Knight Protector: a Star Kingdom novel

by Buroker, Lindsay

  Nalini squinted at him again. Tristan wasn’t sure if it was because he was saying the wrong things—maybe bodyguards weren’t supposed to have a sense of humor—or if she was trying to figure him out.

  Since the last thing he wanted was to be figured out, he decided he should keep his mouth shut. Bodyguards were supposed to loom silently, anyway, weren’t they? He remembered that from the historical dramas about the nobility. The bodyguards rarely got lines in those stories, much less starring roles replete with dazzling demonstrations of their wit. Knights often starred in the dramas, but for the next however many months, Tristan was not a knight. He was a bodyguard, and if he was discovered as the spy he truly was, he might become a dead bodyguard.

  4

  As faux sunlight streamed in through the window, offering morning brightness similar to what one would find on one of the close-in planets, Nalini stood in her nightgown, sipping Citrus Delight tea from her mug and pondering the holographic math problem projected over her kitchen table. Actually, it was an asteroid, with measurements and equations hanging in the air beside it.

  She was intimately familiar with the asteroid—it was already en route to Oceanus, where it would be dropped into a shallow stretch of the equatorial sea and shaped into a massive island that would eventually house millions. This was her first time seeing the calculations, and something about the numbers seemed off. The equations were correct—the computer confirmed that for her. So what was wrong? Her subconscious brain sensed a problem, but her conscious mind hadn’t been able to pinpoint it yet. That was problematic because she needed to get the final files sent off to Oceanus’s terrestrial terraforming and planning board for approval before she left on her trip. The board would only give her a final okay for dropping the asteroid into their sea if the math proved that neither the impact nor the water the asteroid displaced would cause any problems for the two continents already on the planet.

  Her engineers promised her everything was correct, but…

  Nalini tilted her head sideways, as if a new perspective might help.

  “Someone took a shortcut, eh?” came a man’s voice from the doorway.

  Nalini jumped, almost spilling tea all over herself. She’d forgotten about her new bodyguard.

  She turned to face Tristan and almost upset her tea again.

  He stood in the doorway in gym clothes that clung to his lean muscled form like a second skin. He’d clearly been making use of the private weight and cardio machines on the second floor of her suite. Someone else might have looked scruffy in a sweaty T-shirt and damp, tousled hair, but his handsome face and chiseled body could have been draped in rags and grime and still been appealing.

  Realizing she was staring at him, Nalini jerked her gaze to his face. He was scrutinizing the asteroid instead of watching her ogle him. Good.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Oh, sorry.” Tristan looked at her—she felt underdressed in her nightgown and realized she would have to wear more clothing now to wander around the suite—then bowed deeply. “Your Highness.”

  “No, no.” She waved a hand, not worried about whether he addressed her properly. “I meant what did you say—something about the math?”

  “Yeah. That’s a volume equation for a generic ellipsoid. Your asteroid is ellipsoid in shape, but look at the hilly bumps on the back side there and all those craters gouged into the surface. If you’re using ships to move that thing around in space—are you?—then your engineer should have been more precise. Unless… You’re not the engineer, are you, Your Highness? I didn’t presume to, uhm. Never mind.” Tristan pointed toward her refrigerator. “Do I eat here? Or is there a cafeteria for…” He waved vaguely at himself, as if he hadn’t yet accepted that he was a bodyguard—or a servant, essentially.

  “I’m not the engineer. This was just sent to me for a final look before it goes to the terraforming office on Oceanus. Yes, we’re moving the asteroid—it’s already en route. I thought something was off.”

  Nalini eyed the equations and nodded. He was right. The math presented would give her a very rough estimate, but she wagered the terraforming office would want something much more precise before they let her drop an asteroid into their sea. And she knew her team had all of the measurements down to every crater and crack on that thing. They had carefully selected it, after rejecting more than two hundred asteroids, more than six months ago.

  “I’ll send them a note.” She waved at the refrigerator and cupboards. “You’re welcome to eat whatever you can find. When we get back, we can order you groceries.”

