Star Wars, page 5
“What?” the Mirialan woman sitting beside him all night asked. He’d rather liked the black diamond marks on her cheeks, and she’d rather liked taking his credits. Until now. “The cheap stuff’s not good enough for you?”
The Rodian chortled, and Axel drank again, a drop landing on his thousand-thread-count shimmersilk tunic.
“How do you know this isn’t the cheap stuff?” he asked.
“Don’t mind him.” Raik spoke in her scratchy, whistling voice. “Coruscant’s little prince don’t trust no one to pour him a drink, isn’t that right?”
Raik was an Utai with a wrinkled, pinched mouth that gave her the appearance of sucking on a sourdrop. Her bulbous, protruding eyes were affixed on Axel as she slipped between the roulette and sabacc tables. She relieved the dealer and plunked into his seat. A pink drink appeared at her side from the many-armed bartender.
“Raik, darling, I mean no offense,” Axel said, taking another sip of the Chandrilan whiskey, a gift from the senator’s daughter on his last visit. “But this was a very good year.”
And it was true. That batch was a thousand credits a bottle. A tragic shipping accident had made it the rarest batch in the galaxy, with only three hundred bottles left in existence. But what Axel Greylark wasn’t saying was that he’d seen far too many people poisoned in his day to trust a drink from a dank hole in the wall in the steaming bowels of the city, even one as—nice—as Raik’s Parlor.
“Why would I poison you, my best, most handsomest customer?” Raik asked. The ring of her mouth took on the drink’s pink tinge. “Besides, you owe me too much money. If anyone wants you dead, it’s that heiress. What’s her name?”
The Mirialan snapped her fingers. “Lady Lulu Faradaisy? Something ridiculous like that.”
Quin bleeped what might pass for a chortle among droids. Axel shoved the flask back into its chest compartment.
“Lady Lu-reen Faraday,” he corrected. Even going down as far as the entrails of Coruscant wasn’t enough to get away from the gossip of his very public split from the Chandrilan heiress of Faraday Spirits, now shipping all over the galaxy. The only reason he remembered the Faraday family business’s slogan was because it was the first thing Lu-reen had said to introduce herself, followed by her father’s title of senator. “And don’t believe everything you watch in the holos.”
Raik reset the roulette table and re-racked the selection of cues. “So you didn’t break up with her by standing her up at the spaceport?”
“No, that’s right,” he admitted. “There’s just more to the story.”
Axel bit down on his back teeth and frowned at his warped reflection on the side of the lamp. The yellow overhead light made his complexion sallow, and emphasized dark circles that hadn’t been there three days before. His dark hair was rumpled, and his eyes were bleary, but he had looked worse.
In his pocket, his comlink buzzed. Likely his mother. Again. He silenced it because he knew what she wanted. His mother wanted what everyone else did: an answer as to why he’d done what he’d done. Instead of making the decision to settle down, start to get serious, he’d taken his favorite speeder and a stack of credits, and wound up at whatever gambling den, club, or cantina would give him entry. He didn’t need to explain himself. Why bother? The HoloNet, his “friends,” and his family had already made up their minds. The only place to hide from another one of his family’s interventions was at Raik’s. Which was why he was determined to let his good luck take him as far as it would go. His talent for silencing any voice of doubt allowed him to ignore his comm.
“Besides, you’re all much better company,” Axel said, never letting his smile falter. A lifetime of the very best schooling, from private tutors to the royal academy, had given him pretty manners. Raik ate it up. “And because you’ve been so good to me and extended me a chit to keep playing, I’d never leave you in the lurch.”
“ ’Cause you don’t want to end up in a ditch,” the Mirialan woman murmured.
He leaned forward on his elbow and grinned. “Darling, don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“Losing to you is not my idea of a good time,” she purred, walking slender fingers across the top of his hand. He angled himself slightly toward her. “But now things have turned. You sure you’re not secretly a Jedi?”
The sniveling orange Rodian honked a laugh. “If he was Jedi, he wouldn’t be losing all day and night!”
