Chapter Eleven
Orro raised his head to the sky, opened his mouth, and let out what could only be described as a primal yell. Since he was holding a butcher knife in one hand and a sharpening stick in the other, the effect was very dramatic.
I waited.
“Is he always like this?” Gaston asked me quietly.
“I think so.”
Orro stood frozen, seemingly lost to his despair.
I counted in my head. One, two, three…
Orro turned to me, his eyes intense. “How long?”
“You have to delay the banquet for an hour to allow for the otrokars’ celebration,” I said.
“One? Hour?”
“Yes.”
Orro swung his stick and knife. “I have fish. Delicate fish. I have soufflé. I have… I can do one hour. But no more!” He waved the knife for emphasis. “No more. Not one minute, not one second, not one nanosecond, not one attosecond more.”
“Thank you.”
I walked into the front room, Gaston following me.
The Arbitrator’s delegation had, for some reason, decided to appropriate my front room despite the perfectly adequate space in their quarters. George was absorbed in his reader. Jack and Sophie were playing chess. Given that I was terrible at chess, I had no idea who was winning. Her Grace had artfully arranged herself in a chair by the window and indulged in a cup of hibiscus tea and her tablet. Judging by the small smile on her lips, Caldenia was reading something with a lot of smut or a lot of murder.
“Attosecond?” Gaston asked.
“I’m guessing it’s a very, very small fraction of a second,” I said.
“One quintillionth of a second,” George said without raising his head from his reader.
Jack pondered him. “Have you started memorizing random crap again to amuse yourself?”
“No, I’m connected to the wireless,” George said. “I googled it.”
The otrokar shaman emerged from the hallway, wearing a tattered black cloak. His long black hair, tinted with a hint of purple, spilled over the fabric. Combined with his skin, a deep bronze with an almost green undertone, the hair made his pale green eyes startling on his harsh, angular face.
“Greetings, Ruga.” I inclined my head. “Are you ready to inspect the site?”
He nodded.
I stepped outside, Gaston and the shaman in tow. I had a feeling George had assigned Gaston to me, because he’d been trailing me for the past half hour.
Dagorkun had informed me they would need a clearing that was at least five akra long and wide, which roughly translated to a square with a side of thirty-five point two yards. I would have to appropriate part of the new land for it. After we took down the alien assassin last summer, I used part of the money I had earned from House Krahr to purchase another three acres. The plot sat in the back of the property, past the orchard, on the north side, securely cushioned from view by dense oaks and cedars. Fueled by the boost of Arland’s, Sean’s, and Caldenia’s presence, the inn had rooted through the new land almost overnight and spent the past seven months or so making it its own. That provided me with a large enough area for the otrokar festival.
The new land had only cost me fifteen thousand dollars, primarily because it housed a bat cave and couldn’t be zoned for building. The cave itself opened a few hundred yards to the east, outside my property, and if the peace summit succeeded, I would buy it. The bats could prove very useful.
I stopped and surveyed the lot. Small gnarled cedars rose above the grass, flanked by some bushes. I had never liked the Texas cedars. They always looked really dry and starved of water with their rough trunks, and just to add insult to injury, every winter they spat out clouds of yellow pollen so thick it blanketed the hoods of the cars in fine powder overnight.
“This is wrong,” the shaman said. “There are too many trees. There is no water and the ground is too uneven.”
I inhaled and let my magic flow.
The soil around the cedar trunks softened. Ripples pulsed through it like waves from a stone cast into a pond. The trees shuddered and sank into the ground whole, twisting as they were sucked into the soil. No sense in wasting the wood. The otrokars would likely need some for the festival. The inn would prepare the logs and absorb what was left afterward for its own purposes down the road.
Gaston’s eyebrows rose. The shaman frowned.
Obeying my push, the ground smoothed out. A foot-wide trench formed along the perimeter of the clearing. Rocks, stones, and pebbles, most pale sandstone, rose like mushroom caps from the depth of the ground to line the bottom of the trench. I raised the south end of it about eight inches to create a slope. A long garden hose snaked its way from the house. A second hose connected to the first, and its end dropped into the trench. Water spilled onto the rocks and obediently flowed down the newly made stream bed. I walked along the trench, adjusting the height as needed.
The shaman stepped over the trench, reached inside his cloak, and produced a pouch made of scaled hide. He whispered something, opened the pouch, and spilled bright red powder into the air. For a moment the red cloud lingered, suspended by some invisible force, and then the individual particles fell, sinking into the soil. A subtle change came over the area. I couldn’t see any difference with the naked eye, but now the land enclosed by my artificial stream felt slightly odd. It still belonged to the inn, but now it also responded to the shaman’s magic.
