The Star Princess (24 page)

"Ah… "

"And you hardly ever do any real work, except for trying to fix the mess you made of these hedges."

Muffin squared his shoulders. "I have done more than that," he insisted. "I have weeded all the beds." He might only be posing as a groundskeeper, but he tried to do a good job. He came from a family with a good work ethic.

"You're after them, aren't you? That couple. You're one of those reporters who's always bothering celebrities. Paparazzi. There have been a lot of them sneaking around here lately. We've seen them from the wash shed. Photographers, too."

Ché returned to the airplane. "We will need to make an exterior inspection. Then I'll get us cleared to taxi." Muffin's hand shot to his ear, cupping it. He stared at the ground, concentrating.

"That's him. He's famous, right?"

Muffin shrugged. "Hollywood."

"I figured. We always ask whenever someone brings us a plane to wash, but no one seems to know, or want to say, but everyone's watching. And you're one of the snoops."

She made no secret of the fact she didn't approve. Muffin almost confessed that he didn't do this for a living, that he used to be proud of his role as bodyguard to the ruler of the galaxy, but here we was, reduced to snooping as she put it.

Now Ché and Ilana both appeared outside the airplane. Muffin went flat against the wall and inched closer to get a better view without going too far past the hedgerow, which was no where near as ragged looking as Copper seemed to think. Shaggy, but not ragged. He'd had haircuts worse than that.

He watched as Ché took Ilana on a walk-around check of the outside of the airplane. Periodically, they'd crouch close together while Ché explained how a piece of equipment worked.

Copper peeked around Muffin's arm. Her breasts brushed his elbow. He tried not to look. All women were petite to him— but if this one were in his arms, at least he'd have something to hold on to.

In no time at all, it seemed, Ché and Ilana had climbed back inside the aircraft. "Cessna one-four-five-alpha-kilo request taxi."

A female voice answered over the craft's radio speakers. "Five-alpha-kilo, cleared to taxi. Hold short runway two-five."

A drumming roar burst into Muffin's ear as the craft's propeller began to turn, drowning out any further conversation. Muffin yanked out the earpiece. It would be impossible now to hear the voices. The engine was too loud, and soon they'd be too far away.

Muffin watched helplessly as the little airplane taxied away. He could barely see it now. Sunshine reflected off the white paint, and it suddenly looked very small. He couldn't listen and couldn't see. Glumly, he trudged back to his cart and grabbed a pair of pruning shears.

"Wait, John! Don't take it out on the hedge. The people in the Cessna, they'll be okay. I know. I washed their plane this morning."

Muffin jerked his gaze around to Copper. She looked even prettier with the concern for him that she wore on her face. She wasn't a space-hand or a jaded frontierswoman. She reminded him of the women of his homeworld, the homeworld he hadn't wanted to return to because he didn't want to live there alone while drowning in his family's good intentions.

"Washing gives me a close-up look at the airplanes," she explained. "If I think the maintenance isn't being kept up, or if anything's loose or too dirty, I yell at the owner." She swallowed. "I lost my parents and my brother in a crash that shouldn't have happened. I figure it's the least I can do."

A shadow passed over Muffin's mind. It had been a long time since he thought of the war, but Copper's words spurred a memory of that time. "I flew in combat," he said, almost without realizing it. He did have the good sense not to say more, that his last mission was part of the raid to free Queen Jasmine. That they were running to their starfighters on foot when the young pilot he was paired with took a shot in the abdomen. Muffin had got the lad off Brevdah Three, but he'd bled to death during their escape. "I haven't had the heart to pilot a craft since."

Copper waited for him to say more, but that was all there was to tell. "I am not a man of many words," he apologized, opening and closing his fists.

Her gentle smile told him she'd already figured that out. "Do you want to get a Pepsi or something? There's a machine over by the wash shed."

Nodding, Muffin put the shears back in the wheelbarrow.

"I don't think you should be snooping, anyway," she scolded. "No matter how good it pays." Her expression pleaded with him. "If it's not right."

