Queen's Peril

by E. K. Johnston

  She lay back on the bed, a grin stretching across her face. She had done it. The months of planning and preparation, of training herself to look a certain way no matter how she felt, of isolating herself from her family and friends, had worked, and she was Queen of Naboo. She groped for a pillow and put it over her mouth, smothering the giggle that boiled up out of her. The guards were, after all, right outside her door, and Padmé hadn’t yet decided if Amidala was the type who giggled, even in private.

  She let herself bask in the feeling for several minutes before she sat up and got back to work. From what she could tell, Bibble had sent every document the planetary government had produced in the past few months, and even though she was aware of most of the issues, this would be her first access to the privy details. She couldn’t wait to get to them. But first, there was something she had to do.

  She held her private comm in her hand and called her parents. She hoped she hadn’t kept them waiting too long. They had been quite understanding of her ambitions, even if her father didn’t entirely think it was a good idea, and hopefully they would know why she hadn’t been able to call them earlier in the day.

  “Congratulations!” Jobal’s voice came through the connection with pristine clarity as she stepped into the projection.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Padmé said. She let herself smile again. She could always be herself with her parents.

  “We’re so proud of you,” Ruwee added, appearing beside his wife.

  Coming from her father, those words meant more than Padmé could say. She knew he understood that, and that her smile would always be enough for him, queen or not.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t call and tell you myself,” Padmé said. “It’s been a very busy day.”

  “I can imagine,” Ruwee said with a laugh. “Sio lives for this sort of thing.”

  Having a father who was known at least by reputation to most of the important people on the planet had never really impacted Padmé’s life. Ruwee had the gift of knowing how to be friends with powerful people without taking advantage of it, and it was something Padmé admired about him. He very rarely slipped up, but she supposed this was an exciting day for him, too.

  “Anyway,” Ruwee continued, “we both understand that your time is going to be spoken for a lot. We’ve known that since you entered the campaign. Politics moves your priorities around, and we trust you enough to make those decisions.”

  “What your father is trying to say,” Jobal said, jumping in, “is that we know you’re busy and excited, and we’re going to hear about you on the holonews, and we love you anyway.”

  “That is not at all what I was trying to say,” Ruwee said.

  Padmé laughed. She kept it quiet, but didn’t raise her hand to muffle the sound. Her mother had always encouraged her dreams as much as her father had tempered them with practicalities. They were two different approaches to the same destination and, Padmé had learned, two different ways to show love.

  “I’ll remember who I am, Dad,” Padmé said. “No matter who I’m talking to or what I have to look like.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” Ruwee said.

  “I wanted to hear about your rooms, but I guess you don’t have those yet,” Jobal said. The private apartments in Theed’s palace were very, very rarely open to the public. For security, and other reasons, little was known about their appearance, but there were rumors that they held some truly great pieces of art, and Jobal was highly interested in that sort of thing.

  “Not for a couple more days,” Padmé said. “I’m in the palace now, but not the royal part yet. Queen Sanandrassa is probably packing up, but the official transfer of power isn’t until the end of the week.”

  From her study of the blueprints, Padmé was reasonably sure that her current room was a few floors directly below the royal apartment, but she assumed the upper floors were laid out differently. Eventually, her guards and staff would live where she was staying now.

  She heard a chime through the comlink, and both of her parents looked away for a moment.

  “Sorry, your father is hosting his usual postelection get-together,” Jobal said as Ruwee disappeared from the frame.

  “That’s all right,” Padmé said. “I still have a lot to do.”

  Mother and daughter lapsed into comfortable silence while they waited for Ruwee to come back.

  “Give my love to Sola,” Padmé said as Ruwee returned to the frame.

  Her parents said good night, and she turned off the comm. She thought of her parents’ house tonight, full of friends celebrating and theorizing what was going to come next. For a moment, she was painfully lonely. And then it struck her: she was going to be what everyone was talking about. Yes, there were new representatives in the legislature to discuss, too, but the primary focus of most conversations tonight would be the new Queen of Naboo, and that was her.

  It was an incredible responsibility. And Padmé was so, so excited.

  Coruscant was, at times, made of light. It shone like a beacon—the seat of the great Republic Senate, attracting attention from systems in every corner of the galaxy. Like mynocks to a transistor coupling, all kinds of people were drawn to the power of the city-planet, and all of them basked in the glow.

  But Coruscant was also full of structures and cables and the detritus of centuries of continuous habitation, and in the shadows of those things, there was always plenty of space for the dark. In the seedy corners of the undercity, cruelty festered, and looked for places to grow.

  Darth Sidious rarely bothered with the lower levels. He had ways to exploit them if he wanted something, of course, but it was far more his style to bring darkness into places where people thought they were beyond its reach. He found the weak points, the cracks where the light got out, and shoved the darkness in. He played a long game, a smart game, and unfortunately, from time to time, that meant dealing with people who failed to understand the grand scope of his vision.