  He grunted a thanks and poked through the kitchen.

  Nalini sipped from her tea while she composed a message and resisted stealing glances at her bodyguard. Mostly. His backside was as appealing as his frontside.

  What had her father been thinking? Giving her a bodyguard who could be a model for one of those rugged outdoorsmen channels when she was about to be betrothed to another man? While it was true that she wasn’t known for jumping into bed with every attractive visitor to the palace, she was a normal woman with normal urges.

  And the fact that he had volume equations for ellipsoids memorized intrigued her.

  Did Kingdom knights truly get that much education when it came to mathematics? They were known for their fighting prowess more than anything else, at least outside of the Kingdom. She wouldn’t have guessed that academics played much of a role in their training.

  A beep sounded as her team leader responded to her message, promising to get the engineers on the problem and have better numbers for her by the end of the day. She switched her holographic display from the asteroid to the current market analyses and updates from around the system.

  While the commodities tickers scrolled data, Nalini watched Tristan crack six eggs, a random collection of green vegetables, and two scoops of collagen powder into her blender. He found a jar of pickled beets and tossed some of those in, cranking up the power to pulverize the dubious food choices into a sludgy, dark-purple liquid. While it blended, he peered into an upper cabinet and found her stash of chocolate lava cupcakes. He pulled one out and unwrapped it.

  “If you throw that in the blender, I’m going to vomit,” Nalini announced.

  He looked back and seemed surprised to find her watching him. As if any woman would pay attention to the financial news when she had someone like him in her kitchen.

  “Nope.” He grinned, winked, and took a large bite of the cupcake.

  The grin disarmed her, since it was the first time she’d seen anything resembling a smile from him. She decided she liked it and again wondered what her father had been thinking.

  Tristan turned off the appliance and looked at her glass collection, but he dismissed the offerings and drank straight from the blender container. Nalini should have chastised him for not using a glass, but she was too busy wondering how someone could drink that concoction and eat a cupcake at the same time.

  When he set the blender down, half of the thick “juice” consumed, he must have read her question in her face. “I grew up eating a lot of junk food because it was chea—readily available where I lived. When I met the knight who agreed to take me on as a squire—I was fourteen then—he told me that it was important that we eat the healthiest of foods, so that it would be easier to train and condition ourselves to be in the best possible shape. I thought his healthy foods were disgusting. After two weeks, he caught me binging on those deep-fried caramel corn snacks that are popular on Odin. After he expressed his disapproval and made me run to the top of a mountain and back, we came to a compromise I could live with.”

  He drank the rest of the purple concoction while Nalini waited curiously for the conclusion of the story.

  “The ninety-ten rule.” Tristan took the empty container to the dishwasher and set it on the tray to be sucked into the unit. “I eat ninety percent healthy food that my mentor would have approved of and ten percent whatever I want.”

  He picked up th
e second half of the cupcake and popped it into his mouth. His eyes rolled back into his head at apparent approval of the taste. They were good. Nalini only bought the best sweets.

  “Would have approved of?” she asked, catching the tense.

  Tristan’s expression grew somber, more like it had been the day before. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He tilted his head curiously.

  Was that not a familiar expression in the Kingdom? Or had he not believed that she was someone who would express condolences? She reluctantly admitted that she had been brusque with him the night before. She was disgruntled more with the new life being thrust upon her than anything he’d done.

  “Thanks.” Tristan pointed his thumb toward the exit. “I’ll clean up and pack. We’re leaving for this trip later today, right?”

  “Yes. It’ll take about a week of travel each way and a few days on Oceanus for me to oversee the drop-off of the asteroid and the start of the development project.” As she imagined being alone on her star yacht with Tristan, a weird flutter of anticipation teased her gut. She reminded herself that she was a professional and not a hormone-driven teenager anymore, so she could keep her hands to herself—especially since she hadn’t caught her bodyguard ogling her at any point. Still… she couldn’t help but wonder if she was flirting with danger by going off alone with this man for two weeks.

