Page 5 of Star Prince (Star #2)
Chapter Five
Gann Truelénne dismissed the escort assigned to him; he preferred to navigate the maze of corridors in the palace himself. His travel cloak whipped around his legs as his strides carried him into the heart of the largest personal residence in the galaxy. To his left and right, massive columns soared to the ceiling, the space between them open to a vast desert. He breathed deeply. Sienna’s two suns had dropped below the horizon, and the palace heat shields had lowered for the night. It made the B’kah homeworld feel almost habitable, a term not generally used to describe any of the eight Vash Nadah home planets. But it had been so long since Gann had trodden upon anything but the deck of his starship, the Quillie, that he swore he felt the polished-stone floor rolling beneath his boots .
“Welcome back,” a voice boomed from the distant end of the passageway.
Gann squared his shoulders. Ahead, the king awaited him, his tall, muscled frame illuminated by the halo-candlelight flooding the hall. Romlijhian B’kah was the undisputed ruler of all known worlds, a direct descendant of Romjha, a warrior of almost mythical greatness credited with saving civilization from extinction over eleven thousand years before. A hero in his own right, Rom was a statesman, a decorated soldier, and a devoted husband. But to Gann, his most fitting title would always be friend.
Gann halted and snapped his fist over his chest, dipping his head in a bow. “You summoned me, Your Majesty.”
Rom’s eyes sparked with amusement. “Ah, such formality.”
Gann slowly raised his head. “I thought it was better to be safe. It’s been two years since I last saw you in the flesh; your rank may have finally gone to your head.”
“My one-too-many-times-battered head?” Rom asked dryly. When Gann grinned and pretended to search for a tactful answer, his friend laughed heartily. “Ah, my friend, it’s good to see you.”
They came together in a spirited embrace. Then, hands clasping each other’s shoulders, they moved apart, a thousand shared memories in their eyes.
Finally, Gann let his hands fall to his sides. “You didn’t bring me here simply because you missed me.”
“Not entirely.” Rom’s tired smile was maddeningly enigmatic. Without further comment he waved toward an open set of double doors and led Gann through a vast chamber, where a floor of Siennan marble reflected lavish tapestries and pieces of furniture—all ancient and priceless—encircling a saltwater fountain stocked with rare sea creatures. Such grandeur was breathtaking to those viewing the palace for the first time, but such trappings of wealth and power did not intimidate Gann. He had grown up amid this wonderland. His father was a member of the previous king’s elite guard, as was his father’s father and the thousands of years of Truelénne men who came before him. The loyalty Gann felt for Rom and his family went beyond friendship, beyond the years they had served on the same starship during Rom’s exile. It was bred in his bones.
The men walked silently. Gann studied his uncharacteristically subdued friend, wondering suddenly if this mysterious summons translated to a family emergency. “How is Jas?”
Rom’s eyes lit up at the mention of his Earth-born wife. “Very well. She looks forward to seeing you. In fact, she’s chilling several bottles of Red Rocket Ale as we speak.”
Gann had hoped as much; he found the Earth beverage delicious. And he wasn’t alone. Beer was swiftly becoming a sought-after libation across the galaxy, making Jas’s longtime friend, Dan Brady, creator of this royal favorite brand, one of Earth’s wealthiest businessmen.
Gann made another bid to determine the root of Rom’s concern. Rom was close to his children-by-marriage and treated them as if they were of his own blood. “Ian and Ilana—I trust they are well?”
“Yes.” Rom leveled him with a perceptive, if somewhat worried gaze. “All are healthy, thank the Great Mother. But you are correct in assuming the reason I brought you here is not a Vash Nadah matter. In fact, it’s quite personal. A predicament of lost and found, you might say. Found, I pray, with your help.”
A surge of anticipation quickened Gann’s pulse. Life had lacked a certain… spark since he and Rom had parted ways upon his friend’s ascension to the galaxy’s throne. Whatever Rom required of him now, it was bound to be good and, he hoped, exactly what he needed to lift him from his doldrums of late. Though he couldn’t help wondering why a king with an immense army and security forces trained in covert operations at his disposal would need an aging warrior’s help.
