“They gave me a magic inn and access to a treasure trove of galactic knowledge.”
“They gave you an inn that was a hair away from dying, and you nursed it back to health, while they didn’t lift a finger to help.”
I held out my hand. Sean’s copper robe fell out of the ceiling into my fingers. I thrust it at him. “It’s fifteen minutes till midnight. Put the robe on and quit complaining. You knew the deal when you signed up.”
“You sound like my drill sergeants.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and we went down to the kitchen, as he slipped on his robe.
The backyard had been transformed. Colorful lanterns hung in the air, lavender, pink, green, and a warm, happy yellow. Lengths of silky fabric draped the outer wall of the inn, curving to both sides, forming canopies over the porch and part of the lawn. Delicate lantern flowers, turquoise, pink, and magenta, bloomed on the lawn. To the left, a pair of lantern peacocks the size of a car, perched among the flowers. To the right, a lantern tiger pair guarded their cub. A path stretched from the porch to the spot where the Drífan herald had entered yesterday, bordered by lantern jellyfish, suspended from nearly invisible wires. Their colorful paper tentacles swayed in the breeze.
It was just me and Sean. Caldenia was watching from her quarters, but I didn’t think it would be wise for her to be present. Orro had disappeared into his rooms. When I had notified him that the Drífen were incoming, he hadn’t responded.
The night was quiet. A cold wind stirred my hair.
Sean reached into his sleeve and pulled out a flower. It was white and frilly, with brilliant blue specks on the petals and a deep blue center. He held it out to me.
Awww. He brought me a flower.
I took it and smelled it. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”
We were standing on the porch together at midnight, with the magical lanterns glowing all around us. In a few moments, all hell could break loose, but for now it was just us. When I got old, I would remember this moment, the moment when Sean brought me a flower from Baha-char.
The Drífen arrived.
There was no power surge, no bright light from the sky, no gate in the fabric of existence. They simply appeared at the edge of the field and walked toward us. There were six of them: Zedas; the Akeraat from the previous evening; the small creature that had accompanied him; a very large woman in silver armor, with nearly white skin and equally pale hair, carrying a halberd on her back; a man dressed in black with dark brown skin and a wealth of glossy dark hair pulled back from his face, who was like a dagger, compact, fast, and probably deadly; an olive skinned woman in her early forties, her hair twisted into elaborate knots, walking primly in a green and white robe; and in front of them all, a woman in her early thirties, wrapped in an old cloak.
I searched for their magic. The woman in the cloak felt almost inert, but the others were saturated with power. I could feel them moving through the inn grounds, dense concentrated knots of magic. Gertrude Hunt creaked.
Steady. I won’t let them hurt you.
They came within fifteen feet of us and stopped.
“Greetings, innkeepers,” the woman in the cloak said. “Thank you for accepting my request and extending your hospitality to us.”
This was the liege lord? I didn’t know who I expected but she wasn’t it. She looked perfectly normal. About thirty, maybe thirty-five, with deep bronze skin, pretty, athletic build, average height. The only remarkable thing about her were her dark eyes, the same nearly black as Rudolph Peterson’s, and dark green hair. Even here in Red Deer, Texas, I saw people with green hair on a regular basis. I could have passed her in the store and never looked twice.
My brain was still processing, but my mouth was already moving. “Welcome, honored guests. Let me show you to your rooms.”
The door behind me slid to the side. A hallway formed, cutting straight through the kitchen and other rooms, sectioned off from them with invisible walls. I didn’t want any interference.
The liege lord and I entered, walking side by side. Behind us, her entourage followed. Sean brought up the rear and the tunnel collapsed behind him as soon as he passed.
“Did you make the call?” she asked. She seemed, not tired exactly, but resigned, like a person facing a mountain she didn’t want to climb.
“I did. I told him your conditions. He arrived this morning.”
“Did he try to force his way into your inn?”
“Twice. He did attempt to buy me first.”
She glanced at me. There was a magnetic authority in her gaze. I still felt no magic.
“He cannot enter while I’m here,” the liege lord said. “Not until the appointed time. I don’t wish to see him.”
“He won’t be a problem,” I told her.
“My uncle is the very definition of a problem. He’s persistent.”
That cinched it. She was definitely American. “Here I own the air we breathe. Your uncle won’t enter without my permission.”
“I hope so, innkeeper.”
