Innkeeper Chronicles 3.5: Sweep of the Blade Read online

  “And they would flush out the Under-Marshal,” Ilemina finished. She

  rose, her arms crossed, and studied the screen. “The question is, why

  are they so fixated on the Marshal and Under-Marshal? Even if both fall,

  the House won’t be leaderless. Their numbers are still too insignificant

  to do any real damage. With two hundred knights against our

  thousands, all they can really do is to take a hostage and barricade

  themselves somewhere they thought they could defend. But even so,

  we would just pry them out. What is the end game here? What do they

  want?”

  The room fell quiet.

  Ilemina was right. It made no sense.

  “They do have a plan,” Arland said. “Everything they have done up until

  now has been thought out and calculated.”

  “Except for the incident with the lees and the Tachi,” Karat said. “What

  could they possibly accomplish by hassling the aliens?”

  Soren leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “It may have

  been a misguided attempt to embarrass us by demonstrating that we are

  unable to protect our guests. However, the burden of shame would fall

  on their Houses. They would have acted badly, and their leadership

  would appear weak because they couldn’t control their people and

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  account for their boorish behavior. Reparations and apologies would

  have to be made, and they are in no position to offer any. They have

  been reduced to pirating their quadrant for resources.”

  “They were trying to make them leave,” Maud said.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “If the lees and the Tachi felt threatened, they would evacuate,” she

  explained. “Neither delegation has the numbers to oppose a large attack

  and neither party wants to antagonize you. They want the trade station

  and access to your space. If their presence became an issue or caused

  any inconvenience, they would remove themselves from the situation

  rather than risk aggravating you. They would wait the wedding out and

  resume negotiations after the other guests left.”

  Otubar leaned forward. “The ends justify the means.”

  “Yes,” Soren agreed. “They are willing to weather the shame if it means

  running off the lees and the Tachi.”

  “But we’re back to why?” Ilemina said. “What possible detriment could

  the lees and the Tachi be to their plan?” She turned to Maud.

  Great. “I don’t know.”

  “See if you can find out,” Soren said.

  This would not be an easy conversation to have, but it was better to have

  it now before they gave her any more responsibility.

  “I’ve made a deal with Nuan Cee,” Maud said. “I now owe him a favor

  for saving my daughter.”

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  “That reminds me,” Ilemina said. “Could a lees have poisoned Helen?”

  “It needed to be said,” Otubar said.

  “No,” Arland said. “That was the first thing I checked. All of the lees

  were nowhere near the game grounds or the lake. Their equipment is

  sophisticated and can render them practically invisible, but I have seen

  their disruptor in action and Nuan Cee knows about it. The disruptor

  relies on a maille emitter, and once you know what to screen for, it’s not

  hard to find. They’ve been using plain stealth to get around the castle

  and record candid videos of us, but they had nothing to do with

  poisoning the child. It would be too heavy handed for them anyway.”

  “Why?” Karat asked.

  “The lees pride themselves on balance,” Arland said. “A good bargain is

  the highest honor they could strive for. Saving a child and collecting a

  favor from the parent satisfies the need for balance. Hurting a child to

  save it and then collecting the favor is not a balanced transaction.”

  Maud almost did a double take. He flashed her a grin.

  “Is he right?” Ilemina asked.

  “Yes. The lees pride themselves on being clever. To set us up by hurting

  Helen would go against Nuan Cee’s clan’s code.” Maud took a deep

  breath. “However, I do owe him a favor. He will collect, which means

  he will ask me for something and I won’t be able to refuse. I am now a

  security risk.”

  Ilemina waved her hand. “Eeh.”

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  “You are a security risk if we don’t know about it,” Soren said.

  Ilemina shrugged. “Go to the lees for me and get their take on the

  situation. Same with the Tachi.”

  “I’ll need something to bargain with,” Maud said.

  Arland’s mother rolled her eyes. “They’ve been asking us to review their

  proposals for the trade station. So far, we have declined. Tell them that

  if they help you, I will personally look at every chart they want to send

  my way.”

  Otubar’s eyebrows rose a hair. Ilemina bared her teeth. “Other vampire

  Houses are plotting against us and they view the aliens as our allies. They

  are threatened by the lees’ and Tachi’s presence in our midst. If they

  fear it, then I will make our ties with those two species even stronger. He

  who is feared by my enemy is my shield.”

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  Chapter 14 Part 1

  September 6, 2018 by Ilona 395 Comments

  We are getting back into the swing of things, so we are going to give you

  this quick appetizer before a larger scene on Friday.

