Oh, wait.
Something sharp poked into my ribs. It was hidden in the Wild Spacer’s cloak. I squirmed, trying to alleviate the pain. “Whatisthat?” I hissed.
He hesitated. “What’s what?”
“That.”And I squeezed my hand between our bodies and moved the object. It was solid and cylindrical.
“Nothing…”
“That isnotnothing.”
“It’s just—chess ko!Watch yourself!” He hissed as I slipped my hand into his gray cloak and pulled it out. At first, it looked like a metal handle to something. The insides rattled. It took a moment for me to realize what exactly I was holding.
A lightsaber.
He tried to grab it back, but I quickly moved out of his reach.
I stared at it, wide-eyed. “Is this yours?”
“Obviously.”
“No, it’s not.”
He turned his face to the sky and took a calm breath. “Then why did youaskme?”
“You’re not a Jedi. They don’t exist. They’re gone,” I said, and then another thought occurred. “Isthiswhat those guys are after?”
His mouth tightened into a thin line. I took that as a yes.
“Are you in trouble?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “How do you know I’m not the onecausingthe trouble?”
“Are you?”
“Do you want me to be?”
I caught his gaze and narrowed my eyes. Looking into his eyes felt like looking into the night sky itself, too large and unfathomable to stare at for very long—though I’d stared into the sky so often, his eyes didn’t bother me at all.
He frowned. “Are you all right?”
I cocked my head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because my…You know what, never mind.” He turned his face away, breaking eye contact.
I asked, “How did you get this l—”
“They’re here,”he whispered, bending over me and lifting his cloak around us so we were a little more hidden in the gap. The sudden darkness made it intimate, and underanyother circumstance I would have wondered at our closeness. But my hands were trembling. My heart rattled against my ribcage, so loud I was sure the whole alleyway could hear. We couldn’t move. We didn’t dare.
And so we waited.
CHAPTER THREE
The Unfamiliar
My mother used to sit me on her lap in the quiet hours all to ourselves on the flight deck, the buttons and knobs on the console blinking and beeping in symphony as she told me, “You can go wherever you want, my heart. The sky is wide.”
And I used to believe her. She always looked most at home in the pilot’s seat, humming to herself as she flew. Most of the time theStarfarercoasted on autopilot—droids and navigational systems were more than enough to accurately take a ship to its destination—but Mom always rechecked the coordinates anyway, and she charted courses, and she dreamed.
