[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(41)
“Very well.” The slits in Bossk’s eyes narrowed into apertures a honed razor might have cut. “As you wish. Maybe there is something I can learn from an … old one like you.” He smiled the ugly smile characteristic of his species. “After all-you murdered your way to control of the Guild. I have but to wait, and it’s mine.”
“Is not patience a virtue, even among the assassins?”
Bossk pushed the other council member aside, knocking him against the smaller figure of Zuckuss. The Trandoshan stepped up to the crescent-shaped table, directly in front of Boba Fett. One clawed hand grasped the goblet by its stem. “To your health.” Bossk drained the contents, then threw the goblet against the wall behind; it clanged like a bell, then rolled clattering across the hard stone tiles of the floor. “However long it lasts.”
“I suppose”-Fett returned the other’s gaze- “it’ll last long enough.”
Dark wine seeped around Bossk’s fangs as he leaned toward Fett. “You might fool the others,” he whispered, “but you’re not fooling me. I don’t know what your game is-but I don’t worry about you knowing mine.” His voice dropped lower and more guttural as he brought his snout almost against the visor of Fett’s helmet. “I’ll be a brother to you, all right. And I know how, believe me. I had brothers when I was spawned. And you know what?” Bossk’s breath smelled of wine and blood. “I ate them.”
He
turned and strode away, toward the
council chamber’s doors. One of Bossk’s clawed feet connected with
the empty goblet he had thrown, sending
it skittering against the wall like a tiny droid whose circuits had been scooped out. The other bounty hunter, Zuckuss, glanced around at the watching faces, then ran after Bossk.
Sitting next to Boba Fett, Cradossk heaved a sigh. “Don’t judge us too harshly, my friend.” Cradossk took the flagon from the tray being held near him and refilled his own goblet. He knocked that back and filled it again. “Sometimes our get-togethers go a little better than this… .”
10
“You’ve been a long time away,” said the Emperor. The ancient, withered head slowly nodded. “Many are the stars you travel among.”
“All my journeying is in your service.” Prince Xizor inclined his head, a courtly signal of submission. The dark serpent of his topknot brushed across his shoulder. “And to the glory of the Empire.”
“Well spoken, as always.” Emperor Palpatine swiveled his throne toward another section of the immense room. “Whatever else might be said of him, you must agree that the prince has a way with words. Don’t you think so, Vader?”
Xizor turned toward the hologram of the dark-caped figure-an intimidatingly life-sized image, transmitted from the Devastator, Lord Vader’s personal flagship. Don’t try it on this one, Xizor warned himself. He had witnessed too many examples of what happened to those whose words caused the Dark Lord of the Sith to lose patience. The Emperor might be keeping him on a short leash. But one long enough, thought Xizor, to reach my throat.
“Your judgment, my lord, exceeds mine.” Vader kept his own words as diplomatically inscrutable as the mask that concealed his face. “You know best where to place your trust.”
“Sometimes, Vader, I think you’d prefer it if I trusted no one but you.” The Emperor put his fingertips together. Behind him, framed in the towering windows of the throne room, the curved arms of the galaxy extended, like shoals of gems in an ink-black sea. Below the stars, the towers and massive shapes of Imperial City rolled like the crests of a frozen sea across the hidden surface of Coruscant, a monument in durasteel to both the ambition and the grasp of Palpatine. “I see into so many creatures’ hearts, and all I find there is fear. Which is as it should be.” The deep-set eyes contemplated the empty cage formed by his hands, as though envisioning the worlds bound by the Empire’s power. “But when I look into yours, Vader, I see … something else.” Like a hooded mendicant rather than the ruler of worlds, Emperor Palpatine peered through the angles of his fingers. “Something almost like … desire.”
Prince Xizor managed to keep his own smile from showing. Desire among the Falleen, his species, meant only one thing. His cruel beauty, the sharply chiseled planes of his face, and his regal bearing, combined with a pheromone-rich musk that evaded all conscious senses, were what put a female of any world under his command. Humanoid female, of a type pleasing to his own sense of aesthetics; if the members of the more repulsive of the galaxy’s species were similarly affected, that was not something he had yet felt the need to put to the test.