A cold, ugly sensation spread from the apex of Axel’s chest. He brushed her slender green fingers away, his voice like flint as he said, “Don’t insult me, darling.”
Confused, the Mirialan backed off and snatched a drink off a passing serving droid’s tray. She knocked it back.
“Are we going to flirt all night or are we going to play?” asked the Rodian.
“You’ve had enough, friend. Buy-in’s a lot more than that,” Raik said benevolently.
The Rodian got up abruptly, muttering in the language Axel barely understood from accompanying his parents on ambassadorial visits to the swamp world. Something about his husband killing him? Whatever it was, the Rodian was out.
The Mirialan stacked her winnings into neat towers. The two of them had been trading the same credits back and forth for hours.
“You keep having your fun, little prince. The rest of us must go earn our fortunes.” She raised her hand to caress his face, but he leaned away.
What bores. He wasn’t going to let her or anyone ruin his new streak. He sat up and reached for the tray of cues.
“You too,” Raik added, gesturing at him. “Go home, Greylark. I already run the risk of angering your mother.”
“Leave my mother out of this,” Axel said, a hard edge clipping his voice, one he did his best to keep buried.
Quin hovered into the air, the droid’s triangle chest panel backlit with pulsing red light, as happened when Axel’s temper flared. Stragglers in the den turned to glare at him, to see if he’d cause a scene, if he’d join the unfortunate moof-milkers tossed out into the gutter outside. He couldn’t help but feel he’d done the very thing Raik had wanted him to do: let himself be baited. Because of his mother, the admirable, glorious, magnanimous Chancellor Greylark, he had been denied entry into most of the clubs on every other level, but not here.
This was a place where he could have fun, forget. Buried so deep in the belly of Coruscant, in a place that smelled like acrid sewers and musty, recycled air. A place of shadows where he didn’t have to be Axel Greylark, son of the most important woman in the galaxy. He could just be his wretched self.
“Come on, Raik, darling,” Axel said, resting his arms behind his head. “After all we’ve been through? You, who give refuge to many, would deny me one more parlor game?”
“Ah, but I give refuge to those victims of your mother’s policies,” Raik said, then glanced around the quiet room, the band at the center of the room merely stretching aching fingers and tentacles. “Who told you to stop playing? Never stop playing, is that understood?”
The band kicked into a cover of the irritatingly popular “Your Love Sends Me to Level 9.”
Axel smiled at the Utai. His best Greylark smile. “One more. Please?”
When she made no show of moving, a tightness wrapped around his chest at the thought of stepping out those doors with nothing to show but a few hundred credits. He’d already lost so much. His accounts had been frozen, and he was certain the chancellor’s security detail was searching for him. He could go home. Explain himself to his mother, issue a statement, and perform an act of community service as penance for his behaviors. Or he could stay because his luck had finally turned on that last hand.
“And what are you going to bet with?” Raik grinned as she played with the house’s stack of chips.
Axel undid the sash of his cape and folded it neatly onto the pile. “The shimmersilk count alone is worth seven hundred.”
“Keep your garments,” Raik sneered. “I want something precious. Something the galaxy covets from you.”
Axel tried not to grimace. The price of his upbringing was that he’d been on the holofeeds since the day he was born. Despite his penchant for getting into trouble, he was coveted as one of the galaxy’s most eligible bachelors.
“You flatter me,” Axel said, and Quin gave a warning beep.
“If you win this round, I will clear your debt to me.”
Axel did his best to keep the thrill of that possibility from showing on his face. He glanced at the wall of trophies behind the bar, then the tank where Raik housed neon carnivorous piirayas that were all mandibles and tiny fins. He cleared his throat. “And if I lose?”
“All I want is a lock of hair from your pretty head.”
