Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [128]
But twisted in the latter, by them, none of it now of Kenobi, of those who were Jedi Knights. Will they twist the boy’s as well?
Perhaps. No one alive has withstood the Emperor, or Darth Vader.
Or Jabba the Hutt.
But none of them know me, save Jabba. They only know of me, of my kind, the lurid tales told. And it is this I will use: ignorance, and rumor. Let them say what they will. This time, I will use it. Its power is pervasive.
In the palace, which once was a monastery—pure in its existence until polluted first by raiders and later by Jabba himself—there are many for me to peruse, consider, pursue—even to stalk as the stories claim, a manner heretofore disdained but now apropos—and a plethora of races, of species, of soup. From myriad nations, a plenitude of planets. But here nothing matters save the master all of them serve; they are as nothing to him, to me, and as nothing they shall die.
Except to make a point.
Jabba, be afraid. Even you may die.
And the essence of your soup, one may hope, may pray, shall be as rich in its substance as is your flesh in corpulence.
I have been what I am: perfectionist in my work. All have died. All. None left to tell the tale.
But now the tale is necessary, and the telling of it. The Weequay, dead of unknown means, will cause consternation, but no certainty. There is a need now for “error”; for what they will take as error. A being left alive. To describe, in infinite horror, of inescapable terror, what monster it was who nearly took its life.
Thus it is time for me to depart the closet of rumor we Anzati too often inhabit.
• • •
There are levels of fear as there is a pecking order of entities within Jabba’s palace. To strike at the Hutt I must strike first at the others, beings whose presence serves much, or very little, but nonetheless the absence thereof makes itself felt in all the small and large ways, the mild annoyances or the doubt, the anger, the abrupt concern for one’s safety. I know all of the levels, as I know how to use them.
First, those in Mos Eisley, already reported as dead; but Jabba will assume it is of no consequence—or small consequence—until convinced otherwise.
Next, the Weequay. Jabba will not miss him. But others will. And once enough of them die, enough of the small people, even the elect might be led into true fear.
A female, now. The dancing girl with head-tails, the Twi’lek, is already dead, thrown down as appetizer to Jabba’s hungry rancor, but there are other females. And so I seek one out.
She is what many entities, Jabba among them, consider beautiful: lush, plump in flesh, a bounty of breasts, the ponderous movements of a body in motion. Hands waving, six breasts swinging, buttocks never still. But she is stilled, at last, when the revels, ended, devolve into stupor. The woman, an Askajian—they who bear multiple young at one whelping—leaves the audience chamber to seek her rest through the remains of the night until the unyielding sun of Tatooine stands high overhead once again.
But rest she will not have. Sleep she will not know.
And it is in the servants’ quarter, where one assumes one is safe, that I pursue the assignation.
As she walks from the audience chamber, the high, proud step fades into weariness, into scuffing and graceless relief that she may at last seek her bed. She is dulled by the hour, and careless; that she should take care never suggests itself to her, for this is Jabba’s palace, protected by all the dregs of the uncounted universes.
And so it is nothing to me to allow her to walk past me, unseeing, and into the antechamber, unknowing, intent upon release; and so it is as nothing that I follow, step behind her, whisper an endearment in her native tongue.
She whirls, multiple breasts wobbling. There is delight at first in her eyes; was she then expecting someone? But it is I, not he, not she, not it; delight shapechanges to fear.
In her tongue I say she is the most beautiful woman I