comma edit: 12/12/2016

A/N: Thanks for the feedback everyone! We're now on Tatooine, where not much happens to Sabe that we know about, so I've gotten a little creative. Please let me know what you think!

To Save the Queen

Chapter 13: Stall

I sat. Bored out of my skull, I sat. Rabé and Eirtaé stood behind me, perfectly still, the picture of what a handmaiden was to look like. Two of the pilots we had rescued from the hanger were standing outside the door in a pitiable attempt to make the throne room look more official.

I desperately wanted to order them to go do something useful and to close the doors behind them, so that Rabé, Eirtaé and I could play cards or gossip, or something; anything to make this awful waiting easier.

The throne room was hot and my dress was uncomfortable and the headdress was heavy. I was bored.

I had been sitting in the throne room for hours, ever since Padmé left with Ambassador Jinn. I had only spoken once, when Captain Panaka came in to say that Padmé, Jinn, Jar-Jar and Artoo Detoo had left to get the parts. I had thanked him. And that was it. For the past three hours, that was it.

Just when I began to pretending to faint just so I could get out of the room, I heard footsteps.

I blinked and rapidly refocused my eyes. I heard the soft rustle of velvet as Eirtaé and Rabé stood up even straighter.

One of the pilots walked into the room and gave an incredibly deep bow, glancing up at me in awe, "Jedi Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi to see you, milady."

I waited, fully expecting him to get out of the bow and let Ambassador Kenobi in, like Panaka would have. He didn't.

There was an awkward pause.

Then he looked up at me, from where he was still bowing, adoration radiating from him. He was clearly expecting me to say something.

Thinking quickly I nodded my head at him regally, "Let him in. Thank you, Pilot."

"Jans," he filled in quickly, thinking I wanted his name, even though I didn't. "Quinton Jans."

"Thank you, Pilot Jans," I repeated, once again nodding regally. He still didn't move. I paused, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

Then, taking a wild guess, I tried, "You may let Ambassador Kenobi in now."

Pilot Jans still remained bowed down low in front of me.

"You are dismissed," I tried again. "Thank you," I added, trying to soften the blow a little.

Pilot Jans shot out of his bow, his face a bright red, "Thank you, your highness," he practically squealed before spinning out of the room toward the door where, I saw with some amount of horror, Ambassador Kenobi was standing, directly in my line of vision. He was obviously fighting a smile.

"The Queen says you can go in now," Pilot Jans obediently dictated, even though I had absolutely no doubt that the Jedi had heard the entire, awful exchange.

"Thank you," Kenobi replied in his soft, cultured voice.

Then, he walked into the throne room, paused several feet away from me and bowed. However, unlike the idiotic pilot, he actually managed to stand up straight in a reasonable amount of time.

"Ambassador Kenobi," I acknowledged, forcing myself to sound Queenly and not sleepy. "How may I be of help to you?"

"I have received a comm call from Master Jinn," Kenobi explained, getting straight to the point. "He wishes to know what we have on board the ship, for bartering purposes. While I have done an inventory of most of the ship, I was wondering if I might have permission to see your and your handmaidens' quarters."

My mind went blank. Of all the things I was expecting, that was not one of them.

Then, my thoughts started to whirl, quickly cataloguing the shape our rooms were in and whether or not it would be appropriate for the Jedi to see it.

Our beds were made, I thought frantically, our nightgowns were folded up neatly, there were no embarrassing underclothes lying around… but our weapons were in plain sight and…. Suddenly, it felt like my heart had stopped. We had never cleaned up the diagrams and flimsies full of notes about our ideas to get Padmé safely to and from Tatooine.

