Which was odd. There’s no way Ganna wouldn’t have some kind of security personnel down here, or at least a janitor droid. Lula was sure to be guarded.
Unless Ganna had moved her to another location.
Lexo’s hopes were sinking fast, but he pressed on. The scent of corwindyl was so strong. She had to be here. She had to be.
He heard a scuffling sound. Footsteps maybe? Like someone had tripped over something.
A weapon would come in very handy about now. Lexo did not doubt his ability to kill most species, acting by feel and instinct. But if he encountered a droid or another Gamorrean, he’d need a different plan.
The scuffling sounded again, and Lexo moved toward it. Might as well face whatever was ahead.
Something plunged against him. He put up his hands in defense and encountered smooth skin, a pulsing wrist.
“Let me go!” said a high, familiar voice. The wrist slipped from his grasp, and small hands attacked him fiercely, mindlessly. “I won’t go back there! I won’t—”
“Lula!” he said, finding her shoulders, pulling her close, ignoring the beating she was giving him. “It’s me, azure sea.”
Her tiny form stilled in his arms. “Papa?” Her voice was shivery with terror.
“I’m here.”
And suddenly she was gripping him so tight he considered that he might suffocate. Words poured out of her. “I knew you’d come I just knew it so I left the corwindyl for you but maybe I left too much I don’t know but then it got so hot and the lock on my cell stopped working and the guards ran away to help Ganna except one and I had to hit him on the head with my meal tray then…” Lula paused to suck in air, then couldn’t seem to find any more words. She just sobbed once, hard, and buried her face in his robes.
Lexo thought his shoulders might burst with happiness and relief. He had found her. His Lula was all right. Now all they had to do was get away. They would leave Cantonica behind. It was the only way to be safe from Ganna. They could get passage on a freighter. If he sold every single thing he owned, if they worked off some of the fare, they might be able to scrape enough together. They’d get by. Somehow.
“We must go, my sea,” Lexo said, gently extricating himself from her embrace. “The environmental controls will come back on any mom—”
And it was as though he’d summoned them with a thought, for a cool breeze suddenly coated his skin and the lights brightened to normal levels. Doors slammed closed, fountains resumed tinkling, and the overhead lights vibrated with a soft, electronic buzz.
Lula was tugging at his sleeve. “C’mon, Papa. Ganna’s guards are back there, so we have to leave the way you came.”
He drank in the sight of her—her big brown eyes, her smooth human skin, her hair like a charcoal cloud. Dried blood crusted her upper lip, and a smudge of dirt or grease marred her forehead. “Are you hurt, my sea?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go!” She yanked him forward.
“Wait.” Lexo looked around, finally absorbing the fact that there were shelves full of data storage banks and various odd items: sculptures, a purple geode, a piece of bent scrap metal mounted on a plaque. Lexo stepped closer to read the inscription on the plaque. It said: THIS PIECE OF THE DEATH STAR II IS CERTIFIED AUTHENTIC BY GARRAC & SONS, PURVEYORS OF RARE ANTIQUITIES AND FINE COLLECTIBLES.
“This is Ganna’s private library,” Lexo murmured.
“What? So? Papa, we have to go.”
“The countess told me I might find something important here. Something worth the risk.”
Lula frowned. “Why would she help you?”
“It’s a long story.” Lexo’s hands were burning in earnest now, especially his badly injured forefinger. He ignored the pain, rummaged through the shelves, picking up each item, looking underneath. Lula just stood there, gaping at him. “All this stuff is valuable, Lula,” he explained. “Extraordinarily valuable. Which means now that the environmental controls are back on, the room is under lockdown again. No one is coming in here except Ganna or his elite staff. We’re safe for another minute. Quickly, help me search.”
Lula followed his lead and started sorting through the shelves. “What am I looking for?”
“I’m not sure. Something valuable and portable, maybe? Or possibly just information.” He picked up a dainty tiara, placed it back on its velvet pillow.
