"Big plans tonight, Anakin?" I glanced over at my former master's apprentice with a smirk.

Anakin Skywalker studiously avoided my gaze, preferring to scour the saucepan in his hands. "Not ... um ... not big plans, exactly." He cleared his throat. "'Dala arrived today, so she and I are just going to spend some time catching up."

I raised an eyebrow. In the years since they'd met, Anakin had grown from a chattery boy into a fine young man, all blue eyes and fair hair and easy smile. Amidala, already a pretty girl then, was now a striking woman, alternately regal and personable but never less than beautiful, dark hair and eyes offset by her pale face. She and Anakin always made time for each other when they were on the same world, and if "catching up" was what they were calling it now, then "catching up" was what it was.

I suppressed my smile and carried on stacking dishes and putting them away. "Master doesn't need me here," Anakin insisted, "and she doesn't have meetings with Chancellor Palpatine until tomorrow." And once those meetings began, no doubt, she'd be busy with them right up until her departure.

"That's wonderful, Ani," I said. "You're so rarely in the same place lately. It's good this is working out. She's a nice girl."

Anakin's whole manner changed. He looked over at me, a smitten smile on his face; his shoulders relaxed; and I saw that I had found the magic nerve. The reaction was so automatic that I hated to think what would have happened if I'd had something negative to say about Amidala. But right now he was beaming. "She is, isn't she?"

"I've always thought so," I laughed. "And she's always seemed as happy with you as you are with her."

Anakin blushed and looked at the floor. "I'm always afraid she still sees me as a little boy," he admitted. "I was nine when I met her and she's twenty-one now."

"But you're older now than she was then," I pointed out. "And that doesn't matter anyway, Ani. Think about it -- does Qui-Gon think of me as a child?" I leaned closer to the boy. "I'll give you a hint: not a bit."

Anakin grinned, but quickly sobered. "Whoever I marry, I hope we're as happy as you and Master Qui-Gon."

"When you marry the love of your life, Anakin, you will be." I ruffled the sandy hair -- not as easily as I used to. Anakin had reached my height and looked sure to grow nearly as tall as Qui-Gon before he quit. "Now go on with you. I'll finish up here. Don't keep that nice girl waiting." Anakin blushed even deeper than before, bowed briefly, and scurried out to meet Amidala. I finished in the kitchen and returned to where Qui- Gon and our guests still sat around the dining- table.

The conversation over dinner had been friendly and full of laughter. Master Windu, who had just taken a new padawan, was feeling the unaccustomed strain, and Qui-Gon had been enjoying teasing him over it. Qui-Gon had been doing pretty well, setting Master Windu in his place with comments like "You wait until you're training your fourth padawan in thirty years, and then tell me you're exhausted," when Master Yoda had reminded him that he was not by a long way the most productive master at the table in terms of training padawans. Yoda himself, of course, had been directly responsible for the education of at least fifty knights -- none of whom, to my knowledge, had ever failed -- and indirectly responsible for countless more. He had been a master for over eight hundred years, and had also risen to the Council and supervised the training of others. Plus, age hadn't slowed him down. Yoda had been my own master's master, fifty years before, and had trained Depa Billaba after him, who now sat with him on the Council. His other surviving students were similarly advanced in each of their own fields.

Master Yoda had set all this out with an air of weariness belied by the twinkle in his eye. "Wait, you should, until your thirtieth padawan you have trained, young Jinn," he had said, "and then tell me twenty more you shall train before complaining of exhaustion." He had glanced at Anakin and winked. "And tell me not that easier my students have been to train than yours. No picnic were you."

Everyone had laughed, and Anakin and I had begun clearing up while Masters Yoda and Gallia regaled a wide-eyed Sionnach with stories of Qui-Gon's childhood and youth. This subject had apparently segued neatly into the difficult main topic of the meeting; when I returned to the table, judging from the serious expressions on Joma's and Qui- Gon's faces and the unchecked shock emanating from Masters Windu, Gallia and Yoda, I guessed my friend and my bondmate had shared their discovery of the growing number of Adepts. Sionnach had been sent to do her homework in Anakin's room. I slid into a seat next to Qui-Gon.

"All of us here are responsible for Adepts -- or we are Adepts ourselves," Qui-Gon was saying, with a nod in Joma's direction. "Mace, now that you're training young Morgesh, you and I are the only ones with Adept padawans." Master Windu nodded. "Adi, the rest are in the creche. And Master, of course you're here representing the Council, as governor of Knight Phrel and Master Ral."

