Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 04_ Lightsabers - Kevin J. Anderson [36]
"No one hurt," she croaked.
"It was a bomb?" Tenel Ka asked.
Her grandmother motioned them all back the way they had come. "Yes. In the dining hall," she said.
"Must leave immediately."
"We were all supposed to be in the dining hall!"
Jaina blanched. "So that bomb-" The matriarch nodded. "-was meant for the princess and me."
THE ROYAL YACHT, a Hapan Water Dragon, skimmed across the ocean waves at top speed, its repulsorjets kicking up spray. Bright sunlight shone through its transparisteel windowports, and the fresh smell of saltwater and rafts of seaweed filled the air.
Leaning against a windowport, eyes half shut, Tenel Ka watched the water dance and sparkle. She had always thought of Reef Fortress Island as her summer home, a place to enjoy the warm sun, the surf, and the ocean breezes. But in truth, it was a stronghold, a safe haven in time of danger.
"I feel ill," Jaina said. "Mentally and physically."
Tenel Ka, having been lulled by the yacht's rocking movement as it sped across the water, now straightened and blinked in surprise. "What is wrong, Jaina?"
"Do you realize that a few minutes one way or another, and we might all have been blown to bits by that bomb?" Jaina asked incredulously. "Or maybe I'm just a little seasick from these waves."
^
Tenel Ka looked at each of her friends in turn.
Jaina did not look well. Her straight brown hair, dull with perspiration, clung in damp clumps to her pallid face and neck. Lowie, sitting beside Ta'a Chume as she steered the yacht with nonchalant confidence, seemed too interested in the navigational computer to be affected by the waves. Jacen, on the other hand, looked boyishly enthralled by the experience.
Tenel Ka said to Jaina, "You will recover."
Tenel Ka's grandmother spoke from her position at the helm. Although royal guards accompanied them, the former queen preferred to pilot the craft herself. "We're almost to the fortress now. You'll be safe there."
Tenel Ka's eyes narrowed shrewdly as she noted her grandmother's words. "Should you not have said we will be safe?"
"You and your friends will be safe, yes," her grandmother said evasively.
"Where will you be?" Tenel Ka asked.
"Much of the time I'll be with you, but I'm not sure I can trust the investigation of this bombing to anyone else. Until I get to the bottom of the plot against us, I may have to travel back and forth between Reef Fortress and the Fountain Palace."
Jaina looked startled. "And leave us on the island alone?"
"You will have a full complement of guards,"
Ta'a Chume said soothingly. "And Ambassador Yfra will stay with you whenever I'm away."
Lowbacca snuffled a question from the navigation station. "Master Lowbacca wishes to inquire whether that island up ahead is our final destination," Em Teedee elaborated.
Jacen and Jaina went to the front windowport to look out at the smear of darkness rising from the sun-dappled water.
"Yes," Tenel Ka's grandmother replied, "that is Reef Fortress."
Tenel Ka didn't move forward to look out at the island. She'd been there so many times, she already knew what she would see. It never changed. She closed her eyes, picturing the rocky spires jutting up from the foamy waters of the ocean. She envisioned the water-level entrance to the cave grotto, the steep stone walls of the fortress itself, the crystal-clear cove where she had once loved to swim, the dizzying heights from the parapets along the impenetrable walls where she could walk or run with the wind in her hair, the gently steaming thermal springs in the cellar that provided fresh water for bathing, cooking, and drinking.
Tenel Ka suddenly realized that she had felt homesick after all for this place that held so many of her happiest memories from her childhood, memories of carefree time spent with her parents.
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