"I can leave my hatch open here. I don't have to worry about Mandos, Sin."

"That's just what Jaster said and look what happened to him... so, as soon as I get my memory back and I can see, you're gone again....

still angry?"

"No." He waited for her to edge forward into the front of the c.o.c.kpit and look at him, but she stayed aft. "I'm glad you're okay."

"And why haven't you shown at Mirta's celebration?" "Cowardice."

"I told Mirta the truth. She's devastated." "You shouldn't have done it before her wedding." "Bo, I never made Ailyn hate you. I never told her any-thing. That was the problem. She filled in the gaps too much. I should have explained, but I wanted us to get on with our lives.... forget you.... hey, you know."

"I know." But Fett knew that he could have stayed in touch, or visited, and then Ailyn would at least have seen he was around, and not totally callous-just mostly. It might not have made any difference in the end. "I'm not good at telling people things, either."

"If you'd told the magistrate why you shot him, you'd never have been convicted."

"And have everyone know what he did to you? You didn't tell anyone.

You didn't want it dragged out in public."

There was only one thing Fett could have done with a sc.u.mbag like Lenovar. He wasn't just any rapist, although that would have been bad enough; he was a Journeyman Protector, Fett's superior officer on Concord Dawn, a con-stable who should have been upholding the law, not be-traying his uniform and Fett's trust. If I could have killed him a few more times, I would have. No, the only regrets Fett had were the stupid rows with Sin, the cruel things he'd asked about whether Ailyn was really his, and all the words that couldn't be unsaid now. She would never have told him about Lenovar; finding out for himself had been the tipping point.

Unrepentant, the magistrate said. You bet I was.

With the fights, and recriminations, and everything he owned taken by the courts, and then the exile... how did anyone repair a marriage after that? Better men did, all the time, but he didn't know how.

Sintas edged closer behind the pilot's seat. Fett thought it was better if she didn't have yet another illusion ruined.

"I'd have gone anywhere with you, Bo, "she said. "I didn't care if we lost everything."

"I know. I was the one who didn't have what it took."

"The last time I saw your face.... what were you, nine-teen?"

"Close enough."

She was desperate to look at him. Fifty-odd years. He understood why she needed to, but it was still a bad idea for both of them.

Being Sintas, she did it anyway.

She slid around in front of his seat and looked into his eyes; her, midthirties, perfect, him, over seventy, and with a savage life in those absent years that etched itself in every pore.

"Oh, Bo... whatever happened to you?" "I survived."

She could have looked more shocked. She just seemed ripped up by regret, but not half as much as he was. She touched the scars on his cheek-scars that had been etched by the Sarlacc's acid. It was another story he needed to tell her. "Come and see Mirta, "she said. "Please?"

"She'll give me the full number on why it was my fault for not telling her."

"No, she's a big girl now. She knows things are never as black and white as we want them to be."

Sintas had never expected him to be eloquent, which was a blessing right then. He handed her the envelope. That was the simplest bit. "Got a few things for you." "Bo, you don't have to do that."

"Just shut up and take it." Shysa would have done this so much better. He could do anything with a grin and that accent. "And I should have bought you one of these at the time... and this is yours anyway."

Fett went back to calibrating his HUD just so he didn't have to watch. Sin could do the strong-and-silent routine just as well as he could, as long as their eyes didn't meet.

"I know what's in the canister, "she said, "and I can't look at it right now." It was the only holoimage of the three of them as a family, in that short, idyllic time before it all collapsed. "But you're insane to buy me the stone. I'm never worth that much." "Sell it. It's yours."

"I've got the first one."

"Half of it. And a lot's happened since, so there'll be a different set of Fett memories in the blue stone. If you ever want to do some catching up."

Fett wondered if Mirta had taken her to visit Ailyn's grave yet.

The problem with Mirta telling Sintas that he'd gone to so much trouble to recover Ailyn's body and then buried her with half of the heart-of-fire, was that it made him look like a nice, normal, loving father. And however decent his motives were when he destroyed his marriage, he'd never been man enough in the years that followed to visit his family and try to repair the rift. It took more guts than facing an army.

You get the life you deserve, Fett. Everyone does. "Sin, after I left - did you find someone else?" She was holding the blue heart-of-fire between both palms, one flat above, one below, almost as if she was rolling it, eyes a little distant as if she'd already started lis-tening to its silent voice.

"I did, Bo, more than once, "she said at last. "But in our line of work, it never lasts, does it? You?"

"I don't remember, "he lied. She could tell anyway. "Let's go do the family thing, then." Sintas put the stone in the hip pocket of her pants. "Just this once."

He hadn't finished calibrating the HUD, but he put his helmet on anyway. And once it was on, he looked like the Bo she once knew and loved, and the lost years vanished for a brief time. They went to Mirta's feast.

