Canto Bight [Star Wars]

by Saladin Ahmed

  “Yes, yes, anything,” says the manager.

  “You will give us the woman,” says Parallela, and indicates the clerk with a lazy wave of one hand. Her face, like her sister’s, gives away only what she wants it to: It is impossible to look at her and know the reasons for her demand.

  The clerk feels her stomach turn to water, and wonders if this is the day she finally admits that she is never going home, save in death. Sweet, distant Naboo, which seemed so common once, when the stars of Canto Bight came calling…

  The manager blusters. “We are not—you must understand—Cantonica does not condone slavery. Canto Bight is subject to the rules of the planetary governing body.”

  The planetary government is controlled by the city, which represents most of the world’s population, and even more of its wealth. To claim that it acts independently of the interests of Canto Bight is to indulge in a fantasy even wilder than the rumor the clerk has heard whispered behind the backs of the Grammus sisters. She’s heard people say the sisters come not from another world—everyone comes from another world; save for the street urchins and stable children, no one is born in Canto Bight—but from another dimension, something on the far side of hyperspace, as impossible and untrue as the Force of the old Jedi Order. Some even say that they come from the dimension where the Force retreated after the fall of the Jedi, that they have crossed impossible distances to see what happened to their gifts.

  It would only make sense for them to wind up in Canto Bight, if all those lies were true. Everything comes here sooner or later, to shrivel and forget itself beneath the bright and shining sky.

  “We don’t want to keep her,” says Parallela patiently. “She could never survive the journey back to our…home…and she would never be accepted if she did. All things come in two, the right and the wrong, the action and the consequence. Your resort has performed an action. You have wronged us. You must lose one of your finest jewels in consequence, else how will you learn to do better?”

  “You must do better,” agrees Rhomby. “This is as great an opportunity for change as you will ever receive. We do not desire a slave, merely someone to carry our bags from this resort to our new one, which we hope will take both the lesson and the gift we offer them to heart.”

  “Gift?” asks the manager blankly.

  “Yes,” says Parallela. “We are bringing them the rare advantage of a woman who has already tended to our needs, and can thus explain what must be done to please us.”

  The clerk stiffens. She took the bet when she placed her guess: By being willing to consider the positive outcome, she also allowed for the possibility of the negative.

  The manager protests. The Grammus sisters are firm, and remain so through the process of acquiring the severance forms for their new “souvenir,” collecting her things from her place in the employee quarters—theirs are already packed and ready to move—and ostentatiously resigning their claim to their rooms. In a matter of time that seems too short to be believed, the three of them are standing outside, Rhomby summoning a chauffeur-driven speeder with an airy wave of her hand as Parallela attempts to conceal a large cutting from the lobby bromeliad in her valise.

  The clerk—clerk no longer; she doesn’t know what she is anymore, has defined herself by her job for so long that all of this seems impossible—shifts her weight from foot to foot, uneasy. Finally, she blurts, “What happens to me now?”

  Parallela blinks, seemingly nonplussed. “You take care of our needs on this world,” she says. “You smooth our way.”

  “And when you go…” The clerk pauses. Nothing she can say feels right. “When you leave, what happens to me then?”

  “Ah.” Rhomby steps back, picks up two of the bags, contorts her face in what would, on a human, be considered a smile. “That is when your story starts. Come now. We have an appointment to keep tonight. We must hurry.”

  The speeder’s doors are open, and all objection is swept away in the face of the sisters’ calm, implacable insistence that this is how things must be.

  DERLA HAS RENTED HER CUSTOMARY room at one of the smaller, less fashionable casinos: palatial enough to allow her to bring clients to sample her wares without shaming herself, small and spartan enough to stretch her budget over several days. It is a delicate balancing act, which is why she has not chosen to make any changes, not even knowing she will—all things being equal—be on her way by morning. She has brought no sample cases, nor has she reached out to any of her usual contacts.

