Star Wars, page 3
After a few hours, the light would fade and only green pollen would be left behind. Was it beautiful because it was overwhelming? Or was it beautiful because it was fleeting?
Even now tiny bits of it blew into the penthouse from the balcony and clung to every available surface. As startling as it was, he couldn’t get swept up in all of it. He had to focus, to make his introduction into being a common thief worth it, because there was someone waiting for him to succeed.
When Axel’s tray felt too heavy, he turned a corner, back to the place where he’d hidden by the tall potted plants earlier. He had a few moments to return to the kitchen to do another run, but Kozmo found him.
“You are frighteningly good at this,” Kozmo said, a nervous laugh dotting his words. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Because I’m so perfect at everything?”
“Not everything, Greylark. I’m still ahead of you in school by two points.” Kozmo smirked, and Axel realized what a nice smile his nemesis had. Then he remembered the hurt in the little lord’s voice when Axel had said they weren’t friends.
“Greylark! There you are!” The shout was not directed at Axel but at the man striding into the small alcove away from the gathering.
Axel froze, Kozmo beside him, as Senator Lexxir Greylark turned around and faced the happy drunk man Axel had stolen from. Axel was wearing a visor. He was unrecognizable. Wasn’t he?
“Count Vennerson,” his father said, dusting off the shimmering pollen that had gotten on his cape. “Good to see you.”
“I thought we’d miss you today. Have you tried this delightfully sour concoction?”
Axel didn’t even allow himself to breathe deeply as his father looked right at him. The elder Greylark’s large eyes narrowed. Did he know? Could he see? He handed Axel his empty glass and said thank you.
Axel held it by the stem but otherwise remained perfectly still.
“Where is your charming wife?” Count Vennerson asked.
“Kyong is viewing the phenomenon. It’s her first. We wanted to surprise our son but didn’t want to disrupt his classes.”
“My daughter is in her first year,” the little drunk man slurred. “We must introduce them. Bright futures ahead of them. Will you let me steal you away for a moment? I want to discuss the absolute nightmare the hyperspace lanes in my sector—”
Axel knew he had to move. The other “servers” were gliding back to the kitchen, and if he wasn’t among them with his loot—he was certain Elecia was a woman of her word.
“Forgive me, Count Vennerson,” Lexxir Greylark said, distracted as he read a holo that blinked from his comlink. “It’s Dean Harket.”
“Is everything all right?”
“My son has taken ill. I must get Senator Greylark and go see him at once.”
“We’ll continue this conversation!” the drunk count shouted, then resumed dancing and rejoined the party.
As soon as the other men left, Kozmo tugged at his sleeve and hissed, “Axel.”
Axel had a tray full of stolen jewels, but he had one more item that needed liberating. He bumped into the drunk man.
“Did you drop this?” Axel asked, and offered the man his timepiece back.
The man thanked him profusely, even as Axel slipped the man’s blaster out of its holster. So relieved the man was to have something returned, he paid no heed to Axel’s clever fingers.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kozmo asked, alarmed.
Axel blinked through the haze of Elecia’s words. He knew better than to fall for promises from strangers. “Do you really think that they’re going to let us walk away after we’ve seen their faces?”
Kozmo was flustered and scared. Axel didn’t need to see his eyes to notice it—the little lord’s pinched lips, the tremble there.
“Stay behind me,” Axel said. “Follow my lead. We’re getting out of here alive.”
“Somehow, you are not reassuring at all.”
Still, they returned to the kitchen with their stolen goods, Kozmo at Axel’s heels. They were the last ones back, every one of them tipping the contents of their deep trays into a durasteel crate, like tithes to a petty god.
“This should clear us with the Hutts,” the Twi’lek said.
Elecia watched the offerings as if she could count every credit with the ting of metal. “Barely.”
It was Axel and Kozmo’s turn. The little lord went first, adding his loot, hands shaking so hard he threw the tray in, too, and jumped back.
