Sweep of the Heart

21

In our last thrilling instalment, the identity of the pirate prince was finally revealed. He was exposed and purged from the inn to Baha-char, where the woman whose family he murdered exacted her revenge. It wasn’t swift, but it was bloody.

Vercia got her just deserts when Orata dumped the entire responsibility for the Muterzen pirate prince into her lap. Vercia realized that she has a space cruiser sized target on her back and attempted to request a room at the inn. The request was denied. Mmm, so satisfying.

Now the guests are in their chambers and the long-awaited date between Cyanide and the Sovereign is beginning. Are you suffering from sweltering summer heat? Read on, for relief is only a few words away.

Gertrude Hunt had a dozen branches. Some we used often, like the one leading to Baha-char. Some, like the desert door, were used once in a while. The rest stayed mostly shut, and half of the time I forgot we even had them. However, today one of those forgotten branches got its chance to shine.

Cyanide made three requests with regard to her date: she wanted to be up high, she wanted a new view, and she wanted something soft to lie on. Like most big cats, she didn’t fancy walks unless it was the only way to get a delicious snack. We managed to deliver on all three counts.

Kosandion surveyed the rustic alpine lodge. To be honest, rustic was a relative term. It wasn’t rustic as in “Grandpa built a little cabin out of whatever timber he found handy.” It was the luxury kind of rustic, a modern homage to a Renaissance Jagdschloss that sometimes occurred when too much money met the need to roleplay as a medieval Bavarian aristocrat hosting a hunting party.

The lodge was sixty feet tall, with a gabled ceiling made of faux-redwood boards in a rich beautiful brown. The floor matched the ceiling. In front of me, a wall built with rough square slabs of gray stone housed a massive fireplace. A fire crackled within, radiating warmth. Thick timbers, stripped of their bark but left naturally round, thrust from the wall above the fireplace, supporting a narrow second story walkway. Matching wooden columns rose to the ceiling to meet thick beams.

The wall on my left was redwood and stone. The walls on my right and behind me were floor to ceiling glass, set into a faux-redwood frame. Beyond the glass lay an alien planet. A winter wonderland stretched as fast as the eye could see.

We were high up on a mountain slope under a sky smothered with pale clouds. In the distance, on the left, a white peak rose from the forest, jagged and sharp, a sign of a young mountain range. Just beyond the windows, the ground dropped, rolling to the valley below. Alien trees blanketed the steep slope. Their branches, sheathed with long, fluffy needles and coated with snow, cast blue shadows onto pristine white powder. It was one of the most perfect winter landscapes I had ever seen. You could almost hear the crunch of the snow underfoot just by looking at it.

“Where is this?” Kosandion asked.

“I don’t know. There are no artificial signals coming from this planet. No radio waves, no energy readings. When that happens, the only way to identify the location is by taking an image of the night sky and running it through a galaxy mapping unit, but I’ve never seen the stars here. It is always like this—a long blue winter under an overcast sky.”

Theoretically, we could get a small craft through the branch’s door and fly up past the cloud cover to capture an image of the stars, but it would be dangerous and there was no need for it.

Kosandion crossed his arms and gazed out the window. He’d traded his Sovereign robe for a two-piece outfit that reminded me of the stylish Senator-wear designs from Nigeria: narrow hunter green pants and a matching shirt with an asymmetric hem that ended almost at his knees. The Senator shirts tended to be cut a little loose, while Kosandion’s tunic, embellished with the Dominion’s geometric embroidery, was perfectly tailored to accentuate the breadth of his shoulders and his narrow waist.

Kosandion’s body looked elegant, but his face looked troubled. It wasn’t his expression, it was in the eyes, a kind of weary introspective distance.

“How much trouble will Vercia’s mess cause you?” I asked.

“More than I would’ve preferred,” he said. “The Muterzen fleet is an immediate threat, but the Murder Beaks should keep them occupied. Still, contingency measures must be implemented.”

“What about her family? Will they make things difficult?”

“The Dominion’s politics are complicated. There will be quiet inquiries. Those who are perceptive enough will discern that show for what it was—a good save and a swift punishment. In the immediate future, her family will lobby for federal protection.”

