Something cold dripped on my nose and I shivered, pulling my worn jacket around myself tighter. It was too big for me, but it had belonged to my mom back when she flew freighters for the Republic, and while it didn’t smell like her anymore, I felt a little braver with it on.Besides, it looked cool and vintage and was much better than my tour uniform.
The alley let out into a bustling street in Spindlehub Square, vendors hawking their wares as buskers played outdated glimmik for a few creds, the smell of burning fried mynock making the air smoky and thick. Coruscant had a certain kind of thrill. It wastheCore World—a hub for hundreds of planets—so cultures and people and stories mingled together like threads twisting into knots.
By the numbers on my datapad, I thought I was finally in the right location. Which meant it wassomewherearound here. I pushed myself up on my tiptoes to see over the crowd—
And there, nestled between a noodle joint and a clothing store, was a tiny shop with a large front window display showing ancient-looking tomes and strange gadgets from across the galaxy. The hand-lettered sign above the door read:BAELOR’S.
Thank thestars.
I hurried across the street and ducked into the shop. Inside, every surface was cluttered with…stuff. Antique knickknacks with notes alleging that they were from far-off places, or originally owned by long-dead Jedi or mercenaries or nightwitches—Nightsisters, I corrected the note silently—and Sith. I was quite sure that the Senateinsignia ring in the window hadnotbelonged to Emperor Palpatine, but of course I couldn’t prove it.
This place was tacky and almost certainly pawning off junk, but there was something immediately lovely about it, too.
I loved a good story—a good fairy tale. I was raised on the best of them. I loved how they could transport you to faraway times and faraway places. How they could protect you from heartache and shield you from grief. How they could make you feel understood in a galaxy that often made you feel so incredibly small. And how they sometimes made you care about whether the fictional queen of fictional planet Naroo would be murdered in cold blood by her would-be droid-assassin lover.
Okay, maybe that was just romance serials—but it was still a fun story.
There were shelves and shelves full of old texts and holobooks between old gadgets and half-broken artifacts, and a separate shelf for books on datatape. There must have been hundreds, all stacked on top of each other haphazardly, impossible to look through if you didn’t already know what you wanted to find.
As I wandered deeper into the shop, a gadget caught my eye. It was a simple flat plate of copper with rotating disks on top of it that you could spin or flip, and oneach circle were different symbols, and on the disk itself was the smallest map of the known galaxy I’d ever seen. The note simply read,Tool once used by hyperspace prospectors to navigate the stars.
Something deep inside my chest tugged toward it, like my lungs were caught on a fishhook.
Navigating the stars, huh?
I picked it up. The device was lighter than I thought it’d be, so it couldn’t be made out of copper. Whatever it was, though, it was old. My fingers traced the markings on the outer circles. They were worn, almost illegible, but any navigator worth their weight in creds would know what they were.
A star chart.
Was it real?
“You break it, you buy it.”
Startled, I jumped and spun toward the checkout counter, where a grumpy reptilian Rodian sat, flipping through a holobook of Alderaanian poetry. I quickly put the device back. “Sorry. I—I was just looking.”
“And touching.”
“Sorry,” I repeated. “It’s very pretty.”
He inspected me for a long moment and then closed his holobook. “Not many people pay attention to that old thing. It’s a celestialabe. You know, before droidscharted ships through hyperspace, there were navigators who did that. Some were rumored to have a special knack for it—astrogating, they call it.”
“Ah.” My heart jumped into my throat. I twisted my fingers together, looking down at my filthy boots. “That, um, that sounds dangerous.”
“Most things that matter are.” The Rodian waved his hand in the air. “But now we’ve got droids and maps and charts, and the celestialabe is obsolete. Then again,” he added, a sparkle in his black eyes, “maybe it’ll point you somewhere you’ve never been. Maybe with ityoucan astrogate, too.”
“That’s not how astrogating works,” I said before I could stop myself.
He narrowed his eyes at me. They were large and buggy. “It’s not?”
“I mean, that’s what I hear,” I quickly amended, and decided to change the subject before I torqued him off further. “Actually, I’m looking for something in particular. The last installment of a serial novel.”
The shopkeep sat back on his stool. “Are you now.”
“It’s kind of rare, but someone told me if anyone would have it, your shop would.”
“And they’d be correct.” He motioned to the shelves upon shelves of holobooks and datatapes. “Name?”
“Under the Tan-Tan Sun.”
