Chapter Two
The enormous bolt of faux silk unrolled slowly at my feet, its end disappearing into the marble floor. Beast had barked at it on principle for about five minutes, until she finally decided it wasn’t that exciting and went off to explore the vastness of the ballroom. She sniffed at the corners, found a quiet spot, and lay down.
I would’ve loved nothing more than to join her, except not on the floor but in my nice soft bed. Opening the ballroom had drained me. I felt like I had run several miles. Given the choice, I would’ve retired for a nap right after the Arbitrator left, but the time line for the peace summit was tight. George wanted to get started within forty-eight hours, which meant that instead of taking a nap, I had stolen a can of Caldenia’s Mello Yello to stay awake, jumped into my car, and drove through the rain to rent a truck. Then I drove the truck two hours to Austin to the largest regional fabric distributor. There I bought an enormous roll of faux silk and another of cotton. That cost me a third of my emergency fund. Next I stopped at a stone and landscaping place and purchased bulk stone. They helped me load it, and when I came back, I dumped it in the backyard where the inn promptly ate it.
Now I was here, valiantly doing my best to stay on my feet as the inn continued to consume the faux silk inch by inch.
“Well. This is quite a development.”
I turned to see Caldenia standing in the doorway. “Your Grace.”
The older woman slowly stepped into the ballroom. Her gaze slid over the marble floor, the columns, and the soaring white ceiling with golden flourishes.
“What’s the occasion?”
“We’re hosting a diplomatic summit.”
She turned on her foot and looked at me, her eyes sharp. “My dear, don’t tease me.”
“This roll of faux silk cost me six dollars per yard,” I told her. “Once I purchase food, I will be destitute.”
Caldenia blinked. “Who are the attending parties?”
“The Holy Anocracy, represented by House Krahr; the Hope-Crushing Horde; and the Merchants of Baha-char. They are coming here for the arbitration, and they will probably try to murder each other the moment they walk through the door.”
Caldenia’s eyes widened. “Do you really think so? This is absolutely marvelous!”
She would think so, wouldn’t she?
“Tell me the plan.”
I sighed and pointed at the eastern wall. I had formed a balcony along the east, west, and south sides of the room. Each balcony terminated far from its neighbors, too far for any of the species to clear in a jump and too high to safely jump down from.
“The otrokars’ rooms will be up there. They give prayers to sunrise, so they require a view of the morning sun.”
I turned and pointed at the opposite wall. “The vampires go there. Their time of reflection begins as sunset ends, so they’re in the west.”
I pointed at the North wall. “The Merchants will reside there. They’re a forest species and prefer shady rooms and muted light. Everyone has their separate stairwell. Nobody can enter quarters other than their own. The inn won’t permit it.”
I pointed to the south, where long windows sliced the wall into sections. “I’m going to put a table there for the leaders to conduct their negotiations.”
“That’s a well-planned layout,” Caldenia said. “But why pink marble?” She waved at the ceiling. “Pink marble, white ceiling, golden accents… With the electric lighting, it will turn into this ghastly orange.”
“I had one chance to impress the Arbitrator, and I had to improvise.”
Caldenia arched one eyebrow.
“I saw it in a movie once,” I explained. “It was easy to visualize.”
“Was it a movie for adults?”
“It had a talking candelabra who was friends with a grumpy clock.”
“I see. What about a ballroom from your parents’ inn?”
I shook my head. I remembered it in excruciating detail, but when I thought about recreating it, my heart squeezed itself into a painful clump. I sighed. “I can make it completely white if you would prefer.”
Caldenia’s eyes narrowed. “So the color can be altered?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, not white. White is the safest of choices. Also, as memory serves, House Krahr builds their castles with gray stone, and you don’t want to show favoritism.”
“Otrokars favor vibrant colors and ornate decoration,” I said. “They tend toward reds and greens.”
“So we must strike a balance between the two. Blue is a soothing color most species find conducive to contemplation. Why don’t we try turquoise?”
I concentrated. The marble columns obligingly changed hue.
“A little more gray. A little darker. Little more… Now, can we put lighter streaks through them? Can you fleck it with gold… Perfect.”
I had to admit the columns did look beautiful.
“Let’s take down the gold leaf,” Caldenia said. “Elegance is never ostentatious, and there is nothing more bourgeois than covering everything in gold. It screams that one has too much money and too little taste, and it infuriates peasants. A palace should convey a sense of power and grandeur. One should enter and be awestruck. I’ve found the awe tends to cut down on revolts.”
