Queen's Hope Read online

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  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

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  1200 Grand Central Avenue, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-368-07809-2

  Design by Leigh Zieske

  Cover illustration by Tara Phillips

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To all of the queens who are fighting alone:

  Baby, you’re not dancing on your own.

  Once there was a girl who had nothing, and she was not content.

  Hers was a hard world, and bleak. She grew up surrounded by dust and dereliction and was always hungry because there was never enough to eat. She sweated uncomfortably as she worked under the desert suns and froze in the night when the heat evaporated. Her family was gone, and there was no one to comfort her from the time she was small.

  But the girl did have something, a belief that no one could take from her. She had faith in the inherent goodness of the galaxy and the forces that made it work. Though no one cared about her feelings or her future, she cared about the people around her, and she showed them in small ways. She didn’t know it, but that made her special. Another person might have turned under the same pressure and known only hate. She was forever generous, forever offering help to those who needed it, because she couldn’t keep her spirit contained.

  As she grew older, she learned more of how the galaxy was supposed to work. The Jedi and their crusade to maintain balance. The Republic and its laws that couldn’t protect her. What she got instead was one criminal after another, those who used their power to serve themselves only. Another girl might have given up, resigned to her fate and made bitter by it. She knew many who had, and she didn’t blame them. They did what they needed to do to survive. But there was something in her that always turned away from darkness, no matter how tempting it was.

  The girl got older. The desert lined her face before its time and cracked the skin of her hands. She worked endlessly, even tinkering with projects on her own time to fend off the loneliness. She could sell her work, though she would never have enough money to buy her freedom. No one noticed her, at least no one on Tatooine.

  It wasn’t something she heard, not exactly. It was a call, but it was the sort of call you feel. Somewhere, out in the galaxy, something was waiting for her. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t have a lot of time to try to figure it out, but when she dreamed, she heard a song and she felt less alone.

  The song promised her something that, for a time at least, would be only hers. There would be no ownership, no pressured obligation. Only love and connection and the sense of a home. The girl didn’t feel manipulated, even though the power that sang to her was beyond her perception.

  The girl knew that nothing was permanent. Even the scars on her back could be properly healed if anyone cared enough about her to do it. She was being offered a chance for joy, a chance to belong to someone because she chose to, not because she was stolen. A chance to have someone who would look up at her and feel love. Something worth fighting for.

  Shmi Skywalker held out her hands to the stars and said: “Yes.”

  For one of the very few times in her life, Padmé Amidala had no idea what to do. She kept secrets all the time, but this one was different. Usually, the girls she shared her secrets with also helped her keep them. They weren’t just her confidants; they held her web of secrets together. And this time she was alone.

  A faint whirring from the corner of the room reminded her this was not entirely true. There were other beings who would keep this secret with her, though not very many. The only problem was that none of them could help her right now. At least, she was pretty sure. It never hurt to ask.

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about dressmaking?” she asked the little blue R2 unit.

  He turned his dome back and forth, mimicking a humanoid shaking their head, and beeped perhaps more sorrowfully than the situation really called for. Padmé thanked him anyway. There was no reason to be rude.

  She returned to the contemplation of the fabric in her lap. There wasn’t enough for a whole new dress, but she hadn’t been expecting that. The cloth had been in her family for several generations, each person given a piece of it to incorporate into their wedding clothes. Her sister, who had chosen not to marry, had used her portion to make clothes for her daughters, showing that she welcomed new additions to the family.

  It hurt, a little bit, to be doing this alone. Anakin didn’t understand, but she couldn’t really expect him to. He understood family, of course, and wanting to maintain a tradition. It was clothing he was a bit less familiar with. She appreciated that his compassion led him to give her time and space to work on a solution, though. They were in a bit of a hurry.

  R2-D2 chirruped again, and when he had her attention, he projected a holographic image between them. It was familiar art, one of the windows from Theed palace that had been replaced after the Battle of Naboo. This one featured her, when she was queen, surrounded by orange-cloaked handmaidens. The droid’s suggestion was clear.

  “I can’t, Artoo,” Padmé told him. It caused her nearly physical pain to say it. “What we’re doing has to be a secret. I can’t bring them into this.”

  The projection changed to a holonet image taken during the victory celebrations ten years ago. Queen Amidala stood in white next to the Gungan leader, Boss Nass, surrounded by members of her court. R2-D2 zoomed in on one handmaiden in particular and beeped encouragingly.

  “I don’t know, Artoo,” Padmé said. “It doesn’t seem fair to ask for help and not give any details.”

  The droid made a sound that somehow managed to replicate a shrug, and the image disappeared.