“Not until I see Leyli.” Axel kept his tray in hand. At the center, under the cloth, was the blaster.
Elecia grinned again. “Of course. Get Leyli out of the freezer. We have to go.”
Kerun returned with his girl. Axel was so relieved to see her, he did not notice that she was no longer in restraints. That they walked side by side, so unlike a hostage and captor.
Axel grabbed his stolen pistol and stunned two of their crew. At his back Kozmo shouted his name. Kerun and the remaining crew raised their blasters, but Elecia raised a hand. The thieves obeyed her silent command.
“This wasn’t part of our deal, Axel Greylark,” Elecia said. There was something in her eyes that made him want to put his blaster down. The sensation was right there. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. At her command, he’d want to take the leap.
But no, why would he? He had someone depending on him.
“Let Leyli go,” Axel demanded.
“As you wish,” Elecia said, and nodded not at Axel but at her captive. “The rest of you, prepare for extraction.”
“Oh, darling,” Leyli said, shaking her head. She looked from Kozmo to him. He noticed then that her hands were free. She was dressed differently. No, not differently. She was wearing a holster that hadn’t been there when they left school. “Oh, Axel. You really should have done as we asked.”
We. As in them and Leyli. Not Axel and Leyli. Leyli, who had begged him to go out that day. Who had insisted they go to the tower. Who had suggested their getaway route.
“Leyli . . .” he said.
The Kilotowan girl, his girl, drew her blaster from her hip and shot. Red plasma flashed faster than Axel could blink and register that he hadn’t been her target. Kozmo fell on the floor in a heap.
“No!” The scream ripped from him as he turned and fired at the thieves. Blue light pulsed, and he cursed with every shot he missed.
“Load it up! Let’s go!” Kerun shouted. They moved together, a seamless unit. Axel and Kozmo had only ever been part of a distraction. Meant to get left behind, caught red-handed. They headed for the servants’ exit corridor with their loot.
“Do we have to hurt him?” the Kilotowan girl whispered.
“Say your goodbyes, Leyli,” Elecia said, that voice of hers almost hypnotic.
Axel fell to his knees beside Kozmo, a black circle burned right at the center of his chest. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving, and neither was Axel.
Leyli crouched in front of him and tapped her nail on his chin. How many times had she done that before? When she’d kissed him in the library, when they’d snuck out and spent lazy days at the beaches on the other side of the city.
“You used me,” was all he could say.
“Come on, darling,” she said. “We had fun, didn’t we?”
“I thought you wanted out of the family business,” he said, his lip curling with anger and hurt. “I thought—”
“I do want out of the family business. I’m just not cut out for university. And I’m still a Romero. You know what it’s like, Axel. Deep inside, you do. We’re the same. We’re never going to please our families. We’re never going to be what they want us to be. So we have to make our own way.”
“And burn everything and everyone in the process.”
“You’ll learn,” she said. “Maybe next time you’ll learn to never set your blaster to stun.”
Axel’s hand shook so much he had to press the blaster flat against his chest to make it stop. They both knew he didn’t have it in him to fire at her. To hurt her.
“Ship’s leaving,” Elecia said, eyes trained on Axel. “I’ll handle this.”
Leyli left, and she did not look back. But Elecia did. Her dark eyes brightened, a tooka cat with many lives.
“What are you waiting for?” Axel said with disgust. If she was going to shoot him, she would do it.
“I’m admiring your bravery,” she said, backing up. “And your chaos.”
Axel met her stare. That spark built in the pit of his stomach. His heart raced the longer he stared, the longer he saw her knowing smile, the phosphorescent green streaked on her cheek.
“Our paths will cross again, Axel Greylark. Of that I am certain.”
And then she was gone, vanishing behind the hissing lift door.
