Tristan sprang back, releasing his hold. He offered his adversary a hand, but his foe snarled, threw sand at him, and rose and stalked out of the arena on his own.
Tristan shrugged, brushed sand off his torso, and faced the dais. He met Nalini’s eyes as he bowed.
The unexpected eye contact startled her. The gladiators always looked to her father, knowing he was the one who determined their fate.
But this man, with his neatly trimmed beard and short tousled hair, looked at her.
His eyes were a deep brown with an intensity that made her stir uneasily in her seat. He seemed like someone who wouldn’t miss anything, such as the secrets she didn’t want getting back to her father. She hoped that one of the dimmer-looking thugs won. If she had to have a bodyguard, she would prefer a dumb one. Also one whose muscles didn’t play together in such an appealing way as he trotted back to await the next round.
Nalini caught herself touching her chest and lowered her hand with an irritated snap. She wasn’t her sister.
The battles continued, robot servants bringing food and beverages around to the spectators who worked in the palace while humans served those in the royal boxes. There were three more elimination matches with different pairings before Tristan fought again. Nalini nibbled on a pastry coated in sesame seeds while she watched him walk back out into the arena.
His next match, against one of the other victors from a previous round, did not go to the ground. His foe was also fast and agile, appearing more natural than the hulking cybernetically or genetically altered men, and preferred all manner of kicks and punches. Tristan adapted to his style easily enough, blocking the barrage of blows without giving ground. He had a knack for reading his opponent, seemingly before the other man even knew what he would do next. Or maybe it was that there was something predictable about the combinations of punches and kicks he threw.
Either way, Tristan defeated him more quickly than his first opponent, an open fist to the nose sending him tumbling to the sand. Tristan sprang after him, locking his foe’s arms behind his back so he couldn’t get up, and the drone flew out for the countdown of three.
The crowd was audibly disappointed by how quickly the skirmish had ended, but when Tristan offered to help up his foe—this one allowed it—and dusted himself off and faced the dais, a round of whoops and applause went up for him.
He bowed, meeting Nalini’s eyes again. She expected some smugness or a cocky smile, but his jaw was set with determination, the same intensity in his eyes as before. After he bowed, he jogged back toward the winners’ side.
“I like his professionalism,” her father said as he accepted a cup of raki from a servant. “Perhaps I shall offer him a position even if he doesn’t win. The Kingdom’s loss will be my gain, eh?”
One of the other men still in contention looked at Nalini as Tristan jogged back to the group. The thug pointed at her, smirked, and grabbed his crotch.
Nalini was so startled that she glanced at her father, amazed that one of the men had dared such rudeness in his presence, but he was selecting from a dessert tray and did not notice.
She launched a defiant glare at the brute, but Tristan had said something, drawing his attention. The man, who towered more than a foot above him, grabbed his crotch again and made thrusting motions and laughed.
Tristan punched him in the face, the blow so fast and hard that the man didn’t get a hand up to defend himself. Because he’d been too busy using it on his crotch, Nalini wagered, satisfied with the action even if she shouldn’t have taken pleasure in such a petty thing.
The big man sprang for Tristan, ready to have the final battle right there, but androids and human guards ran out with stunners, shouting for them to knock it off.
The two men broke apart, glaring at each other with the intense hatred of mortal enemies rather than strangers who’d met that night. The crowd whooped and roared, some rising to their feet and stomping their approval at this bonus display of ferocity.
Several more matches were fought, but the end was inevitable. Tristan and his new nemesis were the last two combatants left standing.
As they stalked out, neither taking his gaze off the other, Nalini revoked her wish for someone besides Tristan to win. The last thing she wanted was that crotch-grabbing troglodyte as her bodyguard. By the stars, her bodyguard would sleep in the servant’s room in her suite. He had to be someone trustworthy.
Even if a servant would be punished, if not outright executed, for any sexual crimes he committed on a member of the royal family, he might try anyway, believing he could get away before being caught.
Nalini swallowed, horrified by that thought, as the drone sounded a bell and the men lunged for each other.
