Keeper of the Heart

Chapter 4

Shanelle touched down on the solidite landing pad at the bottom of Mount Raik without a hitch. The airobus handled like a dream. It was much larger than the one-seater Fleetwing II that she had been using on Kystran to get around in, but then she had learned in her World Discovery class how to fly all of the more modern single-pilot ships known in the Centura Star System. The airobus seated twenty comfortably, with a large cargo bay in the back for trade goods.

Shanelle opened the hatch just before turning to her friends. “This is the end of the easy part. From here on we rough it.”

“You don’t mean on those, do you?” Jadd asked, staring in horror at the waiting hataari on one end of the solidite paving.

Shanelle grinned, following his gaze. The four-legged Sha-Ka’ani beasts did take getting used to.

Huge, shaggy-haired, with long, wide backs that were as high off the ground as Shanelle was tall. But they were placid creatures, well adjusted to working with man.

But before she could reassure Jadd, Caris said with a good deal of awe, “My Stars, Shani, so that’s what they look like!” She wasn’t even looking at the hataari, but at the four warriors waiting with them. “I expected them to be big, but not that big.”

“Shani said they’re gentle with women,” Cira reminded her, her own voice sounding eager. “I’m willing to find out.”

“You may have to wait on that,” Yari put in. “Looks like we got trouble coming.”

Shanelle glanced toward the other end of the landing pad as she stepped off the airobus, and sure enough, a party of five men was heading in her direction, none of them looking very friendly. In fact, the short, rotund fellow in the lead looked as if he was just short of hopping-around mad.

Corth moved in front of Shanelle to block her view of the group just as it arrived. Six feet four and dressed in the leather bracs of a warrior, complete with sword-Shanelle’s sword, to be exact- Corth brought the round, little man up short, but not too short. The fellow was still seething with belligerence.

“Get out of my way, man,” he ordered Corth. “I demand to speak with the pilot of this bus.”

Corth, of course, didn’t budge, so Shanelle stepped to the side of him to say, “That would be me.”

“Then I will inform you, young woman, that I will have the job of every incompetent at your Center. How dare you people treat His Eminence, the High King, in such a shoddy manner. Do you even know who you’re dealing with? This is intolerable-”

Shanelle had the feeling he was only working up to a really good tirade, so she cut in. “It’s not the Center’s fault that so many visitors showed up for the competitions and that there weren’t enough hataari to carry them all. But I’m here to offer you a ride if you want it.”

“Well, that’s more like it,” the man huffed. “You will fly us immediately-”

“Sorry, but if you want a ride, it will have to be on those hataari over there. I’m not going back to the Center, and even I can’t land an airobus within the city, or didn’t you people read the laws of this planet to know that isn’t allowed?”

The man visibly bristled at that. “Then you are as stranded here as we are, because we have already been informed by those ignorant savages that those particular animals are not for rent.”

Shanelle did some bristling of her own at that point. “Those men happen to be my father’s warriors, under his orders to escort me to him, so they wouldn’t give up hataari brought for my use no matter who the hell you say you are. And I’ll have an apology on their behalf, or you can-”

“How dare you speak to me so! How dare you-”

“Oh, for Star’s sake,” Shanelle said in disgust and turned away, finished with trying to get through to someone that pompous.

Only she came face-to-face with the four warriors who had quietly come to join the group, and who were each looking down at her in what was so obviously amusement. Likely they had heard what had been said, and that was what they were so amused about, that she had come to their defense. They wouldn’t have taken insult themselves, not from someone so beneath their notice as the rotund visitor was.

“The little man with the big voice requires your assistance, Shanelle,” she was told by Lowen, a brown-haired warrior with eyes almost as light an amber as her own. “Best you see to it.”

She thought she was being reminded of the ride she had offered, until she heard the groan. She swung around to find that the visitor must have tried to stop her from turning away from him, because Corth now had the man’s fingers closed in his own fist and was bending those fingers back in such a way that the visitor dropped to his knees under the pressure.

“Let him go, Corth.”

The man was released instantly, but another voice was heard from, quietly commanding, “You should have known by the way she was dressed that she was Ly-San-Ter’s daughter. Apologize, Alrid.”

