House is riding on this.”
“I said, fine,” Seveline’s voice turned sharper.
Short fuse, that one. She could use that later.
Helen moved on to the next shuttle and Maud strolled past the two
women.
“My lady,” the blonde said in Common Vampiric. “Pleasant day to you
and your beautiful daughter.”
Maud inclined her head a neutral couple of inches. “Greetings, my lady.”
“I’m Seveline of the House of Kozor. This is my friend, Lady Onda, also of
House Kozor.”
They treated her like she was an idiot who couldn’t identify crests.
Perfect.
24
“I’m honored,” Maud said.
The two women smiled, showing the very edges of their teeth.
“Is this your first time enjoying the hospitality of House Krahr?” Onda
asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re in for a treat,” Seveline said. “Their festivities are legendary.
Once you are settled, do find me. I see us becoming the best of friends.”
“Indeed,” Onda said.
Two-faced bitches.
“I’ll do my best,” Maud said.
Arland was marching toward her with a grim look on his face.
“I must beg your forgiveness,” Maud said. “The Marshal requires my
presence.”
“We wouldn’t presume to keep you,” Onda said.
“You are beyond gracious. Come, my flower.”
Maud took Helen by the hand and headed toward Arland. They met
halfway.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“Trouble?”
“Inconvenience. Are you ready to depart?”
“Yes.”
He led her to a small silver shuttle, a six-seater.
25
“Am I flying with you in your personal craft?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Is that wise?”
“I thought we established that I don’t care about being wise.”
Flying in his personal shuttle meant she’d face scrutiny at the point of
landing, but it also meant she could speak to Arland in privacy.
Maud settled Helen into a soft blue seat and hopped into the passenger
spot next to Arland. He touched the controls and the shuttle streaked
through the hangar into the sky.
26
Chapter 2 Part 2
January 19, 2018 by Ilona
Arland was an excellent pilot.
The take-off was so smooth, Maud barely felt the acceleration. Instead
of flicking on the autopilot, the shuttle’s equivalent of cruise control, he
guided the small craft manually. The landscape rolled under them, a thick
forest growth, the massive trees stretching their ancient branches to the
sun. A moment, and the dense canopy abruptly fell away.
The spaceport sat in the middle of a mesa, and now they’d cleared it.
Below, a sheer drop fell to dizzying depths, the bottom of it no longer
forest, but a verdant grassland. A wide river wound through it,
unrestrained by any dams. White mesas bordered it all, their tops
dripping green and turquoise woods.
27
“Oooh,” Helen offered from the back seat.
“Do you like it?” Arland asked.
“It’s beautiful,” Maud said honestly.
“It’s home,” he said.
It could be your home, his glance added.
Too early for that.
He looked straight ahead, his face calm, and she found herself staring at
the hard line of his jaw. Imagining running her fingers down its length…
Stop it, she told herself.
“Does it strike you as odd, my lord, that Kozor and Serak decided to bury
the hatchet?”
“Alliances are broken and created all the time,” he said. His voice held
no enthusiasm. He didn’t like it either. Her instincts rarely failed her, but
it was nice to have a confirmation.
“True. But most Houses view such old rivalries as healthy.”
“Is that so?” he said.
“It is. Conflict keeps their forces sharp. The strong and talented emerge,
weaker people are culled, and there are ample opportunities for heroism
and much growling about duty and honor.”
Arland smiled, showing a hint of a fang. “And speeches. Don’t forget the
speeches.”
“Their feud is generations old. There are dead and wronged on both
sides. There must be some mutual advantage for them to set it aside. Are
you aware of such an advantage?”
28
“No.”
“Then it must be a common enemy.”
Arland sighed.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Your reasoning is sound,” he said. “I’m not arguing with it. A month ago,
I said pretty much the same thing at a strategy session where this
wedding request was discussed.”
“And?”
“And I was told there was no graceful way to refuse the request. We are
the dominant House in the quadrant. We have no evidence we are being
lied to, and we have no excuse to deny it. We aren’t at war, and our
House is enjoying unprecedented prosperity at the moment. Holding a
wedding in a neutral territory had been done before, so the tradition is
on their side.”
He’d said the magic word. “Tradition.”
“Yes. If we refused to host this wedding, there would be questions.”
“‘Is House Krahr so weak that they are afraid of allowing a mere two
hundred wedding guests into their territory?’ ‘Is House Krahr worried
about Srak-Kozor alliance?’”
He nodded.
Hosting a wedding was expensive. Tradition dictated that something had
to be offered in return. “What was their offer?”