“Like a shipping manifest?” Lula said, hefting a datapad. “Blasters. A lot of blasters. Sands, Papa, this is so much money.” She scrolled further. “And something about DeFancio Storsilt. Ganna had a plan…That’s why Hard Luck has been having such a time of it! His feed was switched. Storsilt will be ruined by the end of the week.”
“Let me see that.” Lexo snatched it from her hands and read. Lula was right. Ganna was behind Jerdon Bly’s deal. He was helping engineer the poor performance of Storsilt’s stable of fathiers. He also had a plan to force Ubialla Gheal to sell her businesses, and he was pushing legislation through that would ban police speeders in favor of pursuit droids, supplied by himself of course.
He was orchestrating it to happen all at once. It would be a massive coup. Ganna was setting himself up to either flee Canto Bight one of the richest people in the galaxy, or stay and rule like a king.
“This is it,” he whispered reverently. “The countess suspected. But she didn’t have the resources to stop him. She used me. Does…” He didn’t dare continue the thought aloud, not in front of Lula: Does the countess own me now? Have I merely traded an unwanted arrangement with Ganna for one with her?
He cleared his throat. “We have to take this datapad with us. It’s leverage.”
Lula rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t be silly. All he has to do is take it from us and kill us. Haven’t you watched any of the old spy vids? We need to send all this information somewhere.”
“Can you do that?” he asked.
She grabbed the datapad from him. “Papa, you are old,” she muttered under her breath as she swiped and typed. “Always so helpless with devices.”
“What are you doing?”
“Compiling it into a single data burst. Security is still down from the outage, but it will come back online any moment so I have to work fast…there.” She looked up at him. “So, where should I send it?”
Lexo had never bothered with the expense of maintaining his own data account. Maybe the countess? Zord?
“It should be someone you really trust,” Lula added, “who has good encryption.”
He knew exactly who. “Send it to Neepers Panpick, Private Investigator, along with a message that if we don’t check in with him tomorrow, he should release the information citywide.”
She programmed in the message. “All right, it’s done.”
“Let’s go!”
“Wait,” Lula said. “One more thing.” She put the datapad on a massive stone slab table, grabbed the Death Star II memorial plaque, lifted it over her head, and brought it smashing down on the datapad. Bits of glass and metal and microfiber flew everywhere. She repeated it over and over, smashing the poor thing to bits.
“There. Now he’ll never alter the data or track the transmission.”
“Good thinking.” Lexo spent a luxurious moment marveling at his clever daughter. “All right, now let’s go!”
They reached the stairway. The trapdoor had sprung closed when the environmental controls came back on. Lexo had only a brief moment to worry that it wouldn’t open from the inside before it swung wide all of its own accord. Two Gamorrean guards poked their heads into the stairwell and stared down at them. Behind them was a shiny silver protocol droid.
“Trespassers,” the droid said. “How quaint. Come up here right away. My master wishes to speak with you before you die.”
Lexo and Lula exchanged a glance. “We have leverage now,” he assured her under his breath.
“I know.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Put on your ‘spa face,’ Papa.”
Together they followed the guard
s and the droid up the stairs, through the vestibule, and into Ganna’s receiving room.
BIG STURG GANNA WAS HALF submerged in a giant, alga-filled tank made of a sheer, glasslike material. Only his head and shoulders and the very tip of his ticklish tail were exposed to open air. He lurked there, like a great beast waiting for his prey to chance by unawares.
“Lexo, my friend,” Ganna rumbled. “I told you to behave.”
Lula murmured, “I really hate that guy.”
Lexo gave her shoulder a squeeze. The guards were at their backs, the protocol droid off to the side.
“Master Ganna, I found them in the library,” the droid said.
“Which is a pity,” Ganna said. “Now I’ll have to kill them.”
“That would be a big mistake,” Lula spat out.
