'I made no bargain,' King Frane said, his eyes glinting dangerously.
'But you did,' Qui-Gon said steadily.
'Well, perhaps I did, but I am breaking it,' King Frane said, watching Qui-Gon warily.
'Yaana stays in custody until Leed agrees to begin royal training.'
'So that is how you'll force me!' Leed cried. 'You'll hold an innocent girl hostage! You are no better than a bully!'
King Frane's expression instantly changed to rage. 'Yes, I will do this,' he bellowed furiously. 'Have you not been listening, you fool? I am king! I can do what I want. I know what is best for Rutan!'
King Frane stalked off, followed by his cluster of advisors and guards. Leed gazed after him, a look of disgust on his face.
'You see why I did not want to return?' he said. 'He has found a way to keep me here against my will.'
'So it appears,' Qui-Gon said neutrally. 'What do you mean?' Drenna asked.
'If we return Yaana to her father, King Frane has nothing to bargain with. He will have to face Leed as father to son, not king to subject.'
'But she's in prison,' Drenna objected.
'That is the difficulty,' Qui-Gon agreed.
'Not necessarily,' Leed said slowly. 'I think I know how to break her out.'
Chapter 13
'I'll explain on the way,' Leed said. 'I know where Yaana is being held. Can we take your transport?'
Qui-Gon nodded. 'Let's go.'
'Are you sure we should be doing this?' Obi-Wan murmured to Qui-Gon as Leed and Drenna hurried ahead. 'We're not supposed to break the laws of a planet.'
'Well, we're with the prince,' Qui-Gon observed. 'Officially, he's now in royal training. We have his permission.'
'But if we help Leed, we'll be taking sides,' Obi-Wan pointed out.
'No, we're rescuing a hostage,' Qui-Gon corrected. 'King Frane has no right to hold Yaana in prison. She's only ten years old.'
Obi-Wan fell silent. There were times when he had to struggle with Qui-Gon's decisions. His caution would lead him to choose a different way. But it was at such times that he was learning to let go and trust his Master. He knew that it was unjust to hold the girl.
'Don't worry, Padawan,' Qui-Gon told him. 'I am beginning to see how this situation can be resolved.' He smiled. 'We just have to break someone out of prison first.'
'That's all?' Obi-Wan said. He returned Qui-Gon's smile. Whenever they got out of rhythm, Qui-Gon managed to get them together again, either with a small joke or a gentle correction.
Obi-Wan jumped into the pilot seat of the starship. On Leed's direction, he punched in the coordinates for the landing platform on the outskirts of the city, close to the prison.
'So tell us why you think you have a way to rescue Yaana,' Qui-Gon said to Leed as soon as they were under way.
'It was last summer on my visit,' Leed began. 'I was already trying to tell my father that I preferred Senali to Rutan. Of course he wouldn't listen. There was a grand hunt that day, and I refused to participate. So he threw me in prison.'
Qui-Gon looked at him, startled. Drenna gasped.
Leed gave a faint smile. 'Just for a day. He said it was for my royal training. So that I would know how Rutan treated its prisoners. It wasn't too bad. Of course everyone knew who I was, so I was given the best cell and no one mistreated me. But an interesting thing happened while I was there. A bird got into the exhaust system and began to fly around the place. It kept tripping the sensors. The guards could not seem to catch it or shoot it, and the sensors kept alerting the main system that a massive prison breakout was in progress. It took them awhile to figure out it was the bird — at first they thought the system had been triggered by a prisoner. But every time they checked out a sensor and did a cell check, everything was fine. The problem was that the system calls for an automatic notification to the king's guard when there is trouble at the prison. My father kept getting notification that a major breakout was going on, and then was told that it was nothing. The hunt was disrupted, and he was furious. They finally had to confess a bird was tripping it. He told the prison to turn off the system and catch the bird, or he'd fire every single one of them.'
Drenna laughed. 'I like the idea of one tiny creature causing all that trouble.'
Leed grinned at her. 'I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it myself. They turned off the system until they caught the bird. Everyone forgot about me — I was in the warden's office, since they were about to release me. That's when I noticed something. When the guards change shifts, they remove their weapons belts if they are leaving and the guards on the new shift buckle on their own weapons belts. They do this in the weapons supply room, which is kept locked. When they shut the system down, the weapons supply room goes into automatic lockdown. That's in case there's a real breakout. They don't want the prisoners to get access to weapons.'
Qui-Gon had already reached Leed's conclusion. 'So if the system was shut down during a changeover, there would only be a reduced guard staff on duty with no access to additional weapons.'
'Three guards per block, to be exact,' Leed said, nodding. 'It's a flaw in the system. I tried to tell my father upon my return, but… well, let's just say he wasn't in the mood to listen.'
'I don't understand,' Drenna said. 'How can we get a bird to invade the system?'
