Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“Thief!” She snatched it from him.

“Don’t tell Tap.”

“Tap? These were in my pack. I’ve been dreaming about these all day.” She poured some into his hand.

“You’ve certainly gotten more generous since we were children,” he said.

“I shared everything with you.”

“Izzy,” he said, “after your parents—why did you leave the academy?”

She crisscrossed her legs, fidgeting with the necklace under her shirt again. “At first it was an accident.”

“Leaving or going in the first place?”

“I went to appease my father,” she said. “He said when he was in school it was the best time of his life until he met my mother and then we became his world. We’d finally stopped moving around and Eroudac would do. A lot of good it did him to have followed her.”

“You don’t mean that,” he said softly. “And you wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.”

She took a deep breath and looked away. “I wish—”

Izzy cut herself off. She rubbed her lips together and frowned. Was she afraid of what she was going to say? She rested her hands on her knees, and he reached out to hold the tips of her fingers. It was the only way he could let her know that she could talk to him. He’d wait if he had to.

“I wish I could talk to them both,” she said. “Even for just a minute. Though I know if I could, I wouldn’t have the courage to confront my mother and tell her that you shouldn’t have a family if what you do is going to get you killed. All you do is leave people behind.”

He licked chocolate from his tooth and considered that. It upset him in a way he couldn’t explain until he voiced it. “That’s not fair. My parents were average people, as far as I know. My father worked every day of his life doing what he was supposed to, and at the end of the day he still ran back in that fire to pull people out. He still left me behind. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have ever had a family.”

“But your father saved people,” she said.

“Doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I’m angry with him, too, Izzy.” He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Keep going.”

She let her fingers trace his. “The reason I dropped out and the day I took my first job were connected. My genetic science professor was always frazzled but had figured out a way to make a very potent tea from the haneli flower. But a drought on Haneli had made them nearly impossible to buy on her salary.”

“She hired you,” Jules said.

“I offered my services,” she corrected. “I was running out of credits. I’d watched my mother, and I was so sure that smuggling was the reason we never stayed put. I thought I could do that. Besides, without my parents, I would have to start making my own way.

“I was friendly with some of the guards at the spaceport because I spent most days burning fuel by taking the Meridian for solo runs to nowhere. I’d watched my mother smooth-talk her way out of violation citations and get police officials to grant her landing permits to planets she had no business getting onto. Unfortunately, charm is not hereditary.”

“I disagree,” he said.

She nudged his leg with hers, then said. “Well, I got caught.”

“What did you do?”

“The only thing I could think of. I panicked and dropped the cargo. I couldn’t exactly show my face to my professor after that. I’d already spent the credits. Besides, I knew I belonged in the sky, not in a classroom relearning things my father had taught me long ago.”

Jules wanted to point out that the haneli flower was not just used for teas, and her professor might have conned her. But he didn’t want to spoil her memory.

“And after that you just kept going?” he asked.

Instead of answering she asked, “Do you still want to fly?”

“I’ve been saving for years. I woke up this morning not sure of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I always find something that keeps me here.”

She squinted at him—this girl he’d never thought he would ever see again, who had consumed him in the hours they’d been together. “What’s keeping you here now?”

He licked his lips. “I haven’t found an adventure worth chasing.”

Izzy’s gaze flicked to his mouth again. He wanted to lean closer to her, to see if she would meet him halfway. But there was too much sadness tugging at her smile, and he didn’t feel right about it.

“The worlds out there aren’t all we dreamed they would be,” she said.

“Maybe they are and you’ve been with the wrong people.”

“I wasn’t always with Ana Tolla’s crew.”

“You’re better off. If they make the mistake of crossing Oga—”

“I never liked that about them, you know. She’d never give details about the score. But her crew does everything she says, when she says it. People know Ana Tolla’s name.”

Jules scoffed. “I’ve never heard of her. Smugglers are as common as the rats in the landport. No offense.”

“Those who send for her aren’t moving shipments of rare pelts from Batuu to the Core. Ana Tolla drains your bank account to ruin, she holds people hostage, she gets sent in to unravel corporations and crush them.”

Jules grimaced and crossed his arms over his chest. “My point stands. They’d be crazy to try. Ana Tolla, whoever she is, is small-time on Batuu.”

“Then that makes me a nanosecond.”

Jules watched the frustration that brought a pout to her sweet mouth. He shouldn’t be noticing her mouth like that, but there he was. “Is that what you want? To be infamous in the galaxy?”

“I won’t be much of anything in the galaxy if I can’t get a simple delivery done.”

Then the sound they’d heard before—a terrible squawking—returned, this time followed by the flapping of wings. The creature flew through the open door. It ruffled its purple-and-blue wings as it waddled to Izzy and settled in her lap, wrapping its prehensile tail around her arm.

“What’s happening?” she asked, holding up her other arm.

Jules had to compose himself. Had the bird been following them ever since the chaos at the market stall? “Volt told me about these. They sort of latch on to people with a strong bond.”

“No bond,” Izzy said, and tried to lift the creature off her lap, but that only made the loralora bird nestle deeper. “ You’re the one who freed her!”

“What’s her name?” Jules asked.

“I can’t name her,” Izzy said. “We have to set her loose. Or return her to Volt.”

He snapped his fingers. “I know.”

“We are not naming the bird, Jules.”

But as he said the word, the loralora bird flapped her wings and squawked in agreement. “Lucky.”

The last thing Izzy needed was a stowaway. She wanted the loralora bird to bond with someone else. Though the bird liked Jules, she seemed particularly attached to Izzy. Izzy had never been good with pets, mainly because she had never been allowed to have any. In a last-ditch effort, Izzy grabbed the doll she’d found earlier and waved it in front of the purple-and-blue creature. It squawked and pecked at the figurine’s head, but stayed put. A strangled laugh escaped her when the beheaded doll began falling apart at the seams. She remembered Mother Rakab had made it for her after she’d seen Izzy crying with jealousy over Jules’s toy.

If Julen Rakab had shown up weeping on the Garsea doorstep, Ixel Garsea would have let him cry until he got it out of his system, then set him to cleaning spare parts that would be used for fixing the ship.

Among the skills her mother had taught her, wrangling a domesticated animal was not one of them. The loralora bird, aptly named because of the sound it made, went in the speeder with them.