“Kindly do not lecture me on my own family’s policies,” Thurfian said stiffly. “And that’s only if they succeed. If they don’t, they lose even merit adoptive status.”
“I’m aware of that,” Thalias said. There was a slight tremor in her voice, but her jaw was firmly set. “But you were going to throw me out of the family anyway.” She lifted the questis again. “I’ve petitioned the Office of the Patriarch, and the petition’s been accepted.”
“Fine,” Thurfian said between clenched teeth. Curse this woman, anyway. “I’ll give you the instructions on how to get to the homestead—”
“The Patriarch’s Office has requested that you accompany me.”
Thurfian hissed out a curse. The final spiral to his plans. She’d outmaneuvered him completely.
She…or Thrawn.
Could he have anticipated this confrontation? Certainly Thalias couldn’t have come up with such a dangerous scheme on her own. And if it was Thrawn, how had he persuaded her to risk her entire future with the Mitth for him?
Just one more reason this man needed to be taken down.
“Of course,” he said, standing up. “I wouldn’t miss it for all the riches in the Ascendancy.”
* * *
—
Che’ri had never been good at reading adult faces. But even so, she had no trouble seeing that Thrawn was surprised and concerned as he put away his questis. “Is something wrong?” she asked anxiously.
He hesitated a moment before answering. “It appears Caregiver Thalias won’t be joining us,” he said.
“Oh,” Che’ri said, looking past him at the little ship he’d brought them to. The last of the crates of supplies were just being taken aboard by the dockworkers, and he’d said they’d be leaving as soon as Thalias arrived.
Only now they weren’t? “So what are we doing?”
Thrawn turned to gaze at the ship. “This mission is vitally important, Che’ri,” he said quietly. “Thalias didn’t say much—I gather she wasn’t free to talk openly—but it was clear she would be occupied for at least the next few days.”
“So we’re not going?” Che’ri asked, still struggling to read his expression.
“That depends on you.” He turned to look at her. “Are you willing to go with me, just the two of us, into the depths of the Chaos?”
For a moment Che’ri’s mouth and tongue and brain seemed frozen. A sky-walker never went anywhere without a shipful of people around her. That was the first rule and promise she’d been given when she first began her training. Girls like her were too rare to risk to anything less than a full warship or diplomatic cruiser. What Thrawn was asking was never done. Ever.
But he’d said it was important. Could it be important enough to break all the regular rules? “Can we do that?” she asked hesitantly.
He shrugged, a small smile touching his lips. “Physically and tactically, of course,” he said. “I can fly, you can navigate, and the ship itself is well enough armed to get us out of any trouble we’re likely to find ourselves in.”
“I meant are we going to get in trouble.”
“You, no,” he said. “Sky-walkers are effectively untouchable by any punishment. You might get a scolding, but that would be all.” He paused. “If it makes a difference, Thalias didn’t suggest that we wait for her, or that we abandon the mission completely.”
“If I don’t go, what happens?”
“Then I abandon the mission,” Thrawn said. “What would take days under the control of a sky-walker would require weeks or months of jump-by-jump travel. I can’t afford months.” His lips compressed. “Neither, I fear, can the Ascendancy.”
This game, at least, Che’ri knew way too well. An adult would make vague threats or vaguer promises, with big stuff happening either way if she didn’t run for the extra hour or skip one of her rest days or do whatever it was they wanted.
But as she gazed at Thrawn’s face, she had the eerie sense that he wasn’t playing the game. In fact, she wasn’t sure he even knew how to play it.
And if Thalias really was expecting her to go…
“Okay,” she said. “Can you—? Never mind.”
“What?”
“I just wondered if you could get me some more colored graph markers, that’s all,” Che’ri said, feeling her face warming with embarrassment. Of all the stupid things to ask for—
“As a matter of fact,” Thrawn said, “there are two new boxes already aboard. And four binders of art sheets to draw on.”
Che’ri blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I’m—thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Thrawn gestured toward the ship. “Shall we go?”
* * *
—
“You’re troubled,” Thrawn said into the silence of the scout ship’s bridge.
Che’ri didn’t answer, her eyes focused on the brilliant stars blazing through the canopy, her mind churning with the sheer wrongness of this.
Sky-walkers didn’t fly alone. Ever. She’d always had a momish along, someone to take care of her and make her meals and comfort her when she woke from a nightmare. Always.
Thalias wasn’t here. Che’ri had hoped she would rush in at the last moment and demand that Thrawn take her with them.
But the hatch had been sealed, and the controller had given permission to launch, and Thrawn had taken them out of the cold blue of Csilla’s atmosphere into the colder black of space.
Just the two of them. No officers. No warriors.
No momish.
Che’ri hadn’t always gotten along with her caregivers. Some of them she’d really, really disliked. Now she was wishing even one of the rotten ones was here.
“They’ve never understood you, have they?” Thrawn said into her silence.
Che’ri made a face. Like he would know anything about that.
“You want more than what you’ve been given,” he continued. “You don’t know what you’ll do when you’re no longer a sky-walker, and it troubles you.”
“I know what happens,” Che’ri scoffed. “They told me. I get adopted by a family.”
“That’s what you’ll be,” Thrawn said. “That’s not what you’ll do. You’d like to fly, wouldn’t you?”