  This, too, is intentional. The elite of Canto Bight are unaccustomed to being denied whatever pleases them, and most will only hear that she was onplanet long after she has gone. They will writhe to think that they somehow missed her, their palates growing dry with longing for wines they have not tasted. They will ache for her good regard. And on her next visit, their thirst will be all the greater, and their generosity will be increased to match. Anything to keep her from spurning them again.

  Now, however, she has a different role to play, that of the eager subordinate. She lifts a bottle as black as the heart of a dead sun from its case, holding it up until the light catches stardust hints of gold and purple from the liquid within. It is lovely. It is perfect. Nothing else will do.

  There are clients who can be sold a legend independent of a bottle’s quality, who will eagerly buy the last bottle of wine from Alderaan even knowing that Derla has sold a hundred “last bottles” discovered in smuggler’s caches and concealed cellars the galaxy over. They care more for the story than the substance. Not this client. Not this night.

  Ubialla Gheal would not, on first glance, strike most as a threat. She is long, she is elegant and lithe, as comfortable draped across a golden bench as standing at her own bar, a cocktail in her hand and an inviting smile upon her lips. Where Ubialla is, the party is sure to follow—and if the party somehow gets lost along the way, another will spring spontaneously into being, all for the privilege of pleasing her. She is beauty, grace, and charm personified.

  She is, naturally, corrupt. Most in Canto Bight are. Derla finds Ubialla’s corruption almost charming: Few who rule this city bother with such petty concerns as concealing what they are. Ubialla still pretends to respectability. As such, Derla has always felt reasonably safe in her company. After all, respectable businesswomen don’t harm highly valued assets, such as the galaxy’s finest sommelier.

  The hotel stairway unwinds beneath Derla’s feet as she descends, a cunning thing of repulsorlift fields and delicate thrusters that exists only as it is being used. It dismantles itself behind her, racing forward to catch her feet again, so that it looks as if she walks along a trailing stream of flower petals or of frost, something natural, something real. It is as artificial as everything else about this place, a small and unnecessary luxury supplied by her hotel, and she revels in it. These are the things that draw people back to Canto Bight again and again, even once they understand the city lurking beneath the shimmer and sparkle, ready to rise up and devour. There is magic, to choose a quaint and outdated term, to the workings of the city.

  Speeders zip by as she passes from the tower height of her room and into the traffic lanes. Here, too, her stairway guides her, sliding itself into the space between the beacons, threading the needle of the organic-operated vehicles. No one licensed to drive in Canto Bight would be foolish enough to strike a tourist—not here. On the artificial inland sea, yes; there, her body could vanish beneath the waves, never to be seen again, and she could become but one more set of bones sleeping in the great breast of the city. Here…

  If she were to be struck, she would fall. How she would fall, until she shattered almost artistically against the pavement. The lights of Canto Bight would shine off the fragments of her carapace, off the broken bits of the bottle now tucked safely into her valise, and it would not be covered up, and it would not be concealed. Her death would damage tourism, if only for a day, if only in this district.

  If there is a religion in Canto Bight, it is tourism
. Tourism, which fills coffers and replenishes staffing pools, which spreads the legend of the city across the stars. Even the wealthiest and most arrogant of the city’s elite have no desire to damage tourism. Without it, where would they be? In some other criminal enterprise, no doubt, but one without style, without grace. Without tourism, they might as well be Hutts—a fate the controllers of Canto Bight would die to escape.

  The staircase allows her the illusion of a leisurely descent while actually moving her at a speed well above what she might have managed on her own. In what seems to be no time at all, Derla steps onto the pavement, the staircase fluttering away into the air. She will take a speeder home when her business is done. A beautiful entrance, a quiet exit: these are respected things here in Canto Bight.

