"But he was on a hunt, I know that. He told me to get out of his way." Did Fett believe her? She'd stitched him up and tried to lure him to his death, so she could hardly blame him if he was having second thoughts about the clone. The man was real, all right. "So we're retracing his steps?"

"Yours."

"How are you going to pass yourself off as a client looking to hire a bounty

hunter?"

"I'm not. You are."

Mirta suddenly realized why he'd agreed to let her ride along. "My, I do come in handy, don't I?"

"Earn your keep. Rules of any partnership."

Mirta thought that sounded remarkably like her dead mother. Ailyn Vel was more a chip from the granite block of Fett than she'd ever admit, but that was impossible. She'd been a baby when Fett had left her grandmother, too young to pick up his callous ways.

"How do you cope?" Mirta asked.

"What?"

"How do you cope with being alone?"

"Are you going to yap all the way to Kuat?"

"You can't bring yourself to tell me to shut up, can you?"

"I cope because I like it that way," Fett said.

"Well, Mama was all I had and I don't like it that way."

Fett paused, and there was the faintest movement of his lips—as if he was stopping himself from saying something he'd regret. He ought to have understood, she thought. He'd lost his father at the hands of a Jedi, too.

"Yeah," he said. "What about your dad?"

"He died in a hull breach. Not even in combat."

"Why'd Ailyn marry a Mando? Sintas must have warned her we're bad news."

Mirta found she was clutching the heart-of-fire pendant tight in her fist. It was just half of the original stone. The other slice, split from it with a blow from the butt of Fett's blaster, was buried with Ailyn Vel in a modest grave outside Keldabe, in an ancient wood that the vongese hadn't managed to destroy.

I can't feel anything from this stone. It ought to tell me something. I'm Kiffar. Part Kiffar, anyway.

"She hung around Mando'ade to get a better idea of how to hunt you.

Then she met Papa. It didn't last."

"Romantic."

"She cared about him."

"And she let him make a Mando of you."

"I spent two summers with Papa on Null, after he and Mama split up.

He taught me everything he could. And then he got killed."

She didn't say it to shut Fett up. He was hardly a talkative man anyway, but there was quiet, and then there was breath-holding silence.

That was what she heard now.

"That's too bad," he said.

"Don't try to out-orphan me, Ba'buir. I know what it's like."

She struggled between the hatred she'd been taught to feel for him and the evidence of her own eyes that he wasn't a monster—at least not the monster painted by her mother. The very thought felt disloyal to the dead. After almost two months, she'd reached the stage where she had days when her mother wasn't her first waking thought, and didn't haunt her dreams. That felt like betrayal, too.

But life had to go on. She had to make sense of this, and not let Ailyn Vel's death be for nothing.

"No need to discuss it, then." He inhaled. He looked like he'd been holding his breath all that time. "Are you okay living where you are?"

"Yeah."

"I could buy you a house of your own. Anywhere."

Mirta never knew when he was going to flip over into awkward generosity. Beviin said he had his moments. He might, of course, have been trying to get rid of her with the lure of a place on a far planet.

"I'm okay where I am, thanks." No, that sounded dismissive. "I meant that I like living with Vevut's family."

Fett said nothing. She knew what he was thinking now.

"Yes, I do like Orade," she said. "He's a good man."

"You're a grown woman. None of my business."

But everyone knew she was a Fett now, and that carried with it some burdens. It took a brave man to risk a Mand'alor for a grandfather-in-law, especially one with Boba Fett's reputation. Mirta shut her eyes and tried to listen for whispered messages from the heart-of-fire.

"Why can't you get information from that?" Fett asked suddenly.

"I'm only part Kiffar. I don't have the full ability to sense things from objects." She opened her eyes again. Fett was still an implacable statue of detachment. She studied his profile to see what of him might be in her. "It's called psychometry. They say some Jedi can do it, too."

Mentioning Jedi might not have been a good idea, but Fett didn't show any reaction. "The stone absorbs memories from the giver and receiver," he

said. "Sintas said so." Ah. Under the veneer there might have been a man who wanted to either relive happier times or hide the ones he preferred to forget. The stone held a little bit of Sintas Vel's spirit, and a little bit of his. There was more veneer to him now than core, Mirta suspected, but she'd seen him cry, and nobody else had ever seen the adult Boba Fett weaken, she was sure of that. Maybe he hadn't even cried as a kid.

"I'm trying hard, Ba'buir."

"Worst thing you did was tell me you knew what happened to Sintas."

It was a slap in the face. When she'd said it, she hadn't even known if it would do the trick and lead him into her mother's ambush. Now she regretted hurting a dying man, even if she had been raised to loathe him.

"We'll find out how Grandmama died, I promise."

"After I get that clone," Fett said, all gravel and calculation,

"I'll find a full-blooded Kiffar to read the stone."

Mirta took it as a cue to shut up. Playing happy families wasn't the Fett way. She wondered how many other families had the record of violent death and attempted murder that theirs did. I hope what's in me is more like Papa. Then she recalled Leia Solo deflecting her blaster shot at Fett, and knew that it was Ba'buir blood in her veins after all—

Grandpapa's.

"Stand by," said Fett.

He didn't deploy full dampers when Slave /jumped. He never did. The acceleration to lightspeed and beyond felt like being punched in the chest and then sat on by a Hutt. She made a point of biting her lip discreetly as the stars streaked to lines of blue-white fire and the crushing sensation passed.

That had to hurt him, too. He was a sick man. Mirta fumbled in her pocket,

pulled out some painkiller capsules, and held them out to him. He took them without a word. His fingertips were cold.

It felt like a long, silent lifetime to Kuati space. Mirta filled it with planning how she would disembowel Jacen Solo if and when she got the chance. There was already a line forming for the privilege. Ba'buir wouldn't say what he had in mind for him; all she was certain of was that Boba Fett never turned his back on a score that required settling.

"Decelerating in half a standard hour," he said.

She wanted very badly to love him, but couldn't. If she had found out what happened between him and her grandmother, she might have found it easier, but she knew it might also have confirmed her legacy of revenge. One thing she'd learned fast was that it was a subject to avoid.

It wasn't that she was afraid of asking; she just couldn't get past the silent routine. He could make the world outside vanish if he wanted to.

Bador was a striking contrast to Mandalore. Slave /swept on a descent path past orbiters and over cities studded with straight roads and open plazas. Mirta checked her datapad to orient herself.