Read Online Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace by Kevin J. Anderson - Free Book Online

feet. “I just found him—er—just like this—down the hall—near the tunnel to Ephant Mon’s quarters! And I brought him here to perform—uh—emergency culinary resus-susperation! Garbage inhalation of the last resort! It’s an emergency technique I learned from …”
    With great presence of mind, Porcellus slipped out of the receiving room and concealed himself in the very darkest corner of the kitchen. From there, a few minutes later, he watched the Gamorrean guard plod dutifully out, carrying the kitchen boy’s corpse slung over his shoulder. He was followed in fairly short order by Ree-Yees himself, staggering as though his brain had been set on auto-pickle and reeking of Sullustan gin.
    There was very definitely something going on in the palace.
    â€œA plot,” rumbled Gartogg, the Gamorrean guard, who returned to the kitchen the next morning, Phlegmin’s corpse still slung over his shoulder and much unimproved by the day’s rising heat. “Clues.” A long pause, while he considered, as if carefully matching the contents of one of his brain cells with the contents of the other. “All tied together.” He helped himself to a handful of the packing material which had come around a jar of candied rennet, and snuffled noisily. “Girl. She, um …”
    â€œWhat girl?” demanded Porcellus. “And get that disgusting thing out of here!”
    â€œMercenary girl. Brought in Wookiee. Last night.” Gartogg licked a fragment of plastiform from his lower lip. “Ladyfriend of Solo. The smuggler. Boss caught them.” He carefully poked back into its socket the corpse’s left eye, which was starting to droop free, and looked inquiringly in the direction of the white-chocolate bread pudding that Porcellus was preparing for tonight’s dessert.
    â€œGet that thing out of here!” commanded Porcellus. “I cook in here, this place has to stay clean—clean and
healthful.
” He was not anxious to have the Gamorrean start thinking about plots.
    But Gartogg was right about the girl. When he was summoned to Jabba’s audience chamber at the beginning of the evening’s festivities, Porcellus noted the absence of the tarnished brown-black slab of carbonite which for months had decorated the alcove, and the presence of a new “pet” on Jabba’s dais.
    His heart went out to her in pity. She was very small, slender and fragile-looking in the few scant scraps of gold and silk the crimelord allowed, her heavy, dark-red hair piled thick on her aristocratic head. “I—I’m sorry,” he stammered quietly, kneeling on the dais at her side. “If there’s anything I can get for you from the kitchen …”
    It was a hopelessly ineffective offer of aid, and he knew it; but she smiled, and took his hand. “Thank you.” She had a voice like smoke and honey; he could see, not fear, but terrible worry in her brown eyes.
    Solo
, thought Porcellus despairingly.
She’s in love with that smuggler Solo
. She was in this position—a prisoner like himself in Jabba’s palace—because of that love.
    And so, though his own heart hurt with love for her, he made it his business to see that Solo got food from the palace kitchen, not something that was guaranteedin Jabba’s dungeons. Many of the prisoners didn’t get food at all, for long periods of time. But Porcellus, though his heart was in his throat with terror every time he did it, bribed the guards with beignets and chocolate ladybabies to take meat to the Wookiee, and because he knew hibernation sickness left the body weak and shaky from carbohydrate starvation, smuggled things like stuffed pasties and breaded eggs to the man his beloved loved.
    He felt like a fool—the man was going to be executed anyway and he was playing around with a rancor-pit offense himself. But it was all he could do for her,