His curiosity soared higher as he trailed Rom to where soft music emanated from a sitting area hidden behind a screen. Here the walls were whitewashed and plain, the tile floor strewn with cushions, all glowing in the light of Sienna’s three pockmarked moons framed in an enormous skylight. Mementos from Rom and Jas’s travels, along with framed holo-images of their families, graced shelves and ledges clearly installed for that purpose, making obvious the intimacy of the couple who lived there.
A stab of longing blindsided him as an image blossomed in his mind’s eye of a private retreat like this, shelves stacked with holo-images of a wife, children. He frowned, then cleared his throat. Family life was for other men; that was the way of it. Serving the B’kah was his calling, a choice he had made long ago, duty over personal wishes, if not consciously then by birth. Why, then, had regret tainted where only pride dwelled before?
Because the tedium of your life is chipping away at your sanity, that’s why.
Stiffly, he clasped his hands behind his back. It was blasted obvious that he needed this mission. This adventure. He hoped it was good.
“Gann!” A woman’s accented singsong voice mercifully dragged his thoughts outward.
Clutching three frosty bottles in her hands, Jas breezed into the room. Immediately her presence lifted his spirits; her energy and zest for life were contagious. She stretched up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek in the overt display of affection characteristic of Earth-dwellers, as her exotic black hair, common on her homeworld if nowhere else, swung over her shoulders.
He pressed one hand to her back and returned the kiss, on her cheek, Earth-style. Then she stepped back to gaze at him. Smooth and elegant in her simple white gown, she looked every inch Rom’s queen, though he knew she still flew as an active starpilot in Sienna’s space wing. “I bet you could use a beer,” she said.
He grimaced. “I could use ten.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling.” Delight shone in her eyes. The bottles were passed around, and conversation filled the cozy room. “Like old times,” Jas said after a bit, grinning up at him before exchanging a deeply affectionate glance with Rom.
When the couple’s eyes met, their smiles slowly faded.
Rom set his bottle on a nearby table. “It’s time I explained why I summoned you here.”
Gann dipped his head. “I await your orders.”
As custom dictated, the men waited until Jas sat before they, too, settled onto the carpet, arranging plump cushions for comfort. Gann leaned against his pillow and crossed one long, boot-clad leg over the other.
“Few know the frontier better than you,” Rom began. Gann’s muscles thrummed as they did during a rousing game of bajha, the sword game played to hone instinct and the senses and practiced in complete sensory deprivation. He had looked forward to a possible extended stay planetside, but running a personal mission for Rom, particularly in the remote and unpredictable frontier, sounded far more intriguing. “Out with it, B’kah. What particularly corrupt and misguided soul would you like me to apprehend? Or is it a cache of stolen personal objects that requires my expert interception?” Grinning eagerly, he tipped his bottle for a swig.
Jas sighed. “Our niece ran away. We’re sending you after her.”
Gann almost choked on his swallow of beer. Jas’s intense expression indicated she was not joking, and the expectancy bolstering him drained away. Valiantly he attempted to keep his disappointment from his voice. “I’m to fetch a runaway princess?”
“Yes. Tee’ah Dar, Joren and Di’s daughter. Joren thought— prayed —she was here.” She pressed her lips together. “If only she had come here...”
“Jas,” Rom said gently, taking her fingers in his.
Her voice was fervent and low. “She must have been so unhappy. I wish she had told me. I might have been able to help her, to intercede with her parents, to offer alternatives to…this.” She sighed. “I met Tee’ah right before the war, seven years ago, when Rom and I were living in the Dar palace. Unlike us, Joren and Di maintain the old traditions. They raised Tee’ah in seclusion.” She squeezed her husband’s hand. “Rom and I are working to change the customs that have outgrown their usefulness, like the ones keeping women like Tee’ah so isolated.”
“But all this must be done slowly,” Rom said. “Or we’ll aggravate the mistrust and resentment that is not so well hidden by some members of the Great Council.”
