Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles, #4)

by Ilona Andrews

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.

“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 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 fang. “And speeches. Don’t forget the speeches.”

“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.”

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.

“What are you doing?” she asked through clenched teeth. “I’m showing you your room.” “This is the room of a Marshal’s spouse.” Arland looked into the room, his expression puzzled. “You think so?” She resisted the urge to punch him. “Yes, I think so. It has the House Krahr banner positioned behind a chair with a Marshal’s insignia on it.” Arland blinked and rubbed his chin. “So it does. How peculiar.” “My Lord Marshal.” “My Lady Maud?” “I’m not your wife. I’m not even your betrothed.” “Where would you like me to put you?” “Not here.” “I don’t know a room suitable to a woman I asked to marry me and who replied with ‘maybe.’” “That wasn’t what I said.” “You said, ‘Arland, I’m sorry, I can’t marry you right now. I need time to decide.’” It was an exact quote.

“Yes. And if he marries, my father will start nagging him about children instead of reminding me to get married and deliver a host of grandchildren to ‘brighten his old age.’ A break from his concerned inquiries about my progress in this matter would be most welcome.”

Vampire worldview, condensed into three sentences: If it’s not food or a pet, kill it, because it might be poisonous.

“Then Arland starts disappearing. ‘Where is Arland?’ ‘He is off on some adventure at some inn on Earth.’ Everything is Earth. Broker a peace treaty? Earth. Go shopping for a unique present for his favorite cousin? Earth.” “What did he get you?” Maud asked. “Coffee. It’s of an excellent quality, but when would I ever need ten pounds of it? It’s enough to get the entire regiment roaring drunk. The next thing we know, he skips out on the wedding preparations, because someone on Earth needs his help. Because the needs of his House are clearly fisur’s kidneys. He goes to Karhari and then there is this footage of him tearing out of some armored hovel with vampires in shabby armor clinging to him and him roaring like he is some hero in a period drama.” Maud lost it and laughed. “You don’t understand.” Karat waved her hands. “The damn thing was everywhere. He brained seven vampires singlehandedly. So the Karhari Houses are screaming bloody murder, our relatives twelve generations removed are forwarding the recording to us, our allies are asking why our Marshal is involved in a brawl on some backwater planet and if we sent him there as a plan for some sort of secret offensive and if so, why haven’t we told them about it, and we keep getting marriage proposals because half the galaxy decided he is good breeding stock. I saw my father’s and aunt’s faces when they watched it. They turned a color not found in nature. It’s not funny!”

“Then the scary old knight came and told me that if I challenged the boy, there would be ripper cushions.” “Repercussions.” “Yes. So I asked if the boy would get repercushions if he fought me, and the knight said yes, and I said I was okay with it.”

“Oh please. Arland is besotted with you.” “Besotted?” “Yes. I’ve used that word correctly. If there was a river of fire and you were on the other side of it, he would strip off his ridiculous armor and swim through the flames to get to you.”

“Yes. There is a piece missing that I do not understand.” “Very well. It goes back to the Law of Bronwyn.” The galaxy had very few universal laws, but the Law of Bronwyn had proven true again and again, so often that it was simply accepted. “Once a species is introduced to interstellar spaceflight, it will advance technologically but not socially,” Nuan Cee said. Maud nodded. “Yes. Their individual standard of living may drastically improve, their technological progress will continue, but their social construct mostly stays the same. The ability to travel between the stars removes some of the pressure factors known to drive societal change. Once you get interstellar spaceflight, suddenly population density is no longer an issue. Geographical limitations are gone. The competition for natural resources is largely gone, at least in the initial stages. Different splinter groups within the society no longer have to learn to coexist; they can simply move apart from each other.”

“Societal change is hard, because a society is made up of individuals. These individuals learn how to be successful in that particular social construct, and they resist change because it threatens their survival. To really implement a change, one must convince the population that their survival as a whole is in doubt unless they alter their course. Because interstellar flight removes a lot of these survival factors, the society in question generally stays as it is once the ability to traverse the stars is achieved. If they were hunter-gatherers, they remain so. If they were a republic, they remain a republic, and so on.”

“When we started this story, I told you that a stable society is resistant to change. The Holy Anocracy is stable, Honorable Nuan Cee. They won. Why would they change? Their way of life has worked for them for thousands of years. They never stopped building castles or wearing armor; they just make them stronger. They never abandoned their faith, because it sustained them in their darkest hour. They cherish their children, they guard them like their greatest treasure, and they teach them to fight from a young age, because history taught them that children are both precious and vulnerable. Without children, the Holy Anocracy has no future. Above all, the vampires distrust outsiders. Nothing good ever came to them from beyond the stars. You are an outsider fighting against thousands of years of inertia. A single strange bird flying at a massive flock, trying to change its direction. The kind of change you are seeking can only come from within, from someone deeply respected, someone rooted in their society.

Arland glanced at Helen. His eyes darkened. “Who?” “It was a formal challenge,” Maud said. “I’m getting ripper cushions,” Helen told him. Arland turned to Maud. “Lady Helen challenged someone in the nursery, was warned not to fight, and did it anyway. Now there will be repercussions.” “Did you win?” Arland asked. Helen nodded. “All is well then. If you go through life never doing anything deserving any repercussions, you’ll never know victory.” Helen grinned. “That is some fine parenting, Lord Marshal.” Maud loaded enough sarcasm into her tone to sink a space cruiser. “I try,” Arland said.

“No apologies necessary, my lord. It was time well spent. I was fortunate enough to experience the hospitality of House Krahr first-hand.” He waited. “Nothing to add, Lord Marshal?” “A wise man knows when to shut up,” he said. “I have a mother and a female cousin. I know that tone of voice. Anything I say now will be wrong. I will humbly wait to be banished or forgiven.” “Humbly?” “Yes.” “Why, my lord, I’m surprised you know the meaning of the word.”