I seriously doubted I’d face any revolts, but if it cut down on the slaughter I would be quite happy.
“Gold has its uses, but always in moderation,” Caldenia continued. “Did I ever tell you about Cai Pa? It’s a water world. The entire planet is an ocean, and the population lives on giant artificial floating islands. It’s amazing how many people you can stuff into a few square miles. Each of them is ruled by a noble grown rich on pharmaceutical trade and underwater mining. Space is at a premium, so of course the fools build elaborate palaces. I had cause to attend a meeting in one of those monstrosities. They have these underwater algae forests, quite beautiful, actually, if you are into that sort of thing. The entirety of the palace walls was covered in algae cast in gold. There was not a single clear spot on the walls or the ceiling that didn’t have some sort of flourish or a flower in gold or some other garish color like scarlet. And between the algae there were portraits of the host and his family with jewels instead of eyes.”
“Jewels?”
Caldenia paused and looked at me. “Jewels, Dina. It looked ghastly. After ten minutes in the place, I felt like my eyes were under assault by an interstellar dreadnought. It was making me physically ill.”
“Some people simply live to prove to others that they have more.”
“Indeed. I lasted a single day, and when I departed, the host had the audacity to claim I had insulted his family. I would’ve poisoned the lot, but I couldn’t stand to be in the building for another moment.”
Her Grace raised her arms. “This is your ballroom, dear. Your space. The heart of your small palace. The sky is the limit, as they say. Abandon conventions. Forget the palaces of your world. Forget your parents’ inn or any other inn. Use your imagination and make it your own. Make it glorious.”
The sky is the limit… I closed my eyes and opened my mind. The inn shifted around me, its magic responding. My power flowed from me, and I let it expand and grow, unfurl like a flower.
“Dina…,” Caldenia murmured next to me, her voice stunned.
I opened my eyes. Gone was the pink marble, the gold leaf, and the crystal chandeliers. Only three windows, all in the north wall, remained. A glorious night sky spread across the dark walls and the ceiling, endless and beautiful, the light patina of lavender, green, and blue forming gossamer nebulae dotted with tiny flecks of stars. It was the kind of sky that called space pirates to their ships. Long vines spiraled around the turquoise columns that supported the balconies, and delicate glass flowers glowed with white and yellow. The floor was polished white marble, inlaid with a rich mosaic in a dozen shades from black and indigo to an electric blue and gold, stretching to the center where a stylized image of Gertrude Hunt decorated the floor, circled by a depiction of my broom.
I looked up. Above it all three enormous light fixtures came on, each a complex constellation of glowing orbs bathing the room in bright light. I smiled.
“Now that is what I call awe,” Caldenia quietly said next to me.
#
The magic chimed in my head. I opened my eyes. Ten past midnight. A little early for the summit, which was supposed to start tomorrow evening.
I swung my feet out of the bed. I’d gotten an hour of sleep. My head felt too heavy for my neck. I couldn’t remember the last time I worked so hard. I still wasn’t sure if the pits in the otrokar rooms were low enough. There was some sort of sacred proportion between the central “pit” area and the height of the plush circular couches around it. I’d consulted my guides and made them to the exact specifications listed, but my gut told me the height was off. It just didn’t look right, so I’d spent the last thirty minutes of my day lowering and raising the wooden makeshift couches before I had the inn make them in stone. It would all be worth it.
Another phantom tug, like ripples in a shallow pond. Someone stood at the end of my driveway, just inside the inn grounds, waiting politely to be invited in.
I got up and slipped on my innkeeper robe. A simple gray affair with a hood, it hid me from head to toe. Beast raised her head from her post by my bed and let out a quiet, sleepy bark. I checked the window. A dark figure stood by the front hedge, melding with the thick night shadow of an oak. It would be tall for a human. Probably a couple of inches taller than Sean.
Ugh.
I picked up my broom and left the bedroom, walking down the long hallway to the front staircase. Beast trotted next to me. The architecture of the inn had changed so much in the past few hours, my trek to the front door nearly doubled.
The floor was cool under my bare feet. The rain was still falling, and the inn and I agreed on a comfortable seventy degrees inside, but as in any house, some spots were warmer and some cooler, and I wished I had worn socks.
Why did I even think of Sean Evans?