  No, it would be fine. And she wouldn’t truly be alone. Her pilot, Jenna, was scheduled to fly the yacht, and Devi would also be there. If anyone was a suitable chaperone, it was Devi, who would be busy drilling bodyguard protocol into Tristan’s head.

  The trip would be fine. Nothing would happen.

  After Tristan left, a soft beep chimed, and her father’s face appeared over the table.

  “Yes, Father?” she answered his comm.

  “Ah, good. I caught you.”

  “We won’t leave for several hours. I still have to pack, and Devi needs to gather supplies for the journey.”

  “Of course, my daughter. I simply wished to tell you not to dawdle. You need to be back in three weeks. No later.”

  “Back for what?”

  “The Frost Ball. You’ll need to attend this year.”

  Nalini gripped the edge of the table, not bothering to hide her grimace. Her father knew she hated the palace balls. Unlike her sisters and brothers, she had no interest in dressing up, dancing, or socializing with the hundreds of men and women who visited from the other Miners’ Union dynasties.

  “Prince Jorg is coming all the way from System Lion to attend,” her father added. “King Jager and I have agreed that the two of you will formally announce your betrothal there.”

  “Oh,” she mouthed.

  “It’ll be fun. Don’t worry. We have lots of festivities planned. And I’ll send along an allowance so you can shop for new shoes while you’re on Oceanus.”

  Nalini rubbed the back of her neck. She hadn’t needed her father’s money since she’d been fourteen and purchased her first set of buy-and-hold properties, but he liked to give her these gifts. When she’d been ten, nothing had delighted her more than a new pair of shoes, and she did still like to shop for the latest fashions, but she doubted a pair of jewel-bedecked Lin Marteens would help with the panic welling in her belly.

  “Promise me you’ll be back in time,” her father said. “I know you like to arrange to be off on business trips for the main social events in the palace, but this time, you can’t. Your marriage, and the alliance it will give us, is very important.”

  But it was so soon. The ball was only three weeks away, and when would her father and the king want the wedding date to be? How much of her freedom did she have left?

  “I understand,” she said numbly. “I’ll be here.”

  * * *

  Tristan hadn’t unpacked much the day before, so it didn’t take him long to prepare his meager belongings. He gazed down at his pertundo lying on the bed. The trademark knight’s weapon looked like a halberd with a telescoping shaft that let it retract to hang on one’s belt, and its technologically advanced blade could cut into the finest suit of combat armor. He’d brought it along because he was an expert at using it, but the pertundo was a very distinct weapon. Should he carry it openly on the station and around the system?

  According to his cover story, he’d been kicked out of the knighthood for fraud. If that were true, he wouldn’t have been allowed to keep the unique weapon. Unless he’d stolen it. He grimaced at the dishonorable notion, even if it was a fake dishonorable notion.

  It wasn’t uncommon for knights to be sent on spy missions, but how did his colleagues balance their sense of personal honor with the need to deceive to succeed at such a mission? So far, he’d said little of himself to anyone, letting the sultan’s agents ferret out his cover story from the fake news articles Royal Intelligence had posted. It bothered him that nobody he’d interacted with had thought him too honorable a man to have partaken in such a scheme, even though someone figuring him out would mean he had failed.

  “I wish you were still alive, Sebastian,” Tristan murmured, his chin on his chest. “For advice. For friendship. For many reasons.”

  The thud of a footstep sounded in the foyer, and he spun to face the open door as the android Devi appeared.

  “Bodyguard,” she said, managing an impressive level of disdain as she looked him up and down. “I have placed Princess Nalini’s trunks by the door for you to carry to Shuttle Bay One, where her star yacht is docked and being prepared for departure.”

