by Troy Denning
“Wald!” Tamora scolded. “Will you stop that?”
“Sure, when I get some answers. You see what happened to my shop. I’ve got a right.”
Han’s knuckles were turning white, and Leia knew what that meant.
“Look, why don’t we all put the blasters away?” She holstered her own weapon. “If we were really going to shoot each other, we’d have done it by now.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Han seemed to be glaring into the office. “I can be patient.”
“Your kind of patience isn’t what we need.” Leia stepped over, took the blaster from Han’s hand and laid it on the counter, then nodded at Chewbacca. “You, too. I think Wald here just needs Tamora to convince him that she’s here voluntarily.”
Chewbacca stared through the door for a moment, then growled ominously and set his bowcaster on the counter.
Wald kept his blaster pressed to Han’s face. “Tamora, why don’t you and the kids come into my office?”
Tamora rolled her eyes, then snatched the bowcaster off the counter and pointed it at Chewbacca. Leia began to fear she had misjudged the sincerity in the woman’s voice, and the Wookiee growled softly.
Tamora ignored him. “Okay, Wald, we have the drop on them.” She almost certainly lacked the strength to pull the bowcaster’s trigger, but Leia was not going to tell her that. “Now will you believe me?”
Wald let out a sound that resembled a chemical cutting torch running out of fuel; then the blaster rifle disappeared into the office and a stocky little Rodian waddled into view. Leia always found it difficult to tell a Rodian’s age—perhaps because so many of them pursued violent professions and died young—but the sagging of his sensory horns, the blotchy gray areas near the end of his thin snout, and the milky sheen of his bulbous eyes suggested that Wald was fairly old.
“Sorry about the blaster.” He held a green hand out to Han. “No hard feelings, eh?”
“No.” Han took the hand, teeth grinding so hard Leia could hear them. “Not many.”
“Kit?” Tamora shoved the bowcaster into Chewbacca’s arms, then grabbed her children again and led them behind the counter toward Wald’s office. “Where are you?”
“He’s not back there.” Seeming to realize that a distraught wife would have to see for herself, Wald addressed himself to Han and Leia and allowed Tamora to look anyway. “He was here, though, with that moss-painting everyone’s after.”
Leia tried not to show her alarm at the word everyone. “And?”
“And Jergo—a Kubaz sellsecret—came in behind him and pulled a blaster. Jergo wanted the moss-painting. Kit wouldn’t turn it over.” Wald lowered his voice and pointed at a scorched hole in the ceiling. “He nearly got himself killed. I had to lay out Jergo with a hydro-spanner.”
“So where’s the painting now?” Leia asked.
Wald made a point of turning toward the door of his office. “Let’s wait for Tamora.”
Han pulled a fistful of credit vouchers from his pocket. “Look, you’ve suffered a lot of damage here on our account. Maybe if we covered the cost of the cleanup for you.”
The sensory horns atop Wald’s head twisted outward in irritation. “The damage I suffered wasn’t on your behalf. It was on Kitster and Tamora’s. And you’re not cutting the Banais out of this deal—whatever it is.”
“Of course not.” Leia took the vouchers from Han and pressed them into the Rodian’s hands. “But we do feel responsible.”
“Sure you do.” Despite the cynicism in Wald’s voice, he took the credits. “I still think we should wait for Tamora.”
A moment later, Tamora emerged alone, her eyes red from crying. Leaving her children in the office, she closed the door and went to Wald’s side.
“Okay, Wald. What happened to Kit?”
“I wish I could tell you.” Wald spread his hands and, glancing at Han and Leia, said, “But the truth is, I don’t know.”
“But you know something,” Tamora pressed. “Tell me.”
Wald repeated his account of knocking the Kubaz spy unconscious, then continued. “That happened a minute after Kitster commed you. For a while, we thought Jergo was just trying to take the painting and sell it, but then a squad of stormtroopers showed up.”
“They didn’t take him?” Tamora gasped.
“No.” Wald glanced at Han and Leia. “Maybe I should tell you the rest alone.”
Chewbacca started to growl, but Leia silenced him by raising a hand. They would get nowhere through intimidation. “It’s Tamora’s decision.”
