Stellet laughed, raised his glass in a mock toast. "Sit?"
"Can't. Got a game to play."
A gravelly voice from a nearby table pulled Khedryn around. "You smell of fine perfume, Khedryn Faal," said Kolas, a tawny-furred Cathar still working on the kind of banter that predominated at The Hole.
Khedryn leaned over him-he smelled of spoiled pulkay-and said, "You mean ankarax dung, or an open sewer, or something unpleasant. Keep trying, Kolas."
Those at the tables near Kolas jeered the Cathar. Kolas's whiskered face screwed up in confusion. He growled with embarrassment and hid behind his drink.
Khedryn thumped Kolas on his massive shoulder, picked up his pulkay from the bar, and spotted Marr down the hall, near the archway to the back room of The Hole. His first mate's elongated head seemed to float over the more vertically challenged crowd. Marr was tall even for a Cerean.
Before Khedryn could raise a hand in greeting, a human thrust himself into Khedryn's space. The man was taller than Khedryn by a head. His neatly trimmed beard and short brown hair book-ended intense, haunted gray eyes, the kind Khedryn had seen in religious fanatics. Khedryn put him at forty years, maybe, about the time human men looked back on their lives, found them wanting, and turned stupid.
"You're in my gravity well, friend," Khedryn said, and tried to push past.
The man would have none of it and blocked his way. He felt as solid as Kolas. Over the man's shoulder, Khedryn saw Marr take note of the confrontation and move his way. Several other patrons took notice, too, and half stood. The man seemed to sense the precariousness of his situation.
"Captain Faal," the man said. He backed off a step and put his hands in his pockets. "If I could have a moment."
"Not now."
The man stared into Khedryn's face. "Please, Captain. I will be brief."
Khedryn took him in. From his dungarees and boots, Khedryn made him as a salvage man. He wore a blaster, but that was part of the Farpoint uniform.
"Is this business?" Khedryn asked.
The man nodded. "Potentially lucrative."
"That's the only kind I'm interested in. We should talk, but in a bit. I've got a sabacc table waiting for me."
The man held his gaze and did not give way. "It would be better if we spoke now. Please, sit."
The words sounded strange to Khedryn's ears. They bounced around in his mind, repeating, repeating. He felt a tickle behind his eyes. His vision blurred for a moment and when it cleared he figured he should at least hear what the man had to say.
"Of course, friend. Let's get a table-"
Marr's long fingers fixed on Khedryn's shoulder. "The game is waiting, Captain. Reegas is displeased already."
Khedryn felt a moment's light-headedness. "Reegas?"
"Yes." Marr put his body between Khedryn and the human. The Cerean had a hand on his blaster and a question in his eyes.
Khedryn looked into the dark eyes of his friend, shook his head to clear it. What had he been thinking?
"Reegas, right."
He looked around Marr at the man who had accosted him.
"What is your name, friend? And how do you know me?"
Disappointment colored the human's face. "I know of you. And you'll be interested in what I have to say, Captain."
"No doubt. After the game, though."
"Captain-"
"He said after," Marr interrupted.
"What'd you say your name was?" Khedryn asked.
"Jaden Korr."
"Korr here says he has a business proposition, Marr."
Korr did not even look at the Cerean.
"We are always looking for business," Marr said.
"I'll find you after the game. You're welcome to watch, if you like," Khedryn said, and indicated the vidscreens. "Better'n watching a grav-ball game that was played four standard months ago."
"I suppose it is," Jaden said, studying Khedryn and Marr. "I may take you up on that, Captain."
Sitting in the corner of The Hole near the Bothan musicians, Kell watched the bearded human confront Khedryn Faal and he knew almost immediately that he had found his Jedi. He imagined the sharp tang of the Jedi's soup, licked his lips, and stood.
For two standard weeks he had prowled unnoticed among Farpoint's streets, cantinas, and gambling dens. He had fed off the stored sentients in Predator's hold while gathering information about Farpoint, its people, the comings and goings of ships, always with an eye toward spotting a Jedi.
He had found nothing. Until now.
The Jedi had been posing as a scrap dealer from the Core. He must have been shielding his Force signature. But Kell had felt the flash of power when the Jedi had used the so-called mind trick on Khedryn Faal. Therefore-Kell smiled at the echo of Wyyrlok's syntax-the Jedi clearly had urgent business with Faal.
And that information allowed Kell to put together the puzzle of Krayt's vision, to see Wyyrlok's sign. And perhaps his own.
He had heard the gossip that Junker had happened upon a promising salvage opportunity, of course, but such stories were not uncommon in Farpoint. He had thought there was little to distinguish it from any others.
But now he suspected otherwise, because the Jedi must have thought it different from the others. And that meant that Kell had found his sign. He would get his answer when he determined where the salvage opportunity was located. He would have wagered much that it was on the icebound moon in orbit around a blue, ringed gas giant, the image of which Wyyrlok had impressed on Kell's mind.
Kell imagined lines crossing, knotting together, the warp and weft of Fate's skein meeting in the corrugated confines of The Black Hole and leading outward into the Unknown Regions and Kell's destiny.
Over the Bothans' music, over the hum of conversation, laughter, and vidscreens, Kell had heard the Jedi say his name to Khedryn Faal.
Jaden Korr.
The name sent a thrill through him. He savored the syllables, the sounds an incantation that would summon him to revelation.
"Jaden Korr," he whispered.
The Bothan musicians built their song to a climax, staring at and past Kell without seeing him. Kell allowed his perception to see fate lines as the Bothan music died. The room became a net of glowing tethers, but Kell had eyes only for the tendrils of red and green that spiraled around the gray-eyed Jedi.
He wound through the crowd, almost invisible to those in The Hole. Perhaps someone saw him for a moment, but he flickered in and out of perception with such smoothness that they probably registered him only out of the corner of an eye, as a fleeting shadow.
Or a ghost.
A table erupted in shouts as someone scored in the grav-ball game blaring on one of the vidscreens. Korr stood in place, arms crossed, staring after Khedryn Faal, motionless and placid amid the frenetic activity of dancing girls, servers, and patrons in The Hole.
Kell fell in with the activity. His feeders roiled in his cheeks as he closed on Korr. He could not take his eyes from the back of Korr's head, could not pry his thoughts from the imagined taste of the Jedi's soup, the sharp, creamy flavor implied by the power that flashed when the Jedi had used his mind trick.
Kell's appetites were driving him, he realized, making him incautious. He recognized this, but he recognized, too, that if revelation were ever to be his, it would come through the soup of a Force-user.
Perhaps this Force-user, he thought.
He glided behind Korr, near enough to touch him, and stopped there. His feeders twitched. The effort to keep himself shielded-even from a passive Force-user-strained him. His daen nosi tangled themselves with Korr's, squirming, silver, green, and red serpents wrestling for dominance.