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We Don’t Do Weddings:

The Band’s Tale

by Kathy Tyers

Jabba the Hutt’s cavernous, smoky Presence Room stank of spilled intoxicants and sweaty body armor. Guards and henchmen, dancers and bounty hunters, humans and Jawas and Weequays and Arcona lay where they’d toppled, crumpled under arches or piled in semiprivate cubicles or sprawled in the open. The inner portcullis yawned open.

Just another all-nighter at Jabba’s palace.

That portcullis bothers me—what if we want to leave in a hurry?—but it keeps out the worst of the riffraff.

Let me rephrase that. The worst of the riffraff, Jabba himself, paid us well. Crime lord, connoisseur, critic; his hairless, blotchy tail twitched in rhythm when we played. Not our rhythm. His.

We are Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, members in good standing of the Intergalactic Federation of Musicians, and we are—or were—Jabba’s full-time resident entertainers. I’ve never spotted his ears, but Jabba appreciates a good swing band. He also likes controlling credit and inflicting pain, and he finds either more therapeutic than our music.

Huddled on the back of the stage, we put away our horns while Jabba’s guests snored. My Fizzz—you symphonic ridgebrows would call it a Dorenian Beshniquel, but this is jizz—slips into a thin case in less time than it takes to roll an Imperial inspector and check his pockets for credit vouchers.

We are Bith. Our high hairless craniums manifest a superior evolutionary level, and our mouth folds pucker into a splendid embouchure for wind instruments. We perceive sounds as precisely as other species perceive color.

Our band leader, Figrin Da’n, was wearily swabbing his Kloo Horn (there’s a joke there, but you’d have to speak Bithian to get it). It’s a longer double-reed than my Fizzz, richer in pastel harmonics but not so sweet. Tedn and Ickabel were arguing over their Fanfar cases. Nalan had started disconnecting the horn bells from his Bandfill, and Tech—we look alike to non-Bith, but you might’ve picked out Tech by the glazed gleam in his eyes—sat slumped over his Ommni Box. Plaster chips from a midnight blaster skirmish littered the Ommni’s reception dish. (The Ommni clips our peaks, attenuates the lows, reverbs and amps the total sound. Playing it takes even a Bith’s full genius. Tech hates Figrin. Figrin won the Ommni last season in a sabacc game.)

“Hey, Doikk.” Figrin’s head glistened. It was going to be a typical Tatooine scorcher, and Jabba’s temp exchanger needed repair.

I cinched down my Fizzz. My Fizzz. “What?” I had a shot “lip,” as humans call it. I was in no mood for foolishness.

“Time for a friendly hand of sabacc?”

“I don’t gamble, Figrin.”

Figrin brushed the sheen off his head with one knobby hand. “You’re thermal, Doikk.”

And you’re compulsive. “All musicians are thermal.”

“You’re thermal for a musician. Who ever heard of a bander that didn’t gamble?”

I’m the band’s inside outsider, the straight man. I’ve carried that sweet little Fizzz through six systems. I peg it when it cracks and lube it when the keys click. I carve my own reeds. I wasn’t betting it on any sabacc match. Not even to placate Fiery Figrin Da’n, a bandleader who criticizes every missed note, owns everybody (else)’s instruments, and isn’t shy about giving orders.

“I don’t gamble, Figrin. You know th—”

A smoky silhouette rolled in through the main arch. “Figrin,” I mouthed, “turn around. Slowly.”

The droid’s wasp waist, huge shoulders, and squared-off head had scalded my memory shortly after Jabba gave us our exclusive contract: his vintage E522 Assassin. Eefive-tootoo had saved my neck when one of Jabba’s human sail-barge tenders accused me of munching out of Jabba’s private snack tank of live freckled toads. Luckily for me, Eefive-tootoo gave me an alibi. I’d vowed never again to have more to do with humans than necessary.

But Jabba’d been hot to feed someone to the rancor. Justice would’ve suggested throwing in my human accuser, but Jabba and Justice are not on speaking terms. They dropped Eefive, liberally smeared with meat juice, through the