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  —and turned them on their crowd of customers. “Now hear this,” Annileen said. “This land is my property. If there’s any trading to be done with the Jawas, I’m going to do it. If you don’t want to pay my markup, you get on your dewback and head on up to the Mospic Range, or wherever they’re going next.”

  A low, agitated rumble came from the crowd. Annileen responded by firing once into the air.

  “I’m serious,” she growled. She glared at the gathering. “Any one of you tries to buy a rivet from these guys, know this: I’m not gonna shoot the Jawas. Selling’s what they do. They’re never going to comprehend property lines. You, on the other hand, know very well where you are, and what the rules are. So you might as well go back inside. If there’s anything worth having, we’ll put it on sale—after we’ve wiped it down.”

  Her point was made. Grumbling patrons of the Claim started to wander back into the building. Annileen hadn’t had to shoot anyone in a long time. One stun blast every few years was usually enough to convince people that this was her commercial terrain. She would let Gloamer come out from the garages and deal directly; in slower years, he’d supplemented his business by buying defunct equipment from the Jawas and refurbishing it. But the store already took a percentage on his trades, so that was in the family.

  A tiny figure in a brown cloak and hood appeared on the ramp. Half her height, the Jawa’s glowing eyes met hers. He gave a wave. She nodded back. “Keep an eye on them,” she told her children, still on guard. “Make sure they don’t steal anything.”

  Kallie laughed. “Who? The Jawas or our customers?”

  “Both. Kallie, you watch the Jawas. Jabe, you get back inside and mind the place before they start drinking straight from the taps.”

  Jabe moaned. “I’ve been in there all day!”

  “Fine. Then you stay out here and Kallie goes inside.”

  Kallie gave her mother an anguished look. “That’s not fair, either. My job is outside, remember?”

  Annileen looked coyly at the young woman. “Ah, yes. That was you outside earlier, telling all my diners about how Ben saved you from killing yourself.” She struck her forehead with her palm in mock surprise. “Oh, wait. That was inside, wasn’t it? Now scoot!”

  Kallie stomped back into the Claim. Jabe gave a triumphant hoot and marched to where Mullen and Veeka were standing with several of the other Gault farmhands, bemused by the whole scene.

  Annileen watched Jabe join them and sighed. Her kids were sixteen and seventeen. Would they ever be done competing with each other? Whichever child won each battle, the prize was always one more headache for her.

  And she wasn’t any happier with Jabe’s choice in friends. Mullen Gault had been a grump of a kid and hadn’t improved, and Veeka had been a mess ever since her twin brother died. Annileen wouldn’t let Kallie near the older girl. She wasn’t having the same luck keeping Jabe away.

  Someone tugged at her sleeve from behind. Annileen thought for a second it might be a Jawa. Instead, she turned to see Erbaly Nap’tee standing there. “Do you work here, young person? There was no one inside at the counter.”

  Annileen sighed aloud. Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she grasped the Nikto woman gently by the shoulders and turned her to face the lead Jawa. “Here. Ma’am, you have my personal permission to buy from the Jawas. Courtesy of Dannar’s Claim.”

  The lead Jawa chirped at Annileen in puzzlement as the elderly customer approached him. Annileen shrugged. “She’s for sale, if you want her,” she said, darting quickly away to look at the wares coming down the ramp.

  It took less than five minutes for the Jawas to bring down everything worth owning; they were well practiced at this. Annileen surveyed the lot. Too many droids, as usual. She didn’t carry them. Dannar had never liked selling things he didn’t know how to fix, and it was a good policy. You didn’t want to guarantee a machine just to have it start a killing spree in someone’s kitchen. The small appliances, however, she could put out as-is. Walking down the line, she was struck by remorse, as always: every one of these things was scavenged from the home of some prospector family in the hills that couldn’t make a go of it. One cooker she recognized on sight; she’d sold it three times.

  “Togo togu! Togo togu!”

  Annileen’s eyes turned back toward the ramp. Two tiny Jawas were clawing quickly up it, leaving a third wailing creature behind. Veeka and several of the Gault farmhands had formed a circle and were tossing the terrified Jawa as if it were a throw-toy.