“Will you grant it?”

He shook his head. “The penalty for impeding a public official is a tiered charge. The more power one has, the steeper the punishment. An ordinary citizen shouting over Resven would have gotten a warning and a small fine, but Vercia was a highly placed officer in the Liaison Corps. If the Justice Corps proceeded with the charges, she could have faced a prison term. She resigned last night, hoping to avoid it. Now she is no longer a servant of the people, therefore she is ineligible for the additional federal security. This will not endear me to her family in the slightest. They will bide their time waiting to stab me in the back, and I will spend the next couple of years slowly removing them from positions of influence.”

He fell silent. First, Odikas and his Conservative Alliance looking for a leader, then the pirates, Vercia, her well-connected family, and all on top of the spousal selection and other matters pertaining to running the Dominion, which didn’t stop just because he was trying to find a partner. He had a lot on his plate.

“Her Grace asked me to tell you something. I meant to do it last night, but things were hectic.”

Kosandion raised his eyebrows.

“Olivio teseres tares,” I told him.

He smiled.

“What does it mean?”

“‘Fate needs a mason,’” he said. “It’s an old saying.”

She told him to become the architect of his own destiny. Interesting.

I felt Cyanide approach. It was time to put on a show for the viewers many light years away.

“Your date is here, Letero.”

The doors in the far wall opened, revealing Tony and Cyanide walking side by side. The big, white cat saw the winter outside, opened her blue mouth, and panted once. I didn’t know enough about the Higgra to interpret that.

“Greetings, candidate Cyanide,” Kosandion said.

“Greetings, Sovereign of the Dominion.”

Tony retreated and shut the door behind him.

Cyanide padded to the fire. I had made her a long, ergonomic version of a cushioned chaise lounge, large enough for her to stretch out. Kosandion got a comfortable stuffed chair. I had put a couple of small tables here and there, but I kept it simple.

Cyanide examined the lounge and looked at me. “Sit here.”

I glanced at Kosandion. He frowned.

I sat on the edge of the lounge. Cyanide leaped onto it and flopped herself on my lap, all two hundred and fifty pounds of her.

Ow.

Big golden eyes stared at me. “I require attentions,” Cyanide announced. “All of them.”

Kosandion raised his eyebrows.

“And the brush,” Cyanide said.

Whatever made this date go smoothly.

I reached out, and Gertrude Hunt pulled one of the brushes from the stables. They were soft with dense bristles, originally designed for the beasts of burden the Merchants sometimes brought with them, and I had sterilized them after each use. The brush landed in my hand, and I began working through Cyanide’s fur. Her eyes widened, flashing dangerous gold, then half closed, and she turned her head, presenting me with the corner of her jaw. Just like Olasard. Except he barely weighed seventeen pounds. If this went on for too much longer, my legs would go numb.

Silence ensued.

Cyanide made a soft rumble in her throat. It was too deep to be a purr and not violent enough to be a roar, more like an internal contented cough.

“Do you wish to tell me of your planet?” Kosandion asked.

“No.”

Well, this was going swimmingly.

He tried again. “What would you rather talk about instead?”

Cyanide turned over on her back, her fuzzy paws level with my face. I glided the brush along her chest. Long claws shot out of her paws and withdrew.

“If I marry you, can I bring this human with me to serve me?”

“No,” Kosandion said.

“A pity.”

Cyanide made her coughing noise again.

More silence. Kosandion really needed an image boost, and his spousal candidate was flat-out ignoring him. How to salvage this…

Kosandion pulled out a small gadget, squeezed it, and it projected a tablet in front of him. He began scrolling through the documents.

A minute passed. Another.

What was going on?

“You should tell her about our arrangement,” Cyanide said, stretching to get a better brushing angle. “Or she won’t focus on attentions.”

“Is that wise?” I asked.

“This date isn’t broadcast live,” Kosandion told me, still absorbed in whatever he was reading. “Highlights only.”

“I thought all dates were live like Ellenda’s.”

Kosandion put the tablet device on the side table.