The thug had walked out with sand in his hand, and he flung it at Tristan’s eyes before they engaged. Tristan ducked aside and missed most of it, but some got into his eyes, throwing him off ever so slightly. His foe rammed into him like an asteroid-coring machine.
Tristan crashed to the ground, the big man smothering him. Nalini groaned, certain her knight was done for.
But somehow, Tristan created enough space to get his knees to his chest and plant his feet against his foe’s torso. He thrust, hurling the heavy man into the air, then rolled away before the mass of muscle landed.
His opponent twisted with surprising agility for such a big man and came down on his feet. Tristan was already charging at him. He threw punches so quickly that his hands blurred, and at one point, he slammed a knee into the man’s groin. It was a tactic he hadn’t used on any of his other foes, but Nalini clenched her fist, delighted when the brute howled in pain.
He lunged in, punches flying, but Tristan was too fast. Not only did he dodge the attack, but he darted past his foe and came around behind him. He slammed a foot into the back of the man’s leg, forcing him to his knees. Before the thug could recover, Tristan wrapped his powerful arms in a lock around his thick neck.
They ended up facing the dais, so Nalini had a clear view of the big man flailing, trying vainly to reach Tristan with limbs made inflexible by his great muscle mass.
Tristan, right against his back with his arms squeezing ever tighter, looked neither triumphant nor concerned. There was simply that same intense focus. His adversary’s face turned red, then purple. The crowd roared as the flailing grew weaker.
The drone came out and did its countdown. The big man tried one more time to escape the lock, but he failed. The drone announced Tristan the winner, and he let his opponent go, the big man tumbling face first into the sand.
Once again, Tristan offered a hand up—Nalini would have preferred it if he’d kicked the coarse oaf in the face—but this one also ignored the help. He grabbed sand and threw it toward Tristan’s face again as he stood, but Tristan saw it coming and closed his eyes.
The androids started out to instill order, but the man stalked off without further fighting.
Tristan brushed off the sand, faced the dais, and once again bowed to Nalini.
“Ah, very good,” her father said. “He will do, I believe.”
Nalini sank back in her seat as the guards came out to lead Tristan away.
“I think my wives might also tell me that he is handsome.” Her father quirked an eyebrow at her. “You’ve made your feelings on servants clear, so I won’t worry about that, but do not forget that your fate is with Prince Jorg.”
“I haven’t forgotten, Father.” Nalini cleared her face, wondering what expression she’d worn that had prompted him to make that statement.
Tristan looked back at her as he neared the exit tunnel, his expression inscrutable. She was glad he wasn’t crude and lustful like the other man, but it bothered her that she couldn’t read him and had no idea what he was thinking.
All she knew was that he was her new bodyguard. She feared she was in trouble for more reasons than one.
2
Four weeks earlier…
Sir Tristan Tremayne stared at the coffin, only vagu
ely aware of the cool hazy mist coating his face and contrasting the hot tears streaking down into his beard. His mentor and best friend was dead.
His father had once told him real men don’t cry, but he’d been mining ore on a penal asteroid for the last twenty years. He was a criminal. What did he know?
A throat cleared behind him.
Despite his resolve to ignore his father’s advice, Tristan wiped the tears from his face before turning around. Knights couldn’t show weakness, especially one who hadn’t been born into the nobility and worried that everything would one day be taken away from him.
He didn’t recognize the man in the suit who stood behind him and bowed when their eyes met.
“Sir Tremayne? I’m Itsuki Yamamoto, the lawyer handling the settling of Sir Hanh’s affairs. After his death, this was found in his cabin on the Tiger’s Wrath, and there was a note that it was for you.” A puzzled crease furrowed Yamamoto’s brow as he opened his jacket and pulled out a vial of vibrant red dirt.
Tristan accepted it, tears threatening again as he read the label: Arakan Moon regolith.
