Page 88 of Star Champion

“I have the feeling this is the start of a beautiful friendship,” Nico said as Migel Arran walked away in the false Barésh sunshine.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Jemm. It’s time you worked up some confidence in me. Have I steered you wrong yet?”

He hadn’t. She owed so much of what had happened to Nico. And now, she hoped, he could find as much happiness in his life as she had found in hers. The love lighting up his face when he was around his daughter was what she remembered seeing when he used to be around Kish. Maybe now that he had broken down the barrier keeping him from growing close to his little girl, he would not be so closed off to new possibilities, like the pretty Earth doctor, CJ, the only one to catch his normally disinterested eye.

Nico’s transformation was not the only one Jemm had observed. Uncle Yul had taken to walking along the forest paths, always holding his walking stick clasped in both hands, his knuckles pressed to the fabric of his cloak at the small of his back. He now came around a bend in the trail, slowing as he spied Jemm’s mother sitting on the bench as usual, her pensive gaze fixed on some infinite point beyond the horizon.

He stopped a few paces away and also contemplated the sea of trees. “We’re waiting for ghosts who will never return.”

A beat of silence. “I suppose we are.” Then she tilted her lovely face to look up at him.

“Good day, Mrs. Aves.”

“Good day to you, Prince Yul.”

“Please. Call me Yul.”

“I’m Marin.”

He gestured with the walking stick at the bench. “May I, Marin?”

“Aye. Of course.”

As he sat, he snagged his cloak on one of the bench’s posts.

“Oh dear.” She withdrew a pouch from the folds of her coat. Filtered sunlight warmed the red highlights in her hair. “Give me your cloak so I can mend it.”

“That’s servants’ work,” he said, but did as she asked anyway.

“No, it ain’t. Why let a stranger do for ya what a friend will do? Go on. Give it here.”

As she sewed the tear in his cloak he sat rigidly, looking somewhat shy. “A friend,” he said, appearing to enjoy the sight of her bent to the task of doing him a kindness, and with such focus and care.

“Aye. Friends, we are.”

Yul aimed his smiling face into a shaft of warm sunshine, and his hard, lean frame seemed to melt like a cake of marl-butter left in the sun.

Grinning, Jemm wrapped a towel around her shoulders and left the garden area to allow the pair some privacy.

As everyone close to the sport of bajha had predicted all along, Team Eireya would face the B’kah clan’s Team Sienna in the finals. The tension and anticipation was palpable in the locker room on the desert world Sienna, the B’kah homeworld. Klark would have enjoyed the glory of seeing the Galactic Cup Games hosted on Eireya instead, but they had lost the all-important card toss.

Jemma was to face Reeglan A’nnar B’Kah, who was also undefeated. While the media cheered her advancement to this point, most seemed to agree she would finally meet her match in the ring. Some already praised her for taking second place in the league, and what a wonderful accomplishment that was, for a female. Opinions were that she would be eliminated, and maybe even quickly. To Klark, it seemed premature.

Klark took a moment with her before she left to confer with the coaches and finally enter the ring, where he could follow only in his mind. As always, he hunted for flaws in her bajha suit, checking the seams, her boots, her gloves. Her hair was longer now, curling in reddish-gold waves around her neck and jaw.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Beautiful.”

Her tight expression melted with a laugh. “If only that was an advantage in the ring.”

A security officer approached them with a porta-note card in his hand. “Miss Aves, there’s a message for you from the king.”

“Hmm, why would my father message you in this manner?”

“Not your father, Your Highness.” The security officer sounded a bit awestruck. “The King of Kings. His Majesty Romlijhian B’kah.”

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