“Ellenda didn’t do well in the voting, but her presence guaranteed high ratings,” he said. “My mother was a mysterious, inscrutable figure for most of her stay in the Dominion. She spent twenty-two years there, and by the time she returned to her planet, most people knew just as little about her as they did when she first arrived. For the Dominion’s citizens, Ellenda was a chance to get a better understanding of the Uma, my mother, and my heritage. The Higgra do not generate the same level of interest.”

I thought that the spouse had to stay for a period of 25 years… Oh. Kosandion was twenty-one when his father died. His mother must’ve left when he ascended the throne. Was it voluntary? Did she want to go home?

“I do not care about the Dominion’s interest,” Cyanide rumbled.

“What do you care about?” I asked.

“The neural nets,” Cyanide said. “And Clan Sai.”

Clan Sai, the Merchants who claimed the Dominion as their territory. This was getting convoluted. Officially, the Merchants had no territories, and many of them competed for the best trade partners, trying to outbid each other. But they always strived for a monopoly, and once a Merchant Clan grasped a region in its claws, it was difficult to shake them loose. According to Cookie, a century ago, Clan Sai managed to push out the other three Merchant Clans vying for the Dominion, and they had been highly protective of it ever since.

“What’s a neural net?” I asked.

“There is a special plant that grows on our planet,” Cyanide said. “A fur lichen den, formed by the long tendrils of the fur lichen plant colony. Many organisms coexist within the fur lichen, some microscopic and others large enough to be visible by even a human eye. The Fuzzy Worms feed on the many creatures of the fur lichen den and craft their webs within it. We harvest the webs and weave them into neural nets with our tools and claws.”

“The neural nets are the best solution for regeneration of the nervous system,” Kosandion said. “Once they’re implanted, the healing is miraculous. People whose paralysis resisted every other treatment regain the use of their limbs within days. Transplants, nanotherapy, artificial neurons, nothing else comes close.”

“We want to sell them to the Dominion,” Cyanide said. “But the Sai are blocking our way.”

“The Sai have moved a ship into the orbit of the Higgra planet,” Kosandion explained. “They’re pressuring the Higgra to use them as intermediaries for the sale. The Higgra have applied for a direct trade agreement with the Dominion; however, Clan Sai indicated that they are not above using their other trade agreements as leverage.”

“If you buy directly from the Higgra, the Merchants will pitch a fit and stop supplying you with other goods?” I guessed.

“Precisely,” Kosandion said. “According to the federal guidelines, a thorough review of the potential impact must be conducted by the Commerce Department, which could take years.”

“So, you’re cutting out the middleman and the bureaucracy by using the Higgra’s minor ask.” I brushed Cyanide’s throat.

“Yes.” Kosandion smiled. It was a sharp and cold smile. “I don’t react well to blackmail.”

A lot of things suddenly made sense. I kept brushing. Cyanide rumbled, her eyes closed. In the fireplace a log popped, sending sparks into the flue.

“If Clan Sai suddenly canceled their trade deals, it would put the Dominion’s economy into a difficult position,” I said. “If only there were another Merchant clan willing to step into the gap. Someone with a lot of resources, able to react to the situation quickly. Someone who might have sent a representative to observe this spousal selection.”

Kosandion chuckled. “By the end of this affair, we will make you into a proper Dominion politician, Dina. Let me know if you ever consider a career change.”

“No thank you,” I told him. “I’m happy right here, doing what I do now.”

Cyanide rumbled and turned on her side. Kosandion picked up the tablet and resumed his reading.

Outside the snow began to fall, fat fluffy snowflakes drifting softly to the ground. For the next half hour, I brushed the big cat and watched the snow, while the Sovereign caught up on his paperwork.

Tony ambushed me as soon as the Higgra’s date was over.

“Dad wants to talk to you.” He thrust the phone at me.

My heart made a pirouette. Most innkeepers avoided personal phone calls. Even getting a phone number of an innkeeper was a sign of trust, and it was understood that direct communication was only for emergencies. What was bad enough for him to call me?

Brian Rodriguez looked back at me from the screen. “Have you gotten anything from Lachlan Stewart?”

“No. I don’t know who he is. Should I know who he is?”

Brian heaved a sign. “How much do you know about the Loch Broom Inn?”