I had miscalculated with the bedroom. There was a weariness in her, a kind of bitter determination. She needed comfort in the worst way, and when we sought comfort, we went home. That’s why the hamburger. She didn’t want the beautiful Drífan bedroom. She wanted an echo of home.
I reached out with my magic, carving a new room off the bedroom I had made yesterday. And now the symmetry of the original bedroom was off. I frantically shifted the columns.
“Is something the matter, innkeeper?” the liege lord asked.
“No. Are you hungry?”
“Not tonight.”
We came to the massive double doors. They swung open before us and the common room of the Drífan palace glittered beyond. The trick to building successful rooms wasn’t in duplicating the guest’s original environment. When they travelled, they wanted to see something new. If they arrived at an exact replica of the palace they left, they would be disappointed. Instead, a successful innkeeper took the elements of the original and used their imagination to create something new, familiar enough to be comfortable yet different enough to not feel stale.
The room in front of us kept the Drífan grandeur. The floor was soft beige stone with marble swirls of paler white and flecks of gold. The walls were the color of ivory, the stone weathered, as if the palace was hundreds of years old. Two rows of columns, their bodies matching the walls, their tops elaborately decorated with bands of red agate and green malachite, supported a thirty-foot ceiling with a huge domed skylight in the center.
Straight ahead, my version of a stone throne, elaborately carved from purpleheart wood, beckoned with soft green cushions. Directly behind the throne a tapestry hung on the wall, a perfect replica of the view from the Drífan balcony, complete with the blue bird. I had Gertrude Hunt weave it from colorful synthetic silk. On both sides of the tapestry double doors offered access to a balcony. More doors, six specifically, branched off from both sides of the room, leading to individual bedrooms.
I had echoed the glowing purple of the throne and the green of malachite and the red of the agate through the room with accessories, decorative swords, alien vases, padded chairs, and side tables. Alien flowers and Earth shrubs bloomed in the corners from simple clay pots that could have been made at the start of time. It was a cohesive space, still ornate, still old, but serene and calming.
Zedas took a step forward, bowing slightly at the liege lord’s right. “Is it suitable?”
“It is.” The woman strode into the room.
“Your bedroom is the closest to the throne on the right,” I specified. “My name is Dina. If you require anything, call me and the inn will notify me.”
The Drífen walked into the room past me. The large woman grasped the double doors and shut them.
I was halfway down the stairs, when I heard a voice whisper in my ear, delivered by the inn’s magic.
“Thank you for the room, Dina.”
6
The morning of the first day of Treaty Stay started with breaking up another koo-ko debate. They had convened for an early morning ritual, which progressed into a spirited discussion, which then predictably degenerated into a brawl. This time nine of the combatants had needed the regeneration chamber. At the rate they were going, we’d have a fatality before the holiday was over. I had lost only one guest in the inn, and I’d made a promise to myself to never lose another.
The day had just started, and it looked like it was only going to get worse.
“When you told me we had a new guest, you neglected to mention he was a Medamoth.” Sean loomed over me as I drank my first cup of tea.
In the depths of the kitchen, Orro moved like a dark wraith. He hadn’t made a sound since storming off yesterday.
“I have him contained in his own wing. He’s on a pilgrimage.”
“A pilgrimage or an assassination attempt?”
“A pilgrimage. He’s too high ranking to be an assassin. He’s scheduled to assume the post of a colonial governor and the Hope-Crushing Horde will be his new neighbors. He knows we brokered a peace on Nexus, and he designed this entire pilgrimage around our inn. He’s trying to figure out how to make peace with the Otrokars.”
Sean crossed his arms on his chest. “I had several Medamoths under my command on Nexus. They don’t make peace. They kill, they hunt, and they write bad poetry.”
I couldn’t resist. Auul, the planet Sean’s ancestors blew up rather than surrender to their enemies, was known as the planet of warrior poets. “So they are a poor imitation of a werewolf?”
“They are eight feet tall, homicidal, and rabid. They chase anything that moves and bite things without thinking.”
I squinted at him. “What kind of bad poetry do they write?”
Sean gave me a look and recited, “Hunt. Hunt. The scent of prey. The light of the moon. Blood on the fang. Taste the heartbeat. Rapture.”
I clapped. “That was lovely.”
“What will be lovely is when he finds out about the space chickens. There will be a massacre. And guess what? The Assembly won’t be happy about that.”