He pulled off both gauntlets, revealing age-spotted, veined hands, and held them up. “Yes. I did a lot of healing. I look even older than I already am, don’t I? Drains you, healing.”
“How many folks here know you’re a Jedi?” “I used to be a Jedi, “he said quietly. “I left the Order sixty years ago and became a Mando’ad. But I suppose I’m pretty easy to spot for someone strong in the Force like you.”
“What about you, then, Venku?” They still hadn’t said whether anyone knew what they were. “You’re harder to pin down, but you can use the Force, can’t you?” “I can,’” Venku said. “But I avoid it.” “So who knows! Nobody, I bet. Are you scared even now? Come on. I know what it’s like to be a Jedi and walk into a cantina full of Mandos.” “Why do you care?” Gotab said.
“In case it has serious consequences for you, of course.” Venku and Gotab looked at each other as if in some unspoken debate. Venku sighed and shook his head. “Buir, “he said, “if you want to come clean after all these years and any Mando’ad so much as looks at you the wrong way, you know I’d kill them. After all you’ve done for Mandaiore, nobody can call you jetu. “And what about you, Kad’ika?” “I’m not that much use to the Kaminoans now.” Gotab snorted. “Fett would still sell you.” Jaina realized she’d hit a few nerves, and now Fett’s name had been mentioned, she knew she would hit a few more.
“So you don’t like Fett, “she said.
Gotab shrugged. “He’s completely amoral. He cared nothing for Mandalore when we were occupied by the Empire.”
“I’m missing something here, Gotab, so let me tell you what I’m asking for.” Jaina was surprised to feel an urge to defend Fett. He wasn’t completely without morals; he had principles, all right, pretty rigid ones, but they didn’t fit a lot of folks’ idea of ethics. “Fett’s ex-wife Sintas-she was stored in carbonite for over thirty years, and now she’s blind and suffering from amnesia. I was hoping you might be able to heal her. She’s done well to recover as far as she has, but there’s not much more that doctors can do.”
“You sure she wants to remember being married to Fett?” he asked.
It was probably a random insult, but maybe Gotab knew that their past was a messy one.
“He thinks it’s fairer if she knows everything so she can make better decisions about her future.”
Gotab leaned back in his seat and looked at Venku as if they’d had a bet on something. “Well, I’ve lived to see a lot of unexpected things, but Fett growing a conscience-wayii.”
Venku took one of the glasses of ne’tra gal, the sticky sweet black ale, and stared into it. “You probably guessed that we have misgivings about Fett, although he’s lived up to more of his responsibilities as Mand’alor lately.” “So you wouldn’t help his ex-wife.” “Will it help her?”
“Well, staying blind and not recalling much of your past, not even your own kid, doesn’t sound a better deal than finding out what a scumbag your husband might have been.” Jaina was getting impatient; she needed to know if exposing the two men as Jedi would end in trouble. “And if your neighbors know what you are, will you have to go into hiding?”
The doors parted and Carid came in with a couple of other men, laughing loudly. He waved to Jaina as if she were just another regular. She couldn’t imagine him coming after this frail old man and harming him for once having been a Jedi. If Gotab had been here for sixty years, then he must have known that Mandalorians, however violent and uncompromising, tended not to blame folks for who their parents-or brothers-were. On Mandalore, you could erase your past.
“It’s going to come as a shock to Fett, for a start, “said Venku. “But maybe it’s time, because even if anyone knew and wanted to exploit it, they’d have to take me first, and I don’t come from a family of pushovers.” “Look, just tell me.”
Sixty years was a long time to sit on a secret that big. It grew to be a habit, and then it probably became unthinkable to imagine naming it. Jaina knew the size of the secrets in her own family, the ones about her grandfather. The longer she spent with Fett and the Mandalorians, the more she saw of how parallel their lives were in so many ways, and she wondered how much of that had fueled the ani-mosity.
“I was a Jedi general in the Clone Wars, “Gotab said at last. “I left the Order because I couldn’t stomach how we talked about compassion and then turned a blind eye to using human clones for our slave army. The clones I served with were my brothers. I helped them escape, I healed them. I did whatever I could to atone for the wrong that Jedi did those men. And Venku-Kad’ika-his mother was a Jedi and his father was a clone soldier. We hid from the Empire for years because they could have bred a whole new clone army from him. We hid so well that not even Fett’s fixer, that Beviin, knew who we were, or even what our true clan name was.”