"I was always told," said Joma, "that in the whole galaxy an Adept was born perhaps twice in a generation. Now I'm counting more than ten in a fifteen-year period, with the density at the young end -- this can't just be a quirk of chance, much as I wish it were. And Adept-ness isn't genetic, like Force-sensitivity, is it?"

"It's congenital," Mace said, clearing his throat. "You're born that way -- it's coded in your genes -- but it isn't hereditary." He rubbed his eyes. "It seems to select randomly, independent of the parents' status."

"Meaning," said Qui-Gon, "that we can rule out the possibility of this being an evolutionary phase."

"Thank goodness," Joma cut in. "No, I think you're right. It's far too inconvenient a trait to become the norm. Can you imagine -- a whole population of me? Ugh." She shuddered.

"Joma," I warned. Her tendency toward self- deprecation was almost as sore a subject with us as her tendency toward ego. She had it in her head that she herself was undesirable, but that her skills and output were far superior to most others', and I'd spent years trying to nudge both misconceptions in a more central direction.

"No, Kenobi, give it a rest. It's not low self- esteem; it's high self-awareness. I know I'm difficult to live around." She winked. "That's not a value judgment; it's a statement of fact. Several thousand beings hypersensitive to the Force -- it would be exponential. The migraines. The mood swings. Nobody would ever get anything done."

"Fair enough," I laughed. She had me on the mood swings.

"Our only conclusion," Qui-Gon went on, glancing at me, "is that the Force itself is choosing these children and leading them to us -- or us to them." I smiled to myself. Finally, after seven years, it seemed that he had been proven, rather than just demonstrated, to have been right. Finding Anakin had been the will of the Force. There remained little question on that point. I made a mental note to find something else to needle him about. "But the question is why?"

"I spent this morning in the archives," I offered, "and in the past five hundred years or so I couldn't find anything remotely similar."

"Far enough back you did not search." We all looked to Master Yoda, who, I belatedly realized, had been silent until now. Mace Windu stopped staring into his wine glass, and Joma quit tapping her spoon on the table. But Master Yoda didn't go into detail on what I might have found if I had reviewed older records. He turned, instead, to Master Gallia. "Why until now was this not mentioned?" he demanded.

For all her usual calm, Master Gallia seemed very flustered. "I -- I don't think I even noticed it, Master Yoda," she stammered. "It's -- we're always delighted to get an Adept; I must not have realized how many there were."

"Don't blame her for that," Joma said before Yoda could speak again. "I only caught it today, when I saw the four of them together, and I'm the one interviewing these kids when their parents bring them in. Plus -- well, if anybody should have seen it, it'd be me."

"Sooner I wish we had known," Yoda said, and I saw that he wasn't angry. In place of the anger, though, was something I had never seen before, something far more terrible. Master Yoda was afraid. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Qui- Gon rub at his scar with the knuckle of his thumb. I reached over absently and pulled his hand away, not noticing until it curled around mine that I had done so, just as we used to pull Sionnach's thumb from her mouth when she was a baby. Our eyes met for an instant and when he smiled at me, I almost forgot the others and the meeting and the growing sense of unease.

Almost. "So we're not just fortunate to have this many Adepts," Mace said, bringing the discussion back on point. "Any idea why the Force has blessed us?" His tone won a weak smile from Master Gallia.

"Happened before, this has," Master Yoda said. "Many generations ago. Hmm. A thousand years, perhaps. Or more." A knot of nausea crept into my stomach. "Many Adepts, then. Strong were they with the Force. Needed, to battle powerful adversary." I saw Adi Gallia sit back against her chair, her eyes closed. Qui-Gon squeezed my hand.

"What do you mean?" Mace asked.

"The Sith," Adi said, her voice hollow. "The last time the Force started concentrating Adepts was in time for the last Sith war."

"So you're saying --"

"Danger, there will be. That is what I am saying," Master Yoda declared.

The silence that followed was uncomfortable but brief. "If that's the case," Qui-Gon said, "I'd almost rather it were an evolutionary phase. Migraines and all."

"But here's what I don't understand," said Joma -- on her feet, now, and pacing behind her chair. "The Force makes more Adepts when it knows a powerful adversary is on the rise. But why does it let the adversary rise in the first place? Why let it get to a point where we have to arm ourselves this way?"