“Thank you.” Tristan wore his formal silver liquid armor for the funeral, so he was short on pockets. He tucked the vial into his utility belt. Since the lawyer still looked puzzled, he explained, “I collect dirt from the planets and moons I visit because…” He groped for a way to explain how little he’d had growing up, how he’d never thought he would travel outside of the capital city, much less leave the planet Odin, and how that had only changed when he’d become Sebastian Hanh’s squire. “Just because,” he finished. “Sir Hanh knew.”
“A dirt collection?” Yamamoto didn’t appear that enlightened. “Well, that’s less controversial than what’s in his will.” He took a long look over his shoulder through the mist toward where Sebastian’s twenty-five-year-old son Andreas, cousins, nephews, and uncles were gesticulating to—
Tristan rocked back when he recognized King Jager, Queen Iku, and their eldest, Prince Jorg. Though he shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course they would come to the funeral of one of their most trusted knights, especially since Sebastian was—had been—from one of the oldest noble families.
Jager glanced in his direction, and Tristan fought the old urge to drop prostrate to the ground with his nose smashed against the dirt. He bowed, as befitting a knight, though even that wasn’t required across such distance.
“Yes, there’s the controversy playing out, I believe,” Yamamoto said. “I informed Andreas of the, ah, update to Sir Hanh’s will when I arrived. I assume Sebastian discussed it with you?”
“His will?” Tristan asked. “No. Is this about my probationary period?”
Even though he was devastated by the loss of his best friend and the only mentor he’d ever had, he couldn’t help but think of himself now that this lawyer was here. Tristan was one month shy of finishing his probationary year, something required of any commoner who made his way through the rigorous gauntlet to qualify as a knight, and Sebastian had promised to stand beside him at the king’s court and argue to make sure it became Tristan’s permanent position. But with Sebastian gone…
He swallowed, remembering how many people had opposed his appointment. Nobody had cared much when Sebastian had taken him on as a squire, since they’d assumed that some kid off the streets would never pass the vigorous physical and academic exams required to become a knight, but when he had, people had become much more vocal. Was Sebastian’s son Andreas complaining about that even now? Why would it matter to him?
“No, not that. This.” Yamamoto pulled out a small tablet computer and held the screen up toward him.
Fear tightened Tristan’s gut, the words even harder than usual to read as panic set in. His dyslexic brain jumbled letters around, and it didn’t help that the long multisyllabic words were legal mumbo jumbo to start with.
“Can you sum it up for me, please?” Tristan’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment that hadn’t stopped rearing up in his mind over the years, even after he’d been given a label for his reading difficulties. He drew some small solace in the fact that he excelled at mathematics—that half of the academic tests had pulled up his reading and writing scores and given him a passing score—but nobody ever asked him to recite math problems aloud.
Yamamoto’s brow furrowed again. “He left you his estate.”
Tristan blinked slowly. Even though that was as concise a summary as anyone could have asked for, he struggled just as much to understand it. “I don’t understand.”
“He,” Yamamoto said slowly, as if dealing with a simpleton, “left you his estate. All of it.”
Yamamoto stretched a hand toward the rambling castle that covered tens of thousands of square feet, the manicured lawns and gardens, the horse stables and riding arenas in the back, the hangar and shuttle pad with several private spacecraft and aircraft, and thousands and thousands of acres of the Liliowy Mountains that spanned countless lakes and some of the richest timberlands on the continent.
Tristan shook his head. “He has a son. And cousins and nephews.”
He pointed to those people now, suddenly understanding why they were gesticulating and arguing with the king.
“Yes, and until recently, his son stood to inherit his title and estate. He’d left you some hundred thousand Kingdom crowns, which seems reasonable, if an excessive amount to give to a commoner whose father is in prison and whose mother overdosed on drugs.”
The heat hadn’t faded completely from Tristan’s cheeks, and it rekindled now at this reminder of his dubious origins. “I see. It’s more acceptable to give money to appropriately pedigreed commoners.”
