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“He isn’t dead,” said Porcellus. “He’s asleep. He’s resting. He said he was tired and he was going back to his quarters to take a nap. He must have … he must have fallen asleep right here in the hall.”

Ak-Buz’s sightless eyes continued to stare at the ceiling.

The guard frowned, turning the information laboriously over in his mind. “Looks dead.”

Porcellus could feel the rancor’s claws closing around his body. “Have you ever seen a Weequay asleep?”

“Uh … No.”

“Well, there you are.” Porcellus bent down and heaved the body to its feet, draping an arm around his shoulders. For a horrible moment he wondered what he’d do if rigor mortis had begun to set in, but in that heat there was little chance of it. The glaring head with its filthy braids lolled against his cheek. “Now I’m going to get him to his quarters—er—before he wakes up.”

The guard nodded. “Want help?”

“Thank you,” smiled the chef. “I’m fine.”

He concealed Ak-Buz’s body in the scrap pile in the machine yard, a heartstoppingly tricky operation because he had to lug it through the dungeons and then out past the barracks where the Weequays lived. The Weequays—silent, deadly, vicious enforcers—were part of Ak-Buz’s sail-barge crew, and though they showed little loyalty to anyone, Porcellus had the impression that being found in possession of the body of their commander wouldn’t be such a good idea. But they weren’t anywhere in sight—probably in my kitchen stealing the beignets, thought Porcellus gloomily—and neither was the sail barge’s mechanic, Barada. With luck nobody would look under the monumental pile of rusting speeder parts in the yard’s corner until decomposition was sufficiently advanced, something which shouldn’t take too long in this heat. Ordinarily, on Tatooine, one would have to worry about Jawas raiding the scrap heap for metal, but the pieces of the last Jawa caught doing so were still fairly fresh, nailed to the gate.

Porcellus hastened back to his kitchen, wondering what he was going to do about the banquet tonight and bereft of the smallest crumb of inspiration.

“You call this food?” The Hutt crimelord’s huge copper-red eyes swiveled slowly, the pupils contracting slightly with anger as they fixed their gaze upon his unfortunate servant.

Porcellus had never understood Huttese very well, but when Jabba raised one of the exquisite vegetable crepes in a hand surprisingly small and delicate in comparison with the rest of his yellowish, gelid bulk and squeezed it so that the contents plopped thickly to the floor, it was entirely unnecessary for his new translator droid, C-3PO, to explain, “His Excellency is most displeased with the food you have been serving of late.”

Porcellus, standing before the Hutt’s dais on the ornamental trapdoor that covered the rancor’s pit, managed to make a small sound, but that was all. Eight meters below his boot soles, the rancor snuffled softly in the dark.

The horrible eyes narrowed. “You seek maybe to do me ill?”

“Never!” Porcellus dropped to his knees—causing the rancor in the pit below to rear up to its full height and sniff at the grille—and clasped his hands pleadingly. “How can I prove my goodwill?”

Jabba chuckled, a sound like a bantha being gutted—slowly. “We’ll let my little one prove,” he said, and dragged on the chain he held. From the dais beside him rose the lovely Twi’lek dancer Oola, Jabba’s newest pet. Her delicate face showed apprehension, as well it might.

Porcellus had never learned exactly what Jabba did with his “pets”—usually female but always young, lithe, and beautiful—but he knew they seldom lasted long and he’d heard some truly horrible tales from his friend and fellow slave Yarna the Askajian.

At the moment, however, all the Hutt did was scoop up a fingerful of the vegetable-crepe stuffing and hold it out to her, and after a moment, with visible distaste, Oola licked the subtly flavored concoction from his slimy hand.

“Now bring me real food,” gurgled the Hutt, turning back to Porcellus. “Fresh—live—untouched.”

By the time Porcellus returned