Maz wondered at the girl's tears.
"Please...I can explain."
Euden, a burly bouncer she'd rescued from somewhere on the outer rim shoved the girl roughly to her knees. "Quiet, you filthy sneak."
Maz twirled the deup'laa coin between her fingers, marveling at the craftsmanship put in to something meant to deceive. It was thanks to a sharp-sighted dealer of Four Claw Snap, and a lucky streak that seemed a little too lucky, that the girl had been caught. "Do you know what I do to card and coin sharks in my tavern?" she whispered, sliding down from behind the desk of the small office where she balanced supply orders and shipping manifests.
The girl, a twi'lek with skin so blue it almost seemed to glimmer in the bar room lights, whimpered again. "H-he said you wouldn't notice. He told me to stick to the tables and to make certain bets. It wasn't my idea, I swear."
The coin snapped from her knuckles to her palm, and her head whipped up to meet the girl's eyes. Even on her knees, the twi'lek towered over her small frame. "Who told you to cheat here?"
"My employer," squeaked the girl. "He bought me from a slaver two sectors over, at a market in Bathala. Told me if I won at your tables, he'd free me."
Maz adjusted her goggles, noting the tremble of the girl's lips. She was telling the truth, though it was a wonder how the twi'lek had lived this long with such blind faith in a slaver's promises. "Do you know who I am?" The girl shook her head. "I'm Maz Kanata. And I have lived a long, long life filled with cheaters and swindlers and big men thumping their chests so they can scare me and take what's mine." She leaned back against the desk. "And do you know what I did? I learned to thump my chest harder."
Quietly at first, and then growing to a thunderous roar, Euden and the other bouncers beat their chests in unison, the eerie rhythm filling the small office. It was a salute to Maz, from those most loyal to her, but in-between the dull notes lurked a warning to anyone within earshot: Maz Kanata was a hurricane to those who dared draw against her.
Maz retrieved a curved daggerfrom the hidden compartment beneath her top desk drawer. The girl's eyes widened and Maz let loose an amused grin. "Old smuggler habits. We tend to bury our treasures within arm's reach." She motioned toward the smaller bouncer, who had yet to earn his name. "Place her hands on the desk."
"No!" the twi'lek screamed. "You can't! Without hands I cannot work. My master will dump my useless body when he unloads his next shipment." She reached forward to grab Maz's cloak, but Euden pulled her back just as her fingertips brushed the fabric. "Have mercy, Maz Kanata. I'll die!"
"The thing I can't understand," Maz said, scratching the blade against the rough skin of her chin. "Is why your slaver would send you in here with a fancy trick coin to make sloppy bets. What did he expect to happen? Did he honestly think I'd let you walk free?" She shook her head sadly. "No, this man sent you into my tavern to die."
The twi'lek pushed her thick headtails away from her weeping face, horror now creeping across her features as she realized her error in judgement. "He said he would free me," she repeated weakly between sobs.
"Freedom belongs to anyone strong enough to take it," Maz growled fiercely, slamming a fist into her palm. Her eyes grew distant as she rubbed her wrists, her thoughts somewhere beyond the walls of the room.
"I can help you," the woman began desperately. "You're a smuggler, right? Or you were? My master has a shipment onboard his Brayl-class freighter right now, at a dock not even ten kilometers away. It has to be valuable because he's eager to make the exchange with a man named Bacariuth tomorrow. Two of the other girls who helped load the crates whispered that the shipment is worth enough to buy our freedoms ten thousand times over. I could take you to it."
Maz lifted her large round eyes to Euden who shrugged. Usually, she knew of any competition docking in the local bays, but it wasn't impossible for someone unknown to slip through. It also wasn't impossible for this sneaking cheat to be leading her crew into a trap. Still...her curiosity was piqued. She wanted to meet this wretched man who sent slaves to their deaths and dared swindle her tables. Not to mention the fact that a Brayl-class freighter added to her fleet would be worth its cargo capacity in credits. "And what do you get in return, child?"
Tears streaked through a thin layer of dirt on the girl's cheeks as she narrowed her crystalline eyes, her voice sharper than the dagger in Maz's hands. "I get to kill the man who sent me here to die."
The deep lines of Maz's face curled upward into a wicked grin. "That's more like it." She plunged the blade deep into the hardened wood of the desktop. "Now, tell Euden everything you know about this shipment."