Rey scanned him just as openly and rudely until the blue-haired Ushar showed up with Wyllus, who was Rangu's Cantina's one and only waiter.

"So," said Rey, when water and meat and rice was in front of her, and Wyllus had walked off to resume being lazy in the shade, "What do you want to know?"

She gestured at the food in front of her when they gave her funny looks. "I'm not stupid. If it's not my… affections that you're trying to buy, then it's information. So, what do you want to know?"

The one named Kylo scowled while Ushar laughed. "We give off that vibe, huh?"

Rey shrugged. "I would have guessed you were bounty hunters, but I've never known them to work in pairs, and…" Her eyes ran over their black woven outercoats and sombre leather vests and pleated undertunics. "No offense, but you're bad at disguises. You're obviously rich. You might want to try, I don't know, losing the-"

"Truthfully, scavenger," cut in Kylo, "there's nothing I really want to know about this shitfest of a planet, but while we're marooned here-"

Ah. That explained his general aura.

"What's wrong with your ship?" she demanded with a mouth full of rice.

He scoffed and leaned back and folded his arms. "Well, if we were looking for information, we're clearly talking to the wrong person. Aren't you aware? It's not just us. No one can get out." He curled one full upper lip at Rey and half-rolled his eyes away as if the sight of her was offensive. "Now, if you're going to go out of your way to repulse us, why don't you instead direct us to where we can find more amenable young women. It's the least you can do after we've fed you."

The hutt was laughing. He choked on his laughs and coughed out fumes which clouded the air around his face.

Rey ignored him. No one could get out of Jakku? That sounded implausible. She knocked back the dry meat with water and poked her tongue around her mouth. "Huh. So, you are trying to buy female company. I would have guessed you were archivists, or one of those freaks looking for the Church of the Force. But if you're just-"

"Church of the Force?" Suddenly, Kylo's entire demeanour changed, and his eyes lasered in on Rey, no longer lazy and scornful but piercing and focused. His posture was rigid, his voice low and vibrating, the quality of it raising hairs along her spine. "Is there a temple here? Where?"

Rey put down her fork, somewhat unnerved by the transformation. There was something dangerous about him now, something that touched her on a primal level and aroused feelings of fight, flight, or submission. These feelings were accompanied by the prickling desire to go for her staff.

But she stayed her hand. A look alone could not be taken for an actual threat, no matter how unnerving. With deliberate motions, she speared another cut of meat and put it into her mouth and chewed on it. "No temple," she said, surprising herself by how cool and un-alarmed she sounded. "Sacred village. Hidden sacred village. Well, sort of. It's actually more hard-to-find than hidden."

"Where?"

"Just beyond the ravine. A little less than five days away on foot. I've made the journey in about ten, eleven hours on my speeder."

Kylo was still, his gaze fixed uncomfortably on Rey, as if trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or not. His companion was looking at him. "Could just have the same name," the blue-eyed, dark-skinned man mused quietly. "But if not…"

"Of course, it is," snapped Kylo, breaking off eye contact by an angry jerk of the head. Rey let out a slow breath. In that one motion, he had gone back from predator to ill-tempered young man. That frightening display had barely lasted a minute, and no one else seemed to have even noticed it. The hutt was smoking his hookah with admirable insouciance, Ushar's electric blue eyes looked meditative, and the swelling dinner crowd flowed around their table like water around a rock.

Kylo slipped his hand into his coat and withdrew a slim device, which turned out to be a map reader. It projected a topographic hologram of Jakku. "Pinpoint the village on here," he demanded.

Rey looked. The map was somewhat outdated. It displayed military sites that were no longer in existence and was missing some of the more recently established locations entirely. "It's, ah, around here." She took a stab at the long grey patch demarcated by squiggly, veiny lines.

The two men stared. "That's a third of the bloody ravine you've just highlighted," Kylo hissed. He looked at his blue-haired companion as if to say, "Can you believe this?"

"It's a small map," said Rey defensively. "And it's old. I don't even see Pilgrim's Road on here. You're rich, you couldn't have bought an update?"

More croaking laughter burst out of the hutt at their long table. "Koochoo," he rasped, "uba canta kaee chahsa biweoo vehpobaee jakku bai banba wa pohkashop wata? Ha ha ha." Still laughing, he managed to somehow also take another drag off his pipe.

"He's right," said Kylo, smirking nastily. "The last people to map out this star-forsaken planet was the Galactic Empire. No one outside of Jakku cares about Jakku."

Ushar was fiddling with the hologram. He undid Rey's aggressive highlighting while zooming in on the area. Then he bid her take another look. Rey pretended to deliberate before pointing at a spot closer to Namenthe's Crater than to the sacred villages. In her opinion, these dodgy sith-loving wankers could do with a few hours of floundering under the sun.

Someone came and dropped down uninvited on the bench next to Rey. He was a trader, a bald short man with a scruffy beard, droopy eyes, and skin that was dry and patchy from the wind and sun. "You're buying meals for humans in exchange for conversating, that right?" he said.

They glared at him.

"Alright, alright. I don't need me meal bought. I like conversating, is all."

He was shown the map. "What's here? Is there a settlement here?"