  Adjusting the drape of her gown with her free hand, Derla strolls down the avenue, chin high, allowing herself to be seen. She recognizes the house staffers of many of her past patrons as they hurry about their errands; some spare a look in her direction, careful not to stare, and she can almost hear them noting her presence, preparing themselves for a night of wine tasting and drunken orders from their masters. How surprised they’ll be when she never appears. How surprised, and then how concerned, as they wonder whether their households have fallen from favor. There is status, too, among the serving class of Canto Bight, and to serve a master or mistress who can no longer arrange for something as simple as a delivery of wine is to serve nothing good.

  Derla smirks as she walks. Oh, she will be in high demand when next she comes this way. Her own legend grows, and all she has to do is keep moving, her hand clutching the handle of her valise, the scent of mystery trailing in her wake.

  Her destination would be impossible to miss even for someone who had never been here before, whose eyes were dazzled and whose heart was struck by the beauty of the place. For Derla, who has walked these streets more often than perhaps she should have, it is a simple star to steer by.

  The shell of Ubialla’s nightclub extends high into the air, peppered with beacons that steer the traffic around it, allowing the speeders to zoom startlingly close, so the wind from their passage becomes a part of the façade, rippling the vegetation her gardeners have so carefully cultivated. The club has other faces, Derla knows, entrances styled to suit the streets they face onto. This approach is one of the more “civilized,” intended to appeal to casual tourists.

  The bouncers on the door straighten at the sight of Derla, offering her the tightest and most proper of nods, unable to conceal the confusion in their eyes. They have never been faced with her unscheduled appearance before. Always her visits have been things of pomp and circumstance, her own hired help following her with a hover-unit piled high with crates and boxes, each containing its own wonders. Ubialla has been an excellent customer over the years, and she has been rewarded for her patronage with alcoholic delights from every corner of the sky.

  Derla inclines her head politely and walks on, through the gracefully swinging doors, into a palace of wonders and delights.

  She has never bothered to learn the décor of Ubialla’s place, which changes so often as to be ephemeral, now rustic, now sleek and clean. She entered once to find every wall covered in a veil of living insects, delicate winged creatures from a thousand worlds. Their incubation and transport must have cost a fortune, but when she had returned the very next day to look upon them again, they had disappeared, leaving not even a single trace behind. The walls had been layers upon layers of netting that day, and some of the customers had climbed them, cocooning themselves above the floor as they sipped their drinks and dreamed of cleaner stars.

  Looking for commonalities within Ubialla’s territory is a fool’s game, and Derla Pidys is no fool. She steps lightly and nimbly, marking the location of the walls—those, at least, rarely change—and noting with relief that this layout sports the private booths of which she is so enamored. She has done much business in those booths, pulling their curtains fast and blocking out the world while she and her customers deal with the less delicate aspects of commerce.

  There is more privacy in her rented room, or in their palatial estates and apartments and speeders, but a surprising number of her clients would prefer to come here, to be seen in public making their purchases from one of the best-regarded sommeliers in the galaxy. No one thrives in Canto Bight without learning to cultivate their own legend, to shape it as their heart desires.

  No matter how often Ubialla changes the appearance of her club, the layout remains essentially the same. It grinds on her, Derla knows, to be bound to any static thing—but drunks will be drunks the galaxy over, and someone who has dived too deep into their cups moves mostly on the dim traceries of memory rather than what stands before their eyes. If Ubialla were to move the walls, she might gain in short-term customers looking for true novelty, but she would lose her regular clientele, and upon such backs are fortunes made. So the walls remain where they have been for years, and the club bends around them, shaped and reshaped upon a whim.

  Derla follows the patterns this club has held since she first entered it, and her eyes merely skim the new fripperies, noting them for later consideration. In any other establishment, she might worry that the bare walls with their crystal racks of wine and liquor spoke to some shortage of resources: that Ubialla had finally managed to offend one or other of her many patrons and was on the verge of losing everything. Here she has no such concerns, nor does she feel she needs them. Ubialla is mercurial. If the place is bare now, it is simply because it was palatial yesterday, or because it will be a forest of singing bells tomorrow.