“It’s okay, Wald,” Tamora said. “I trust these people.”
Wald regarded Leia and Han’s hooded faces warily. “Kit said not to trust anybody.”
“He told me the same thing,” Tamora said. “And Kitster doesn’t have the faintest idea what he’s doing. These people do. They, uh, work for the owners.”
“The owners?” Wald regarded Chewbacca and C-3PO, his snout twitching with interest. “They look a little rough for the artsy crowd.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Han said.
“Will you please just tell us what happened to Kit?” Tamora pleaded. “Have you seen what’s going on outside? The sky is filled with TIEs and assault shuttles. Kitster’s about to get himself killed.”
Wald reluctantly looked away from Han and Leia, then said, “He took my old swoop out into the desert.”
Tamora’s face fell. “The old swoop?”
Wald nodded. “It gets worse. He was going out through Arch Canyon.”
“Arch Canyon?” Tamora gasped. “The one in the old Podracing course? That Arch Canyon?”
Again, Wald nodded. “He said it’s his only hope of keeping the Imperials off his tail. He’s right, but it doesn’t make it any less crazy.” Wald cast a disparaging look at Han and Leia, then added, “I told him he should just sell the painting to them and be done with it, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said Killik Twilight doesn’t belong in Imperial hands.”
Leia exhaled in silent relief; at least Tamora was right about that much. “So who does Kitster plan to sell it to?”
Wald looked back to Tamora. “You’re sure you want me to tell them?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Tamora said. “Ji and Elly would like to see their father alive again someday.”
“Okay.” Wald stared at the floor and kicked a broken recording rod across the room, then said, “That’s the thing. I don’t think he means to sell it to anyone.”
“What?” This from Leia, Han, and Tamora.
Wald looked to Tamora. “He wasn’t thinking right. He just kept talking about some Devaronian and Twi’lek who tried to blow it up, saying he was going to take it someplace safe.”
“Someplace safe.” Leia could not believe what she was hearing. “On Tatooine.”
“Of course, on Tatooine,” Wald said. “He wouldn’t be taking a swoop to Ohann, now would he?”
“I doubt it,” Leia agreed. “Then what?”
“Well, I think he was hoping for a reward. He was going to send a message to Princess Leia.” Wald waddled closer and squinted up beneath Leia’s hood, obviously trying to make out her features. “Except I’m pretty sure he thought you were still on Coruscant.”
Leia sighed. “Is there anyone in Mos Espa who doesn’t know who we are?” She pulled back her hood. “I’m sure there’s no use denying it.”
Wald twisted his sensory horns back and forth and jerked a thumb toward Chewbacca and C-3PO. “A droid, a Wookiee, the painting—I’d have to be a lot blinder than I am not to figure that.”
“Thank you for pointing that out.” Leia and the others had realized all along that staying together would make them easier to identify, but things were happening so fast they didn’t dare separate. She turned to Han. “At least we still have something going for us.”
“For a little while.” Wald pointed toward his security system, a small vidcam hidden in the ceiling corner. “I overheard the stormtroopers talking about their new admir
al.”
“Pellaeon?” Han asked.
“All I know is, he awes them,” Wald said. “But you should know he thinks there’s something in Killik Twilight the New Republic doesn’t want the Empire to have. It’s the only reason he can see for the Devaronian throwing a detonator at it.”
Leia and Han exchanged looks of exasperation. They could hardly have stood by and watched the Imperials walk off with a code key that would mean the exposure of the entire Shadowcast network and the deaths of thousands of agents. But it was frustrating to realize that had they done nothing, the code key might well have spent the next decade hanging harmlessly in some admiral’s stateroom.
“Thanks for telling us, Wald.” Leia took a calming breath, then turned to Tamora. “Perhaps you’d care to comm Kitster? We could arrange a rendezvous.”
Tamora nodded and activated her comlink. “Kit?”
A tiny echo of her voice sounded from the back of the room, beneath the toppled vaporator.
“Are you there?”
Again, the echo sounded from beneath the toppled vaporator. Chewbacca went to the back of the room and picked up a comlink identical to Tamora’s.
