Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [19]
Arms folded, Fortuna drummed his long nails gently on his own biceps. “Should the situation continue,” he said in his soft voice, “explanations for it could be devised.”
“Here!” Porcellus whirled, lashed out indignantly with the dishtowel in his hand. “That’s the master’s!”
Ak-Buz, commander of Jabba’s sail barge, backed quickly away from the little electric fence around the beignets, dropping the pair of long-nosed nonconductive machinist’s pliers he’d used to poke through the current. A snarl contorted his leathery face—the only expression, as far as Porcellus had ever been able to ascertain, of which Weequays were capable—and he ran out of the kitchen into the hot sunlight of the receiving bay, shoving the stolen beignet into his lipless mouth as he went.
“They seem to think this place is a charity kitchen.” Porcellus mopped nervously at the last traces of spilled sugar.
“Shall I suggest to Jabba that the Weequay be punished?” Fortuna’s voice was a dangerous purr. “Thrown to the rancor? A little quick, perhaps, though Jabba is fond of the spectacle … Lowered into the pit of the brachno-jags, perhaps? They’re small in themselves, but a hundred can strip a being’s bones in, oh, five or six hours. One alone—if that being is tied up quite firmly—can take four or five days.” He smiled evilly. “Would that be a fitting punishment for one who tampers with His Excellency’s food?”
“Er …” said Porcellus. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
To his own great distress, his words turned out to be prophetic, as he discovered some hours later when he tripped over the barge captain’s dead body in the corridor leading to the lower regions of the servants’ quarters …
Panic had had its effect. After searching the kitchen for another half hour, dogged by the sullen Phlegmin (“How come you let Ak-Buz take a beignet and not me? There’s nuthin’ in that box … What you lookin’ for, anyway, boss?”), Porcellus had discovered, to his horror, that though the time was approaching to begin preparing that night’s feast, he hadn’t the smallest inspiration about what to prepare. Poached icefish imported from Ediorung on a bed of Ramorean capanata? What if Jabba should choke on a bone? A ragout of Besnian sausage with orange-Madeira sauce? If the spices should disagree with his already irritated digestion, what would his immediate assumption be? Vegetable broth, thought Porcellus, vegetable broth and unspiced rice pudding … He reflected upon the crimelord’s probable reaction to such a menu, and the images conjured to mind were not pleasant ones.
In quest of inspiration for the first time in his life, he retreated to his room to consult his cookbooks, take a nap in the relative cool, and relax … he had to relax …
And there was Ak-Buz’s body, sprawled in the corridor halfway to his room, arms outflung and eyes glaring fixedly in the sunken stare of death.
Porcellus knelt beside the corpse. Still warm. Shreds of sugar topping speckled the Weequay’s quilted vest.
Maybe after consuming seventy-five kilos of dewback offal the rancor won’t be terribly hungry tonight …?
Snuffle, snort, demanded a deep, gluey voice. “What happened here?”
The chef leaped to his feet in a panic of shock and horror, to find himself facing one of Jabba’s Gamorrean guards.
Porcellus had always hated the Gamorreans. They were among the worst of the food-cadgers, and he was forever cleaning up drool, dirt, and miscellaneous vermin in their wake. Last week five of them had come to blows in his kitchen over who was going to lick out the bowl from a Chantilly crème, with the result that the bowl ended up broken, two rather delicate processors were smashed, and Porcellus was nearly beheaded by an ill-aimed vibro-ax. The Chantilly crème had suffered, too.
“Going on?” squeaked Porcellus. “Nothing’s going on.”
The guard’s porcine brow furrowed in a long moment of thought. Then he gestured with his spike-gloved hand at