  Maud rushed down the hallway. The meeting with the lees and the Tachi

  was in less than ten minutes, but her personal unit had pinged, letting

  her know Helen was awake. Maud tore through the castle at a near

  sprint. Logic told her that everything would be fine, but emotion

  trumped logic, and her emotions were screaming at her that something

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  would go terribly wrong in the time it would take her to get to the

  medward. By the time she reached the door, she was in a near panic.

  The door whispered open.

  In a flash, Maud saw the room in excruciating detail: the bed, the white

  instruments, the blue readouts projected on the wall, the medic standing

  to the side, and Helen, upright on the bed.

  “Mommy!” Helen cleared ten feet in a single jump.

  Maud caught her and hugged her, wishing with everything she had that

  this was real, and her daughter wouldn’t disappear out of her arms

  fading back into the hospital bed.

  “Full recovery,” the medic said. “I uploaded a monitoring routine to her

  personal unit and synced it to you. If she takes a turn for the worst,

  which I do not anticipate, her unit will flash with yellow and you will get

  a warning. Should this occur, I want to see her immediately.”

  “Understood.” Maud kissed Helen’s forehead, inhaling the familiar scent

  of her daughter’s hair. It will be okay, she’s okay, everything is fine, she’s

  alive, she’s not dying… “Thank you for everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” the medic said. “I did very little. All I could do was

  keep her alive for a little longer. Eventually she would have slipped

  away. Are you going to speak with the lees?”

  “Yes.” She was still clutching Helen tightly to herself, unwilling to let go.

  “I want the recipe for that poison.” />
  “I will try, but the lees hoard their secrets like treasure. They will only

  trade, for something of equal or greater value.”

  The medic pondered the wall for a moment and tapped his unit. A round

  ceramic tower slid out of the floor and opened, revealing a core lit from

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  within by a peach-colored glow and rows of tubes, vials, and ampoules

  arranged in rings around it. The contents of the tower glittered like

  jewels, some filled with amber liquid, others containing glowing mists or

  small dazzling gems in a rainbow of colors. It was oddly elegant and

  beautiful, the way vampire technology often was. The medic plucked a

  twisted vial filled with green mist and held it out to her.

  “A gesture of good faith.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a biological weapon we developed during the Nexus conflict. It

  renders the lees infertile.”

  He just pulled a species ending toxin out of the shelf like it was

  nothing. And he had dozens more in there, all of different shapes and

  sizes. How many other species could they neuter with one of those shiny

  bottles? She just watched him reach into a Pandora’s box like he was

  grabbing a sandwich out of a picnic basket. Her reaction must have

  shown on her face, because the medic shrugged. “It was never used. It

  was judged to be against the code of war. Also, it’s a poor weapon. It

  doesn’t kill the enemy. It’s something one might use in retaliation for

  being beaten, and we do not lose.”

  “I need a carrying case for this,” she said.

  “Why? The vial is unbreakable by normal means and is hermetically

  sealed.”

  Maud smiled. “You don’t just hand someone a terrible evil without

  impressive packaging. We need a chest filled with velvet or a high-tech

  vault container with an elaborate code lock. Something that makes it

  seem important and forbidden.”

  The medic’s eyes lit up. “I have just the thing.”

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  253

  Chapter 14 Part 2

  September 7, 2018 by Ilona 569 Comments

  The meeting with the lees and the tachi was set in the Maven’s Gardens,

  located at the top of a small mesa, which jutted next to the Marshal

  Tower, the same tower that housed Maud’s and Arland’s quarters. The

  gardens were accessible from within the tower and by a long, covered

  breezeway that curved around the tower from one of the bridges

  connecting it to the rest of the castle. Consisting of a small, stone plaza

  ringed by lush greenery, the gardens were at once a very private and

  completely exposed space. The trees and shrubs hid it from outside

  observers and its location, on the very edge of a sheer drop, made

  outside surveillance impossible. However, the cameras and turrets,

  mounted on the walls of the tower directly above, had the perfect view

  of everything that transpired.

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  From inside the plaza, the gardens looked calm and inviting. Blue,

  turquoise, and pink blossoms rose from the flower patches beneath old

  trees. Here and there, plush furniture, some made with vampires, some

  with other bodies in mind, offered comfortable place to sit and reflect. A

  natural-looking waterfall that had to be engineered and carefully

  installed filled the silence with soothing sounds of falling water, which

  coincidently made audio surveillance even more difficult, as if the

  dampners installed along the perimeter of the mesa weren’t

  enough. Maud decided she rather liked it.

