One tended to pick up a few tricks when one was the daughter of Captain Hansifred Quay of theStarfarer.
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 likethis, 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 forastrogating. 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 fullof 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 wasdead.
I was going to be sick.
Oh, stars, what if they foundmenext?
“Whereisit, 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.