“Are there any additional adjustments you would like me to make?” I asked.
He shook his head. “This will suffice. I have work to do here before the festival can begin.”
“Do you require wood for the fires?”
“Yes.”
A pile of cedar logs rose from the ground.
I inclined my head. “Gaston will keep you company so there are no incidents.”
The shaman spared me a look. “I now stand on the land of my ancestors. There are things in this life I fear. Vampires are not one of them.”
“All the same, I would like Gaston to stay with you. Please let me know if there is anything else you require.”
I walked away. I had more preparations to make. Lord Robart’s guests from House Meer would need their own small set of rooms. Putting them in with the Holy Anocracy’s delegation would be asking for trouble.
#
Red curtains or blue curtains? I peered at the guest suite for Nuan Cee’s “employee.” When I’d pressed Nuan Cee for specifics about his guest, he played dumb. I tried dropping subtle hints, then more obvious hints, until finally I straight-out asked what sort of furniture I should provide for the new addition to his delegation. His answer was “large,” after which he informed me that he was too tired to continue the conversation and needed to retire.
Large as in human large? Vampire large? Nuan Cee large? Which large were we talking about? First Sophie, now this. This new thing with guests arriving but not bothering to explain to me their species or any preferences was getting really annoying.
I caught myself before my irritation tainted the room. I had settled on a very basic set of furnishings, light bamboo floor, and beige walls. The room desperately needed color, but I would have to add it on the fly. With my luck, his guest would turn out to be a Ravelian slug and I would have to coat the whole room in crude oil.
“It will have to do,” I told Beast.
A chime sounded in my head. Lord Robart’s guests were about to arrive. I checked the time. We had less than fifteen minutes before the celebration was set to start.
Time is a funny thing. When you have a headache, five minutes seems like an eternity. When you’re trying to prepare for the otrokar celebration, make two additional guest suites, one for the vampires and the other for the Merchants, and pacify a melodramatic seven-foot-tall hedgehog-like chef convinced that his fish will become inedible because it has to wait an extra hour in the refrigerator, three hours go by in a blink.
I hurried to the front room. The sun had set, the day burning down to purple embers in the west. Twilight claimed the streets, painting the floorboards of the hallway in cool blue and purple. We had less than fifteen minutes before the celebration started. I made it just as George walked down the stairs. He was wearing an indigo doublet that set off his pale hair. Jack followed him, dressed in dark brown leather.
“House Meer is incoming in ten minutes,” I told them.
“Good.” George smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
The magic of the inn tugged on me. Something was happening in front of the building. I stepped to the window. The long stretch of Camelot Road rolled out before turning, and on the corner, half-hidden by the enormous prickly pear the Hendersons refused to trim, a police cruiser waited. Oh great.
“Problems?” George asked.
“Officer Marais’s intuition never fails.”
George glanced at his brother. Jack shrugged and pulled off his shirt, exposing a hard, muscled frame.
“Jack will take care of it,” George said.
That’s what I was afraid of. “Please don’t hurt him.”
“The guy is ruining your life and you want me not to hurt him.” Jack’s pants followed. He kept going, and I kept my gaze firmly on his face.
“Officer Marais isn’t trying to ruin my life. He’s trying to do his job and keep the neighborhood safe.”
“Fine, fine.” The last shred of clothing landed on the floor. “I’ll be back in time for the fireworks.”
Jack stretched and then his body broke apart. Fur spilled out. For a moment he almost appeared to be suspended in midair, then his body twisted, crunched, knotted on itself, and a large lynx landed on my floor.
Okay. That was certainly interesting. What the hell was he? He wasn’t the Sun Horde, that’s for sure.
“Could you open the back door please?” George asked.
The back door swung open and the lynx shot out through the kitchen and into the night. Something banged. A screech echoed through the inn.
“It is enough I put up with the dog. Must I have cat hair in my food as well?” Orro yelled.
He’d missed his calling. He should’ve become a Shakespearean actor instead.
Beast barked, clearly offended.
“My apologies.” I turned to the wall. “Screen please. Front camera feed, zoom in three hundred percent.”
A screen sprouted on the wall, giving me a detailed view of Officer Marais’s car and its owner, who was leaning back in his seat.
Something thumped the cruiser. It rocked on its wheels.
Officer Marais sat up straight.
Another thump.
Another.
Officer Marais swung the door open and stepped out, illuminated by the glow of the nearby street lamp, one hand on his gun. He stepped around the car and checked its rear.
The crape myrtle bushes in the yard across the street rustled.
Officer Marais turned smoothly and stepped away from the car. The bushes rustled again, shivering, as something moved away from the car toward the streetlight.