“Um… It’s an old castle in Scotland. Very remote. They specialize in large-scale events.”

Loch Broom was off the beaten path, and its beautiful but severe landscape meant that human visitors were rare. If you wanted to have a destination wedding on Earth, or a diplomatic summit, or a convention, Loch Broom Castle was your venue. It wasn’t the only inn catering to large-scale events, but it was one of the better known.

“Lachlan runs Loch Broom Castle. He is fourth generation, old, and crochety. Also stubborn like a goat.”

“Okay.”

“He wants to adopt you.”

“What?”

“He’s eighty years old, and he’s been looking for a successor. His oldest is an ad-hal, and her kids live off-planet. His youngest took over a small inn in Bulgaria just to get away from him. His kids don’t want to deal with their grandfather either. Lachlan’s been watching the coverage of the selection, and he’s decided you are worthy.”

The walls around me creaked in alarm. In the innkeeper world, adoption could take place at any age, provided the “parent” was at least twenty years older than the “child.” Once adopted, the “child” would be considered a rightful heir to the “parent’s” inn. But I wasn’t an orphan. This was ridiculous.

“I already have parents.”

“That was pointed out to him. He says that according to our guidelines, enough time passed that they can be declared dead soon...”

“They are not dead!” They were missing.

Brian nodded. “I know. We told him. He is determined to get you and Sean over to Scotland. He says you have ‘the vision.’”

A wall to my left parted and Sean came out of it, looking ready to fight somebody.

“It doesn’t matter what he’s determined to do. I’m not leaving Gertrude Hunt. The Assembly can’t separate us, I won’t—”

Sean put his arm around me and leaned over my shoulder to pin Brian with a stare.

Brian raised his hand. “Dina, if Lachlan reaches out to you, he might make it seem that this has been decided and you must leave your inn and go to Loch Broom. I’m telling you right now, as a representative of the Assembly, you don’t have to do what he says. If he tries to bully you, call me. You’re doing a good job where you are. You’ve bonded with your inn. Nobody is going to remove you unless a catastrophe happens. So don’t worry about it, and if he calls, tell him no. Okay?”

“Okay. Thank you for the warning.”

“Let me talk to Tony, please.”

I handed the phone to Tony, and he walked away, muttering something.

Sean hugged me. “What happened?”

“An elderly Scottish innkeeper wants to adopt me.” I shook my head. “What’s next?”

“Next, you’re going to sit down for at least 15 minutes and eat something. Come on.”

He sat me down at the kitchen table, and Droplet brought me food. I took exactly two bites of the most delicious burrito I had ever tasted, and then the inn tugged on me. The werewolf was awake.

I found the werewolf in our high-tech med unit. She must’ve heard me come in, but she gave no indication of it. I approached the bed. She looked at me and didn’t say anything.

I pulled up a chair and sat. Her color was much better, and she seemed alert. Around us the walls were a nebulous charcoal, swirls of darker and lighter gray. Karat had an aversion to the sterile white, so I had adjusted it to her preferences.

Gertrude Hunt pulled on my attention, announcing an incoming call from Gaston. I took it.

“We have a slight problem,” his disembodied voice said from the empty air about eight feet up.

The werewolf sat up and squinted at the source of the voice.

“What is it?” I had dumped, that is delegated, the responsibility for the 2nd Trial, the talent show, onto Gaston and Tony. They should be at the rehearsal now.

“One of the talent demonstrations is in poor taste.”

“What do you mean?”

“I personally find it distasteful,” he said.

What would Gaston find distasteful? Orata warned me that the candidates were allowed a lot of latitude when displaying their talents. Even if one of them were to light themselves on fire, we couldn't interfere.

“Is it dangerous to other guests?”

“No.”

“You have to let them do it. If we block any of the candidates from demonstrating their talents, they could claim we prevented them from becoming a spouse.”

“Understood.”

He broke the connection. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

“You win,” she said finally.

I waited.

“I saw you kill that thing before I passed out. You’re stronger than me, so you win.”

“I never was in competition with you.”

She looked away.

“What’s wrong with your ossai?” I asked.

She gave me a dark look.