Maybe Sintas would do that Kiffar thing with the new heart-of-fire, and read and discover everything that had happened to him while they were apart, and what he just couldn't manage to tell her even now.

It was just three words. But it was three too many for Boba Fett.

NOVOC VEVUT'S HOME, KELDABE: WEDDING FEAST OF MIRTA GEV AND GHES.

GRADE.

"I've found a use for Jedi!" Carid bellowed. "I knew I would one day! Look!"

The line of ale bottles stretched the length of the dura-plast trestle table in Vevut's crowded courtyard. Jaina con-centrated, knowing how critical the timing would be. Then she inhaled slowly, stepped back, and Force-pulled all thirty caps off in a rapid sequence that popped and rattled like a Luit pyrocracker. Froth welled from the necks of the bottles; the guests showed their approval with shouts of "Oya!" and "Kandosii!, "hammering their fists on the thigh plates of their armor.

Jaina took a bow. "Now you know why Jedi apprentices spend years in quiet contemplation and earnest study at the academy. "

The celebratory feast was packed; guests had spilled out from the courtyard onto the gra.s.s outside the low retaining wall. A man in gray armor had an animal with him, a predator with a deeply folded coat and six legs. When she pa.s.sed, it looked up sharply as if it recognized her, and made plaintive grumbling noises, slapping its whip-like tail on the ground. Mirta edged through the crowd toward her, not looking radiant or blushing.

Jaina could sense her misery, but she also knew the specific cause of it, because Sintas had told her: a single traumatic event whose consequences had spiraled out of control and finally fed into the crisis that now engulfed Jaina's own family, and much of the galaxy. It wasn't a di-rect causal chain, but it was so close and personal now that it might as well have been.

Fifty-odd years ago, what was happening to us right then? Mom was growing up on Alderaan. Uncle Luke was on Tatooine, no idea what was coming ten years down the line. Dad.... Dad was probably learning to steal speeders. And Sintas, who none of us knew or even thought about until this year, was a teenager with a baby daughter going through the worst time of her life. And none of us knew that we'd end up on this collision course.

Mirta finally pushed through the sea of bodies and steered Jaina to a quieter corner.

"Ba'buir was here with Grandmama earlier, but I can't find them now, "Mirta said.

"They've probably got some talking to do." "All I can think of now is-what if I'd killed him?" "But you didn't."

"You don't understand, Jaina. It's all I can remember with my mama now. She built her whole life around hating Fett and making him pay, from the work she did to the man she married. And everything she taught me. I grew up on hatred."

"But you've changed all that, Mirta, "Jaina said. "You stopped that cycle, didn't you? That takes some doing. Put it behind you. Live your life. I think Fett wants you to be happy, even if he doesn't give you any clues."

"I'm talking about what I nearly did. I was going to kill him. If your mother hadn't diverted my blaster back on Corellia, he'd be dead now."

Mirta hadn't struck Jaina as the kind of woman who worried about things like that. She was hard; pure and sim-ple, an unsentimental and unforgiving woman. But in all that struggle to survive, and all the violence she had meted out, there remained someone who could challenge the core of her upbringing. It was an extraordinary strength. "What-ifs can be corrosive, "Jaina said. "You should..." "It's not about me, Jaina.

It's about you. How do you think it feels when you find out that none of the events happened the way you thought, or even happened at all? But you were prepared to kill your own flesh and blood on the strength of it?"

"You think I'm going to kill my brother." "I think you need to hear from someone who nearly killed their own grandfather. Think about what it'll do to you."

"Mirta, he murdered your mother. He killed my aunt."

Jaina had an image of Jacen in her mind as he once was, and then imagined bringing a lightsaber down across his neck. It made her unsteady for a moment. "Are you saying I should forgive him? Is that what this is all about?"

"No, I think there are things you can't forgive. But exe-cuting someone is a step beyond, and if you're thinking about it... just remember me."

Jaina seriously considered a little careful mind influence right then just to stop Mirta being brokenhearted and guilt-ridden on her wedding day. But given Mirta's strength of will, Jaina was sure it would bounce right off her. She didn't even try.

"No disrespect to your granddad, "she said, "but he wasn't totally blameless, was he? I can imagine how much damage it does to a marriage when something that awful happens. But other folks handle it differently.

He could have, too. He could have stayed in touch, at least."

"When you've got the blaster in your hand and his back lined up in your cross-wires, it doesn't feel like that. And things happened to him to make him that way. Maybe they happened to your brother, too."

"I can't believe you're pleading for Jacen, "Jaina said. "If he walked in here now, wouldn't you shoot him dead for what he did to your mother?"

"Yes, I would." Mirta had a few wild flowers twisted in her hair, but she was still in yellow battle armor. It was in-congruous and very Mandalorian. "Without a second thought. I'm Fett's granddaughter in every sense. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing for you to shoot him.

