. He followed Tina and watched, and he tried to learn. They ate later on low benches under a rattling awning. Bowls of broth steamed in their hands. The air smelled of salt and pepper and something toasted.

Laughter rose and died around them, replaced by the rattle of rain hitting sheet metal two levels up. Ryuni spoke carefully.

"You… help. I… speak. But slow."

"You are doing better," Rann said.

"Much better." He answered in Ryl, careful and halting.

"I will try your tongue. We meet halfway." Ryuni blinked, then laughed without restraint. The sound startled even her. Rann laughed too, quietly at first, then with less caution. It felt strange to do it without looking over his shoulder. He did it anyway. The Force here hummed in small threads rather than a single chord. It did not press. It did not judge. For a few hours he was not a Senior Initiate under constant scrutiny. He was a boy learning words, tasting broth, watching a merchant make trust out of nothing.

When he returned to the Temple that night, the marble corridors gleamed as always, but the quiet felt heavier for the contrast. The loneliness settled deeper into his bones. The gong at lights-out sounded exact and indifferent. That weight brought him back to the Archives. The Tyrant of the Holocrons kept her post behind a desk that looked like a fortification. Flimsi rose in stacks, each aligned with care.

The library's great hall was hushed, but near her station it was entirely still, as if the sound itself took instruction. Jocasta Nu did not glance up when Rann approached. When she did, it was with the precision of a closing file.

"Initiate Crys," she said.

"To what do I owe this visit? Surely not to debate the indexing of Chandrilan prayer-stones." He had rehearsed a dozen openings on the walk over. None survived her gaze.

"Hello, Master Nu. I am here to request that you attend the Initiate Trials." This was considered the polite way for an Initiate to signal interest in a particular Master. It was also quite unusual as he was merely twelve years old, the youngest possible age one could take the Initiate Trials. Most waited until they were fifteen or sixteen. One brow moved. The smallest motion altered the air.

"You are aware, I trust, that I have not taken a Padawan over ten years."

"Yes, Master. But you also served on the High Council."

"Indeed. And for that reason I could not. A Council seat requires impartiality. A Padawan's bond would compromise it." Her tone was clipped, certain.

"Now I serve as Chief Librarian. That burden is no less. The Order's memory rests here, its doctrine is preserved here, and it is preserved only through vigilance. Do you imagine I could abandon such a charge to travel as tutor and guardian?" Her reasons followed in sequence, well-ordered, properly weighted. To anyone else they would have closed the matter. To Rann they sounded like arguments she had arranged for herself long ago and kept polished. He stood at attention while she finished the list.

"I believe we could make it work," he said. Her mouth thinned by a fraction.

"Confidence has its place, Initiate. So does humility." Silence settled. Dust motes drifted in sunlight. Jocasta Nu regarded him as if he were a ledger that needed balancing. He felt the measure of it: strengths and liabilities, precedent and risk. At last she inclined her head.

"Nevertheless, I will give your request due consideration." It was not consent. It was not refusal. It sat between them like a sealed decree. Rann bowed. When he lifted his eyes, she had already resumed her writing. ~*~*~ That evening, the air in Yaddle's chambers carried the smell of steeping tea and old books. Rumor moved fast in the Temple; it often arrived before the people who inspired it. Yaddle held the door with a small twist of the Force.

"In, in," she said.

"Sit, my padawan." Jocasta entered with the same precision she brought to the Archives. She folded into seiza and accepted a cup.

"You always contrive to make me feel fourteen again," she said.

"But you already know why I am here."

"Advice, you seek. Answer, you know," Yaddle replied. Jocasta looked into the steam.

"I am not convinced I should take this boy. He is clever, but unruly. He questions when listening would suffice. He resists correction and bends rules to suit his reasoning. Such tendencies are not strengths in one so young." Her tone remained formal, but the cadence slowed as she went on.

"During my years on the Council, it was impossible. Impartiality was required. Now, as Chief Librarian, my obligations are no lighter. The memory of the Order rests in my care." She hesitated.

"And there is the fact that he is a teenage boy. I can instruct Initiates in meditation and history. I do not know that I can reach him. He will not confide in me. He will see severity and little else." Yaddle's ears twitched.

"Excuses, these are."

"They are facts," Jocasta said, but the firmness had softened.

"So spoke once, many of you," Yaddle said.

"Headstrong. Clever. Difficult. Yet trained, you were. Guided, you were. Learned, you did." Jocasta's grip tightened slightly on the cup.

"That was different."

"Different? No." Yaddle touched the sleeve of her robe with a single claw.

"Afraid, you are. Burden, you fear. Truth, you know." Silence did the work of a long argument. Steam curled upward and vanished. Jocasta set her cup down with care.

"If I were to take him," she said at last, voice lower, "could I train him as you trained me?" Neither said the word that belonged in the space between them. It did not need saying.

"Qualified, he is," Yaddle said.

"Training, he shall have. Worry, do not." Jocasta rose, robe gathered neatly. She had the look of someone who had balanced a column and found it still uneasy.

"I will consider it," she said.

"But I will not be pressed into haste. Not by him. Not by you." Yaddle sipped her tea. The steam lifted, thin as thread. When Jocasta left, the chamber was quiet again. In the quiet, choices waited their turn.