  Padmé considered his suggestion. She wasn’t asking for help as queen or senator this time. That would have been normal and easy. She was asking for help as Padmé, and somehow that made everything messy and complicated. She thought she knew where the boundaries were, but she rarely tested them. She wasn’t very good at asking the girls to help her as a friend. They’d spent too much time at work.

  But they were friends. What she shared with her handmaidens, current and former, was a friendship so deep that it included large parts of her heart. She mourned for Cordé and Versé, even as she rejoiced at the successes the others had found beyond her sphere of influence. Surely she, Padmé, could ask for this.

  Decision made, she gathered the fabric so as not to trip on it, stood up, and made her way over to the communications console.

 
Saché had called her several hours ago, saying she would not be home at a reasonable hour and not to wait up for her. This was, Yané mused, for the best. Their bed was full of sleeping children. A mudslide in one of the eastern regions of Naboo’s secondary continent had taken out most of a village four days ago. The only survivors were eight children who had been in a school transport at the time of the disaster. While Saché and the other government representatives worked to stabilize the slide and calculate the full extent of the damages, Yané had opened their house to the children.

  Four of them had since been taken in by other family members, but the remaining four, all cousins, seemed to have lost everyone. Yané was doing her best to make them feel safe and welcome, but she knew that trauma was not so easily dealt with. If they wanted to sleep in a pile on the bed she shared with Saché, they were welcome to it. It was plenty big enough.

  As she often did when she had a moment to herself, Yané went to her loom. She didn’t have a lot of time to make cloth these days, though she still made most of the children’s clothing, as well as her own and Saché’s. It was always nice to get back to the very beginning of her art form, so she almost decided to ignore the communications console when it chimed for her attention, before common sense reasserted itself. When she saw who was calling, she quivered with excitement.

  “Senator!” she said as Padmé appeared in front of her. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  She knew Padmé was on Naboo, of course. She had arrived after the Geonosis incident and had gone directly to the lake house with a request that she was not to be disturbed. Saché reported that war was spreading, and Naboo was almost certainly going to be involved, but details were few and far between. Still, Yané was pleased to see Padmé.

  “Hello, Yané,” Padmé said. “I’m sorry to call so late. I hoped you would be available.”

  “Your timing is perfect,” Yané told her. “Saché’s still at work, dealing with the mudslide disaster, and all the survivors are asleep in our bed. I’m completely at your disposal.”

  “Oh,” said Padmé. “I’m so sorry. I’d forgotten about the mudslide. Do you have everything you need for additional children? You must be so busy.”

  “You have plenty of other things to worry about,” Yané said. “And so do I, to be perfectly honest, but at the moment, I could use a distraction. What did you want to talk about?”

  Padmé hesitated, and in that moment, Yané knew it was a personal favor. If it were work-related, she would have simply stated her reason for calling.

  “I would like your advice about a dress,” Padmé said finally.

  Yané recognized the cloth immediately, or rather, its function if not its particular form. This was going to be a wedding dress. For Padmé. Seemingly out of nowhere, but now that the senator spent so much of her time offworld, it was hardly surprising that she did things Yané was unaware of.

  It still hurt, though. Yané let a bit of it show in her face and saw Padmé recognize it for what it was. They didn’t need words. This was enough.

  “You should use it as your veil,” Yané said, getting down to business now that they had cleared the air between them. “A few years ago, the style was to incorporate the fabric into the train or the sash, but I think a veil will be more of a statement piece for you.”

  Yané’s wedding fabric had been incorporated into both the train and the sash, since she used her own fabric and Saché’s in the design. Saché’s outfit had been the mirror of hers, with wide-legged trousers in place of the skirt to suit her personal taste. That had been almost two years ago.

  “That makes sense,” Padmé said. “I can handle that much sewing here. Do you have a suggestion for the dress itself?”

  Yané looked closely at the cloth in Padmé’s hands and then across the floor to where her loom stood. Padmé deserved more than a dress she could cobble together from whatever pieces she had with her. She deserved something made by the hands of a friend. If Yané got out the mechanized ones and drank a whole pot of caf, she could do it. Saché wasn’t coming home tonight anyway.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  Padmé’s whole face transformed when she smiled. It wasn’t the smile of the queen or the senator, but the personal one that Yané saw only infrequently and treasured every time. Whatever Padmé was up to, she was happy, and Yané couldn’t deny that Padmé’s happiness was one of her very favorite things. That made everything worth it, even the secrets kept as Padmé drifted away from them.

  “Thank you,” Padmé said. “Thank you so much.”

  They didn’t linger on the channel, even though they both had many things they would have loved to talk about. They had work to do.