Suddenly he was less motivated to follow Ché and Ilana as carefully as he'd been doing. What was the point? Their relationship was going exactly as Ian wanted. Perhaps Muffin should step back a bit, notifying Ian only if things changed for the worse. Maybe he'd been following the couple so closely because he'd had nothing else to do. But now there was Copper. She might be a better way to fill his time.

He answered her with a broad smile. "Show me the Pepsi. I will buy it for you."

She gave her head a shake as they walked. "Nah. I'm buying this time. It's the least I can do for you after throwing you down on the ground."

Muffin cringed. "And she's such a little thing, too," he muttered.

Copper's mouth fell open. "What did you call me?"

Had he said something to hurt her? Blast the language barrier. He was not swift of tongue in his own language, let alone in a difficult and confusing one like this English. "Little?"

"Bless you. I'm five-eight, and two hundred pounds. No one has ever called me 'little.' Forgive me if I swoon."

As far as Muffin was concerned, she could faint away right into his arms and he wouldn't complain. But she looked too steady on her feet for that. "Where I am from the people are big. Trust me, Copper, you are not." He brought his fist to his chest. It made a solid thump. "We grow large and hardy in the cold crisp air, the bright sunshine, and our bountiful food supply, all of it homegrown and hunted locally."

Copper said, "You can tell me more over a soda."

"If you buy me the beverage, it is only right that I buy you dinner."

Her green eyes swerved his way. "Dinner?" Her cheeks turned pink. "You mean… like a date?"

"I think so." He hoped he'd gotten the translation right.

"Okay." She looked happy and stunned. Muffin was delighted he had made her that way, because it was exactly the way he felt. All the more reason to take a little more free time.

But at one p.m., he'd intended to follow Ché and Ilana to their next destination, wherever that might be. But was it necessary? Would Ian have asked it of him? Muffin doubted it. Clearly, Ilana and Ché could get into no worse trouble than taxiing, and there was nothing he could do about that now that they'd taken to wheeling around the tarmac.

No, this afternoon Muffin was free. Work, work, work made him an unhappy boy, Muffin thought, grinning at Copper. "We have arranged for Pepsi, and for dinner. Would you like to share lunch with me?"

"Share? Mmm. No. But I'll eat with you if I can have my own plate."

Muffin laughed, a deep and rich sound, even to his own ears. But ever the dutiful guard, he couldn't enter the wash shed, a metal-sided hangar that smelled like soap, without turning to look toward the runways one more time.

Copper snatched his sleeve and tugged. "They'll be fine."

Sighing, he turned back to her. On a normal day, he'd not have taken his attention away from a woman like Copper for a single moment, but the prickling in his neck wouldn't go away. He knew it had to do with the flying. ,

·

Chapter Fifteen

Forty-eight, forty-nine…

Klark Vedla hung upside-down from an exercise bar. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his feet were held snug by ankle restraints. With each silent count, he lifted his upper body from the vertical.

Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two

Sweat dripped onto the mat below his head. An occasional drop entered his eyes and burned. He kept his eyes open, however. Guards watched him around the clock, but one must never become complacent or trust fully the so-called unbreakable security of the palace. His ancestors had made that mistake, and they were slaughtered, nearly all.

That's why it was different for the Vedlas than for the other families. The Vedlas had survived near-extinction. Passed down from generation to generation through the millennia was the need to be vigilant, to always question, to always keep their clout intact, so that no one would ever become powerful enough to harm them again.

There was no question in Klark's mind that Vedla blood was superior to all the rest. It was his goal in life to keep it that way. Because of his purist views, in some circles he was considered a hero. In others, he was a nuisance and even a danger. "It is best to be one or the other," his father told him. "But not both. The disparity will get you killed, Klark," he had warned.

But some things were worth dying for. All true Vedlas felt the same.

Fifty-seven, fifty-eight…

His stomach muscles burned. Gritting his teeth, he grunted with each lift of his upper torso. He was stronger than he'd been a standard month ago, and expected to become stronger still. If there was one good thing he could say about incarceration, it was that he'd never been in better shape. Daily now, he put his body through what he would have considered sheer torture in the old days.