Marais followed, his steps careful.
A lynx emerged from the bushes and sat on the pavement.
Officer Marais froze, his hand on his sidearm. His face told me he was calculating his odds. He’d walked too far from the car. If he turned and ran, the lynx would catch him.
Now what? If Jack attacked, Marais would fire, I had no doubt of it. “Your brother might get shot.”
“Jack is a man of many talents,” George said.
Well, that didn’t answer anything.
The lynx stretched his paws out in front of him, turned, and flopped on the road on his back like a playful house cat.
Some tension left Officer Marais’s stance. The line of his shoulders softened.
Jack rubbed his big head on the pavement and batted at the empty air with his paws.
“Hey there,” Marais said, his voice hesitant. “Who’s a good cat?”
Jack rolled over, sauntered over to the nearest bush and rubbed his head on it.
“Good cat. You’re a big guy, huh. Did you escape from someone’s yard? People should have more sense than to own wild animals like that.” Officer Marais took a careful step back.
Jack whipped about. His furry butt pointed at Officer Marais, his tail went up, and a jet of pressurized cat spray drenched Marais chest.
Oh no.
“Aaah!” Marais leaped back and jerked his gun up, but Jack had vanished as if he were never there.
“Sonovabitch!” Marais shook his left hand, which was dripping with cat urine. “Damn it all to hell.”
His face stretched as if he had just taken a gulp of sour milk.
He looked down on his chest and gagged. “Oh Jesus.”
He tried to hold on to his composure. His chin quivered. He gagged again, bent over, and dry heaved.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or to feel bad.
“Oh sweet Jesus.” Officer Marais straightened and marched to his car, his face contorted. The cruiser’s lights came on as the engine roared to life and the big car tore out of the neighborhood.
George smiled. “I told you—many talents.”
#
I stood on the edge of the landing field as a crimson drop fell from the sky and melted into thin air, leaving three vampires in its wake. Vampires got bigger and more grizzled with age, not taller or fatter, but bulkier, as their bodies gained more and more hard mass. The three knights before me were massive. Where Arland’s and Robart’s armors were works of art, the newcomers’ armor was a work of art designed to communicate the fact that its owner had a nearly unlimited budget. Ornate, customized to fit, it turned each of them from a living being into a mobile, lethal fortress. They stood there scowling and showing their fangs, and I had a strong feeling that this would not end well. The one in the front carried a huge axe. Behind him, on the left, a vampire with an old scar across his face brandished a blood mace, and his friend on the right, with hair so pale it looked almost white, had equipped himself with a sword that had a wickedly sharp, wide blade.
“Greetings to House Meer,” I said.
Next to me Robart had a deeply pleased look on his face. He was the only Marshal who’d come to meet them. Two of his knights waited nearby, their faces grim, looking like they were ready to repel an attack at a moment’s notice. Apparently Lord Robart’s affinity for House Meer wasn’t shared by those under his command.
The oldest knight opened his mouth. The biggest of the three, his mane of jet-black hair streaked with gray, he was clearly the leader. It was strange to think in several decades, Arland would look like that.
“Greetings, Innkeeper,” he said, his voice a deep growl.
“Lord Beneger,” Robart said.
“Lord Robart,” the leader answered.
No standard, no display, no ceremony. Vampires thrived on ceremony. House Meer was here, but they were making it clear they weren’t visiting in an official capacity. My hand tightened on my broom. I had only seen vampire delegations do this four times, and every single time it was done so the House could deny it had sanctioned the actions of its members. I would not permit a massacre in my inn.
“Follow me.” I led them through the back of the house to the balcony overlooking the festival grounds. Arland, Lady Isur, and the rest of their vampires occupied the far right side of the balcony, House Vorga the middle, and Nuan Cee’s clan took up the far left.
Below us the otrokars were checking piles of wood. They had arranged the logs I provided into a bonfire at the south end of the circle created by my stream and made four smaller piles along the water. The bark on some of the logs was red and purple. They must’ve brought some of their own wood.
The scarred knight from House Meer looked down on them and spat on the balcony. “Blasphemy.”
He spat on my inn.
I smiled as sweetly as I could. “Next time you choose to spit, my lord, the stones under your feet will part.”
The scarred knight glared at me.
“We are guests here, Uriel,” Lord Beneger said. “My apologies, Innkeeper.”
Apologies or not, the next time Lord Uriel decided to hawk up some phlegm, he would regret it.
The otrokars formed a ring around the festival grounds. While we spoke, the night had snuck in on soft cat paws, turning the eastern sky a deep, beautiful purple. Twilight claimed the clearing, the light of the sunset diluted by encroaching darkness. Shadows deepened and grew treacherous, the wind died down, and the first hint of the stars studded the sky.
