A Crash of Fate Read online

  “I wish you hadn’t seen that,” she said finally.

  “Between the snakeskin boots and the flashy jewelry, he’s hard to miss.” Jules tried to laugh it off, but there was an awkwardness that hadn’t been there before. “What did he mean about celebrating?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  He leaned in close, smiling playfully like he was trying to draw her out of a shell of her own creation. His voice was a whisper surrounded by the cacophony of vendors calling out to them. “I thought we were done with lies, Izzy.”

  She leveled her eyes at him and was surprised when she recalled her mother’s words. “Lying is a skill.”

  They made quick work of getting back to the cantina, where Jules’s speeder was parked. Though Izzy’s infuriating former boyfriend had gone in a different direction, Jules couldn’t help feeling like they were being followed. He checked the favored hiding places for pickpockets, but they were clear. The entire Outpost seemed quiet as the day stretched into late afternoon.

  The silence between them gave Jules space to think about Damar, with his hair a shade of blue Jules had only seen on the tongues of underwater animals. Everything about him was polished. His snakeskin boots were new, his pants were wrinkle-free like the clothes of the high-class dignitaries who liked to spend their time gambling at Oga’s. But Jules couldn’t give a Kowakian monkey-lizard’s ass about what he was wearing. It was the smirk on his face as he spoke to Izzy that drove an ugly, hot sensation through his core. At least she’d gotten the last word—or the last shot, rather.

  “Thank the ancients,” Jules said, and peeled back the tarp he’d used to cover his speeder.

  Izzy pointed at him. “Do not say it was luck.”

  “I won’t say it, but I’m definitely thinking it.” He powered up the engines and they took off, leaving the Outpost behind for the empty road that bordered the Surabat River Valley. He inhaled the first moment of true quiet and relief they’d had since their collision that morning. He tore his gaze away from her, trying not to think about how much he loved the sight of her in his tunic.

  She rested her elbow on the side of the speeder and leaned out, watching the landscape roll by. Her hair was pulled back, but the loose strands whipped around her face. If he wasn’t careful, he would drive straight into the next spire, because Izzy Garsea was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

  The more he tried to understand her, the more tenuous his grasp seemed. She was like the singular occasion when the three Batuuan suns shone at the same time a thunderstorm was rolling in. His mother had had a saying about that—something about sun gods fighting with rain gods, from when she was a little girl and her parents spun tales to go with the ruins they zoomed past. Izzy was two impossible things at once: his childhood best friend and a stranger who’d swept him up into her troubles. She was both fiercely independent, wanting to get off-world, and a girl who’d chosen to stay with him. She was laughing one minute and shooting at someone’s foot the next—though that someone had deserved it. She was a wonder, and she might be his ruin.

  But he wouldn’t have it another way yet.

  The broadcast from DJ R-3X crackled as they got farther from the Outpost. “Here’s Sentient 7 and the Clankers with their smashing hit ‘Droid World.’” When the signal was too scrambled, Jules shut off the radio.

  “When today is over I think I might take a holiday,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I’m sure you’ve earned it, no matter where you end up.”

  He wanted to revisit their conversation from breakfast. But each time he began, he cut himself off. Why was he afraid to tell her what he’d done when he met Trix Sternus at Hondo’s?

  After he’d told the spice trader his entire life story, she’d asked him one question: “Do you want to see her again?”

  Naturally, the answer was yes. But he’d listed his concerns aloud to Trix. He didn’t know where Izzy was going. It seemed crazy to search the galaxy for a girl he hadn’t seen in years. Plus, he didn’t have a ship.

  “Well, kid,” Trix had said, “it so happens I’m here to sell my ship and stay awhile. I’ll give you a good price.”

  He’d signed so quickly, he didn’t even have time to process what he’d done. Then he’d stepped off the ramp and seen Izzy. Regret was the furthest thing from his mind. Even if they went their separate ways for a time, he’d done something he always wanted to. But he probably should mention it to Belen.…

  They arrived at the abandoned settlement where they had once lived as neighbors. The cloudless sky blanketed them and a feeling of infinity came with it, like they were the only ones on the planet. That far out from Black Spire Outpost, the homes were smaller, simpler. The sandstone on the domed roofs was sun-bleached.

  They got out and approached the crumbling structures. Smoke stained the outsides of the houses along the edge where the fire had started. Izzy put her hand close to handprints where someone might have used the wall to support their weight.

  “You know, Izzy,” Jules said, “you think louder than Neelo’s caterwauling on live music nights at Oga’s.”

  “And you drive slower than a ship running on fumes.” Her words teased a smile from him. She rested her hands on her hips and stared at the small houses. “I can’t tell them apart,” she said sadly.

  “Your homestead is further down,” he said. “Next to ours.”

  She followed him along. It was like stepping through a door into the past. When he was little, Belen told him that the cenotes near the ruins were portals. They were pocked caverns filled with pools of pale blue water. He swam to the bottom but only found pebbles and catfish.

  “The things I remember from our time here are like flashes,” she told him.

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember meeting you,” he said. “You were always there.”

