“Do you remember how to use it?” Maud asked.
Helen nodded.
“Show me.”
Helen tapped the center rectangle with her finger. A translucent screen showing the layout of the ship flared into life one inch above her wrist.
“Call Mommy.”
Maud’s own unit came to life, tossing her own screen out with Helen’s image on it.
“Good.”
The harbinger unit served as the Holy Anocracy’s version of a smartphone. Equipped with a powerful processor, it made calls, tracked its target, provided maps, monitored vital signs, tracked schedules, and simplified dozens of small tasks to make one’s life easier. In adults it interfaced with armor, but Helen was wearing a child’s version. It couldn’t be removed or turned off by anyone other than a parent.
For the past five years, keeping Helen alive had been the core of Maud’s existence. Once they made planetfall, there would be times Helen would have to be on her own. Thinking about it set Maud’s teeth on edge. The harbinger didn’t take away the anxiety, but it blunted it, and right now she would take all of the help she could get.
“All set?” Maud asked.
“All set,” Helen said. “Can I bring my teddy?”
“We’ll bring all our things.”
They had so little, it didn’t take them long to pack. Five minutes later, Maud swung the bag over her shoulder, glanced one final time at the cabin and display, and took Helen by the hand. The door slid open at their approach. Maud squared her shoulders and raised her head and they stepped through it.
Let the games begin. She was ready.
Space crews had a saying, “Volume is cheap; mass is expensive.” In space, where air and friction weren’t a factor, it didn’t matter how large something was, only how much it weighed. It took a certain amount of fuel to accelerate one pound of matter to the right velocity, and then a roughly equal amount of fuel to decelerate it.
House Krahr had taken that saying and run with it. The arrival deck of the ship looked like the courtyard of a castle in the finest Holy Anocracy tradition. Square gray stones paved the floor and veneered the towering walls. Long crimson banners of House Krahr, marked with a black profile of the saber-toothed predator, stretched between the false windows. The gentle breeze of atmospheric circulators stirred the fabric, and the several krahr on the banners seemed to snarl in response.
In the middle of the chamber, a vala tree spread its black branches. Solid, with a sturdy trunk and a mass of limbs that divided and subdivided into a vast crown, the vala reminded Maud of basswood, but unlike the gentle green of linden trees, the vala’s leaves were a vivid scarlet. The blood-red heart of the ship, a remnant of the origin world, sacred to vampires. No major ritual took place in vampire society without the vala tree to witness it.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, a two-foot wide stream meandered through the smooth stream bed, crossing the deck, winding around the tree in a perfect circle, and disappearing beneath the roots. Maud could’ve understood if it was part of the water supply that would be later recycled, but there were bright sparkly fish in it. The stream served as a decoration, nothing more. The luxury boggled the mind.
There had to be some way to close it off, if the ship had to maneuver, Maud reflected. Otherwise they would have a mess on their hands. There was nothing more fun than unsecured water in zero-G.
“Can I?” Helen whispered.
“Yes,” Maud told her.
Helen ran to the tree, little heels flashing.
Maud followed slowly. She’d walked across stones just like these countless times before when she was married. If she let it, her memory would change their pale gray to a warm travertine beige; the crimson banners to Carolina-blue; and the dark ceiling of the ship to an orange-tinted sky.
She stopped before the vala tree. Every vampire planet had them. If the climate couldn’t support them, the vampires built hothouses just to plant them. A vala tree was the heart of the clan, the core of the family, a sacred place. The blossoms of the vala tree had decorated her bridal crown. It was a great honor, appropriate to the bride of the second son of the Marshal of House Ervan.
A hot pain pinched her chest. It’s in the past, she told herself. It is over and done with. Let it go.
Careful footsteps approached from behind, trying to sneak up on her. She hid a smile.
“Greetings, Lord Soren.”
The footsteps stopped, then resumed, and Lord Soren halted next to her. Vampires aged like their castles—growing bigger and sturdier, as if time itself reinforced them. Lord Soren was the perfect example of a middle-aged vampire: wide in the shoulders, muscled like a grizzled tiger, with a spectacular mane of dark-brown hair and a short but thick beard, both touched with gray. His syn-armor, midnight black with red marks denoting his rank of Knight Sergeant, and the small round crest of House Krahr, bore a few scars here and there, much like Lord Soren himself. A testament to life spent in battle. He looked like a humanoid tank.