  Helen splashed through the shallow edge of the fountain, watching the

  water cascade over a perfect reproduction of a neighboring mesa, only

  ten feet in height. The waterfall landed into a pond made to resemble a

  lake. Helen stumbled through it, waving her arms, like a giant about to

  take on a mountain. Maud came to terms with the simple fact that if

  there was an inch of water, her daughter would be in it. She showed no

  signs of illness. Maud had only checked her personal unit three times in

  the last six minutes, which had to be a heroic feat of willpower.

  Otubar loomed next to Maud, like a silent mountain himself. She still

  had no legal status, and for negotiations to succeed, she needed to

  borrow some authority. Maud would have preferred Arland as a back

  up for this meeting, but he was sleeping off his booster, and she had to

  admit Otubar had authority in spades. The Lord Consort projected quiet

  menace, emphasis on the quiet. He didn’t speak, he made no small talk,

  he asked no questions. He just towered like some legendary bastion of

  vampire might.

  The lees and the Tachi arrived at the same time, each delegation led by

  a vampire knight through the side tunnel. Nuan Cee wore his usual silk

  apron, the kind Maud saw him wear at this shop, and a necklace of white

  and blue shells that matched his silver blue fur. It wasn’t the bejeweled

  ensemble he donned for important meetings. The two lees behind him

  bounced up and down as they walked, looking like two fluffy, excited kits.

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  The Tachi queen strode next to the Merchant, elegant and seemingly

  weightless despite her size. Her exoskeleton was a cheery, beautiful

  azure, like the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The two tachi following

  her exhibited color as well, one deep lavender, the other a familiar

  green. Ke’Lek. She had expected a neutral grey. A pleasant surprise.

  Good. The tachi are in a receptive mood.

  “Lady of sun and air.” Maud bowed her head. “The great

  Merchant. Welcome.”

  Nuan Cee waved his paws magnanimously. “No need, no need. We are

  all friends here.”

  The tachi queen bobbed her head. “I am relived to see you well. And

  your child.”

  “Please,” Maud murmured and pointed to a table with four chairs. Two

  were the typical vampire seats, large, solid, with simple but functional

  lines. The third chair to Maud’s right was a divan, piled high with soft

  pillows. The fourth chair on Maud’s left looked like a mushroom with

  plush, padded cap and round protrusions to the back and the sides. It

  had taken Maud a good half an hour of drawing and explaining to

  convince House Krahr’s fabricator supervisor to manufacture one. She

  still wasn’t sure if the proportion of the stem to cap was off by an inch or

  two, but it looked right and it was the best she could do.

  The queen saw the chair. Maud held her breath.

  A flash of deeper color rolled over the royal and she perched on the chair,

  locking her vestigial appendages on the protrusions. Nuan Cee sprawled

  on the divan like a Roman patrician.

  The tachi bodyguards split up. Ke’Lek remained behind the queen, while

  the other tachi headed to the fountain. The Nuan Cee relatives followed

  the tachi to where Helen was splashing. The significance wasn’t lost on

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  Maud. If anything happened to either Nuan Cee or the tachi queen,

  Helen would be a primary target. The thought should have disturbed her,

  but she took with easy calm. Either too much happened and I am now

  inoculated, or I’ve gotten used to high stakes negotiati
ons.

  A vampire retainer delivered pitchers of green and red liquids, one wine,

  the other spiced juice with slices of local fruit, and platters of baked

  snacks and artfully arranged fruit and vegetable slices, and withdrew. It

  felt like an odd tea party. Here she was serving cosmic cookies and wine

  to a queen of enlightened predators and the head of a clan of ruthless

  assassins. Nothing much at stake except an interstellar alliance. Whee!

  Maud sipped some juice. This would have to be done very carefully. If

  she offered either of them a finger, they would bite her entire arm off.

  No time like the present.

  “Have you rested from the interstellar travel?” she asked. “I always find

  planetside to be a relief.” Not the best opening, considering they were

  both the planet for the last two weeks, but it would do.

  The tachi queen glanced at her. “This planet is rather beautiful.”

  “I do so enjoy the planetside,” Nuan Cee said, “However, as regrettable

  as it is, one must commit to the unpleasantness of space travel to pursue

  one’s goals.”

  So far, so good. “I do wonder how space merchant marines do it. Long

  voyages, expensive cargo, and I hear pirates in certain quadrants.”

  Nuan Cee’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes. One does have to make

  sacrifices in the name of profit.”

  “Or scientific achievement.” The tachi queen speared a cookie with a

  long talon. “The quest of knowledge can not proceed without the fuel of

  labor.”

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  “It always rankles me when opportunistic beings attempt to cash in on

  the labor of others.” Maud studied the contents of her glass.

  “It is both unfair and predatory,” the tachi queen said. “However, one

  may not always have a choice in selecting their path. Sometimes course