The Front Is a Lemon Avenue Flying Straightly 87-88
Arza was at least six centimeters taller than every other woman she’d seen in Tem-Yeroon, so the yellow suit was probably a man’s. She stepped into the pants carefully and pulled them up slowly, but they fit over her hips. Fortunately, the waistband laced up, so it was easy to cinch. The pants still didn’t fit right. They didn’t fall straight down around her legs, and if she imagined sitting down, phantom pain cut across her stomach. It wouldn’t be a problem.
The vest was a single, rectangular piece of fabric with a round hole in the middle. Arza had to retie the stomach wrapper twice before it held the sides closed. She slung her belt over one shoulder so that her lightsaber hung under her arm, then pulled on the jacket over it. The hilt’s imprint showed through the fabric. It didn’t matter. If the Sith found her, they’d assume she was armed, and no one else would notice. She knotted her hair in a low bun and draped the scarf around her shoulders. Covering her face indoors would attract attention. She’d figure out how to tie the scarf over her face once she was outside.
Arza stepped out of the laundry room. The hallway was empty. She closed the door behind her and reached down to the Force, ignoring the nauseous buzzing behind her teeth, to trace the metal edges of the lock down into the mechanism. Tiny blocks of metal were lined up precisely on oiled tracks. Arza chose the two closest to her and switched their positions. The lock clicked. She climbed the wide, steep staff stairs two at a time, and she was back inside room 505 before she saw anyone else.
The shutters were already open. Nothing covered the windows except the white cloth and the lattice. Arza ran her fingers around the far left window frame, found the knots where the cloth was tied to metal hooks, and undid them. She tossed the cloth under the table behind her and reached through the lattice.
The slats were smooth and the edges were slightly rounded. Six were vertical and eight were horizontal. Arza followed one vertical slat down until it crossed the windowframe, where her fingers found something that felt like a bolt. She twisted hard. It gave.
Arza unscrewed the bolt and pulled it back through the lattice, where she studied it, tilting it back and forth to watch the soft gold light flash dully across its six sides. She set it carefully on the windowsill and felt for the exposed screw. It threaded through a hole in the slat. Gently, Arza pulled on the bottom edge. It was surprisingly flexible, and she slid the tip of her finger behind the base of the slat all the way up to the screw. Nothing else held the slat in place. She let it snap back against the window frame and touched the two slats on either side. Both had matching bolts.
Arza pulled her hand back through the window and closed her eyes. She called up the mental image of the bolt, its weight, the way the edges felt against her skin and the way the metal caught the light, and burned it all into her mind like an old display screen. Bracing herself like she was about to dive into cold water, she reached down to the Force and felt outwards around the window frame. There should be twenty-seven of them. She fixed them in her mind one at a time, watching the bright metal points blink on into a neat rectangle, and then she twisted slowly until all twenty-seven balanced, quivering, on the ends of the screws. She pushed them the fraction of a centimeter forward into the open air and then funneled them back through the lattice.
Arza opened her eyes. The bolts were heaped neatly between her palms. She smiled. Careful to keep them together, she set the pile down on the bench behind her.
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I believe the franchise should move away from acting as a mirror to real world politics as it only encourages more apathy and distrust. Instead Star Wars should lean into why government bodies are needed and beneficial to overall society. At some point you have to strive for more than “enternal rebellion”.
The Front Is a Lemon Avenue Flying Straightly 85-86
Arza was in the hotel laundry room for almost half an hour before she found a suit of clothes in her size. It was so yellow that it almost vibrated. The fabric was smoother than it looked. She kept her fingernails away from it when she held it up against her body so that it wouldn’t snag.
Arza draped the yellow suit over the edge of the table and set the rest of room 421’s clean laundry back in its white canvas bin. The bin next to it was embroidered with a 425. 422 through 424 were somewhere else.
Tables were shoved against all four walls of the room, except next to the door, where two wicker panels wider than Arza’s arms were long were set into the wall.
Arza hooked her fingers around the edge of the top panel and pulled. It swung back. More white canvas bins, folded flat, were piled inside. She lifted out a stack—that was 321—stripped, rolled up her own clothes inside her robe, and stuffed the bundle into the back corner of the cabinet. She pushed the stack of bins back into place. No one could see her clothes unless they moved it first.
