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"You make it sound as if you had been there." In the narrow space aboard the Hound's Tooth, Neelah folded her arms across her breast. She gazed skeptically at the other figure with her." How would you know so much about what went on in Emperor Palpatine's throne room?"

"There's ways," said Dengar. He sat on the floor's metal grate, his back against the bulkhead." How do you know I wasn't there with the Emperor, and Darth Vader and Prince Xizor?"

"They wouldn't have let you in." Neelah leaned against the structural beam behind her." I know that much, at least." There had been plenty of other things she hadn't known, which Dengar had had to explain to her; the story he had been relating to her, about all the bad blood in the past between the Trandoshan bounty hunter Bossk and Boba Fett, wouldn't have made sense otherwise. Who Emperor Palpatine was, and even Darth Vader, the entity known as the Dark Lord of the Sith-those things she'd had a rough idea of before Dengar had started with the story. Neelah had kept her ears open while she had been one of the dancing girls in Jabba the Hurt's palace; in a place like that, with its unrelenting atmosphere of ennui and malice, gossip about the galaxy's politics and dominant personalities had been just as endless. Most of the sentient creatures in the palace, from the lowliest scullery hands to the top-level mercenaries, had been constantly on the lookout for some way to scrabble up the chains of credits and power that seemed to link the stars together like an invisible web. Loyalty to any one employer was strictly a mercantile commodity, to be bought and sold like all the other temporary services.

So Topic A of conversation, in all the barracks and corridors and slop pits, had always been about who was up and who was down, who had managed to wangle a way closer to the center of the Imperial court, who had gone over to the Rebel Alliance, who was for sale to the highest bidder-and who was dead, all the scheming and maneuvering having reached an end with a blaster bolt to the head. Disloyalty might be more profitable in this universe, but it also had its price.

"All right," said Dengar." I wasn't there. But other creatures were; the Imperial court is full of eavesdroppers and snoops. Just like Jabba's palace." Neelah had told him about how much she had learned in that viewless fortress back on Tatooine." If you're not listening, you're not surviving-that's how those places are set up. It's not a matter of spies, so much-though there are always plenty of those, some of 'em talking to the Rebels, some reporting to Black Sun-as it is just sentient creature nature. And I know how to keep my ear to the ground as well, you know." Dengar pointed with his thumb toward the ship's cockpit deck above them." I may not be quite the bounty hunter that Boba Fett is, but I got at least a few of the necessary skills. You can't get anywhere in this business without being able to work your info sources. I got some lines into the Imperial court and Black Sun-some of them official, the stuff they want you to know, and some of them out the back door." Neelah raised an eyebrow." And you trust them?" " No more than I have to." Dengar gave a shrug." Some information I paid for-hey, it's a business expense-and that's usually got at least a little reliability factor to it. If you get killed because you trusted something they told you, you're not going to be coming back to buy any more from them. And some things you can get confirmed from more than one source-even when it's something to do with somebody dead, like Prince Xizor. The problem with running a criminal organization is that you've always got a lot of less-than-honorable creatures working for you, and knowing all about your business dealings. So when you're gone, they'll always talk for a credit or two." A half smile showed on Dengar's face." Why do you think creatures like me spend so much time in dumps like that cantina back in Mos Eisley? It ain't the food, and it sure isn't the gnardly music they got going there. No, what creatures go to a place like that to hear is information, pure and simple. Keep your ears open and you can find out all sorts of things."

"If you say so." Neelah was less than impressed. As far as she could tell, Dengar was entirely too trusting. Probably just as well, she thought, that he's getting out of the business. Still, she had the odd conviction that the story-or at least as much of it as he'd told her so far-was true. A sudden, disturbing notion came to her: Maybe I already knew some of these things. From before, from that life that had been stolen from her, that had been hers before her memory had been wiped clean and she had been enslaved in Jabba the Hutt's palace. If that was true, it meant that she had been something quite different from a simple dancing girl and potential rancor-fodder.

But I knew that, too-deep inside her spirit, in some place where an unquenchable spark of fire had remained glowing in the surrounding darkness, she had been absolutely sure that her true identity was something higher and greater than the lies in which she had been trapped. Even before she had discerned that Boba Fett had been watching out for her in the palace, making sure that nothing too horrible-or at least fatal-happened to her. Some strange twisting fate had brought her to that place, and some other destiny lay beyond it-if she could find it and hold it tight to herself. Everything that had been taken from her, the very self that had been erased, like a name written on a scrap of flimsiplast and set on fire, reduced to crumbling ash; she would either find it or die in the attempt. In some ways, it didn't matter which; that was what left her unafraid of the helmeted figure up in the Hound's Tooth's cockpit. The worst Boba Fett could do was kill her; the other death, in which her identity had been destroyed, had already happened to her, long ago.

"You can believe it or not," said Dengar." Doesn't matter to me. But you could get the same story from plenty of other creatures in this galaxy; now that all that stuff is over, the whole war among the bounty hunters, most of it's not exactly a secret." With an upward tilt of his head, Dengar again indicated the cockpit above them." Boba Fett made sure of that."

"He helped spread these stories-is that what you mean? Why would he do that?"

"Anything that adds to his reputation, he figures is a good idea. He won big out of that whole bounty hunters war, and against some pretty fierce opponents. Hey" -Dengar laid a hand on his own chest-" I'm pretty impressed. It's the kind of thing that when a lot of other creatures, bounty hunters or not, meet up with Boba Fett, they just roll over and play dead from the start. No sense in actually winding up dead. So it saves him a lot of time and effort, being preceded by that kind of well-known history."

Neelah supposed that made sense. Though it raised some other questions as well. If Boba Fett saw some advantage to grooming his reputation, using the myths and legends about him as a weapon against other creatures, then where did the process stop? A convenient lie or exaggeration would serve his purposes just as well as the truth. And once that possibility was admitted, then nothing about him could be trusted. Nothing that he couldn't back up with his own actions. There's the problem, admitted Neelah. You guess wrong, and it would cost you your life.

"So then what happened?" Neelah sat back down at the base of the ship's structural beam, across the small space from Dengar." Come on-the story doesn't end there." All the while that the Hound's Tooth had been traveling through space, toward its unrevealed destination, she had been listening to him. She had lost track of time, of how many Standard hours had gone by." What went on next with Boba Fett and all the other bounty hunters?"

"I don't know if I should bother telling you." Dengar had rooted around in the Hound's storage area and had found an empty cargo duffel. He wadded it up into a makeshift pillow." Not if you're going to be so skeptical about everything. What's the point?"

Spare me, thought Neelah. She rolled her eyes upward in exasperation. Someday, if he lived that long, this supposedly sentient creature would be on the hands of some other female, his bride-to-be Manaroo. Neelah didn't envy her.