“This sounds worse and worse.”
“An Arizona newspaper did an article on him, and he filed a SLAPP suit. It dragged on for three years. The newspaper eventually won, but the suit took so long, they went bankrupt meanwhile and had to close. By that point he’d expanded into other businesses. New song, same dance—he goes after failing enterprises, grabs them cheap, and then cashes in on their desperation.”
I didn’t like any of this. Rudolph Peterson sounded like the kind of man who would make trouble, and I wanted to avoid trouble at all costs. I already had my hands full.
“Do not worry,” Orro said, emerging from the pantry and cold storage with a heap of groceries in his arms. “If this human creates problems, we will feed him the Grand Burgers. Once he consumes enough of them, his body will surely fail.”
If only it were that easy.
I’d spent the entire morning refining the Drífen rooms. The distance between me and Gertrude Hunt kept getting in the way. I felt it every time I needed to do something elaborate. It was like trying to do an intricate drawing with a blunted pencil. I could make the inn do what I wanted it to do, but it required a lot of concentration and occasional do-overs.
I had never in my life experienced anything like this. I was born in an inn; for all of my life it had been a constant presence, a third parent, always ready to catch me if I stumbled. Yesterday, I’d read some of the innkeeper diaries Gertrude Hunt had stored in its database, looking for someone having a problem with my symptoms. I found nothing. The distance was there, and the more I felt it, the closer I edged to panic.
I couldn’t tell if it was getting better or worse. In the end, I sat down on the ornamental staircase to catch a breath and rested, feeling Gertrude Hunt around me.
“It’s alright.” I stroked the stairs with my fingertips. “We will figure it out. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
That’s where Sean found me.
He came through the doorway with measured grace, no wasted movement, no deviation from the course, and headed straight for me. Beast trailed him, making happy snorting noises.
He sat next to me and looked at my handiwork. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you. How are the weapon systems?”
“Deadly.” He sank a ton of sarcasm into that one word.
“Really?”
“No. The northern particle cannon is trashed. One of the Draziri must have sank a long-range heat burst into it. Everything’s fried. The HELL units won’t talk to me.”
“I bought them secondhand from a Morodiak. The inn partially integrated it but if you want to run diagnostics, you have to speak its language.”
“So, I have to growl at the HELL units?”
“Pretty much. I know you can growl, Sean. I’ve heard you do it.”
His upper lip trembled in a snarl, betraying a flash of fang.
“Ooh, scary. The Morodiakian HELL units don’t stand a chance.”
“Are you humoring me?”
“Yep.”
I leaned against him. He put his arm around me.
“We need to upgrade. Or at least repair,” he said. “The stealth guns in the front are in good condition, but they’re antiques. About a third of the long-range weapons that face the field are out of commission, and there is only so much I can do with bubble gum and duct tape. We need to replace them.”
I had no room to argue. We’d taken a serious beating. I’d known opposing the Draziri would be expensive when I took the job but standing by while an entire species was being exterminated was beyond me.
“I’d do it again,” I told him. “I’d shelter the Hiru again.”
“Of course you would. And that’s why I need you to open the Baha-char door for me.”
“Wilmos?”
Sean nodded.
Wilmos owned a weapons shop at the galactic bazaar. He also ran mercenary crews and brokered deals between private soldiers and people who wanted to hire them. Like Sean, he was a werewolf without a planet, and he was the one who’d gotten Sean the Nexus job. And a small part of me worried that once Sean walked back through Wilmos’ door, he wouldn’t come back.
The anxiety pinched me, sharp and cold.
I couldn’t tether Sean to the inn. If he left, he left. It would mean we weren’t meant to be. I had to let it go.
Bringing the weapon systems back online was going to be pricy, and I really wanted to hold some money in reserve, in case the Drífen or the Assembly threw another curveball at us. I took a mental inventory of our funds.
Ugh.
“How much do you need?”
Sean thought it over and turned to me, a serious look on his face. “One dollar. Maybe three.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I was paid well on Nexus.”
“That’s your money. You earned it.”
“Damn right and I’ll spend it as I please. Right now I’m richer than you.”
“How do you know that?”
He grinned at me. “I asked the inn. It won’t open the Baha-char door for me, but it gave me complete access to your finances. I could rob you blind.”
“You think you can. Seriously, how much do we need?”
“I won’t know until I get there. Dina, you have to decide if we’re together or not.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“If I’m going to live here, you have to let me contribute. It’s fair. You’re in charge of the guests, and I’m in charge of their security. This is what I do.”
He was right. It was fair.
I pushed off the stairs. “I’ll open a door for you. But only if you promise not to spend everything you have on upgrading the inn. You bled for that money.”
“Mostly I made other people bleed for that money.” A shadow crossed his face. “Now I’ll use it for something good. Something I want.”
We walked to the kitchen together. “Will you be home in time for dinner?”
“I’ll try,” he promised.
