“Nathan and Leopold?” I spluttered, resisting the urge to violently shake my brother. “Nathan and Leopold! They’re the guys you think are going to help us? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s okay, Meda. They’ve changed. I’ve met up with them quite a few times since I caught sight of them in a park near the palace just after we got to Cholar.”
“Where they’d no doot gone so’s they could case the place whilst on a day pass from a juvenile detention centre,” said Kirsty.
“Cholar doesn’t call them that,” said Leopold. “They’re guidance homes. And we were in one for a while after we got hauled to Cholar. They do good work.”
“I suppose the people at yours made you see the error of your ways and turned you from your life of crime,” I said scornfully.
“It was already losing its appeal,” said Nathan. “The Ring of Beom was the biggest thing we’d ever been involved in, with more repercussions and political fall-out than we had any idea about at the time. We did what we did because the Cholarian guy who approached us — some emissary of Drazok’s — offered us pretty good monetary incentive. But it wasn’t just that. Director Ramsweir paid us a call too, and made it sound like it was our duty to help AUP acquire Cholar by swiping the Ring of Beom. He also made it clear our father’s future with AUP depended on it. We’d had a few brushes with the law on a couple of worlds Dad’s been stationed on and AUP’s influence got us out of them. According to Ramsweir, we owed them.”
“And with your freely admitted criminal background, had no trouble accommodating his wishes.”
“Not much, no,” Leopold acknowledged. “With Dad in charge of AUP’s security team, getting the guards’ patrol schedules adjusted was easy enough. Making sure Cholar’s Hereditary Keeper of the Sacred Ring was…unwell on the target night was a little trickier, but we managed. Other people had already made sure certain security devices weren’t operating at peak efficiency, but the motion detectors and scanners programmed to pick up concentrations of body heat were more resistant to tampering and would have been hard for guys our size to get past. That’s why we recruited Simon. He wasn’t big enough to register on them, and as soon as we realized what a clever kid he was, we knew he could disable any other potentially troublesome alarms and pull off the job.”
“Clever?” I snapped. “Oh, yes. Very. But not clever enough to figure out you two were crooks.”
“Hey, we made it sound like a game,” Nathan protested. “And however high his I.Q., he’s still just a little kid. No offence, Si. There’s nothing wrong with being a little kid. Just means you didn’t have enough life experience to size us up properly.”
“Then or now,” I said, glaring down at my brother and then back at Nathan and his brother.
Leopold winced. “Meaning you don’t believe we want to help you.”
“Why should we?”
“Because, just like Ramsweir thought we owed him, we do owe Supreme Ruler Taziol. He’s been good to us. Really good. Drazok’s guy made it clear we could expect repercussions if we didn’t get the ring back from you, so after you got away from us, we lay low for a while. When things fell apart for Drazok we thought we might be all right but just after the Supreme Ruler’s coronation, we heard he had people looking for us. We’d been pretty scared before, but we were really scared then because he wasn’t just a disgruntled crooked politician looking for power. He was an absolute monarch who had a lot of power. We figured he was going to…well, we didn’t know what he was planning to do to us, so we headed for Smugglers’ Stronghold in Klavor’s Outer Regions. And that place isn’t as safe for people on the run as it’s purported to be, because it didn’t take some Ralgonian guy called Skoko very long to track us down.”
“Skoko and a Royal Guardsman took us back to Cholar, and when we were summoned before the Supreme Ruler, we thought we’d had it,” Nathan picked up. “Thought we were going to be imprisoned for life, or shot at dawn, or something. But it wasn’t like that at all. Oh, he made sure we knew what we did was wrong. Big time wrong. But he also said he was willing to make allowances because we were still young and had been lied to and intimidated. He thought spending some time with the house parents at the guidance home would help us find a better direction for our lives. He told us if we wanted to make a fresh start on Cholar afterwards, we were welcome to stay. And, well, we decided to. Cholaris has a great university and Leo and I have found better directions for our lives.”
“What are you studying?” I inquired. “Criminology?”
“Nate is.” Leopold grinned. “Figured he’d be starting with an edge. Me, I’m into archaeology. Our mom’s thrilled. We’ve been, uh, quite a worry to her these past few years.”
“And your dad? The AUP security chief who looked the other way when Simon was stealing the Ring of Beom?”
“He didn’t look the other way. He honestly thought everything was working the way it was supposed to. It was a couple of his security people who lessened the effectiveness of some of the devices. On Ramsweir’s orders. They aren’t really to blame either. Ramsweir outranked Dad.”
“Dad doesn’t work for AUP anymore,” said Nathan. “He was so steamed at the Directorate for getting us mixed up in the Horrible Cholarian Business, he quit. Went back to Earth and started up a private security firm. Mom’s pleased about that, too. She never did like all those alien world postings. Says the only reason she’ll leave Earth now is to come visit us. She and Dad are planning to do that quite soon. We were talking to them when Simon came by the hotel asking for our help, so they know all about the royal rescue and want us to help. Mom thinks you’re really plucky kids and said she’d like to meet you if you’re still on Cholar when they get there.”