Axel let go of a pent-up cry. He shuddered as he pressed his palm over Kozmo’s forehead. Somewhere in the kitchen, the hostages in the freezer banged against their enclosure. He wasn’t sure how, but he had to get Kozmo’s body back to the school. He had to—
“Get off me, you reckless laser brain,” Kozmo croaked.
Axel blinked, unable to breathe as he watched his nemesis prop himself up on his elbows. Kozmo smiled. “I must find a way to tell Father we should make a blaster-proof prototype.”
Right where the scorched fabric made a perfect circle, Kozmo brushed away a burn mark to reveal the medallion the little lord always wore.
“Hideous,” Axel said, “but functional. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
They opened the latch to the freezer but made a break for it before the confused staff could run out to get help. The two thieves Axel had stunned were slowly coming to and would likely take the fall. There was no honor among thieves, it seemed.
Because Kozmo was still woozy on his feet, Axel drove. They shared a tense silence, letting Leyli’s unspoken betrayal settle between them. Axel had other things to worry about. But the day’s celebration had the campus thrumming with so much cheer, they were able to slip unnoticed back to the east tower.
“Thank you,” Kozmo said, stalling at the door to his suite.
“For what?” Axel frowned.
“For not leaving me behind. You could have saved yourself. You didn’t have to stay for your nemesis.”
“Don’t make it weird.” Axel keyed open his suite and hesitated. “Save me a seat in class tomorrow.”
Kozmo grinned and finally said goodbye.
When Axel entered his room, he wanted nothing more than to crash into bed. But he smelled like blaster fire and the horrible food from the party. He wanted to scrub off his memories from the day, even if it would take forever to forget the cold look in Leyli’s eyes when she betrayed him. As he shrugged off the white jacket and kicked off his boots, he thought of the ringleader. Elecia. Her cryptic smile. Her strange words. I’m admiring your bravery. And your chaos. If he was lucky, he’d never see her again. It was a very big galaxy, at least.
So distracted was he that Axel didn’t notice the man sitting in his lounge until he spoke.
“I was wondering where you’ve been.”
Axel startled and almost choked on the word: “Dad?”
FOUR
Axel scanned the room, quite literally searching for an excuse. His father beat him to the punch. In his fingers was a tiny green stem. A guiji pepper remnant. Always throw away evidence, he noted.
“I want you to be very careful before you lie to me.”
Axel sat in front of his father, his back straight. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”
“Perhaps you should let me decide that. I was young once.” Lexxir chuckled, then sobered as he took in the green pollen staining Axel’s clothes, though the shimmer had faded on the drive back. Did he recognize the uniform from the party?
Axel decided he would not put his honest senator father in the position of having to deal with the Reena security officials.
“I made a mistake today.” Axel rubbed the back of his neck. Why did he ache everywhere? “A friend and I fell out.”
“Your nemesis? That fellow from Luzalite?”
Axel snorted. Of course his father remembered that. “No, it turns out we’re friends now. I think.”
Lexxir combed his fingers through his short wavy hair, silver threads peppering the inky black. “Sometimes I forget university can be as bad as the Senate chamber.”
“I’m sorry,” Axel said. Then for the first time that day, he admitted something he hadn’t been able to say out loud. “I don’t always feel like I should be here. Like I should be doing something useful instead of giving Dean Harket high blood pressure. I don’t know—” He cut himself off because he thought of Leyli’s parting words. “I feel like no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to measure up to whatever it means to be a Greylark. I’m not like you. I’m not like Mother.”
Lexxir watched him for a long, quiet moment. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Axel. Your mother and I have chosen a life of service, but we never meant for it to become a burden to you. I only want you to be who you have always been. Axel Greylark, my son.”
“Even if I don’t apprentice with you next year?”
Lexxir laughed and eased back into the lounge chair. “That, you have to take up with your mother.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Since you’ve made a miraculous recovery, you have approximately ten minutes before you are to join your mother and me at the fairgrounds,” Lexxir said, waving his hands like he was not witness to his son’s deception. “I’d use that time to shower.”