“I will tell you honestly,” Yamamoto said, ignoring the sarcasm, “that it’s unlikely it’ll stick. The king will have to get the Senate to sign off on overturning it, but they probably will. Even if Andreas is petulant and spoiled, that describes half of the children of nobles in the Kingdom, and it’s never been grounds for taking their lands from them.” Yamamoto took back his tablet. “If you expect to have a shot at keeping that which he bequeathed you, you had better hire a very good lawyer.”
“I don’t have the money for that,” Tristan mumbled, more out of habit than because he wanted to pursue a lawsuit.
Yamamoto snorted. “Ironic.”
Tristan stared bleakly at the lawyer as he walked away, then turned back to the coffin. The lid was down, since poor Sebastian had been maimed horribly in the explosion that had destroyed the bridge of his ship—and taken his life—but Tristan wished he could see his mentor’s face one more time. No, he wished he could speak to the living man one more time.
“Why, Sebastian?” he whispered. “You didn’t need to do this—shouldn’t have done it. All I ever wanted was to be a knight.”
The coffin did not answer.
“I see you got this worked out real well for yourself,” came Andreas’s angry snarl as he stalked up.
Tristan turned in time to see the punch coming, and he could have blocked it—his instincts started to whip his arm up to do so—but he caught himself and let the punch land. Knuckles mashed against his cheekbone, stinging, but it was nothing like the punch of a knight, or any trained warrior. It was the punch of a dandy who spent his days betting on horse races and his nights down in the capital, carousing with his cronies.
“What’d you do?” Andreas demanded, wincing and shaking out his hand. “Get him drunk and sweet-talk him into changing it? Or did you suck his dick while you were out on those missions? Everybody knows he never preferred my mother or any other woman.”
Tristan sighed. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the implication, and he couldn’t manage the anger any longer to clench his jaw in indignation.
Yes, Sebastian’s tastes had run toward male companionship, but Tristan’s didn’t. Nobody ever believed he wouldn’t have crossed the line of his own preferences to advance his career. It bothered him more that people could believe Sebastian would have asked someone to do that. He’d b
een as noble and chivalrous as all the knights in the legends combined. What truly angered Tristan was that Sebastian’s son would speak poorly of him, and he found his fingers curling into a fist until he noticed a second man walking up.
“Is that how Tremayne got Hanh to vouch so passionately for him to be granted knighthood?” Prince Jorg asked dryly, his eyes dancing with amusement. And cruelty. That cruelty had been there every time Tristan had encountered the man—the future ruler of the Star Kingdom. “I’d wondered why someone would argue so vehemently to allow some street filth to be made into a knight.”
Tristan made himself bow and greet Jorg with a formal, “Favor of the Kingdom to you, Your Highness,” even though he would have preferred to punch the man.
Andreas’s anger was understandable. Jorg was a spiteful snot who acted like he was thirteen instead of thirty. Tristan hoped the rumors about Jager partaking in out-of-system anti-aging treatments were true and that he would outlive his son. Jager wasn’t known for loving benevolence, and reputedly had ambitions to take over the Twelve Systems and put them under Kingdom rule again, but he wasn’t as much of a petulant ass as his son.
“Yes, do suck up,” Jorg said. “And also to the king, not only me. I’m sure that’ll make my father much more inclined to buck two thousand years of tradition and give you the Hanh estate.”
“I don’t want his estate or his money or anything.” Tristan’s fingers twitched toward his utility belt. That wasn’t quite true. He would keep the red moon dirt. It touched him that Sebastian had thought to gather it for him.
Andreas sprang back behind Jorg. “He’s grabbing his axe!”
Tristan’s hand hadn’t been anywhere near the knight’s pertundo he carried—a weapon modeled after a retractable halberd rather than an axe—but he lowered it.
“Dear Andreas, were you planning to use me for a shield?” Jorg, who’d passed all the knight exams himself, hadn’t mistaken the reach for anything offensive. “Because there are laws against that, you know. In fact, at the first sign of danger, you’re supposed to fling yourself in front of me rather than behind me.” Jorg’s cold blue eyes glinted. “Perhaps we can try that later in some highway traffic.”
Knight Protector: a Star Kingdom novel Page 2