I asked the kiosk for a list of commercial transports that had room for a passenger and might be willing to leave tonight. Just my luck, only one starship was headed anywhere near the Ghost Sector in the next several days: the Red Azalea. It listed its next major stop as a big space hub, Gingko Station, at the edge of the sector. That would work. Once there, I might be able to find out more about the Pale Lightning’s current location.
I checked the Red Azalea’s safety record and reputation. It was a freighter, not a luxury cruiser, but that wasn’t such a bad thing—it would be easier for me to keep a low profile on a freighter. The kiosk indicated that the captain—Captain Hye—was willing to take on “working passengers” and that she could be found at . . . oh. Nari’s. Apparently Captain Hye liked to gamble during her downtime.
Fine. I pulled up a directory of the spaceport and memorized the directions to Nari’s gambling parlor, as well as the Red Azalea’s current berth. Then I took a deep breath to steady myself and headed for the stairs to the upper level.
Even if I hadn’t consulted a map first, finding Nari’s would’ve been easy. As I approached, I heard the clattering of dice and the sounds of shouts and laughter, as well as the faint strains of sinuous music. A surprisingly tasteful statue of a three-tailed fox stood next to the open doorway, one paw upraised as if in greeting. In the lore, fox shifters gained tails as they aged—up to nine, anyway—as a reflection of their power. I once asked Mom why I only had the one tail, and she told me not to be so literal. The statue gave me pause, though. Most people thought foxes were bad luck, so why would a gambling parlor put one up on display?
I stepped over the threshold to find a tall, broad man lurking in the dim light of the foyer. A bouncer, I assumed. As he looked me over, a diminutive woman came up to greet me. She wore a sleeveless dress of fine silk, and I could just make out an elaborate tattoo of a fox and a pine tree covering most of her upper left arm. “Welcome to Nari’s,” she said, smiling as if I were a particularly delicious snack.
I was taken aback for a moment, because normally I wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a gambling parlor. Then I remembered that I looked sixteen in my current disguise.
I embarrassed myself by sneezing all over her. I wasn’t even able to cover my mouth in time. Normally I didn’t sneeze in reaction to my own magic, which meant—
The woman’s smile froze. “You’re . . .”
I stared at her, silently begging her not to say it out loud. If I wasn’t mistaken, she was a fox, too—one I didn’t know. Which made sense, since my mother never would’ve let me near anyone involved with gambling.
“My name is Kim Bora,” I said rapidly. “I’m just here to talk to one of your, um, guests.”
“I see,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing. “Come with me. Quickly, now.”
I followed, somewhat reluctantly, but I needed to find Captain Hye.
The woman led me past tables of gamers rolling dice in cups, and others where people were playing with flower cards that had distinctive red backs. In another room, an audience watched in intent silence as a pair of opponents played janggi. The player with the grumpier face moved a cannon to capture a piece. I couldn’t tell who was winning. I wouldn’t have minded lingering, but the woman shooed me into a cramped back office. My palms began to sweat. Maybe this hadn’t been the brightest idea. What did she want with me?
To calm my nerves, I surveyed the room. Despite its small size, it was crammed with luxuries. One wall displayed a painting of a starship shooting over an ice planet’s horizon, with highlights picked out in luminous gold and silver. The desk was made of real wood, with grain so deep and lustrous I could have lost myself tracing it with my eyes. A small shelf unit even contained books, the old-fashioned kind, heavy with the sooty smell of ink and aging paper. I thought of the rickety dome dwelling I had left behind and wished I could live surrounded by such wealth.
“You have the look of Areum and her sisters,” the woman said without inviting me to sit. She didn’t sit, either.
Oh no. She knew my family.
And she wasn’t done. “But your magic smells most like Seonmi’s.”
This was a wrinkle I hadn’t considered. I’d never realized that someone would recognize the scent of my family’s magic. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, looking the woman squarely in the eye.
She snorted. “Don’t play games with me. You’re that daughter of Seonmi’s, aren’t you?”
A pit opened at the bottom of my stomach. She’d figured out who I was. Was she going to turn me in? Maybe my best move was to run—
The woman shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said with an odd bitterness. “I’m the cousin they never talk about—Nari.”
“I have no idea who you are,” I said with perfect honesty. Still, I couldn’t resist sniffing the air. She did smell a little like my aunts, now that I was paying attention. There wasn’t much physical resemblance—she had an exaggerated prettiness that I’d never seen in Mom or my aunties—but with a fox, that didn’t mean much. Why hadn’t Mom ever told me about her?
“Your mother and aunts and I all grew up together,” the woman said. She pointed toward a chair. “Sit, sit.”
Now I did. “I’m sorry about whatever happened,” I said, wondering what could have gone so wrong.
“Well, you didn’t come here to discuss old history, I’m sure,” Nari said. “So, Min—did I get that right?”
I started. I hadn’t told her my name. She couldn’t be completely out of touch with my family if she knew it.
“You must be . . . how old beneath that Charm of yours?” She sniffed the air, and I wondered what my scent revealed to her. “Not old enough to follow Jun into the Space Forces, or you’d be gone already.”
So she knew about my brother, too. Perhaps Mom still talked to her once in a while, even if they were estranged? I could only imagine that she’d kept Nari a secret from me to protect me from a “bad influence.”
Nari smiled at me, her teeth glinting. I was forcibly reminded that we were both foxes, and foxes were predators. “I’ve been keeping track,” she said, “in case I can ever repay your mother the favor I owe.”
That sounded promising. “Favor?” I asked before I could stop myself.
She gestured toward the doorway and the cards, the dice, the excited chatter of gamblers. “She and I started this business together. After she met your father, though, Seonmi wanted to leave it behind and start a family. She gave me full ownership and wished me well.” Now she sounded resigned rather than bitter.
My eyes prickled, and I blinked away sudden tears. I had asked my aunties about my parents’ past on a few occasions, but they’d always looked so sad that I hadn’t had the heart to persist. And after trying in vain a few times, I’d learned not to ask Mom herself. Never had I imagined, though, that my mother’s background had involved a gambling parlor. I couldn’t envision her in a place like this.
“The rest of the family disapproved of our business, of course,” Nari went on. “They didn’t care how profitable it was. In fact, they considered the money tainted. They cut all ties to me and it took so long to forgive Seonmi that they never really got to know your father before he . . .” She trailed off. “Well, you know how that story ended, and you have the look of someone in a hurry.”
I ground my teeth in frustration. My older relatives, including the ones I had been living with all these years, had once turned their backs on my parents? I was tempted to keep Nari talking so I could learn more, but she wasn’t wrong about my being in a hurry.
“Thank you for telling me the truth, Aunt Nari,” I said, trying out the name. “It was very . . . eye-opening. But right now I’m looking for the captain of the Red Azalea.”
Nari’s expression softened. “Your mother brought you up to be polite, I see.” She smiled. “So, you seek Captain Hye. I have a better idea, though.”
I wasn’t interested in hearing it. I had to keep sight of my mission. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really do need to talk to the captain. Please.” I said please in the same tone I used when I needed to convince Mom I wasn’t up to any tricks.
“Hear me out first,” Nari said. “What’s your rush, anyway?”
I didn’t want to give her any details. It would be too dangerous to tell her what I had done to the investigator. Then again, I had to come up with a plausible reason for running away. So I landed somewhere in between. “Mom thinks I’m a troublemaker,” I said. “She’s threatening to send me to the middle of nowhere until I straighten out. I’d rather go and see the rest of the galaxy. I have to leave before my family catches up to me.”