“Chubba!” Wald cursed. “That’s where Jergo grabbed him.”
Leia sighed. “Would it be too much to hope that he told you where he was going?”
Wald spread his hands. “Someplace safe. That’s all he said.”
Leia turned to Tamora next but didn’t even bother asking when she saw the look of despair on the woman’s face.
“We’ll never catch him in a landspeeder,” Han said. “Especially not with a bunch of TIEs after him.” He turned to Wald. “Do you have another swoop?”
Wald and Tamora exchanged looks. Then Wald said, “I don’t—not one that can catch Kitster.”
“It’s the one Wald used to win his freedom,” Tamora explained.
“Kitster and I built it from a design a friend’s mother found in his room.” There was more than a touch of pride in Wald’s voice. “It was nearly as fast as a Podracer.”
A strange feeling of déjà vu came over Leia, and she asked, “Who was this friend?”
“Anakin Skywalker,” Wald said.
“You knew Anakin?”
“Of course I knew him.” Wald sounded insulted. “He was my pal. We were slaves together.”
Leia’s jaw dropped. “My father was a slave?”
“Don’t make it sound like something dirty,” Wald said, growing defensive. “We were kids. It wasn’t like we gambled our way into it.”
“That’s not what she meant.” Han took Leia’s hand and gave it a little squeeze to break her out of her shock. “It’s just hard to believe that a slave grew up to be Darth Vader.”
“Darth Vader?” Wald waved his palms dismissively. “That’s a lie. Anakin Skywalker never became Darth Vader.”
“Really?” Leia heard the ice in her tone, but found herself losing the battle to keep her temper under control. The Rodian’s denial touched a deep and painful chord, for rejecting the truth of Darth Vader’s identity was the same as claiming all his terrible deeds never happened. “And you know this how?”
“Because I knew him,” Wald retorted. “You don’t understand what it takes—what it took back then—for a slave to win his freedom.”
“We do.” Tamora tried to slip between Leia and Wald. “But what we really need now—”
Wald stepped around Tamora and continued to speak, his voice filled with admiration. “I thought it couldn’t be done. But Anakin did it.”
“So he got lucky and won a Podrace,” Leia said. “That hardly makes him a hero.”
“It does on Tatooine, dear.” Han took Leia by the arm, then pulled her closer and said more gently, “Damp down your power core. We need this guy’s help.”
Han was right and Leia knew it. But this was a visceral issue, something so powerful there could be no compromise. Fortunately, it was also entirely unimportant—at least to the task at hand—and she knew she had to set her anger aside.
Leia took a deep breath, then said, “I’m sorry, Wald. Obviously, we have very different views of Anakin Skywalker.”
“Obviously,” Wald said. “And only one of us is right.”
Leia clenched her teeth, swallowing a sharp reply. Obviously, she thought.
Tamora breathed a sigh of relief, then said, “About that swoop—”
“I’m afraid I must interrupt,” C-3PO said, awkwardly picking his way through the debris strewn on the floor. “The Squibs are here.”
“Squibs?” Tamora gasped.
She slipped behind Chewbacca, and Han and Leia pulled up the hoods of their sand cloaks.
“I’ll get rid of them.” Wald started toward the door. “I’m sure they’re just here to sell me something I don’t need.”
He was too late. The trio came boiling into the hut, their fur ruffled and greasy, and their belt pouches loaded with all the broken comlinks, datapads, and glow rods they had retrieved from the recycling bins.
Wald met them three paces from the door. “Grees, Sligh, I’m not buying anything—”
“And we’re not selling!” Sligh said.
The Squibs swept past the Rodian as though he wasn’t there and came straight for Leia and Han, not quite able to keep their gazes from straying to all the interesting stuff scattered over the floor.
“I can’t believe how you treated us,” Emala said to Han. “We thought you were a player.”
Grees waved the credit transfer chip at Han’s belt. “Try to cut us out again, and we go straight to Mawbo with this. We’ll pay her and take the painting ourselves.”
“She doesn’t have the painting.” Han tried to snatch the chip away, but Grees was too quick for him. “And you can’t pay Mawbo our money. She wouldn’t activate that chip.”