The otrokars’ shaman stepped into the circle drawn by my stream, entering from the north. He wore only a long, layered leather kilt. Strange symbols drawn in pale green and white marked his exposed torso. His hair streamed loose about his face. Some strands were braided with a leather cord decorated with bone and wooden beads.
Fire burst in the two piles on his left and right all on its own. He kept walking, the lines of his muscular but lean body oddly beautiful. The fire jumped to the other two piles, then to the bonfire. An insistent drumbeat sounded, growing more and more urgent as the three otrokars on the edge began to play big bloated drums. A wild, eerie melody of pipes that hadn’t come from any wood or grass born on Earth issued a challenge, the simplest kind of music brought to life by a sentient being’s breath. The shaman turned his head, his long dark hair flying, spun like a dervish, and began to dance.
The otrokars clapped as one, picking up the rhythm of the drums. The shaman whirled and twisted, his movements born from the grace and speed of a hunter closing on its prey, wild and strangely primal, as if every layer of civilization had been ripped away from him and what remained was a creature, fruit of the planet that birthed it, as timeless as life itself. It was impossible to look away.
The otrokars began to sing, a simple, exuberant melody. I couldn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear. I live. I survived. I’m here.
Breath caught in my chest. I realized with absolute clarity that one day I was going to die. One day I would no longer be here. All the things I wanted, all my thoughts, all my worries—all of it would be gone with me, lost forever. There were so many things I wanted to do. So much I still wanted to see. I had to hold on to it. I had to hold on to every short second of life. Every breath was a gift, gone forever to the cold stars the moment I exhaled.
I wanted to cry.
The symbols on the shaman’s body glowed, weak at first, then brighter and brighter. The flames of the fires turned pale yellow, then olive, then a bright emerald green, matching the radiance of the shaman’s markings. The wood no longer fueled it; the blaze raged on its own.
Shadows rose among the otrokars, translucent silhouettes without features, silent and standing still.
The shaman twisted, bending backward, his supple body nearly parallel to the ground, and suddenly a simple wooden staff was in his hand. He spun the staff, turning it into a blur, planted it into the ground, and clawed at the sky with his free hand. The glowing coals from the bonfire rolled to him, forming a narrow scorching path to the blaze.
The shaman froze, poised on his toes, leaning back slightly, rigid, every muscle in his body tight, like a genius ballet dancer frozen in a moment just before the leap. His eyes glowed deep purple, otherworldly, as if the distant planet itself stared through him. He held out his left arm to the side.
The Khanum emerged from the shadows and came to stand next to him. She wore a simple tunic. Her feet were bare. The shaman’s hand clamped her shoulder.
A wave of translucent purple dashed through the green light of the coal path. A shadow appeared in the heart of the bonfire.
The Khanum stepped onto the coal path and walked quickly to the blaze. With every step, the shadow became clearer. Arms formed, the lines of the shoulders and the neck streamlined, hair sprouted, and features formed in the oval of the face. A young otrokar man stood in the flames. He looked like Dagorkun.
They were so close now she could almost touch him. The Khanum stood still on the coals, one hand raised, as if trying to touch her dead son. Her bare feet burned, but still she refused to move.
Dagorkun moved in from the side and took his mother by her hand. The shadow in the fire nodded to his brother. Dagorkun nodded back and gently led the Khanum away, back to the others. The shadow melted into the light.
I realized I was crying.
Another otrokar stepped to the shaman. A second wave of purple, a second shadow, another trip down the coal path. A woman this time, older, wearing the otrokar armor.
One by one the otrokars came, each finding another loved one in the fire. Dead wives, dead husbands, fallen parents, children taken before their time… Some only stayed for a brief glance, but most lingered, enduring the pain for a chance to see someone they’d lost one more time.
Finally the last otrokar stepped aside, letting the ghost of her past fade into the light. The shaman moved, his staff drawing a complicated pattern in the air. An otrokar woman began to sing, her voice soft but rising, a challenge to the stars above us.
The shaman thrust his staff into the ground and opened his arms.
The fires turned white. Tiny sparks swirled within them like ghostly fireflies.
The woman’s voice rose, stronger and stronger, her song holding the darkness at bay like a shield.
Fear not the darkness
Fear not the night
You are not forsaken
We remember you
The fire exploded. Thousands of white sparks floated through the air, swirling, drifting among the otrokars. The shaman held out his hand, letting the glowing dots brush against his skin, and smiled.
The myriad of glowing lights floated up, pulled to the sky by some invisible current, and rose high, toward the greater universe beyond.