Марта Уэллс: From a Certain Point of View

Yathros sucked in a breath but acceded to Mizz’s tug on his arm. For several minutes following he kept his eyes on the horizon where the ship had disappeared. When he looked back to his surroundings he noticed a tremble to Mizz’s step.

The Empire was not the only perpetrator of wickedness they encountered. At one junction, they watched three ragged Ugnaughts denied passage aboard a speeder cab in favor of a single Bespin aristocrat. Elsewhere, a mining engineer was selling tickets to a disaster shelter in the sublevels. Yathros stepped forward to object, but Mizz whispered, “Don’t.”

“A proclamation!” Yathros began. His voice was recovering its stentorian authority. “The people still recognize me. In this time of emergency, there will be no profiteering, no selling of safe passage. They will hear and obey!”

“Let it be,” Mizz said. “Please.”

Mizz’s own voice was quiet—the voice of a beggar or a despairing old man. Yathros felt a surge of pity he did not entirely understand, and the haunting sense of an echo whose source he could not recall. He nodded and they moved on.

The farther they went, the more Mizz’s movements became enervated; the more his eyes ceased to be watchful, focusing ahead like a pendulum coming to rest. It seemed his strength flowed into Yathros, who held his chin higher and often looked to his companion. Perhaps, Yathros thought, the atrocities that aroused the ire of a king were too much for a mere Wing Guard.

“We need to make a stop,” Mizz said, as they walked down a residential street. No light shone from doors and windows. “It won’t take long.”

Yathros grunted assent. Three blocks later they turned a corner and Mizz stopped abruptly, nearly toppling forward.

At the end of a short alleyway was a doorway into a two-story apartment barely wider than the alley itself. The metal of the door lay in a crumpled pile kicked to the side; blackened craters and holes indicated it had come under a barrage of blasterfire. From what Yathros could see of the interior, the apartment was a ruin of shattered furniture and smashed glass.

Mizz stumbled forward, disappearing inside. Yathros did not pursue, and heard the sound of ashes crunching and heavy objects tossed aside. Then silence. Then heavy breathing.

Then, for a while, nothing.

Eventually Mizz emerged, touching his fingertips to the alley wall as he found his footing. “All right,” he said, standing before Yathros. He was very nearly steady. “Let’s go.”

Yathros rested a grimy hand on Mizz’s shoulder. “You aren’t surprised,” he said.

“No.”

“You were braced for what you saw,” Yathros said.

“Got a call earlier on the comm,” Mizz said, not looking at Yathros. His voice was barely audible.

“You came for me instead of them?”

“You were closer, is all.”

Yathros considered this awhile, and squeezed Mizz’s shoulder. “What you said before? About me and my—and my royal blood?”

Mizz waited, saying nothing.

“I forgive you for doubting.”

Mizz pressed his palms to his face; wiped his mien clean till no expression remained save a red tinge to his eyes; and they started toward the docks again.

—

Mizz seemed to have aged during the night, and Yathros had been timeworn as long as anyone in Cloud City could remember. But some hours before dawn, upon mounting the marble steps leading to the Caretaker’s Bridge, they came within view of the docks. Both men halted at the zenith and sat to rest.

“End of the road,” Mizz said. “End of Bespin, too. We’ll be out of here soon.” It was the first he’d spoken in some time.

Yathros squinted at his companion as if examining a speck on the man’s forehead. Eventually he smiled thinly and turned to the docks again. “Perhaps it’s not the end at all. Perhaps it’s merely the darkest moment of a triumphant tale—when all is presumed lost, so that victory can be sweeter.”

“Sure,” Mizz said. “Maybe.”

Yathros observed Mizz out of the corner of his eye. The man’s grief, he thought, was familiar enough without requiring great study.

With a grunt, Yathros rose to his feet, steadying himself on Mizz’s shoulder. He leisurely surveyed the city from above; and though he saw the panicked masses and the stormtrooper blockades, the towers glittered no less brightly. The clouds were no less magnificent as they washed like tides against the edges of the platforms, and from afar even the darkened houses looked like royal palaces.

Cloud City had treated him well, he thought, and he had taken responsibility for her and her people. Here he had become something more than himself. Outside he would be reduced in stature, and he would care for Bespin’s citizens no longer.

This was a truth that was not his alone.

“You ready to leave?” Mizz asked.

“Are you leaving with me?” Yathros returned.

“Lando’s orders,” Mizz said. “He wants you safe.”

“But Lando is not king.”

“Yathros—”

“Landonis Calrissian is not king!” Yathros bellowed, much too loudly—for surely the stormtroopers would hear. “The choice is ours, Darbus Mizz. Our fates are ours to choose, not the regent’s.”

“We should go,” Mizz said, shuffling upright.

But Yathros’s grip was steely, and the old man turned Mizz to face him. As Yathros spoke, flecks of spittle dappled Mizz’s face; the king’s eyes were wide but his voice was controlled. “If we leave, we become refugees. If we stay, we stay with the people we have long guarded, as you guarded me this very night—people lacking the money or fortune to escape.

“We could shelter with the Ugnaughts who have been friends to me. We could stand against the stormtroopers, as we’ve done once before. We could remind our people that the Empire will fall, as all tyrannies fall. We could fight evil, Darbus Mizz.”

Mizz smiled ruefully. It was clear he couldn’t escape the appeal of Yathros’s words, no matter his obvious doubt. But he said, “An old vagrant and a security guard can’t do a lot of good here. Not anymore.”

Yathros released a huff of breath and dropped his chin. “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid you’re right. And yet—” His chin snapped back up. His grin was sly, and vanished quickly to be replaced by a more sober expression. “—a mighty king and a deadly assassin trained by the sinister Kouhun order? An assassin once a servant of the treacherous Calrissian, now seeking redemption as a royal agent? They could do a great deal.”

Mizz swallowed, paused, and spoke carefully, as if any wrong word might disrupt the strange energy in the air. “Fantasies are a luxury for peaceful times. In darker days, they can get a person killed.”

“Truth lights the way in darkness, and the story you’ve lived to date goes nowhere worth seeing. Trust in an old king’s wisdom, my friend. Accept a hidden truth—illuminate secret paths—and take the gift I offer you.”

Mizz didn’t answer. After a silence, Yathros shook him briskly. “Admit it! Admit who you are!”

The words spilled from him at last. “Darbus Mizz, Prince of Assassins?”

“I knew it!” Yathros cried joyously. “You knew it. Now we shout it in the face of the world.”

Mizz began to laugh. Yathros grinned again. The laughter was a manic sound, and it soon blended into the sound of sobbing from one or both of them as they recalled griefs recent and ancient. They held each other atop the stairs and looked out to the city, Yathros to the docks and Mizz to the glittering towers, until they began to cough.

A bright streak crossed the sky as a ship jumped to lightspeed. “A promising sign,” Yathros murmured, and he wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve.