Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles Book 2) (6 page)

I was well aware of the risks, but I had no choice.

“Unfortunately…”

My heart sank.

“…all of my kitchen staff is really busy. We’re short-handed at the moment.”

I fought hard to keep despair out of my voice. “Thank you anyway.”

“So happens I know someone who might help,” he said. “If you’re desperate enough.”

What? My hopes soared. “I’m very desperate.”

“He was ranked as a Red Cleaver a few years ago.”

My hopes plunged to the ground, hit hard, and exploded. “I can’t afford a Red Cleaver chef.”

Mr. Rodriguez probably couldn’t afford a Red Cleaver. That was the second highest ranking. I couldn’t even afford a Grey Cleaver, which was the lowest rung. The Cleaver ranking meant certification by the Galactic Gastronomy Board, a diploma from the best cooking school in the Galaxy, and a long apprenticeship in one of the prestigious restaurants. Cleaver chefs were worth their weight in gold, literally.

“He was stripped of his certification.”

I’ve never heard of someone losing their Cleaver. “Why?”

Mr. Rodriguez hesitated. “He might have poisoned someone.”

I put my hand over my face. This was just getting better and better. A poisoner chef. What could possibly go wrong?

“Dina, are you there?” Mr. Rodriguez asked.

“Yes. I’m just wrestling with it.”

“I warned you that you would have to be desperate. I don’t believe he was ever convicted of the crime but somehow he was involved in a death of a diplomat. You would have to talk to him to get the whole story.”

With my back against the wall, I didn’t have options. The least I could was talk to him. “Where can I find him?”

“He lives in a small hole-in-the wall hovel at Baha-char. Just past the Gorivian gun merchant.”

“I know where that it is. Thank you.”

“Oh, and Dina, he is a Quillonian. They can be touchy.”

That was the understatement of the year. Quillonians were notoriously difficult.

“I hope it works out.”

He hung up. I slumped against the wall. Tired or not, I needed to go and see this touchy dishonored Quillonian chef who may or may not have poisoned someone, because the Arbiter was due to arrive tomorrow evening.

I had quite possibly bitten off more than I could chew. No, thinking like that would only get me into trouble. It was the fatigue talking. I would host this summit and it would be successful. Gertrude Hunt needed the guests.

I got my boots out of the closet, put them on, and buckled a belt with a knife on it around my waist under my robe. Baha-char was the place where you went to find things. Sometimes things found you instead and tried to take your money. On the inn grounds, I ruled supreme. Outside of it, my powers dropped off sharply. I could still take care of myself, but it never hurt to expect the worst and be prepared.

Beast barked once, excited. I took my broom, pulled the hood of my robe over my head, and headed down the hallway. The inn creaked in alarm.

“I’ll be back soon,” I murmured. “Don’t worry.”

The door at the end of the hallway swung open. Bright light spilled through the rectangular opening and dry, overbearing heat washed over me. I blinked, as my eyes adjusted to the light, and stepped into the heat and sunshine of Baha-char.

I strode through the heat-baked streets of Baha-char, the hem of my robe sweeping the large yellow tiles of its roads. Around me the marketplace of the Galaxy breathed and glittered, its heart beating fast, pulsing with life. Tall buildings of pale sand-colored stone lined the streets, decorated with bright banners streaming from its balconies. Plants, some green, some blue, others red and magenta, spread their branches on the textured terraces, offering cascades of flowers to the sun in the light purple sky. Above me narrow stone arches of bridges spanned the space between the buildings. Merchant booths offering a bounty of goods from across the universe lined the through-way. Open doors marked by bright signs invited customers. Barkers hawked their wares, waving holographic projections of their merchandise at the crowd flowing past them.

Around me the bright, multicolored crocodile of shoppers crawled through the streets. Beings from dozens of planets and dimensions, clothed in leather, fabric, metal or plastic, tall and short, huge and small, each with their own odd scent, made their way searching for their particular goods. A constant hum hung in the air, a cacophony of hundreds of voices mixing together into the kind of noise that could only be heard at Baha-char.

The last time I had come here, Sean was with me. I didn’t even know if he was dead or alive. It was so fun to watch him here. He had travelled while in the military and he thought he was worldly, then I opened the door to the sun-drenched streets and Sean turned into a child entering Disneyworld for the first time. Everything was new, strange, and wondrous.

Six months and no word. Either I imagined things and he wasn’t at all interested or something happened to him. Thinking about Sean being dead somewhere out there, among the stars, made me angry. First my parents vanish. Now Sean was gone.

I caught myself. Yes, clearly this was all about me. Not exactly my proudest moment. As soon as I straightened out the chef situation, I needed to go back to bed before the lack of sleep made me weepy.

Ahead the traffic slowed. I stood on my toes and glanced over the spindly shoulder of some insectoid being. A creature that resembled a Penske truck-sized maggot slowly crawled up the street. It was wearing a plastic harness along its back. Bright burgundy and gold umbrellas protruded from the harness at even intervals, shielding its wrinkled pallid flesh from the sun. Several shopping bags hung from the hooks on the sides of the harness. One of the bags had Hello Kitty on it.

We were moving about half a mile an hour. I sighed and looked around. I’d been coming to Baha-char since I was a child and most of the time I walked through on autopilot.

A familiar dark archway loomed to the right. I strained and heard a quiet, haunting melody playing. I stopped.

