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 battles 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?