“Thank you, Father.” Axel bowed his head in deference.
Lexxir rested a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Remember this, Axel. I will always be proud of you.”
No matter what had occurred that day, Axel had the unquestionable certainty that his father had faith in him. As he washed the tumult of the day off his skin, he decided that Leyli was wrong. The two of them were nothing alike. He’d try to do a little bit better. He’d beat Kozmo in their studies. He’d apprentice with his father and follow him to negotiate in war zones. He’d be a Greylark. He’d try to understand what it meant to be a Greylark—both for himself and for the galaxy.
Dressed in a new suit, hair still damp, he raced through the corridors of his university to meet his parents. He saw them, side by side on the green, admiring the fading bioluminescence that kissed everything it touched. He hurried to join them.
Axel Greylark was on his way.
You do not have a name. Mine is Marda Ro. I am your mother. Your grandmother. Your great-grandmother. This is your legacy. You are mine.
It started in a public house on the planet Dantooine. The settlement is their oldest but remains small—a port for trade, with little local product of their own except for the expeditions into the vast jungle. Trappers and collectors bring out rare creatures to sell alive to menageries, or dead for meat and manufacture. From a child in a stall along the roadside, I bought a nail file made from the bone of an irisophant—strong enough for even my claws. Travelers come and go there, people of all kinds, all work, above and below and alongside the law.
The public house was dim—but I have learned this year that we Evereni see well in the dark. I never needed to know it before, when I lived in the daylight, when I gathered flowers and cared for children and—
My cousin likely knew. It is not one of the things she shared with me.
A generator perched on the leaning roof kept the table lamps flickering inside, and competing neon signs colored the haze of synth-smoke an ugly brown. But I was there to be noticed and shone in my white flight suit, an even whiter scarf and cowl wrapped around my shoulders and covering my head. I chose a table with space for more than me and sat facing the room. As I gestured for service, I let my cowl fall back so my face—my ears, my skin, my eyes, my teeth—could be seen. I’ve been told that we are beautiful and terrifying equally, and during my year in the darkness I’ve practiced leaning on the beauty. I can make my eyes even blacker and larger with makeup. I curl my hair and braid it smoothly. I make sure my mouth is soft.
Many who knew me in the past would be surprised to learn I am good at hunting.
No one taught me to hunt. I follow my instincts, listen to what my teeth want, my skin and my bones. It is the will of—
No. The Force has nothing to do with me now. I never wear the waves of Force blue as I once did, nor often the gashes of lightning down my face. The lightning I wear sometimes for the people I’ve surrounded myself with on the Gaze, for solidarity when they go into battle on my behalf. That hunt, that day, was no such thing.
That was for me. And you.
In the public house I lifted my chin and waited with a mug of thin local beer and a bowl of tea. I drank the tea and let the beer be an invitation. Some people’s eyes flickered over me without any care; some leaned in to leer at me. I bared my sharp teeth until they left. A Devaronian got his horns in my face, and I tossed the beer in his. A Twi’lek paused as she passed, eyes widening when she recognized Evereni in me. But she moved on. I waited. I smiled—softly. I am young. I look vulnerable. . .if you do not know Evereni.
Then I saw the human against the far wall. He was the one. As he drank with a friend, his dark eyes continued to return to me. He knew what I am. He was not afraid. He was not eager, either.
I pulled my cowl up and pushed through the dirty crowd to his table. He had a blaster in his hand. Stopping, I smiled again, but with all my sharp teeth. I held up my hands. “I want to ask you something,” I said.
His friend, a Rodian, turned fast and yelped at how near he found me.
“Ask,” the human said. His pale cheeks were painted with some kind of faint glitter. I liked it.
I said, “You know what I am.”
“That isn’t a question,” he replied.
I clicked my teeth for him. “Then answer this: Have you encountered others like me? Where would you go to look for my kind?”