  Padmé found the sewing bot exactly where she’d hoped to, in one of the workrooms the lake house boasted. It was a house for artists, as most houses in the area were, but this one was specifically set up for the talents of the girls she’d brought here over the years. The lights in the workroom were soft and well-angled, and Padmé immediately got to work.

  She wondered briefly what Anakin was up to. She wouldn’t see him again until tomorrow afternoon, though he was the only other human in the house. He could sense her, she knew, and he probably felt her excitement and her concerns. She hoped he understood that her feelings were normal. Not everyone had Jedi training in controlling the emotions they projected. He was probably meditating or working on C-3PO, who still needed to be cleaned before his final plating could be finished. The droid had been on Tatooine, and then Geonosis. His joints were probably full of sand.

  The needle flashed as she worked, finishing the edges and modifying the pleats in the veil. It was quiet, and that was strange. Even if no one was talking, the rooms she worked in were always full of people. She was usually surrounded.

  The pain of Sabé’s absence lanced through her suddenly and with no warning. She missed all of the girls, of course, but Sabé she missed the most. She wasn’t even entirely sure where her friend had gone. They hadn’t talked about it, what with Padmé running all over the Outer Rim and then the war beginning. There hadn’t been time. Sabé had run a variety of offworld missions for Senator Amidala since she’d gone to Coruscant, but Padmé had always given her the time she needed to follow her own interests. Trafficking led to the dark corners of the Republic, and Sabé couldn’t always send word. Now, even though this wedding was a secret that must be kept from the galaxy at large, Padmé missed her.

  Padmé pushed down the guilt and sadness she was feeling and focused on the good things. She was safe. The Battle of Geonosis had been won, even if the cost had been high. Anakin Skywalker loved her.

  And tomorrow she was getting married.

  This time it was going to be different. Sabé had decided that years ago, when their first operation on Tatooine had gone sideways. Since then, she hadn’t returned to the planet, but she had worked on building up a contact list and identities for both her and Captain Tonra that would allow them to go back and try to liberate people again. Both of them were technically still in the employ of the Naboo senator, but their long-term assignment had not changed. Lacking other orders, Sabé had decided it was time.

  Most people in the Outer Rim didn’t really care about the escalating Separatist conflict within the Republic. It didn’t affect their day-to-day lives, and it didn’t involve their governments. They had much more immediate concerns. For those who profited off of pain and suffering, however—the crime lords and the traffickers—any war was an opportunity for more business. Sabé was here to do whatever she could to stop it.

  “They’re calling it the Clone War,” said Tonra, in the copilot’s chair.

  They’d spent more time away from each other than together over the past six years. She’d been building her network, and he’d been working much more closely with Typho and Mariek Panaka, protecting the senator. When they did meet up, it was usually for a specific operation that Padmé was running, or because Sabé needed backup. His voice was as reass
uring as ever, though, and his presence as solid. Sabé had a lot of doubts about a lot of things these days, but Tonra was never one of them.

  “Creative,” Sabé said.

  “They have to call it something,” Tonra said. “Or else how would they sell news holos about it?”

  “Two manufactured armies,” said Sabé. She shook her head. “I don’t like it. Our side has souls. We can’t just throw them at mass-produced machines.”

  “There’s significant debate about that,” Tonra said. She glared at him, and he held up a hand defensively. “But I agree with you.”

  Sabé looked at the ship’s chronometer. She was still in her bright, fancy-looking clothes and needed to change before they arrived. She looked just fine for a day spent as a high-level aide in the hallowed halls of the Republic Senate or for engaging in important trade negotiations in the Core, but that wasn’t who she was anymore. She flipped control of the ship to Tonra’s station and made her way to the back compartment.

  Technically, a person of her claimed social standing wouldn’t have her own craft. They should be taking a public shuttle to Tatooine, if everything was going to be perfect. But Sabé was reluctant to give up the freedom and flexibility that a private ship allowed her, so she had managed to squeeze it into their cover.

  Sabon and Arton Dakellen were middling successful traders, specializing in short-haul trips for specific higher-value and low-volume goods. With the onset of the war, they had sold their stake in trading and found land-based jobs that would be more stable during the conflict. Since Sabon owned the ship outright, she got to keep it. The pair were moving to Tatooine, where Sabon would run logistics for a water export company and Arton would maintain the supply chain for one of the local cantinas. Their ship would be generally available for hire, and though it was not to be their primary source of income, it would explain any absences from the planet.

  Last time they had come to Tatooine, they had simply shown up. They had asked too many questions. This time, they would be members of the community. It would take longer, and they wouldn’t be able to help as directly, but Sabé knew in her heart it was a better plan.