  “Lose the Jawa, buy the drinks!” Veeka rasped, having already laughed herself hoarse.

  “Hey!” Annileen yelled. “Quit that!” She rushed toward the group—stopping only when she saw that Jabe was part of the circle. Annileen’s eyes bulged. “Jabe!”

  Jabe looked up at the voice. It was enough distraction to cause him to drop the toss heading his way. The Jawa squealed and scampered loose, heading for the ramp. Jabe had heard his mother’s voice—but the farmhands were closer, egging him on.

  “Buy the drinks! Buy the drinks!”

  “No, you don’t,” Jabe said, bursting through the circle to chase the meter-tall creature. Annileen reached the foot of the ramp just as Jabe dashed up it. Jabe vanished inside the darkness of the doorway. “I’ve got you, you little—”

  “—yaaaghh!”

  Jabe reappeared, eyes wide and the blood drained from his face. Behind him in the doorway loomed someone else. A hooded figure all in brown, just like the Jawa who had escaped—but twice the height. Desperate to escape the giant, Jabe tripped and tumbled down the ramp, even as Veeka and the other hands went for their blasters.

  Annileen laughed as her son landed at her feet. “Blasters down, folks. It’s not the Giant Jawa Avenger.” She smiled as her rescuer looked down at her and saluted. “Hello, Ben,” she said. “Welcome to the Claim!”

  Ben removed his cowl. “Good afternoon—er, noons.” He looked up and took a breath, clearly pleased to be out of the wretched air of the sandcrawler. “I hope I didn’t frighten anyone. The Jawas were kind enough to give us a ride in.”

  He whistled, and Rooh appeared in the doorway, behind him. He fished around and found her lead. “I’d have stepped out earlier, but she got a bit tangled up in there.” Ben’s eyes turned back down the ramp, to where Annileen stood over Jabe. “Is the boy all right?”

  “He hasn’t been right for a while,” Annileen said, lifting Jabe to his feet by his collar. She glared at him. “I told you to watch the Jawas, not use them for sport. Now get back over there!”

  Jabe meekly recovered his rifle and trudged to the far side of the product display line, eager to avoid eye contact with his friends.

  Ben and his eopie stepped down onto the surface. “Your son?”

  “I’m ashamed to admit it,” Annileen said, chuckling. “He must have thought you were a giant Jawa.”

  “Ah,” Ben said. “Must be the eyes.”

  “Ha!”

  Scratching Rooh’s neck, Ben looked up at the store building ahead of him. “Nice place.”

  “For out here in the wastelands,” Annileen said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, trying in vain to remember the last time someone worried about offending her. “It should be nice. It’s mine.”

  Ben stood and walked his animal toward the building. He read the block letters carved in the sign out front. Sand had collected in some of the indentations. “Dannar’s Claim.”

  “He founded it, I came along later,” Annileen said, finding a morsel in her pocket for the eopie. It was such a docile creature. It took after its owner, she thought. “Dannar’s my husband.”

  “Your husband,” Ben repeated. His eyes scanned the crowd outside the sandcrawler.

  Annileen rubbed Rooh’s face, lovingly. “It’s just me now—and the two kids you’ve already met.” She smiled. “What brings you here?”

  “Your invitation,” he said, nodding toward the animal. “I
could use some feed for Rooh.”

  Annileen stood. “You’ve come to the right place.” She looked back toward the sandcrawler, where her son stood limply against the gargantuan vehicle, guarding nothing in particular. “Jabe! Get this man some eopie feed! Now!”

  The boy looked up. “But I thought you wanted me to watch the Jawas.”

  “Forget it,” she said. The Jawas were clustered around Erbaly now, occasionally chattering to each other as they listened to the elderly Nikto woman’s questions. They’re probably all trying to figure out how to end the conversation, Annileen thought. She looked to Ben. “First bag’s on the house.”

  Ben lowered his eyes. He did that a lot, she’d noticed. “Please, you don’t have to give me anything. I can pay—”

  “It’s for saving me the burial expenses for my daughter. Besides, one meal and Rooh will have you back here every week. Only the best, here.”