Ganna laughed, a deep, gravelly sound that vibrated Lexo’s shoulders. “Your ward has spirit, I’ll give her that. I must say, this is partly my fault. I should have realized, when the countess offered her gift, that she was sending a spy.”
“The countess had nothing to do with this. When I learned that someone from Zord’s was coming here, I made sure I was sent in his place.”
Ganna frowned, considering.
“I acted alone,” Lexo assured him.
“Then how did you get the environmental controls down? Took out even my emergency generators. You don’t have that kind of clout.”
Lexo smiled. “As you yourself have pointed out, all the richest, most important, most influential citizens of Canto Bight are my clients. Many of them owe me favors.”
Ganna’s frowned deepened. “That’s all too plausible, I’m afraid. It’s why I went to such lengths to recruit you. Doesn’t matter now. You’ll die. It’s good timing, actually. My composting tank needs an injection of carbon-based life.”
Was that why it smells so bad in here?
“You won’t kill us,” Lula insisted.
“She’s right,” Lexo agreed. “We found some very interesting information in your library.” Quickly, he listed all they had discovered. “Imagine if those people—the countess, Storsilt, Gheal, the police chief—all learned about your plans at the same time and turned against you en masse? You wouldn’t survive one day.”
Ganna took a deep, shuddering breath, and then went silent and still. The water of his alga tank sloshed over the side, soaking the stone floor. Finally, he said, “It doesn’t matter.” He gestured to the guards, who stepped forward.
“We sent it away,” Lula said. “All that information is someplace safe. But if we don’t leave this place alive, it’s going out on a citywide burst.”
“You’re lying,” Ganna said, but he put up a hand to stop the guards.
“Master Ganna,” said the protocol droid, “our system did recognize a large data transmission moments ago. Our security features weren’t yet back online, and our logger failed to record it, but the size and shape of the data checks out.”
Ganna sank down into his tank, submerging completely. Bubbles streamed up from his nose. More water sloshed over the side.
The protocol droid said, “Oh, dear.”
Ganna resurfaced. “What do you want?” he practically yelled.
Lexo felt suddenly buoyant, like he was walking on air. This was going to work. “First, you must not buy out the countess’s share of the spa.”
“Done.”
“You must return Storsilt’s fathiers to their regular feed.”
“Yes,” Lula said. “No more harming fathiers.”
“You must not buy out Gheal or anyone else. They are my valued clients, after all. I heard, by the way, that your intermediary Jerdon Bly met with a terrible fate tonight.”
Ganna blinked. “Anything else?”
“You will never request my services again. All futures massages will be done by Maby Sagedo and Oble Rumb.”
“And if I do all this, you won’t release that data?”
“No one will know about it except us,” Lexo assured him. “Oh, and one more thing.” He looked down at Lula, his precious, precious girl.
Lula smiled, and it was like the sun rising over a perfect sea.
“You must buy my daughter’s indenture debt from Bargwill Tomder. And you must sponsor her fathier riding lessons for the next five years.”
Lula said, “Papa!”
Water sloshed as Ganna turned toward them. “I don’t understand,” he said. “All this trouble for a stupid girl. An ugly human. She’s not even your real daughter!”
Lula gasped in mock disbelief. “I’m not?”
“I’m so sorry you had to find out this way,” Lexo said.
“But we look so much alike!”
Ganna looked back and forth between them, utterly confused.
“Do we have a deal?” Lexo said.
In the softest voice Lexo had ever heard from Ganna, he said, “We have a deal.”
“In that case, my beautiful human daughter and I are leaving now. It will be a delight to see you again at the bathhouse.” This time, it wasn’t a lie.
The sun was rising on the city as they exited the hotel and casino. Morning washed the walls, the fancy streets, the luxury speeders, in warmth and light. Canto Bight wasn’t so bad, Lexo decided. Ostentation had its own kind of beauty.
“Lula, I have to tell you,” Lexo said as they walked toward Old City. No cab for them this time; they couldn’t afford it. “I did some things to find you. Some bad things.”
