Sacrifice

"Sometimes."

Omas's brows lifted in a split second of hope. "I appreciate that it's not easy to curb an officer who does so much to reassure the public."

"We all need heroes in difficult times, even if we don't need their protection as much as we think."

"Indeed. And for all their muttering, I do believe the Jedi Council secretly relishes seeing one of their own kind adored for his two-fisted and muscular approach to keeping the peace. It dispels the image of their being passive mystics out of touch with grim reality."

"Success is everyone's child. Failure is an orphan."

Omas smiled ruefully. "Well, he'll either win the war for us ... or bring us down." He went back to his polished plain of a desk, looking somewhat shrunken when he sat behind it now. The small bronzium vase holding a single purple kibo bloom made the desk look all the more vast and empty. "Heroes have a habit of doing that."

Us. Bring us down.

And politicians had a habit of sowing doubts and ideas that wormed into the subconscious. Niathal noted Omas's subtle warning and almost began to explain that she already had the required degree of paranoia for a more political career, but he probably knew that by now. If he didn't, she was slipping.

"I'll bear that in mind," she said.

Omas was a consummate statesbeing who'd survived attempts on his life and his career several times. He'd understand the entire conversation that was packed into that one line: that she knew Jacen was a loose cannon, that she knew he was massively, overwhelmingly ambitious, and that she knew she might find herself sidelined by him if she didn't keep on her toes. And that she knew Omas was aware that her eyes were on his job, and