Officer Marais lay on the floor, next to his ruined squad car, flanked on both side by the stalls. A female from Nuan Cee’s clan was quietly distributing feed to the buckets. She saw us and stopped. As I approached, the filaments slid off his body, leaving the inn’s hard roots anchoring him to the floor. The filaments streamed to me, smoothly reforming into the broom in my hand. The roots gagged Officer Marais’s mouth, but his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He was furious. If he could’ve gotten loose, he would fight all of us for his life.

I glanced at the car. It was even worse than I thought. The axe had gone straight through the hood, slicing through the engine like it was made of Jello. I could see the floor through the gap.

The stables were quiet, save for the rhythmic chewing coming from the donkey camels in their stalls.

“I can make it painless,” Lady Isur murmured. “He won’t feel a thing.”

I held up my hand. “Give me the Last Resort.”

The wall of the stables spat out a small syringe. I crouched by Officer Marais and injected the contents into his arm. He glared at me as if he was wishing with every fiber of his being that my head would explode. His face softened. His breathing deepened. His body went slack, his eyes closed, and he slipped into a deep sleep.

“What did you give him?” George asked.

“A tranquilizer.”

“But he will still remember what happened,” Jack said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “To be believed he will need evidence. We’re going to remove the evidence.”

“This is it?” Lady Isur frowned. “This is the plan?”

“Yes,” I told her. “It has worked many times for many different innkeepers. Sometimes simple plans are the best.” I turned to Arland’s engineer. “Please fix it.”

Hardwir stared at the cruiser. “You want me to fix that?”

“Yes. It must be restored to its original condition exactly as it was before the blow.”

The dark-haired knight frowned, approached the cruiser, glanced through the gap and wrenched the hood up. “This is an internal combustion engine.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“This is an abomination against nature.” Hardwir let go off the mangled hood. It fell, broke off, and crashed to the ground. “I won’t do it.”

Arland’s eyes blazed. He gathered himself, somehow turning larger. “What do you mean, you won’t do it?”

“I won’t do it! I swore an engineer’s oath. I own obligations to my profession, obligations which bind me to practice my craft with integrity and to preserve the precious nature of the Universe.” Hardwir stabbed his gauntleted finger in the direction of the engine. “It poisons the environment, it’s horribly inefficient, and it runs on fossil fuels. It requires a finite, high-pollutant resource to function. What idiot would build an engine based on a finite non-renewable resource?”

“I don’t care,” Arland snarled. “You will fix it.”

Hardwir raised his chin. “No, I will not. You’re asking me to repair something that makes toxins. If this was an engine of war, it would outlawed.”

“You swore fealty to me personally. You swore fealty to our House.”

“I am an engineer. I won’t betray myself.”

Arland opened his mouth and said one word. “Ryona.”

Hardwir snarled, baring his teeth.

Arland’s face showed no mercy. “If we don’t fix this, we will be discovered, which means this peace summit will fail. All of the sacrifices of your sister on the battlefield will be for nothing.”

Hardwir spun away from him, glared at the exposed engine, and turned back. “No.”

Arland touched his crest. “Edalon? I’m sorry to interrupt your vigil. We need you. It’s an emergency.”

A single word emanated from the crest.

A moment later the inn chimed, announcing a visitor at the back of orchard. I opened the gates of the stables. A single vampire knight walked through the trees. He was of average vampire height, just over six feet, and lean, almost slender. His skin was the darkest of the vampire genotype, a grey with a blue tint, like the contour feather of a mature blue heron. His hair fell on his shoulder in a cascade of long thin braids. It must’ve been black at some point, but now it was shot through with grey. Vampires didn’t go grey until well into their seventies, but he didn’t look anywhere close to that. He wore long crimson and silver vestments over his armor, but unlike the single robe of a Catholic priest, this vestments were cut into long ribbons, eight inches wide. They flowed as he moved, streaming from his shoulders like an otherworldly mantle. Watching him approach was surreal.

Arland had called on his Battle Chaplain. They must have a spacecraft in orbit.

The chaplain strode into the stables. His face was completely serene, his eyes calm as he surveyed the cruiser, Officer Marais, and finally us.

Arland stepped closer to him and spoke quietly his voice barely above a whisper.

Odalon nodded and turned to Hardwir. “Your concerns do your credit.” His voice was soothing and even, a kind of voice that made you relax almost in spite of yourself.

“I won’t do it,” Hardwir said.

“Walk with me,” Odalon invited.

The engineer followed him out into the orchard. They stopped by one of the apple trees and spoke quietly.

Arland sighed. “All of this could’ve been avoided.”

Lady Isur shrugged. “If not this, then something else. Robart is going to make this as painful as possible. You knew this going in.”

Hardwir and the Battle Chaplain walked back.

“Even if I agreed to do this, it wouldn’t work,” Hardwir said. “I would need a molecular synthesizer to repair the parts…”

“They are standard issue on most military vessels,” Lady Isur said.

“I wasn’t finished, Marshall,” Hardwir said. “We have a molecular synthesizer on board, but the repairs must match the wear and tear of the engine. For that I must determine the age and the degradation of the current engine, which means I need an age sequencer and specialized software. We don’t have that. We’re a military vessel, not an archaeological exploration ship.”

The female member of Nuan Cee’s clan cleared her throat. We all looked at her.