Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(5)

“Don’t know a ‘Sloane,’?” he says, but the way the corner of his mouth tugs upward, as if on an angler’s hook, is telling. “Sorry.”

Sinjir gives Norra a look.

Norra gives Sinjir a nod.

With that, Jas eases aside, and Sinjir formally takes up her position in front of the dangling Mercurial Swift. The ex-Imperial clucks his tongue as he starts in on Swift. “If I asked you the question, What is the most important part of your body, you would—as the ego-fed narcissist that you are—say…”

“My mind,” Swift answers.

“Your mind,” Sinjir says, simultaneous with Swift. “Yes. And then I’d roll my eyes like I am now—here, look, I’m rolling them.” He does indeed roll them. “I’d say, No, no, silly, I need your mind keen and sharp, fully aware of what is about to be done and what is happening as it happens. I’d note that what’s precious to you is your hands. Your fast hands, spinning those nifty little batons around like a man from the Nal Hutta circus, and I would note that the hand has so many tiny bones, none so strong as your batons, and it would be dreadfully easy to break each of them, one after the other, as if I were playing the keys of a melodium. And you’d bluster—”

“Break my hands,” Swift hisses. “Do it. Cut them off for all I care. I can afford their replacements. Metal machine hands would—”

“Help you do your job better, yes. I know. And how right you are. The bones in your hand are such small thinking. All of your body is! It’s amateur hour interrogation, really. Ah. Time then to go deeper. More aspirational. Forget flesh and bones and blood. Well. Hold on now. Blood. That’s interesting.” He leans in, practically nose-to-nose with the bounty hunter. Swift struggles. Norra wants to warn Sinjir to be cautious, but he’s like a hypnotizing serpent—Mercurial won’t do anything. Not yet. Not now. He’s rapt. The mystery of the threat to be revealed has been fitted around his neck like leash-and-collar, tugging him forward. “Your name, your true name, is not Mercurial Swift. Is it, Geb? Geb Teldar. Right?”

A flinch as Mercurial retreats from that name like a buzzing fly. “I don’t know that name,” he says. But he does. Even Norra can see that.

“It’s not really as snazzy as ‘Mercurial Swift,’?” Sinjir says, making a pouty face. “I mean, is it? Geb Teldar.” When he says those words, he deepens his voice, flattens his lips, makes his accent sound common and muddy. “Oy, my name’s Geb Teldar. I’m a pipe fitter from Avast. I’m Geb Teldar, faithier stall-mucker. I’m Geb Teldar, droid-scrubber extraordinaire. It’s really very…bleh, isn’t it?”

“Go to hell.”

“Thing is, Geb? Once we knew your real name, it was easy to find out other things, as well. You’re from Corellia, aren’t you?”

Swift—or, rather, Teldar—says nothing. His eyes shine with what Norra believes may very well be fear.

In the palm of Sinjir’s hand is a flat disk—a holoprojector. He taps the side, and a single image shines in the space above it: a nice house in the Vrenian style, square and boxy but with climbing flowers up its corners and a lace-metal trachyte fence surrounding it. The door is tall and narrow—and by the door stands a droid familiar to most of them standing there.

Mercurial’s cheek twitches. “Is that—”

“A B1 battle droid,” Sinjir answers, “it is, indeed. I’m sure he had a proper designation at some point, but we call him Mister Bones, in part because he’s very good at pulling the bones out of people’s bodies. Oh. Perhaps you were instead asking a different question, and to that the answer is: Yes, Geb Teldar, that is the house of Tabba Teldar, and if I read the intel correctly, she is…your mother?”

The captive bounty hunter’s face twists up like a juiced fruit. He bares his teeth in a feral display as he seethes: “How did you find her?”

“It was an ordeal,” Norra interjects. “But less than you’d think. You’re arrogant and people don’t like you. All it took was one bouncer in one seedy club to tell us that he heard sometimes you send an infusion of credits to someone living in Coronet City. Cross-referenced with the ever-growing New Republic database, which ties in now with CCPS records. And so it revealed Tabba Teldar to us. Which was enough.”

“You’re New Republic,” Swift says, suddenly smug. He winces as his arms strain above his head. “You wouldn’t do anything to her. You’ve got a code. You have to follow the law.”

Sinjir looks to Jas, then the two of them erupt into laughter. Norra doesn’t, because she’s not in the mood, not even for the pretense of this faux-amusement acted out. But they sell it, and Sinjir—when he’s done laughing and wiping tears of hilarity from his eyes—says with sudden, dire seriousness: “This is all very off-the-books, Gebbo, my friend. The NR doesn’t even know we’re out here. We’re like a proton torpedo without guidance—just launching through space, rogue as anything. Jas, as you know, is a bounty hunter. As for me—oh, my name is Sinjir, by the way, Sinjir Rath Velus—I was once an Imperial loyalty officer, which meant I secured and tested the loyalty of my fellow grayshirts in whatever way was most motivating for them and me.”

“We follow no law but our own,” Jas says.