“And they would flush out the Under-Marshal,” Ilemina finished. She
rose, her arms crossed, and studied the screen. “The question is, why
are they so fixated on the Marshal and Under-Marshal? Even if both fall,
the House won’t be leaderless. Their numbers are still too insignificant
to do any real damage. With two hundred knights against our
thousands, all they can really do is to take a hostage and barricade
themselves somewhere they thought they could defend. But even so,
we would just pry them out. What is the end game here? What do they
want?”
The room fell quiet.
Ilemina was right. It made no sense.
“They do have a plan,” Arland said. “Everything they have done up until
now has been thought out and calculated.”
“Except for the incident with the lees and the Tachi,” Karat said. “What
could they possibly accomplish by hassling the aliens?”
Soren leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “It may have
been a misguided attempt to embarrass us by demonstrating that we are
unable to protect our guests. However, the burden of shame would fall
on their Houses. They would have acted badly, and their leadership
would appear weak because they couldn’t control their people and
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account for their boorish behavior. Reparations and apologies would
have to be made, and they are in no position to offer any. They have
been reduced to pirating their quadrant for resources.”
“They were trying to make them leave,” Maud said.
Everyone looked at her.
“If the lees and the Tachi felt threatened, they would evacuate,” she
explained. “Neither delegation has the numbers to oppose a large attack
and neither party wants to antagonize you. They want the trade station
and access to your space. If their presence became an issue or caused
any inconvenience, they would remove themselves from the situation
rather than risk aggravating you. They would wait the wedding out and
resume negotiations after the other guests left.”
Otubar leaned forward. “The ends justify the means.”
“Yes,” Soren agreed. “They are willing to weather the shame if it means
running off the lees and the Tachi.”
“But we’re back to why?” Ilemina said. “What possible detriment could
the lees and the Tachi be to their plan?” She turned to Maud.
Great. “I don’t know.”
“See if you can find out,” Soren said.
This would not be an easy conversation to have, but it was better to have
it now before they gave her any more responsibility.
“I’ve made a deal with Nuan Cee,” Maud said. “I now owe him a favor
for saving my daughter.”
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“That reminds me,” Ilemina said. “Could a lees have poisoned Helen?”
“It needed to be said,” Otubar said.
“No,” Arland said. “That was the first thing I checked. All of the lees
were nowhere near the game grounds or the lake. Their equipment is
sophisticated and can render them practically invisible, but I have seen
their disruptor in action and Nuan Cee knows about it. The disruptor
relies on a maille emitter, and once you know what to screen for, it’s not
hard to find. They’ve been using plain stealth to get around the castle
and record candid videos of us, but they had nothing to do with
poisoning the child. It would be too heavy handed for them anyway.”
“Why?” Karat asked.
“The lees pride themselves on balance,” Arland said. “A good bargain is
the highest honor they could strive for. Saving a child and collecting a
favor from the parent satisfies the need for balance. Hurting a child to
save it and then collecting the favor is not a balanced transaction.”
Maud almost did a double take. He flashed her a grin.
“Is he right?” Ilemina asked.
“Yes. The lees pride themselves on being clever. To set us up by hurting
Helen would go against Nuan Cee’s clan’s code.” Maud took a deep
breath. “However, I do owe him a favor. He will collect, which means
security risk.”
Ilemina waved her hand. “Eeh.”
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“You are a security risk if we don’t know about it,” Soren said.
Ilemina shrugged. “Go to the lees for me and get their take on the
situation. Same with the Tachi.”
“I’ll need something to bargain with,” Maud said.
Arland’s mother rolled her eyes. “They’ve been asking us to review their
proposals for the trade station. So far, we have declined. Tell them that
if they help you, I will personally look at every chart they want to send
my way.”
Otubar’s eyebrows rose a hair. Ilemina bared her teeth. “Other vampire
Houses are plotting against us and they view the aliens as our allies. They
are threatened by the lees’ and Tachi’s presence in our midst. If they
fear it, then I will make our ties with those two species even stronger. He
who is feared by my enemy is my shield.”
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Chapter 14 Part 1
September 6, 2018 by Ilona 395 Comments
We are getting back into the swing of things, so we are going to give you
this quick appetizer before a larger scene on Friday.