  Despite his personal distaste for them, the lower levels were a good place to have a discreet conversation. Sidious rarely bothered with having those in person either, but he knew that his presence could be overwhelming and he had no issue pressing that advantage when one of his so-called allies was faltering.

  Nute Gunray had been ranting for several minutes about the failed bill. Sidious had more or less been ignoring him the whole time. It wasn’t important. At the end of the day, Gunray himself wasn’t all that important. Useful, yes, particularly given his suggestibility and willingness to spend vast amounts of money on a disposable fighting force, but not important.

  “And then that senator from Naboo insisted on the bypass amendment, and it cost us the entire Delcontrian faction,” Gunray wound up. “We did everything we could, but the votes were against us.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sidious snapped. He had learned a great deal from this failed bill. How far Malastare was willing to go. How much the Tellonites were willing to lose. Whom the Caladarians were willing to sacrifice. “You will have a new bill in the next few days.”

  “Dodd won’t be able to introduce it,” Gunray said. “It’s too obvious.”

  “Of course it is,” Sidious said. He was surrounded by idiots. “Someone from the Delcontrian faction will introduce it.”

  “But we just lost them!” Gunray protested.

  “That was Naboo’s fault,” Sidious said. “This new bill will win them back.”

  Gunray muttered something too quietly for Sidious to hear, and then immediately looked fearful. Under the cowl of his hood, Sidious smiled. They needed him so badly, for their petty little squabbles, and he terrified them completely. It was one of his chief delights.

  “Someone will contact you,” Sidious continued as though nothing had happened.

  “Yes, my lord,” Gunray said. He bowed obsequiously, and Sidious cut the connection before he could say anything else.

  The Neimoidians were troublesome. It was always a challenge to find someone just incompetent enough,
and while Sidious enjoyed the thrill of it, sometimes it required more of his supervision than he liked to give. He needed agents who could act independently, but it wasn’t time for them yet. There were too many pieces, too many outcomes, to let someone who could think for themselves start messing around.

  Still, there was never any harm in being prepared. Sidious changed comm channels and reached out to his apprentice.

  Amidala had won. Tsabin watched the announcement, along with everyone else on the planet, and felt something unfurl in her chest she’d never felt before. This was what success felt like, even if it wasn’t precisely hers yet. She left the room where the other students were watching the full results and went back to her small quarters.

  Queen Amidala. It sounded regal. Perfect. Beautiful. And, to all appearances, the Queen herself was all three. She must be brilliant as well, but Tsabin knew that brilliance alone wasn’t enough to run a planet. Charm, that elusive quality Tsabin had never possessed, was a part of it, too.

  She pulled her carry case out from under her bed and opened it. The bag was a bit dusty, but aside from that, it was empty and ready to go. She turned to her desk, where three acceptance letters were stacked. Pretentiously written on arbovellum—real paper—they were offers to sit in the back row of three different orchestras. She hadn’t read any of them past the first few lines. Now, she swept them into the garbage disposal and gathered up what knickknacks had accumulated on her desk. These went into her carry case, along with her spare clothes and the other belongings she’d brought with her to the conservatory.

  Last, she pulled down her hallikset case. She opened it up and looked at the instrument that was the cause of so much of her stress and joy. Her fingers brushed the silent strings. But her decision was already made.

  Tsabin shut the case and placed it on top of her larger one. Then she sat down on her bed to wait, reading through the election results on her personal screen. There were no great surprises this year. Only an odd fluttering in her chest that something was finally going to go right for her.

  And when Captain Panaka came back, Tsabin would absolutely be ready to go.

  In hindsight, perhaps she should not have met Tsabin for the first time as the Queen. It had made perfect sense at the time. Padmé had several meetings in the morning with various officials and palace employees, and when Panaka announced it was time for the final meeting of the afternoon, Padmé hadn’t slipped out of her role. So Tsabin had met her as a cool and distant monarch, and not as someone who was going to get to know her like a second skin.

  To her credit, Padmé realized the error almost as soon as Panaka was finished introducing the girls to each other.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Amidala said. “That will be all for now.”

  Panaka was surprised to be dismissed; he wouldn’t be on duty again until the next day, but he’d swallowed any protests he might have made and left them to it. Then the two of them were staring at each other in an awkward silence. Padmé’s eyes flicked to the guards, who were pretending not to be there. She didn’t have a complete read on them yet, so she wasn’t sure how far their discretion would go. They never accompanied her into the room where she slept, though. And there were two chairs in there, she remembered.

  “Walk with me?” she said, getting to her feet and holding out an arm.

  Tsabin nodded and fell into step beside her. Padmé led the way into the bedroom and shut the door behind them.

  “This is more complicated than I was imagining,” she said. “Please, sit down.”

  Tsabin did as she was told. So far, as a matter of fact, she had been entirely biddable, and her face hadn’t shown any emotion. Padmé could completely understand that.

