After the Gourmand had settled, Kregg followed a pair of Chevin guards down the boarding ramp. At his back were Ak-Gar and his retinue, and at his side waddled Arvis Xiu. There's no escaping the blue moon's orbit.
"It seems our lord has requested an audience with you, my dear smuggler," Arvis said. He kept his voice soft as snow, though his breath reeked loudly of rank wine. "It would be prudent of us to attend him quickly. He does not like to be kept waiting."
Kregg groaned under his breath. "He just got unloaded off his barge for fek's sake. What's he doing already holding court?"
"We have a fickle master." Arvis grinned, revealing a gleaming set of teeth. Kregg remembered that they once were white as pearl. The toll of decadence had turned them a sallow, slick shade of mustard. "Speaking of, it would be remiss if I did not return to his side at once. I think it wise that we not be seen together much more, my boy."
"Good, I was getting tired of yer stink anyhow." Kregg shoved himself out of the column.
They entered the palace from the back, through an old hangar that once served as a cargo bay for the Hutt cartel of an older, better Nar Shaddaa. If one ever existed as such. Those that Kregg heard speak of Narsh before Durgulla took control always spoke highly, though he never failed to note that they were all vagrants and spacers who never stayed anywhere for more than a few standard weeks. He supposed it could not have been much worse under the thumb of the kajidics than under the Fat Minister alone.
As he pushed ahead of the rest of the Fat Minister's servants, Kregg passed through a series of corridors. Years ago, Xira had told him they had been built as an escape passage from the Chamber of Commerce in the event the building came under attack. And how funny it was that this was the way we came when she tried to kill the fat bastard. The walls had gone to ruin. Deep fissures ran like rivers through every wall, and craters marred every surface. Doors lined both walls, broken apart evenly by half a standard meter of space. A Hutt's court could have fit through the hall easily enough, though Kregg could not help but think even the smallest of Hutts would have been hard pressed to pass through. Let alone Durgulla the Fat. Perhaps the Evocii builders planned it that way, as a small sort of revenge.
The hall ended at a slatted door of wrought, dark wroshyr wood that creaked when Kregg pushed it open. Stepping through, he was assaulted at once by the thunderous brass of horns and the vigorous pulse of bass, the clattering of porcelain dishes in the metallic hands of serving droids, and the screaming throes of lust and violence. Wafting between it all were the gentle scent of pheromones, the smell of emission, and the rank stench of decay and rot. Wherever the last one came from, Kregg did not care to know.
To his left stood a bar where he had drank his fill many a time, before he was chained to the Viridian Slug. A droid bartender operated behind the counter, studious and quick as his programming permitted. A Balosar woman had been in the droid's position when Kregg was here last. He wondered what became of her. Diminutive as she was, she had been easier to look upon than the looming tower of gangly wires and drab sheet metal that filled glass after glass with a rotating spindle of arms. The cavalcade of patrons never seemed to end. Kregg recognized several faces from the Gourmand. They were smallfolk all, each one greedy well above their station. They fit in perfectly.
He ignored the jeers from the drunkards as he passed the bar. Some hurled invective, others whispered honeyed words. Kregg tuned them out all the same. Past the bar was the alcove's edge, a thick wall of permacrete and plaster that opened up into the palace atrium. Peasants and nobles swarmed the floor in droves, perhaps the only time in their lives they would meet as equals. In an alcove overhead, a Yuzzum crooned in front of a Bith quartet. All those years ago, when last Kregg stood here, banners bearing the insignia of each Hutt kajidic had draped and covered each of the alcoves above. The banners yet remained, albeit in tatters with the symbols erased.
Durgulla the Hutt belonged to no clan, no family. The Fat Minister ruled alone, and so long as he governed Nar Shaddaa, there would be separation between the people and their liege.
At the other end of the atrium, the Hutt was sprawled across his twin daises, a hook-nosed hookah pipe crooked in the corner of his mouth. He belched purple smoke out the other side. All his courtiers attended him, save Arvis Xiu, who was nowhere to be seen. Ooba Vyr was speaking in hushed tones to his lord when Kregg approached the throne. The Fat Minister thrust up a flabby arm with such force it sent the Sullustan stumbling sideways.
