"Mara didn't ask for it." Fett put his arm out behind him and shifted into a proper sitting position, legs stretched. "She just went to do some necessary pest control. She nearly succeeded."

"You're saying he needs... that I have to kill him." "It's not that simple."

"Why haven't you ever gone after him personally? Why did you tell your men to leave him for me?"

"Because if I put him down like the vermin deserves, your family can blame that rotten Boba Fett again when the truth wears off, when you need an excuse to stop feeling bad about what you had to do. No, you clear up your own mess. I wondered-am I standing back to let the Solos and Skywalkers fight each other because I want them to suffer? No. It's only Jacen who deserves it, and on balance I'd prefer to see him live a long time in a lot of pain. Like I've said before.... he's no use to me dead."

Jaina tried to work out if she was on the receiving end of a subtle gloating lecture from Fett, or if he'd brooded about this long enough to have a lot of words looking for an outlet. Even her Force senses strained to pick up clues. He really did seem to be thinking aloud, trying to find some answers.

Jaina felt suddenly irrelevant. "You can manage quite long sentences, can't you?"

"It's all billable time, Solo."

"You hate Jedi, I understand that. Seeing your father killed, having to survive on your own..."

"No. You don't get it. But if any of your kind could, it'd be you."

Fett put his weight on one arm and jumped to his feet, looking pretty fit for his age. He walked off down the slope toward Keldabe and didn't look back. With the 360-degree sensor in his HUD, he didn't need to. Jaina wasn't sure she'd had an answer at all, but she had a stack of extra questions. She broke her own rule and scrambled after him.

"Hey, don't give me the cryptic treatment, Fett." Jaina reached up from behind for his right shoulder, and a little Force pull made him turn. That probably didn't help, given the topic. "Jedi killed your father. You hunted mine. I went on hating you and feeling pretty unfriendly about Man-dalorians for a long time. We all do it."

"I'm trying to keep this simple."

"What?"

"Mace Windu killed Dad. The barve ends up taking a walk out Palpatine's window, so I don't get to blow his brains out. Add a few years of lashing out at any Jedi, and then I stop and ask why I carry on.

Because Force-users are all trouble. Sith, Jedi, no difference, although the Sith al-ways paid well. Every big war since the Old Republic apart from the Vong has been about you two having your sectar-ian conflicts and dragging everyone else in. I say it, guys like Venku say it, and then folks start thinking that maybe galactic peace doesn't include you."

"You'd starve if you didn't have a war to go to." "Making virtue out of necessity."

"And we're peacekeepers. You can't always do that by-appealing to folks' better nature."

"Yeah, I forgot. The compa.s.sionate Jedi." He held out his palm.

"Give me your lightsaber. I left all mine at home." "Why?" "Give."

Jaina took the hilt off her belt, and thought that only a Jedi who put excessive faith in her Force certainties would hand a lightsaber to an irritated Fett. He snapped the blade casually into life-he'd handled the weapons more than he admitted, that was clear-and sliced the humming beam clean through the branch of a small tree. Then he shut it off, tossed the hilt back to her, and bent to grab the severed wood.

"A weapon for a civilized age, you reckon?" Fett thrust the end of the branch into her face so she could see it was a clean cut, not a lot of sap. "You cut someone's head off, you trap enough oxygenated blood in the brain for two minutes' consciousness, maybe. Then go and retrieve your dad's body parts and see how well you sleep some nights." Fett walked away again, and this time Jaina let him go. It was a little while before she recovered enough to think of yelling after him to demand how many of his kills had been instantaneous, but that was probably for the best. One mo-ment she was close to thinking they had a good understanding; the next, it was war again.

Was this his plan all along, to set her up to harm her own brother so the most powerful Jedi families could tear them-selves apart?

You can go crazy thinking like this. He's just a man. It's your own brother who's plotting and planning.

Fett hadn't planned to see his daughter getting killed, and he hadn't known Jaina was going show up asking him to make her a Jedi hunter. He was an injured but dangerous bystander, landing a punch any way he could.

Okay, Jacen, would you think twice about killing me if I got in your way like Mara did?

Jaina thought she knew the answer, but the next minute she doubted herself. Combat training was definitely out for the day. She decided to use the downtime to try building bridges with another Mandalorian who probably didn't want to talk to her: Gotab, or whatever his name had been when he'd still used a lightsaber.

It must have been a very hard life for him. He must have been mad to choose it.

Or desperate.

Or maybe the last place anyone would look for a Jedi was in the middle of hostile country like this.

BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, NEAR KELDABE.

"Mirta, where have you been?" Sintas asked.

"Been on a job, Ba'buir."

Fett watched Sintas making her way competently around the room, navigating by touch. Watching her when she couldn't see him made him uncomfortable now; he was predatory, intruding. He wanted more than anything to do what was right for her but he was going around in circles.

She located Mirta and the two women hugged. "What job, sweetheart?"

"We seized an Imperial Star Destroyer."

Sintas parted her lips slightly, then laughed. "Oh, just a little job. n.o.body hurt?"

"Loads of people. But not us."