  “That’s fine.” Curious how many trunks he would have to carry—in the stories of old, princesses and queens always traveled with entire baggage caravans—Tristan peered around the android. A reasonable two suitcases rested against the wall near the door. They were made from a sturdy lime-green material covered in silver tiger stripes. He wouldn’t proudly carry those over his shoulder, but at least they weren’t pink and a threat to his masculinity.

  “Of course it’s fine. Don’t give me lip, bodyguard. You’re number two around here.”

  “Number two?”

  “Yes.” Devi spoke slowly and pointed at her chest. “Number one.” Then she pointed at his chest. “Number two. If it were possible, I would assign you a far more advanced number.”

  “Because you think I’m advanced?” Tristan smiled faintly, not surprised when the android disagreed.

  “Certainly not. You are dull, aren’t you?”

  “Terribly so, yes.”

  “Perhaps Nalini wishes that. She has me for the brains. You must be here for the brawn. Though I assure you that my synthetic polymer frame and precision mechanical musculature make me physically superior to a human.”

  “Of that I’m certain. You must be an exceptional individual for the princess to have chosen you.”

  “Clearly. This is for you.” Devi held out a thick brown book that had spent a lot of years in a lot of people’s hands.

  Tristan grimaced. Unless it was delightfully empty inside, or perhaps filled with geometry problems, it looked like the kind of thing that would take him weeks and multiple headaches to read.

  “I don’t need a book, thank you,” he tried, hoping that would work.

  It did not.

  “It’s the Stella Force Bodyguard Handbook, which the palace has adopted as doctrine. I have been instructed to train you in proper protocols, since I am programmed as a bodyguard myself, but my time is far too valuable for lectures, especially for remedial students.”

  “I see.”

  Tristan stared bleakly at the book. Even though the android was over-the-top and he didn’t find her insults as offensive as he would have from a human, they did uncomfortably remind him of all the teachers who’d thought him slow because of his reading difficulties. He had been remedial.

  “You will read the book—” Devi stepped inside and thrust it into his hands, “—by tomorrow morning, and I will quiz you on the contents.”

 
“Tomorrow?” Tristan flipped open the book, thinking it might be filled with pictures and diagrams, but no. Pages and pages of dense text in closely packed lines taunted him. More than three hundred pages. What bodyguard duties could possibly need such in-depth explanation? “I can’t read this by tomorrow.”

  “There is little to do once the yacht flies out of the bay, especially since you are not the pilot. You will have several hours available tonight for reading. I have observed Nalini reading and know this would be plenty of time for her to finish such a text.”

  “Maybe so, but I think she’s smarter than me.”

  No, he didn’t think it. He knew it. He’d had to research the family for his mission, but he’d also been curious why King Jager had chosen Nalini for his oldest of only two sons, so he’d dug a little deeper on her.

  She was only twenty-five—a year older than he—but she had been making real-estate deals around System Stymphalia and System Hind for more than ten years, first in her family’s name and then in her name. And judging by the depth and scope of the various deals, she was versatile and good at her job. People from distant corporations paid her huge consulting fees for a few hours of her time.

  “I have no doubt about that,” Devi said, “but there is no reason why you can’t read that text in a few hours. You will be quizzed tomorrow. I will not abide laziness, even from a number two.”

  “A number what?” Nalini poked her head into the room.

  “Nothing.” Tristan bowed to hide his worry that she’d heard him confess that his reading was poorer than average.

  How long had she been out there? He’d been paying attention to the android instead of listening for her footfalls.

  “Your bodyguard is number two, until I can come up with a schema that makes it logical to assign him a number even more distant from one,” Devi explained. “I am number one.”

  “Ah.” Nalini’s smile might have been amused or indulgent.

  “He admits to being dull and lazy,” Devi added.

  “I do not.” Tristan frowned, finding the android’s insults more threatening now that there was a witness to them. It probably didn’t matter, insofar as his assignment went, but he didn’t want Nalini to believe he was either of those things. But if he protested too vehemently, would she believe it true? Maybe a self-deprecating joke would be better. “Not aloud, anyway. I keep thoughts about my dullness to myself.”