“You didn’t go into a wetwork form during the fight,” I told her. “And your rate of regeneration is lower than that of a typical werewolf.”

The ossai were a marvel of bioengineering. A programmable synthetic virus, it was the reason werewolves could bounce up tall trees, murder their opponents with insane speed and accuracy, and change shape. The werewolves had three forms: the human form they called OPS; the OM form, a quadrupedal animal shape they used for scouting and covert action; and the wetwork form, a huge human-wolf monster, which they used in combat.

Werewolves changed forms without thinking. It was instinctual like breathing. Sean had shifted into the wetwork shape when he’d attacked the cruiser and then shifted back, probably without conscious effort.

She didn’t. The corrupted ad-hal nearly killed her, but she had stayed human.

“What’s wrong?” I repeated.

The werewolf sucked the air in and let it out slowly. “Activation failure. In your boyfriend, the ossai are linked into a single bionet. They communicate with each other. My ossai don’t. Sometimes chunks of them link up, and I get a boost, but most of the time they fail.”

Oh. Like a faulty fluorescent light. When Sean flipped the switch, the light came on instantly and was blindingly bright. When she flipped the switch, it pulsed and flickered.

“Can your ossai be fixed?”

She shook her head. “I hoped so, but Wilmos said no.”

Sean was right. She had a problem, and she went to see Wilmos. Except this time he couldn’t help.

The werewolf shrugged. “It took me three years to make my way to him, and in the end, it was for nothing. My parents are normal. Apparently, this just happens sometimes during fetal development.”

“You fight well.”

She gave me a bitter smile. “I like how you didn’t say the second part out loud. I fight well—for a defective werewolf.”

“Only things can be defective, not people.”

“Spare me.”

There was a lot of self-loathing there. Arguing with her would only provoke hostility.

“Wilmos said that if I find a strong werewolf, the kids would be normal. If at least one parent is fully active, and the fetus is monitored and treated in the womb, the activation failure usually doesn’t reoccur,” she said.

“Is that why you fixated on Sean?”

“I asked Wilmos who the strongest werewolf was. He said Sean but he was taken. I never run away from a fight.”

“No, you just run into it without thinking.”

She glared at me.

“I was talking to the thing that took Wilmos, and you attacked it before I got anywhere.”

It took a few seconds to sink in. She slumped against her pillow.

“You know where Wilmos is,” she finally said. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Why they took him? Is he alive? What do they want?”

She looked at the ceiling. I could see it in her face: she realized that she screwed up. It wasn’t the first time, and I could tell it was getting old for her.

“Have you ever seen Sean fight?” I asked her.

“Fight? No. I barely got to talk to him. The first time, he threw me out of your inn. The second time he came out to get the guy with weird teeth and told me to stay out of his way.”

I flicked my fingers. A screen appeared on the wall. On it, a battle raged across the barren hellish landscape. Armies clashed, vampires in black syn-armor, otrokars in battle suits, and the Merchant mercenaries in tactical gray.

“Nexus,” I told her.

A clump of fighters burst on the right and a single figure tore out into the open. He was seven feet tall and clad in obsidian black. The armor coated him like a second skin, flowing over his muscular body, completely seamless. It turned into clawed gauntlets on his oversized hands, into boots on his feet, and into a hood on his head. Inside the hood was darkness. Ink-black darkness that looked back at you.

The fighter ripped into the soldiers, moving with insane speed. The two green-edged blades in his hands sliced, stabbed, and cut with relentless, controlled fury.

The werewolf woman stared, open-mouthed.

“Nexus killed all of Sean’s predecessors. Every Turan Adin before him died,” I said.

Nuan Cee had given me this recording after the Peace Summit. I never knew why. It just arrived one day to the Baha-char door, a small datacube inside a little box with Clan Nuan seal on it. I had watched it twice so far, and I’d cried every time. A familiar heat warmed the back of my eyes. I had to hold it back until I got my point across.

“Consider the kind of willpower required to wake up every morning and fight through hell, then heal your wounds, and do it again. And again. And again.”

