“Vongese. But no prizes for guessing that.” He walked off to another patch of grass, scouting around for something. “Ah, look. They turn up all the time. Come over here.”
A skull seemed to have worked its way out of the soil. It wasn’t Mandalorian-Jaina could tell from the odd ridges that ran from brow to crown on its one clean side that it had been a Yuuzhan Vong soldier-but it still looked quite human: far more human than the Yuuzhan Vong had been in life, when they were so proud of the ritual facial mutila-tions that made them look utterly alien. Beviin squatted to pull the skull free. When he poked a finger into an empty eye socket, a pale yellow worm tumbled from the clinging soil and made a frantic, squirming bid for safety on the ground.
“I think there were a few thousand of them, “Beviin said. “And this was a poor place to defend, but we took them on. You fought the vongese, didn’t you? You understand.” He tilted the skull and picked off the soil still clinging to the right side, revealing a huge split over the orbital ridge. “Ah, ner vod, we’ve already met. How have you been? Rotting, I hope.”
Beviin drew his saber and lined the blade up carefully with the split in the bone. It slotted into it neatly. Once Jaina had proved her worth in the workshop and worked until she dropped, Beviin had been the most gracious host imaginable, and she found it hard to square that avuncular charm with the man he could become when he picked up that beskad.
“And that, “he said, pointing to the avenue of trees, “is Fenn Shysa’s memorial. Your mother knew him, and your uncle Luke, too. Pay your respects and we can get on with your lessons.”
It was a battered red-and-green helmet on a plinth; no inscription, no railings, nothing that indicated its owner had been a head of state or even who was commemorated. Jaina was struck less now by the intimidating face that Mandalorians presented than by their apparently anarchic society and-despite the credits flooding in now from their beskar mining and sales of the Bes’uliik-grim rural pov-erty. Then she remembered little Briila, able to handle a tiny blaster at five years old, and old man Fett nearly taking her spleen apart with a gut-punch, and decided that caution was still the best option.
It was hard to know how to be reverent toward a helmet. She did what she would do at a state funeral, and simply bowed her head for a moment, as Jedi did.
“Shysa led us to kick out the Empire, “Beviin said. “Didn’t you, fen’ika?” He walked up to the helmet and patted it fondly. “A great Mand’alor. But he always wanted Fett as the front man, and Fett wasn’t having it. Shysa got his way in the end, though. Hey, do you want to record a holoimage for your mother?”
“Some cultures would find that disrespectful.”
“Ah, we don’t. Shysa would have loved it, if it was for Princess Leia. You could even have been a Mando if your mama had said the word-and if she hadn’t met the space bum, of course.”
Beviin said it with a big grin, and it didn’t sound like the insult it would have been in Fett’s mouth. “Why did Shysa think Fett should be Mandalore? Because his father was?” Jaina didn’t add that Fett didn’t strike her as the community-minded kind. “Bloodlines don’t matter to you.”
“True, but Jango had a fearsomely good fighting reputation, and he was Jaster Mereel’s chosen heir, so the Fett name has some power. When things were as rough as they were when the Republic fell-well, even we needed icons. You know that Shysa even got a clone deserter to pose as Jango Fett’s heir, just to give the ametuse the idea that we were solid again? Nobody really knew who or what was under the armor. Worked…. for a while.”
“And then Fett ruined all their national solidarity by showing up as my grandfather’s right-hand thug.” Jaina knew her own dynastic moral high ground wasn’t all that farther above the waterline than Fett’s. “What happened to him?”
“Shysa?” Beviin winked. “Or Vader?”
“The deserter.”
“Spar? Oh, Fett’s daughter killed him. He was a good Fett double, all right… too good, may he find peace in the manda. Ailyn hated her papa.”
“That’s tragic.” Was Beviin joking? No, he wasn’t; but why would any man put himself in harm’s way for Fett? “So, there’s Shysa…”
“You’ll have to ask Fett about that yourself.”
“I’ll put it on the list after I ask him about his not-dead wife.” Jaina fought down a bitter anger that Sintas Vel was alive and Mara wasn’t. “I think Uncle Luke might advise him to seize that blessing.”