He was also Arland’s uncle. She had worked hard to get him to like her. Lord Soren wasn’t complicated. His worldview came down to three things: honor, tradition, and family. He dedicated his life to upholding all three, and they were never in conflict. He viewed her favorably, but how far exactly his good will extended remained to be seen.
He pondered Helen, who had dropped her bag and was dipping her fingers into the stream. “The child loves the water.”
“There is little water on Karhari, my lord.” There was nothing on Karhari except miles of dry, hard dirt, and it desiccated those sent there until they hardened and dried as well.
“It’s a new experience for her.”
“It is.”
They watched her in comfortable silence.
“It’s good that you joined us,” he said.
She hoped he was right.
“Perhaps, with your presence, my nephew will stay put for longer than five minutes before running off on another fool’s errand halfway across the galaxy.”
The arrival deck was slowly filling up with people waiting to go planetside.
If he does, I’ll run off with him. “I understand Lady Ilemina is in residence?”
“She is.”
Sooner or later she would have to meet Arland’s mother. It wouldn’t be a pleasant meeting.
“Has my nephew told you why I had to come to the inn to fetch him?” Lord Soren asked.
“No.”
“What do you know of House Serak?”
She raked her memory. “One of the larger Houses. They control most of their planet, which is also named Serak, if I recall correctly. They’ve never produced a Warlord, but they did come close twice in the past five centuries. After suffering defeat in the Seven Star War, their influence diminished, but they’re still formidable. They’re also hungry to regain what they’ve lost and that makes them dangerous.”
Lord Soren nodded in approval. “And their sworn enemy?”
It took her a second. “House Kozor. A slightly smaller House, but a great deal more aggressive. They control the second habitable planet in the Serak system.”
“They’ve decided to bury the bones of their fallen,” he said.
Interesting. “An alliance?”
“A wedding.”
Maud blinked. “Even so?”
“Yes. The son of the Serak’s Preceptor will marry the daughter of the Kozor’s Archchaplain. They required a neutral location in which the ceremony can be performed.”
“Naturally.” It was a sword-edge wedding. Nobody trusted anyone, and everyone was waiting for an ambush. “Did House Krahr offer them such a haven?”
“There was no way to reasonably refuse,” Lord Soren said. “We dominate the quadrant and Serak is only one hyperspace jump away from us. The wedding is in eight days. It would’ve been more appropriate for Arland to have been on the planet to assist with preparations, but since he’s been otherwise occupied, we’ll be arriving about the same time as the wedding guests.”
“Correct me, but isn’t there another vampire-controlled star system, closer than this one, to the Serak system?”
“There is.”
Something was off about this wedding. “One wonders why two Houses with such lack of trust want to be bound.”
“Supposedly to end their conflict and form a pact.”
“If they are unable to come together for even the most joyous of occasions and require a neutral location and a host to oversee them, their alliance is doomed from the start. There must be willingness from both Houses for the marriage to hold.”
Lord Soren studied her.
“How large of a wedding party are you expecting, my lord?”
“One hundred guests from each side.”
“And they will arrive armed?”
“They will.”
House Krahr could field tens of thousands of troops. Two hundred vampires, no matter how elite, shouldn’t have posed a threat. So why did this suddenly make her uneasy?
The door in the far wall slid open and Arland strode through it. She saw his handsome face, framed with a mane of blond hair.
His blue eyes found her. He grinned. Her heart skipped a beat.
Damn it.
Arland zeroed in on them and broke into a march. He moved like a massive predatory cat, deliberately, smoothly, the blood mace at his waist a reminder of his rank. He’d fought for the place at the top and won. All of Krahr’s military obeyed him without question. And his mother was the Head of the House, the Preceptor.
Arland was the perfect embodiment of everything a vampire lord should be. Smart, powerful, fearless, and loyal. A paragon of vampire knighthood. It took Maud exactly two seconds to deduce that he was his uncle’s pride and joy. He was likely his mother’s pride and joy, too. And she was a human nobody.
“Lord Soren,” Maud murmured. “Lady Ilemina must be stressed by these preparations. Perhaps it would be wiser not to mention Lord Arland’s proposal.” And her refusing of it.
“I couldn’t agree more,” the Knight Sergeant said.