The Front Is a Lemon Avenue Flying Straightly 83-84
Finding the words felt like fishing an ice cube out of warm water.
“When I reach into the Force here, I feel… wrong. I feel like I’ve been drugged.” Arza pulled in a slow breath through her nose. “It makes me hate everyone else.”
Before Arza could stop herself, she was watching for Kellaceen’s reaction, but her expression didn’t change. She was intensely focused, shaded faintly with worry.
“They practice a Force religion here,” Arza said. “The city is built around a shrine, which might be Force-resonant. I sensed a disturbance in the Force when a religious ceremony was being held there. I was told that all Force-sensitive people do.”
“Was it similar to the disturbance you sense when you reach into the Force?”
Arza had known she would ask. She still didn’t know what she’d say. She closed her eyes.
“No.” Conviction stepped into place. “It didn’t. During the ceremony, the Force was…” Arza hadn’t expected to ever feel this shaky talking to Kellaceen again. “It felt murderous.”
It sounded wrong. Nothing else could have been true. Kellaceen gave her six or seven seconds of silence, but that was all she could think.
“Did you confirm that a Sith is in the city?” Kellaceen asked.
“As of two days ago, yes.”
“When I’m close to an unshielded Sith Lord, I sense their poison in the Force, so tapping into it poisons me. It makes me feel sick and irritable.”
“Have you ever felt like the Force itself was…” Arza struggled for the words.
“I’ve never sensed that the Force itself was hostile, only that it was contaminated.”
There was a long pause.
Never fill silence. Only say what you have to say.
“Some people off-world think this city worships the Dark Side,” Arza said.
“Do you agree?”
Music pumped outside. Someone’s speeder roared, someone shouted, and someone laughed.
Arza saw the woman on the ground floor of the restaurant gesturing wildly, drunk and excited, long nails flashing. She saw the waiter, frowning slightly, wiping the hair off his forehead and thinking about something else, and the woman in teal, leaning into her friend’s shoulder after the shockwave in the Force.
“I don’t,” Arza said.
Kellaceen believed her.
The cramp in Arza’s foot was fading. She started to unravel the braid on her right temple.
“Do you want to talk about anything else?” Kellaceen asked.
Arza sighed. “Not now.”
“Be careful, teiyya.”
“You, too, Master.”
“Go with the Force.”
Arza finished the ancient Green Way blessing. “Stay with the Force.”
Kellaceen gave her a small smile and disconnected. Arza turned off her datapad and set it facedown on the table.
The lights were too bright. Arza sank into the Force, let the wave of illness knock her mind out of alignment, and flicked off the light switch on the other side of the room. She wanted to flinch back inside her skull like she’d just touched something hot, but she reeled her consciousness in slowly and shut off her sense of the Force like gently closing a door. She was alone in the gold glow leaking around the edges of the shutters.
Her fingers reached the top of her braid. She scrubbed at her scalp, stifling a wince, and ran her hands down the fresh strip of loose, frizzy hair. Someone outside was laughing again. Traffic blew by, laced with deep, knocking bass and twitchy, rasping drums. Arza closed her eyes and listened.
An ugly, reedy speeder horn honked below her. Arza sighed through her nose. She unfolded her legs and stood.
Her shoulder bag’s strap was attached by a pair of carabiners, one on each end. She unclipped them and let the strap swing from her hand, clicking softly, as she crossed to the door.
The Front Is a Lemon Avenue Flying Straightly 81-82
Arza dropped a towel on the floor and swiped it around with her feet. She wrung the last drops of water out of her braids and went back outside.
A springy wicker mat, light-colored and crossed with a thin grid of black thread, covered the floor. Thick panels of a darker, redder wicker, woven into sharp-ridged rectangles that reminded Arza of cut gems, hung on the walls. She assumed they absorbed noise. The only sound in the room came in through the window. The rest of the hotel could have disappeared as soon as she closed the door. The bed was low, level with her calves, and heaped with thick blankets. The head was pushed against the wall on her right. There was just enough space between the foot and the opposite wall for one person to pass through.