4
Finishing the Drífen quarters took forever. Not only did everything have to be intricate and ornate, but I’d had a hard time concentrating. I kept worrying about Sean, about the Assembly, about the Drífan coming, about Rudolph Peterson…
Magic tugged on me. Caldenia wanted my attention. I opened a small two-way screen in the nearest wall. “Yes, your Grace?”
Caldenia gazed at me. “It’s three o’clock, my dear.”
Three o’clock was the time when we had our afternoon tea, provided the inn wasn’t under attack or filled with lifelong enemies trying to broker a fragile peace.
“I’ll be right there.”
I could have said no. I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. But I missed our tea, too. For months and months in the beginning, it had just been me and Caldenia at the inn, and even after Orro came to stay with us, he rarely joined us for tea. We finally convinced him to have dinner with us, but he was truly comfortable hovering in the kitchen, covertly watching our expressions as we ate his food. A couple of times I’d dared to make dinner so he could have the night off. Both times I’d aimed for simple things, like steak or roasted chicken. He ate the food and afterward awkwardly patted my shoulder or my head, whichever happened to be closer, so I’d know he didn’t completely hate it. But Caldenia and I shared each other’s company when it was just the two of us and I’d come to enjoy having tea with her.
In thirty seconds, I walked into the tearoom. I had made it months ago to Caldenia’s specifications. She wanted to sit high and enjoy the view, so I had built a small turret off the dining room and you had to climb a short staircase to reach it. Today the stairs were a bit of a chore. Maybe I made them too steep.
Like all places her Grace occupied, the tearoom was an unapologetically luxurious, yet elegant space. The windows took up three quarters of the round room’s wall space, offering a beautiful view of the Avalon subdivision directly across the road from us. I had a choice between the orchard or the street,
and I picked the street, because Caldenia loved to people watch. Speculating on our neighbors’ comings and goings provided her with endless entertainment, and she predicted affairs and identified divorces and firings with frightening precision. None of the people in the neighborhood realized that a former galactic tyrant observed every aspect of their lives.
I crossed the rosewood floor and joined Caldenia at a round table in the center of the room. The table was laser cut from a block of garnet mined many light-years away and Caldenia adored it. She said it reminded her of crystallized blood.
I picked up a small glass teapot, poured jasmine tea into her Grace’s cup, filled my own, and sipped. Mmm, delicious.
Caldenia inhaled the aroma and delicately swallowed a tiny mouthful. For a couple of minutes there was only silence and tea, and I felt the knot in the pit of my stomach slowly unraveling.
“Fire!”
I winced.
Caldenia chuckled.
“It’s not funny.”
“On the contrary, it’s quite amusing.”
I drank more tea. “I don’t know what has gotten into Orro. Usually he’s dramatic but this is too much even for him. It’s all declarative statements, grand pronouncements, and ‘Fire!’”
Caldenia chuckled again.
“He’s going to give the inn a heart attack. He never used to be this bad. I don’t know what happened.”
Caldenia looked at me from above the rim of her cup. “Let’s just say that your ordeal took a toll on all of us, dear. When you sat there like a mannequin and your werewolf carried you everywhere while the inn was under attack, even I experienced emotional discomfort. It was fleeting, of course. I came to my senses quite quickly, but the momentary twinge was real. That creature in the kitchen is perhaps the most sensitive of all of us. It shook him badly.”
I hadn’t realized. I’d been so focused on everything that needed to be done and so absorbed in the simple happiness of having Sean that it never occurred to me that Orro was upset.
“You are his savior,” Caldenia continued. “You found him at the lowest point of his life, living in squalor, without plan or purpose, and you rescued him and brought him here. For him and I, this inn and you provide a refuge, a home, if you will. If something were to happen to either of you, we would be adrift. It’s a terrifying prospect.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“Under normal circumstances, we would have some time to…what is that wonderful word? Process. Once, when I was quite young, I hired a squadron of Yako mercenaries. Vicious warriors, ferocious and merciless, clad in a natural scale armor with claws three inches long and teeth to match. Once I besieged Lorekat, they broke through the shields and slaughtered thousands. It was a meatgrinder. The street quite literally ran red with blood.”
She said it with relish, the way most women who looked her age would say, “My husband took me on a cruise and there was free wine.”
“After we took the city, the Yako leader informed me that they would be leaving. I offered them money, plunder, favors, but none of it made any difference. Their general informed me that the taking of life was a traumatizing occupation and now they had to restore the balance of their souls. They all had to return home, hug their spouses and hatchlings, and sit on their eggs. The Yako yearned for peace and comfort, and no riches could replace it. It taught me that for every period of stress there must be a time of rest and contemplation. This is the sole reason I’m still alive.”
Wow.
“Our period of peace and contemplation was cut short. We are all coping as well as we can. I do it by drinking tea and watching the Laurents’ divorce war. Orro is doing it by trying to abandon decades of culinary training so he can recreate street food of marginal quality. To each his own.”
