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The customs agent stared after him.

• • •

“I’ll have a beer,” said Han. “Corellian, if you’ve got it.”

The port bar was nearly empty; only a few elderly Gamorreans sat together in a booth in back, playing some game that involved throwing bones; a creature of some race Han had never seen before sat at the far end of the bartop, inhaling something that, even from here, reeked of ammonia.

The bartender looked Han over, nodded, and turned toward the bar. A long mirror hung on the wall behind the bar; Han stared at himself in it. He thought that the gray in his hair gave him a distinguished look.

“I thought this city was called ‘Dying Slowly,’ ” Han said as a dark beer was laid down in front of him. “When did the name change?”

The bartender shrugged. “It’s always been called just ‘Death,’ far as I know.”

“How long you been on-planet?”

“Eight years.”

“What for?”

The bartender stared at him. “Take some advice—you don’t ask that sort of question around here.” He shook his head and turned away.

Han nodded, and sat drinking his beer; he’d known that, once. A thought struck him. “Hey, buddy.”

The bartender looked over at him.

“Just out of curiosity,” said Han—

He paused and looked around at the nearly empty mid-afternoon bar.

He leaned back in toward the bartender. “Now that spice is legal … what sorts of things get smuggled around here, these days?”

The trip to Devaron took long enough that Malloc’s shoulder wound was nearly healed by the time they neared hyperspace breakout, though the leg was starting to fester, and none of the drugs Fett had seemed to be helping—Fett hoped sincerely that the injury wouldn’t kill the fellow before they reached Devaron.

Fett had sent a communication ahead to the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. Normally he would not have bothered to involve the Guild; but normally he did not have a five million credit bounty. A Guild representative should be waiting at Devaron when they reached it.

Fett kept the Butcher down in the Slave IV’s holding room through most of the trip.

In the remaining minutes left before their exit from hyperspace, Fett dressed himself. The Mandalorian combat armor he dressed in was not the armor he had worn in years past; that armor, burned and cracked, was still somewhere deep inside the Great Pit of Carkoon, back on Tatooine. But Mandalorian combat armor, though rare, could still be acquired if you went about it right. For years Fett had been hearing about another bounty hunter who wore Mandalorian combat armor, a fellow named Jodo Kast. It had annoyed him terribly. With some frequency, during those years, Fett had found himself being blamed for, and credited with, things Kast had done.

Less than a year after his escape from the Sarlacc, Fett had hunted Jodo Kast down, via the Bounty Hunter’s Guild; he’d pretended to be a client, disguised in bandages; his own Guild had not known him. He’d requested the services of Kast, and Kast had come; by that time Fett had changed into his own spare armor, taken away the impostor’s armor, and also his life.

Before the ship left hyperspace Fett brought the Butcher up to the control room and put him in the chair nearest the airlock. Malloc was sweating heavily, fighting with his fear. He’d drunk his first five bottles early in the trip; Fett had held back the sixth bottle for this moment. Fett restrained Malloc at the ankles, and by his right hand; he left the Devorian’s left hand unchained, so that Malloc might drink. Once he was satisfied with Malloc’s bonds Fett unsealed and handed Malloc the last bottle of Merenzane Gold. It wasn’t a matter of kindness on Fett’s part; if it kept Malloc from struggling during the transfer to the Devaronian authorities, better to let him drink.

They’d barely spoken to one another the entire trip. Malloc lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed three, four times, before speaking. “How much longer?”

Fett glanced at his controls. “Six minutes until breakout. At least twenty before we dock with the shuttle that’ll take you downside.” He paused.