“Thatthief!” 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.”
“Youhelpedhim!”
“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 Isaw 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.”
BecausebeforeI 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.