"Marcus Kregg," Durgulla said as he shoved his majordomo away, "how pleasant to see you again in person." He lifted the pipe from his mouth and spewed forth a great gout of smoke. "Activate the droid!"
Kregg did not fail to note when the Fat Minister shifted from the cordial "High Huttese" he used in court to the fast and loose dialect the Hutts used among themselves. He still thinks I won't understand. Pity to him. He took a knee.
The lone woman among Durgulla's court, Shana, rose to the task. The white palace lights glanced off her teal skin as she rolled the bug-eyed translator droid forth. She wore a bodice across her chiseled frame, one laced so tightly that Kregg thought it would burst at any errant movement. Her figure reminded Kregg of Xira in her prime, before she had been starved.
The Fat Minister laughed and pulled on the chain dangling at his side. The rattling of steel rang out from behind his meaty tail. Twyla crept out from behind it, stepping over with gentle footfalls and striding with gusto into the Hutt's arms. A hornless, white-painted Devaronian stumbled after her with a marked lack of grace. Where Twyla was still lithe and thin, this one was not.
"You like my concubines, smuggler?" Durgulla's lipless mouth twisted into a smile. He shot a look at the droid as it whirred to life. "Tell the fool I will give him one."
"The Exalted Durgulla the Fat offers to you one of his prized slaves," said the droid. It arced and waved its stiff-jointed arms in a crude facsimile of human gesticulation when it spoke. "He implores you to choose wisely."
"What if I want neither?" Kregg answered. He was familiar enough with this game. The Fat Minister would grow bored with one of his slaves, powder them in ash and sugar, and present them to Kregg as a substitute for Xira. "What's his answer?"
Durgulla grumbled. "Why does he not want this one? She matches perfectly." Twyla leaned in closer to him, and he rewarded her with a chunk of chuba straight from the pot. "Tell him he can choose."
"The Exalted Durgulla the Fat says you may pick any servant of your choosing from his pens, but he would prefer if you picked the one he offers now. What is your choice?"
"You know which one I choose," Kregg said.
"Tell this Fondorian slime that it would be prudent for him to pick Emai here, and to forget about his Rattataki whore." Durgulla wrapped a meaty arm around the Devaronian's stomach and wrenched her closer. "Though I wish to hear his choice. Remind him of my generosity."
"Durgulla the Fat is a gracious lord, and will let you pick any you choose," the droid said. "Speak her name, and he will decide here and now."
Kregg felt a flash of inspiration in his head. "I pick Twyla." He forced a smile. "You haven't quite ruined her yet."
The Fat Minister's eyes went wide. He roiled in anger, cursing Kregg, humanity, Core-slime, and smugglers for several minutes. "I have made them better!" he said, returning to High Huttese. "All who come to my court, all who revel in grandeur, all who take my gifts are made whole by them. This is what they want."
At what cost? Kregg dared not speak and upset the Hutt's temperament even further.
"Your kind looks at us in disgust, but we are the pinnacle. To be like a Hutt is to exemplify glory itself." Durgula barked a request for more meat to a courtier, who rushed to obey. "I give your ungrateful species a chance to be exalted. The other Hutts would never be so generous as to even give you a second glance. I love my people." The courtier returned with a platter almost as wide across as the Fat Minister's chest. The Hutt and his slaves began to graze. "How dare you imply I do not love them," Durgulla said in between crunching bones.
"Aye, they love you," Kregg said. "But I will ask, at what cost? They do not love you, but your power and your gifts. Most have had nary a crumb their whole life, so you shower them in so many morsels you could bury them alive."
"As I said, I give them what they want." He seized a particularly engorged chuba from the platter, snapped it in half between two massive fingers, and shoved one end down Twyla's throat before he gulped down the other. She feigned mirth, but Kregg saw the flicker of daggers in her eyes. "They had nothing before me. And if you are rid of me, they will go back to nothing."
Kregg shrugged. "Sure, you are a benevolent lord. I'm sure she agrees."