“What can I do?”
She shrugged. “Nothing at all. Just be unharmed for a little while and it will all go back to normal. The more normal you act, the quicker we will relax and lull ourselves into blissful complacency. Sentient beings are spectacular liars. We are gifted with an unparalleled ability to deny things that make our life unpleasant. We even pretend death isn’t a certainty, because contemplating our own mortality drives us mad.”
Normal. Very well, I could do normal.
“The Laurents are divorcing? They seemed like such a nice couple.”
Caldenia’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, it’s sordid. Apparently, Elena decided that their marriage wasn’t spicy enough and she talked Tom into joining a swinger’s club.”
“Tom and Elena? Down the street?” I didn’t even know Red Deer had a swinger’s club.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t she a middle school teacher?”
“And he works for FedEx.” Caldenia grinned, showing her sharp teeth. “It gets better. The one unbreakable rule of the swinger’s club is that nobody can fall in love and Elena, what is the term the kids use, caught feelings for the club’s manager. Tom discovered this, moved out, and took the children. Now there is a divorce and a nasty custody battle.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Elena and her new beau are living in the house and there are odd cars in their driveway at all times. And a van from Digital World came by and Margaret thinks she saw them bring in a bunch of cameras. She is sure that they are filming pornography.”
“Shocking.” Margaret lived across the street from the Laurents, and since she worked out of her house, she was always home.
“I know. A den of iniquity right under our noses. The best part is, Tom talked Margaret into letting him install cameras on her house. He is filming his old house twenty-four seven hoping to get enough ammunition to win sole custody. Margaret gave me her password and I can pop right into her computer through the Wi-Fi and watch it whenever I want. It’s delightful.”
I hid a groan. “So, you and Margaret are cataloging everyone who comes and goes from that house?”
“Of course we are. One must find diversions where one can, dear. We have devised a ranking system for the visitors. Would you like to see?”
I opened my mouth to answer. The inn chimed, projecting an image of Thek. The First Scholar’s headdress sat askew, and his feathers stuck out in all directions, fully erect and making him look twice his size. Outraged squawking, screeching, and thudding filled the room. Feathers flew over the blood-smeared floor. A koo-ko body hurtled through the air behind Thek with a piercing battle screech. Thek clutched his headdress and ducked, screaming over the clamor, “I require assistance!”
I waved an apology at Caldenia and took off running.
It was amazing how fast an innkeeper could move through the inn when properly motivated. It took me three seconds to land in the middle of the koo-ko fray and half a second to snap my fingers. Holes burst in the ceiling, releasing five-foot-tall metal claws on flexible metal tails. Each of the claws had six prongs coated in a thick layer of a rubber-like polymer, rendering them smooth and slightly springy. The claws dove into the melee, snapping up the koo-ko. Once the targets were caught, the claw’s prongs locked, forming a cage around the koo-ko and retracting back to the ceiling. The philosophers ran, but my claws were faster.
The final koo-ko dashed toward the left channel in a desperate attempt to glide away, but the last claw swept under him, neatly scooping him up.
The First Scholar stared at the row of cages suspended just below the ceiling. “Well. I have never seen this arrangement before. Very effective.”
“Thank you.”
Most of the combatants had given up, but a few koo-ko still hurled themselves against the bars of their cages, still overcome by battle madness. I had designed the bars very carefully. They flexed outward with each blow, preventing the koo-ko from injuring themselves.
“The last inn I visited flooded the chamber with glue,” Thek confessed.
“I’m familiar with that method, but the last time it was used, one of the guests panicked and bit through his own leg with his beak trying to escape.”
“I have
heard of this. Indeed, your method is far superior.”
The koo-ko were small and plump but very agile, and when agitated, they darted around like a wide receiver with a football in his hands. The innkeepers had attempted to solve the problem of restraining them for centuries. Everything from a pulse of blinding light to knockout gas had been tried. Unfortunately, the light had caused partial blindness, knockout gas resulted in at least one fatality, and trapping them in their own tiny chambers caused deep psychological damage. Koo-kos lived in flocks. Separating them from each other led to an immediate and acute spike of anxiety, especially if light and sound deprivation methods were utilized. The cages were my answer. They could still see each other, they could scream at each other, their movement wasn’t restrained, but they couldn’t hurt themselves or each other.
The center of each cage’s ceiling lit up, scanning the beings within. A thin stalk sprouted from the floor in front of me and bloomed into a screen. I scrolled through the scan’s results. “Two broken bones, three dislocated wings, and a dozen minor lacerations. My congratulations, First Scholar. No fatalities and no eyes were lost.”
“That’s a relief.” Thek sighed.
The inn’s floor bristled with nozzles. A disinfecting mist erupted over the amphitheater, washing blood and smears of feces off the floor, seats, and the podium.
“If I may ask, what is the purpose of the small tiger?” Thek asked.
Sweep with Me (Innkeeper Chronicles Book 5) Page 4
