Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [50]
She rotated her hand. “The Ewok chief gave me this. I tried to refuse it. They have so little metal—it was obviously a treasure of the tribe, and offworld. But they insisted.”
Luke understood. Sometimes you had to accept an outrageous gift or else offend a sincere giver.
Chewie, immaculately brushed all over, emerged from the door beside Luke’s. An Academy-age woman who stood waiting beside the main door stumbled backward. “Oh,” she said. “Your … friend is welcome too, of course.”
Luke glanced at Leia and Han. As he understood it, there’d been another disagreement over whether the invitation included Chewbacca. Evidently Han had won the battle but was losing the war, because Leia—whose hair lay tight to her scalp in the front but flowed loosely down the middle of her back, like a living thing freed—looked everywhere but at Han. Han’s low-slung holster was missing. Carrying concealed, Luke guessed. Formal wear.
“Let’s go.” Leia tossed her head. “We’re late. Record any messages, Threepio.”
Their escort took them down to ground level, instead of up to the roof port. A closed white repulsor vehicle waited, running, in a garage along the eastern radial highway. They climbed in. The driver weight-stabilized the vehicle and then set off.
Luke glanced up and out as the vehicle purred along near ground level. A pair of brilliant blue-white lights hovered in midair over the street corner. The street seemed to be the same blue-white shade. But white stone would reflect any color. At one spot between tall towers, a steady stream of aircars whizzed overhead at right angles to their boulevard. Immediately after they passed under the aircar route, the escort turned left onto an avenue that curved to follow the circles of the city.
Luke craned his neck. The lights here gleamed warm and yellow, not blue-white—but at the very moment he noticed their color, the escort pulled into a short drive that arced to a portico lined with softly glowing pillars. Luke stared. The massive stone building behind that portico, built of white stone blocks, was shorter than Salis D’aar’s high-rises: a private midtown dwelling, on a world where stacks seemed to be the norm. He wished he could sneak away during dinner and see how anyone could fill so many private rooms.
A man and a woman in dark green military jumpsuits—definitely not Imperial, maybe leftover from pre-Imperial Bakura—opened the vehicle doors and then stood aside.
Luke sprang out first and looked around. Nothing seemed amiss. He nodded over the top of the car at Han. By then, Leia and Chewbacca had scooted out.
“There you are,” exclaimed a feminine voice from between the glistening porch columns. “Welcome.”
He felt Leia panic. Reaching for his saber, he scanned the porch for a threat.
Prime Minister Captison, dressed in a dark green military tunic that was crisscrossed with gold braid from epaulets to cummerbund, bowed to Leia. “My wife, Tiree,” he said. A spangled, black-caped figure stepped closer. Madam Captison wore a floor-length ebony hooded robe strewn with tiny gemlike beads, and she didn’t even remotely resemble Darth Vader—despite the black cape. “Tiree, may I present …”
Leia curtsied to the woman, struggling palpably to control her panic. Luke frowned. This Vader preoccupation was really getting to her.
Captison’s introductions made it obvious that Chewbacca’s presence caught him unawares. Recovering, Leia glared at Han, but Madam Tiree Captison looked delighted. She reached up, laid a hand on one of Chewie’s huge shaggy arms, and announced, “Let’s go in. Everything is almost ready.”
Leia ignored Han and took Prime Minister Captison’s arm. Luke saw and felt Han bristle. “Easy,” he murmured as they stepped into line behind Leia. “Show ’em your charm.”
Han lifted his head. “Charm,” he muttered. “Right.”
Along both sides of this indoor hallway ran another line of glistening rain pillars, similar to those in the senate chamber and outdoors, but narrower. Behind the rain pillars, flowering vines covered irregular white