"I can remember how to strip down a blaster."

"You were a bounty hunter, Ba'buir."

"I can recall chasing a man who had something I wanted back-a metal box. I'd better remember how I did it, if I want to earn a living again."

Watching Sintas desperately grabbing at sc.r.a.ps of her life and trying to build herself back into a whole woman made Fett feel scared and dirty; it reminded him that he'd failed in every aspect of living, except his job-except killing people. It wasn't the killing that bothered him.

It was the failing, and not being like his dad. Jango Fett had taught him how to be a perfect soldier, but he'd also shown him by example how to be the ideal father. He'd managed one out of two.

"Sin, "he said. "You never have to worry about sc.r.a.ping a living again. I owe you credits. A lot. I'm paying up."

Sintas felt her way toward him. She was going to touch him. He could see it coming, and he dreaded it, because it was going to bring it all back, not just the memories that were better left forgotten, but the way it felt to touch her, because that part of his life was dead and buried. You left her.

She found his hand and took it. "I know I must have married you for a good reason. And whatever went wrong, you still seem like a good man."

"Sin, there's some more bad news you need to know." She still had a grip on his hand. He'd seen her at her best and worst, although she'd never seen the best of him, and he never got over how beautiful she always was, whatever the circ.u.mstances. He needed her to let go of his hand; but he didn't want her to. There was nothing salvageable in the relationship and he didn't even want to hear himself think if only.

Imagine if you'd both been happy when she went missing, though.

Imagine pining all those years, getting her back so many years later, and then having to face the sepa-ration of age-that she couldn't want you again, even if she tried.

Yes, it was better this way, if it had to happen at all.

"I can feel some of the things in the heart-of-fire, "she said.

"But I can't make sense of it."

"Okay. Sit down." He steered her to a chair. Mirta watched as if she was waiting to pounce on any mistake. "Our daughter died."

Sintas took the news with a few blinks. It was awhile be-fore she spoke again. "I feel bad that I can't remember enough about her. What happened to her? She must have been an adult, because Mirta's here."

It was a guessing game, and Fett hated those at the best of times.

"I'm going to get it all over with now, or I'll just be giving you a fresh bit of misery every day, "he said. Or maybe it's because I need to blurt and run. "She was killed, Sin. She was a bounty hunter. She blamed me for you going missing on a job, because I should have been there to look after you both. She stalked me for years and she tried to kill me.

But she got picked up by the secret police on Coruscant, and she died under interrogation. She was fifty-three or fifty-four, I think. And that's about it. Except she raised Mirta to hate me, too, and Mirta tried to kill me, but we got that out of our systems."

Mirta was as tough as they came. She just stood there, and the expression on her face was acceptance. The boil was lanced. Sintas did a reasonable job of controlling the shock, but her lips moved silently as she tried framing a question and failed for a few moments. The anguished ex-pression in her eyes was all the worse for the fact that Fett knew she couldn't even see their expressions.

Regret, guilt, pain, anger. That's what you're missing, Sin. But I bet you can imagine it well enough.

"The barve who killed my girl-where is he? Is he still alive? I'll fix that..." Sintas burst in anger. Maybe it was all so terrible and alien that she was too shocked to cry, and Fett knew it was better to act rather than feel. "And how could you want to kill your own grandfather, Mirta? You didn't even know him."

Life was unraveling again. Fett had tried to do it right and take the blame, as he deserved, and now it was spin-ning off like a broken rotor and hitting Mirta, who'd stuck by her mother through thick and thin. Fett felt that his whole life had been about others taking the shrapnel from the blasts he caused.

"Don't blame her, Sin, "he said. "Whether Ailyn knew it or not, she was right to loathe me. The only good news is that I'm a rich old man now, and you're still young, so I can pay and you can do some living."

That was his emotional limit. He'd hit the end-stop today. If he'd been like Beviin, all heart and pure courage, unafraid of love or the risk of being hurt by it, he'd have held Sintas, and told her all the little details that would have softened the blow and made more sense of it once the shock wore off. But he wasn't Beviin, nowhere near. He almost got the whole thing off his chest and told her why they'd split up, but he lost his nerve. There was a limit to how much osik could hit the fan after all.

"I'll see you later, "he said. "I think we can find a special doctor to get your memory back, and maybe your sight." Sintas had her hand to her mouth now in a kind of slow-burn horror. "Well... at least I'll be ready for it..." "I'm sorry."

She rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry, too, Bo." She didn't even seem to realize she'd said it. Bo. It was what she'd always called him.

"Go on, "Mirta said, "you've got things to do. I'll sit here awhile."

Fett tried to calculate how many hours he'd spent with Sintas since she'd been revived, and it probably didn't add up to a full day. No, it wouldn't be any different this time, even if the years they'd lost were magically erased; he couldn't face spending time with people. As he slipped out of the farmhouse, Beviin was sawing planks in the front yard.

"How's it going?" he asked, looking as if he knew any-way.

