Марта Уэллс - From a Certain Point of View

“You’re about to be dead,” the stormtrooper said.

Yathros’s sight cleared enough to reveal the black moon of the muzzle pointed toward him. Terror buoyed him like drink and helped his words flow. “Your kind took everything from me once before. There’s little you can do today.”

Vision blurred again, mixing with memory. He saw the muzzle of the weapon; the white figures aboard his ship, Life’s Little Rewards; bloody hands; an empty cargo bay. Later an empty purse; an empty house. The boy gone.

Yathros preferred not to think of these things, and he nudged the recollections forward through time to when he’d found the ring, found the ticket to Cloud City. Found the picture of the crown on his head as a child, found the books his father had read to him. Found his greatness and was reborn! Those were memories worth keeping.

Now someone was stealing all he possessed again, but it wasn’t the stormtroopers who were wholly to blame.

“Calrissian,” he murmured. “Fate will not repay your acts kindly.”

He expected to hear a blaster shot. Instead the sneering man said, “You know Calrissian?”

Yathros arched his brow. “Know him? Indeed, I know him. I made him what he is, and I—”

A king must be cunning: This, Yathros had learned long ago, when he’d first arrived on Bespin with fifty-four credits to his name. (That was before he’d begun minting his own money—bless Or’toona Fleenk and her printing press!) He recognized the mixture of disdain and greed in the crisply dressed officer above him and saw an ally, if not a friend. Or perhaps a tool to avenge treachery.

“—I can find him,” Yathros spat. “For he struck one too many bargains with your kind, didn’t he? He thought he could trade my trust for Imperial favor—never realizing the Empire only takes, and does not trade. Now he flees us both, and as much as I loathe your Empire, it is Calrissian who betrayed me today. I can find him, and he will be yours.”

“Is that so?” The officer attempted to sound dubious for the benefit of his minions, but Yathros knew he’d piqued the fool’s interest. The man turned to the stormtroopers. “Pick him up.” Then, to Yathros: “Talk, you.”

Gloved hands launched Yathros upright. “He keeps a yacht at a secret dock,” Yathros said, swaying in the troopers’ hands. “I know exactly where it is! We dined there once when I took him as my apprentice, and it was where Queen Zeechay granted me the blessings of the Angels of Iego. Come quickly, before Calrissian—”

“Never mind,” the officer snapped. “He’s delusional. Shoot him.”

The troopers tossed Yathros away as if he’d suddenly produced a terrible stench. He managed not to fall, but he didn’t have time to wonder whether death was at hand before the world flashed red and filled first with the sound of energy blasts, then the sound of screams. He clapped hands to his ears and turned away, squeezing his eyes shut and stumbling along the tunnel. He didn’t know what was happening, but none of it surprised him—violence was the way of the Empire, and this was violence incarnate.

Callused, ungloved fingers smelling of soap and perfume ripped his hands from his ears. “Yathros!”

Darbus Mizz, Wing Guard and henchman to Baron Administrator Calrissian, stood among the bodies of the stormtroopers. He dangled his blaster in one hand. “Yathros,” he said again. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Yathros snarled and stumbled back. “Kouhun! Assassin! Blackguard!”

“What?”

“Calrissian sent you to silence me, eh? Before I could betray his hiding place, as he betrayed me. ”

Mizz stared, clearly astonished that Yathros had recognized the situation for what it was. From one peril to another, Yathros thought, as Mizz gripped Yathros by the wrist and pulled him into the turbolift car.

“Not going to shoot me?” Yathros asked. The lift hummed and his knees wobbled. Mizz kept his blaster out, his eyes on the door. “Don’t tell me Calrissian blames me for all this. He plan to toss me in a dungeon? Punish me for predicting his downfall? Or perhaps—”

The lift door opened, and Mizz yanked him onto a broad platform open to the sky. The trees of the arboretum peeked over distant walls, and a trickle of refugees snaked among parked speeders.

“—or perhaps he needs me, eh? Is that it?”

Mizz growled and pushed Yathros forward with his palm, applying steady pressure between Yathros’s shoulders. Laser blasts flickered in the sky like some obscene auroral display. “Calrissian gave us a way out of here,” Mizz said. “You need to take it.”

Yathros snorted. Ire energized him despite the fatigue in his muscles and the bruises on his skin. “He remembers my tales of the hidden treasures of the Nothoiin Noble Court? Hopes to start a new life? Tell him that noble wealth is not for him!”

In the shadow of a hotel balcony, Mizz halted. “Enough, Yathros. Lando Calrissian sent me—”

“I know!”

“—because he likes you. He’s always liked you. It’s the only reason he put up with you all these years.” Mizz’s voice was rough and watery. Yathros let out a bark of a laugh, but the Wing Guard continued, “Anyone else would’ve had you arrested when you accosted casino patrons or issued proclamations on the street, but Lando thought you were charming. He didn’t pity you or laugh at you—he invited you to dinner more than once. When the Empire arrived he knew you’d get yourself killed, so he sent me.”

“Lies,” Yathros retorted, and spat a pink wad of phlegm onto the ground. “If you believe that—”

“Enough!” It was a roar, and Mizz was trembling now; he glanced about to see if anyone had heard. Then his shoulders slumped as he turned back to Yathros. “You’re not a king. Lando’s not a regent. I’m a badly paid grunt, not an assassin. But we’re all in trouble, and your fantasies are making things worse. Put them aside or we’re dead.”

They stared at each other awhile. Mizz was the first to break off, looking back to the road and releasing a hiss of breath.

He marched away. Yathros didn’t follow at first, but when Mizz returned and tugged him forward he did not resist.

—

It was a long way to the docks, and their route was twisted and tortuous. The Empire had shut down the shuttles first, then the trams; now most of the throughways were blockaded, and Yathros and Mizz were often forced to retrace their steps and seek alternative paths.

They didn’t speak. Yathros barely appeared to think, staring ahead into the middle distance, occasionally tripping over his feet and catching himself before Mizz could assist. Now and again frustration flashed into his expression only to vanish instantaneously, like drops of water bursting into steam. Mizz, meanwhile, moved with the jerky half-attention of a man too fixated on the outside world for grace. One hand stayed forever on his blaster while his eyes flickered to and fro.

Whatever outrages played through Yathros’s mind could be no more vile than the horrors the pair witnessed. Stormtroopers rounded up Cloud City residents like cattle. Shimmersilk duffels and portable safes full of valuables were “confiscated” by officers leering with greed. Yathros and Mizz heard a sharp crack upon crossing a bridge and both looked up to see a transport in flames, dipping as its engines failed and toppling into the clouds. For minutes afterward, the smoke they breathed tasted unholy.

When the bridge was behind them, Yathros stopped short and tugged at Mizz. “The air whales,” he murmured. “The survivors will fall for many minutes. If we could but summon the air whales—”

“Not another word,” Mizz snapped. He sounded more exasperated than angry. “They’re dead, and we have too far to go.”