Arza walked slowly. On the ceiling, a slim white pipe ran down the length of the room. It fed two sprinklers, one on either side of a Republic-standard smoke detector. A tall wicker folding screen, woven in a herringbone batten, separated the bed from the rest of the room. On the other side, a long, thin table, a thin slab of sealed black stone on a wicker base, ran under the windows. Two matching benches fit perfectly underneath. Arza dropped her bag on the luggage rack in the corner and pulled down the rolling shutters over the windows. They were reinforced with the same metal bars as the door, and the latches felt reassuringly solid.
She looked back at the door to the hallway. The light switch was on the left side, level with her elbows. A small, dull silver shutter was set into the wall above it. She crossed the room in a few steps and slid the shutter back, wincing as the edges ground on the tracks. Behind it, a red composite lever was marked FIRE in huge white Aurabesh letters. A handwritten note in Yera was taped to the wall behind it. She left the shutter open.
Less than three hours had passed since Kellaceen had told Arza to call her, but if she didn’t pick up, she could call her back. Arza didn’t let herself imagine taking a nap while she waited. She propped up her datapad on the table, keyed in Kellaceen’s personal frequency, and almost sat down.
Then her foot cramped, and she stumbled back up. For a minute, she held herself over the table, hands flat on the cool stone, breathing shallowly and waiting for the worm of agony to loosen.
When it finally did, she hobbled to the end of the table and collapsed cross-legged on the floor. She could barely reach her datapad, but she got it with two fingers and dragged it towards her. While the call connected, she undid the tie on the end of the braid hanging down her left temple and started to undo it, letting it frizz out into a tightly crimped fan.
The call went through. For a terrible second, the visual didn’t load, but then Kellaceen’s face pushed through the static.
She was taking out her own braids. Half of her gray hair was piled in a dense, elegant knot high on her head. The other half hung in a curtain around her face. Her smile lines deepened like streams filling up in the rain.
“Hello, teiyya.”
“Master.” Even hearing herself say the word again was a relief.
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The hotel room was long and narrow. Faint gold light drifted through the white cloth tied over the window on the far end of the room, sliced into squares by the lattice outside. The wavering hum of the light worms floated over the muted roar of traffic. They were right outside.
Arza already knew the answer, but she closed her eyes anyway and pictured Lann.
She was sitting across from her, twisting the cap on her sersaf bottle between two fingers while she stared down at her notepad. The thin fringe of hair working its way out of her braid brushed the ends of her long eyelashes.
Her hand went still on the sersaf bottle. The freckles on her nose shifted as she frowned, narrowing her eyes down at the page and sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. It shone when she let it go. Smiling triumphantly, she picked up her ink brush, ran it around the inside of her ink bottle, and licked the tip.
Arza’s mouth was dry. Something tasted metallic on the tip of her tongue.
Then she was back in the kitchen in the round room at Central, leaning back against the counter while Lann reached across her. Lann hadn’t actually touched her, but now, alone in her hotel room, it felt like she’d poured warm water down her stomach.
It’s hard to imagine people being that reserved with you.
Arza sighed and opened her eyes. She needed to stop clenching her teeth.
Without looking, she found a switch on the wall next to her and flipped it with a crisp click. Silver can lights flared to life in the ceiling. She unlaced her boots, wincing when she pulled her knees up to her chest, and slid open the thin wicker door on her right.
Inside, a knee-high tap emptied into a shallow square pool. Arza twisted the handle until beads of condensation bloomed across the metal and a fine, freezing mist hung above the tiles, then cupped her hands under the jet of water and splashed it over her face. The water almost fizzed on her skin. After the cold burned out her mind and the tired feeling coating her muscles, she breathed in deeply, slicked water off her face, and felt for one of the thick towels hanging from the walls. She scrubbed her skin dry on the warm, dry cloth and opened her eyes.
She was standing in a puddle. When she shifted her weight, the ceiling’s reflection rippled like cloudy glass. She heard her mother yelling at her to clean up the water she’d sloshed around the sink in their house or the Floor People would curse her, and she smiled.
The Front Is a Lemon Avenue Flying Straightly 71-77
“So, whatever they want, it’s not money,” Arza said. “For now, let’s just compare Tem-Yeroon to the rest of Perquan. What can you get here that you can’t get anywhere else on the planet?”
