“Thank you.”
I had to show this to Sean. It wasn’t the proof of life we both wanted, but it was something.
Kosandion nodded. “You’re welcome. If I could impose on you for a small favor?”
I braced myself. “It’s not an imposition. Your needs are my top priority.”
Kosandion pushed the data cube with the ratings across the table toward me. “Make sure my aunt sees this.”
14
The First Trial is about to begin. Will Gertrude Hunt rise to the challenge of hosting? Will we survive the candidates’ wit? Let’s listen in.
“Do you think the data is real?” Sean asked.
We were walking through the short dim hallway side by side. Beast trailed me, and Gorvar trotted by Sean’s side. The two animals had decided to ignore each other’s existence, concentrating on guarding us instead.
“Kosandion is Caldenia’s nephew, so he’s devious enough to manufacture this energy reading and use it to manipulate us. But why bother? He could’ve simply asked me to hand the ratings off to Caldenia. I would do it because he is a guest. Instead, he felt that there was a value attached to me running this errand, and he compensated me for my effort.”
Sean’s frown deepened.
I had taken the data to Caldenia right after my conversation with Kosandion. I found Her Grace enjoying a lovely breakfast on our back patio. I’d placed the cube on the table and told her Kosandion wanted her to have it. She raised her eyebrows and said, “He did, did he?” She scanned the cube with her reader, and then she smiled with all her teeth, and I’d been low-key haunted by that smile ever since.
We stopped before a dark wall blocking our way. Sean’s eyes were still grim. I reached over and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He blinked.
“We don’t know anything and it’s eating at you.” It was eating at me. “I know that you really want to go and look for him, and instead we have to do this.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t like surprises. And I don’t like being lied to. This was supposed to be straight forward: keep the candidates from killing each other. We were told that Kosandion would ignore Caldenia’s presence. Instead, the candidates are trying to kill him, and Kosandion and Caldenia are scheming, either together or against each other.”
“Nothing really changed,” I said. “When we took this job, we knew we had to keep Kosandion safe. This assassination plot doesn’t alter that. We also knew that Caldenia and Kosandion have a complicated history. Predictably, their present relationship is complicated.”
He made a low growling noise in his throat. Gorvar’s ears twitched.
“And that’s exactly what I find surprising. What is the nature of their relationship? Is she plotting to kill him?”
“I don’t think so?” I didn’t sound very convincing.
“Of all the places in the universe, Kosandion picked our inn. Is he planning to punish Caldenia for the murder of his father? If I were him, I would provoke her until she snaps and does something unwise. It doesn’t matter if she succeeds. As soon as she acts against him, you and I will have to expel her from the inn. She would be done. The bounties on her head are still sky-high. I checked.”
I knew how he felt. One small mistake, and everything we’ve built could come crushing down. We couldn’t lose Gertrude Hunt. We just couldn’t.
“This could be made much simpler if we just locked Caldenia up until it’s over,” Sean said.
“Sometimes you say things that make me wonder about you.”
“No need to wonder. I’m a simple man. I love you and I will protect you. And the inn. Even if I have to murder Caldenia and everyone else to do it.”
I stood on my toes and kissed him. “What if we don’t murder anybody?”
The corners of his mouth curved. “No promises.”
“Are we ready?”
“As ready as we’re going to be.”
I touched the wall in front of us with my broom. Glowing dots of light pulsed from the broom, drawing an outline of a huge double door in the wall. The once-solid surface split down the middle, and the two halves of the door swung open, letting a flood of sunshine bathe us.
A large empty arena spread before us, bordered by a raised amphitheater divided into fourteen sections, one for each delegation, one for Kosandion and his retinue, and the last for the observers. Each section was freestanding, raised thirty feet above the arena’s floor, and separated from the adjoining sections by a thirty-foot gap. A short safety wall secured the sections. We had shamelessly stolen the idea from the Old Arena at Baha-char.
Ideally, I would have encircled each section by an impenetrable barrier, the same way I had secured Kosandion’s balcony. Unfortunately, maintaining that many barriers simultaneously was beyond Gertrude Hunt’s capacity. They also caused a distortion in Orata’s cameras, and since the whole thing had to be recorded, I settled for the wide gaps and bringing Gertrude Hunt to high alert. If the delegates as much as twitched toward each other, the inn would pluck them right out of their seats and toss them back into their respective quarters.
In the center of the arena, I had raised a stage. Perfectly round and exactly 25 yards across, it sat about ten feet above the arena floor. When the candidates would need to enter it, I would make a ramp from their section directly to the stage.
“What about the moderator platform?” I asked.
We needed a moderator for the debate, and Sean had volunteered to make a special platform for him.
“I’m working on it,” Sean said.
He raised his head to the brilliant blue sky and squinted at the sunshine. In reality, the arena was deep inside the inn. I had done some serious damage to dimensional physics. The sky above us was real, but if someone flew a drone over the inn, they would find only the worn roof of an ordinary ornate Victorian.
Even a year ago, expending that much energy would have been impossible for me. Each inn had a finite capacity for energy storage. A steady flow of guests was much preferable to the feast or famine scenario Gertrude Hunt had to endure for the last couple of years. Our reputation was spreading, and we’d had more visitors in the past few months than ever, each of them more troublesome than a typical inn guest but very much welcome. These guests allowed our inn a chance to grow, but its energy reserves were still insufficient to contain the massive influx of this event. Gertrude Hunt was overflowing with magic. It was a use-it-or-lose-it situation, so I used it to give the trials a wow factor.
Tony had shaken his head at the arena and told me I was working too hard. According to him, a college auditorium would’ve done the job. But the Dominion was broadcasting the spousal selection across multiple star systems. Their neighbors were tuning in, and the Innkeeper Assembly was watching it and evaluating our performance. Gertrude Hunt’s reputation was on the line. As Caldenia once told me, life gave us few opportunities to put our best foot forward, so when a chance to shine presented itself, it was best to take it. A little bit of showmanship didn’t hurt.
A chime pealed through the arena. It was time.
Sean tapped his spear on the floor. Huge screens descended from the clear sky, offering each section a chance to view the action up close.