"I did not make a wrong turn," Han said.
Chewbacca loudly disagreed.
"I did not."
The wookiee grunted in response and shook his head.
"I did not," he repeated.
The two got in an argument that consisted of Han sniping back, "Not! Did not!" over and over, all of which could just barely be heard over the continual howl from the wookiee. They carried on that way for a couple minutes before it dawned on the pilot that they had company. He stopped arguing with the wookiee and turned to Gwynplaine who had quietly slipped into the cockpit and asked her, "What're you looking at?"
She looked like she'd just woken up, she rubbed one eye as she said in a quiet tone, not groggy but not all there yet, "Do you really not realize that you two sound like an old married couple?"
Chewbacca grunted in response. Han looked at her with a deadpan expression and hardly missing a beat, in a nonchalant voice he asked her, "Who're you calling old?"
Gwynplaine ignored the question and glancing out the window she asked him, "Where're we going?"
Alavak was one of the smallest planets in the galaxy, but it was home to one of the most notorious royal families, the Vomanors. Everybody in the galaxy knew of them, few had actually seen them, and most knew to keep their distance from them. Han had been to the planet on a few occasions to do a little business, he'd never been near the palace grounds but he'd gotten a few distant glimpses at the members of the family. An unusual bunch by any and all standards of lifeforms in the universe. They looked so different from everybody else from every other planet, you knew one when you saw one. Among their own physical traits, they were all easily identified by the mark they were all tattooed with. Most commonly the family members alternated between wearing it on their hand or their forehead for the whole planet to see. They all wore that mark, they carried it from birth, only members of the royal family wore that tattoo. And all members of the royal family stayed on Alavak. Han had always regarded the whole thing as some weird cult, they were all born on that planet, they all died on that planet, as far as he knew the entire extended family all lived in the palace. As far as he knew, nobody ever left, but staying in that corner of the universe, they were able to rule over all inhabitants of the planet as well as throw their royal weight around in the nearest neighboring districts.
You definitely knew a Vomanor when you saw one, there was no mistaking it whatsoever. Every single member of that family was born with the same physical trait. No matter if they were man or woman, short or tall, thin or broad, they were all born with an exaggeratedly long grin on their face that never moved. Where most people's mouths could only expand just past the edges of their nose when they grinned, the Vomanors' permanent grins reached halfway clear up their cheeks. Nobody knew how, but somehow they were capable of eating and perfect diction with those huge sardonic grins with all their teeth exposed and their lips curled back. Aside from that one feature which nobody could overlook, they were all regular looking people, from the face-down the women, what he'd seen of them, were gorgeous, just like human women anywhere, the men, they just looked like men, if you never had to look up at their faces, you'd never know, from the neck down they looked just like everybody else.
The Millennium Falcon landed on Alavak the next morning. The three occupants of the ship departed it and found themselves in a mangle of various lifeforms, the subjects of the planet as it were. They followed a dirt road to a fork, on the right ahead several hundred meters, was the palace, on the left was the town, shops, peddlers, a bar. They went left, and when they reached the town, Han led the others to the bar, which was fairly crowded for that time of the day.
"What're we doing here?" Gwynplaine asked.
"Sit down, get a drink," Han told her, "I'm going to meet a contact." He turned to his friend and told him, "Chewie, stay here and keep an eye on her. I'll be back soon."
The wookiee had a departing comment for him.
"What do you mean don't do anything stupid?" Han asked as he headed for the door, "I know exactly what I'm doing."
Han's 'contact' was a slightly older man named Deno who in the smuggler's personal opinion, looked more like a humanoid droid than an actual human, tall, skinny but he always held himself tight and stiff, he even walked like a droid. He'd been easy to pick out of the crowd.
"Deno, long time no see."
"Han Solo, what're you smuggling now?" the older man said in a half joking tone.
"Nothing at the moment, I need some information," Han said.
"Uh oh," Deno replied, "anytime you need information, trouble's brewing."
"Could be," Solo remarked, "What can you tell me about the Vomanor family?"
"That's a pretty extensive history, and I know you don't have that kind of attention span," Deno told him. "What specifically do you want to know?"
"I need to get an answer about something. I can't explain it to you, come with me," Han had the man follow him back to the bar. "You're going to have to see it for yourself."
The doors were open to the bar so they could just stand in the doorway and peer in. Han pointed over to the bar and Deno looked and saw the young redhead, and saw the small blue tattoo on the back of her neck.