Axel’s bloodshot eyes traced the wall of trophies proudly displayed behind the bar. The horns of a Devaronian male. An upper row of teeth from a Karkarodon. Preserved Togruta montrals encased in glass. The shriveled hands of unfortunate thieves and cheats. Rumors were that she’d been exiled from her clan and from Utapau itself because of her affinity for such vicious trophies. She ended up on Coruscant, running the tables for the Romero Cartel until they set her up with her own gambling den in exchange for their protection fee and information. Axel threaded his fingers through the thick black strands of his hair.
Hair grew back.
His debt to Raik would keep growing, too.
QN-1 made a deflating beepboop sound Axel knew quite well. It was his droid’s way of telling him to go home.
“What say you, little prince?” Raik ran her fingers across the box containing the cues, strange tiny reptiles that some believed had evolved in the gutters of Coruscant from rats and lizards. When light hit them, they curled into compact little balls no bigger than a roulette cue. Axel picked up his lucky purple cue and brought it into the shadows of the den. The critter unspooled, its pointed face and beady eyes moving in the air. Axel snagged a piece of the rind from a discarded drink on the table and let the ugly little beastie feast.
“A tempting offer,” Axel said, deliberating on the odds. Raik’s roulette was a true game of chance, not skill. There were forty slots—thirty-seven numbers, one golden jackpot, and two black house slots. He’d alternated his bets, inside, outside, doubles, and triples across evens and odds. Sometimes, when he was reckless and bold, he bet on a single number—eighteen. Now he had one shot. For Axel, possibility itself was like an electric charge. The sleepless aches, the bloodshot eyes, the worries of his uncertain future—it all zapped away and there was nothing but the thrill of chance.
He stacked his remaining credits across four numbers for a split bet. Two odds, two evens. One included eighteen, naturally.
“What are we waiting for?” He flashed a smile at Raik, who returned it, revealing tiny yellow teeth.
Axel moved his palm into the light, and his cue clamped up, its shimmering violet-and-emerald carapace ready to roll.
Raik’s Parlor, nearly empty, had attracted the remaining patrons to their table. QN-1, never one to be left behind, hovered at Axel’s shoulder. He tapped his droid’s domed head for luck.
“Such pretty hair,” Raik said, and set the roulette to spin.
Axel let his cue drop with a turn of his palm. Raik’s red house cue bounced as the gold-and-chrome pit whirled, blurring the metal and numbers as it picked up speed. The Utai woman seemed unusually calm, like she knew something Axel didn’t. Like she’d already foreseen the outcome.
For a fleeting moment, as the roulette slowed and the cues bounced from black to chrome to gold, Axel raked his hair back. He could hear his mother’s voice, soft, low, and defeated. Oh, Axel. He’d deal with the inevitable confrontation when it came. For now, he had a game to win and a ledger of debt to clear.
“Come on,” he whispered, the creak of the table, the rattle of the carapaces reverberating. His cue bouncing from slot to slot, edging so close, so very close to the jackpot gold. “Come on, come on.”
The roulette stopped completely. Raik’s cue rattled into the double zero belonging to the house, while his landed one fraction to the left of the jackpot and away from any number he’d bet. There was a winded sigh from everyone around him, like they’d all felt the gut-punch of his loss.
Raik chuckled, reaching to hoard the credits on the board toward her bosom. “Don’t worry. I’ll—”
Then his iridescent cue, his lucky strange little critter mutated in the gutter, did something impossible. It made a tiny gurgling sound and bounced into the jackpot as the wheel gave a final nudge.
“I won.” He said it so he could believe it himself, and then said it again with his usual confidence. “I won.”
A cheer went up around him. Hands pounding his back. Quin head-butted his thigh in victory, its front panel pulsing an array of colors.
“You deserve a name,” Axel said, cupping the creature between his palms. It unfurled enough to waggle beady eyes.
“That didn’t count!” Raik snarled. “You—you tampered with the cues.”
“I did no such thing.” Axel fed his cue the pith from a discarded cocktail fruit, then stood. His thighs ached from disuse. He needed to get to the bathhouses and get the crick in his lower back worked out. “Don’t be a sore loser.”
