All the while I piloted, Sian hadn’t looked outside—not once. Come to think of it, the only time I remembered him doing so was to watch Naboo, and at that point we weren’t moving. Maybe it wasn’t space he was afraid of but travel.
Starstallwas an RY-280 that had been almost completely gutted and refitted to hold twenty or so passengers comfortably in its main hold, fortyuncomfortably. It was composed of a single large seating area with seat belts,along with booths in the corners for holochess and other games, and three rooms in the back for storage, a kitchenette, and a three-stall refresher with a single shower. The storage room was packed full of essentials and a single flat cot.
“I’m sorry you’re still stuck with me,” I commented, getting out of my seat, and he followed me back into the ship. I wasstarving. There had to be some sort of emergency snacks in the bins, so I busied myself looking in them.
“Eh, Noola and I have been through worse.”
His creature, curled up on a chair, crooned in agreement.
“How long until we reach the ship?” he asked, looking over my shoulder as I took out a rations tin and shuffled through it. Freeze-dried jerky, fruit snacks, some crisps…He took a leaf of jerky and sat beside Noola, breaking off a piece to feed her. “Wherearewe meeting them?”
“Geonosis,” I replied. “It’s a few hours, and we have to transfer at least two lanes, but it’s pretty straightforward.” I sniffed the fruit snacks, wrinkled my nose at the smell, and decided on the crisps instead. “We’ll catch up.”
“Ifwe don’t run into pirates,” Veebee said.
Sian sighed. “Pirates, mercenaries, the First Order…”
“They only care about the Unknown Regions,” I said. “They wouldn’t come this far in. The guys on Coruscant excluded. That reminds me, though.” I sat down on the other side of Noola and opened the dense crisps. “The story you gave those Jawas about the saber…”
Sian fed Noola another strip of jerky, trying to act cool. “Yeah?”
“Was it true?”
He tilted his head. “Which part? About the people who died for it? Or how important it is?”
“All of it,” I admitted. “Did your mentor…?”
He let out a hard breath. “Yeah. First Order scum killed her. Some hotshot junior officer was after us—she saw him, I didn’t—and she told me to split up. She said we’d meet on Coruscant. At Baelor’s…but of course nothing went to plan. Nothing ever did, you know? So I didn’t expect thebest, but I also didn’t think…” He frowned. “I didn’t know she’d died until those First Order assholes showed up in that shop instead of her. I’m sure they report to the officer who killed her.”
I thought back to my first meeting with him. That was when he found out his mentor had died? I felt sick to my stomach. “How evil.”
“A lot of things are evil in this galaxy, Starlight,” he replied gently.
Still.“I’m sorry.”
He seemed amused. “Why?”
“Because you haven’t gotten the chance to mourn.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction, as if he hadn’t even thought to give himself that sort of grace, and he tore off a piece of jerky and chewed it slowly. “S’fine,” he mumbled.
“I don’t really know what you’re feeling, but I sort of know what it’s like,” I ventured, glancing at Veebee and Entoo. They’d shuffled through the bins for something to do and gotten out a deck of sabacc cards.
Veebee shrugged. “She’d hate for you never to talk about her, you know.”
Sian inclined his head, curious. “Who?”
“My mom,” I replied. “She died when I was eight. Do you know the story of my family? The Quays?”
“Can’t say I do,” he replied, which was one of the many things I was beginning to like about him. Everyone I’d ever met knew about the Quays, so to find someone who had no expectations? It was refreshing.
“Well, we come from a long and storied line of hyperspace cartographers and navigators,” I began, “so much so that my mom’s side developed a strange sort ofsense—astrogating. But we call it wayfinding. My mom couldpick a point in the galaxy and close her eyes and know exactly how to get there. And coupled with a navicomputer, she could go anywhere. She knew which rare lanes to take, which unexplored ones to discover. She foundnewones. A lot of people called it luck, and maybe it was, but I like to think it was something deeper.”
His eyebrows furrowed in thought. “Your mom’s side? So is it inherited? Doyouhave it?”
I shrugged. “I think I do? Mom died, like I said, while trying to get home. She took a new lane to make it home for my birthday and…” My voice trailed off, my mouth wobbling. I pressed my lips together tightly to collect myself and tried again. “She never made it home. So afterward, Dad refused to let me practice, and Val left before I had ever worked up the courage to ask him to teach me what he learned from Mom.”
Sian cocked his head. “Val knows how to, too?”