"Bad. Could be worse." This was Beviin's home, and somehow Fett filled it with the detritus of his own disas-trous life, and Beviin never complained. The man found room for Fett's damaged ex-wife and a pa.s.sing Jedi whose family was pretty well as screwed as Fett's now. He had to ask, or else it'd look as if he was the only person who didn't realize that Beviin had saved him time after time. "Why do you bail me out all the time, Goran? And don't say it's because it's duty to the Mand'alor."

"Because n.o.body can live the way you do and not notice how much it hurts." Beviin carried on sawing. "I suppose it's me being grateful for not being that way." Beviin never pulled his punches.

"I don't understand why any of you do it, "Fett said. "Shysa, Spar-why didn't they say, 'Fett doesn't care, why should I do anything for him'? I didn't even know Spar."

"I hear Spar did it for Shysa, actually, because he told him Mandalore needed to look strong and stable to the outside world, like the Fetts were back."

Fett never kidded himself it was because of his lovable personality. He had his uses. But then that was how he treated everyone else, so he had nothing to complain about.

And problems went away if you threw enough credits at them: buy an a.s.sa.s.sin, a bounty hunter, or someone to look after your neglected wife.

The only one that wouldn't go away with a good dose of creds was time.

But Mirta was right. He had things to do, and if he didn't, he'd find some. He strode back to Slave I, opened the comm, and called his broker.

They said the man could acquire anything. He could prove it, then, by finding the biggest blue heart-of-fire gem on the market, the rarest and costliest of gems.

OYU'BAAT TAPCAF, KELDABE.

"They said you wanted to see me, Jedi."

Jaina looked up. She'd felt him coming anyway; Gotab left a very distinctive impression in the Force. Venku, al-ways hovering close to support the old man if he faltered, was a dim light next to him. They were both edgy and a lit-tle hostile.

"I do, Gotab, "she said, and stood to pull up a chair for him. Cham the barkeep lined up ales. "And you, Venku. Please, sit down."

Both men lifted off their helmets. She could see Fett reflected clearly in Venku now that she was so familiar with that face. The mouth was different, but this was definitely Fett's genetic material. She'd learned fast not to call it fam-ily.

"You want something from me, "Gotab said. "Spit it out."

"You're a healer. Am I right?"

He pulled off both gauntlets, revealing age-spotted, veined hands, and held them up. "Yes. I did a lot of healing. I look even older than I already am, don't I? Drains you, healing."

"How many folks here know you're a Jedi?" "I used to be a Jedi, "he said quietly. "I left the Order sixty years ago and became a Mando'ad.

But I suppose I'm pretty easy to spot for someone strong in the Force like you."

"What about you, then, Venku?" They still hadn't said whether anyone knew what they were. "You're harder to pin down, but you can use the Force, can't you?" "I can,'" Venku said. "But I avoid it." "So who knows! n.o.body, I bet. Are you scared even now? Come on. I know what it's like to be a Jedi and walk into a cantina full of Mandos." "Why do you care?" Gotab said.

"In case it has serious consequences for you, of course." Venku and Gotab looked at each other as if in some un-spoken debate. Venku sighed and shook his head. "Buir, "he said, "if you want to come clean after all these years and any Mando'ad so much as looks at you the wrong way, you know I'd kill them. After all you've done for Mandaiore, n.o.body can call you jetu. "And what about you, Kad'ika?" "I'm not that much use to the Kaminoans now." Gotab snorted. "Fett would still sell you." Jaina realized she'd hit a few nerves, and now Fett's name had been mentioned, she knew she would hit a few more.

"So you don't like Fett, "she said.

Gotab shrugged. "He's completely amoral. He cared nothing for Mandalore when we were occupied by the Empire."

"I'm missing something here, Gotab, so let me tell you what I'm asking for." Jaina was surprised to feel an urge to defend Fett. He wasn't completely without morals; he had principles, all right, pretty rigid ones, but they didn't fit a lot of folks' idea of ethics. "Fett's ex-wife Sintas-she was stored in carbonite for over thirty years, and now she's blind and suffering from amnesia. I was hoping you might be able to heal her. She's done well to recover as far as she has, but there's not much more that doctors can do."

"You sure she wants to remember being married to Fett?" he asked.

It was probably a random insult, but maybe Gotab knew that their past was a messy one.

"He thinks it's fairer if she knows everything so she can make better decisions about her future."

Gotab leaned back in his seat and looked at Venku as if they'd had a bet on something. "Well, I've lived to see a lot of unexpected things, but Fett growing a conscience-wayii."

Venku took one of the gla.s.ses of ne'tra gal, the sticky sweet black ale, and stared into it. "You probably guessed that we have misgivings about Fett, although he's lived up to more of his responsibilities as Mand'alor lately." "So you wouldn't help his ex-wife." "Will it help her?"

"Well, staying blind and not recalling much of your past, not even your own kid, doesn't sound a better deal than finding out what a sc.u.mbag your husband might have been." Jaina was getting impatient; she needed to know if exposing the two men as Jedi would end in trouble. "And if your neighbors know what you are, will you have to go into hiding?"

The doors parted and Carid came in with a couple of other men, laughing loudly. He waved to Jaina as if she were just another regular.