Fifty-nine, sixty, sixty-one…

Old days? Not even a standard year had passed between now and then, the days of freedom, of decadent pastimes, of women and other sports, and of the glorious game of politics that ultimately saw him imprisoned in his own home.

It was merely a setback.

Seventy-three, seventy-four…

There were those who considered him finished— in politics and as a man. Bah! They were sadly mistaken. Klark Vedla, second son of the Vedla king, would rise again. And when he did, glory would be his. He would prove to all that the Vedla name stood above the other seven, by ensuring that Ché Vedla, his beloved brother, won his final victory over the humiliation foisted upon him. When it came time, far in the future, to sing out the names of the heroes, Che's would be among them.

Eighty-two, eighty-three…

Klark kept his eyes focused on the door to his exercise chamber. He took in the burn, the pain, used it to forge his strength, so that it would be there for Ché. Sweat ran in rivulets down his bare chest, over his crossed forearms. It dribbled along his neck and jaw, sprayed by the breaths hissing in and out between his gritted teeth. It was worth it, worth the price.

"One hundred," he gasped out, letting his shoulders fall. He hung upside-down for a moment, arms dangling limply, blood roaring in his head.

Then he saw the guard standing by the entrance to the chamber come suddenly to life. Klark froze, ready to swing upward and release his ankles.

"Good morning," a cheery voice rang out.

It was Hoe, Che's eternally effervescent and efficient advisor. With a businesslike bounce in his step, the man strode toward him, walking bent over sideways as if that were the only way to communicate with a man hanging by his feet. In his hand was his ever-present computer, and he was waving it. For the first time, Klark saw that Hoe was upset. The man's cheeks were ruddy, and there were shadows under his sharp eyes.

"What is it?" Klark inquired.

Hoe tipped further to the side. "It is terribly important, my lord." He cast a glance over his shoulder at the door guard, somehow without throwing out his neck in the process. "And confidential."

"You heard him," Klark yelled to the guard. "Leave."

Klark knew the guard would not go; they never did.

They merely moved their post to outside the room. "Is it Ché? Is my brother in danger?"

Hoe hesitated just long enough to worry Klark. "He is uninjured, my lord. There is a problem, however. One that could be construed as danger." He was still standing sideways. "Will you be coming down, sir?"

"Oh, I suppose I must." Lifting up, Klark opened the ankle cuffs, holding on to them as the device lowered him gently to the mat below. "I couldn't bear it if you injured your back," he added.

Hoe gave a half-smile as he poured Klark a refreshing drink. The man never seemed completely comfortable around him. It was as if he were afraid of him. Well, Klark supposed he'd earned it. No one could say he didn't deserve his reputation.

He donned a robe, tying the belt around his waist, before taking the glass of icy ion and botanical infused fluid Hoe offered. Without having to be told, the advisor trailed him outside to his balcony. The scent of fresh-cut greens wafted in the breeze; at this early hour, the army of palace gardeners was already busy. The vast ocean sparkled in the sunshine.

An illusion, that freedom, Klark thought, scrutinizing the fair-weather sky. As if the locator surgically implanted in his neck weren't enough, palace security had erected a force shield all around his balcony. One could break through it without injury, but the breach would alert Security within an instant, simultaneously putting out a warning on computers all through the palace. Why bother, Klark reasoned, when there were more efficient ways of escape? He'd figured out nearly all of them by now, and remained within his quarters only to please Ché. He owed his brother that, at least.

Klark sat down at a table of polished tree sap made stone-hard after millennia spent deep underground— on a planet that no longer existed, reduced to mere molecules after its parent star went supernova five thousand years earlier. When Klark felt like brooding, he'd get drunk on Heart of Taj ale and stare at the bizarre creatures frozen forever within the depths of the amber, until he'd convinced himself of the insignificance of his suffering within the grand scheme of existence.

At times, it even worked.

But there was no need for that on this fine day. "Sit, Hoe," he said magnanimously. "Join me and tell me what you have learned."

Hoe dispatched a servant for a carafe of tock and another pitcher of the beverage Klark drank after exercise. They sat in silence, Hoe awkward and Klark amused, until the servant, arranged the beverages on the table and left once more.