Jacen's a Jedi. He can't be in league with her. She's done something to him. Mind-influenced him or something.

This woman had left his mother with a battered face. This woman was all

he'd been taught to fear and avoid, and Jacen was talking to her in his office, as bold as anything.

Ben knew he had to tell someone, but he'd run out of people to trust. If Jacen could be influenced like that, anyone could—except Mom. Mom wasn't in Lumiya's thrall, or she wouldn't have been in a fight with her.

Ben had to find her. He had to warn her.

That morning he'd felt like things couldn't possibly get any worse, and now he knew they could.

chapter fourteen

If you think you're going to scare us off by cozying up to the Mandalorians, Bug Boy, you've got another think coming.

—Hebanh Del Dalhe, Murkhanan Department of Trade and Industry, to the Roche ambassador, during a disagreement on intellectual property rights

BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, KELDABE, MANDALORE

"Too much holonews is bad for you," said the man standing in the doorway of the outbuilding. Fett had spotted him coming—it was hard not to. His armor was extraordinary. There was no real need for Fett to be vigilant on Mandalore, but then Jaster Mereel had once thought he was perfectly okay among his own people, too. Safe was always better than sorry. Fett carried on cleaning his helmet, feet up on the chair.

"It's riveting," he said, nodding in the direction of the monitor that he'd propped on the table. The news anchors and commentators had descended into a feeding frenzy about the bloodless coup. "Jacen Solo, the boy who wants to be Vader when he grows up. He finally did it."

"He probably looks in the mirror when he brushes his teeth and tells himself it's his destiny."

"And you are?"

"Venku."

He didn't have a proper Keldabe accent. If anything, he sounded like he'd spent time on Kuat, and maybe Muunilinst, too. That wasn't unusual for Mandalorians, and it was more common now that so many were flooding back to what Beviin called Manda'yaim.

That was the traditional name for the planet, not Mandalore. Fett had never realized that. Every day was an education that told him how far adrift he was from his own people.

"Sit down, Venku." Fett gestured to the last remaining chair in the room. He tried to think leader and not bounty hunter. "Whatever it is, get it off your chest."

Venku had the most eclectic armor Fett had ever seen. It was a custom to wear sections of armor belonging to a dead relative or friend, but Venku had no two plates that matched. Every piece was a different color. The palette ranged from blue, white, and black to gold, cream, gray, and red.

"What happened to your fashion sense? Did someone shoot it?"

Venku still stood, ignoring the chair. He glanced down at his plates as if noticing them for the first time. "The chest plate, the buy'ce, and shoulder sections came from my uncles. The forearm plates were my father's, the thigh plates came from my cousin, and the belt was my aunt's. Then there's—"

"Okay. Big family."

"Those who are tab'echaaj'la and those who still live, yes."

Fett had given up asking for translations. He got the general idea.

"I'm nearly done with cleaning my bucket."

"And they said charm wasn't your strong suit. Okay, I came to tell you I'm relieved you decided to be a proper Mand'alor. The Mando'ade are coming home. You probably don't notice much beyond your own existence, but this is your purpose."

Fett had never thought of himself as easygoing, but normally he couldn't get worked up enough to slug fools if he wasn't paid to. This man didn't strike him as a fool, but he'd hit a nerve and Fett couldn't quite work out why.

"Glad I could be more useful than a doorstop."

"Which is why I'm also relieved to give you this." Venku opened a pouch on

his ammunition belt—his aunt's belt, he'd said, so she must have been a typical Mando woman—and placed a small, dark blue rectangular container on the table. "And don't mistake this for adulation or sentimentality. You owe your people. There'll be someone along shortly to administer it."

Venku turned toward the door as the word administer bored into Fett's skull. "Whoa there."

Venku glanced over his multicolored shoulder. "Don't try doing it yourself. It has to be inserted into the bone marrow, and that's going to hurt like you wouldn't believe. Let someone qualified do it. It'll still hurt, but they'll place it correctly."

So this was one of Jaing's minions. He certainly didn't have his boss's sartorial style, although he did have expensive dark green leather gloves, and Fett couldn't guess what or who had contributed to those.

"Tell him we're even," Fett said. "And . . . thank him."

Venku started to say something then stopped as if he was getting a message via his helmet. Fett tilted his own helmet in his lap so he could see the HUD display that was patched into Slave J's external security cam. A man tottered past the ship, clearly very old indeed from his gait but still wearing full lighting armor, and paused to look at the ship.

Then he moved out of cam range in the direction of the building.

Fett would never rule out even a senile Mandalorian as a possible threat: if the old man had survived to that age, he was either unusually lucky or a serious fighter. But Fett remained with his feet on the chair, wiping the red shimmer-silk lining of his helmet with a sapon cloth, consumed with curiosity but hiding it perfectly. The old man appeared in the doorway, squeezed past Venku, and stared at Fett.

"At least I lived to see the day," he said. "Su'cuy, Mand'alor, gar shabuir. "

It wasn't the most polite greeting that Fett had ever received, but it was certainly the most relevant to a terminally ill man. It was the only possible

"So you're still alive." He'd worked out what shabuir meant, too, but he chose to take it as ribald affection rather than abuse.

The old Mando walked out with arthritic dignity, paused again at the door to stare at Fett, and went on his way.

"You made his day," said Venku.

"I shouldn't ask."

"Then don't." Venku sighed, then put his hands to his helmet to pop the seal. The rustle of fabric muffled his voice as he lifted the buy'ce.

"Oh, all right, then."

Boba Fett was looking into the face of a man perhaps ten or fifteen years younger than him: dark hair with a liberal threading of gray, strong cheekbones, and the very darkest brown eyes. He'd looked much like that himself twenty years ago. The nose was sharper and the mouth was a stranger's, but the rest—it was a Fett face.

He was looking into his own eyes, and into the eyes of his long-dead father.

"I'm Venku," said the Mando with the motley armor. "But you probably know me better as Kad'ika. Interesting to meet you at last . . .

Uncle Boba."

OSARIAN TAPCAF, CORUSCANT

I couldn't think who else to tell," Ben said. "Or who else would listen to me if I did."

Mara wondered if he'd been crying about Lekauf or Jacen's breathtaking betrayal. He'd been crying about something, though, and he was doing a

reasonable job of disguising it.

"I believe you, Ben."

"Maybe I did imagine it."

"You didn't." No, he certainly couldn't imagine Lumiya having a friendly chat with Jacen, dissecting their run of triumphs, and deciding when Niathal would no longer be useful.

And discussing their lies. No daughter to avenge—and wiping out Ben's memory of what happened to Nelani.