Innkeeper Chronicles 3.5: Sweep of the Blade
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knights and retainers hurried to and fro. Screens shone on the walls,
flashing with data and images. A clump of retainers surrounded Ilemina
on the left and an equally large group crowded Lord Soren.
“Lord Marshal!” Knight Ruin emerged from the rush, the look of
determination on his face. As far as she could tell, Knight Ruin’s mission
in life was to ensure that Arland was where he was supposed to be when
he was supposed to be there, so he could be taking care of pressing
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matters of which Knight Ruin always had a long and detailed list. She had
a feeling the russet-haired knight considered her to be a permanent
threat to his success.
Arland veered left to what had to be his desk, with Ruin following and
speaking in urgent low tones. Several knights peeled off from the crowd
and closed in on Arland like starved sharks.
Maud halted, taking in the controlled chaos around her. The entire
wedding venue had to be relocated to the battle station, where things
would finally come to an end. The logistics of moving the celebration
alone were enough to give one kittens but selecting who would be in
attendance to the wedding added an entirely new dimension. Planetside,
House Krahr had an overwhelming number advantage. In space, with a
limited capacity, half of which was taken up by the wedding “guests,”
every attendee counted.
The gauntlet was thrown, the war banner unfurled, and the fangs bared.
House Krahr had risen to the challenge.
In his wildest dreams that’s what Melizard had envisioned. A thriving
House, bustling with activity and preparing for war. The hum of voices,
the chimes of communication alerts, the rapid rhythm of running
footsteps… Spacecraft taking off on the monitors. Knights in battle
armor. An electric excitement saturated the hall, sizzling along her skin.
Her former husband would have drunk it in like it was the nectar of the
gods. Melizard would’ve killed, in a very literal sense of the world, for a
chance to be a part of this. He had once told her he felt like he was born
into the wrong House. She never understood it until now. House Ervan
could have never delivered this, not on this scale. This was what he
must’ve seen in his head.
He must’ve felt suffocated.
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She imagined his ghost standing next to her, a thin translucent shadow
and waited for the familiar pinch of bitterness. It didn’t come. Maud
puzzled over it.
I’ve moved on.
She was free. Finally. All her memories and bitter lessons were still there
but they lost their bite. The present mattered so much more now.
Everyone around her was busy. She should make herself useful. At least
she could contribute in some small way. Someone somewhere could use
her assistance…
A young vampire knight slid to a halt in front of her. If Melizard’s ghost
had any substance, she would have torn right through him. She was tall,
with a deep grey skin and a wealth of blue-black hair, braided from her
face. She held a tablet in her hands, a communicator curved to her lips,
and a secondary display projected over her left eye.
“Lady Maven.”
Maud moved to step aside and froze in mid-step. She was the Maven.
“Yes?”
“I’m Lady Lisoun. I’m your adjutant. What should we do about the
chairs?”
“What about the chairs?” What chairs? Adjutant?
Lady Lisoun took a deep breath. The words came out of her in a rapid
sprint. “The battle station banquet hall chairs.”
Maud waited.
“They are sojourn style chairs.”
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Sojourn style chairs had a solid back. There was no way the tachi would
be able to sit in the sojourn chairs. Their vestigial appendages would be
in the way.
“Your desk is this way.” Lisoun began weaving her way through the
crowd.
Maud marched next to her. “Can we substitute different chairs?”
“No, my lady. They are part of a unit, one table and eight chairs.”
“Are they attached to the table?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Whose bright idea was that?”
“I don’t know, my lady. They stove away for the ease of storage.”
“Are they at least height adjustable?” The lees couldn’t sit in a vampire-
sized chairs either.
“I don’t know.” Lisoun braked to a stop before a desk surrounded by
people. “I will find out.”
The rest of the knights swarmed them. Everyone spoke at once.
“One at a time!” Maud barked.
A familiar looking retainer – where had she seen them? Ah, feat hall –
thrust a tablet under her nose. On it glowed elaborately arranged platter
of fruit and vegetables. “Menu for approval!”
Maud stared at the arrangement. “Take out all of kavla – the tachi are
allergic. Make sure the honey doesn’t contain any kavla either.” She
waved her fingers at the tablet, scrolling through the
pictures. “No. None of these make any sense. The tikk igi dishes need
to have a pattern. You can’t just put a bunch of pretty fruit randomly on
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a platter. There must be a progression of taste or color, ideally both. A
circular arrangement would start with sour fruit on the edge and then
progressively get sweeter toward the center. Or, you start with purple
berries and work your way through a spectrum to yellows. This is a
haphazard mess. Take this back, bring me an updated menu.”