  “Until I wasn’t.” Their boots crunched pebbles. “And now I know why.”

  When he’d been waiting for her to return, he’d wondered why she left. Knowing, truly knowing, that it was Oga Garra, he felt even worse.

  The small house the Garsea family had called home for five years was nearly overrun with vines and new, bright green trees. The entire settlement had been left behind, and the community had moved farther away from the farms and spread out. What remained looked much like the rest of the Outpost, an ongoing battle between the land and those who would build on it.

  Izzy placed her hand on the entryway and peered inside. Faint light broke through holes in the roof. Jules lingered at the threshold. He marveled at her just as he had done since they were children.

  There was nothing left after the fire, but still she searched the place that had once been her home.

  “This is where my parents had their bed. I had my own, but I used to crawl out of mine and curl up between them. Sometimes I’d wake up and my mother was gone, but my dad was still there. It was like sleeping next to a hearth because he ran so warm.”

  “I’m sorry, Izzy,” he said, closing the distance to where she stood.

  She found a drawer that had only been half-consumed by the fire and hadn’t been ransacked by scavengers. “For what?”

  “My intention wasn’t to make you upset by coming here.”

  “I’m not upset, Jules,” she said. There was something in the drawer—a doll that had seen better days, stitched around the sides. He recognized the work because he’d had the same one as a kid. “You know, I never retrace my steps? When I was small, after Batuu, we never stayed in one place longer than six months to a year. The shortest was on Corellia for two weeks, and the longest was here. I never allowed myself to miss anything or to make friends because I didn’t want to ever feel what I felt on the night when I woke up and we were leaving the planet. I wish I had thanked your mother for this.”

  Izzy set the doll on the table. He couldn’t stand the way she looked then and there. Lost. Like she had nowhere to go.
Jules was not in a position to make promises to her or offer her anything but his presence.

  “My mother asked for you before she passed,” Jules said.

  “Really?”

  “The virus made her forget a lot. She also thought my da was still alive. I think she called you the frilly girl next door.”

  “My father called you my shadow.”

  He supposed he had been, once. But he said, “I still say you were the one following me.”

  Her face bloomed into a smile, her green eyes flecked with gold brighter under the ray of light where she stood. Her hand moved up his forearm and rested over his heart. Could she feel how fast it was beating?

  “Izzy, earlier today I did something—”

  Then they both heard a noise and turned toward the doorway. It was a shrill wailing sound. The spell of the past was broken as they went back out into the harsh light of day. There were no new footprints on the ground besides theirs.

  “Are there animals out here?” she asked.

  “Batuuan rats and nightsnakes, but nothing that makes that kind of noise.”

  “You were saying before?”

  The moment was gone. But now that they were alone, he could ask her the things he’d wanted to know all day. They went back into the shade of the house and sat on the floor. He pulled out the bag of chocolate-covered caf beans and her eyes went wide.

  “Thief!” She snatched it from him.

  “Don’t tell Tap.”

  “Tap? These were in my pack. I’ve been dreaming about these all day.” She poured some into his hand.

  “You’ve certainly gotten more generous since we were children,” he said.

  “I shared everything with you.”

  “Izzy,” he said, “after your parents—why did you leave the academy?”

  She crisscrossed her legs, fidgeting with the necklace under her shirt again. “At first it was an accident.”

  “Leaving or going in the first place?”

  “I went to appease my father,” she said. “He said when he was in school it was the best time of his life until he met my mother and then we became his world. We’d finally stopped moving around and Eroudac would do. A lot of good it did him to have followed her.”

  “You don’t mean that,” he said softly. “And you wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.”

  She took a deep breath and looked away. “I wish—”

  Izzy cut herself off. She rubbed her lips together and frowned. Was she afraid of what she was going to say? She rested her hands on her knees, and he reached out to hold the tips of her fingers. It was the only way he could let her know that she could talk to him. He’d wait if he had to.

  “I wish I could talk to them both,” she said. “Even for just a minute. Though I know if I could, I wouldn’t have the courage to confront my mother and tell her that you shouldn’t have a family if what you do is going to get you killed. All you do is leave people behind.”

  He licked chocolate from his tooth and considered that. It upset him in a way he couldn’t explain until he voiced it. “That’s not fair. My parents were average people, as far as I know. My father worked every day of his life doing what he was supposed to, and at the end of the day he still ran back in that fire to pull people out. He still left me behind. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have ever had a family.”

  “But your father saved people,” she said.

  “Doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I’m angry with him, too, Izzy.” He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Keep going.”

  She let her fingers trace his. “The reason I dropped out and the day I took my first job were connected. My genetic science professor was always frazzled but had figured out a way to make a very potent tea from the haneli flower. But a drought on Haneli had made them nearly impossible to buy on her salary.”

  “She hired you,” Jules said.

  “I offered my services,” she corrected. “I was running out of credits. I’d watched my mother, and I was so sure that smuggling was the reason we never stayed put. I thought I could do that. Besides, without my parents, I would have to start making my own way.

