Startled, he glanced down and noticed the burn hole, too. He frantically parted his cloak and melted with relief. The shot had missedhimat least, though it also burned the shoulder of his jacket.
“That could have been worse,” he said, more to himself than to me as he took off his cloak. He kicked one of the unconscious men over, turning him on his back, and began patting him down. He found what he was looking for in the man’s pockets—a communicator and a small metal cylinder. “Damn. First Order.” He scrubbed the top of his head in aggravation and stood. “I was kinda hoping they weren’t.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him properly. “I’m sorry—did you just sayFirst Order? LiketheFirst Order? Like the zealots in the Unknown Regions who want to bring back the EmpireFirst Order?”
He stood, tossing his cloak over the men. “Unless there’s another one you know of…”
“You must be mistaken,” I said, shaking my head. “They can’t be here—how do you know from that—thatthing?” I motioned to the metal tube in his hand.
“This,” he said patiently, holding up the metal cylinder, “is a code cylinder. They contain coded information about whoever uses them and grant them some sort of security clearance. First Order officers usually carry them.”
“How doyouknow?”
He gave me an unreadable look, and his mouth did that peculiar twist again—tucking in at the corner. “This isn’t my first time.”
If I hadn’t been panicking before, I certainly was now. “Oh, stars. Oh,stars,” I repeated, pulling my hands through my hair. I stepped back. There were two unconscious—perhapsdead—fascists on the ground, and despite wanting to kick themagainfor, you know, who they were, the gravity of it all was overwhelming. “This is bad. This issobad. I—I have nothing to do with any of this.” I began to tremble. I had done a good thing and helped somebody out, and now I was complicit in a crime. “I just wanted to complete my mom’s serial collection.”
My voice sounded far away. I sank into a crouch.
“Hey,” he said, squatting down beside me. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, yeah?”
“I’m trying,” I replied, realizing that I was still clutching the lightsaber to my chest. I needed to let go of it, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. They were stuck. The reality of the past ten minutes—the death of the Rodian, the escape, the firefight—came crashing down on me.
I could havedied.
With a sigh, he sat down beside me. “We can’t stay here long. They’re gonna wake up soon.”
I felt like I was going to vomit. “How are you so calm?”
“Practice,” he replied. Then he offered his hand to me. “Sian, by the way.”
I looked down at his outstretched hand, then at his face. His strange eyes studied me, dozens of pinholes of white, widening just slightly as he drank me in. “Ardent,” I replied, and pried one hand off the saber to shake his hand.
He grinned. “Thanks for helping me back there.”
“Yeah…” I looked down at the saber.
“I didn’t kill anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he added. Ihadbeen worried about that.
Suddenly, an air vent grate behind us fell with a loud thump, and a creature scuttled out of it. I startled with a yelp as the creature scrambled across the alley and up Sian’s body to his shoulder. It nudged its head against his with a purr.
He scrubbed the creature under the chin. “Quick thinking back in the shop, Noola. Were you the one who took care of that last guy?”
The creature chirped in reply. It had three short legs on either side of a long, narrow body, each leg bound with a glossy sort of webbing. Its face was diamond-shaped, with wide gold eyes with a vertical pupil, a forkedtongue, and a frame of horns the same deep indigo as the scales on its body. Though the longer I looked, I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if the scales changed colors from purple to green to blue. The only parts of it that didn’t shift colors were the tufts of fur on its paws and the tip of its tail.
I recognized the creature from the shop earlier. “That’s your pet?”
“She’s more like a babysitter,” he clarified. “Now. Let’s find our way out of here, shall we? But first, can I have that saber back?”
Mortified, I shoved it into his chest. “Yes! Absolutely. It’s yours.” I looked away, a flush crawling across my cheeks.
He bit back a grin as he returned it to his gray jacket.
Regrettably, when we found our bearings, we were in amuchseedier area of Coruscant. Dad had warned me to stick to the main streets of Spindlehub Square, because the crime syndicates weren’t quite as prevalent there, but here that was quite obviously not the case. Blaster holes marred the buildings, and sparks screeched out of broken tech above. The streets were damp, and the neon lights fizzled. As we made our way toward what looked like the main street, the people mingling there were of a much different crowd, too, and the light that filteredin from above was so removed, it was barely a pale mirror of itself.
We were still in Spindlehub Square, I was sure, butwhere…I had no idea.
Neither, it seemed, did my companion.
