speck of a man was beneath him. Argel was useful, and so Bane would continue to play the part of a Sith-obsessed merchant.
'I hope you were able to find what I was looking for,' he muttered. 'The details you provided were rather vague.'
'I promise you this, Sepp,' the other man replied with a cunning smile. 'You will not be disappointed.
'But you have no idea how hard this was,' Argel added, throwing in an exaggerated sigh. 'What you're after is illegal. Banned by the Jedi Council.'
'Everything you deal in is banned by the Jedi Council.'
'This was different. I'd never even heard the name Darth Andeddu before. None of my suppliers had. I had to go outside the normal channels. But I came through, like I always do in the end.'
Bane scowled. 'I trust you were careful. I wouldn't want word of this to make its way back to the Jedi.'
Argel laughed. 'What's the matter, Sepp? Some of your business practices not quite on the up-and-up? Afraid the Council will come after you for cheating on your taxes?'
'Something like that.'
'Don't worry, nobody will ever know you were involved. I only brought it up because I may have to renegotiate our original price.'
'We had a deal.'
'Now, now-you know my initial quote is only an estimate,' Argel reminded him. 'I had to outlay triple my normal expenses to track this particular item down.
'But I'm willing to give you a bargain and only charge you double my original offer.'
Bane gritted his teeth, knowing his hopes of a quick end to their conversation would remain unfulfilled. He had the funds to simply pay, of course. But this would arouse suspicion. He had a role to play: that of a savvy merchant. If he didn't negotiate down to the last credit, it would seem strange.
'I'll give you a ten percent bonus. Nothing more.'
For the next twenty minutes they haggled back and forth, finally settling on 40 percent above the starting price.
'A pleasure doing business with you, as always,' Argel said once payment was agreed upon.
From inside his vest he produced a long, thin tube roughly thirty centimeters long. The tube was sealed at one end, and the other was capped with a tightly screwed-on lid.
'If the item proves unsatisfactory,' he noted as he handed it over, 'I will be happy to take it back and return your funds:less a reasonable commission of course.'
'I highly doubt that will be necessary,' Bane replied as he wrapped his fingers tightly around the tube.
With the transaction complete there was no point in staying at the cantina. Bane was eager to open his prize, but he resisted until he was safely back inside the privacy of the library annex on his personal estate. There, beneath the pale glow of the lonely overhead light, he carefully unscrewed the lid. He tipped the tube, allowing the single sheaf of paper rolled up inside to slide out.
His instructions to Argel had been simple: be on the lookout for any book, volume, tome, manuscript, or scroll that made mention of a Sith Lord named Darth Andeddu. He couldn't say any more than that for fear of raising suspicions or awkward questions, but he had hoped it would be enough.
For two months his supplier had turned up nothing. But then, just as Bane was beginning to fear the Jedi had successfully buried all trace of Andeddu and his secrets, Argel had delivered.
The scroll was yellow with age, and Bane gingerly unfurled the dry, cracked page. As he did so, he marveled at the long and untraceable chain of events that had allowed the scroll to not only survive across the millennia, but eventually make its way into his hands. He had chosen to seek the scroll out, yet on some level he felt his choice had been preordained. The scroll was part of the Sith legacy; a legacy that by all rights now belonged to Bane. It was almost as if he had been destined to find it. It was as inevitable as the dark side's eventual triumph over the light.
The page had been fashioned from the cured skin of an animal he couldn't identify. On one side, it was rough and covered with dark splotches. The other side had been bleached and scraped smooth before being covered with handwritten lines in a language Bane immediately recognized.
The letters were sharp and angular, aggressive and fierce in their design; the alphabet of the original Sith, a long-extinct species that ruled Korriban nearly one hundred thousand years ago.
That didn't mean the document was that old, of course. It only meant that whoever wrote it had revered and respected the Sith culture enough to adapt their language as their own.
Bane began to read the words, struggling with the archaic tongue. As Argel had promised, he was not disappointed with the contents. The scroll was a religious proclamation declaring Darth Andeddu the Immortal and Eternal King over the entire world of Prakith. To commemorate the momentous event, the proclamation continued, a great temple would be built in his honor. Satisfied, Bane carefully rolled the scroll up and slid it back into the protective tube. Despite being only a few paragraphs scrawled across a single sheet of parchment, it had given him what he needed.
Andeddu's followers had built a temple in his honor on the Deep Core world of Prakith. There was no doubt in Bane's mind that this was where he would find the Dark Lord's Holocron. Unfortunately, he had to think of a way to acquire it that wouldn't raise Zannah's suspicions.
Andeddu's Holocron offered the promise of immortality; with it he could live long enough to find and train a new successor. It was Unlikely his current apprentice would know the significance of the Holocron, but he wasn't willing to take that chance. Though she was loath to challenge him directly, if she learned that he planned to replace her Bane had no doubt she would do everything in her power to stop him.
He couldn't allow the fear of being replaced to become the catalyst that compelled Zannah to finally challenge him. Fighting back simply because she knew she was about to be cast aside was nothing but a common survival instinct. His successors would need to do more than just survive if the Sith were ever to grow powerful enough to destroy the Jedi. Zannah's challenge had to come from her own initiative, not as a reaction to something he did. Otherwise, it was worthless.
This was the complex paradox of the Master-apprentice relationship, and it had put Bane into an untenable position. He couldn't send Zannah after the Holocron, and if he went after it himself she would almost certainly suspect something. He rarely traveled offworld anymore; any journey would immediately put her on her guard. She might try to follow him, or prepare some type of trap to be sprung on his return.
Even though she had disappointed Bane by not challenging him, Zannah was still a dangerous and formidable opponent. It was possible she might defeat him, leaving the Sith with a leader who lacked the necessary drive and ambition. Her complacency would infect the Order; eventually it would wither and die.
He couldn't allow that to happen. Which meant he had to find something to occupy Zannah's attention while he made the long and arduous journey into the Deep Core.
Fortunately, he had already had something in mind.
Bane's personal study-unlike the secluded private library tucked in the back corner of the estate-was a buzzing hive of endless electronic activity. Even when unoccupied, the room was illuminated by the flickering images of HoloNet news feeds, the glow of data screens showing stock tickers from a dozen different planetary exchanges, or blinking readouts on the monitors indicating private communications filtering in from the network of informants he and Zannah had assembled over the years.
For all the opulence and extravagance throughout the mansion, more credits had been spent on this room than any other. With all the terminals, holoprojectors, and screens, it looked more like the communications hub of a busy starport than a den in a private residence. Yet the study was no grandiose display of wealth; rather, it was a testament to efficiency and practicality. Every single piece of equipment had been carefully chosen to handle the staggering volume of data passing through the room: thousands of data units every hour, all recorded and stored for later review and analysis.
The study helped reinforce the illusion that he and Zannah were wealthy entrepreneurs obsessively scouring news from the farthest reaches of the galaxy in search of profitable business ventures. To some degree, this was even true. Every credit spent on the study was an investment that would eventually payoff a hundredfold. Over the