That shop belonged to Wilmos Gervar, an old werewolf. Last time we were at Baha-char, Sean had stopped here. Wilmos had a nano-armor on display, made especially for the alpha strain werewolves such as Sean. Sean saw the armor and became obsessed with it, as if it had called to him. Wilmos offered him a deal: he would give Sean the armor, but Sean would owe him a favor. I thought it was a terrible idea and told him so, but Sean took the armor, and once we’ve dealt with assassin threatening the inn, he went to Baha-char to replay the favor. That was the last time I saw him.

If anybody knew where Sean was, it would be Wilmos.

People bumped me. The crowd was moving and the current of beings tried to carry me with it. To go in or to not go in? What if Sean was in there, drinking tea from Auul, his now shattered planet? That would be really awkward. Hi, remember me? I threw you out of my house because you were an ass and you kissed me? He left for a reason. I didn’t want to be anyone’s blast from the past.

Not knowing was worse than any potential awkwardness. I cut through the crowd and stepped through the arch. A meticulously arranged shop greeted me. Weapons with wicked curved blades hung on the walls. Knives lay displayed under glass. Strange armor on the mannequins lined up like soldiers at a ceremony next to high-tech guns in metal racks. A large animal padded into view, its paws bigger than my hands. Blue green, with a shaggy mane and ears that reached to my chest, it moved like predator. Despite the size, there was something lupine about its build. He felt like a wolf, and if you saw him on Earth, you’d think he was the spirit of all wolves come to life.

“Hello, Gorvar,” I said.

At my feet Beast opened its mouth and growled low.

“Who is it?” A man walked in from the other room. Tall, grizzled and still fit, he moved like Sean, with the natural easy grace. His greying hair fell to his shoulders, and as his eyes caught the light from the doorway, pale gold rolled over his irises.

“Hello, Wilmos.” I smiled.

“Ah yes, Dina, right?”

“Right.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I happened to be in a neighborhood and stopped by to check on Sean. Haven’t seen him for a while.” There, that didn’t sound too desperate.

“He’s out on a cruise with Solar Shipping freighter,” Wilmos said. “He owed me a favor, and I owed a friend of mine. The friend has a shipping route and picks up credit vouchers from a couple of leisure planets, so he gets boarded a lot. He needed a good security person, so I gave him Sean for a year. It’s good for him. He wanted to see the glory of the Universe and now he gets a tour.”

“You want me to get a word to him?” Wilmos asked. “I can probably leave a message for him. I’ve got the codes for the freighter.”

Hmmm. I gave him a nice sweet smile. “Sure! That would be great.”

Wilmos tapped the glass of the nearest counter. It turned dark and a small circle with glowing symbols appeared in the corner. “Sorry, it will have to be text only. They’re too far out for face to face.” He tapped the circle, spinning it with his fingertips. An English keyboard ignited at the bottom of the rectangle. I was about to send an interstellar text.

“Go ahead,” he said.

I had to send something that only Sean would know. At least I would find out if he was dead or alive. I typed
It’s Dina. The apple trees recovered
.

Wilmos touched a glowing symbol. The message flashed brighter and dimmed. Seconds ticked by. I kept my smile on.

A message flashed in response to mine.
I told you I wasn’t poisonous.

Sean was alive. Nobody else would know that I nearly brained him with my broom for marking his territory in my orchard.

“Anything else?” Wimos asked. He was trying to be nonchalant, but he was watching me very carefully.

“No, that was it. Much appreciated.”

“Any time. I’m sure he’ll visit when he gets shore leave.”

“He’s welcome any time and you as well. Come on, Beast.”

Beast gave Gorvar one last parting snarl and we walked out of the shop, joined the crowd and kept going down the street.

It made no sense. Wilmos built and sold weapons. Some of the gear in his shop looked too new to be antique. He must’ve had a lot of connections in the soldier for hire world. When Wilmos recognized Sean, he’d become unglued. Sean was a natural biological child of two alpha strain werewolves, who weren’t supposed to have survived the destruction of their planet. A normal werewolf was bad news, but Sean was stronger, faster, and more deadly than ninety nine percent of werewolf refuges strewn across the Galaxy. Wilmos had acted as if Sean was a miracle.

“You don’t stick a miracle onto a freighter where he’ll be a security guard,” I told Beast. ‘There are more exciting ways to see the glory of the universe.”

It was like finding the last known Tasmanian tiger and selling him to some rich guy to be a pet in his back yard. It just didn’t add up.

Wilmos didn’t want me to know what Sean was doing. I didn’t know why, and I really wanted to find out.

***

It took me almost half an hour to get to the Quillonian’s place. The shop owners pointed the door out to me, but it was three floors up and I had to find the way up and then the right set of stone bridges to get to the terrace. Quillonians were a reclusive race, proud, prone to drama, and violent when cornered. A couple of them stayed at my parents’ inn and as long as everything went their way, they were perfectly cordial, but the moment any small problem appeared, they would start putting exclamation marks at the end of all of their sentences. My mother didn’t like dealing with them. She was very practical. If you brought a problem to her, she’d take it apart and figure out how best to resolve it. From what I remembered, Quillonians didn’t always want their problems resolved. They wanted a chance to shake their clawed fists at the sky, invoke their gods, and act as if the world was ending.

My father was brilliant at handling them. Before he became an innkeeper, he was a very good conman, excellent at reading his marks, and he finessed our more difficult guests. Before long, they were eating out of his hand. I tried to remember what he’d said to me about it. What was it? Something about plays…