The Royal Runaway Page 3

question her, instead keeping to their own business.

  The princess held her head high and assumed an air of confidence and authority as she strode along the marbled foyer and headed toward the kitchens. As she walked down the corridor, the smell of first-meal being prepared preceded her arrival at the kitchens. The tempting aroma of freshly baked bread and creamed julak eggs made the young princess suddenly feel quite hungry. But she couldn’t stop. The last thing she wanted was to run into tempestuous head cook Malaca, who’d probably stop her in her tracks and march her back up to her chamber.

  As Eladria passed the kitchens, she peered through each door, and was relieved that all the kitchen staff, including Malaca herself, were too busy to notice the girl and her grudik as they slipped past and carried on down the corridor. With a measure of relief, she came to her intended destination, a small service elevator at the end of the corridor. She pressed the button and the door promptly opened. Stepping inside, the girl reached up to the console and selected ground level. At that moment someone stepped out of the kitchens—a young male kitchen assistant—and caught sight of her in the elevator. Their eyes briefly locked and Eladria felt a surge of alarm. But with an enormous sense of relief, the door shut and the elevator activated with a rattling hum. He wouldn’t tell anyone, surely?

  Eladria paced anxiously as the service elevator descended. It was used by the kitchen staff and led down to the vegetable garden and fruit orchard, occupying the south quadrant of the palace gardens. Just a little to the left of the orchard, Eladria knew of a gap in the security field. By climbing over the wall she ought to be able to sneak out of the palace undetected—as she’d already done on more than one occasion.

  The elevator came to a stop, depositing her on the edge of the garden complex. She exited and hurried down the stone path, which was lined on either side by rows of growing vegetables, overlooked by a series of triangular greenhouses. It was still dark; the garden path lit by a series of pale red lamps. As the moon had no atmosphere, the skyless heavens were forever cloaked in blackness and dotted with twinkling stars. Beyond the glass biodome, the planet was visible as an enormous marbled sphere of blue and green, glazed with swirling patches of cloud. The first hint of sunlight was visible beyond the curved contour of the planet, which meant dawn was approaching.

  Eladria passed through the gate separating the vegetable plots from the orchard. She hurried across the lawns, the grass glistening with drops of water from the sprinklers. She made her way past the fruit trees and down a flight of steps into the main garden complex. She’d played in these gardens all her life and knew them inside out. Sure enough, as she passed through a thick grove of lacast trees and struggled through a particularly dense jola bush, she came to the granite wall enclosing the palace grounds. A series of pylons encircled the exterior rim of the great wall, creating an invisible security field preventing anyone from entering—or indeed leaving—the palace. But Eladria had learned that unbeknownst to palace security, there was a slight gap in the field at this location.

  She tugged on the leash as Tanos stopped to smell the roots of a tree. She stepped toward the wall and was relieved to see that her escape apparatus was still there, carefully concealed amid the undergrowth. Several months ago she’d surreptitiously taken some old wooden crates from the refuse unit and stacked them one upon the other, using them as steps to scale the wall, enabling her to jump over to the other side. She’d marked the exact spot of the gap in the security field with a piece of chalk on the wall. It was a friend from school that had tipped her off about the gap, ironically the son of one of the city’s senior security officials. She didn’t know how he knew about it, but she quickly learned to ensure that she stacked the crates in exactly the right place. If she missed the gap and came into contact with the security field, she was rewarded with a painful jolt of electricity.

  Satisfied that the crates were stable, she reached down and scooped up Tanos, holding him with one hand and using the other to steady herself as she climbed up the boxes. She came to the top of the wall and looked down. The boxes she’d placed on the other side were still there. She descended them like steps, relieved that she’d managed to slip through the barrier without hurting herself.

  When she reached the ground, she put Tanos down and looked around. She was back in the grounds of an old disused security station. Her footsteps echoing as they struck the concrete, she strode past the rectangular grey building, which seemed somewhat eerie in the darkened quietude of the early morning.