"'Let them' rise the Force does not," Yoda reminded her. "Use the Force, they do, like a thing. Like a tool. Different, we are. Feel the Force, we do. Our ally, it is. As it helps us, so we help it. Defend it, we must, against those who would harness it only for their gain."

"Did you say there were families who chose to keep their Adept children?" Adi Gallia asked quietly after a moment. Joma nodded. I felt a prick of something awful in my mind, an idea that initially had no form, but unleashed an abstract dread. "We should contact them."

"Yes," Qui-Gon agreed. "Keep an eye on those children, wherever they are." I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. The pin-prick of a thought had bled through my consciousness, and a horrible truth was becoming clear.

"And find out from the branch temples how many Adepts they see," Mace added, "if they don't all end up here."

My stomach turned. I hated what I was about to say. Joma looked at me sharply, uncertainly. "We need to go searching for them ourselves," I said. Nobody answered me, but the thunder of that realization had settled to a dull, grey ache. "We can't wait for the parents to bring them to us."

"We can't do that," Qui-Gon said. "We can't and we mustn't." I could see Mace nodding his agreement. "It goes against --"

"Obi-Wan is right," Joma interrupted. She was in rare form tonight, I noted in some distant part of my mind; she'd stood up to Master Yoda and cut Qui-Gon off in mid-sentence. But she'd never been much interested in deferring to her seniors. "We'll have no choice."

"The Jedi have never, in a thousand generations, sought new recruits," Qui-Gon said. "It --" he held up a hand against further interruption when I would have spoken. "It flies in the face of everything we believe. You heard Master Yoda -- we follow the Force, we do its bidding, and it rewards us with strength and wisdom and temperance. We must trust the Force to bring us its Adepts; seeking them for ourselves would make us no better than the Sith."

"I don't like the idea myself," I said, "but you're exactly right: we can be sure the Sith will be hunting these children. Do we have any option but to stay one step ahead of them?"

"I don't want us to be the ones who decide that a child belongs with us rather than with his family," Qui-Gon insisted. "The parents must make that decision."

"Or the Force makes that decision," Joma muttered under her breath.

"Yes, the Force. We are merely --"

"Don't say we're merely instruments of the Force, Qui-Gon Jinn," she shot back, her voice rising. "Don't you dare. You'd have us believe the Force manipulates us the same way the Sith manipulate the Force? Not me. It's our ally; we work with it. You heard Master Yoda." This last was flung at him in the same tone he'd used just a moment before, but there was a glint in her eye that, naturally, Qui-Gon had to answer.

"I don't say we're instruments of the Force, Knight Phrel," he said. Nobody missed his use of her title; it spoke volumes. Adept you might be, it said, but don't misunderstand what that implies; I am twice your age, I am a Master of this order, and I know what my own master means when he speaks. It was the verbal equivalent of drawing himself up to his full height -- which, of course, was considerable. "I say that we have no power to seize a child whose family does not wish to grant us custody. When their minds are made up --"

"If I'm Adept in order to fight the Sith, isn't that a pretty clear signal? Aren't we pretty sure what the Force wants from me? Wouldn't the Force have compelled my parents to leave me here with you?"

"It doesn't compel," Qui-Gon said, growing impatient. "It guides. And if the Force does not guide a child to us, Adept or otherwise, that child was not meant for us to raise. Perhaps it has other plans for him. We must not presume that every Force-sensitive or even every Adept child is so because he's destined to be ours. And seeking Adept children is that presumptuous."

"It's not for our gain," I cut in, "not using the Force for our own benefit, but letting it guide us, as you say, Master, to where we can protect these children from those who abuse it. When I say we'll need to look for these children, I do not mean we'll do so with an eye toward taking them as initiates. I simply mean we can't afford not to know where they are. If their parents decide to give them to us, fine, but if not, at least we won't be surprised to learn they exist. We may even warn them of the Sith."

"Yes. What if those two families I met have already been influenced, but by the Dark Side?" Joma said.

"Exactly. That's why we need to find those two children. Not because we want their parents to change their minds and give them to us, but because we need to know what sort of enemy we'll be up against, and if he's recruiting from the same pool as we are."

"But once we find them, will we look for other Adepts as well?" Qui-Gon seemed to be cautiously considering giving some ground.

