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

and when, the following night, she took his hand and whispered, “Thank you. Porcellus, thank you,” and looked up into his eyes, it was, for one second, worth it all.
    Jabba’s rumbling, horrible laugh sounded from above them. “You watch out, pretty Leia,” the crimelord said in his slow, almost incomprehensible Huttese. The noise in the hall around them was tremendous, as Jabba’s court degenerated into the usual orgy of card games, alcoholism, and testosterone-imbued lying that characterized evenings at the palace: Max Rebo and his band were playing, and Jabba’s nasty little pet Salacious Crumb was engaged in a vamped duet with the singer Sy Snootles.
    Jabba hefted the golden dish of fricasseed sandmaggot kidneys which was the first of Porcellus’s culinary offerings for the evening. After the adventure of the vegetable crepes, Porcellus had gone back to the Bloated One’s favorite standbys, but for days now he had produced every one with his heart in his mouth. “I think there’s
fierfek
in his cooking. What you think, Chef?”
    â€œNo,” whispered Porcellus desperately, and checked to see if he was standing on the rancor’s trapdoor. He was. “No, it isn’t true …”
    â€œHere.” Leia cast a quick look at the cook’s ashen face and stood up, reaching to take the dish from Jabba’s hands. “There’s no
fierfek
in this, is there, Porcellus?”
    â€œUh …”
    â€œYour Highness,” warned the golden protocol droid C-3PO hastily, “I really wouldn’t advise …”
    Jabba generally dispensed with the formality of utensils, but an ornamental border of cracknels surrounded the fetid yellowish glop heaped artistically in the center. Using one of them for a spoon, Leia helped herself to two large mouthfuls.
    She turned green and sat down rather quickly.
    Jabba roared with obscene laughter. Salacious Crumb, skipping through the crowd around the bandstand, sprang up over the back of the Gamorrean stationed nearest Jabba’s dais, an ugly boor named Jubnuk, and, when Jubnuk swatted irritably at him, ran shrieking to his master’s side and hurled the rest of the dish of sandmaggot kidneys at the guard. This created enough of a diversion for Porcellus to slip hastily out of the main hall. But throughout the remainder of the night’s partying, he returned again and again to the hall to check on Leia, who was looking extremely wan as the night progressed.
    Sandmaggot kidneys did not agree with everyone.
    And all it would need, thought Porcellus despairingly, would be for
her
to drop dead.
    Jubnuk, who had licked all the spattered sandmaggot kidneys off his armor and the surrounding walls, showed no ill effects. Porcellus took what comfort he could from that.
    Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi Knights, entered the palace with the first light of dawn.
    The first Porcellus knew of it was when he pickedhis way on tiptoe among the sleeping bodies in the audience hall with a cup of vine-coffee and a freshly made jelly doughnut for Leia—also sleeping on the dais at the Hutt’s side—and saw Bib Fortuna enter, followed by a medium-sized, slender, and self-effacing young man in black.
    â€œI told you not to admit him,” rumbled Jabba, when his majordomo had wakened him to see the young man before him.
    Porcellus stepped hastily back, concealing himself behind the bemused and hungover crowd of Jabba’s retainers, one of whom—a dark-skinned newcomer in a helmet of gondar tusks—relieved him of the vine-coffee and the doughnut.
    â€œI must be allowed to speak to your master,” said Skywalker in his soft voice.
    Bib Fortuna turned immediately to the crimelord. “He must be allowed to speak to—”
    â€œYou weak-minded fool.” Jabba pushed Fortuna aside. “That old Jedi mind trick will not work on me.”
    Skywalker inclined his head in a