  “I was friendly with some of the guards at the spaceport because I spent most days burning fuel by taking the Meridian for solo runs to nowhere. I’d watched my mother smooth-talk her way out of violation citations and get police officials to grant her landing permits to planets she had no business getting onto. Unfortunately, charm is not hereditary.”

  “I disagree,” he said.

  She nudged his leg with hers, then said. “Well, I got caught.”

  “What did you do?”

  “The only thing I could think of. I panicked and dropped the cargo. I couldn’t exactly show my face to my professor after that. I’d already spent the credits. Besides, I knew I belonged in the sky, not in a classroom relearning things my father had taught me long ago.”

  Jules wanted to point out that the haneli flower was not just used for teas, and her professor might have conned her. But he didn’t want to spoil her memory.

  “And after that you just kept going?” he asked.

  Instead of answering she asked, “Do you still want to fly?”

  “I’ve been saving for years. I woke up this morning not sure of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I always find something that keeps me here.”

  She squinted at him—this girl he’d never thought he would ever see again, who had consumed him in the hours they’d been together. “What’s keeping you here now?”

  He licked his lips. “I haven’t found an adventure worth chasing.”

  Izzy’s gaze flicked to his mouth again. He wanted to lean closer to her, to see if she would meet him halfway. But there was too much sadness tugging at her smile, and he didn’t feel right about it.

  “The worlds out there aren’t all we dreamed they would be,” she said.

  “Maybe they are and you’ve been with the wrong people.”

  “I wasn’t always with Ana Tolla’s crew.”

  “You’re better off. If they make the mistake of crossing Oga—”

  “I never liked that about them, you know. She’d never give details about the score. But her crew does everything she says, when she says it. People know Ana Tolla’s name.”

  Jules scoffed. “I’ve never heard of her. Smugglers are as common as the rats in the landport. No offense.”

  “Those who send for her aren’t moving shipments of rare pelts from Batuu to the Core. Ana Tolla drains your bank account to ruin, she holds people hostage, she gets sent in to unravel corporations and crush them.”

  Jules grimaced and crossed his arms over his chest. “My point stands. They’d be crazy to try. Ana Tolla, whoever she is, is small-time on Batuu.”

  “Then that makes me a nanosecond.”

  Jules watched the frustration that brought a pout to her sweet mouth. He shouldn’t be noticing her mouth like that, but there he was. “Is that what you want? To be infamous in the galaxy?”

  “I won’t be much of anything in the galaxy if I can’t get a simple delivery done.”

  Then the sound they’d heard before—a terrible squawking—returned, this time followed by the flapping of wings. The creature flew through the open door. It ruffled its purple-and-blue wings as it waddled to Izzy and settled in her lap, wrapping its prehensile tail around her arm.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, holding up her other arm.

  Jules had to compose himself. Had the bird been following them ever since the chaos at the market stall? “Volt told me about these. They sort of latch on to people with a strong bond.”

  “No bond,” Izzy said, and tried to lift the creature off her lap, but that only made the loralora bird nestle deeper. “You’re the one who freed her!”

  “What’s her name?” Jules asked.

  “I can’t name her,” Izzy said. “We have to set her loose. Or return her to Volt.”

  He snapped his fingers. “I know.”

  �
��We are not naming the bird, Jules.”

  But as he said the word, the loralora bird flapped her wings and squawked in agreement. “Lucky.”

  The last thing Izzy needed was a stowaway. She wanted the loralora bird to bond with someone else. Though the bird liked Jules, she seemed particularly attached to Izzy. Izzy had never been good with pets, mainly because she had never been allowed to have any. In a last-ditch effort, Izzy grabbed the doll she’d found earlier and waved it in front of the purple-and-blue creature. It squawked and pecked at the figurine’s head, but stayed put. A strangled laugh escaped her when the beheaded doll began falling apart at the seams. She remembered Mother Rakab had made it for her after she’d seen Izzy crying with jealousy over Jules’s toy.

  If Julen Rakab had shown up weeping on the Garsea doorstep, Ixel Garsea would have let him cry until he got it out of his system, then set him to cleaning spare parts that would be used for fixing the ship.

  Among the skills her mother had taught her, wrangling a domesticated animal was not one of them. The loralora bird, aptly named because of the sound it made, went in the speeder with them.

  “Do you think we can feed Lucky caf beans?” Jules asked as he drove. He was clearly relieved not to have to worry about Delta Jeet or Damar for the moment. They had a couple of more hours until the suns set, and he wanted to show her more of the surrounding area. She was happy to, but her mind lingered on the past. “Izzy?”

  “Sorry, I was thinking about how kind your mother was compared to mine.”

  Jules smiled in that unbearably charming way of his. “Your mother was kind to me, Izzy.”

  “When?” Why did she question that so readily?

  “There was one time when you were sick. All the kids had caught a strain of valley fever, but for some reason I was fine. She told me to go back home, but I said I could help take care of you.”

  She couldn’t believe him. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you that you were being an idiot and would get sick, too.”

  “She gave me a piece of candy from her pocket and said that the best way I could help you was to let you rest. When I saw you earlier today, I thought you looked just like her in that jacket, you know.”