Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (14 page)

He panted, his lungs aching with the still, hot air.

Doors lined both sides of the curved guest wing, most open to reveal empty rooms. In the past they had served as individual sleeping and meditation chambers for the monks, but now the moldy breath of neglect filled the hallway. Jabba had few guests at any given time.

Even two or three tended to nuture his pampered paranoia.

Glancing over his shoulder, J’Quille crept to an empty room near the stairwell leading up to the roof.

He shut the door softly behind him.

J’Quille went to the window slit in the far wall. Peering out at the night sky, he flared his nostrils, sucking in the soothing breeze.

The cool air smelled faintly of dust. A whiff of goatgrass clung to the breeze, no doubt rising from the kitchen. A delicious shiver traveled through him. Blood stained the wind tonight too.

He turned from the window and pried the cap from the pommel of his vibroblade. Sliding a holoprojection tube hidden in his vibroblade, he set it on the thick windowsill, making sure the tiny lens in the side faced him.

He pushed the transmit button and waited for Lady Valarian to respond.

It shouldn’t take long. She didn’t go to bed until dawn, when the Lucky Despot closed for a short time to get ready for the next day’s customers.

A light flashed on the cylinder. Half a second later the lens projected a hologram of the entry hatch and bulkhead where Lady Valarian conducted business.

Part of the Lucky Despot’s charm was that it had once been a cargo hauler. Lady Valarian had used the spaceship’s decor to create an atmosphere comfortable to spacers and exotic enough to lure planet-bound clientele. A low, wistful growl rumbled in J’Quille’s throat.

And into the middle of the holo stepped Lady Valarian, dazzling as always. Her curled mane, tinted a burnished red, spilled down the sides of her face. She had painted her tusks blue and wore a gold ring on the left one. Earrings glittered on her ears.

A wave of longing sped through J’Quille. His nostrils tingled with the remembered allure of her pheromone perfume, the softness of her fur against the flat of his nose, the way she snuffled in her sleep…

“J’Quille,” she said, waving one claw-polished hand.

The blare of music and sabacc players from the Star Chamber Cafe tinkled in the background. “How wonderful to see you! Oh, my little Mastmot, how thin you are! You’ve been shedding again. Well, now that you’ve completed that little task you promised to do for me—”

“Not yet, my little ice tiger,” he said. He clucked his tongue.

“There’s a problem. I need to talk to you.”

Lady Valarian’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of problem, dearest?”

The massive hand of a Whiphid male reached from the edge of the hologram and offered her a Sullustan gin ice blaster. J’Quille’s throat tightened. A male, in Lady Valarian’s chambers…

“J’Quille?” Lady Valarian said. “Darling?”

J’Quille cleared his throat. Probably just a servant.

“I’m being blackmailed,” he said. “Someone knows the kitchen boy was poisoning the toads. He was killed minutes ago.”

Lady Valarian removed the siptube from her lips.

“What are you trying to tell me, dearest? Does Jabba know you’re trying to poison him?”

“Not yet,” J’Quille said, wishing he could be that certain.

Lady Valarian sighed. “Then why are you calling, darling? Please get to the point. I have other business to attend to.”

J’Quille’s nose flaps flared.

Lady Valarian’s eyes teared under her worried brow.

“And this is much too dangerous. If someone caught you, my precious…”

J’Quille leaned toward the holo. “I need help. I need to find out who killed the scullion. Do you have any idea who killed him or who might be blackmailing me?”

“There’s a B’omarr monk—” A deep laugh rumbled through the palace walls below, drowning the words.

Jabba.

J’Quille stiffened. The fur on his spine prickled with a rush of fear.

Lady Valarian’s eyes widened. “J’Quille—”

“I won’t fail,” J’Quille said, reaching for the projection tube as another laugh reverberated through the walls. He severed the uplink and slammed the tube into the grip of his vibroblade.

Muscles taut, J’Quille held his vibroblade ready in front of him.

He listened for even the slightest sound the scraping of feet on stone or the rattle of weapons.

Silence.

Were the guards waiting for him in the hall? Better to face death head-on. He opened the door, expecting a blaster shot or the slash of a vibro-ax.

Nothing.

The corridor was empty. J’Quille dashed toward the far stairs.

