Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [2]
Or, she thought—scrolling through the capsule summaries of reports, items of interest, minor events—they could be small anomalies.
“So how’d the Dreadnaughts do in last night’s game?” Han went to the wardrobe to don his jacket of sober dark-green wool. It fit close, its crimson-and-white piping emphasizing the width of his shoulders, the slight ranginess of his body, suggesting power and sleekness without being military. From the corner of her eye Leia saw him pose a little in front of the mirror, and carefully tucked away her smile.
“You think Intelligence is going to put the smashball scores ahead of interplanetary crises and the latest movements of the Imperial warlords?” She was already flipping through to the end, where Intelligence usually put them.
“Sure,” said Solo cheerfully. “They don’t have any money riding on interplanetary crises.”
“The Infuriated Savages beat them nine to two.”
“The Infuriated …! The Infuriated Savages are a bunch of pantywaists!”
“Had a bet with Lando on the Dreadnaughts?” She grinned across at him, then frowned, seeing the small item directly above the scores. “Stinna Draesinge Sha was assassinated.”
“Who?”
“She used to teach at the Magrody Institute—she was one of Nasdra Magrody’s pupils. She was Cray Mingla’s teacher.”
“Luke’s student Cray?” Han came over to her side. “The blonde with the legs?”
Leia elbowed him hard in the ribs. “ ‘The blonde with the legs’ happens to be the most brilliant innovator in artificial intelligence to come along in the past decade.”
He reached down past her shoulder to key for secondary information. “Well, Cray’s still a blonde and she’s still got legs.… That’s weird.”
“That anybody would assassinate a retired theoretician in droid programming?”
“That anybody would hire Phlygas Grynne to assassinate a retired theoretician.” He’d flipped the highlight bar down to Suspected Perpetrator. “Phlygas Grynne’s one of the top assassins in the Core Worlds. He gets a hundred thousand credits a hit. Who’d hate a programmer that much?”
Leia pushed her chair away and rose, the chance words catching her like an accidental blow. “Depends on what she programmed.”
Han straightened up, but said nothing, seeing the change in her eyes.
“Her name wasn’t on any of the lists,” he said as Leia walked, with the careful appearance of casualness, to the wardrobe mirror to put on her earrings.
“She was one of Magrody’s pupils.”
“So were about a hundred and fifty other people,” Han pointed out gently. He could feel the tension radiating from her like gamma rays from a black hole. “Nasdra Magrody happened to be teaching at a time when the Emperor was building the Death Star. He and his pupils were the best around. Who else was Palpatine gonna hire?”
“They’re still saying I was behind Magrody’s disappearance, you know.” Leia turned to face him, her mouth flexed in a line of bitter irony. “Not to my face, of course,” she added, seeing Who says? spring to her husband’s lips and hot anger to his eyes. “Don’t you think I have to make it my business to know what people whisper? Since that was back before I held any power in the Alliance they say I got my ‘smuggler friends’ to kill him and his family and hide the bodies so they were never found.”
“People always say that about rulers.” Han’s voice was rough with anger, seeing the pain behind the armor of her calm. “It was true about Palpatine.”
Leia said nothing—her eyes returned for a moment to the mirror, to readjust the hang of her tabard, the braided loops of her hair. As she moved toward the doorway Han caught her arms, turning her to face him, small and slender and beautiful and not quite thirty: the Rebel Princess who’d turned into the leader of the New Republic.
He didn’t know what he wanted to say to her, or could say to her to ease the