“But, Jorran-”

“Apologize!”

The little man, still on his knees, began a long spiel about how sorry he was to have offended the daughter of the shodan, and damned if he didn’t sound sincere. But Shanelle was barely listening.

She was looking down at herself and trying to figure out how they had guessed her identity by what she was wearing. She wasn’t wearing the chauri that all Kan-is-Tran women wore. Her calf-length skirt might be of the same length as the chauri, her blouse also sleeveless, but there the similarities ended. Her outfit didn’t consist of the semi-sheer scarves that made up the skirt and top of the chauri, but was solid white with muted silver glitter, thin, surely, but in no way transparent. The skirt was narrow; the short blouse hung loose, but conformed to her ribs and waist in the way it was draped, outlining her figure. She wore white boots instead of sandals, and even her hair was tightly rolled at her nape instead of left unbound.

Of course, she was forgetting the one item that she took for granted, that would make her father send her straight home to the palace if she wasn’t wearing it: the white cloak thrown back over her shoulders that said clearly she was under the protection of the shodan. A blue cloak would have done just as well, blue being the color of the Ly-San-Ter family. But no Kan-is-Tran woman went out without her cloak; otherwise she became claimable.

But these visitors wouldn’t know all that. It had to be the fact that she was the only one in her group cloaked, and the visitors were likewise cloaked, for them a symbol of royalty. Whatever, she finally looked at the man who had forced the other to apologize.

This one had to be the High King. He wasn’t more fancily dressed, just more regal-looking, and not bad-looking either, with light blond hair cut short, emerald-green eyes, and an ideal height in her opinion of no more than six feet two. Nothing intimidating in that.

But she hadn’t even noticed him before, nor had he paid much attention to her either, until he figured out who she was. Now he was smiling at her and it plainly turned her stomach. Stars, why did they always get ridiculous as soon as they knew her for a Ly-San-Ter?

“They claimed you were beautiful,” he said now, offering her the barest bow-probably a tremendous concession for a man of royal blood. “I feared it would be an exaggeration, but I see instead it was an understatement.”

Shanelle didn’t need to hear that kind of rubbish just now, and didn’t bother to address it. “If you people still need a ride up to the city, you can use three of our hataari. We don’t mind doubling up.”

“We accept your offer gladly,” King Jorran told her, only to add to his men, “I will ride with the princess.”

“I’m not a princess, and I’m afraid you can’t ride with me. My father’s warriors wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m pleased to know your virtue is so well guarded,” he replied, if somewhat stiffly for being refused. “My queen must be untouched.”

Oh, Stars, not another would-be suitor. Shanelle walked away, Corth right behind her.

“Forget it, doll,” Martha said soothingly, to remind Shanelle she wasn’t alone. “You were only mildly interested in that one.”

“I know.”

“Besides, when they know who you are, there’s always the possibility that your family’s wealth might be motivating them, or the prestige of being connected to a powerful shodan.”

“I’m aware of that, Martha.”

“Not that those reasons matter once they get their first look at you and see that you are the true treasure.”

“What program are you running?” Shanelle demanded irritably. “Bolster-the-flagging-spirits?”

“You always get depressed over this subject for no good reason,” Martha complained.

“I’m no different than any other Kan-is-Tran woman, golden from head to foot. There isn’t anything unusual about me, Martha, to call for all that ridiculous flattery that comes out once men know who I am.”

“Then you haven’t looked in a mirror lately.”

“Oh, real cute. But you don’t hear warriors dumping out all that garbage.”

“No, they just give you the sincerest form of flattery every time they’re around you. Take a look behind you if you think I’m pulling your leg.” Shanelle did, and found all four warriors following her with their eyes. “Want me to tell you what they’re thinking?” Martha added.

Shanelle blushed. “No.”

“Are you going to tell me you didn’t know they all want you, that just about every one of them has already asked your father for you?”

“You’re putting me into a really foul mood for my homecoming, Martha,” Shanelle growled. “I don’t want a warrior. I want love. I want to be able to stand on an equal footing at least some of the time with my future lifemate. I want what my mother has.”

In a soft, gloating voice Martha made her point. “What your mother has is a warrior.”