Distant voices, human voices, drifted from Jabba’s audience chamber, punctuated by the unmistakable cackle of Salacious Crumb.

J’Quille took the steps two at a time. Just before he reached the bottom step something caught his eye. He drew back.

The carbonite slab.

Empty.

J’Quille’s tail twitched. The human pleading with Jabba must be Han Solo. But that was impossible. A person stood a better chance stepping out of the heart of a Toolan iceberg than breaking free of carbonite’s freezing grip-Another round of laughter filled the audience chamber. A cacophony of voices joined Jabba’s bass chuckle. Hugging the wall, J’Quille peeked into the room.

The bounty hunter, a human female, stood helmet-less beside Solo facing Jabba. J’Quille hissed in surprise.

A human! That’s what the smell had been!

Solo’s head bobbed and wobbled, his eyes unfocused and not quite fixed on Jabba. “I’ll pay triple,” he said as the Gamorrean guards dragged him off.

“You’re throwing away a fortune here. Don’t be a fool!”

Jabba smiled, then turned to leer at the human female with the same cruel lechery he had gazed on the Twi’lek dancer. His slimy lips gleamed with spittle.

J’Quille slid back into the shadows and quietly sheathed his vibroblade.

It wouldn’t look good if a guard stumbled across him lurking in the stairwell with his weapon drawn. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

The Crumb’s hysterical screech covered J’Quille’s retreat up the stairs.

There was still time. As much time as Jabba remained preoccupied with the human female.

J’Quille trotted down the corridor to the guest room. That would be safer than his own quarters if Jabba suspected him. He closed the door and sat on the floor facing the window slit, his vibroblade lying across his legs. Framed by the slit, the night sky had faded from black to deep blue. It would be dawn soon.

He stared at the stone wall opposite him. Jabba had to know. Why else would Phlegmin be dead? The blackmailer, the monk Lady Valarian warned him about, had told Jabba about the poisoned toads then killed the kitchen boy to prove his loyalty. J’Quille grimaced.

Jabba was always demanding proof of loyalty.

J’Quille had been forced to hunt and “kill” his own servant in a display of fidelity. Fortunately that great sack of nearsighted slug gel couldn’t tell a Whiphid tusk from a greater Mastmot tooth.

Footsteps tramped heavily down the hall. J’Quille leaped to his feet, drawing his vibroblade. The thick, swinish grunts of several Gamorrean guards echoed in the corridor. Holding his breath, J’Quille stepped behind the door.

The guards lumbered past.

J’Quille listened till their footsteps faded, then sank down onto the floor again. He slid the vibroblade in its sheath. Lady Valarian had given him the weapon.

Lady Valarian. For whom he risked his tusks daily.

And who had a strange male in her chamber. Just a servant? Or a rival?

J’Quille’s mane bristled. Perhaps this blackmailer had more to do with Lady Valarian and less to do with Jabba.

Perhaps Lady Valarian had tired of waiting for him to act and decided to rid herself of the potential embarrassment of an inept spy in Jabba’s palace. She had always despised foolish, weak males. Look at D’Wopp, her first husband. The fool had been too stupid to turn down a bounty offer by Jabba during their wedding reception. Lady Valarian had shipped him back to Toola in a box.

J’Quille was no fool and he was not weak. The slow poison had been Lady Valarian’s idea. “Let’s not be too obvious, my sweet,” she’d crooned.

J’Quille stared at the vibroblade. Beautifully crafted, the finest weapon credits could buy. Was he jumping to conclusions?

Still, she knew about the monk…

Slamming and banging echoed from the direction of the hangar.

J’Quille listened at the door, then stalked to the window slit. In the gray light people were scurrying about, preparing Jabba’s Ubrickkian sail barge. Evidently Jabba was planning a trip to the Great Pit of Carkoon sometime in the near future, probably to feed Han Solo and the Wookiee to the Sarlacc.

Was J’Quille on the menu, too?

He shivered, then peered across the sands at the welt of brightness along the horizon. One of Tatooine’s two suns was rising.

The light spread slowly like water, dousing the glitter of stars. He had better head up to the roof to meet the informant. J’Quille unsheathed his vibroblade and opened the door.

Someone shuffled down the hall. J’Quille waited in the doorway and listened to the dry whisper of clothes. Instead of diminishing toward the stairs to the main audience chamber, the steady shuffle grew louder.

