One Fell Sweep

Helen sat in the corner, quietly fascinated.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” I asked.

“No.” She yawned. “I’m not sleepy.”

“Let her stay,” Arland said, his voice quiet. “I remember sitting just like that watching my mother. The smells and the lights, it’s comforting.”

I sat in the chair. It was comforting to watch in a way. There was a meditative, unhurried quality about his movements, as if he were going through a ritual he’d done hundreds of times before. The light played on his profile and the strands of long blond hair that had escaped his ponytail. He was right. Helen probably watched her father or my sister check their armor just like this.

For a while he worked quietly. Helen’s head drooped. She sighed and put her head on the table onto her arms. Her eyes closed. She wasn’t quite asleep yet. I could see her eyelashes trembling. A few more minutes and I would let the inn carry her to bed.

“How well do you know Sean Evans, my lady?” Arland asked quietly.

“As well as I know you.” Actually, I knew Sean better. He had shared his secrets with me. Arland hadn’t.

“I don’t believe he is who he presents himself to be,” Arland said.

“What makes you think that?”

Arland raised his hand with a small tool in it and drew an imaginary line. It started low, climbed upward, and evened out in an arc. “This is a standard planet-to-orbit shuttle trajectory.”

He moved his tool low and drew a second line. This time it kept going low, accelerated, and curved sharply, shooting up. The trajectory was almost completely inverse. “This is what Sean Evans did.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The second trajectory sharply accelerates the craft before the drastic atmospheric climb. It’s less comfortable for the passengers and it’s harder on the shuttle.”

I could testify to it being less comfortable. At the time, it felt like a rhino sat on my chest.

“There is only one place where that trajectory is absolutely necessary. The atmospheric anomalies there make flight unpredictable and unsafe, so it is necessary to attain the proper speed and acceleration at low altitude before punching through the atmosphere as fast as possible while at the same time ascertaining that the way is clear and you’re not taking the craft straight into an anomaly that suddenly formed above your shuttle.”

“And where is this place?” I knew the answer.

“Nexus,” Arland said.

That’s what I thought.

“I don’t know what he told you he did, but I asked him where he’d learned to fly.”

“I was there. I remember. He said Wilmos taught him.”

Arland nodded. “I did some checking through our databanks. Wilmos isn’t unknown to my House. I give you my word as a knight of the Holy Anocracy that Wilmos Gerwar knows the proper trajectory for a planet-to-orbit shuttle ascent.”

“You think Sean was on Nexus.”

Arland nodded. “The Merchants employed many mercenaries.”

“Would it be such a bad thing if he was?”

“Nexus changes people,” Arland said. “I’m concerned only for your safety.”

“In that case she should be concerned about you as well,” Maud said from the doorway. “After all, you’ve done two tours, Lord Marshal.”

Arland raised his head and studied her.

My sister walked in and put her armor on the table. The inn’s wall opened and the repair kit Arland had given her slipped out. She caught the heavy box and placed it on the table.

“I’m a knight. I’ve been conditioned to handle the rigors of war from childhood.”

Maud spread her armor out, her eyes half closed under her long eyelashes as she surveyed it. “You would be surprised how many knights break under the rigors of war, my lord. They break and they run, as their honor lies dying behind them.”

“I do not run, my lady.”

Maud arched her eyebrow. If I didn’t know, I would’ve sworn she was a vampire. “I have run, my lord. And I would do it again, if the circumstances called for it. Honor can’t keep my daughter alive, but I can.”

“There is a difference between blindly fleeing for your life and a strategic retreat because the battle is lost,” Arland said, spraying pearlescent solution onto his armor.

“Sometimes it is very difficult to tell the difference between the two.” Maud tapped the kit. It unfurled like a flower. She selected a narrow tool with her long elegant fingers and concentrated on some imperceptible flaw on the right shoulder.

Arland’s eyes narrowed. “Although if I wore your armor, I would run, my lady. Is that a manual terminal on your vambrace?”

Maud grimaced.

“Was your crest damaged?”

“It was ripped off my armor when House Ervan exiled me and my husband, my lord. You’ve read the file.”

“You seem very sure of that, my lady.”

She shot him a quick glance. “A knight conditioned to handle the rigors of war, such as yourself, would make sure he knew exactly who he allowed on board his destroyer.”

Arland opened his bag, took out a black box, and set it by his armor. Square, six inches by six, the box was completely solid. No seam, no line marking the place where the lid fit. Just a solid box that seemed to absorb the light.

Maud’s eyes widened. Arland went back to working on his armor. Maud did as well. Some sort of strange vampire communication was taking place here.