“I suppose we can’t just burn down the whole Senate and start over again with a system that makes sense?” Dormé asked.
“I’m fairly certain that would be treason,” Padmé said. “We’re going to have to work with what we’ve already got.”
Sabé had never wished for the deep calm of a Naboo lake as much as she did at this particular moment. For six weeks, she had been Tsabin, a new resident of Mos Espa, one of the spaceports that dotted the surface of Tatooine, with her partner, Tonra, whose own name was un-Naboo enough to pass. After the unrelenting suns and the unrelenting wind and the unrelenting grit of the desert planet, she longed for home. Everything she had planned to do on Tatooine had gone sideways almost as soon as she’d landed, and she’d been scrambling to right her course ever since with little success.
The local criminals didn’t trust her because she was too new. By the time she’d realized—too late—that Tatooine had a nascent liberation movement, they no longer trusted her because she’d been trying to get in with the criminals. Only the sellers would talk to her, and Sabé found them almost too odious to bear. The upside of the whole debacle was that Captain Tonra had turned out to be a decent living companion. She suspected this was because he wanted her to like him, and for the most part, it was working.
They had a small house on one of Mos Espa’s innumerable side streets. It was cramped and uncomfortable and not entirely sound. In her darker moments, Sabé soothed her wounded pride by reminding herself that she wouldn’t be stuck on Tatooine forever. This mostly served only to prick her conscience even more: there were plenty who had no such choice.
It was those people she had come to help, and it was those people she had, for the most part, failed.
The door slid open, and Tonra ducked inside. He was dressed nondescriptly, as was she, but he carried a pack.
“It’s time,” he said.
Sabé took a deep breath, calling up the Tsabin personality, and followed him out into the blistering sunlight. She wished she’d had more time to recover from the auction Tonra had been able to swindle their way into, but that was a selfish thought, too: She felt only fury and frustration. There was so much more at stake.
It was a quick walk to the spaceport, where their secondary freighter was parked. Waiting for them next to the ramp was their purchased cargo.
They were still chained.
Sabé thought she might supernova with anger, giving Tatooine another sun. Rage coursed through her—at herself, at this abhorrent system, at everything.
“Do the preflight,” Tonra said, his hands on her shoulders. He let her see his own fury, smoldering no less intensely than hers but channeled in a different direction. “I’ll take care of them.”
The overseer pressed the control ring into her hands and was smart enough not to say anything. She all but fled up the ramp into the cockpit, unable to face the people who stood silently on the platform.
The checks done, Sabé ground her teeth as she watched out the viewport while Tonra marshaled the last few passengers up the ramp and onto the transport. Most of them were scared—and she couldn’t blame them—but she was in no mood to be gentle at the moment. Tonra was good at that sort of thing, so she left him to it while she triple-checked their stores and the map of their route.
Twenty-five souls. That was all she’d managed to save. It was better than nothing, but it was still so far from enough, and it gnawed at her. They would only be replaced with twenty-five more.
Tatooine’s was a strange economy, running on water and crime, the latter being much more lucrative. The Hutts’ iron control of smuggling and trafficking was impossible for two people, both new to the planet, to overcome.
“Everyone is squared away,” Tonra said, settling into the copilot’s chair. “Are we ready to go?”
“Nearly,” Sabé said. It would have been easier if they’d had another pilot to make this run instead of doing it themselves, but the freighter they were using was unremarkable enough and there was no one else they could trust—or who trusted them.
The freighter lifted off and headed out of Tatooine’s atmosphere. Once they were in the clear void of space, Sabé set the coordinates for a planet in the Chommell sector. Karlinus was nearly as affluent as Naboo itself, and it was always looking to hire agricultural workers. One or two seasons at a fair wage and the people they’d “rescued” would be able to go wherever they liked.
“I’m sending a message to Yané,” Sabé said. “She’ll meet us there and take care of those blasted tracking chips they’ve been forced to carry.”
She was carrying the control ring on her belt, and it felt like it was burning her. The navicomputer indicated that its calculations were complete. Tonra opened the comm to make a shipwide announcement.
“We’re about to go to hyperspace,” he said. “Please prepare yourselves.”
Sabé counted to twenty-five, one second for each newly freed soul on board, and then made the jump.
The governor of Karlinus was a short young woman with warm golden-brown skin, whose round face was framed by thick hair that frizzed in the humidity and whose wide smile was instantly welcoming. She met them on the landing pad herself, with a dozen unarmed guards. Sabé appreciated the gesture on the governor’s part and was even more pleased when she spotted Yané in the crowd. Her charges were mostly adults, but there were two families—one Rodian, one human—with children, and Yané would be of extra help settling them.
Sabé went straight down the ramp while Tonra went to the passengers in the hold. Yané threw her arms around Sabé’s neck as soon as she was in range.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Yané said. “And Governor Kelma said you’ve brought twenty-five people. That’s a good day’s work.”
It had been weeks of work, but Yané’s enthusiasm was contagious.
“We’re grateful,” Governor Kelma said. Her brown eyes hardened. “As long as they are all here by their own choice.”