The vampire and otrokar warriors moved as one, their blades slicing, creating a deadly whirlwind with Sean at its center, their own fighting forgotten. Blades flashed, and then the ring of weapons and fighters broke, and he was through, splattered with blood. He didn’t feel like Sean. He felt like a force, as if the rage and the bloodlust that emanated from the fighters had coalesced into a humanoid form and tore through the battlefield.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“Why are you crying?” she asked me, her voice quiet.

“Because he is inside that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He was protecting the Merchant fort. He didn’t fully understand what was required of him until he arrived there. He found refugees, families, children, the elderly. Creatures who had no place to go. Their lives depended on him. He couldn’t leave. There was no escape, so he killed a part of himself, the one that was kind and funny and was bothered by hurting others, and became that. I cry because I know what it cost him.”

She looked back at the slaughter.

“It took him a long time to come back,” I told her. “Do you understand now? I haven’t trapped him here. I’m not guilt-tripping him into staying or keeping him from being the best werewolf he can be. No force in this galaxy could make Sean do something against his will. I knew him before he was Turan Adin, I saw him with the armor on, and I was there when he took it off. He stays here because he loves me, and I love him.”

She looked at the battle. “Please turn it off.”

I dismissed the screen. We sat in silence for a few moments.

“Your wounds should heal in another couple of days. Do you have a place to go? Where is home?”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “A small room a block away from Wilmos’ shop. I’ve been living there for the last six months. When he didn’t have werewolf guests, I went to hang out at his shop and listen to his war stories. Hanging on to scraps of other people’s glory because I don’t have any of my own.”

Sean had viewed the recording of our fight with the corrupted ad-hal, and according to him, she was well trained and knew what she was doing in a fight. Despite her activation issues, she was faster and stronger than an average human. A lot of security forces would be happy to have her. Failing that, she could make a good living as a mercenary.

None of that mattered. Her self-esteem was nonexistent. She seemed to tackle every problem head-on, without strategy or planning, trying to power through it on sheer will and physical persistence. It must have worked for her in childhood. She probably learned that even if her ossai misfired, if she just ran fast enough, hit hard enough, and didn’t quit, she could hold her own. But the older she grew, the wider the gap between her and other werewolves became. She was likely almost as good as everyone in early childhood, but by mid-teens she would’ve started to lag behind, and by the time she became an adult, she probably realized that no matter how hard she tried, she could never keep up.

If she continued on the same path she was on now, she would die fighting. Heroically, but probably needlessly. She needed to feel competent, to be in a place where her skills were valued, so she could stop seeing herself as a failed werewolf. I needed to talk to her more, but it was almost 10 pm, and I had somewhere else to be.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Derryl of Is.”

I waved my arm. The wall in front of us opened into a new room with a floor-to-ceiling window that offered a soothing view of our pond. I slid the medward bed into it, lightened the walls to a comfortable, soothing blue-gray, and added a screen, some furniture, and a plush rug.

“Things are not as bleak as they look, Derryl,” I told her. “You still have a couple of days to recuperate. Rest. We’ll talk again.”

I knocked on the door of the Gaheas’ quarters. The door opened slightly, giving me a narrow view of a female Gaheas. Like most of her people, she was tall and willowy, with amber skin and long, dark hair put away into an elaborate arrangement on top of her head. When Gaheas felt at ease, they let their hair down, literally. With the exception of their candidate, not a single one of them let themselves have a L’Oreal moment after that first opening ceremony. They considered themselves to be in enemy territory.

“A calm night to you, innkeeper,” the Gaheas said. “How can I be of service?”

“A calm night to you as well. I have a small gift for Nycati.”

“Now isn’t a good time,” the guard said.

“On the contrary, now is the perfect time. It is the end of the 4^th Phase, and if we wait another half an hour, it will be too late.”

I raised my hand and made a small gesture, gently forcing the door to open a bit wider. Behind me Gaston carried a large trunk. I lifted the lid so she could see the shimmering fabric inside.

The woman’s eyes widened. She stepped aside, inviting me to enter with a sweep of her hand. I walked in, with Gaston right behind me.

