Innkeeper Chronicles 3.5: Sweep of the Blade Read online

  facts. Perhaps Tellis is indulged.”

  “Three thousand hours?” Arland asked.

  “Stranger things have happened.”

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  “There maybe a way to obtain a confirmation,” Maud said. “I would

  need an untraceable uplink that could reach beyond this system.”

  Arland walked over to Soren’s desk and placed his palm on its surface. A

  red light rolled over the desk. The screen blinked, and the blood red

  symbol of House Krahr appeared on it. Maud blinked. Arland had just

  taken over the entire communication node. The power of marshal on

  display.

  Arland recited a long string of numbers. The screen went black and

  winked back into existence, a neutral grey.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Bounced the signal off the Lees cruiser,” he said. “They encrypt their

  communication origins, so they can’t be traced. I’m hitching a ride on

  their encryption system. If the call’s recipient tries to trace it, the signal

  will look like it’s bouncing around from random spots in the Galaxy.”

  Wow. “Impressive.”

  Arland shrugged. “The Nuan Cee spies on us every chance he gets. I’m

  simply balancing the scales.”

  She was suddenly acutely aware of the data sphere hidden in the inner

  pocket of her robe.

  “Whom would you like to call, my lady?” Arland asked.

  “Someone from my other life.” Maud walked over and sat on the other

  of two couches, away from Helen. “It might be best if you stay silent and

  remain off screen.”

  Soren grimaced, but stayed by his desk. Arland swiped the desk, turning

  the screen toward her. A second screen appeared in the wall, showing a

  duplicate image, a one-way feed. They would be able to see what she

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  saw but they would be invisible to the other person. Which was just as

  well. The last thing she wanted was to introduce everyone to each other.

  “I need two names of cargo ships,” she said. “One from your House and

  one from Serak.”

  The names popped into her personal unit.

  Maud pulled up a long sequence. Not a call she thought she would ever

  make.

  From where she sat, she had an excellent view of both vampires and the

  screen. This would suck.

  The screen remained blank.

  She waited.

  A long minute passed.

  The screen flared into life. A bridge of a spaceship came into view. A

  large vampire sprawled in the captain seat, older than Arland by about a

  decade and a half, long dark hair spilling over his back and shoulders onto

  jet black armor without a crest. A ragged scar chewed up the left side of

  his face, taking the eye with it. The empty orbit made a perfect home for

  the bionic targeting module. From this distance, it looked like an eye of

  silver, filled with glowing dust. From up close, it looked even worse.

  The vampire leered at her. A familiar shiver of alarm gripped her.

  Renouard hadn’t changed one bit.

  “The Sariv,” he said. If wolves could talk in the dark forests, they would

  sound like him. “Karhari’s gentle flower. So you managed to get out

  after all.”

  Arland narrowed his eyes.

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  “No thanks to you.”

  “I made you an offer.”

  Yeah, there wasn’t a mother alive who would have taken him up on it.

  “You told me my daughter would fetch a good price on the slave market.”

  “I was joking. Mostly. I heard you bagged yourself a pretty boy marshal.”

  The pretty boy marshal went from annoyed to furious in an instant.

  “The word is, you haven’t managed to seal the deal yet.” Renouard

  leaned forward. “Does he not do it for you? I could give him some

  lessons.”

  Arland’s face went stone-hard.

  “I see the scar on your groin wants a twin,” she told him.

  He bared his teeth and laughed.

  “I have a job,” she said.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I need cargo retrieved from two ships. They’ll be passing through the

  quadrant at following coordinates.” She tagged the section of the

  quadrant near Serak system and sent it to him. “Not a large volume, two

  crates off the first vessel, one off the second, less than three cubic meters

  in volume and roughly one hundred and twenty kilos of mass.”

  “Who is hauling this precious cargo?”

  “Silver Talon.”

  Renouard checked his screen. “House Krahr. So rumors are

  right. You’re playing the marshal. I always knew you had it in you.” He

  winked to make sure she got it.

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  Ugh. “Can this be done or not?”

  “It can be done,” he said. “For the right price. I won’t do it, but I’ll act as

  an intermediary. What’s in the crates?”

  “That’s not important.”

  He smiled. “Second vessel?”

  “Valiant Charger.”

  “No.”

  He hadn’t even bothered to check the screen this time.

  “It’s a barge,” she said. “You can do it with your eyes closed.”

  “I told you, that’s not my territory and my contact won’t go after that

  ship.”

  “Get someone else.”

  “There is nobody else. That playing field is a monopoly.”

  “The deal’s off,” she said. “I’ll find someone else.”

  She flicked the screen blank, severing the connection and looked at

  Arland and Soren.

  “House Serak is pirating that quadrant,” Arland said.