“Safe haven for our merchant ships.”
“House Krahr can’t protect its merchant fleet?”
29
He grimaced. “The sector bordering the Serak system is filled with
pirates. Both Kozor and Serak have been fighting them for the better part
of a century. There is a four-point warp near that system.”
Four-point warps were rare. It meant that a ship could enter hyperspace
and choose any of the other three destinations. That stretch of space
likely served as a major shipping artery. The multi-point warp was also
part of the reason Earth enjoyed its special status. The Solar system
contained the only known twelve-point warp in existence.
“Our armada is more than sufficient for the protection of our merchant
fleets,” Arland continued. “The pirates go after freelancers, courier ships,
exploration-and-survey crews, and family miners and salvagers.”
“Anything too small to warrant an escort by a ship of war.”
“Exactly. The crews of these smaller craft are members of House Krahr
and neighboring Houses. It’s been an ongoing thorny issue. We’ve gone
after the pirate fleet a few times. Their ships are small and
maneuverable. They simply scatter. We chase down one or two of their
vessels and turn them to cosmic dust. Meanwhile the rest vanish. Kozor
and Serak have the advantage of location and experience fighting them.
They offered protection for our smaller craft, and we took it.”
To tell him about two Kozor women or not to tell him?
If he were Melizard, she would’ve he
ld back until she had something
more concrete.
That settled it. “I overheard a conversation in the spaceport. Two knights
of House Kozor, Onda and Seveline.”
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Seveline appraised you like you were a side of beef. In her opinion,
you’re a prime specimen and she wouldn’t mind taking a bite.”
30
He grinned at her. He had a terrible smile. It made him look predatory
and slightly boyish at the same time. The combination was devastating.
“They called me a halfer,” Helen said from the back seat.
The smiled vanished, as if jerked away from his face. “You’re not a
halfer,” Arland growled. “You’re a vampire and a human. Both and
whole, not half and half.”
Maud could’ve kissed him. Instead, she plastered a cool expression on
her face. “Seveline told Onda that she should be allowed to play with
you, because it would be a shame to lose.”
“To lose what?”
“I don’t know, because Onda jumped down her throat and made her be
quiet. According to her, too many people worked too hard for Seveline
to ruin it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”
Arland’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it.”
Maud leaned back in her seat. “Neither do I. Later Seveline made it a
point to flag me down and offer me some pleasantries. She believes we
will become fast friends.”
Arland gave her a calculating look. “Perhaps you should.”
If only. She grimaced. “I can’t. For me to become her ‘friend,’ I would
have to pretend to be weak and ignorant. Your mother didn’t come to
greet you at the spaceport. She’s displeased.”
“My mother is likely too busy with the hassle of arranging the wedding.”
She snorted. “Or perhaps, my lord, she’s mortally insulted by your
instruction to make her household presentable for some disgraced
human who turned down your proposal.”
31
“My mother is never insulted. She is far too dignified and refined for that.
She has the patience of a saint.”
“Lady Ilemina,” Maud quoted from memory, “Slaughterer of Ruhamin,
Supreme Predator of the Holy Anocracy, Bleeder of Ert, Fierce Subjugator
of …”
“Like I said, too dignified to take offense. If someone dares to insult her,
she simply kills them, and she isn’t going to kill me. I’m her only son. At
most, she’s annoyed, perhaps slightly irritated.”
Maud sighed. “But I’m not her son.”
“She won’t harm you.” He said it like he was swearing an oath. Like he
would put himself between her and all danger.
He had no idea how intoxicating it was to hear that. Words are cheap,
she reminded herself. Reading too much into them was a dangerous
habit. One she couldn’t afford.
“Your mother will test me. She will encourage others in your House to
test me. I can’t pretend to be weak and pass your mother’s gauntlet at
the same time.”
“A fair point,” he admitted.
“Perhaps, you should pay attention to Seveline. Just enough to
encourage her. Her type gets off on feeling superior. She’d get special
pleasure out of pretending to be my friend while trying to seduce you
behind my back.”
Arland turned to her, his blue eyes clear and hard. “I proposed to you,
my lady. If I treat you with anything but the devotion I feel, my House
will dismiss you.”
He was right.
32
Silence fell. The craft zipped over another mesa filled with old growth. In
the distance, still a few miles off, a castle rose out of the huge trees,
massive and pale grey, so solid and majestic, it looked like it had grown
out of the bones of the mountain.
“I am devoted to you,” Arland said quietly.