In fact, if I remembered right, and I had a bad feeling I did, we even had a particularly large flimsy entitled "How to Tell Panaka the Queen's going to the Spaceport without Dying" propped up against Rabé's headboard. This, as it happened, was not the ideal thing for the Jedi to see and might possibly give away our secret. But it wasn't like I could tell him that he couldn't do inventory of our room. He wouldn't be asking if it wasn't necessary. Besides, according to Padmé's latest orders, I was still the Jedi's biggest yes-man. Whatever they said, went. Panic began to rise up, but I quickly shoved it into a far corner of my mind while I swiftly tried to think of my options.

"Eirtaé," I quickly decided, praying that she would catch on and that she was a really fast cleaner, "Please ask Captain Panaka to pull Wicaté's pricing list for you and meet us in our quarters."

Wicaté's pricing list was a long list of how much all the fabrics cost and how much time and man-power (and thus wage) went into each dress. She made it to bully all of us into taking really, really good care of her precious creations. Luckily, it would also be absolutely essential for helping Kenobi judge the worth of the Wardrobe. However, Captain Panaka didn't have it. It was taped to the door of the Wardrobe, thus providing Eirtaé with time to hide all the evidence of Padmé's and my switch. Hopefully.

Eirtaé stepped forward, and gave me a brief bow before leaving as quickly as proper etiquette allowed. I privately prayed that she'd start running the moment she was out of sight. I didn't know how long I could stall Kenobi for.

I did know that my brilliant plan of keeping my mouth shut just went flying out the window, though.

"Wicaté is one of my handmaidens," I explained to Kenobi, trying to draw out this conversation for as long as possible, my mind still spinning. "She is in charge of creating and maintaining my wardrobe. Whenever she creates a dress, she always keeps careful track of the amount of materials she uses, as well as the number of hours it took, thus giving us a rough estimate of how much it cost to make. However," I continued, "She never says which dress the price is for. So, the list, unfortunately, contains the price for every piece of clothing I own and it will be up to us to figure out which dresses are in this particular wardrobe. Other than that, I don't believe I have anything of value in my rooms. But you are, of course, welcome to check," I told him graciously, studiously ignoring my pounding heart.

Kenobi bowed. "Thank you, your highness. You've been of great help,"

He looked like he was about to go, which wouldn't have given Eirtaé nearly enough time to find suitable hiding places for everything.

I quickly stood up. "This way, then," I announced, deciding to lead him to the rooms. I hoped it didn't look too dumb or obvious.

Kenobi looked startled, but nodded and waited for me and Rabé to sweep by—very, very slowly. I walked as slowly as I possibly could while still looking stately and purposeful. Which meant that a baby just learning how to crawl could have gone faster than us, I thought, stifling a wild urge to laugh. I hoped Ambassador Jinn didn't need the estimates right away.

Kenobi slowly walked with us, a half-step behind me and a half-step ahead of Rabé. I could almost feel his impatience as we finally reached the door out of the throne room.

"Your Highness!" Pilot Jans gasped, jumping to attention, throwing his hand up in salute, losing his balance and almost falling over.

"Pilot Jans." I nodded regally, stopping to talk to him. "Ambassador Kenobi and I are going to take inventory of the possessions in my quarters for Ambassador Jinn,"

I nodded at him again and then slowly, so slowly that I caught a flash of a grin fly across Rabé's face before being replaced with her usual blank expression, turned back around and continued down the hall.

Awkward silence reigned as we made our way down the hall at a snail's pace.

"What does Ambassador Jinn wish the inventory for?" I finally asked, just to break the awful, uncomfortable silence, abandoning the 'don't talk' plan in earnest.

"Several of the shops that he went to in search of the parts told him that they would much prefer to be paid in something other than Republic credits, something more substantial. He was merely wondering if we had anything such as that on the ship," Kenobi explained, very formally.

Padmé, I knew, would not be very happy with that answer. Since we had gone no more than three feet from the throne room and, even at this pace, we didn't have very far to go, I rapidly decided to continue the conversation in the tone Queen Amidala would.

In fact, I thought almost giddily (after all day of sitting in a room doing nothing, this seemed like a strange, horrible sort of adrenaline rush), in order to make my point all the more clear, I came to a complete stop and turned to face the impatient Ambassador straight on.

