Star Wars - Darth Plagueis

him. “A gift.”
    “When you earned it?” Doriana shook his head. “I’m not that desperate. Yet, anyway.”
    The two of them laughed. Doriana’s engaging smile and innocent good looks belied a sinister personality that had brought him to Palpatine’s notice several years earlier. A Naboo, he had a troubled past and, perhaps as a consequence, talents that made him useful. So Palpatine had befriended him and clandestinely drawn him into his web, in accordance with Plagueis’s instructions that he always keep an eye out for allies and would-be co-conspirators. That Doriana wasn’t strong in the Force made no difference. In eleven years of Sith apprenticeship and of traveling far and wide in the galaxy, Palpatine had yet to encounter a single being whose strength in the Force had gone unrecognized or unexploited.
    At the neighboring table, Vidar Kim and the rest were enjoying themselves, their privacy ensured by the table’s transparent sound-muting umbrella. Envy gnawed at Palpatine while he watched Kim … the position he enjoyed in the Galactic Senate, the posting on Coruscant, easy access to the galaxy’s elite. But he knew that he needed to bide his time; that Plagueis would move him to the galactic capital only when there was some good reason to do so.
    As often as Plagueis maintained that the Rule of Two had ended with their partnership, the Muun remained the powerful one, and Palpatine the covetous one. Bane’s dictum notwithstanding, denial was still a key factor in Sith training; a key factor in being “broken,” as Plagueis put it—of being shaped by the dark side of the Force. Cruelly, at times, and painfully. But Palpatine was grateful, for the Force had slowly groomed him into a being of dark power and granted him a secret identity, as well. The life he had been leading—as the noble head of House Palpatine, legislator, and most recently ambassador-at-large—was nothing more than the trappings of an alter ego; his wealth, a subterfuge; his handsome face, a mask. In the realm of the Force his thoughts orderedreality, and his dreams prepared the galaxy for monumental change. He was a manifestation of dark purpose, helping to advance the Sith Grand Plan and gradually gaining power over himself so that he might one day—in the words of his Master—be able to gain control over another, then a group of others, then an order, a world, a species, the Republic itself.
    Doriana’s elbow nudged him out of his reverie.
    “Kim’s coming.”
    “Don’t think I didn’t see that,” the Senator said when he reached Palpatine.
    Palpatine let his bafflement show.
    “The flimsi-card that woman slipped you,” Vidar said. “I suppose you entertained her with the usual tall tales.”
    Palpatine shrugged in a guileless manner. “I may have said something about getting to know the galaxy.”
    “Getting to know the galaxy’s women, he means,” Doriana interjected.
    Kim laughed heartily. “How is it that I come to have assistants who leave trails of conquests, and a son who meditates on the Force in the Jedi Temple?”
    “That’s what makes you so well rounded,” Doriana said.
    More than even Plagueis, Kim had been Palpatine’s mentor in the sphere of mundane politics. Their relationship went back fifteen years, to when Palpatine had been forcibly enrolled in a private school in Theed, and Kim had just completed his stint in the Apprentice Legislator program. In the time since, Palpatine had watched Kim’s family grow to include three sons, one of whom—Ronhar, six years Palpatine’s junior—had been turned over to the Jedi Order as an infant. When Plagueis had learned of this, he had encouraged Palpatine to allow his friendship with Kim to deepen, in the expectation that sooner or later his and Jedi Ronhar’s paths would cross.
    Give order to the future by attending to it with your thoughts , his Master frequently told him.
    “Come and join us at the table,” Kim was saying.
    Palpatine stood and fell into step beside Kim as he headed back to the larger table.
    “One day you’ll be replacing me at this job,” the Senator said quietly,“and the sooner you grow accustomed to what goes on, the better.” He sighed with purpose. “Who knows, a few hours of senatorial gossip might even be enough to deter you from going into galactic politics altogether.”
    Some dozen beings were grouped in a circle, all of them male but not all of them human. The prominent chairs were occupied by Gran