Lann frowned past Arza’s shoulder. “I don’t know. No one at college could name a single city anywhere on Perquan.” Residual bitterness drifted in the bottom of her voice. “But in Tel-Herchoon, when they think about Tem-Yeroon, they think about the Acropolis.”
“Tel-Herchoon doesn’t have anything like it?”
“No. Everyone has holy sites, but I’ve never heard of anything like…” She jerked her head at the window behind her. “Honestly, most things there are pretty much the same, except for that.”
“Hm.”
“But whenever the Yera people in Tel-Herchoon went to Tem-Yeroon, they were going to the Acropolis.” She smiled. “You should have seen my neighborhood during the Great Invocations. It looked like everyone died.”
“Are the Great Invocations religious holidays?”
“Yeah.”
Practices and Principles of the Ten-Branched Way was waiting for Arza in her bag. She stopped herself before she could sigh.
“Assume the Sith is here for the shrine,” Arza said. “What could they want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know if…” Lann sighed. “Okay. You’re a Jedi.”
“I am.”
“The Jedi have temples.”
“We do.”
“But you can use the Force wherever you go.”
“We can.”
Lann nodded briskly. “I don’t know if the Ten-Branched Way is the same way, or if it somehow needs the shrine.”
“We can use the Force anywhere, but Jedi temples are still built in places where the Force behaves in unusual ways. If the Force is a planet’s mantle, then we build our temples on volcanoes. So do the Sith,” Arza added.
“The Acropolis could be like that. It could also just be…” Lann shrugged. “You know what Force religions are like.”
Arza raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t look at me like that. I said ‘Force religions,’ not just the Way.”
“All of them?”
For a second, Lann frowned, playing with her tongs.
Then her eyes shot wide. “Not the Jedi,” she said, her voice hitching louder.
Arza laughed, deep and rich. Finally, her voice blended into the noise of the room. She felt lighter when it swirled away.
Lann stared at her, mortified, but not frightened.
“What are Force religions like?” Arza asked.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Just answer the question.”
Lann’s shoulders collapsed. “I meant…” She heaved a deep, rattling sigh. “I was going to say, they’re janky.”
Arza raised her eyebrows again.
“ ‘We sacrificed an animal yesterday and it rained today, so the Force makes it rain when we sacrifice animals to it.’ ‘We reworded one of our prayers and our sanctuary caught fire, so the Force didn’t like the edits. We’ll never change anything ever again.’ It’s just jank. Layers and layers of jank.”
“That’s true of most religions, I think.”
“But the Force is real. There are things it does and there are things it doesn’t do.”
“The Force has a hand in everything that happens.”
“Jedi don’t sacrifice animals.”
“We have our own traditions.”
Lann folded her arms.
“We have policies. We could still use the Force if we didn’t follow them, but we do it anyway.”
Lann was almost glaring at her.
“What?” Arza asked lightly.
“I wasn’t talking about the Jedi Code.”
“I never said you were,” Arza said.
“I know every rule you follow makes you stronger in the Force.”
Arza waited attentively, head tilted, smile serene.
“Every time you add a new rule to the Code, your Force pushes all go a meter farther.”
“One point seven-five.”
“Huh?”
“I’m joking.”
Lann tapped a finger on her arm like a cat swishing its tail before it pounced.
Arza touched the hem of her sleeve. “I don’t wear a Jedi habit because it makes me stronger,” she said. “It’s just clothes.”
“I know.” Lann frowned. “The Code says you have to wear that?”
“It’s Council policy. When we’re representing the Order, we wear habits.”
Lann played with the bare stems they’d discarded in the corner of the berry tray.
“There aren’t any rules in the Code,” Arza said.
“What?”
“The Code sets out which aspects of the Force belong to the Light Side and which belong to the Dark Side. All the policies for what Jedi can and can’t do are set by the Council.”
“Oh.”
“Common misconception.”
“So the Jedi rules aren’t religious.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You just said they were arbitrary.”
“The Light Side and the Dark Side exist at all times, in all places. Jedi policy reflects the Council’s understanding of how to follow the Light in particular situations.”
“So they’re arbitrary.”
Arza smiled. “I don’t follow.”
