Tales from Jabba's Palace by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

the counter, dusted them reverently with powdered sugar, and activated the portable electric fence around them. He smiled across at his friend. “Present company excepted.”
    “Oh, the guards and stuff ain’t so bad.” Malakili paused as Phlegmin the kitchen boy came in carrying a box of the fragile Belsavian bowvine fruit which had just been delivered. The pimple-faced youth sniffled, wiped his nose on his fingers, and started to take the fruit from their box, looking sullen and offended when Porcellus motioned him sharply to wash his hands. “Well, maybe some of ’em,” the rancor keeper conceded. He hopped down from the table, and crossed to where the chef was examining the fruit for subcutaneous bruises with the delicate fingers of an artist. Phlegmin tried in passing to steal a beignet—the electric fence hurled him several feet against the nearest wall. He retreated, sucking his burned hand.
    “A word in your ear, friend,” Malakili whispered.
    Porcellus turned from his work, the familiar sensation of cold panic clutching at his chest. “Eh?”
    Back in the days when he had been chef to Yndis Mylore, governor of Bryexx and Moff of the Varvenna Sector and that Imperial nobleman’s most prized possession—and how not, when he was a triple Golden Spoon and winner of the Tselgormet Prize for gourmandise five years running?—Porcellus had not been a particularly nervous man. Concerned about the perfection of his art, yes, for what great maestro is not? Worried, from time to time, about the firmness of a meringue served when the Emperor was Governor Mylore’s guest, of course, or the precise combinationof textures in a sauce to be presented at an ambassadorial banquet …
    But not prey to chill terror at every unexpected word.
    Five years as a slave in the palace of Jabba the Hutt had had its effect.
    “Jabba, he had indigestion again last night.”
    “Indigestion?” Later Porcellus realized his immediate reaction should have been uncontrolled horror; it was actually, at first hearing, only a laugh of utter disbelief. “You mean there’s actually a substance he can’t digest?”
    Malakili lowered his voice still further. “He says he thinks it’s fierfek . As far as I can make out, that’s the Hutt word,” he went on softly, “for poison.”
    Then the uncontrolled horror took over. Porcellus felt himself go white and his hands and feet turned cold despite the oven heat of the kitchen.
    The rancor keeper put a big hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I like you, Porcellus,” he said. “You’ve been a good friend to me, letting me take a couple scraps for my baby …” He jerked a thumb at the mass of steaming meat and meat by-products that occupied a good two-thirds of the table. “I don’t want to have to throw you in there with him. So I thought I’d drop you the word before Bib Fortuna gets down here to talk to you about it.” Malakili gathered up the corners of the oilcloth upon which the offal was heaped, and lugged it out the door in a trail of dribbled juice.
    Porcellus said, “Thanks,” though his mouth was too dry to produce actual sound.
    “His Excellency is most displeased.”
    “Entirely without reason, Your Worship. It is wholly the result of a regrettable misunderstanding.” Porcellus bent almost double in a deep bow and hoped BibFortuna, Jabba the Hutt’s vile Twi’lek majordomo, wouldn’t notice the ransacked boxes and canisters which covered every horizontal surface in the kitchen, the result of a frenzied search for anything that might have caused the Bloated One’s unprecedented discomfort. Since many of the delicacies which had gone into the Hutt’s omelettes, roulades , and étouffées over the past years were inedible by any lesser species, the search hadn’t been an easy one—the chef was still wondering about the goatgrass he’d used the previous evening as a stuffing for the gamwidge, and the small unmarked red canister of unidentifiable paste whose