“None,” Veebee confirmed.
Not that the droid needed strings for this particular favor.
Sian speared the food with a fork. It came away from the plate like marshmallowy slime, smelling strongly saccharine and damp. He sniffed it, shrugged, and took a bite. He chewed it. His already pale skin turned a deathly pallor. He set down his fork.
I asked Veebee, “Whatisit?”
“I call it Starblossom Puget. The fruit might not be ripe, though,” she added, watching the stowaway attempt to swallow. “Or it could be the minced raw shaak.”
At that, he scrambled away from the scratch table and spit into the sink.
“It’s probably the minced raw shaak,” Veebee determined.
“You’re a menace,” I said affectionately.
Sian lamented from the sink, “I should’ve tried harder to escape.”
I rolled my eyes and deposited the dirty plates I’d brought down from dinner service onto the counter, where two other stacks already sat, waiting to be washed.“I don’t know why Val was stalking the airlocks. Maybe Dad asked him to account for the guests who came back on the manifest. The next stop is Naboo, but we won’t be landing, so your best bet to leave won’t be until Tatooine.”
“When’s that?” the stowaway asked, and gargled water to get the taste of raw meat out of his mouth.
“A few days,” I replied, trying to keep a straight face. “And stop that. You aren’t going to die.”
“I can feel my will to live perishing,” he lamented.
It wasnotfunny. It was absolutely not funny at all, I told myself as I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my face neutral and excused myself from the galley. While I doubted anything Vee fed Sian would kill him, a secret little part of me relished the breakdown of his suave persona. It was hard to act cool when you were spitting out raw shaak, anyway.
I was so caught up in trying not to look too delighted by the turn of events that I didn’t hear my brother until I had walked past his room. I stopped. He was talking to someone behind his door, and he sounded angry.
I wasn’tnosy, but he was being very loud. I slipped up to his room and pressed my ear against the door.
“…and as I’ve said before,” Val went on, “this is my father’s ship, sir. I can handle this.”
There was static, then a garbled and tinny reply—like someone chatting through a holovid:“Ambition makes liars outof everyone, Quay.”The speaker’s voice was thin and snide, like simply speaking to my brother was beneath him. It made me want to punch whoever it was in the nose. No one talked to my brother that way.“We have a limited amount of time before his intelligence reports tohim. The only reason I chose you for this mission was pure happenstance. Don’t make a fool of me.”
“No, sir,” Val mumbled.
“Good.”
The next I knew, I heard footsteps, and suddenly I was backpedaling against Maeve’s old laundry buggy that she’d left in the corridor as the door slid open. My brother narrowed his eyes at me.
I feigned innocence, pointing to the laundry buggy. “Just dropping off my dirty towels.”
His face pinched, but then he took a towel from his hook. “Thanks for reminding me,” he replied, and locked the door after him before he dumped his towel in, as well. “How was the space station?”
“Fine,” I replied, wondering if he was angry. He didn’tlookit. Which was way different from the Valor in my memories, who hated when I poked my nose where it didn’t belong. We’d gotten into fights more often than not about it, because then I’d go running to tell Dad. “They’ve started producing starblossoms again, which is really cool.”
“Does Dad still do the Piece of Alderaan thing?”
“Yeah.”
He snorted. “See? Things really don’t change. I should probably go up and help with the cleanup from dinner,” he added, zipping up his jacket as he headed for the lift.
“Um—he shouldn’t talk to you like that,” I called after him, telling him exactly what he wanted to know: how much I’d heard.
Enough, as it turned out.
He glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows furrowing. “How did he sound?”