  “Just let me tie her up,” Ben said, spotting the livery yard. “I knew the feed would be a big load for her on the way back, so I asked the Jawas for a ride in.”

  Annileen watched him lead the animal away. Jabe stepped back from the doorway long enough to whisper to her. “Did you say ‘Ben’? Is that the guy?”

  “Unh-huh.” She repositioned her hat and exhaled. “He’s only a few days late.”

  “Ben!”

  Jabe had entered the store less than twenty seconds before his mother and the visitor passed through the door. But it had been enough time for him to inform his sister of Ben’s arrival—and for her to inform the two dozen patrons in the place.

  Ben nodded as the girl met him at the entrance. He’d already placed the cowl back over his head, Annileen saw. She didn’t blame him at all.

  “Hello, Kallie,” Ben said.

  “Hey, you remembered!” Kallie beamed. “Welcome to our store. Let me show you around the place—”

  “Your place is the dewback pens,” Annileen said.

  Kallie pointed at her mother. “Yes, but you told me to work inside. Come on,” she said, grabbing at Ben’s sleeve. “What do you need? Because you know we’ve got it.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve got a broken bridle—”

  “Tack room!” The girl led him toward the back of the sales floor, between tables of curious diners. Annileen followed, fearful for the man’s dignity. If Ben acknowledged the stares at all, she didn’t notice. But she wasn’t going to have a new customer scared off. Particularly a customer to whom she owed a debt.

  Ben stood in the doorway of a tiny room, looking at the array of gear. “It was a closet,” Kallie said, suppressing a blush. “But it’s the one part of the store that’s mine.”

  Annileen reached past them for a rack of bridles. “I thought it would give her something to do.”

  Ben looked back into the store, alive with shoppers and diners, drinkers and postal patrons. “You seem to do a great many things already.”

  “Except stop raging dewbacks.” Annileen passed a bridle to Kallie and pointed her outside. “Get that fitted up for him.”

  Miffed at having been dismissed, the girl smiled at Ben and dashed for the exit. “I’ll be back!”

  “She’ll be back,” Ben said drily.

  Annileen led Ben back through the dining area—an obstacle course of diners with questions about his earlier rescue. Who was he? Where was he from? Didn’t he know no one with good sense went out onto The Rumbles? Where did he live, and would he like to know how to adjust his vaporator? Would he like to buy a landspeeder, so he didn’t have to hitchhike with Jawas? Had he come from offworld, and if so, what was really going on with the Republic? Seeing the man blanch a little at the barrage, Annileen hustled him toward the front of the store. “Press conference after he’s done shopping.”

  “Sure, sure.” Leelee stood, arms crossed, surveying Ben as only a lusty Zeltron could. “Keep the new arrival to yourself.”

  Annileen turned her head and whispered, “You have a husband and five kids!”

  “And a pulse,” Leelee said, a hand on her own red-skinned wrist. She smiled. “Bring him back soon.”

  The newcomer’s head sank a little lower. Annileen looked up the aisle, alarmed. More patrons were looking at them—and now the Gaults were inside, studying the new arrival. She had to do something.

  “Excuse me,” she said, leaving Ben by a rack of shirts. She walked to her counter and hopped up on it. Standing, she cupped her hands together and shouted in her best last-call voice, “Now hear this! This is a one-time-only event. The Jawa embargo is off. Shop!”

  It took a moment for the words to register—and then bedlam. Ben stood back, startled, as a flood of customers rushed for the exit. Some at the bar remained, but all the gawkers left.

  Ben looked up, obvious thanks on his face. “A special occasion, I take it.”

  “I always said the Jawas might be good for something someday,” she said.

  “You never know what role someone will play,” he murmured. He watched her thoughtfully as he helped her down off the counter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE METAL TUB WAS FULL. Overfull, in fact. Annileen had taken advantage of the calm to walk Ben through every aisle of the store, helping him find the items on his list—and many things that weren’t. She’d even pointed out which cheaper imported products were just as good as the more expensive local ones. Had any of her regulars overheard her, she’d have been mortified. Nobody got this kind of service.