"Don't know, do I? Furthest I've been is to Cratertown. Could be there's a settlement. Only thing I'm sure of in this place is sand and more sand. Scavengers and jedi worshipping loons go that way, try asking one of them. This girl here's a scavenger, Plutt's best one. Tried asking her?"

Rey flashed them a smug smile, mollified that the trader knew who she was. Plutt didn't like his scavengers talking to the traders. But now and again, one of them would conveniently forget that, and try to sell directly to a trader, only to be visited hours later by Plutt's goons for a- according to Caron, 'sesshun of educashun'.

"You boys from Coruscant?" asked the trader suddenly. "No? You look like you're from Coruscant. Just got done with some business there. The place is in a right tizzy. Their emperor's done away with his adopted son. Public execution and everything."

It seemed that the two did know. "How did you get away then?" asked Ushar curiously. "We heard they've stopped all ships from leaving while they hunt down anyone associated with Snoke."

"I didn't leave from an official hangar, did I? So, you boys are up to date on the situation. A real mess. People taking it as a license to do away with them enemies. All you have to do is denounce them as Snoke supporters before they can do it to you, and if they're not powerful enough to get a trial, they get killed no questions asked. I saw it meself." The trader shuddered. "Makes me glad to be back here, it does. In Jakku, no one cares about politics. 'Cept maybe the jedi worshippers, but they keep to themselves at least. Whereabouts you from then?"

"Naboo," answered Ushar. He looked at the scowling Kylo and back at the trader. "These… jedi worshippers… You know any? We would be interested in talking to them. I was under the impression the two empires had wiped out all such factions."

"Naboo! Would never have guessed that. Your lot must be chuffed then. If old Palpatine croaks without an heir, the Skywalkers'll be expanding them empire faster than an interceptor can-"

"The jedi worshippers," snapped Kylo with biting impatience. His voice vibrated; there was a tinge of something metallic to it. "Tell me about them."

The trader had fallen silent. As accustomed as he was to the inhospitality of lawless desert planets like Jakku, this sort of imperiousness without pretence was at a completely different level. He trembled awhile under Kylo's scrutiny. "I don't know any," he said at last. He looked like he wanted to go away but was physically trapped by the gaze of the other man.

"They're not political," corrected Rey, standing and taking up her quarterstaff. She didn't like these off-worlders. There was something… off about them, especially the dark-haired one. "I know a few. They've got strange beliefs, but they don't care about the empires or their wars. Good luck with your ship, and thanks for dinner."

"Sit down," said Kylo, transferring his flat gaze onto her. "We're not done."

Rey thumbed her quarterstaff and frowned. The trader, released, left without another word.

"What my friend means," said Ushar with a brilliant smile, "is that you haven't told us where we can find some nice young ladies."

Rey pursed her lips. She wasn't sure that was what his friend meant at all, and she was almost starting to regret letting them buy her a meal. If she'd had any credits, she might have paid them back just so they didn't get any ideas about what they thought they were owed. But she didn't have half a cred to her name. "You're in the wrong place," she said shortly. "Most human females in Jakku belong to the mining communities. You'll have better luck in the other two towns."

"Good to know. Look, if we're still stuck here tomorrow morning, we want to visit the sacred villages. They seem interesting enough. You know the way. Take us there, and you'll get paid. Credits."

"My work's hours to the west of here. I'm not going to waste half the day coming all the way here to look for you on the off chance you're still around."

"Five hundred credits." Kylo tapped his fingers on the table and looking her unblinkingly in the eye. He was smiling slightly; a smile that was more a smirk. "See us to the sacred villages and it's all yours."

Five hundred-?

Rey stiffened, scarce able to believe her ears. Her eyes flit around them as if for confirmation, all the warning bells in her head silenced by the golden lure of money. Five hundred? Did he really say five hundred-? But the hutt was gone, and the trader was in front of a fruit stall talking to one of the constable's deputies. He turned around and pointed them out with a theatrically shaky finger.

"Five hundred credits," affirmed Rey, also shakily- but for different reasons, and when they didn't challenge the number, she tapped her forefinger forcefully on the table. "I want fifty now. As a sign of goodwill. If you're gone tomorrow, I'll have lost half a day of work. The fifty will cover that. And you'll cover meals and water."

They accepted her demands. The blue-haired Ushar fiddled in a pouch, pulled out a chip little bigger than his thumbnail, and extended it to her. Her eyes shining, Rey reached to take it. But quick as a snake, Kylo's hand shot out and suddenly, painfully, her wrist was in his grip. His smile was gone. "If you're not here tomorrow…"

"I'll be here."

"If you're not here tomorrow, I will find you. This chip belongs to me until you bring me to the sacred villages, or I choose to leave your planet. And if you think you can take it and disappear, you will be sorely disappointed. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly." Prick.

"Good." He let her go. "See you tomorrow, Rey. Eight o'clock. Right here."

Rey snatched the chip from the smiling Ushar and slipped it into her pouch, into one of its useful little pockets. She picked up her quarterstaff and stalked back to her speeder, passing by the trader and the deputy on her way. "I'm not going to arrest them just because they gave you the heebie-jeebies," the deputy was exasperatedly saying. "They've got to have committed a crime…"

Rey mounted her speeder and left without a backwards glance.