The interior of the Gaheas’ common room was perfectly round. While they recognized the need for straight lines in technology, when it came to their living arrangements, they considered corners inauspicious. The floor was smooth and gray, like soapstone. The walls were slightly curved, forming a gentle dome overhead, and made of burled wood and smoky resin. On their native planet, the resin would be polished quartz, seamlessly fitted to the wood swirls, but we had to make the quarters in a hurry, and the tinted resin was a quick and easy substitute.

The entire delegation had gathered in the center of the room, clustered around Nycati. They turned as one at my approach, their stares hostile. Hands went to weapons, which in their case meant they simultaneously touched the ornate tiaras and diadems on their heads. Duke Naeoma Thaste, the official head of the delegation, stepped forward, body-blocking Nycati from my view.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion?”

I waved my arm. The dome above us opened like a flower bud blooming. The view of the night sky spread above us, the moon bright like a silver coin. A small red spark ignited in the wall to the left, projecting a translucent red circle with a complex border upward, centering it on the light of a very distant star. An equally complex array of light painted the floor with twenty-one spaces arranged in three concentric circles. One in the center, three in the ring around it, and the rest along the outer rim.

The Gaheas stared at me, unsure. I raised my hand, indicating Gaston’s trunk. The female guard who’d greeted me at the door gently lifted the fabric out of the chest. It unfurled into a shimmering metallic sash, and the light of the array reflected on it and fractured into a rainbow of colors.

Everyone went still. It was a royal stole.

The moon of Gahea dominated its night sky. Several times larger than Earth’s satellite, Gahea’s moon rotated very slowly on its axis, and as it turned, it changed colors, flowing from one phase to another. The phases dictated every aspect of the Gaheas’ calendar. Their passage of time, their holy days and rituals, even the selection of the most auspicious day for marriage, birth, battle, and the signing of contracts — everything depended on the moon.

Today marked the end of the 4^th Phase, the conclusion of the Gaheas’ winter. It was a holy day. Failing to carry out the correct rituals meant bringing ill fortune for the next six Gahean months, until the 10^th Phase, the middle of summer, the date of equal spiritual potency when the effect of neglecting the 4^th Phase rites could be negated.

The phase rituals were complex. It was vitally important that proper formalities were observed, especially the correct attire. However, the Gaheas hadn’t brought a royal garment for Nycati. It would have been an obvious tell of his identity, which they were desperately trying to hide. Now the lot of them didn’t know if they should kill me or thank me.

Nycati murmured something, too quiet for me to hear.

Naeoma Thaste stepped aside. Nycati strode forward, stopped before us, and raised his arms. Carefully, with great reverence, the guard carried the stole to him and knelt, offering it in her outstretched hands. The duke approached, picked up the stole, and draped it over Nycati’s shoulders.

“How did you know?” the hidden prince asked.

“I am an innkeeper. It is my sacred duty to see to the security and comfort of everyone within the inn.”

I put a bit of emphasis on that “everyone.”

“Understood,” Nycati said.

I bowed my head, and Gaston and I retreated, leaving the chest on the floor. The doors shut behind us, and we walked down the long hallway back to the throne room.

“What the hell was that all about?” Gaston said. “That was a very near thing. One wrong word, one wrong gesture, and we would have had to make a very undignified exit.”

“Nycati is secret royalty.”

“The best kind. I take it, they’re hiding his pedigree?”

“Yes. Except their society is hung up on etiquette, and the duke slipped up a couple of times and treated their candidate with too much deference. The gap in rank was obvious.”

“And you wanted them to know that you know. Any particular reason?”

“Nycati has a date with Kosandion tomorrow, after the 2nd Trial. If he tries anything, I won’t just restrain him, I will expose him, and I wanted them to understand that.”

“And you brought me along to demonstrate that not only you know but other people are aware of his lineage as well. Killing you would be pointless and killing me would be difficult.”

“Yes.”

Gaston let out a rumbling chuckle. “Have you ever considered a career in skullduggery, Dina?”

“Everyone is offering me a job lately.”

“You’re doing so well. That’s how it works. Do you find any of the offers tempting?”

“None at all. I don’t need a new job, I just want people to stop making the one I have more difficult.”

Gaston laughed.

I waved goodbye to him and headed straight for my bedroom. Tomorrow would be another busy day and I needed all the rest I could get.