Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [163]
The spite was back in her voice, clearer now; spite and a world of unspoken resentment, the resentment of a woman who has known what it is to be poor. Just as if, thought Leia, she herself hadn’t run ragged through the stars with a price on her head.
But Roganda wasn’t seeing that. Roganda was seeing the Emperor’s levee, too; seeing the last Princess of Alderaan, privileged and pampered, whose aunts wouldn’t deign to speak to her: the scion of all those Ancient Houses who looked down their noses at her choice of wine …
And Leia raised her head in just the attitude she herself had hated in every spoiled rich brat she’d gone to school with, and summoned every ounce of their whiny jeers into her voice.
“You’ll need it,” she sneered, “if your witless incompetence at this stage gets the heads of all the Ancient Houses killed.”
Roganda slapped her. The blow wasn’t hard, but Leia grabbed the little concubine’s wrist, shoved her between herself and Irek, and flung herself the two or three meters down the corridor that separated her from one of the red alarm buttons on the wall. She smacked it hard with the heel of her palm and whirled, raising her hands as Keldor brought up his blaster …
And before Keldor had the chance to rethink his automatic response of not shooting in the event of surrender, Lord Garonnin appeared down the corridor at a run, blaster in hand.
“My lady? What …?”
“They’re deserting you!” yelled Leia. “Running out! That battlemoon’s going to blow the daylights out of this place and they’re taking off in the last ship!” And, whirling, she aimed a single hard lance of the Force at the latch of Roganda’s black box.
Panic, lack of training, and the exhaustion and disorientation of the drugs caused her aim to misfire slightly, but the result was the same. The strap snapped and the box—which Leia could tell was extremely heavy—crashed to the floor, the latch sprang open …
And gems, currency, and negotiable securities spilled across the floor between Roganda and her aristocratic security chief.
After an endless second of staring into Roganda’s white face, Garonnin said softly, “You faithless drab,” and, with his free hand, brought up his comlink.
It was the last conscious movement he made. Irek stepped forward with preternatural lightness and severed him, right shoulder to left hip, the lightsaber cutting and cauterizing flesh and bone like a hot wire passing through clay.
Leia stretched out her hand, Garonnin’s blaster flying free of his dying grasp and into her palm. Even as it did so she flung herself to the floor in a long roll, Keldor’s blaster bolt spattering viciously against the rock where a moment ago she’d been standing; then she plunged down the nearest corridor, heard Irek yelling, “Kill her! She’ll tell the others!” and the clatter of pursuing feet.
Leia took a flight of stairs two steps at a time, fled down a corridor, past deserted rooms or sealed doorways, musty and lit by the intermittent radiance of glowpanels faded with age. She ducked through what she thought was another passageway and found herself in a long room whose single bay window looked out into the lamp-twinkling outer darkness—fleeing to the embrasure, beyond the heavy plex she saw the jut of rocky overhang, the dense curtain of vines … and a hanging bed of vine-coffee plants, gleaming with worklights, not three meters away.
Hanging beds. The supply platform. An emergency ladder to the bottom of the rift.
She was prepared to shoot out the window latches but it wasn’t necessary; they were stiff, but not locked. Shouts, running feet outside … Her breath was still short and uneven from the stimulants they’d given her but she knew she had no choice. Leia squirmed her way through