“It’s not much of a choice,” Sabé said. She had, of course, inquired, but none of the people she had relocated had anywhere else to go. “But you’ll pay them and you won’t force them to stay.”
Sabé and Padmé had agreed on Karlinus because, in addition to being in the Chommell sector, it was a planet that was used to a high turnover in its workforce. Artists and students would come from Naboo, spend a season monitoring the droids that harvested tea or wove silk, and then head home with enough credits to establish a studio or continue their studies offworld. Governor Kelma was in a position to welcome workers and pay them—well—and then send them on their way once they could support themselves. Unlike the mining moons, which struggled to maintain the balance between the rule of Naboo and their allegiance to filling their quotas, Karlinus was a place where prosperity began.
“May I go on board and speak to them?” Kelma asked.
“Of course,” Sabé said, stepping out of the way so that the governor could start up the ramp. “Captain Tonra will introduce you.”
“You’re not happy,” Yané said when the governor had gone. “Not even a little bit, with what you’ve done.”
“We haven’t done anything, really,” Sabé said.
“You brought twenty-five souls out of slavery,” Yané said.
“There are so many more,” Sabé said. “On Tatooine, throughout the rest of the Outer Rim, and I’m sure there’s more in the Republic than any of us want to think about. I just don’t understand how it happens, and that’s probably why I can’t help to fix it. How can one person own another person and live with themselves?”
She hated feeling this naïve and this helpless.
“We know the galaxy can be an ugly place,” Yané said. “Do you think I don’t wonder what might have happened to us in that camp if the queen hadn’t come back? Death is final, but it can be delivered in so many terrible ways. And you’ve helped to stop that, even if it’s just a little bit.”
“It isn’t enough,” Sabé said.
; “No,” Yané said. “But you’re hardly giving up, are you?”
Sabé thought about the cramped little house back on Tatooine and the wretched heat and blowing sand. She thought about lakes on Naboo, and how much she missed her friends and family there. Of course there was only one way for her to go.
Governor Kelma came down the ramp, one arm around the Rodian female and the Rodian baby braced against her hip. Sabé nodded to the governor as she passed and then looked up at Tonra. It seemed cold not to let him even touch the ground close to home, but his face asked the same question Yané had, and Sabé knew the answer.
Yané kissed her cheek, and Sabé headed back up into the ship. Tonra clasped a hand on her shoulder and went to start the preflight sequence. Sabé looked out the viewport until after he had made the jump to lightspeed to head back to Tatooine.
“The senator will understand,” Tonra said. He was adding something green to a stewpot that he’d been fiddling with while Sabé had been out checking on their ship. The pot whirred strangely, but the smell emanating from it wasn’t entirely bad, and Sabé had to admit she was moderately impressed. “You had limited funds and almost no authority.”
He was always careful with her, but she never felt patronized. And he was correct, but managed to not make her feel worse about it.
“I know she will,” Sabé said. “That only makes it worse.”
Tonra nodded, and then kindly changed the subject. “How is the ship?”
“It’s fine,” she reported. “There were some strange tracks in the area, but the ship itself remains hidden.”
They had elected not to dock their primary vessel at the spaceport in Mos Espa, in case they ever needed to make a quick, unofficial getaway. Sabé selected a place not far from where they had set down the royal starship when they were fleeing to Coruscant almost half a decade ago, though she picked a spot with better cover. At the end of everything, that ship was the most important thing they had.
Tonra placed a steaming bowl in front of her and handed her a spoon. She knew better than to look at it before she took a bite.
“Any messages?” he asked, digging in.
“Padmé wants to talk,” Sabé replied. “She sent a time and asked me to reply if it would work, so I did. It’s going to be the middle of the night for her, but I suppose she’s busy.”
“Should we pack?” Tonra gestured to their single cramped room as though it was a palace.
“I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve picked up here that I wouldn’t mind leaving,” she said.
Against all common sense, Sabé had hoped that coming back after their run to Karlinus would change something, but it hadn’t. She wasn’t accustomed to failure, but at the very least, she and Tonra could start over on a different part of the planet.
“I don’t know,” Tonra said. “I’m getting fond of that mouse droid that can’t wheel itself in anything but a circle.”
The mouse droid had come with the house. Sabé had done her best to ignore it, but Tonra wasn’t given to contemplation the way she was: he had to be doing something with his hands. It was, she had decided, his most annoying quality, but she was graceful enough to admit that her pensive silences were probably more than a little unnerving, so it evened out.
“You are welcome to it,” Sabé said. “Just keep it out from under my feet.”
She passed him her bowl and waited at the table while he finished eating. The food was a marked improvement from when they’d arrived, but Sabé had no appetite in the heat, and so she ate as little as possible. Tonra seemed largely unaffected by the weather, at least in terms of his appetite, and if Tatooine had taught Sabé anything, it was that she was happy to give away what she didn’t need to someone who might want it.
Tonra set his spoon down and reached across the table to take her hands. People didn’t often touch Sabé, and she was never entirely sure how to react when they did, but she thought that not immediately jumping up from the table and striking a defensive stance was probably a good start.
“You didn’t fail entirely here, you know,” Tonra said. “We were able to do a little bit of good.”