A thick, grubby hand wrenched the violet cue from his grip. The critter made a whistling cry, then was silenced by the crunch of Raik’s teeth. Axel was still staring at the Utai masticating on the creature that had helped him win when all at once there were hands on him. He groaned as his face was shoved onto a sabacc table. QN-1 whirred and flew to his side. Axel threw his arms back but pain wrenched up his forearm as he was pinned harder. All he could see was Raik’s slimy teeth and Quin crashing hard to the floor.
“This is between you and me, Raik!” No one touched his droid. No one.
The Utai approached, large golden eyes with dark blinking slits narrowed on him. He wanted to gag from the whiff of her breath. “The last person who insulted me I fed to my piirayas.”
Axel heard the knife before he saw it. The soft clang of metal being unsheathed. Sticky hands fisted around a lock of his hair and yanked. He tried to pry his pinned arm toward his attacker’s holstered blaster. He would get out of this. He always got out of this.
“You know, I usually expect a nice dinner before getting in this predicament,” he said.
“Always so glib,” Raik said. “Perhaps I’ll send a second lock to your mommy.”
“I’m sure she’ll frame it.” Axel wheezed as the pressure doubled against his back and his arm felt like it was going to be wrenched off his shoulder. Enough fear worked its way through to him that he felt cold from the inside. He shouted and tried to wrestle out of the grip but there were too many of them and the cold kiss of metal pressed against his hairline. He should have listened to QN-1’s warning. But he’d been greedy. And if he was honest, he simply hadn’t wanted to go home. To the tower above the world, to the empty halls. This was the ultimate price to pay to feed nightmares he couldn’t quite shake.
“Wait, wait!” Axel shouted, his voice ragged. “I’ll make you a new deal.”
“You have no credits. Even the chancellor won’t bail you out. What do you have to offer me when I can take what I am owed?”
Axel saw the blinking red light of his droid, which was slowly getting back up.
“The chancellor herself would owe you a favor. That’s got to be worth more than a bit of my hair, doesn’t it?”
“Your mother doesn’t rule alone, and she isn’t here to speak for herself.”
“Right, but I just needed your attention a little longer. Now, Q, what are you waiting for?”
Quin flew out of Axel’s view, but he heard the electric shock that felled Raik and her enforcer. The droid bounced in a short-lived victory.
As Axel picked himself up, along with the remains of his dignity, he was faced with three figures—a muscular Twi’lek, a hulking human, and a Hassk that screeched loud enough to scatter everyone except the band, who kept playing under Raik’s earlier command.
“Looks like we’ve overstayed our welcome, Quin.”
The little droid made a sound that likely translated to “I told you that hours ago.”
“I know!” Axel raised one palm to stop the trio ready to smash him into smaller pieces that would likely go on Raik’s wall of trophies. “Wait, let’s just settle this like old friends. Have a drink with me.”
The three of them glanced at one another in confusion, and for a wild moment seemed to consider it. Axel gestured to his droid. All night, everyone had seen Axel reach into the droid’s panel for his flask. Quin’s sensors blinked red as Axel retrieved not his rare whiskey, but a silver blaster.
Axel only got one moment of surprise, and he took it. He shot the biggest of the three in the thigh, then knocked over the sabacc table. He propped himself against it, turning to Quin, its front panel still blinking a disapproving red. It whirred a suggestion.
“No, I’ll take the Twi’lek, you take the ugly hairy one.”
Quin beeped. As he prepared to attack, blasterfire was returned. Glass crashed around them, but the band played on, only missing a few notes before the music died. No screams, no blasters, no shouting patrons. A grunt came from Raik, who was slowly rousing from her shock.
“See?” he said, even though he knew something was wrong. “They’re no match for us.”
QN-1 made a deflating sound, then peeked over the edge of their cover, trilling a response.
“What do you mean, backup is here?” Axel shot to his feet, blaster pistol leveled, and came face-to-face with a troop of Coruscant Guards. He blinked, relieved.
