Chapter Nineteen The Bad Guys
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Bad Guys
On our travel day to Tatooine, I feared that Sian was evading me.
So much so that I began to think I’d done something wrong.
Whenever I popped into the galley, he would slip out to the refresher.
When I caught him in the corridor, he’d feign looking for Noola.
It got to the point where Veebee even asked if I’d said anything to him.
“No!” I cried, stalking to the lift to help Kotti with a holochess tournament in the main chamber. “Nothing!”
I didn’t think so, at least. Maybe I had asked too many questions on the flight deck and pried too deeply. I frowned, puzzled. Why did I care so much?
“You’re being silly,” I mumbled to myself as I made my final rounds in the common areas that night. “He’s not evading you.”
It was a big ship, and it was easy to avoid people, but all day? Never mind he was confined to the pantry and he wasn’t in the pantry. Maybe I’d find him now, creeping around again while most everyone was asleep, and finally pin him down.
There were some late-night wanderers—a family in the mess hall playing sabacc and a few guests taking showers in the ’freshers, a few in the lounge on the main deck, gossiping about their sleeping friend.
There was music in the main chamber and laughter at the tables, but Sian was nowhere to be found.
Well, it couldn’t be helped.
With a yawn, I found my way back to my room and opened the door—
There was a shadow near my bed.
“Lights!” I snapped.
The halogens popped on, washing the room in bright, blinding light. I squinted against it, balling my hands into fists—
“Val?”
He stood by my dresser, wide-eyed and frozen, as if he’d just gotten caught. Because he had just gotten caught.
Annoyance bolted through me. “What are you doing in my room?”
The surprise on his face flickered to confusion. “I’m looking for your master key.”
“…I’m sorry?”
He gave a hard sigh. “So, Maeve locks the supply closet at night and I don’t have shampoo.
I was going to take a shower,” he added, stepping away from my dresser.
My underwear drawer was slightly ajar. Had it been knocked open when I’d startled him, or had he been opening it to rifle through?
Or had he looked inside already and found the lightsaber?
My heart pounded in my chest.
“This late at night?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
He gave a meandering shrug. “I can’t sleep.”
“Sure, but you could ask someone for shampoo.”
He narrowed his eyes. “C’mon, Ardent, don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulled out a holopuck and showed me. wanted, it read, and showed the likes of Sian and then—regrettably—me.
My throat tightened. “I don’t know what that means.”
“I thought you were smarter than this, Ardent,” he snapped, and kept searching my room, tearing open the cabinets, looking through my jewelry chest. Then he glanced at the box from my birthday and opened it.
Inside was the key. Incredulously, he snatched it.
“You haven’t even taken it out of the box? ”
I held up the holopuck. “Is this why you’re here?”
He scowled. “Why else do you think I’m here? You’re in trouble.”
“I don’t know, I thought maybe you’d come for my birthday? Like you said you did?”
Correctly calling out his drydak crap always made his bad moods fouler. A muscle in his jaw feathered. “I know you’re hiding him,” he accused sharply, storming out of my room and down the hall to the galley—and straight for Sian’s makeshift bedroom.
“Hold on! Wait!” I cried, hurrying after him, but I wasn’t fast enough.
He swiped the master key and opened the pantry door. He pulled his shoulders back, triumphant.
But there was nothing in the pantry.
No hammock. No comforter. No pillows. No clothes.
Nothing.
In confusion, I glanced at Veebee, but she simply kept chopping up carrots for the morning’s breakfast. “While you’re in there, can you grab a bag of rice?” she asked dryly.
Ignoring her, he whirled back around to me and spat, “Where is he?” There was a venom in his voice that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t like it.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I replied levelly.
“That thief!” he cried. “The one you helped back on Coruscant!”
My heart leapt into my throat, but I tried to keep my cool. I’d faced guests much more terrifying than my brother. Though my brother had never terrified me before. “I never got his name.”
“You helped him!”
“They were about to kill him, Val,” I batted back. “What was I supposed to do?”
He gritted his teeth. “You don’t understand what you’ve done. I’m trying to help you, do you get that?”
“Funny way of showing it.”
With a growl, he threw up his hands. “Fine! Whatever. I know he’s here. I’m going to find him. And you’ll thank me when I do, I promise you that.” Then he turned and stalked out of the galley. It took a few deep breaths after the door closed for me to calm down again.
Only then did I realize that he’d taken my master key with him.
I sank into a chair at the scratch table and put my head in my hands. “This is a nightmare.”
Veebee kept chopping her vegetables. “I’ll say. But you might want to let him out of the cooler,” she added, and pointed her knife toward the walk-in cooler in question.
I hopped to my feet and hurried to open it. Sian stood inside, comforter wrapped around his shoulders, shivering. Despite all logic, my anxiety melted the moment I saw him. He might’ve been cold, but at least he was alive.
“We need to talk,” I said to him.
He sneezed. “Y-yeah, you’re p-p-probably ri-right.”
The galley was no longer safe for him, so when the coast was clear I snuck him into the last bastion of safety—my room.
“Doesn’t he have a master key now?” Sian asked, still with the comforter pulled around him, after I’d closed the door. He held a warm cup of tea to thaw his fingertips, and blew on it gently.
I rifled through the junk drawer in my nightstand and pulled out an old slicer, then quickly reprogrammed the door code.
“Yeah, but this’ll make it a little harder.
The master key will still override it, but it’ll take a minute—and don’t worry, the lightsaber’s still in the drawer. ” At least, the last time I’d checked.
“In the…which drawer did you say?” he asked, looking at my dresser.
I froze. “Uh. Just…one of them.”
He started to open the first one. “This one—”
I quickly lurched over and slammed it closed.
He snapped up his hands. “You almost took my fingers off! Why can’t I look in? You didn’t mind before.”
Because before I didn’t—I wasn’t—
“I’ll space you if you look,” I said with deadly seriousness.
“Fine, fine. You know, this room looks like you,” he added as he poked through all the things I’d collected over the years: the strange bottles and the flimsiplast posters and the souvenirs, the spools of colorful cloth and the knickknacks, and the broken pieces of junk on my shelves. “What makes you collect things?”
I shrugged. “I guess I just like to find some meaning in the junk other people throw away.”
He grinned. “You’d make a good archeologist, then, if you ever get tired of this life.”
“Ha.” I sat down on my bed, folding my legs under me. “You’re still leaving tomorrow when we land on Tatooine, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, staring down into his tea. “That’s the plan.”
“Good. You can stay here tonight. On the floor. And I’ll help you leave tomorrow.”
And that was that.