Do whatever you can to get him locked up and treated or whatever. Maybe let fate take its course and leave someone else to.... kill him."

And that was incongruously Mandalorian, too. Family-not bloodline, but the living fabric of being a family-meant a lot to them, and maybe that was the root of Mirta's anguish.

She's worrying about me going through what she nearly did. Jaina was taken aback. That dualistic Mandalorian mindset-extreme violence, profound love-always threw her.

"I'll never forget what you're trying to do for me, "she said at last.

Mirta looked suddenly embarra.s.sed, as if she didn't want to be caught being kind. "Funny how I've only really got to grips with my own messy family since I've been talking to a shabla Jedi."

"I've learned more than I ever thought I would from all of you, and I don't mean saber tactics, either."

There was nothing like living close to someone who wanted to kill their granddad to make you look at the lightsaber in your own hand and ask if you could really use it on your own brother. Jaina had been thrown up against the choices and consequences here in a way that she would never have experienced in her own polite, restrained, rea-sonable Jedi family. She was also a lot clearer about what it meant to be a Jedi, because of the mirror held up to her by Mandalore. Everyone needed to see themselves as others saw them.

But she still didn't know exactly what she should do when it came to stopping Jacen on his headlong rush to disaster.

"I'll be back later, "Jaina said. "I need to mull over what you've said. But please go back to the party and be happy today. Promise me?"

Mirta didn't have a lot of happiness genes, that was ob-vious, but she managed a smile and clasped Jaina's arm. "Let's never be in opposing armies, but if we are, we'll make sure we avoid each other. Deal?"

"Deal, "said Jaina.

Jaina knew she wouldn't have understood that a couple of weeks earlier, but she certainly did now. She pa.s.sed Sintas walking up the dirt track toward Vevut's house from the center of Keldabe. She was clutching something tight in her right hand as she ambled along slowly, looking down at her fist as if she had a comlink in it, but when Jaina got close to her she could see that it had to be something much smaller than that.

Sintas looked up as if she hadn't seen Jaina coming, and almost stepped out of her way. There were tears in her eyes; Jaina would have been stunned if there hadn't been. Losing your memory was bad enough, but having to recover memories as bad as hers was living through pain twice.

"Sorry, "Sintas said, unfolding her fingers. There was a huge deep blue gem in her palm, shot with brilliant rain-bow colors as it caught the light. "Just been doing some catching up."

Sintas walked on. Jaina marveled at the ability of beings to recover from the worst experiences, and hoped her own family would be able to find some of that resilience.

She could still hear the wedding guests singing-that same plantive ballad she'd heard the other night. She chose to hear it as a song of love and homesickness. It would al-ways sound that way to her for as long as she lived.

OYU'BAAT TAPCAF, KELDABE.

If Fett had wanted a drink in the tapcaf today, he'd have had to get it from behind the bar himself.

Everyone was at his granddaughter's wedding feast, in-cluding the barkeep, Cham. Fett waited for Admiral Daala, thinking that it was a perfect freeze frame from his life that he was waiting to do business here while his granddaugh-ter and his ex-wife were doing the right thing and celebrat-ing the marriage.

He watched Daala walk through the doors, reflected in the mirrored panel next to his table.

"I've been arranging Gil's funeral with Reige, "she said.

"Did that involve a strafing run over Bastion?"

"The somewhat depleted Council of Moffs couldn't see why we wouldn't release the body for a state funeral. I gave them back a few dead Moffs to bury instead." "Corellia, then."

"Reige said Gil would have preferred that anyway." "You can invite Jacen Solo. He's a popular man on Co-rellia. They'd give him a warm welcome.... heat-seeking missile, maybe."

Daala didn't sit down. She looked as if she had somewhere else to go. "Niathal's formally declared the govern-ment in exile of the Galactic Alliance on Fondor." "Who says Mon Cals don't have a sense of humor?"

"And the Fondorians. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing." "Sit down."

"You said, if I might remind you, that I could have an ale at Mirta's wedding." "So I did."

"You seem reluctant. Is that because your ex-wife will be there?"

"My ex-wife saw my face today for the first time in fifty-two years."

"I've never seen you without the helmet." "Time was when I said this was my face." "Seen one Mando, seen them all." Fett clamped his hands on the helmet's cheek pieces, thumbs under the rim, and twisted slightly as he lifted the helmet clear of his head. Daala watched in complete silence with her arms folded. The silence went on a little too long for him to feel comfortable.

"It's not about the scars, "he said. Daala looked him in the face, eyelids closing a fraction, the faintest of smiles pa.s.sing across her lips.

"You scrub up well for an old man, Fett. I bet you broke a few hearts back in the day."

If he had, it was only distant admiration. "There was only ever Sintas."