“Singing, “he said. “I’m not a heavy sleeper. It’s my suspicious nature.”
“Yeah, I heard it, too. It was absolutely beautiful. Is it a love song? It sounds so lonely and longing.”
Beviin stifled a laugh. “It roughly translates as, ‘Nobody likes us but we don’t care, because we’re Mandos, and we’re the best.’ Sorry to spoil the illusion. But we do have our mournful ballads.” He cocked an ear in the direction of Sintas’s room. “I think she’s having nightmares. Whatever Gotab’s done, the old neural pathways are connecting again…”
Sintas was definitely having nightmares; Jaina listened outside for a while and then went in to sit with her just in case she woke up screaming. She was thrashing around, muttering incoherently, and the only words Jaina could understand were “you could have told them…”
Jaina found herself unable to keep her eyes open, and dozed in the chair. She woke with a start; Sintas was sitting up, and it was starting to get light outside. “Stang, “Sintas said. “Daylight.” “You can see?” “I can.”
“That’s excellent news.” Jaina took her hand. “You were having a nightmare.”
“I had a dream, but I don’t think it was one. I remembered something. There was a bounty I was hunting, but I ended up being grabbed, and there was this barve saying
I’d be worth something for ransom, and he shot me full of some sedative or other…”
“Someone who knew you were Fett’s ex-wife?”
“Bo…. oh, stang, it’s coming back… Bo never took kindly to anyone messing with me, even after we split up. Then there was…. oh, Ailyn, no…”
Jaina braced for some trauma to emerge. Just ending up in carbonite would have been enough, but she had all the bounty hunter baggage, plus Fett, and then a dead daughter. “Hey, take it easy.”
“She was so excited. I said I’d be back from the job in time to take her to Coruscant, see the big city, buy her some nice things.”
Ailyn had been about sixteen. Carbonite and fate had wiped out the best part of forty years and a family lifetime that could have been. Sintas seemed as tough as old boots, but tears were now streaming down her face.
“Bo, “she said. “He shot someone.”
That didn’t narrow it down much. Jaina handed her a cloth to wipe her face. “Maybe you need some meds to slow all this down a little…”
“No, no, I need to remember this, I need to.” Sintas put her hand to her mouth. “Ailyn, and then Mirta-whatever did I say that made her go and do all that? I never told her about it. We never talked. I never told her why Bo and I divorced.”
“Mirta thought he abandoned you.” It was definitely none of Jaina’s business, and she shouldn’t have said it. Too late now. “Ailyn blamed his not being around for your…. well, death.”
“I know, but…. look, Bo was exiled for murder. It wasn’t like that. It was much more complicated.”
Jaina preferred Fett’s more succinct analyses: he’d left her and he obviously felt bad about the effect it had on her. It sounded pitifully small and domestic, the kind of stuff the divorce lawyers thrived on, not the catalyst for a vendetta on Ailyn’s scale that ended up with Jacen killing her. But Sintas was getting increasingly distraught as memories were starting to connect. She seemed to have a much more complicated recollection of the breakdown of their marriage. So the law had caught up with Fett at least once in his life. All that surprised Jaina was that he’d been caught at all.
But he’d always have his reasons, she knew that by now. “I think I’d better go and get Mirta, “Jaina said. “No, please, not yet. You look like a sympathetic person who understands how families can tear themselves apart.” They said Kiffar people were psychic. They weren’t wrong there. Sintas had the Solos and Skywalkers down pat.
“Okay, “said Jaina. “But I still think I should go get your granddaughter.”
“Not yet, “Sintas said. “I need to work out how I’m going to explain this to her-that her grandfather was ex-iled for killing the man who raped me… his superior officer.
Chapter 20
My lord Caedus, I disobeyed your instructions about where to search for the Jedi Council, and went back to the locations where Luke Skywalker had hideouts in his Rebel days. I’m now on Endor. There’s an old Imperial base here, just full of force energy, even though the camp’s been abandoned. The Jedi have been here very recently, but I don’t know where they’ve gone-yet.