“I know,” she said. “But this meant a lot to Padmé and it meant a lot to me.”
“You have made at least six new plans for what comes next,” Tonra said. “I know you have.”
She smiled. “It’s eight, actually.”
“See,” he said. “And next time we’ll be more prepared.”
He’d said we twice, which probably meant it wasn’t an accident. Fool’s errand or not, he would follow her.
“I’m going to start packing,” she said. “I’ll take care of the gear that ties in to our identities, you decide what you want to give away.”
It didn’t take them very long to settle everything into packs or arrange things so that the scavengers would find them without bringing down the already precarious roof. Then they walked out into the desert. Sabé had plotted a circuitous route to where the ship was stowed. It was difficult to get bearings on Tatooine’s surface without equipment due to the lack of landmarks, but Sabé had been on the planet before, posing as Amidala, and she had an excellent memory for stars.
“Not that Panaka let us get off the ship,” she said. “And not that I could have in that black gown. The headdress was tall and covered with feathers. We would have ruined it instantly. But there were viewports, and there was nothing to do while we waited for Master Qui-Gon to return but worry and read.”
Everyone on Naboo knew the name Qui-Gon Jinn—the long-haired Jedi who had risked much and lost all during the battle for the planet—but comparatively few had met him. Tonra had heard all of the stories before, and had been present for many of them, but the Tatooine parts of that particular venture weren’t exactly a matter of public record.
“This is where the ship was,” Sabé said, gesturing at the featureless rocks around them. “This is where we waited.”
“The hardest part of that story to believe isn’t the podrace or the bit about the little boy,” Tonra said. “It’s the part where Panaka let the queen off the ship in the first place.”
“Have you ever been able to refuse her?” Sabé asked, and Tonra conceded the point.
They kept walking, staying on the rocks for as long as possible and then turning around and going back almost exactly the way they’d come, but far enough from their previous tracks that Sabé hoped they would befuddle anyone attempting to follow them. There was no evidence of anyone taking that much notice of them, but Sabé had learned a long time ago that excessive precaution was the better part of valor.
At last they reached their ship. It was a decent midrange cargo ship without any identifying markings to speak of. Sabé had acquired it after asking the advice of Naboo’s royal pilot. Ric Olié had suffered an inner-ear injury after the Battle of Naboo that made it difficult for him to leave atmosphere, though he could still fly below the clouds. The new pilot, Daneska Varbarós was a woman of moderate height with dark skin, the most electric eyes Sabé had ever seen in a human, and long hair she liked to bleach and then dye in an ongoing series of different colors. When they had met to discuss the ship, it had been the sort of purple that was visible from low orbit.
Varbarós had also provided intelligence about hyperspace lanes, safe havens on a variety of planets, and what to do if they attracted the wrong sort of attention, be it Republic or rogue. Sabé hadn’t actually had to use any of that information, but she wasn’t about to forget what she now knew.
Tonra made himself scarce on the pretense of securing their gear and performing the necessary preflight checks while Sabé checked the chronometer and waited for Padmé’s incoming call. As punctual as ever, the chime sounded right when the numbers flipped over, and a moment later, Padmé’s image filled the display in front of where Sabé was sitting.
“Sabé,” she said, “it’s so good to see you.”
“Same to you,” Sabé said, and it was true: she’d been surly and off-center the
past few days, but hearing Padmé’s voice and seeing her, even as a holo, made her feel better instantly. She wished again that she had better news.
“Do you have anything new to report?” Padmé asked, and Sabé knew what information her friend was after.
“I’m sorry, Padmé,” Sabé replied. “I couldn’t find her.”
On the holo, Padmé’s shoulders rounded forward as she slumped.
“Did she die?” Padmé asked after a moment.
“No,” Sabé said. “Not from what I can tell.”
She’d made Tonra check the cemeteries after she checked them twice herself. Enslaved people weren’t allowed very much on Tatooine, but they were allowed to set up markers for each other when they died, and so they usually did.
“How can a person, even an enslaved one, just disappear?” Padmé asked.
“It was my fault,” Sabé said. “We came at this all wrong and made mistakes from the moment we got here. The Toydarian was gone, and I spent too much time trying to talk to his cronies. I know there are beings on Tatooine who oppose slavery, but they don’t trust me because I talked to the scum who profit from it, and frankly I don’t blame them.”
“I know you tried,” Padmé said, and the absolution only burned.
“I know the junk dealer lost her,” Sabé said. “I don’t know if it was another stupid bet or if he actually sold her, but I know she’s not here. I just don’t know where she ended up.”
There was a pause that was long enough that Sabé might have thought the transmission equipment had frozen, except Padmé was thinking, pacing in and out of the camera’s range. Finally, she came to a stop back in the frame.
“You think there are people working against slavery on Tatooine?” Padmé asked.
“I am sure of it,” Sabé said. That was what was so frustrating. She had missed an opportunity. “Do you remember Shmi Skywalker’s house?”
“A little bit,” Padmé said.
“Was there a symbol cut into the lintel above the door?”
“I don’t think so,” Padmé said. “Why?”
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