“We’re going to love showing them around,” said Leopold. “I might even have my own vehicle by then. Not sure what kind. Once I’m an archaeologist, I expect to be going to places that might be hard to get to, so I want something versatile. That old Alcavian who whisked you guys away from the starport said he’d help me look for one. I took lessons at his driving school. He was really impressed with my skills and recommended me for an all-vehicle licence. Said I was a natural.”
“You see?” said Simon. “They’re not bad guys anymore.”
Kirsty was still skeptical. “If they’re now on the straight and narrow, how is it they’re still in a position to get hold of bogus passports? Other than Klavor, I canna think of any world that looks upon their manufacture with favour.”
“Including Borel,” Nathan had to admit. “And its penalties are harsher than most. Probably because so many Borelians have a talent for changing their appearance. But even strict laws don’t keep Borel from being one of the leading suppliers of fake passports. Leo and I made a quick trip here for some when we were on the run. The guy we used is considered the best in the business.”
“False identities did not keep Mr. Skoko from finding you,” Jip remarked.
“Yeah. That guy’s really thorough. And he has a suspicious nature. A very suspicious nature. We’ve run into him on Cholar a couple of times, and even though we’ve turned over a new leaf, I don’t think he trusts us much.”
“I don’t blame him,” I said. “But I can’t say he likes us much either.”
Leopold pounced on this. “Then we have something in common. Another thing we have in common is a desire to foil Drazok. Simon filled us in on his plans, and while you may still have doubts about us, you must know there’s no way we’d benefit from having Drazok in power. He’s a nasty piece of work, and sure to seek revenge on anyone who failed him last time round.”
“Aye, or won oot over him” said Kirsty, yielding a little. “I’m thinking he’s wanting revenge on Taz even more than he’s wanting control of Cholar.”
“Like you, we want to keep that from happening,” Nathan avowed. “So, come on, girls. If the Supreme Ruler could give us another chance, why can’t you? Don’t you trust his judgement? That ring of his is supposed to protect him from ne’er-do-wells.”
“It’s not infallible,” I rejoined. “It only works on Cholarians. And only if they’ve taken the Oath of Loyalty. It’s the Shield of Beom that’s supposed to offer actual protection.”
“What’s the Shield of Beom?” Leopold asked. “I take history classes but haven’t studied anything about that yet.”
I briefly explained, his interest finally allowing me to warm to him a little. I still didn’t fully trust him, or his brother, but was starting to think we didn’t really have much choice if we wanted to get off Borel. Fake passports were the best way, and we certainly didn’t know how to go about getting them. Nor did I want to be stuck on Borel for who knew how long trying to come up with an alternative solution.
Challa wasn’t keen either.
“When are we going home?” she demanded.
She and Kadi had been quiet throughout our exchange with Nathan and Leopold, but only because Arlyne hates discord, and not having been personally involved with the two boys, had taken the kids off to the side to play pat-a-cake or something. Challa appeared to have become bored with that and wanted action.
Nathan went over to her. “Pretty soon, sweetie. We just have to get you looking a bit different.”
“Different?” I queried.
“Of course. Arlyne here may have a Ploxian passport, but she doesn’t look Ploxian, and it would be better if she did. The rest of you, too. It’s a rush job, and the guy said it would be easier if you were all the same. His services include having someone give you a make-over. Borelians are really good at that.”
“So I’ve heard. Okay, okay. Do you think we could maybe get started on that bit?”
“Sure. If you’re finished arguing.”
I gave him another glare but followed when he led us all back up into the starport and put us on a ground bus with Leopold to go to their hotel.
“While you’re getting Ploxianed up, I’ll go see how the passports are coming along.”
A Borelian woman was waiting for us in the lobby and went up to the room with us to change us into Ploxians. She decided to start with Challa and Kadi, which was a mistake, because neither of them wanted any part of having their dark skin lightened, their black hair changed to purple, their upswept eyebrows shaved off (like Ralgonians, Ploxians don’t have any) and their slightly ridged foreheads covered up to look flat.
Jip’s Vorlan calming technique kept Challa from exploding in her usual fashion, but she wasn’t about to co-operate either. She went under a bed and wouldn’t come out. I dare say we could have pulled her out, but that would probably have negated Jip’s efforts to avert a tantrum. And Kadi? Well, Jip could only calm one child at a time, so he cried, squirmed, and otherwise made it impossible for the woman to do her job.
“Why not work on me first and let them watch?” Arlyne proposed.
The woman agreed but had only got as far as eliminating her eyebrows when Nathan burst into the room.
“Forget it. There isn’t time. We can’t wait for make-overs, passports, or anything else. They won’t do you any good now anyway. You’ve got to leave Borel as fast as you can, however you can.”
“What? Why?” I shrieked, scrambling up from the floor where I’d still been trying to tempt Challa out from under the bed.
“I’ve just had a message from Dad. He said, ‘Tell those kids to run. Drazok knows where they are’.”