I looked up to meet his blue-grey eyes. I was once again startled by how handsome he was. However, I did my best to banish that thought and continued.

"Ambassador Kenobi," I paused for dramatic effect and stared up at him, doing my best to look reproachful, intimidating and regal at the same time—I didn't know how well I succeeded since Kenobi simply continued to look at me politely, "Do you think me weak? Or simple-minded?" It was, I thought with relief, 100% Queen Amidala and had even startled a slight reaction out of Kenobi. I continued, "I know full well that Ambassador Jinn did not tell me the complete story concerning your arrival on Naboo. However, I did not question him because it was not my place and I trust that the information he withheld will not harm me," I continued to meet his eyes evenly. "But it is my people, my planet that will suffer should we be unable to repair the ship. It is my place to know how the situation is progressing, so that I may better prepare for our next course of action." I stared at him for one very long moment. I drew it out for as long as I felt I realistically could, still desperately playing for time. However, when Kenobi gave me a very small nod and began to look sort of rueful, I knew I had to break the staring contest off.

I gave him a short nod, turned forward and began to creep along again, my heart still thundering madly. I liked the original plan better than this new one.

"Your Highness," Kenobi began again, "Master Jinn has encountered a number of difficulties in procuring the parts we need. There is only one shop at this spaceport that sells the parts for a J-type 327 Nubian. The owner of that shop refuses to accept Republic credits for pay and, in order to get the parts, we will need to barter something else. Master Jinn wishes to know what we have so that he may better prepare for his next course of action,"

I sharply turned to look at him, wondering if he was poking fun of me. However, the expression on his face looked perfectly serious, even if his eyes were, perhaps, dancing a bit. I didn't say anything because, just then, we had arrived at our quarters. Not thinking of anything else I could do to stall him, I instead did the next best thing: gave Eirtaé warning that we were coming in.

"Thank you, Ambassador Kenobi," I politely acknowledged, pitching my voice to be slightly louder than usual. "Here are our quarters," I continued as Rabé slowly, so terribly slowly, moved around me open the door to them.

I leisurely led the way inside, sending up a quick prayer that we'd given Eirtaé enough time. Panic once again began to creep into my mind, but I firmly pushed it aside. I didn't have time to panic.

"This is the bedroom," I said rather unnecessarily as he looked around the tiny compartment that had four beds crammed tightly inside. The beds, I thought with an inward frown, appeared to have been remade neater than I remembered. However, the incriminating flimsies were, thankfully, also nowhere in sight. "I don't believe there is anything of any value in here except, perhaps, Eirtaé's datapad and my flimsies. Of course, you are free to look around to see if there is anything else of value I may not have mentioned."

"Thank you, milady." Kenobi gave another small short bow.

"This," I slowly swept forward toward the door to the wardrobe, fervently praying that Eirtaé was ready for us, "is the wardrobe. Its contents should be of some worth."

I opened the door and Eirtaé spun around.

"Your Highness!" She quickly bowed. "I have found Wicate's pricing list,"

"Thank you, Eirtaé," I said gravely as she handed me the sheet of flimsy, bowed again and left the wardrobe to stand with Rabé at the door,. "Here you are, Ambassador Kenobi. I hope you will find it helpful." Then, before he could respond, I turned to Eirtaé again, "Eirtaé, please stay and give Ambassador Kenobi assistance should he require it."

Hopefully, I prayed, she'd also be able to lead him away from the stowed pieces of evidence.

"Of course, milady," Eirtaé murmured.

"Good luck, Ambassador Kenobi," I bid him good-bye as Rabé and I slowly walked toward the door and out of the room. As I passed by Eirtaé, I gave her a questioning look.

She twitched and, for one moment, looked completely frazzled, "Maybe," she whispered as I brushed by. I grimaced but kept walking, trying to calm my pounding heart.