Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force by Michael Reaves Page B

and fear intertwining in his voice and invading his gray eyes.
    Jax held his lightsaber up between them, then deactivated it. “I’m a Jedi Knight,” he said. “My name is Jax.”

six
    Jax and Laranth stopped to reconnoiter in the confluence of corridors where they’d met on their way to the Force eruption. The boy, who’d mumbled that his name was Kaj, seemed less dazed now. His eyes kept going to Jax’s lightsaber.
    “Which way from here?” Laranth asked, jerking her head toward the alcove terminus of the shaft she’d descended earlier. “That comes out in Ploughtekal. Near the heart of it, in fact. If the Inquisitors are looking for our friend, the market might offer us the best cover. How did you come down?”
    Jax grimaced. “I barely remember. Kaj here sort of swept me off my feet.”
    “If you’re a Jedi, where’s your lightsaber?”
    Laranth and Jax turned in unison to look at the boy. He actually blushed.
    “Strictly speaking,” Laranth told him, “I’m a Gray Paladin. We have a somewhat different approach to a few things, lightsabers being one of them. A Gray Paladin isn’t married to a particular weapon. We simply use the Force through whatever tool we prefer. I like blasters.” She patted the pair holstered at her thighs. “Though I’ve been known to use a vibroblade from time to time.”
    The boy turned his eyes to Jax. “Your lightsaber is red.
His
was red.” He flicked his gaze back the waythey’d come. “How do I know you’re really Jedi—either of you? How do I know you’re not Inquisitors?”
    Jax could feel the uncertainty and fear building up behind the pale eyes. Building toward panic. He’d already seen what this Force prodigy could do when panicked.
    “I’m not,” he said. “Touch me. Use the Force to reach out and read me. I won’t stop you.” He saw Laranth’s eyes widen just before he closed his own and opened himself to this strange boy. He felt her trepidation as a cascade of cold lines down his back, felt the boy’s tentative touch as a cool tendril of uncertainty.
    Blue. The Force manifested in Kaj as amorphous blobs, blue tending toward violet. Jax saw them in his mind’s eye reaching out for him, encircling him, probing.
    After a moment the touch was withdrawn and he opened his eyes to see the boy looking at him, perplexed.
    “What did you sense?”
    “There’s no anger in you. No rage. I have so much and I have to fight it so hard sometimes. And he …” Again, the flicker of attention back toward the debris field with its possibly dead Inquisitor. “… he was like a
furnace
. He burned with it. Why are you so different?”
    “Because I’m a Jedi,” Jax answered him. “Our Inquisitor friend is—something else.”
    “A Sith?”
    Jax glanced at Laranth. “What do you know about the Sith?” he asked Kaj.
    The boy shrugged. “Legends. Myths.”
    “Well, there are all kinds of Sith. As far as I know, an Inquisitor isn’t actually a Sith. But they do use red lightsabers. It’s a function of the crystal that’s used. Different crystals produce different colors.”
    “So … it’s a choice you make.”
    Jax and Laranth traded glances. “Yes,” Jax said. “Usually. Only I didn’t choose this lightsaber. The one Ihad, the one I built and trained with, was destroyed. This one”—he patted the hilt—“was given to me by … someone who knew I needed one.”
    Laranth moved restively. “I hate to break this up, but we have a logistical problem—how to get Kaj onto friendly turf.”
    “Yes, but which friendly turf?” Jax met her eyes, which made his stomach feel strange. “I can take him back with me, or you can smuggle him to Thi Xon Yimmon.”
    “Yimmon has a lot on his plate,” the Twi’lek said. “I can’t conscionably give him yet another consideration without asking.”
    Kaj, who’d been sitting against a pile of rubble, scrambled to his feet. “I’m not a consideration. I’m a Jedi. At least, I
want
to be a