"Oh my God," he said in a voice full of total shock, "It's true."
Paydirt. "What's true?" Han wanted to know.
Deno looked completely different. His complexion was flushed and he was breaking out in a sweat, he turned and hastily stepped away from the bar with the smuggler staying right in step with him, determined to finally get some answers.
"There were rumors, gossip," Deno explained, "but there was nothing solid."
"About what?" Han asked.
"Well," Deno took in a breath and answered, "Several years ago the public suspected Josiana Vomanor was pregnant, but nothing seemed to come of it. Like I said, there were rumors."
"What kind of rumors?" Han wanted to know.
"That she'd given birth to a baby girl, and that they got rid of her."
"Why, birth defects?"
"No, Solo, what do you actually know about the Vomanor family?"
"They're the weirdest looking bunch of royalty I've ever seen," he answered.
"Not your typical royal family, it's a duchy, not a kingdom."
"Okay so it's Duchess Josiana Vomanor instead of Queen Josiana Vomanor, so what?" Han asked.
"In a duchy there can be several dukes, and a few princes if the luck would have it," Deno told him.
Han thought he was starting to get it, "All male heirs to the throne."
"Correct."
"But they could have more than one duchess too, right?"
"They could, in theory...but a male heir was more desirable to the Vomanors," Deno explained as the two men walked through the town square.
"So what about this girl?" Han asked.
"Well, the way I always heard it, the Vomanors had one of their servants take the baby out in the middle of the night and sell it to a group of gypsies who were docked for the night," Deno said. "Of course it would've been impossible for it to have taken place immediately following the birth."
"Why?" Han wanted to know.
The older man stopped in his tracks and turned to look at the younger smuggler and said matter-of-factly, "You're of course aware all Vomanors are born with that grin."
"Yeah."
"So if a child turned up in a gypsy party who looked like that, everybody would know what family she came from," Deno said. "To pass her off as a normal child, there would've had to be extensive surgical work and a much more extensive healing period."
"What do they do?" Han asked.
"Again, nothing was ever proven, you have to keep that in mind."
"Right, right," Han said impatiently.
"When a Vomanor is born, they are born with a complete set of 54 teeth in their mouth, so many that the sheer number and force of them folds the lips back and under, the top set is twice as long as the bottom and they always overlap."
"So I noticed," Han remarked.
"Yes well," Deno continued, "to pass a Vomanor off as any other lifeform, a surgeon would have to break both of the baby's jaws to open the mouth-" Han Solo's hand had already firmly wrapped itself over his own mouth in sympathy as that visualization hit him, the older man continued, "wide enough so all the excess teeth could be surgically removed, and all remaining teeth would be filed down to a 'normal' size so the lips would unfold to a natural shape, then the excess lip tissue would have to be removed-"
Han's eyes about squinted clear shut at the mention of those added details. Paying no mind to his apparent discomfort, Deno proceeded, "to shorten the mouth to an appropriate size, then the gaps under the cheeks would have to be fused shut."
Han absentmindedly groaned in sympathy pain before he removed his hand from his mouth and said to Deno, "Please tell me the kid would be unconscious while that was happening to them."
"Are you kidding?" Deno asked in a disbelieving tone, "Anybody receiving an operation like that would not only have to be near paralyzed, but also barely breathing to ensure nothing went wrong. A surgery of that caliber would easily require 12 hours from start to finish."
Han absently pressed his thumb against one side of his jaw and the rest of his fingers over the other side as that all sunk in. "How long would it take to recover from something like that?"
"It would be several weeks before the jaws would fully heal, and for the flesh to fuse together to close the holes in the cheeks and form a normal sized mouth that could actually close," Deno answered. "But no reputable doctor would do such a thing, too much risk..."
"No reputable doctor," the pieces were falling together, Han looked at his friend and asked him, "What about a doctor named Ursus Hardquanonne?"
The older man looked at him skeptically, "What's he got to do with anything?"
"He was riding with a gypsy ship that crashed on Ar-ra last week, everybody on board died, that kid was traveling with the ship and got separated from them during a sand storm, so she hopped onto the Falcon to leave with us," Han explained.
A look of horrified revelation formed in Deno's eyes as he said in a half whisper, "My God, the rumors were true. But it still doesn't make sense, Ursus Hardquanonne hadn't been a skilled surgeon for years, the procedure would've been botched every way imaginable, the child likely would've died during the operation and if not would definitely have succumbed to infection and shock during recovery. He couldn't have pulled off something like that."