"No," Mace said. "Yes, of course," Joma argued.

"Yes," I said, "but for the same reasons. We must trust the Force to guide us toward its Adepts, rather than waiting for them to come to us, only so we may learn where and how many they are. Maybe they're unable to come to us, Qui-Gon. Think of Anakin. You found him."

"I found him by accident," Qui-Gon said quickly, "and his mother gave him to me."

"And her decision was completely unaffected by you or the Force," Joma scoffed.

"Not if the --"

"And she gave him to you, to us, so now we own him, of course."

"Knock it off, Joma. She gave Qui-Gon the care of Anakin, not the boy himself, and maybe the Force did influence her decision, but Qui-Gon did not." I surprised myself with how defensive I had become on Qui-Gon's behalf. Truly, I couldn't know what had happened at Mos Espa with any more certainty than Joma could; only Qui-Gon and Anakin had been there, and Anakin hadn't been present when Qui-Gon had spoken to his mother. "But if we'd just stayed home and waited for the Skywalkers to come to their nearest temple, we'd never even have known of Anakin." I waited a moment, expecting either Qui-Gon or Joma to interrupt me, but neither did. "If Shmi hadn't asked you to take him away with you, you wouldn't have," I continued. "That's not what we do. But we can and should seek the knowledge, if not the power." That did it. Joma and Qui-Gon and Mace looked very, very unhappy, but did not argue further.

"Discover, we must, where this danger lies," Yoda said. "Terrible, it will be, when it comes."

I felt a tug from the direction of the second bedroom. Glancing at Qui-Gon, who nodded, I excused myself from the table and moved to the door. I knocked softly to alert Sionnach that I was there, then slipped inside. She was standing, looking at the door, wringing her little hands; her homework lay forgotten on Anakin's desk. "What is it, sweeting?" I asked, crouching at her side.

"Ki's unhappy," she said with a frown. "And you too. I couldn't concentrate." She gestured toward her homework.

"Sion, love, you are the sweetest child ever for being concerned for us," I said, pulling her into my arms. "But you mustn't worry. Qui-Gon will be just fine. And me too. We can take good care of ourselves, can't we?"

She pushed herself far enough away that she could see my face. "Not before." Her lower lip trembled. That was strange. I knew she was talking about Naboo, about her infant ability to reach over the light-years and heal Qui-Gon when he was injured and on the brink of death -- but normally that incident was a point of pride for her, not of anxiety.

"That's true," I admitted, "but do you feel how different this is?" I brushed a curl back from her forehead, and she buried her face in my shoulder. "We were a bit unhappy, but now we're fine, both of us, and you can carry on as you were. All right?"

"Can I come sit with you and be sure?"

"Oh, I'm afraid not, firefly," I said, and I felt her arms tighten around my neck. "It's grown-ups out there, and we need to talk about some things, and you need to finish your homework, don't you? But Qui-Gon and I will come and tuck you in once all the grown-ups leave. All right?" Her grip did not loosen. I picked her up and deposited her back in the desk chair. "Come along now. We'll be fine, and we'll be back to tuck you in. I promise."

She looked up at me. "Promise?"

"I promise," I repeated, and kissed the top of her head. When she was determinedly focused on her homework again, I stole out of the room and back to Qui-Gon's side.

"Everything all right?" he whispered.

"It will be," I answered. "She could feel the tension when you and Joma were arguing, and it upset her. We'll talk later."

"Will you present this issue to the Council, Master Yoda?" Adi Gallia was asking.

"Hmm. Not yet."

"What?" Mace Windu's eyes were wide. "Master Yoda, I must respectfully disagree. The Council must be made aware of the danger that --"

"Not yet, I said," Master Yoda interrupted, "not no, never. Too soon, it is, to know what is best course of action."

I didn't understand, and said so. Qui-Gon reached for my hand and locked his fingers into mine. "If I may, Master?" Master Yoda nodded. "All we know at the moment is that we have a concentration of Adept children in the creche. We're fairly certain, based on precedent, that this is an indication of danger to come. But what we don't know is how many more Adepts will come to us -- how substantial that concentration will become. It's possible that these several children are the beginning of a great wave; it's also possible that they're all we'll get. In either event, with the current majority of Adepts being under the age of ten, it's safe to assume that the danger, whatever it is, won't manifest for ten years at the very least. The Force wouldn't expect us to fight the Sith with an army of toddlers." Adi Gallia nodded absently. "So. If, in the next few months to a year, we find still more, younger, Adepts in the creche -- or on our searches --" he cleared his throat -- "then we can reasonably push back the expected date of need for them. Right? But if we conclude that this bunch is what we've got, then we'll be able to report to the Council with something more than a hunch."