"They both agree." The Fat Minister belched, grabbed a morsel in each hand, and shoved them at both women. Then, he barked at the droid, "Tell Marcus Kregg, Core-slime he is, that there is no bigger fool than he. Tell him he must choose before the end of the night, or I will import a clodder of nexu to rip out his entrails. Half I will hang from the bannisters, and the rest I will have forged into jewelry for his lady of Rattatak."
"The Exalted Durgulla the Fat grows most impatient with you," the droid said. "He-"
Arvis Xiu waddled up to the Fat Minister from behind and the droid broke off. Behind him, he was leading Xira in fetters. "As you requested on the barge, Exalted One." He waved her forward.
The Fat Minister looked at her in disgust. "Good. Weak." He wrapped a meaty arm around her delicate frame and brought her in towards him. Kregg grimaced and bit his tongue. Keep from wagging. "I do not understand what you see in this one, smuggler. Delicate, brittle, thin. As it should be. This one tried to kill me."
Kregg kept silent. Don't talk yourself into an early grave. Or worse, Xira into one. All he could do was hope Lysara and her boy would return soon, with a Mandalorian head in tow.
"Everyone," the Fat Minister bellowed, raising his arms. His voice quaked the walls, and all who had gathered turned to face the lord who brought them here today. "I would like to introduce you to my newest possession: an exotic specimen from Rattatak's fighting pits."
He'll never learn. Xira had even told the Hutt before she came from Nagi, so far off the edge of known space that it may very well have been in another galaxy, but the Fat Minister was not one for listening. Nagai were rare enough in any case that they were almost always mistaken for any other pale-skinned species of near-humans. The mistake had almost proven Durgulla's undoing, had it not been for whatever brutish thing lurked amongst his menagerie.
The crowd gaped and jeered at Xira as the Fat Minister presented her like a trophy. "A bag of bones!" said a woman from the rafters. The rest of the crowd echoed the sentiment, with crude japes about her body. Those that remembered joined the fray with cries of, "Assassin!" and "Traitor!". The barrage continued until Ooba Vyr raised his hands and Durgulla called for silence.
"Return to your revelry," the Hutt said. His bloated tongue crept from his cavernous mouth and swept across Xira's face, matting her hair and skin with bile and slobber. When the crowd returned to their business, it was like nothing had even happened. The Fat Minister spoke to Kregg directly. "You will never have her. Think on my offer, Fondorian. Emai is a fine substitute, and there will be more comfort in it for you."
Kregg forced back his anger and bowed. His rage was a kettle close to boiling over, and it grew more difficult to stifle with each passing moment. "Thank you, Exalted One," he said through a forced smile. "Shall I remain here?"
Durgulla looked pleased. "Am I not generous? Stay and revel." He waved and bid Kregg on his way. A servant rested the hookah pipe back in Durgulla's mouth, and he began to seize more food with which to ply his slaves, save for Xira. Arvis Xiu was taking her away, back behind the Hutt's tail.
Kregg returned to the alcove where he had entered. He looked at the bar. Without a bartender, there's no point. You can't converse with a droid. He found a table in the corner where no one else bothered to come. He smelled why. What was once a Togruta lay face-down in a bowl of frothy green soup. Several bowls and dishes replete with crumbs rested at his feet. Botflies buzzed around him, swarming at jaundiced skin. He was so immensely swollen with fat and corpse-gas alike that he had become more orb than man.
Kregg crinkled his nose and got as far away from the grotesquerie as he could. Another alcove on the opposite side of the palace was devoid of patrons. He took a seat at the table closest to the atrium so he could keep the Fat Minister in his line of sight. A few minutes passed before a Rodian serving girl approached to offer him a drink. "Whiskey," he said.
This night would drag on, Kregg knew. For once he was grateful for the Fat Minister and his apathy. The night is just beginning. He rattled the ice in his drink and gulped down the rest. The burn was soothing on his throat. And at its end, we'll be riding free.
He was already beholden to one Hutt. He'd be damned before he fulfilled the whims of another.