"And yet, it seems he did," Han pointed out. "So let me ask you a question, how would she stay alive during the recovery? She wouldn't have been able to eat after having both jaws broken."
"That is one of the mysteries of the Vomanor family," Deno said, "you've seen what they look like, and yet somehow they are able to eat, and however they do it, it's a skill they learn from birth."
Han remembered something and asked Deno, "I've seen her eat, every time she does, she does this," and rubbed his hand back and forth over his mouth, "is that one of their traits?"
"More likely, Hardquanonne's incompetence still finding a way to shine through."
"What do you mean?"
"Even for a top surgeon, nobody reputable would perform an operation like that on an infant because of how many risks it carried, too many ways for something to go wrong. Something may have gone wrong during the fusion procedure, small flaws not visible to the human eye, but it might result in small leaks around the new corners of the mouth anytime she would eat or drink something."
Han tried to think back, he remembered seeing her at the bar on Hexlan drinking a beer but didn't pay much attention, and he hadn't been watching her the previous night when she ransacked the better part of his ship's bar, he looked over at her now and noticed her subtly brushing the back of her hand over her mouth after she swallowed her drink.
"So..." Han thought he was going to throw up as he tried to give voice to his question, "Even though she looks like us...because she was born a girl instead of a boy, her..."
"A duchess was mutilated beyond repair at the order of her own parents," Deno spelled it out for him.
This was hard enough for him to take in, but he had to press on. "What about the tattoo?"
"That was part of the rumor," Deno said, "one of the sentries was ordered to deliver the baby to the gypsies and make the transaction...he thought denying her heritage was even more cruel than deforming her, so it was said he had a branding rushed, so wherever she ended up, somebody would know she belonged to the royal family. Upon discovering this, the family had him killed upon his return to the palace."
"It makes sense," Han realized, "it's in the one place she can't ever see it and once her hair grew in, nobody else would either, she has no idea what she is."
"It was never more than idle gossip," Deno said, "you know how it is on a small planet, everybody needs something to pass the time...but nobody ever pondered about it too long, it just seemed too fantastic, too gruesome, even for the royal family."
"So how old would this kid be?" Han asked.
"Oh goodness, let me think...that would've been...15, 16 years ago."
Han felt like he didn't even know what to do anymore. He felt himself half turn on one foot to move one way, then he turned and put the same amount of weight on the other foot to turn the other way. As soon as he saw that tattoo he knew something was up, but he couldn't imagine anything like this, and it felt like he didn't even know which end was up now.
"Let me ask you one more question," he said suddenly, "this male heir to the throne, did they ever get it?"
"Yes, a year later the Grand Duchess Josiana gave birth to a son."
"Is that so?" Han asked, his mind already starting to form a plan.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to throw up, but he was too angry for that. He still felt lost in a haze but he was starting to be able to see his way through to the end. Suddenly the last few days and everything that had happened and gone wrong for him, the money he lost, the trouble he was in with Jabba, it didn't matter, they didn't even exist anymore where he was concerned. All that existed was here and now.
"That's it," he said determinedly, half to himself and half to the older man.
"What're you talking about?" Deno asked.
"It's Crowning Day," Han said with equal determination, he took a couple steps forward and bellowed to the others, "Chewie, kid, let's go!"
"What are you doing?" Deno demanded to know.
"The royal family has a lot of explaining to do, and the rightful heir is taking the throne," Han told him.
"Have you lost your mind?" Deno asked him. "They'll kill that girl the minute they see her and they'll kill you for bringing her."
Han laughed bitterly and said in response, "If I had a credit for every time somebody told me I'd get killed, I could retire from this business."
"You're making a terrible mistake," the older man warned him.
"No, I'm correcting one," he answered.
Gwynplaine and Chewbacca exited the bar and she asked the smuggler, "What's going on?"
"Change in plans, we're going to visit the royal family," he announced.
Gwynplaine shrugged her shoulders, "Why?"
"If you were smart you'd get back in your ship and leave now," Deno advised Han.
Han Solo responded by clapping his hands on the older man's weary shoulders and telling him, "Deno, you're a great man and I love you, but I know what I'm doing."
"I sincerely doubt that," Deno replied, "but I know I can't talk you out of this, unfortunately."
"I'll see you around," Han said dismissively, and waved to the others, "Come on, we're going to the palace."