  “And Kozor is in on it,” his uncle added.

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  Chapter 9 Part 2

  May 29, 2018 by Ilona

  Maud opened her eyes and turned to check on Helen.

  Her daughter’s bed was empty.

  Panic stabbed her. She bolted upright and saw the open door to the

  balcony. Sunlight sifted through the pale gauzy curtains, painting bright

  rectangles on the floor. As they parted, coaxed by the breeze, Maud

  glimpsed a small figure sitting on the stone rail.

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  Maud picked up a robe off the chair, pulled it on, and walked onto the

  balcony. It stretched along the entirety of her quarters, thirty feet at the

  widest part. A man-made stream curved along the perimeter of the

  balcony, crossing it twice, only a foot wide. On the right, a fountain

  protruded from the wall, shaped like a flower stalk with five delicate

  blossoms that reminded her of bell flowers. Both the stream and the

  fountain had run dry. A couple of benches had been set up, inviting a

  quiet conversation. The balcony begged for plants. It seemed almost

  barren without them.

  Maud crossed the parched stream and leaned on the stone wall of the

  balcony next to Helen. The ground yawned at her, far below, hidden by

  the breezeways, towers, and finally, far below, trees. A normal mother

  would’ve pulled her daughter off the rail, but then there was nothing

  normal about either of them.

  Helen had found a stick somewhere and was poking the stone wall with

  it. Something was bothering her. Maud waited. When she was little,

  she used to sit just like that. Eventually Mom would find her. Mom

  never
pried. She just waited nearby, until Maud’s problems finally

  poured out of her.

  For a while, Maud just stood there, taking a mental catalogue of the

  aches and pains tugging at her. Her ribcage hurt. It was to be

  expected. She should’ve spent yesterday in bed, not hiking up a

  mountain and dodging vampire knights who tried to throw her off the

  path. The booster had taxed her body further and exacted its price. She

  slept like a rock for well over twelve hours. The sun was well on the way

  to the zenith. Soon it would be lunch time.

  She had to have missed breakfast. There were probably message on her

  personal unit. She would check them, but not yet.

  The breeze stirred her robe. Maud straightened her shoulders, feeling

  the luxurious softness of the spider-web thin fabric draped over her skin.

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  Seeing Renouard last night dredged up the familiar paranoia. It had

  hummed through her like a low-level ache, a wound that bled just

  enough to make sure you couldn’t ignore it. After the conversation with

  Soren, Maud had picked up Helen off the couch and carried her to their

  room. Feeling Helen’s weight draped across her chest and shoulder and

  the familiar scent of her hair soothed her. Helen was safe. They were

  both safe. Arland seemed to sense that she needed it and he hadn’t

  offered to take Helen from her. Instead they walked in comfortable

  silence to her room.

  Once at her door, Maud had stepped inside and carefully put Helen on

  her bed. She’s put Helen’s daggers next to her, tucked her in, and

  straightened. She’d left the door open and Arland waited in the

  doorway.

  Maud looked at the distant mesas.

  Last night, when she had turned and saw him standing there, in the

  doorway, half hidden in shadows, tall, broad-shouldered, his armor

  swallowing the light. His hair had fallen over his face, with the line of

  chiseled jaw hard against that back drop, and when the light of the two

  moons caught his eyes, they shone with blue green. He took her breath

  away. He looked like a warrior from some Anocracy pseudo-historical

  drama, some wandering knight who somehow found his way out of a

  legend and into her room, except he was real, flesh and blood, and when

  she looked into his eyes, she saw heat simmering just under the surface.

  She had forgotten what it felt like when a man looked at her like

  that. She wasn’t sure even Melizard had, although he must have. Every

  nerve in her body came to attention. Her breath caught. All she wanted

  to do, all she could think of in that moment, was closing the distance,

  reaching up, and kissing him. She wanted to taste him. She wanted to

  drop her armor, to see him abandon his, and to touch him, body to body,

  skin to skin. Even now, as she remembered it, her heartbeat sped up.

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  Helen had fallen asleep. Arland’s quarters were only a short hallway

  away.

  One step. One word. That was all it would’ve taken. A tiny, minute sign,

  a faintest expression of desire.

  She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. Instead she stood there like a

  statue, as if she had been frozen. He told her good night and she just

  nodded.

  He left.

  The door slid shut.

  She let him go. She let him slip away and then she had stripped off her

  armor, pissed off, and climbed into bed. The booster kept her up for

  another half hour and she lay on the covers, mad at herself, trying to

  figure out what happened and failing.

  She’d never had problems with intimacy. Melizard wasn’t her first, and

  whatever problems they had in their marriage, sex wasn’t one of them.

  Bodies spoke their own language, in love and in war, a language she

  innately understood. A blind woman could’ve read Arland last night, and

  if Maud told herself she didn’t know what she wanted, she would be

  lying.