  The day is young, as yet, and the crowd is sparse, only a few serious drinkers tucked away in booths or perched at tables, their glasses in front of them, their eyes far away. Derla passes a table of giggling girls in resort uniforms, their indenture chips flashing a calm green—off duty, not available for hire or requisition, not currently affiliated with their employers or their etiquette standards. They have ordered a bottle of what she knows to be overly sweet Socorro mescal, splitting it among themselves with the air of celebrants.

  She signals one of the servers to approach her, indicating the girls’ table with a blink of her lower left eye.

  “What do they celebrate?” she asks.

  “One of them is buying her wife’s indenture contract to enable her to pursue work in the medcenter system,” the server replies. “It is a brash move. It could end them. But it could elevate them as well, far above their current status. The coin is worth the chance.”

  “Ah,” says Derla approvingly. This is Canto Bight at its best and brightest—hopeful, chasing fortune as a child might chase a falling star. She discreetly slips a few slivers of metal into the server’s hand. He takes it without looking, as if he has been expecting the gesture—and indeed, perhaps he has. Generosity, too, is part of her legend.

  “Bring them a bottle of dry Socorro white. A good vintage, if you would be so kind. Bravery should be rewarded in the present, as it may not be treated so kindly by the future.”

  The server nods and scurries away. He will, she knows, bring the table the best bottle of wine he can justify, pocketing the remainder of the currency she has given him as a service fee. It does not bother her. He will not attempt to defraud her, to pass off something cheap and common as the bottle she has paid for. In another place, perhaps, where she was less known, that might be a concern. Here, where she has established herself as expert, patron, and benefactor, she will be treated fairly, if only to keep her returning. Someone like Ubialla does not burn such connections lightly.

  Derla continues on her way, and there is Ubialla, tall and grand and shining like a star. That, too, is intentional: has always been so. Ubialla Gheal is a woman who knows her angles. She, like Derla, is dressed in white, but where Derla wears the color as a way of bowing her head to the spectrums of other eyes, Ubialla wears it like a challenge, bright and blazing and impossibly present. Something in the fabric catches the light, not enough to
glitter—that would be crass, and so far below Ubialla as to be unthinkable—but enough to make her shine against the dark backdrop she has created for herself. Her skin is flawless, dark enough that the white gown contrasts like the space above Cantonica, beautiful, untouchable, rare. The high dome of her head is similarly adorned and similarly glorious.

  Derla has wondered, at times, whether Ubialla chose to become a nightclub owner because she understood that she was no legendary beauty, no myth waiting to unfold, but that with the right lighting and the right lies, she could easily elevate herself to the position. Here Ubialla controls everything, and everything is designed to two parallel but complementary goals: to make a profit, and to flatter its creator.

  The thought of parallels is enough to make her upper eyes blink in quick amusement. Steeling her expression and its inappropriate expansiveness away, Derla approaches the woman in white with her shoulders back and her chin high.

  “Derla,” says Ubialla, with precisely the correct amount of surprise to make it clear that this is no surprise at all: She has known of the other woman’s arrival since Derla docked her ship. She approaches quickly, grips Derla by the shoulders, and kisses the air next to the other woman’s cheeks, first the right and then the left, before letting go. “What a delightful treat it is to have a visit from you! And so mysterious! I had no idea you were coming before I received the notification that your room had been reserved.”

  A polite but pleasant fiction. Derla allows it to stand. Blinking her upper eyes in quiet subservience, she reaches into her valise and withdraws the wine she has brought for Ubialla. Offering it without comment, she says, “I am afraid this is a very brief stop on my part. I am here to acquire, not to sell, and have only this single evening on which to make my acquisition. My client is similarly pressed for time, and very much wished to come here and sample your delights. I was hoping you might have a booth available for me to reserve. Something quiet, out of the way, where I can conduct my business.”