Part 29 (1/2)
And as she'd seen in the bunker, the Commodore's final action had been to call someone in the sector capital.
With a final look at the wrapped body drifting through the void, Mara turned the s.h.i.+p toward Shelkonwa. Governor Ch.o.a.rd had sent the Reprisal to destroy the Blood-Scars and cover his tracks. He was a traitor to the Empire.
And Mara was going to take him down.
Chapter Eighteen.
LEIA HAD FULLY EXPECTED TO FIND GOVERNOR Ch.o.a.rd's troops already surrounding their hotel by the time she and Chivkyrie arrived. But the hotel and grounds looked just the way they'd left them an hour and a half earlier.
Nevertheless Chivkyrie insisted on entering alone to retrieve their belongings, directing Leia to a tapcafe across the street that catered to offworld personnel. Leia went in, ordered a small drink just for show, and found a table by a window where she could watch.
It seemed like forever before Chivkyrie finally emerged from the hotel, her carrybags looped casually over his shoulders. He looked around, then crossed the street toward her. Dropping some credits on the table, Leia went outside to meet him. ”What took you so long?” she asked as she took the bags.
”I thought it would be wise to make a few comlink calls,” Chivkyrie said, gesturing her down the street away from the hotel.
”Forgive the impertinence, but that doesn't sound all that wise to me,”
Leia pointed out. ”You could have been tracked and caught.”
”If so, better there than in your presence,” Chivkyrie said. ”At any rate, I believe we may have at least a little breathing s.p.a.ce. While the ports have been closed to all female humans of your description, my friends tell me there are no reports of wide-scale patroller activity, at least not in the first-tier areas where any search would naturally begin.”
”Or else Ch.o.a.rd is smart enough to a.s.sume we'll avoid those places.”
”Hardly,” Chivkyrie said calmly. ”There is a large population of Adarians in Makrin City and the surrounding area. Governor Ch.o.a.rd is quite familiar with our strengths and weaknesses and way of thinking.
Furthermore, Chief Administrator Disra unfortunately knows me all too well. He knows that I could not permit a guest to stay in quarters below her own proper tier.” ”Yet you did so,” Leia pointed out. Chivkyrie ducked his head. ”No,” he said, sounding embarra.s.sed. ”I allowed you to check into that hotel, but I never intended for you to actually stay there. I planned to send my servants to pick up your belongings after our meeting and move them to my home.”
Leia grimaced. They were indeed an inflexible people. ”So where are we going now?”
”Do not worry, Princess Leia,” Chivkyrie said, his voice grim but steady.
”My tier status will no longer be a problem for us, nor will it cloud my thinking and dictate my actions.” He seemed to brace himself. ”For you see, my actions have betrayed my guest. I have no choice but to renounce my name, my home, and my tier status.”
Leia stared at him in surprise. For an Adarian to do such a thing was the societal equivalent of cutting off his arm. Did he really understand that? She opened her mouth to ask- And had the grace to shut it again. Of course he understood.
By joining the Rebellion he had tacitly stated he was willing to give his life for freedom. Now he had placed his social standing on the line, as well. For an Adarian, was a far harder decision to make. ”Thank you,”
Leia murmured. ”What now?” ”Now,” Chivkyrie said, lengthening his stride, ”we find a way to use the brief time we have been given.” Leia picked up her own pace to keep up. Inflexible these people might be, but they were also honorable and brave. It was, she decided, a fair trade.
They walked three blocks, then got onto one of the public air transports heading northwest toward the main s.p.a.ceport. They got off six blocks later and switched to a transport headed south toward the main interstellar financial district and the third-tier residential areas around it. At the edge of the district they again switched transports, this one heading east toward where Makrin City ended abruptly at a line of craggy cliffs dotted with dark caves.
”The catacombs,” Chivkyrie said, pointing at the distant holes visible between the buildings and occasional trees as they walked down a stained walkway. ”Over the centuries they have housed the criminals and the exiled, the bringers of war and the bringers of plague. At this time in our history they have become home to the dest.i.tute of many species, peoples who came to Shelkonwa looking for a better life but failed to achieve it.”
Leia wrinkled her nose and was immediately ashamed of her reaction. It sounded grim, but no worse than some of the other places she'd found herself in over the years. If Chivkyrie could lower himself to mixing with his society's lowest tier, she certainly could do so.