  What’s wrong with me?

  “Am I a mongrel?”

  Helen’s question caught her off guard, Maud blinked, trying to switch

  mental gears.

  “It’s fine if I am,” Helen said. “I just want to know.”

  “Did someone call you that?”

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  Helen didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  “Did they use that word?”

  “They called me erhissa.”

  Maud’s hands curled on the stone wall. Helen must’ve plugged the word

  into her personal unit, and the translation software spat out the closest

  equivalent: mongrel. They called her that, those assholes. In that

  moment, she could’ve hurt whoever said it and she didn’t particularly

  care if it was adult or a child.

  Maud gripped her anger with her will and bent it, until she was sure her

  voice would sound calm and measured. She had to explain. Hiding the

  truth wouldn’t serve either of them well.

  “Touch this.” She held the sleeve of her robe. Helen brushed her fingers

  over the smooth material.

  “The vampires breed special creatures, a type of strange-looking

  snake. The snakes secrete long threads and spin their nests from

  them. The vampires collect these nests and make them into

  fabric. There are two main types, kahissa, which makes very thin fabric

  like this one, and ohissa, which makes stronger fabric. Both are

  useful. Sometimes kahissa and ohissa breed and they make a third kind

  of snake, erhissa. Erhissa doesn’t make nests. It’s poisonous and it

  bites.”

  Helen flinched.

  “To vampires erhissa has no purpose,” Maud said. “But erhissa knows

  the world doesn’t revolve around vampires. It doesn’t care what

  vampires think. It just keeps doing its own thing.”

  “So, I am a mongrel.”

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  “On Earth, that’s a word people use when they don’t know what breed a

  dog is. You know who you are. You are Helen.”

  Helen looked down and dragged her stick across the stone, her jaw set.

  “Each of us is more than just a human or a just vampire. There is only

  one you. Some people realize that, and others refuse to see it. Doesn’t

  matter if they are human or vampire.”

  “Why?”

  Maud sighed. “Because some people have rigid minds. They like

  everything to be clearly labeled. They have a box for everyone they meet.

  A box for vampires, a box for lees, a box for humans. When someone

  doesn’t fit into their boxes, they panic.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t exactly know, my flower. I think it’s because they lack

  confidence. They think they figured out the rules of their world and when

  something falls outside those rules, it scares them.”

  “So, I’m scary?”

  “To those people? Yes. If the rules they made up don’t apply anymore,

  they don’t know how to act, and it makes them feel like their survival is

  in doubt. Instead of adapting to new situation and coming up with a new

  set of rules, some of them will fight to the death trying to keep the world

  the way it was. Do you remember when we lived in Fort Kur? What was

  written above the door?”

  “Adapt or die,” Helen said.
r />   “It’s impossible to stop change,” Maud said. “It’s the nature of life. Those

  who refuse to adjust to change will eventually die out. But before they

  do, they will get nasty. They might even hate you.”

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  Helen looked up. Her eyes flashed. “I’ll hate them back!”

  “Hate is a very powerful tool. Don’t waste it. Some of the people you’ll

  meet will be mean to you not because of what you are but because of

  who you are. If they were honest with themselves, they would admit that

  they don’t like you because something about you makes them feel

  inferior. They might think you’re a better fighter, or you’re smarter or

  prettier, or you’re taking up attention they think should be going to

  them. Those people are truly dangerous. If they get a chance, they will

  hurt you and those you love. Save your hate for those people. Never hurt

  them first, but if they hurt you or your friends, you must hurt them back

  harder. Do you understand?”

  Helen nodded.

  “Do you want to go back to Aunt Dina’s inn?”

  Helen’s shoulders sagged. “Sometimes.”

  Maud stepped close to her daughter and hugged her. “We can go any

  time. We don’t have to stay here.”

  “But sometimes I like it here,” Helen said into her shoulder. “I like

  Ymanie. Aunt Dina’s inn doesn’t have Ymanie.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  If they went back to Dina’s Inn, Helen would have to be homeschooled.

  Even if she could alter her daughter’s outlook on life, there was no way

  to disguise the fangs, or her strength, or the way her eyes caught the

  light at night. Growing up at the inn was interesting and fun, but it had

  its lonely moments. All three of them, Klaus, Maud, and Dina, had dealt

  with it in their own ways. Klaus left the inn every chance he got. He and

  Michael, his best friend and another innkeeper’s son, went on

  excursions, to Bahachar, to Kio-kio, and every place they could possibly

  reach from either of the inns. Maud had burrowed into books. And Dina

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  went through phases when she tried to pretend to be just a human and

  attempt to go to public school to find friends. Friendships built on lies

  never lasted.