“’A man who never does anything deserving repercussions will never taste victory,’” she said with a straight face. “That idiot couldn’t find his way out of a boot with floodlights and scout support. Trust me, victory is not in his future.”

“How bad is it?” Karat asked. The medic met Maud’s eyes. “You’ll be fine. If you get to me in time, I can heal almost everything. Except stupid. You’re on your own with that one.”

She always thought that Klaus would inherit the inn, and Dina, who always wanted to live a normal life, would end up as a gardener or botanist somewhere, while Maud became an ad-hal. Motherhood and marriage hadn’t been on her radar. Now her parents were missing, Klaus was lost, Dina was an innkeeper, and Maud lay in a vampire hospital bed after getting the living daylights beat out of her by a prospective mother-in-law.

“A human goes off to walk the Lantern Vigil, while my cousin the Marshal stays home to babysit,” Karat said. “I realize now why I have never fallen in love. I’m entirely too sane for that nonsense.”

To the right of her, the mountain rose, the gray rock scarred by rain and stained by patches of green and turquoise vegetation that somehow found purchase in the near-sheer cliff face. To the left, a dizzying drop to the rocks and trees far below promised a few seconds of terror before a gruesome death. Back on Earth there would have been guardrails and signs at the bottom of the path warning visitors to be careful and that they ascended at their own peril. Vampires didn’t bother. If one of them was dumb enough to fall off the trail, they would consider their death natural selection.

“Would I have time to devote to hobbies and leisurely pursuits?” Arland frowned, pretending to think. “Let me ponder. Two weeks! I took two weeks off in the last six years, and my uncle came to fetch me as if I were a wayward lamb. Because the great House of Krahr cannot endure without my constant oversight. My job, my hobby, my off time, my ‘me’ time, all my time consists of taking care of the never-ending sequence of mundane and yet life-threatening tasks generated by the well-honed machine that is the knighthood of House Krahr. I haven’t had a moment to myself since I was ten years old.” Lord Soren stood up, took a small blanket off the back of the nearest chair, walked up to Arland, and draped it over his nephew’s head like a hood. Okay. She hadn’t encountered that before. “He is giving me a mourning shroud,” Arland said and pulled the blanket off his head. “Like the mourners wear at funerals.” “So you may lament the tragic loss of your youth,” Soren said.

“Hate is a very powerful tool. Don’t waste it. People who don’t like you because of what you are may change their minds when they get to know you. But some people will hate you because of who you are. If they were honest with themselves, they would admit that they don’t like you because something about you makes them feel inferior.

“Children leave,” Ilemina told her. “It is the greatest tragedy of motherhood that if you have done everything right, if you have raised them in confidence and independence, they will pick up and leave you. It is as it’s meant to be.

When you bargained with a lees, the first price they quoted you was always outrageous. It was a test and you had three options: first, you could pay the price and be known as a fool by their great-great grandchildren; second, you could walk away and be judged too rigid to become a business partner or an ally; and third, you could bargain. Only the third option brought respect.

Thank you for that bus that just rolled over me after you threw me under it. Felt lovely.

“We didn’t finish our discussion, my lady.” Oh, she was more than ready to have a discussion. It would feature topics like Why the hell would you let nine knights pummel you? and What were you thinking?

“You should stay with me. Here. You and Helen. Don’t leave me. I don’t want you to go.” Her heart sped up. “Marry me, or not, I will take what you’re willing to give me. Don’t leave.” There it was. He just came out and said it. He went for it. She had to give him an answer and this time it couldn’t be a maybe. “Lord Arland?” He sighed quietly, his voice resigned. “Yes, my lady?” “I’m not going anywhere, you fool. You are mine. But if you decide to fight nine random knights again because you want to make a statement, I swear, I will leave you bleeding right there and walk away.” “No, you won’t. Next time you can help.” She swore, and he laughed.

Arland ignored her. They were almost to the bend in the hallway. Suddenly Arland braked, and then the lees flooded all available space, their veils swirling, their jewelry shining, tails and ears twitching. Maud saw Nuan Cee in the center of the lees mob and reached out to him. “Helen…” Nuan Cee took her hands into his furry paw-hands. “I know.” The rest of the lees rushed past them, washing over them like a wave, and rolled down the hallway, parting around Ilemina, Otubar, and Soren. “I have nothing to trade,” she said. Nuan Cee’s turquoise eyes shone. He grinned, displaying sharp, even teeth. “I am sure we can come to an arrangement.” “Get out of my medward, vermin!” the medic screamed. “Do not worry yourself.” Nuan Cee patted Maud’s hands as a mob of lees carried the medic out of his medward. “All will be well now.”

“It brings me and the Lord Consort great joy,” Maud said. Lord Consort projected all of the joy of a boiling thundercloud.

“The man is a menace, and the galaxy would be better off without him.” She squinted at him. “Are you jealous of Renouard?” “Not anymore. You are here with me and he is somewhere in the Malpin Quadrant, about to impersonate a supernova.” Arland sipped his tea.

“Keep him. He’s not stupid. He’s been a pirate for twenty years; he’s a survivor. He knows a lot of creatures. He’s also vain and he hates the Holy Anocracy, which makes him predictable. He may prove a valuable resource. Alternatively, you can storm his ship, put him in chains, have him dragged here and hidden in some dark hole, and when you’re suffering from an attack of melancholy, you could go and poke him with a stick. It would cheer you right up.”

She laughed. “Do you feel I need assistance defending my honor?” Arland leaned back and glanced into her quarters. “What are you doing?” Maud asked. “Checking to see where your sword is before I answer.”