Besides, the caves could hardly smell any worse than the aromas a.s.saulting her from the packed rows of buildings lining the narrow street. ”Sounds like a good place to hide out for a while,” she said.
”It is an ideal place,” Chivkyrie agreed. ”Which is why we are not going there. The caves will be one of the first areas Governor Ch.o.a.rd orders searched when he realizes we are not in any of the city's first-tier locations. We will, however, take some of your personal items there later, the better to confuse our pursuers.”
”Good idea,” Leia said. ”If we're not going to the catacombs, where are we going?”
Abruptly, Chivkyrie stopped. ”Here,” he said, pointing to the building beside her.
Leia looked. They were standing by a small tapcafe squeezed in between two secondhand stores, with a faded sign over the door in Adarese and a four-language menu in the tinted window. ”Here?” she echoed.
”It is sometimes wisest to hide the prize in plain sight, is it not?”
Chivkyrie said. He was trying to be decorous, Leia knew, but it was abundantly clear that he was quietly pleased with himself. ”I have thus obtained for you a job.”
For one of the very few times in her life, Leia found herself at a complete loss for words. ”Oh,” she said, just to say something.
”I searched the employment ads myself, to eliminate any chance that it could be traced to a servant or friend,” Chivkyrie went on. ”You can begin immediately.”
”Thank you,” Leia said, again mostly to say something. The tapcafe, she noted uneasily, seemed to be the source of the majority of the neighborhood's objectionable odors. ”What exactly will I be doing?”
”Serving at tables, of course.” Chivkyrie frowned. ”Unless you would prefer to cook?”
”No, no-serving's fine,” Leia a.s.sured him. ”I don't actually know any Adarian recipes.”
”The tapcafe also serves Mungras and other species,” Chivkyrie said.
”Perhaps later you will be asked to cook for some of them. But we will stay with serving for now. Come-the workers' entrance is around the block and through the back. The manager, Vicria, is expecting you.”
Vicria turned out to be a lanky female Mungra with dark red accents in an otherwise tawny mane. ”This position requires the lifting of heavy trays,” she said doubtfully, her orange eyes measuring Leia's slender form.
”I understand,” Leia a.s.sured her. ”Don't worry, I'm stronger than I look.”
”We will soon discover whether that is true,” Vicria said. ”There are covergowns in that locker. Put one on, then come to my office for an orderpad.”
Leia nodded. ”Thank you.”
On Alderaan all the serving had been done by BD-3000 attendant droids.
But Leia had been served often enough by living beings that she'd long since become used to the idea. Indeed, after the first few such experiences she'd hardly even noticed the servers anymore unless there was a mistake or accident of some sort. She'd therefore managed to come away with the impression that such work was both simple and largely effortless.
It took only a standard hour for her to lose the simple part of her preconceptions. Serving a table's worth of even these lower-tier Adarians was a subtle minefield of small intra-tier distinctions that required her to take their orders in the proper descending rank succession and not simply by how they were arranged around the table. Since the protocol apparently was for the highest-ranked person to choose his or her preferred seat, followed by the others in their turn, there wasn't even a consistent pattern that repeated itself from group to group, and Leia collected several icy complaints before she figured that out.
The Mungras were less socially rigid, but they presented their own unique set of challenges. It was almost a relief when, late in the afternoon, three humans wandered in. Or it would have been if they hadn't been so obnoxiously falling-down drunk already.
The effortless part of the preconceptions took three standard hours to lose.
It was just after midnight when she finally trudged up the stairway to the row of fourth-floor apartments the tapcafe provided its employees.
Chivkyrie was waiting, dozing in a large armchair that would have comfortably accommodated an overweight Gamorrean. ”Ah,” he said, snapping awake and pulling himself upright as she closed the door behind her. ”I trust the evening's work went well?”
”It went reasonably well, yes,” Leia confirmed, looking around as she took off her covergown and hung it on the rack by the door. The apartment was small and cramped, no bigger than a s.h.i.+p's cabin and only slightly better furnished. But it had a comfortable-looking bed, and that was all she really cared about right now. ”The afternoon, on the other hand, was pretty much a disaster,” she added. ”How about your day?”