Chapter One The Daughter #2
I forced a smile. “Yeah. The last installment ended on a cliffhanger, and this is the only one she didn’t have.”
The Rodian clicked his tongue. “That’s a tough one to leave off on, that’s for sure. The Queen should’ve never left her bedroom. She should’ve known it was a trap!”
I threw up my hands. “Especially after the assassination of Ambassador Naur-Ral!”
He leaned back, waving his hand flippantly. “Pfff, I wouldn’t be worried about him.”
“But she saw his body!”
“Didn’t check his pulse.”
I gave it a thought. “She didn’t, did she?”
“Always check for a pulse,” he said solemnly, pushing himself off his stool, and then he shuffled out from behind the counter.
He went to the shelf near the celestialabe and started digging through a few bins at the bottom.
“I think you might be in luck. I remember seeing one somewhere around here—aha!” He pulled out a small square drive.
It was bright blue—like the Crystal of Effervest they were searching for in the serial.
The publisher really did know how to market the series way back when.
“If the ambassador is still alive, then who will she choose?” I wondered aloud as he shuffled back behind the counter to make sure the datatape booted up. “The assassin or the ambassador?”
“The assassin droid might still kill her. He does need the money.”
“The ambassador might backstab her—he wants power!”
We exchanged looks, reader to reader, like to like, before he wrapped the drive in a brown cloth he’d pulled out from under the counter. “You’re in luck today, kid. It’s the last one I’ve got.”
“Thank you.” I took my purse out of my satchel to dig out a few creds and put them on the counter. “Is this enough?”
He didn’t even count them as he took the credits and handed over the wrapped datatape. “Happy reading and—may the stars keep you steady,” he added with a wink, quoting the infamous goodbye in the serial.
I smiled. It was a real one this time. “And the iron keep you safe.”
With a grunt, the Rodian drew on the guise of a curmudgeon again as he sank back onto his stool to pop open his holobook of poetry.
I turned to leave, the package clutched tightly to my chest.
Finally, the last installment. I’d first stumbled on the serial when I found a trunk full of my mom’s things in the belly of the ship a few years ago.
It was one of the few things Dad had forgotten about, so he’d forgotten to throw it out, too.
The serials and old clothes—including this jacket—and star charts were the last possessions I had of Mom’s.
And now something of her collection was complete. I had actually found it. Maybe escaping the ship every so often wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
Now all I had to do was find my way back to hangar eighty-nine.
As I left the shop, the front door flew open. I collided with a young man hurrying inside. My forehead met his chin, and we both stumbled back, hissing in pain. He was tall, covered in a ratty-looking cloak, hood pulled low.
“Sorry,” he murmured, rubbing his chin, already passing me into the shop and heading straight for the old Rodian.
“S’fine,” I muttered to myself, because clearly he hadn’t stuck around to see if I was, and left. My head hurt. I was sure I had a red mark where his chin had caught me on my forehead. “Ow…”
I hoped it wouldn’t bruise. I really didn’t want to think up a lie to Dad. I already had enough going.
Remembering the way I’d come, I started down some steps to a market street lined with shops from different sectors, selling specialties at absurd prices. I was good at navigating places I’d been—it came with the territory, really.
One tended to pick up a few tricks when one was the daughter of Captain Hansifred Quay of the Starfarer.
Halfway down the street, I peeked into the package just to make sure I hadn’t dreamed up that entire scenario. There it was, the icy-blue datatape and—
There was something lumpy, too. Unwrapping it a little more, I reached inside, my fingers curling around the flat, cold thing beneath the datatape.
The celestialabe.
Had I accidentally snagged it? No, he’d wrapped it in the cloth along with the tape.
But I hadn’t paid for it, and if my dad saw something like this, he’d get suspicious about where I’d gotten it.
The trinket was far too expensive. Never mind what the shopkeeper had said—that it was for astrogating.
Even if that were true, I wanted nothing to do with that.
Nothing at all.
I dropped the celestialabe back into the bag and turned on my heel toward the shop.
I hadn’t paid for it.
I didn’t want it.
That was exactly what I’d tell the old Rodian when I handed it back to him, but politely. I shouldered open the shop door. “Mr. Baelor—”
“Is this really necessary, friends?” The voice cut through mine, smooth and cool.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark shop, I became keenly aware that it wasn’t nearly as empty as it had been a few moments ago. The acrid scent of something burnt—meat? What kind of meat smelled so foul?—filled my nose.
A handful of men surrounded a younger man at the counter.
I recognized his filthy cloak, though his hood was pushed back to reveal shimmery silver hair.
They hadn’t seen me yet, so I ducked behind a half shelf full of pristine creature skulls and peeked out from behind it.
I didn’t know why my instinct was to hide.
It was just a feeling, a shiver up the back of my spine.
Daaric always told me to trust the shiver.
“If we’re friends, then hand it over,” said one of the men, stepping closer to him. “We tracked you halfway across this blasted galaxy for it.”
“Don’t look him in the eyes,” one of the other men warned. “They’re strange.”
“That’s rude. My mother said I had very pretty eyes,” the young man replied with a shrug. His voice had a strange lilt that I didn’t expect to hear this far into the Core. It was drawling and lazy, better suited for the Outer Rim—Batuu, maybe. Or an outpost on Bakura. Somewhere in Wild Space.
He was certainly a long way from home.
Where’s the shopkeeper? I thought frantically, looking around until I spotted a hand on the ground two aisles across from me. Dread coiled in my belly. Oh, no.
I quietly crawled to the shopkeeper and found where the terrible burning smell was coming from. The Rodian had tried to escape and been shot in the back. He lay splayed out, with a smoking blaster wound.
They had killed him. He was dead. I’d just been chatting with him about a serial and now he was dead.
I was going to be sick.
Oh, stars, what if they found me next?
“Where is it, scum?” a man snarled. I heard an altercation and peeked out again from behind the shelves.
The apparent leader of the five men had a blaster shoved directly into the Wild Spacer’s abdomen.
“I won’t ask again. Give us the relic and we’ll tell you what happened to that teacher of yours. ”
I fisted my hands. This wasn’t good.
“If you’re here, I already know,” drawled the Wild Spacer. And then a wide smile stretched across his pale face, chaotic and foreboding. “That hotshot new junior officer of yours killed her. What, he couldn’t come here himself? Too busy sucking up to your cute little Supreme Leader?”
“Watch your mouth!” the leader sneered, pressing the blaster harder against the Wild Spacer’s stomach.
“Aw, sweetheart, did I hit a nerve?”
He had a death wish—that was that—and I was about to be witness to a murder. Would that mean I was an accomplice? How would I be able to sleep at night? These men were really going to shoot him. They were going to murder him right here in a random shop on Coruscant—
No, they won’t.
I steeled myself. I liked sleeping at night.
I was about to stand from my hiding spot to do something, anything, as a distraction—
The body of the Rodian twitched, and his hand shot up to snag my wrist, keeping me hidden. “Always check for a pulse,” he rasped, and from inside his vest he pulled out a blaster.
Oh.