Maud rushed down the hallway. The meeting with the lees and the Tachi
was in less than ten minutes, but her personal unit had pinged, letting
her know Helen was awake. Maud tore through the castle at a near
sprint. Logic told her that everything would be fine, but emotion
trumped logic, and her emotions were screaming at her that something
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would go terribly wrong in the time it would take her to get to the
medward. By the time she reached the door, she was in a near panic.
The door whispered open.
In a flash, Maud saw the room in excruciating detail: the bed, the white
instruments, the blue readouts projected on the wall, the medic standing
to the side, and Helen, upright on the bed.
“Mommy!” Helen cleared ten feet in a single jump.
Maud caught her and hugged her, wishing with everything she had that
this was real, and her daughter wouldn’t disappear out of her arms
fading back into the hospital bed.
“Full recovery,” the medic said. “I uploaded a monitoring routine to her
personal unit and synced it to you. If she takes a turn for the worst,
which I do not anticipate, her unit will flash with yellow and you will get
a warning. Should this occur, I want to see her immediately.”
“Understood.” Maud kissed Helen’s forehead, inhaling the familiar scent
of her daughter’s hair. It will be okay, she’s okay, everything is fine, she’s
alive, she’s not dying… “Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome,” the medic said. “I did very little. All I could do was
keep her alive for a little longer. Eventually she would have slipped
away. Are you going to speak with the lees?”
“Yes.” She was still clutching Helen tightly to herself, unwilling to let go.
“I want the recipe for that poison.”
“I will try, but the lees hoard their secrets like treasure. They will only
trade, for something of equal or greater value.”
The medic pondered the wall for a moment and tapped his unit. A round
ceramic tower slid out of the floor and opened, revealing a core lit from
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within by a peach-colored glow and rows of tubes, vials, and ampoules
arranged in rings around it. The contents of the tower glittered like
jewels, some filled with amber liquid, others containing glowing mists or
small dazzling gems in a rainbow of colors. It was oddly elegant and
beautiful, the way vampire technology often was. The medic plucked a
twisted vial filled with green mist and held it out to her.
“A gesture of good faith.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a biological weapon we developed during the Nexus conflict. It
renders the lees infertile.”
He just pulled a species ending toxin out of the shelf like it was
nothing. And he had dozens more in there, all of different shapes and
sizes. How many other species could they neuter with one of those shiny
bottles? She just watched him reach into a Pandora’s box like he was
grabbing a sandwich out of a picnic basket. Her reaction must have
shown on her face, because the medic shrugged. “It was never used. It
was judged to be against the code of war. Also, it’s a poor weapon. It
doesn’t kill the enemy. It’s something one might use in retaliation for
being beaten, and we do not lose.”
“I need a carrying case for this,” she said.
“Why? The vial is unbreakable by normal means and is hermetically
sealed.”
Maud smiled. “You don’t just hand someone a terrible evil without
impressive packaging. We need a chest filled with velvet or a high-tech
vault container with an elaborate code lock. Something that makes it
seem important and forbidden.”
The medic’s eyes lit up. “I have just the thing.”
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Chapter 14 Part 2
September 7, 2018 by Ilona 569 Comments
The meeting with the lees and the tachi was set in the Maven’s Gardens,
located at the top of a small mesa, which jutted next to the Marshal
Tower, the same tower that housed Maud’s and Arland’s quarters. The
gardens were accessible from within the tower and by a long, covered
breezeway that curved around the tower from one of the bridges
connecting it to the rest of the castle. Consisting of a small, stone plaza
ringed by lush greenery, the gardens were at once a very private and
completely exposed space. The trees and shrubs hid it from outside
observers and its location, on the very edge of a sheer drop, made
outside surveillance impossible. However, the cameras and turrets,
mounted on the walls of the tower directly above, had the perfect view
of everything that transpired.
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From inside the plaza, the gardens looked calm and inviting. Blue,
turquoise, and pink blossoms rose from the flower patches beneath old
trees. Here and there, plush furniture, some made with vampires, some
with other bodies in mind, offered comfortable place to sit and reflect. A
natural-looking waterfall that had to be engineered and carefully
installed filled the silence with soothing sounds of falling water, which
coincidently made audio surveillance even more difficult, as if the
dampners installed along the perimeter of the mesa weren’t
enough. Maud decided she rather liked it.
Helen splashed through the shallow edge of the fountain, watching the
water cascade over a perfect reproduction of a neighboring mesa, only
ten feet in height. The waterfall landed into a pond made to resemble a
lake. Helen stumbled through it, waving her arms, like a giant about to
take on a mountain. Maud came to terms with the simple fact that if
there was an inch of water, her daughter would be in it. She showed no
signs of illness. Maud had only checked her personal unit three times in
the last six minutes, which had to be a heroic feat of willpower.
