Convergence, the latest book in The High Republic Phase 2 by author Zoraida Cordova lands 22nd November and IGN bring this excerpt from the novel as we meet one of the ‘heroes’ of this early High Republic era, Axel Greylark.
Chapter Five
LEVEL 2623, CORUSCANT
If there was one certainty in Axel Greylark’s life, it was that he could always bet on himself. Quite literally. Deep in the back room of Raik’s Parlor, Axel was one of five players hunched over a roulette wheel that the eponymous proprietor of the gambling den had created as a true game of chance. Illuminated by a low-hanging lamp, the chrome-and-gold pit spun, and each player tossed their cues into the fray. Axel kept his eyes trained on the shimmering carapace of his cue. He’d chosen the violet-and-emerald one because they were his family’s colors, and since he was gambling with his family fortune, the correlation seemed apt.
As the spinning slowed and each tiny sphere rattled into one of the forty slots, several players threw up their hands in disgust and disappointment. Axel squeezed his trembling knee as his cue teetered on the rusty line between two divots. He’d bet his last stack of credits, plus the chit Raik herself had backed him, on account of him being such a good regular and all.
The cue finally tumbled into the golden jackpot.
Axel blinked sleep-deprived eyes.
He’d won.
He’d finally won and it had only taken—Axel glanced at his chrono. Damn it all to hell, had he really been here for ten hours?
One losing player smacked the lamp overhead, causing it to swing and strike the dealer. Two hulking enforcers removed the poor loser, leaving those accusing Raik of fixing the games utterly silent. Axel eased back into his seat. His fingers had come away sticky from the armrest. He didn’t want to know what the secretion was, but he was certain it hadn’t come from him.
Axel’s droid, QN-1, nudged his pant leg below the table. Quin beeped something that sounded like disapproval of Axel’s choices, then opened the triangular panel on its chest. It offered up a small silver flask, which Axel accepted with a gracious smile. He unscrewed the top and took a quick nip. Smoky whiskey burned pleasantly all the way down as he care-fully watched the patrons of the gambling hall thin out. Some headed to find better fortunes in the rat-infested dens lining the pleasure district. Others might clean up and head to the upper levels for the start of the workday. Axel gave no sign of moving, and neither did the Mirialan woman or a tipsy Rodian who tapped a credit on the lip of the table.
“What?” the Mirialan woman sitting beside him all night asked. He’d rather liked the black diamond marks on her cheeks, and she’d rather liked taking his credits. Until now. “The cheap stuff’s not good enough for you?”
The Rodian chortled, and Axel drank again, a drop landing on his thousand-thread-count shimmersilk tunic.
“How do you know this isn’t the cheap stuff?” he asked.
“Don’t mind him.” Raik spoke in her scratchy, whistling voice. “Coruscant’s little prince don’t trust no one to pour him a drink, isn’t that right?”
Raik was an Utai with a wrinkled, pinched mouth that gave her the appearance of sucking on a sourdrop. Her bulbous, protruding eyes were affixed on Axel as she slipped between the roulette and sabacc tables. She relieved the dealer and plunked into his seat. A pink drink appeared at her side from the many-armed bartender.
“Raik, darling, I mean no offense,” Axel said, taking another sip of the Chandrilan whiskey, a gift from the senator’s daughter on his last visit. “But this was a very good year.”
And it was true. That batch was a thousand credits a bottle. A tragic shipping accident had made it the rarest batch in the galaxy, with only three hundred bottles left in existence. But what Axel Greylark wasn’t saying was that he’d seen far too many people poisoned in his day to trust a drink from a dank hole in the wall in the steaming bowels of the city, even one as—nice—as Raik’s Parlor.
“Why would I poison you, my best, most handsomest customer?” Raik asked. The ring of her mouth took on the drink’s pink tinge. “Besides, you owe me too much money. If anyone wants you dead, it’s that heiress. What’s her name?”
The Mirialan snapped her fingers. “Lady Lulu Faradaisy? Some-thing ridiculous like that.”
Quin bleeped what might pass for a chortle among droids. Axel shoved the flask back into its chest compartment.
“Lady Lu-reen Faraday,” he corrected. Even going down as far as the entrails of Coruscant wasn’t enough to get away from the gossip of his very public split from the Chandrilan heiress of Faraday Spirits, now shipping all over the galaxy. The only reason he remembered the Faraday family business’s slogan was because it was the first thing Lu-reen had said to introduce herself, followed by her father’s title of senator. “And don’t believe everything you watch in the holos.”
Raik reset the roulette table and re- racked the selection of cues. “So you didn’t break up with her by standing her up at the spaceport?”
“No, that’s right,” he admitted. “There’s just more to the story.” Axel bit down on his back teeth and frowned at his warped reflection on the side of the lamp. The yellow overhead light made his complexion sallow, and emphasized dark circles that hadn’t been there three days before. His dark hair was rumpled, and his eyes were bleary, but he had looked worse.
We’ll be catching up with Zoraida soon on a forthcoming special episode of Canon Fodder, so be sure to check back for that over the next few days.
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