“You just said they were set by the Council.”
“They’re the Council’s interpretation of the Code.”
Lann balanced her chin on her fists, staring Arza down.
“I thought you didn’t have any opinions on the Jedi Code,” Arza said.
“I never said that.”
“You’re awfully comfortable sharing your opinions about it with a Jedi Knight.”
“Should I stop?”
“I’m not offended. I’m just curious.”
“Doesn’t everyone ask you about it?”
“Generally not.”
“Really?”
“People tend to stand on ceremony, at least when they’re talking to me.”
Lann brushed a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. She frowned thoughtfully.
“Hm?”
“It’s hard to imagine people being that reserved with you.”
“They might avoid asking me about it because they’re worried they’ll offend me, but it also might have never occurred to them to ask.”
“It’s the first one,” Lann said immediately. “Everyone talks about it.”
“About the Code?”
“About all the rules the Jedi have to follow. I don’t care if it’s in the Code or not.”
“Everyone?”
“Pretty much.”
“Even Yul?”
Lann’s face blanked. Then recognition snapped behind her eyes. “Yul Dernary?”
“I don’t know his last name. You introduced us at Central.”
“That’s Yul Dernary. No, we’ve never talked about the Jedi Code.”
Arza shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve found that people don’t talk about us much at all.”
“I have talked to Hurrun about it, though.”
“Does she agree with you?”
“Yeah, she does.”
Arza leaned back, reflecting. “I never thought we had to follow a lot of rules.”
Lann shook her head.
“What?” Arza asked.
“What about attachments?”
“Attachment is forbidden.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“It’s a simple rule.”
“Why did the Council make that a ‘policy’?” Arza could hear Lann bend the end of the question.
“It’s a straightforward reading of Book Three of the Code,” she said. “ ‘The deepest wisdom and broadest compassion abide without attachment.’ ”
"Didn't Jedi used to be able to have ‘attachments’?”
“The attachment ban is as old as the Order.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“The Council’s definition of attachment has changed. It’s not necessarily the same thing as personal relationships,” Arza said. “Personal relationships can exist without attachment.”
Lann snorted.
“Hm?”
“ ‘Personal relationships,’ she said, drawing out the ends of the words, “without ‘attachment.’ ”
“Yes. And vice versa,” Arza added.
Lann was fighting something.
“Attachment can exist without a personal relationship. What?”
Lann finally laughed, high, incredulous, and delighted.
“Hm?”
“I don’t think Jedi are allowed to have ‘relationships without attachments,’ ” Lann said, barely dragging herself back from the edge of laughter.
Arza replayed the last minute of conversation, listening to the drawl Lann poured over the words she emphasized and watching her face shift back and forth between a knowing smirk and baffled near-disbelief like water sloshing in a glass on a shaky table.
Arza had it. “Jedi can fuck,” she said calmly.
Lann doubled over coughing.
Arza smiled. She topped off Lann’s water glass, then took the last bun from the center of the tray and ate it slowly, trying to remember what it reminded her of. The memory brushed her mind, but it pulled away again.
Lann hauled herself back up to a sitting position, still wheezing.
“Although that may change soon,” Arza said, before Lann could say anything.
“Why would they do that?” Lann asked instantly, before she was devoured by another coughing fit.
The corner of Arza’s mouth twitched. “It may be better for the Republic,” she said, “if we minimize the number of people with carnal knowledge of the Jedi Masters.”
Lann grabbed her glass and gulped water. She shook her head at the floor, vehemently unconvinced but not willing to risk talking.
“No children, though,” Arza said. “That’s an old policy. The Council was afraid the Order would become a dynasty. That ban also came down when the Sith clans were a problem. I think that had something to do with it.”
Lann swallowed. “Sith have families?” she said, testing her voice on each word.
“Some of them.”
Lann twisted the last berry off its stem.
“There are people who would burn the galaxy to the ground for their families,” Arza said. “Everyone in a Sith clan was like that, when they were at their height. Some of them stayed that way for three generations, four, sometimes even five.” Arza shrugged. “But it can’t last forever. All it takes is one guy who hates his sister-in-law, and it’s all over.”
Lann cleared her throat. “Did that happen?” she asked, more confidently.
