One Fell Sweep

“To exile a child is unprecedented,” Arland said.

“It is,” Maud agreed, making valiant efforts to ignore the box.

“What led to that decision?”

My sister smiled. “Perhaps, one day I will tell you, Lord Marshal.”

“Regardless of the reasons, you’ve been wronged. The child has been wronged. The Holy Anocracy doesn’t have so many children that it can throw them away. Especially one as gifted as Helen.”

“You’re too kind.”

“Perhaps you would allow me to ask for a small kindness in return,” Arland said. “Allow me to correct a small part of the injustice.”

He pushed the box toward her and proceeded to ignore it.

This was better than a soap opera.

Maud touched the top of the box. The lid slid apart section by section. She dipped her fingers into it and withdrew a crest. Unlike Arland’s crest, which showed a stylized snarling krahr in red on black, this crest was solid black and blank. A no-House crest. I’d seen them before. Vampires who’d left their House wore them. They functioned just like the regular House crests: they controlled the armor, sent out signals that communicated with ships and defensive networks, and stored information.

Maud pondered it as if it were a diamond.

“Thank you.”

Arland inclined his head and went back to his armor.

The inn’s magic chimed in my head. The Draziri were on the move.

I rose. “We have visitors.”

* * *

It started as a single ping, an intruder brushing against the boundary. It touched the boundary and burst into half-a-dozen intruders moving fast. The Draziri weren’t playing. Good, because I wasn’t either.

I crossed the threshold into the war room and stepped onto the wood. Wing was in his room and Helen in hers. Maud must’ve taken her upstairs. Perfect. A deep chime sounded through Gertrude Hunt, a clear high sound impossible to ignore. External shutters and walls clanged, locking down. My voice carried through the inn, echoing through every room.

“Gertrude Hunt is under attack. We are under lockdown until further notice. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

Thin flexible shoots spiraled from the edges of the wooden limb on which I stood, forming a two-foot-tall lattice. I held out my broom. It split into a thousand glowing blue threads that streaked into my robe, adhering to my skin and to the lattice of the inn. It would make Gertrude Hunt and I faster.

The walls around me faded, presenting a 360-degree view of the inn grounds. In the distance, from the north, six orange-sized spheres floated about two feet off the ground, slowly making their way into my territory. A quick scan told me they were rigged to explode.

Magic shifted within me, announcing another intrusion. Ha! He thought I wouldn’t notice. Dear Draziri Commander had a lot to learn about the capabilities of innkeepers.

Caldenia walked through the door, carrying a glass of wine. I smiled at her and let her usual chair rise from the floor. She sat and grinned back at me, flashing her inhumanly sharp teeth.

My sister and Arland reached the doorway at the same time. They would’ve collided, but years of politeness ingrained in Arland took over and he smoothly halted, letting Maud burst into the room. My sister carried her sword. The Marshal of House Krahr was wearing armor.

Maud looked at Caldenia. “Your Grace? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your rooms?”

“Nonsense, my dear.” Caldenia’s eyes gleamed. “I love watching her work.”

“He deployed scout spheres,” Arland said, watching the handful of robotic scouts meander their way into my territory. “He’s trying to map your range. An expensive way to do it.”

“Expensive and pointless,” Maud said. “They’ve been in range for the last six meters. She isn’t just going to destroy them the moment they touch the boundary.”

I concentrated on the depiction of the grounds. An area from the west side rushed at me, zooming closer and closer. The brush grew to mountain size, the individual blades of grass became a forest, and within that forest a chain of ten ants hurried toward the inn.

I’d scanned the ants when I first felt them crossing the boundary and now I tossed the results of the scan onto the screen so the others could see it. One individual ant expanded, rotating, the analysis rolling next to its image, listing the complex readouts. I was looking at a masterpiece of cyborg technology: a living insect carrying within it roughly a million nanobots. Silent, virtually undetectable by all but the most advanced scanners, the ants were meant to reach Gertrude Hunt and let loose their horde of tiny robots, capable of everything from surveillance to sabotage. The Draziri had no idea the architecture of the inn was fluid and changed at my whim. He was trying to map out Gertrude Hunt, looking for weak points.

Arland bared his teeth. “Clever bastard.”

“Not as clever as he thinks,” I murmured.

Magic tugged on me. I opened a second screen in the wall. The Hiru appeared on it.

“How may I be of service?” I asked.

“I realize… this time is not the best.” The Hiru’s voice sounded strained. “The first Archivarian has arrived on Earth.”

Not good. “Where?”

The Hiru raised his right palm. A small map of Red Deer appeared, a tiny glowing dot marking one of the streets. Walmart parking lot. Well, at least the first member of the Archivarius wouldn’t stand out.

“What does it look like?”

The Hiru touched his palm and a projection appeared of a man in his mid-thirties, brown-skinned, with a bald head and an intelligent face. His features were off somehow. Something about them telegraphed alien so loudly, it practically slapped your senses. It took me a moment to figure it out. His face had no pores. No wrinkles, no small imperfections, and no variations in tone troubled his skin. He looked plastic. The effect was freakish. But in darkness he would pass for a human.