Read an Excerpt From Stars, Hide Your Fires

A wanted thief. A murdered emperor. A killer loose on the station.

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Stars, Hide Your Fires, a brand new YA space mystery by Jessica Mary Best—publishing with Quirk Books on July 11.

As an expert thief from a minor moon, Cass knows a good mark when she sees one. The emperor’s ball is her chance to steal a fortune for herself, her ailing father, and her scrappy crew of thieves and market vendors.

Her plan is simple:

1. Hitch a ride to the planet of Ouris, the dazzling heart of the empire.
2. Sneak onto the imperial palace station to attend the emperor’s ball.
3. Steal from the rich, the royal, and the insufferable.

But on the station, things quickly go awry. When the emperor is found dead, everyone in the palace is a suspect—and someone is setting Cass up to take the fall. To clear her name, Cass must work with an unlikely ally: a gorgeous and mysterious rebel with her own reasons for being on the station. Together, they unravel a secret that could change the fate of the empire.

Ouris is—there’s no other word for it—splendid. Ships blur back and forth in distinct layers: zippy little personal ships at the top, bulkier transports in the middle, and floating platforms below. Neatly uniformed attendants in their polished flyboots weave through the ground traffic, wing insignias flashing as they glide past.

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Stars, Hide Your Fires

Everyone’s hurrying like they’re running from a sandstorm. Some rush into glittering buildings that stretch as high as clouds in the sky, while others race to catch a transport. A few people throw me looks of vague distaste. Of course, now that I’m here, I can see that whatever references Mita had to work from, they weren’t exactly the latest fashion. Compared to their sleek and beetle-shell-shiny clothes, my gown, with its puffed shoulders and numerous ruffles, must look distinctly out-of-date and out of place.

But this gown is getting the job done. No one can possibly think I smuggled my way here. I only wish I’d thought to ask Mita for a jacket, too, because for the first time in my life, I’m walking in the sunshine and I’m freezing. My next goal, I decide, is to sneak into a warm building for a few minutes while I strategize where to tap into the city’s nav feed and get the lay of the land. I knew the transport to the palace space station was docked somewhere in the city, but I’d assumed it would be visible from anywhere, the way you’d be able to spot a ship that grand from almost any vantage point on Sarn. But here, the towering architecture is packed together tight, and I can see only as far as the next crosswalk.

Up ahead, I spot a clearing among the throngs on the walkway. I can catch my bearings there, I figure. As I near the gap in the crowd, I see the cause of it: an older woman around Dezmer’s or Mita’s age stands on a crate like the one I recently escaped from. She’s shouting to anyone who will listen.

“Bion! Markarios! Damokles! What am I meant to do without my children, alone in the world? Please, spare a drock for a woman who will never see her beautiful sons again!”

The well-dressed hurry around her, desperately avoiding eye contact, but several people stop to listen, frowning. A young man in a worn but neat suit lays a few drocks on her crate. One of his pant legs is cuffed just high enough to reveal wired machinery where his ankle should be.

“Bion! Markarios! Damokles! My children, all gone, lost to the fighting on Kore, and for what? To swell the coffers of the nobility, to expand our reach beyond what any of us will ever see, all while their mother starves!”

I think of my own mom, running supplies for the war before her ship went down somewhere on the other side of the Aeschylus Belt sixteen years ago, when I was about two. All we got when she died was a bill for her uniform. That’s how Dad found out she was gone.

“All right, that’s enough,” says a man in sturdy white-and-bronze armor, a railgun at his belt. There’s a fancy insignia on his chest, one that matches the gold shooting star on the largest and shiniest building in my sightline. “You’re blocking these good people from getting where they need to go.”

The mother jabs a grease-stained finger at him.

“They want us to forget!” she shouts. “They want us to move on but how can we? Bion! Markarios!Damokles! Dead, on a planet at the far edge of the galaxy, and your precious imperial crown didn’t even care to send their ashes home!”

We never saw Mom’s ashes, either. Nobody ever even told us the circumstances of her death, where exactly it happened or what became of her ship. It’s just a blank, like when I try to picture her face.

The guard steps forward, hand on his weapon. “I’m warning you. You can’t obstruct a major thoroughfare like this.”

“There’s room to walk around her,” says the young man with the mech leg.

“You’ll want to stay out of this,” says the guard.

“Bion! Markarios! Damokles!” cries the woman.

The guard draws his railgun and points it at the young man’s chest.

“Please,” the man pleads. He turns wildly to the crowd and then his eyes land on me. “Please, madam. Tell him she’s not bothering anyone.”

