CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Day
Guests and crew alike raised their drinks.
In his dark blue tour uniform, the gold tassels on his epaulets glinting in the low lights, Dad looked regal and welcoming. He’d braided his dark beard and finished it at the bottom with a golden stud, his hair smoothed away from his face. He looked ever more like the mythological captain of theStarfarer. Hewasa storyteller, after all.
Selling the story was half the job.
“Welcome, honored friends, to theStarfarer! Some of you I recognize from voyages we’ve taken before. Thank you for trusting us enough to return for another trip. Nossen Vellur, how’s Corellia this time of year?” he asked a family of Sullustans, all wearing matching long-sleeve yellow jumpsuits, and Nossen replied with a wobble of his hand.
Dad barked a laugh. “I hear you! Weather’s alwaysgonna make things hard.” Then he turned to a tall wolfish woman. “Yurd, how are your pups?”
To which the Farghul replied, “Perfect, now that I’m away!”
Dad toasted to that. I was never not amazed by his attention to people. He remembered every guest who came through his ship and kept their names with care.
Val was wrong. He wasn’t cruel. He didn’t trap me here. He didn’t lord over me.
Dad was just doing his best, because the galaxy was dangerous, and there were very rarely second chances.
“But I also see a lot of new faces in the crowd,” Dad added, motioning to a large majority of the guests, “and it’s a pleasure to have you on board. Here on theStarfarerwe have a tradition. On the first night of every voyage, we raise a toast to all the people who came before us, to help us preserve our past. The good, we celebrate! The bad, we remember so we may never repeat it again. We lose our rights and ourselves when those in power choose to omit or change a narrative, hoping that those of us who lived it will forget. Because of this, we have a saying inscribed in this very chamber, and I would like to toast to it tonight.” He turned and raised his drink to the inscription above the doorway into the main corridor, and the rest of the guests echoed his movement.
I raised my drink. Beside me Val patiently ran histhumb around the lip of his empty glass, not bothering to partake. A flicker of anger bloomed in my chest.
“ ‘As long as stories persist,’ ” the captain of theStarfarersaid, and the crowd echoed the words like a hymn.
“ ‘As long as stories persist…’ ”
“ ‘So do we who champion them,’ ” Dad finished.
The crowd repeated,“ ‘So do we who champion them.’ ”
Everyone drank. We cheered.
Dad polished off his entire flute in one gulp and raised the empty glass into the light. “This is where I tell you to enjoy the night,” he went on, “to dance so hard your feet are sore in the morning—and trust me, you’ll do that! But if I may have another moment of your time…”
The crowd shifted into silence again, curious. At one of the tables, Maz adjusted her goggles, blinking with those wide, all-seeing eyes of hers. She watched my dad with rapt attention.
I felt dread brewing in my stomach.
Does he know about Sian?I wondered. Was I found out?
“Today I’ve realized just how thankful I am. Not only is it my daughter’s eighteenth birthday, but my only son has come home to help us celebrate it. To Ardent Quay,” he said, raising his glass in a toast. Wait—what? “May this ship always be your guiding star!”
I froze where I stood. My mouth dropped open.Thatwas why Val was here? For my eighteenth? The shock of it—I’d been worried all evening that he was here for some nefarious purpose, but as it turned out, he was just here for…me?
Val elbowed me gently in the side and mouthed,You forgot?
He looked as appalled as I felt. A blush cascaded across my cheeks.
To be fair, my birthday wasn’t the kind of day I liked remembering all that much. If your fondest memory of your birthday was the hours before your mother died trying to get home to you, I would argue that you wouldn’t want to remember it, either.
“To Ardent!” everyone cheered, their drinks high. The colorful lights reflected off of the beautiful glasses, sending sparks chasing across the ceiling.
Daaric sidled up to me, having replaced his dark eye patch with a glittery one for the occasion, and said, “Did you think weforgot? It’s your eighteenth! A big one!”
I tried to rein in my expression. “Then will you let me try some of your Corellian whiskey?”