The man turned back to me. Behind him, the platform sank soundlessly into the ground. The inn would move the bags into their quarters.
“It’s heavy,” he said, his voice deep. “I can just take the bags in one by one.”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. Behind him the grass flowed closed, as if the platform had never existed.
He glanced back and did a double take.
“Gaston?” George called from inside.
The big man shrugged and entered the inn.
I led them to the front room. George took a chair to the left, Gaston landed on the couch, and the auburn-haired man leaned against the wall, inhaling deeply. Sean used to do that. This man was a shape-shifter. Not a werewolf or a werecat of the Sun Horde, but something else.
“Breakfast will be served at seven,” I said.
“It smells divine,” George said. “I’d hoped to take this opportunity to go over some of our strategy.”
I sat in my favorite chair. Beast ran into the room, saw the auburn-haired man, and growled. He glanced at her. His upper lip rose slightly, betraying a flash of his teeth. Yes, definitely a shape-shifter.
“Please don’t try to intimidate my dog,” I said.
“I’m not,” the russet-haired man said. “When I decide to intimidate…”
“I will know.” I finished for him. “She isn’t an ordinary dog. If she bites you, she will cause real damage.”
The shape-shifter studied Beast. “Mm-hm.”
George smiled. “This is my brother, Jack. That over there is Gaston, our cousin.”
Interesting family. “You must realize that both the otrokars and the vampires will see Gaston as a challenge.”
“I’m counting on it. To put it plainly, I’m the planner,” George said. “Gaston is the muscle. His job is to attract attention and appear to be a threat. He is very good at it.”
Gaston grinned, displaying serrated teeth.
“Jack is the killer,” George continued. “He knows other killers, he understands them, and if necessary, he will remove a physical threat before it has a chance to cause any damage.”
Something shattered in the kitchen.
The three men glanced at the kitchen doorway.
“I understand that people in your profession are familiar with the otrokars and the vampires,” George said. “Perhaps we could compare notes?”
The archives of the Arbitrators were legendary. He likely knew everything it was humanly possible to know about all three factions participating in the summit. No, this was his way of trying to gauge the extent of my knowledge. Either he wasn’t familiar with innkeepers, which I doubted given those archives, or he didn’t trust me to already know all the relevant information, which was annoying. Maybe lack of sleep was just making me short-tempered. “I’d love to—”
The vicious snarl of a Quillonian in mortal danger cut through my voice. Now what?
“Excuse me.” I got up and walked into the kitchen.
The door of the far cabinet stood wide open. Orro stood by it, all his spikes erect on his back. His hands clenched a plate. A thick wooden tendril clamped the other end of the plate, trying to pull it out of Orro’s hands and back into the cabinet.
“What’s going on?”
“I broke a plate, and it refuses to let me have another one!” Orro snarled. “How was I supposed to know the dishes were prehistorically breakable?”
“Let him have the plate, please.”
The tendril let go and Orro stumbled back, the plate in his hands.
“Please help him,” I said to the inn.
The kitchen creaked.
“I know,” I said. “But you have to learn to work with him.”
Orro waved the plate. “I will persevere.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I went back into the living room and sat back in my chair, pushing with my magic. “Terminal, split screen, files on vampire and otrokar, please.”
A wide screen formed in the far wall, the left side showing a vampire and the right an otrokar.
George raised his eyebrows. “Thank you. On the surface, the vampires and otrokars seem like similar species. Both evolved from the same predatory humanoid strain. Both have a martial society centered on the ideas of conquest and land acquisition, valuing it over other forms of material wealth. They are both aggressive and quick to respond with violence. The art and religions of both civilizations show a strong veneration of a warrior’s honor. Both cultures show almost no gender gap. That’s where the similarities end.”
A fair point.
“The vampires of the Holy Anocracy try to become perfect soldiers,” George said.
“Vampire,” I murmured. The left screen delivered a close-up of a vampire knight in battle armor, swinging a black-and-red battle mace.
“Each knight is a versatile killing machine, a warrior skilled in a variety of martial styles.”
The vampire on the screen clashed with a lizard-like opponent. The purple lizard grasped the vampire’s mace and ripped it out of his hands. The vampire pulled two short swords from the scabbards in his armor and spun, changing his stance.
“If fifty vampires are on the field, one of them will be a leader and two others will serve as sergeants,” George said. “If the leader is killed, one of the sergeants will take his place, and the best of the soldiers under his command will become a sergeant. They go through stages of martial education. Everyone begins as a rank-and-file soldier and receives the same basic martial training. Those who so choose go on to study and train further, attaining the rank of knight and advancing within the knighthood. Specialization does occur, but overall each vampire is quite adaptable. The core of the Holy Anocracy, the noble Houses, consists of individuals who are hereditary soldiers. They are the warrior elite. The otrokars function differently.”
“Otrokar,” I whispered to the inn. The screen expanded to show an enormous male otrokar. He had to be over seven feet tall and at least three hundred and fifty pounds. Muscles bulged on his frame. The image faded and a new one slid into its place: another otrokar, but this one under six feet tall, lean, spinning two axes impossibly fast.
“You’re probably wondering why there is such discrepancy in size,” George told me.
Actually, no. I wasn’t wondering. I sighed and pretended to look bored. “At puberty, otrokar bodies begin producing a certain hormone that has the ability to greatly reshape their bodies. If they begin lifting weights, the hormone bulks them up and makes them larger. If they train in gymnastics, it makes them more compact and lean. This hormone has evolved as a part of their evolutionary adaptation, allowing them to survive in a wide variety of climates. Children who mature during the times of drought are smaller, children who mature in cold climates are larger, and so on. Unfortunately for their health, the otrokars pushed it to the next level, and until they implemented strict monitoring of adolescents, some of them grew so large that their cartilage wore out under their own weight. This condition is called Veteran’s Knees, and guests suffering from it require special accommodations.”
The room fell silent.
Jack grinned. “He occasionally forgets that the rest of us are not idiots.”
“No, I never expect people to be idiots,” George said. “I do expect them to lack some of the necessary information, because experience has demonstrated to me that assuming someone in a key position knows everything you do leads to disaster. But we were talking about the high degree of specialization among the otrokars. The hormone production stops after they reach maturity, and they are locked into the choices they made in adolescence. They learn to do one profession, but they do it exceedingly well.”
“So if you need someone to blow up a bridge in enemy territory…,” Gaston said.
“Vampires would send a team of five,” Jack said. “All five will know how to arm and disarm the bomb.”
“Otrokars will send a group of twenty,” George continued. “Five will know how to operate the bomb, and the rest will keep them alive until they get there. Otrokars have large families and outnumber vampires roughly three to one. Individually, vampires are better soldiers, which is why otrokars prefer to conquer in a horde. Vampires are led by hereditary aristocracy, while promotion within the otrokar ranks is a meritocracy influenced by a popularity contest. The differences between their ideologies are vast; the two civilizations have great contempt for each other, not to mention they are currently engaged in a bloody war. If members of the two delegations come in direct contact, we can expect fireworks.”