He took the tablet and broke into a sprint.
“The chairs are not adjustable!” Lisoun reported.
“Get me a station engineer.” Maud looked at the crowd. “Next!”
Konstana thrust herself into Maud’s view. They hadn’t seen each other
since the Communal. The red-haired knight’s arm didn’t show any signs
of ever being broken.
“I’m your security chief,” she said.
She had a security chief. “How many people do we have?”
“Three squads, sixty knights total, but they are only letting me take six.
They expect me to secure thirty-eight aliens with six vampires.”
Maud raised her eyebrows. “Is that a problem?”
Konstana scoffed. “Of course not. But I do need to know how they are
getting to the station. Are we transporting them or are they transporting
themselves? And if they are transporting themselves, are we going to let
them dock or are they shuttling over via their shuttles or via ours?”
“What does Sergeant-at-Arms say?”
“He said to ask you.”
Thank you, Lord Soren. “Get battle station security chief on the line and
figure out if a non-regulation shuttle can even dock there. Let me know
what you find out.”
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Lisoun pushed her way into the circle. She grasped Maud’s arm and half
-guided, half-propelled her behind a podium next to her desk where a
large screen presented her with a tough looking female vampire standing
in a large hall. The smooth black floor split, a glossy onyx contraption
spiraled out of it and unfolded into a round table ringed by eight sojourn
/>
style chairs. The chairs were big, rectangular, and blocky. The worst-case
scenario.
“How wide are those chair backs at the seat?” Maud asked.
“Twenty lots,” the engineer reported, which her implant helpfully
converted into twenty-eight inches. Right.
“I need you to cut a hole in the back of the chair at the seat level, twenty-
four inches wide and eight inches tall.”
The engineer stared at her, incredulous. “You want me to deface the an-
alloy chairs?”
“Yes.” She glanced at Lisoun. “I need the sitting chart?”
A diagram popped out on side screen. Oh Universe, what in the world…
“This is wrong,” she told Lisoun. “We cannot put the royal in the back of
the hall.”
“Lord Soren said…”
“Go back to Lord Soren and ask him if he would like to have a war with
the Tachi Protectorate. Lady Dil’ki is not just a scientist, she is a member
of the royal house. She and the Nuan Cee have to be seated in the
front. This needs to be reworked.”
Lisoun took off.
“These chairs are a marvel of function and durability,” the engineer
growled. “The an-alloy is nearly indestructible.”
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“I have…” she checked her personal unit. “Thirty-eight aliens, of which
twenty-two are too small to sit in these chairs and the others have
vestigial appendages which prevent them from sitting at all.”
“These chairs were never designed for aliens!”
“Well, now they have to accommodate some, so find a way to destruct
indestructible chairs. I will send over an updated sitting chart. Every
chair marked tachi must have a hole. Every chair marked lees must be
adjusted for a being of three to four feet in height.”
The engineer bared her fangs. “On whose authority?”
“On my authority. I’m the Maven. Look at it as a challenge.”
The engineer opened her mouth.
Maud loaded steel into her voice. “When these aliens go off into the
Galaxy, they will praise House Krahr’s hospitality instead of telling the
Universe that the elite of vampire engineering couldn’t solve a trivial
problem of the appropriate seating. We will not embarrass
ourselves. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I see you are settling into your role,” a familiar voice said.
Maud raised her head from the screen. “Lord Erast?”
The Scribe nodded at her and passed her a tablet. “The Preceptor would
like you to make the necessary edits. She wishes to deliver the
document to the parties in question as soon as possible.”
Maud raised the tablet. A green spark of the scanner flashed at her. The
contents were locked to her. The screen flared into life.
Mutual Cooperation Pact.
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The following Articles are to outline the involvement and voluntary
participation of Clan Nuan and Tachi Protectorate…
Oh no. “This won’t work.”
“What’s wrong with it?” the Scribe asked.
“It says involvement.”
“Involvement is a perfectly good word.”
“We’re dealing with the lees. It’s like making a deal with…” the devil. She
grappled with her knowledge of ancient sagas, looking for a
reference. “Yarlas the Cunning.”
Lord Erast raised his eyebrows.
“If we leave any gap, any hint at alternative interpretation, they will drive
a spacecruiser through it. We have to make this super simple. Short clear
sentences. No ambiguity at all or we will end up explaining to Lady
Ilemina why the lees now own the station and half of the planet. This will
require an extensive edit.”
She stared at the gathering. Six vampires. If she could cull this to a
reasonable number, she could devote all of her attention to editing the
articles.
“Everyone with immediate need step forward. Everyone whose issues
can wait see me this evening.”