Sean was an alpha-strain werewolf. His parents had escaped the destruction of their home planet and come to Earth where they built a life, had Sean, and raised him, all in secret. Earth served as a waypoint for many travelers from the Great Beyond. The universe, with all its planets, dimensions, and timelines, needed its central hub to be a neutral place to meet, do business, or sometimes simply stop over on the way to somewhere else. Earth had served this role for thousands of years while its native population lived in complete ignorance of the strange beings who sometimes visited the planet in twilight. That’s why inns and innkeepers like me existed. We had only two concerns: keeping our guests safe and keeping them hidden. We stayed neutral and we didn’t get involved. Sean Evans had entered my life when I’d chosen to throw caution to the wind and involved myself in something really dangerous.
In retrospect it was probably foolish, but I didn’t regret it. Together, Sean, Arland, and I had saved my small town from an interstellar assassin. Arland got to avenge a murder as an added bonus, and Sean learned the truth: he wasn’t an Earthborn mutation like his parents had told him, but a product of a military genetic breeding program from another planet. All werewolves were soldiers designed to repel a planetwide invasion by an overwhelming force, but Sean was an alpha-strain variant. Bigger, faster, stronger, a Special Forces kind of warrior. The genetic programming must’ve held true, because he became a soldier here on Earth, but he could never quite find the right place for himself.
Then we met, and I thought we had something.
No, that would be wishful thinking. We had the beginning of something, but once he glimpsed the universe beyond this planet, it was all over. The werewolves had destroyed their own planet rather than surrender it to their enemy, and he could never go “home,” but the stars called him. Because of me he ended up owing an old werewolf a favor, and once the danger here had been dealt with, Sean left to repay his debt. I knew the pull of the stars. I’d answered it myself for a while. When he walked through a portal to the sun-drenched streets of Baha-char, some part of me knew he wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon, but still I hoped he might be back in a month or two. It’s been almost half a year now. Sean was gone.
I’d decided to put him out of my mind, and for the most part I completely succeeded, but sometimes he just popped into my head. I’d glance at the back patio, remember him jumping three feet in the air when I moved it, and smile. Or I’d recall his voice. Or how it felt to be kissed by him.
“I can’t help it,” I told Beast. “It will get better. It just needs time.”
If Beast had an opinion about my occasional involuntary mooning, she kept it to herself.
I opened the front door and strode down the grass to the dark figure waiting for me by the oak. He stood swaddled in a cloak. He seemed tall when I looked at him from above, but on the same level he was towering, six five at least. I had to tilt my head. Beast growled low.
The dark figure raised his left hand, fingers up. “Winter sun.” His voice was rough, but his diction was flawless. Whatever translator he was using worked perfectly.
An otrokar. “Winter sun to you as well.” Winter sun was the kinder, gentler sun. “Welcome.”
We walked back to the front door, and I let him in.
He shrugged off the cloak. I’d seen an otrokar before. They’d frequented my parents’ inn. But having him here in my small front room was an entirely different experience.
His shoulders were broad, his stance light despite his size. A dark brown armor of braided leather strips clasped his body. Hard plates dappled with sprays of black and red in an organic pattern only a living creature could produce shielded his forearms, thighs, and shins. The same plates guarded his chest, the chitinous substance streaked through with complex swirls of golden metal that announced the presence of high-tech electronics. A belt with pockets sat on his waist, and small metal, bone, and wooden talismans hung from it. Otrokars were excellent spacers, and his was the kind of armor designed to protect while still letting one bend and flex when fighting within the confines of a spacecraft. He carried no weapons except for a short sword or a long knife that rested in a sheath on his right thigh.
From the back he could almost pass for a really tall native, but his face made it clear—this was the same primary human seed that had given rise to us and vampires, but it had clearly grown on a different planet. Otrokars had evolved on a world with a scorching sun and endless plains. They hunted in packs and ran their prey to ground. The planes of his face were sharper than those of the Earthborn, as if he had been hacked with a knife from a piece of clay; the texture of his deep bronze skin rougher; the proportions of his features skewed slightly, giving him a dangerous, predatory air. His jaw was triangular, his nose narrow, and when he spoke, his lips showed a narrow flash of sharp teeth. His short hair, coarse like the mane of a horse, seemed black until it caught the light and shone with the deep, violent red of a pigeon’s-blood ruby. His eyes, under thick eyebrows, were a startling light green.
We looked at each other. Beast growled low by my feet. She clearly didn’t like his smell. The otrokar glanced at her, his eyes evaluating. He looked like a man who expects to be jumped at any moment, and he wanted there to be no doubt that he’d pull his knife out and slice his attacker to narrow ribbons.