A shadow materialized around the curve in the hall.

It passed an open door. A pale, round face with a twisted nose peered warily into every shadow.

The same monk who had hidden in the recess outside the kitchen.

J’Quille eased into the room and waited for the monk to pass. The man’s loose robes swayed with each step. Light from the partially open door illuminated the side of his face. His head and face were devoid of all hair.

Anger surged through J’Quille. He narrowed his eyes, deepening the shadows in the hall. His pulse throbbed in his claws as his chest tightened around the beating of his heart.

J’Quille stepped into the hallway. The monk paused and turned, his hands hidden in the folds of his robe, a robe ample enough to conceal a blaster or a vibroblade.

“There you are,” the monk said. His gaze flitted to the vibroblade.

“Let’s go to the roof, friend, where we can speak freely.”

The vibroblade trembled in J’Quille’s hand. He tightened his grip.

“What do you want from me?”

The monk glanced nervously down the hall. “This is not a good place to talk. It’s too easy to be overheard.

Trust me.”

“You were there when the kitchen boy was killed,” J’Quille said, unmoving. “I saw you.”

“There was nothing I could do,” the monk said. His hands shifted under his robes.

Before the monk could free his hands, J’Quille slashed upward with his vibroblade. The blade sliced through the robes and the man’s chest. The monk stared at J’Quille, a look of surprise on his face, then toppled forward onto the floor.

The pressure in J’Quille’s chest eased. At last he could breathe again.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the ripe, giddy scent of fresh blood.

Sheathing his vibroblade, he knelt down and rolled the body over.

The monk gurgled. “Phlegmin… black… mailer,” he rasped, then shuddered and died.

Phlegmin? J’Quille frowned and leaned closer.

Something winked in the dim light.

An earring. J’Quille turned the monk’s head to get a better look at the chartreuse gemstone set in a single gold rihg. His blood went cold.

“You’ll recognize what he’s wearing,” the cleaning droid had said.

The earring was Lady Valarian’s.

J’Quille had given her the pair the day after their first night together. She’d growled with delight and clipped the earrings on immediately.

J’Quille unclipped the jewel from the monk’s earlobe.

The monk had been working for Lady Valarian.

J’Quille flexed his claws around the earring. What was he going to tell her?

A grunt filtered down the corridor. J’Quille grabbed the monk’s robes and dragged the body toward the nearest guest room. The monk’s hands fell free of the robes.

His right hand clutched a thermal detonator.

The one the bounty hunter had used to threaten Jabba?

J’Quille snatched it from the stiffening hand. Whatever he had done, here was a chance to redeem himself.

Heavy footsteps accompanied another grunt.

J’Quille glanced over his shoulder. No one yet, but the person was definitely headed his way. He looked around wildly. Where could he hide the detonator?

His belt pouch seemed too small-J’Quille crammed the detonator into the pouch anyway, praying he wouldn’t trigger it. The pouch bulged, refusing to close. J’Quille smoothed his fur over the pouch’s gap, his shoulders rising as the approaching stranger called out.

Or rather, squealed out. J’Quille turned slowly, forcing himself not to smirk, and looked up into the face of a squat Gamorrean guard.

Stupidity on the hoof.

The guard carried Phlegmin’s dead body over one shoulder. This must be the same Gamorrean who had been talking to Ree-Yees in the kitchen.

The guard trudged up to him, wheezing and snorting.

He uttered a few more incomprehensible grunts, then looked at J’Quille expectantly.

J’Quille’s mind raced frantically. Just how stupid were these guards?

If this brute could believe Ree-Yees, he’d believe anything.

The Gamorrean grunted impatiently. One of the squeals sounded like “dead. “

J’Quille stood. “He’s not dead, he’s, uh, meditating.

Gone into a deep trance. Pondering the imponderables.”

The guard bent over the monk. He wrinkled his nose at the blood and snuffled a short, bewildered snort.

J’Quille wet his lips. “The blood? He wanted to see if he’d reached the final stage of enlightenment. He decided to do a little testing on his own to see if he was ready before asking his friends to put his brain in ajar.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed. He grunted and pointed first at the monk’s head, then at his chest.

J’Quille shrugged. “That’s where their brains are.

In their chests. It makes it easier to remove them.”