Lula paused in the middle of the walkway. “Some things…like from your old life?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated his face. “Are you sad?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m sad, too.” But she reached up to take his left hand, and it was a good thing it wasn’t his right because she would know at the slightest touch how badly injured he was.
They continued walking. “Also, the countess thinks she might be able to identify your biological parents. Is that something you’re interested in?”
“Really? Huh.” She considered for a moment. “I don’t know. You’re the only papa I ever want or need. But…it might be interesting to…”
“Think about it.”
“I will. Hey, do you know how Hard Luck did last night? Is he okay?”
They passed a fountain, and a bench where a woman in a shimmering gown was lying, nearly passed out. “He placed sixth in his race.”
“Good for him!” She extricated her hand. “I’m heading to the stables now.”
“What? Why? It’s been a really long night, Lula. Don’t you want to go home?”
“Go on without me. I’ll be there soon. I never got a chance to give him that corwindyl, remember? And I have a funny feeling…I just know he’s going to need it tonight.”
He gazed down at her. “We’ll go together.”
—
Late that afternoon, Lexo was back at work. He hadn’t slept all night, his forefinger was poorly bandaged, and he’d needed more corwindyl and more injections to keep his hands going. The treatments took the edge off and gave him mobility, but he’d worked his hands too hard last night. Lexo doubted he would ever be pain-free again.
His current client was a yellow Twi’lek male with tattooed lekku. An easy client, almost as easy as a human.
Beside them, Big Sturg Ganna lay on his huge stone plinth. Maby Sagedo and Oble Rumb were climbing all over him. Apparently the councilor had had a very hard night, something to do with his regen tank losing power for several terrifying minutes, and he needed an emergency treatment at Zord’s to manage the stress of it all.
“Oh, yes, I have children,” Lexo was saying to his client. “A daughter.”
“That’s nice,” the client said.
“She is the cleverest, most beautiful girl in the galaxy,” Lexo added.
“Hmm,” the client said.
“Thanks to the generosity of my good friend Councilor Ganna over there, she’s taking fathier riding lessons. A papa ought to s
et up his daughter with a trade, right?”
“You are wise,” the client said.
“I expect my Lula will be Canto Bight’s greatest jockey in no time.”
“Neat,” the client said.
Lexo knew when he was being dismissed, but it didn’t matter. His words were for Ganna, who snapped at poor Maby for touching his tail.
Lexo caught a movement near the balcony. He lifted his gaze and met that of the countess. His days of not getting involved were over. The countess knew what he could do. She would surely use him again, and he would do what she asked in order to keep Lula safe.
It was worth it. Though his own future was uncertain, Lula’s stretched, filled with hope and possibility. “In case I haven’t said it yet today, Councilor Ganna,” Lexo said, loudly enough for everyone in the spa to hear, “thank you so much for your generosity. The people of Canto Bight are the real winners, to have you as our great friend and close ally.”
Big Sturg Ganna seethed helplessly. The countess lifted her wineglass to Lexo and smiled.
“TERRIBLE ABOUT THAT THING.”
“What thing?”
Two. Two plus seven. Down one.
“That the First Order did.”
“I haven’t heard. Which ones are they, again?”
Three. Two plus nine. Even.
“I’m not sure. But whatever it was, I heard it was terrible.”
“Hmm. That’s too bad.”
Five. One plus nine. Up two.
Kaljach Sonmi did not care about the First Order, and neither did he care about the two other players at the zinbiddle table. He did care that they were ruining his count with their blather.
“Never mind,” said the blue-faced one as the dealer slid her another card. “Say, have you ever been to Hosnian Prime?”
“I was treated so poorly by a hotelier there once,” replied her pal, a skinny being that looked related to a tree. “I can assure you, I won’t go back.”
“Zinbiddle,” Kal said, overturning his hole cards.
The green-clad dealer, who was suppressing yawns as the end of her shift approached, barely looked at Kal’s hand. “Winner.”
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