Otubar loomed next to Maud, like a silent mountain himself. She still
had no legal status, and for negotiations to succeed, she needed to
borrow some authority. Maud would have preferred Arland as a back
up for this meeting, but he was sleeping off his booster, and she had to
admit Otubar had authority in spades. The Lord Consort projected quiet
menace, emphasis on the quiet. He didn’t speak, he made no small talk,
he asked no questions. He just towered like some legendary bastion of
vampire might.
The lees and the Tachi arrived at the same time, each delegation led by
a vampire knight through the side tunnel. Nuan Cee wore his usual silk
apron, the kind Maud saw him wear at this shop, and a necklace of white
and blue shells that matched his silver blue fur. It wasn’t the bejeweled
ensemble he donned for important meetings. The two lees behind him
bounced up and down as they walked, looking like two fluffy, excited kits.
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The Tachi queen strode next to the Merchant, elegant and seemingly
weightless despite her size. Her exoskeleton was a cheery, beautiful
azure, like the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The two tachi following
her exhibited color as well, one deep lavender, the other a familiar
green. Ke’Lek. She had expected a neutral grey. A pleasant surprise.
Good. The tachi are in a receptive mood.
“Lady of sun and air.” Maud bowed her head. “The great
Merchant. Welcome.”
Nuan Cee waved his paws magnanimously. “No need, no need. We are
all friends here.”
The tachi queen bobbed her head. “I am relived to see you well. And
your child.”
“Please,” Maud murmured and pointed to a table with four chairs. Two
were the typical vampire seats, large, solid, with simple but functional
lines. The third chair to Maud’s right was a divan, piled high with soft
pillows. The fourth chair on Maud’s left looked like a mushroom with
plush, padded cap and round protrusions to the back and the sides. It
had taken Maud a good half an hour of drawing and explaining to
convince House Krahr’s fabricator supervisor to manufacture one. She
still wasn’t sure if the proportion of the stem to cap was off by an inch or
two, but it looked right and it was the best she could do.
The queen saw the chair. Maud held her breath.
A flash of deeper color rolled over the royal and she perched on the chair,
locking her vestigial appendages on the protrusions. Nuan Cee sprawled
on the divan like a Roman patrician.
The tachi bodyguards split up. Ke’Lek remained behind the queen, while
the other tachi headed to the fountain. The Nuan Cee relatives followed
the tachi to where Helen was splashing. The significance wasn’t lost on
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Maud. If anything happened to either Nuan Cee or the tachi queen,
Helen would be a primary target. The thought should have disturbed her,
but she took with easy calm. Either too much happened and I am now
inoculated, or I’ve gotten used to high stakes negotiati
ons.
A vampire retainer delivered pitchers of green and red liquids, one wine,
the other spiced juice with slices of local fruit, and platters of baked
snacks and artfully arranged fruit and vegetable slices, and withdrew. It
felt like an odd tea party. Here she was serving cosmic cookies and wine
to a queen of enlightened predators and the head of a clan of ruthless
assassins. Nothing much at stake except an interstellar alliance. Whee!
Maud sipped some juice. This would have to be done very carefully. If
she offered either of them a finger, they would bite her entire arm off.
No time like the present.
“Have you rested from the interstellar travel?” she asked. “I always find
planetside to be a relief.” Not the best opening, considering they were
both the planet for the last two weeks, but it would do.
The tachi queen glanced at her. “This planet is rather beautiful.”
“I do so enjoy the planetside,” Nuan Cee said, “However, as regrettable
as it is, one must commit to the unpleasantness of space travel to pursue
one’s goals.”
So far, so good. “I do wonder how space merchant marines do it. Long
voyages, expensive cargo, and I hear pirates in certain quadrants.”
Nuan Cee’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes. One does have to make
sacrifices in the name of profit.”
“Or scientific achievement.” The tachi queen speared a cookie with a
long talon. “The quest of knowledge can not proceed without the fuel of
labor.”
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“It always rankles me when opportunistic beings attempt to cash in on
the labor of others.” Maud studied the contents of her glass.
“It is both unfair and predatory,” the tachi queen said. “However, one
may not always have a choice in selecting their path. Sometimes course