  And he’d responded to it, Annileen thought. “This store is a living thing to you,” he had remarked. A strange observation, to be sure. Almost poetic, coming from a—a what? She didn’t know. Ben hadn’t told her anything substantive about himself.

  “Where are you from, Ben?”

  “All about, really.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “On Tatooine, or here at the store?”

  “What do you do?”

  “This and that. Nothing important.”

  That last answer described two-thirds of her patrons. She’d gotten more substance out of some of her discussions with Bohmer, the Rodian who spoke no Basic. But while Ben’s non-answers were frustrating, they neither surprised nor offended her. None of her customers told her much on the first visit. Not verbally, anyway.

  What they bought, however, spoke volumes. And Ben’s tub—a portable washbasin now doubling as a shopping basket—brimmed with clues for the retail eye.

  The curtain rod told her he wasn’t camping. The basic tools told her he hadn’t been there long. The tins of food paste told her he intended to stay for a while—and that he lived too far away to shop often. The containers of industrial-strength solvent told her he had a big cleaning job ahead.

  And rags. Who bought rags? Someone who traveled light, who’d arrived without old clothing to spare for cleaning.

  Finally, there was that other little tidbit, which she had very nearly overlooked: a bed pillow. Just one.

  She casually strolled the aisles, finding out a little more from him in between Kallie’s periodic interruptions to report her progress. When the supply room failed to yield packing accessories sized for Ben’s eopie, the girl had taken it upon herself to invent something with spare parts. She’d lashed two smaller feed sacks to a third to create a saddle pannier, and had spent the last half hour working on increasing the load. Only twice did Annileen and Ben hear the surprised bleat of a tipped-over animal from outside.

  “Kallie means well,” Annileen had said.

  Ben hadn’t seemed concerned.

  And while he’d sounded knowledgeable about life in the desert, Annileen had grown to believe he didn’t know much about Tatooine. All desert worlds were the same—except in the ways they weren’t. Many an overconfident transplant had learned the hard way. A foolish Geonosian had gone broke protecting his house here against flash floods that existed only in his homeworld memories.

  But as customers reentered, one by one, Ben grew anxious for the tour to end. “This should be sufficient,
” he said.

  “Are you sure? I’m not trying to up-sell you.”

  “I’m just afraid I’ll need a second eopie before we’re through.”

  Annileen chuckled. “We sell those, too.” She placed the armload of goods she was carrying on the counter, while Ben set the metal tub on the synstone floor. “All right. One cashier, no waiting.”

  He shuffled on his feet and reached in his pocket. “Are, uh, Republic credits still good here?”

  “As good as they ever were,” she said, stepping behind the counter. “We don’t pay politics much mind. Let me deal with the loose things first, and then we’ll get to what’s in the tub.” She began adding the items to his already lengthy sales tab—and as she did, she could see him counting along, keeping a running tally to himself. It wasn’t the nervous watchfulness of her more strapped customers, but he was still keeping track. So he can afford all this, she thought. But money still matters.

  “Look there,” a gruff voice said. “Someone’s done some shopping!”

  Annileen looked toward the exit to see Mullen standing in the doorway with his sister, Veeka. Behind them loomed Zedd, one of their Jawa-tossing accomplices. Zedd was human, but only just: muscle-bound and, currently, black-eyed. She had heard that a social misstep involving a Wookiee in Anchorhead had caused the latter condition, as well as the departure of several of Zedd’s teeth. It was Zedd’s incapacitation that had given Jabe his chance to fill in on the lead Gault service crew; Annileen was happy to see Zedd return to work.

  But she wasn’t happy to see him here, now. Mullen’s bad attitude only grew more toxic when he had his pet mountain shadowing him. The doors slammed shut behind the trio, who started walking purposefully toward the counter.

  “Surprised you’re buying here, ’stead of from your little friends,” Mullen said, approaching Ben from behind. “Decent people don’t take rides from Jawas.”