The six vampires in front of her took a step forward in unison.
It was going to be a long day.
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Chapter 17 Part 2
November 9, 2018 by Ilona
Maud stood in the middle of the Officer Hall and watched the entrance
ceremony unfold on a large screen. The banquet room, a large space
meant to accommodate five hundred diners, spread before her, an
expanse of smooth onyx-black floor punctuated by the rosettes of tables
and chairs made of the same glossy black. Crimson banners of House
Krahr stretched along the walls, the black cat-like predator on them
snarling to remind the gathering in whose house they were about to
dine.
The blast shields of the massive battle station were down, and the far
side of the hall was all window, the universe glittering beyond, with the
turquoise and blue orb of the planet rising slowly to the right. A spray of
radiant stars winked from beyond, the Krahr Homeworld Fleet displayed
for the guests in a show of power and strength.
A dais had been raised in center, with the windows as the backdrop, and
in the middle of it a small vala tree spread its gnarled black branches, its
red leaves glowing against the cosmos, at once fragile and indomitable,
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a testament to the power of life that flourished given the slightest
chance.
Both Kozar and Serak were already seated, taking up the center swath of
the tables. The tachi, in the newly butchered chairs, and the lees were
also seated, the tachi on the left, and the lees on the right, with the heads
of both delegation near the dais. House Krahr would take the back rows
of the tables. If either Kozor of Serak recognized that they were being
boxed in, they could do nothing about it.
She had spoken to both factions about what to expect and offered
protective detail for the wedding. Both declined.
“But why won’t the Krahr simply say no?” Dil’ki had asked her as they
strolled through the Maven’s gardens. “It would avoid the loss of life.”
“It’s about face,” Nuan Cee had said, drawing his paw over his
muzzle. “One must never lose it.”
“It’s a challenge,” Maud had explained. “Kozor and Serak hope to
accomplish an incredible feat, worthy of the old sagas. The response
from the Krahr must be equally heroic. They will reject any number
advantage.”
“They truly believe themselves to be that good?” Dil’ki had asked.
“Yes,” Maud had told her.
The royal sat quietly now, clad in diaphanous veils and glowing jewelry
of her kind. Her warriors waited around her, all a saturated even
color. Despite what was coming, the tachi were at ease.
At the other side of the hall, Clan Nuan in their best gold and jewels, all
wearing the soft silky aprons chattered and giggled without a care in the
world.
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The Herald announced Ilemina and Otubar. The hosts entered the hall
last, according to tradition, and Ilemina and Otubar walked to their table,
Ilemina elegant in her ornate armor and Otubar stalking next to her like
a hulking krahr in a bad mood, while the Herald b
arked out their titles:
Supreme Predator, Killer, Destroyer, Marauder, Slayer…
Maud wished with all her heart that she could hug Helen again. She left
her on the planet. The battle station was no place for a child, especially
if things would proceed as expected. She had to do what she did best:
survive. Eliminate the threat and go back, to her daughter, her future
husband, and her new home.
Easier said than done.
Arland approached. She felt his presence rather than saw him and
turned. He towered above her in full syn-armor with a crimson cloak that
made him seem even more enormous. His blood mace rested on his
hip. He’d pulled his long blond hair from his face and secured it at the
nape of his neck, and his features looked carved from granite, his blue
eyes hard and cold. A Marshal in every sense of the word, meant to
inspire fear.
He held out his arm to her. “Ready, my love?”
“Yes.” She put her hand on his wrist, her fingers light as a feather.
They entered the long narrow hallway leading to the banquet hall,
moving in-step.
Ahead the microphone-enhanced voice of the Herald recited their titles,
booming through the room.
“Arland Rotburtar Lord Gabrian, 28th Heir of Krahr, Marshal of his House,
Bloodmace, Bone Crusher, Ravager of Nexus, Destroyer of the World
Killer, Kill count of two hundred and twenty-four.”
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Maud caught their reflection in the polished walls. In it a strange woman
glided next to Arland, wearing black armor and carrying a blood sword,
a narrow crimson sash of the Maven wrapped around her left shoulder,
crossing over her collar bone and draping over her right shoulder to trail
behind her to the floor. She was graceful and strong, and walked next to
a vampire prince like she belonged there.
A giddy, electric anticipation surged through her. They were walking to
a fight. Finally, an end to all the pressure. One way or the other, it would
be decided. Her lips threatened to curve into a smile, and she forced an
arrogant cold mask over her face. Today she was Cinderella and her
sword would be her glass slipper.
“Matilda Rose, Lady and Heir of Demille, Maven of House Krahr.”