Mouths to Feed

They took her on a market day. Little Yone Duri, with her golden-amber skin. Her mother’s lekku curled to tell her to be brave. She clung to her parents’ hands as whips snapped the line forward. The cuffs split them.

The years after were corridors and horrors. Yone learned how to be smaller than a shadow, and how every guard took one extra second before saying no: The second you could sneak past.

When she was in her twenties, a Devaronian named Cikatro Vizago traded the Hutts for weapons and got “excess stock” thrown in. He counted detonators, glanced at the chained bodies, and grumbled about what he hated most: mouths to feed. Yone, wrapped in a flashy strip of synthetic reflective silk some past handler liked to show off, kept to doorframes and watched everyone’s exits.

She attached quickly, the way abandoned hearts do. On the Broken Horn she drifted to two other slaves and learned their names:

Rellik, an elderly Ithorian who could fix anything with a hinge, his twin mouths wheezing in sleep.

Bibbik, a Chadra-Fan kid who called everyone “auntie” or “unc”.

Food began to go missing from Vizago’s personal stores. Once could be an error. Twice, incompetence. Three times, theft. He set a quiet trap with double-logged weights and swapped crates, then waited in the dark.

When a floor panel lifted after lights-out, Yone crept from within his shadow, hands full of ration bricks. Vizago’s snarl was ready.

Yone didn’t run to her own bunk. She ran past, to Rellik’s corner. The Ithorian’s breath rattled like bolts in a can. Yone ripped a nutrient pack with her teeth and pressed it into his leathered hands, then tucked another into Bibbik’s blanket roll. “Hide it where I showed you,” she whispered.

Vizago’s anger turned a corner. “Do you steal because you’re stupid,” he asked softly as he approached, “or because you’re useful?”

“Useful,” she said. Her voice trembled, not with fear, but with a worn-thin defiance. “Hungry people don’t sleep. If they don’t sleep, they panic. If they panic, your crew has trouble. I don’t want trouble. For anyone.”

He huffed. “You’re stealing from me.”

“I’ll steal for you,” she said, and surprised herself with how true it felt.

“Steal stupid and you’re spacing yourself,” he said. “Steal smart and maybe you buy a soft landing. Keep them calm and fed. I’ll point you at a market and look the other way if the weights come up funny. Deal?”

“Deal.”

After that, she was everywhere and nowhere. At docks and bazaars she took enough and no more, shifting one body-width when a crowd’s mood changed. She never ate where eyes could see her. Even when food was free, she palmed it away: crusts in vent grilles, dried fruit hidden in her headwrap’s hem, ration bars under plates. In public, with others, she smiled and talked and did not lift a bite.

Vizago pretended not to see that Rellik stopped wheezing on empty nights, or that Bibbik’s hands stopped shaking when he slept. Fewer crises meant better margins. “Stop hoarding in my quarters,” he muttered once, stepping over a decoy stash near his door. “If you’re going to steal, do it right.”

She flushed. “Yes, sir.”

They docked at Coruscant, a simple offloading at a sketchy level of the city. Vizago let her take to the streets. When she scoped out the area, she saw the woman. Lavender-skinned, stance quiet as a held breath. Yone felt something in her ribs loosen, a knot learned long ago easing. She followed that reflection of refuge all the way back to the ship.

She couldn’t sit still. She had mapped the Broken Horn. She moved caches, told Bibbik which vents to use, Rellik’s breath quieted as they made hushed plans. Vizago watched from afar, amused and relieved. Fewer mouths, fewer problems. He didn’t say it aloud, but when the time came he didn’t block the door.

She slid past Vizago’s office behind a vent grid. He looked up, one brow saying I warned you. She lifted her chin: I listened. He flicked two fingers in an irritable shoo that, in another language entirely, meant go on, then.

They spilled into the city. Yone ran the route she had seen the woman take. In front of her was a door to freedom, and all she had to do was pick the lock.