Jas continued. “I kept in touch with Tee’ah, but only occasionally—via viewscreen, never in person. I gave her advice and encouragement, solicited or not, just as I do with my daughter Ilana. But there’s a huge cultural difference between a royal Vash female confined to a palace and a career-minded young woman living in California, and I failed to account for that. I filled her head with ideas…with possibilities. Now she’s headed into danger she’s little prepared for. I can’t help feeling responsible.”
Gann set his empty bottle on the floor. With a silent sigh, he resigned himself to the nursemaid duty it seemed he was acquiring. What the B’kah asked of him, the B’kah received. Such was his duty, and honor allowed him no alternative. Moreover, he didn’t like the idea of an innocent Vash princess in the clutches of disreputable frontier primitives any more than her family did. “I only glimpsed her briefly—seven years ago. What does she look like now?”
Jas handed him a holo-image. The princess, a grown woman, gazed innocently back at him, her posture erect, her long red-gold hair woven ornately in the traditional way atop her head.
Cradling the picture in his palms, he admitted, “Frankly I cannot fathom her, or any Vash princess, for that matter, running away, much less going to the frontier. You’re certain she went there voluntarily?”
“Quite.” His skepticism had brought a smile to Rom’s lips. “She stole a starspeeder, threatened a lieutenant at gunpoint and launched in the middle of a Tjhu’nami .”
Gann whistled, taking a second glance at the holo-image.
Jas said, “Joren’s men found her starspeeder on Donavan’s Blunder…with a cloaker already on board. The cloaker said she had traded her speeder for another and had already left the planet. Who knows if he was telling the truth? Security saw no sign of her, other than the ship.”
“Any communication from her?” Gann asked.
Rom took the holo-image he handed back. “Yesterday her parents received a short message via a multiple-channel encrypted relay. This was in addition to the note she left them before she departed. In both, she said she was safe, that she had gone voluntarily, and that they mustn’t worry. They assume the message was genuine, but they can’t, of course, authenticate the note or tell where it originated…or when it was sent. Dar intelligence is working on it.” Rom pressed his fingertips together and leaned forward. “There’s something else. Ian’s in the frontier too. But he’s undercover. I’ve tried, but I can’t reach him. My messages to him…bounce.”
Gann stared. “Ian’s undercover?” This plot was becoming more incredible and more convoluted with each passing minute.
“Not that Ian would know Tee’ah if he saw her,” Jas put in, evidently missing Gann’s reaction to her husband’s statement. “Because of custom, she stayed behind at the palace when the rest of the family traveled here for the wedding. I think she saw holo-images of the ceremony, but Ian’s appearance has changed considerably in seven years. So has hers. I doubt they would recognize each other.”
Gann cleared his throat. “I believe I’m missing something here. Why is Ian undercover?”
“Because I don’t want the Great Council to know he’s there,” Rom explained.
“I see,” Gann said, although he didn’t.
Rom’s sharp glance demanded his discretion. “I’m in somewhat of a quandary regarding the frontier. All I can tell you, so as not to place Ian in danger, is that I require his frontiersman’s perspective to guide me in future decisions on the matter.” Rom appeared to choose his next words with care. “Our realm is growing, changing. We’re settling new worlds farther and farther from the heart of our kingdom. Ian will be the first ruler with direct family ties to both the frontier and the Great Council. People on both sides will look to him for leadership. Yet there are still those who don’t see the wisdom of Ian someday taking the throne. I…want to give him the chance to prove them wrong.”
Rom fell silent before he smiled tiredly and added, “But you must find our wayward princess.”
Gann assured him, “I’ll have her home before her bed grows cold. Hunk of bread.”
“Hunk of bread?” Jas appeared baffled.
“It’s one of your Earth-dweller expressions, is it not? Used to describe the ease of a particular task?”
Her lips quirked. “You mean, piece of cake.”
“Yes, yes, that’s the one. A princess in the frontier will stand out like an iceberg in the desert. I’ll have her back to the palace in no time. Piece of cake.”
Jas and Rom walked with him to where the screen separated the sitting area from the larger chamber. Embracing his friends in turn, he bade them farewell. Then he swept his travel cloak around himself and strode from the room.