  “Royal handmaidens are traditionally attached to a queen to serve in her private household,” Padmé said as a place to start. “I don’t know if Captain Panaka has told you the same things that he’s told me, but that is not exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “The captain said you are looking for a bodyguard, but not the usual kind,” Tsabin said. “I wouldn’t be defending you with a blaster. I’d be defending you with my identity.”

  “No monarch has had a bodyguard like that since the last dispute with the Gungans, and that was generations ago,” Padmé said. “And I am still not entirely sure that there is a reason to return to the practice.”

  “My impression of Captain Panaka is that he is more of a ‘no reason not to’ sort of thinker,” Tsabin said.

  She was still sitting stiffly in the chair. Padmé slouched in her own seat, and watched with some satisfaction as Tsabin’s shoulders relaxed.

  “I agree,” Padmé said. “I don’t think there’s any harm in following his advice.”

  “Or,” Tsabin suggested, a hint of mischief in her voice for the first time, “letting him think that most of his advice is being followed.”

  Padmé didn’t try to stop the smile that spread across her face. She was not a deceptive person by nature, but she did understand the value of keeping her cards close.

  “My name is Padmé,” she said. It was the greatest show of trust she could think of. And it was enough.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Tsabin said, finally looking at her with an unguarded expression.

  Padmé leaned farther back into her chair. She kicked off her slippers and crossed her feet in front of her, her knees leaning on the armrests.

  “I’ve already changed the captain’s plan a little bit,” she said. “He thought one bodyguard would be enough, but I have convinced him that a group is a better idea.”

  “Because it’s easier to hide,” Tsabin mused. “Do you know who?”

  “Not yet,” Padmé said. “We only talked about it yesterday. But he found you, and I assume he had other people in mind when he decided that you were the one to bring in.”

  “We should be loyal to you, not to him,” Tsabin said quickly. “They have me staying in the barracks with the other guards, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Padmé hadn’t considered that.

  “He recruited me because I am good at providing support. It’s what I’ve always done for any group I’ve ever played with. But I don’t think that’s all I have to offer,” Tsabin said. When Padmé said nothing, she continued, “Hallikset players spend years on breath control, even though it’s a stringed instrument. It’s part of the discipline, but also helps maintain the purity of the sound. I can breathe without anyone noticing, and that means I can control my face and my reactions.”

  “I wondered how you did it,” Padmé said. “You’re very good.”

  “I can teach you,” Tsabin said immediately. This was going to be more fun than Padmé had thought. “It’s possible that we’ll have different gut reactions to things, but if we both learn the same way of concealing those reactions, no one will be able to tell.”

  They talked for a while longer about themselves, getting to know each other. A droid brought dinner, and the sun went down, and neither girl particularly cared. Tsabin was quick to understand Padmé’s ideas, and quicker still to provide suggestions to improve them. The plan was by no means perfect, but it was a good start.

  “That’s probably as much as we can do before the others get here,” Padmé said. “It wouldn’t make any sense to set up the whole stage before we have all the players on it.”

  “I can show you the breathing exercises, at least,” Tsabin said.

  “Let me call a droid first,” Padmé said, making the decision for them both. “You’re not staying in the barracks.”

  The room Tsabin had stayed in at the conservatory was small, but it was all her own. She’d never shared a room with another person before, and Padmé hadn’t asked. Tsabin quickly buried her resentment. She didn’t want to stay in the barracks anyway, and she was going to have to get used to following Padmé’s orders. Or, rather, Amidala’s orders. It was an ongoing challenge to tell them apart, but also: that was part of her job.

  Tsabin’s things arri
ved just as they finished the second set of exercises. The guard who knocked on the door kept her face carefully bland, and Tsabin could imagine the report that would be submitted at the end of the shift. She decided she didn’t care.

  They would be moving into the royal apartments soon enough, so Tsabin didn’t bother to fully unpack. She got her pajamas and followed Padmé’s directions to the refresher. It was much nicer than the one at the conservatory.

  “I’m still working on figuring it out,” Padmé said, after they had gone to bed. “The differences between Padmé and Amidala, I mean. I think with you I’ll have to be both.”

  It was not quite an apology, but Tsabin understood.

  “I promise to wait until after your reign is over before I write a tell-all for the holos about all the things you messed up in the early days,” she said.

  Padmé laughed.

  “I think the Queen and her new handmaiden are up to something,” Panaka said.

  He picked at his dinner, or whatever you called the meal you brought your wife in the middle of the night when she was on a break from work and you hadn’t seen each other properly in a few days. The palace was quiet at night, but Mariek took her duties seriously and wouldn’t stray too far from the diplomatic wing, even though it was currently unoccupied.

  “They’re teenage girls,” Mariek said. “They are always going to be up to something.”

  “How can I protect her if I don’t know what she’s doing?” he asked.

  “Protect her from what, exactly?” Mariek said. “I know you like to be prepared for things, but this feels excessive, even for you.”

  Panaka put his chopsticks down.

  “If there are problems with commerce in the Mid Rim, Naboo will be swept right along into it,” he said.