"But the conflict won't just happen ten years from today, or whenever," Mace Windu said. "It will grow, and develop, and fester."

"Prevent that we cannot," Master Yoda told him. "Only prepare."

"Telling the Council too soon could create an order-wide panic," Adi Gallia pointed out. "And it's not just the Adepts who will be called upon to fight when the time comes. I suggest we all continue to make sure that all our children get the best training we can give them, and keep an eye on the Adepts just as a sort of timer." Qui- Gon and I agreed; Joma did not disagree, and Mace conceded the point. "How many Adepts do we know we have now?"

Qui-Gon began counting on his fingers. "Master Ral. Knight Phrel. Padawan Skywalker. Padawan Kwahl. And, in the creche, apVess-Norill, Tiran, Gelter, Dues, Welk, and Uinja."

"And Rhyi'nak," Joma added. "That Porgatian family decided today to leave their daughter with us."

"That's eleven," Qui-Gon said, "seven of them children. And there are, at a minimum, two more out there somewhere. For now, I recommend that we seek these two children, keep our eyes open for any more, and look closely at any children we happen to meet if we're away from the temple anyway. I recommend that we not make special expeditions to locate Adept children, even if it is for knowledge rather than power."

"I agree," Adi Gallia and I said together.

"I, also," Mace Windu said.

"I agree for now," Joma hedged, "but once they stop coming to us, we'll have to purposefully go and find the rest. Just so we know where they are."

"Agreed," Master Yoda said. "And keep quiet, we must. Fret needlessly our children should not." He looked pointedly at me as everyone murmured assent.

Quietly, soberly, our guests thanked us and took their leave. Qui-Gon and I silently put away the last of the dishes before checking on Sionnach. She had fallen asleep with a storybook clutched in her hands, waiting for us to come tuck her in; we marked her page and put the book on the nightstand, tucked her in, kissed her good night and turned off the lamp. She didn't wake -- didn't even stir when we lifted her to put her under her blankets. That was unusual; the fact that she was asleep at all was a surprise -- we'd expected to have found her waiting up for us, and to have had to chide her for it -- but the soundness of that sleep, particularly at this early hour, was unsettling. Qui-Gon looked at me, then back at our girl. I could feel his unwillingness to admit how anxious he felt at her non-responsiveness.

All three of us, Qui-Gon and Anakin and I, adored Sionnach as though she really had been our own daughter and sister, but Qui-Gon's devotion to her occasionally surprised even him. Perhaps it was due to the long standing of his friendship with her father; I'd known Dorim apNorill for only a few years when he and M'Liskatha Vess had been killed, and Anakin of course had never met them, but Dorim and Qui-Gon had been close friends and sometime lovers since I was a child. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that he'd spent little time with small children, and quite long ago; I'd been a regular on 'pee patrol' as a senior padawan, and Anakin had known friends with much younger siblings back on Tatooine, but Qui-Gon was at such a remove from those days in his own life that the whole business was less familiar to him. Whatever the reason, there were times when his occupation with her was in a separate category from mine and Anakin's; he never supposed that he loved her more than we did, or even differently, but he often took her successes and failures, her advances and setbacks, much more to heart.

He said nothing now, as we looked at her fast asleep, but reached down to brush her hair out of her face, and in the process to lay the back of his hand against her cheek. Apparently satisfied that her temperature wasn't elevated -- which we would have noticed, of course, both of us, when we'd kissed her forehead a moment before -- he tucked the blanket closer under her chin and turned back to me. "It must have been the stress," he whispered. "The tension of the argument. When it eased, the relief must have been exhausting."

"Yes," I agreed. "We should mention that to Adi. Keep future discussions away from the littler ones."

We watched Sionnach sleep for another several minutes. Back in the living room, we set bedding out for Anakin, who had moved out to the couch for the few days that Sion would be with us. We quickly got ourselves ready for bed, and as we huddled together under the blankets, the full implications of the evening's conversation hit me. "Soon it's gonna rain," I said -- and though Qui- Gon was warm and held me close, I shivered.

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