  She crawled beneath the front gate and into the adjacent street. It was a residential area with detached three-leveled buildings of sleek, polished granite, surrounded by curving marble walls, with trees and small gardens illuminated by the turquoise street lamps. The muted glow of the first rays of morning light struck the slanted rooftops as the sun continued its gradual emergence from the far side of the planet.

  As Tanos stopped to relieve himself against a concrete wall, the princess mentally oriented herself. From here she’d have to make her way to the center of the royal city and get to the transport station. The city was still asleep, but that would soon change. By midday, everything would be in full swing and amid the noise and bustle she would hopefully be able to move about unnoticed.

  She began walking down the empty street in the direction of the central plaza. The city skyline loomed in the distance: buildings of all shapes and sizes, from the monolithic commerce towers to the glistening pyramid-shaped military installation and the half-domed ordinance capital, illumined by spotlights and lit from within by dots of light piercing the darkness like a million little stars.

  As she marched onwards, she was fired with determination and a curious mixture of anxiety and resolve. It wouldn’t be long before her father woke up and realized she was gone. He’d stop at nothing to find her, but she had to do this. Her mother was out there somewhere and she had to find her.

  Had she been just a little older, Eladria would probably have realized the futility and recklessness of her quest and stayed put in the palace. But she was just a young girl yearning to be with her mother again; an overwhelming desire tinged by a bitter sting of grief that obscured her rationale.

  Perhaps inevitably, it wouldn’t be long before she was brought back to reality with a shuddering jolt.

  When the king went to check in on his daughter that morning he was greeted by the sight of an empty bed. Overcome by a surge of dread, he searched the rest of the royal chamber, but there was no sign of her. The moment he alerted Central Control, chaos erupted. Security was notified and the palace was placed on lockdown. Announcements were broadcast across the communication system and teams of security officers began searching every level of the palace. There was no immediate sign of the princess, although a couple of service personnel including a kitchen assistant reported seeing her on level three.

  The king was beside himself. Realizing that he could best help the search by coordinating things from the command room, he made for the elevator and was joined by Zinn, whose face was etched with worry.

  “I should have known she’d do something like this,” the king stroked his greying beard nervously he waited for the elevator. “It’s just like her, Zinn. Stubborn, willful, impulsive.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?” the maid asked.

  “No. She’s clearly devastated by the loss of her mother. I should have seen this coming. I shouldn’t have told her until we were absolutely certain...”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Central Control to oversee the search operation. We’ll strip the palace apart if need be.”

  “And if she isn’t here? It wouldn’t be the first time she’s slipped out of the palace...”

  The king’s face was set in an expression of fierce resolve. “Then we’ll search the surrounding area and comb the entire city if need be: every street, every building, every possible place she might be. I’ve already lost my wife, I can’t lose my
daughter as well.”

  Zinn nodded thoughtfully. “If I might take some time to conduct my own search, your Highness?” she asked.

  With a clank and a beep, the elevator doors rolled opened and the king stepped through them. As he turned and input the command on the console, he looked over at Zinn and nodded. “Do whatever you can, my friend,” he said. “Whatever you can...”

  It took Eladria several hours to get from the outskirts of the palace to the center of the city. She made it to the central plaza and then into the east quadrant of the city, but once there, she quickly got lost.

  As she wandered down a congested boulevard, keeping a tight hold of Tanos’s leash as he followed alongside, she looked around anxiously trying to figure out where she was and where she needed to be. This was a commercial district, bustling with people. Market stalls lined the boulevard: vendors selling everything conceivable, from food—vegetables, fruit, meat, baked goods and drinks—to clothing and jewelry, perfumes, home furnishings, ornaments and electronic gadgets. Eladria was enticed by the aromas of the marketplace and wished she had the currency to buy some food. She’d already eaten two of the torja fruits she’d taken from the palace, giving