“You really want to try her?” Sligh asked. “After what happened to her performance hall?”
Wald came up behind the Squibs. “How are these three involved?”
“They’re not.” Leia pulled a two-thousand-credit voucher from her pocket and held it out to Grees. “We’ll buy you out.”
The Squibs shook their heads without bothering to look at the amount.
“There’s no buyout option,” Sligh said. “We were the successful bidders.”
“So the painting belongs to us,” Grees added, “until we receive the negotiated payment.”
“And that isn’t going to happen, not with two squads of stormtroopers keeping Mawbo’s locked down tight,” Emala said.
“I’m offering you twice what we paid for your, uh, wares in the auction,” Leia said. “Take a look.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sligh said. “It’s not the same fee.”
“If that’s the way you want to play it.” Leia continued to hold the voucher out. “I’ll cancel the transfer chip. You’ll be out your fee and your proceeds.”
The Squibs’ eyes grew round, and Grees said, “We’ll think about it.”
All three began to back toward the door. Leia watched them go, then slipped the voucher into her pocket and turned back to Han.
“You were about to ask Wald something?”
Han’s expression remained blank. “I was?”
“About a swoop?” Leia prompted. “Wald said he didn’t have another one that could catch the one Kitster took.”
“Right. But what about the transfer chip? Shouldn’t you be canceling it?”
“No need,” Leia said. “Unless I’m there to authorize the transfer, the chip will self-destruct when they try to use it.”
“It’ll be nice to see someone getting the best of those three for a change,” Wald said. The tiny mouth at the end of his snout actually formed a smile. “But I doubt I’ll be much help with the swoop.”
Tamora’s face fell. “Wald, please. You know Kitster. He doesn’t stand a chance out there—not with the Imperials chasing him.”
Wald nodded gravely. “I know.”
“Look, Wald,” Han said.
“If this is about the Darth Vader thing—”
“It’s not.” Wald’s tone was sharp. “Do you think I’d let a friend die just because Leia Organa insulted her father?”
“Of course not,” Leia said. “As I said, we have very different views of Anakin Skywalker.”
Wald fixed his bulbous eyes on her a moment, then shrugged. “Why should a Princess believe an old Rodian junk dealer?” He turned to Tamora. “There’s only one swoop that can catch the one Kitster took. You know where you need to go.”
Tamora’s face paled. “Ulda’s?”
Wald nodded. “I know it won’t be easy, but she has that old rocket swoop Rao used to fly. If you want, I’ll take them over.”
Tamora shook her head. “No, she’d see through that.” She turned, and not seeming to notice whether anyone was following, said, “I have to go.”
Leia lingered behind just long enough to be sure Tamora was out of earshot, then asked, “What’s so terrible about this Ulda?”
“Nothing,” Wald said. “Unless you happen to be Kitster’s second wife.”
Chapter Seven
As the landspeeder circled the outskirts of Mos Espa, Leia watched the terrain outside slip past. To one side of the vehicle rose the domed huts and walled docking bays of the spaceport city, a testament to the tenacious soul of galactic commerce—and to the resilient spirit of the profusion of species that called this bleak world home. To the other side of the speeder, a golden sweep of forlorn desert stretched across a measureless distance all the way to the purple wall of the departing sandstorm, a stark reminder of one’s place in the Tatooine scale of things… and of the strength of will it took to survive such a planet.
Leia’s thoughts kept drifting back to her father. Wald’s revelation had caught her off guard. Learning that Anakin Skywalker had been a child slave painted him as a victim, an image so at odds with the monster in her mind that she actually found herself wanting to agree with Wald’s outrageous assertion, to believe that her father had not been Darth Vader.
Perhaps more disturbing than Wald’s revelation was the way Tatooine seemed to be working on her. She was starting to see Mos Espa not as the corrupt spaceport that it had appeared as they waited for the auction to start, but as the home of beings like Tamora and Wald, who lived and grew old here and somehow found their measure of happiness. Even the desert was beginning to feel inviting. It still struck her as dangerous—more so than ever, in fact—but Leia was growing aware of its beauty, of its majesty of scale and subtleness of color, and of the promise of mystery waiting in its hidden heart.