“Sir, there is room to walk around her,” I hear myself say, and the accent comes out credible enough, but the guard doesn’t even look in my direction.

The old woman raises her arms to the sky. “Bion! Makarios! Damokles! This war is a meat grinder, and we are the meat!”

Railgun still trained on the young man, the guard grabs the old woman by the arm with his free hand, clearly about to wrench her off the crate.

“You’ll hurt her,” the young man protests, starting forward.

The guard gestures with his railgun. “Stand back.”

“Stop this at once,” I try in my poshest voice. It comes out thin and tentative.

The guard yanks the woman to the ground, and a middle-aged couple in simple clothes rushes forward to help her back up. The young man starts forward again, but he’s held back by a stocky woman with a holo glass over one eye.

“Careful, Nestor,” she says to the young man.

The guard sheathes his weapon. “Everyone move along,” he says.

“Void take you, you rot-moraled cud,” spits Nestor, and the guard backhands him so hard he falls prone, then rears back to strike again. Eyepatch yells what must be profanity in a dialect I don’t know and leaps forward to seize the guard’s arm. As she struggles with him, someone in the crowd throws something—a lunch tin, by the looks of the greens flying—and it smacks into the guard’s temple. The guard recoils, hand groping for his railgun.

I see the space to execute a lift and I do it, snatching the railgun from the mag catch and ducking out of arm’s reach. I’ve scrapped so many of these things, I know how to do it fast: click the settings to safety, tap the sequence that opens the hatch, snap the wires that send the electromagnetic current. It’s a useless hunk of metal in seconds, and I let it drop to the ground, kicking it backward into the crowd.

The guard spins around. “Where the Void is my gun?” he growls. I’m holding my breath, scanning the area for exits. Nobody says a word. The couple, Nestor and his friend, the old woman, and the rest of the onlookers are all stone-faced.

The guard presses a small glowing panel on his helmet. “This is security unit 351 requesting backup, linking coordinates to all port zone patrols. Send backup immediately, we have a code 89-A.” He looks back at us. “I’m going to need to see ID from everyone.”

Well, shit. That’s something I don’t have. I left my ID, the one that identifies me as a nobody from Sarn, at home, and anyway, there’s no way I would show it to anyone on Ouris.

The people on the walkway dutifully line up, reaching into purses and pockets to produce a small iridescent card, or just holding up their wrists. The guard scans each of them with a wave and a badge on his suit beeps obligingly. I join the line, my mind racing with escape routes.

When it’s my turn, the guard turns to me. “Your ID,” he says.

“I think it’s in my bag,” I lie.

“Then get it,” the guard snaps.

Slowly, I reach for my bag, which holds nothing but a skin of water, my old clothes, and some Pink Dream. I have about six seconds before this becomes suspicious, and in those six seconds, what I need to do is jam this bag over the guard’s head and run before he can get a good look at my face. I’ll be hungry and thirsty, but the most important thing is to lose this guy. Five seconds. I’ll need to be quick. Four seconds. I unfasten the clasp. Three seconds—

“What appears to be the trouble?” says a deep, resonant voice and the guard immediately stands straighter and bows. Clearly this is not the backup he’d asked for.

“There was an altercation during which my weapon went missing,” the guard says in hushed, respectful tones. “I was questioning the suspects when this—this citizen refused to comply with an ID request.”

“I’m sure it’s a simple misunderstanding,” says the stranger as my palms sweat.

I reach into my bag and feel around. “My ID is gone,” I say, eyes wide. “I was pickpocketed earlier today. The thief must’ve taken my card along with my wallet.”

“Sounds like you’re having a bad day,” the guard says, clearly not buying my story.

“Madam, could you turn this way, please?” the stranger asks. “Your voice sounds familiar.”

Slowly, I turn around, the sun in my eyes stinging like alcohol in a cut.

“Oh!” says the stranger. “Captain, don’t worry about it. I know this woman.” Then, to me, “Nephthys Drakos, what are the odds, running into you here? It’s been a while.”

The guard sputters. “I need her ID.”

“She just told you it was stolen,” the stranger tells him. “And I can certainly testify as to who she is,” he adds with a chuckle. “You’ve done your duty here, thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get caught up with an old friend.”

To my amazement, the guard nods.

Gently, the stranger leads me by the arm down the sidewalk. With the sun no longer slicing into my eyes, I turn and get my first good look at my rescuer.

“So,” he says quietly, “mind telling me your real name?”