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.”