Free The Star Prince by Susan Grant Page A

gently, taking her fingers in his.
    Her voice was fervent and low. "God, she must have been so unhappy. I wish she'd 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'd 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'd 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'd 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