“Please don’t.” The words came out of her before she had a chance to
think them over. She felt raw, as if he’d grabbed the bandage on her
wound and ripped it off, reopening it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“I’ll wait,” he said.
“I may never be ready.”
“I’ll wait until you tell me to stop. I have no expectations, my lady. If you
leave, all you have to do is call on me in the time of need, and I’ll be
there.”
Something in his voice told her he would wait forever.
They reached the castle. The ancestral home of House Krahr greeted her,
a forest of square towers wrapped in a maze of walkways, parapets, thick
walls, and courtyards. If she had to escape it, she would never find a way
out.
Arland’s hands flew over controls. The shuttle turned smoothly and sank
onto a small landing pad on top of a squat tower. People emerged from
the taller tower to the left, hurrying across the crosswalk. She had the
worst sense of déjà vu. When Melizard came home, the retainers used
to hurry to the shuttle just like that.
For a moment she felt like she was drowning.
“Welcome to House Krahr, my lady,” Arland said.
She wouldn’t lose her future to her memories. It wasn’t going to
happen. Maud turned to him and smiled her vampire smile, bright and
sharp. “Thank you, my lord.
34
Chapter 3 Part 1
January 29, 2018 by Ilona
As soon as they exited the shuttle, a young vampire knight with dark
auburn hair attached himself to Arland and began rattling things off from
his tablet. Arland’s face took on the stony expression of a man who was
either about to charge the enemy line for the fifth time in a single day or
do his taxes. He marched along the parapet toward the heavy door, with
the auburn-haired knight at his side. Maud took Helen’s hand and
followed him, and the four other retainers closed in, one next to her and
three behind. She could practically feel their stares stabbing her back.
Go ahead. Get an eyeful.
35
The afternoon sun warmed Maud’s skin. She guessed the temperature
somewhere in mid-eighties, and the breeze was downright pleasant. She
had a childish urge to climb onto one of the textured protrusions of the
parapets, strip off her armor, and sunbathe for a couple of hours.
The knight kept spitting out questions, periodically pausing for Arland to
bark an answer.
“Third Regiment requests permission to enter negotiations with the
architectural guilds to update their Chapel Hall.”
“Granted.”
“Second and third companies of Fourth regiment request permission to
settle inter-unit dispute via champion combat.”
“Denied. We don’t parade our rivalries in front of wedding guests from
other Houses. I want the full write-up of this dispute on my tablet within
the hour.”
“Knight Derit requests transfer out of Second Regiment.”
“On what grounds?”
“Irreconcilable differences with his commanding knight.”
“Inform Knight Derit that I declined his request and that he has
misconstrued the nature of his relationship with Commander Karat. They
are not married. It’s not a partnership of
equals. Commander Karat says,
‘Do this,’ and Knight Derit does it, because that’s what knights do. It’s
not a complicated arrangement, and if he has further difficulty
understanding it, he needs to hang up his blood mace and look for a
different profession, more in line with his delicate nature. Perhaps flower
arrangement would suit.”
Maud hid a smile.
36
The carved doors swung open at their approach. They walked through
them and into the shadowy hall. The air here was cooler. Tall windows
spilled narrow blades of light into the hall, drawing golden rectangles on
the stone floor. Shadow, light, shadow, light… It reminded her of the
north wing of Castle Erwan. The last few weeks before their exile, she’d
walked that hall expecting a dagger in her back at any moment.
The male retainer next to her gave her a startled look.
She realized she’d switched her gait. She was gliding now, silent like a
wraith, each step light and smooth. Next to her Helen desperately tried
to imitate her, but her legs were too short, and she ended up gliding two
steps and skipping forward on the third.
The room ended, splitting into a Y-intersection of two hallways.
Arland raised his hand. “Enough, Knight Ruin.”
The auburn-haired knight clamped his mouth shut, biting a word in a half.
Arland stepped to his right and invited her to proceed down the right
hallway. “My lady.”
“My lord.”
She turned right, and they walked side by side. Knight Ruin and the four
retainers stopped at the mouth of the hallway. They reached a door at
the end of the hallway. He pushed it open. “Your quarters.”
She glanced inside and froze. A spacious bedroom suite stretched before
her. A big arched window in the opposite wall betrayed the true
thickness of the walls, full three feet of solid stone. Delicate glass
ornaments, so fragile they looked like they would shatter at the first sign
of a breeze, hung from the walls, glowing with gentle light.
On the far left, an enormous bed waited, big enough to lay four vampire
adults comfortably and equipped with an artfully arranged pile of pillows