“Why not use the vampires?” I asked.

“Because that would simply flip the coin.” Caldenia strode into the kitchen. Her hair was meticulously styled, her pale green gown flattered her face, and her make-up was flawless. Her eyes were sharp and her bearing had a slightly predatory air to it. Her Grace was back.

The three men bowed. She nodded at them and accepted a cup of tea from Orro.

“If he uses a knight to defeat an undefeatable otrokar, the same immunity the otrokari now feel will be transferred to the Holy Anocracy. To get them to cooperate and work together, both sides must be humbled. He has to shake their very worldview.”

“I am willing to put my career at risk,” George said, “because I believe it to be completely necessary. This isn’t a spur of the moment decision.”

I had a feeling that nothing George ever did was a spur of the moment decision. If he ever had a one night stand, it would probably be meticulously researched and organized.

The ball was in my court. Leaving so many guests unattended was crazy. But George had a point. The longer peace talks dragged on, the more rejuvenated the inn became, but also the more money their presence cost us. The summit had to end in a reasonable time frame and it had to end with peace, not war. If the summit failed, there would be plenty of blame to go around and Gertrude Hunt would earn a big black eye.

What to do? We’d be gone over an hour at least. A lot of things could happen in an hour. Officer Marais could return with backup. The otrokari could try to bust through the walls and go on a rampage. The vampires could set fire to the inn…

Okay, I had to stop. Wild theories got me nowhere.

My mother would not approve of this harebrained scheme. But my dad would think it was an adventure. Even my parents were no help.

“Escort me to Baha-char,” George said. “I promise you, I can take things from there.”

If we got caught, George would be in trouble and I would be in trouble with him.

“Breakfast is due to be served to the guests in their quarters in half an hour,” I said. “According to the schedule, the summit is to begin an hour after breakfast. That gives us about an hour and a half. Your people have to uphold the peace until then.”

“Won’t be an issue,” Jack said.

I rose. “We have to hurry.”

***

I crouched on the floor of a small shop. Beautiful pale carpets lined the walls and the floor, providing a backdrop for hundreds of elaborate pieces of lacquerware painted with meticulous patterns of vivid turquoise, cheerful gold, and bright scarlet. Jugs shaped like exotic birds, plates where strange monsters curved in battle with each other, platters filled with foreign blooms filled the shelves and waited in every corner. It was good that I took very little money with me, or I would have walked out of here with something.

George, wearing a plain brown cloak, crouched next to me, deep in negotiations with the owner of the shop. The shopkeeper was so swaddled in layers of blue and white tattered cloth that nothing except his eyes and a narrow strip of olive skin around them was visible. He waved his hands as he haggled with George in an unfamiliar language. His hands looked human enough, but each had only three fingers and a thumb.

It took us about ten minutes to find the shop and we had been crouching here for so long, my legs were beginning to ache. I could feel time dripping away, one drop at a time. Part of me really wanted to be back at the inn. A smaller part wanted to find Wilmos again and ask him about Sean Evans.

The trader rose off his haunches. George stood up and dropped a small pouch into the trader’s hand. The shopkeeper handed a ball of blue yarn to George, tied the end of it to a shelf, walked to the back of the store and pulled a carpet aside. Morning daylight filled the shop. The shopkeeper waved at us.

Great. Here is a magic thread. Hold on to it so you don’t get lost and hope there isn’t a minotaur waiting to meet you.

George stepped to the light, letting the yarn pull from the ball as he walked. I got up and followed him. A vast garden spread before us, rows and rows of roses, surrounded by a forty foot wall of burgundy colored stone. Here and there towers punctuated the wall.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is Ganer College,” George said. “In my world it’s a place of healing.”

A woman walked among the roses. She was about my height. Her very dark brown hair coiled on her head into a conservative but elegant bun. A grey gown hugged her figure, falling down in straight lines, its hem brushing the pebbles of the path as she walked. A gossamer-thin length of matching grey fabric wrapped the gown from the left, draped in an asymmetric swag over the woman’s left shoulder. She seemed about my age and not particularly tall, strong, or very imposing.

I glanced at George. For a moment his cool mask slipped and I saw an intense, all consuming longing reflected in his features. My father loved my mother completely. He also mistrusted the modern world. He understood it, but it moved too fast for him and all of its dangers seemed magnified to him. He viewed each drive to the store as a failed suicide attempt and each major city as a den of cutthroats and thieves lying in wait for their victim. He would never dream of keeping my mother from doing something she wanted to do. But sometimes when my mother was about to leave on an errand, especially if she had to drive into the city, he would look at her just like that, as if he wanted more than anything in the world to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe with him.

The expression flickered and vanished off George’s face, but it was too late. I saw it. The cosmic arbiter was not infallible.

George started down the path and I followed him. When we were about thirty feet from the woman, she stopped. “That’s far enough.”

George stopped.

“I am angry with you,” she said. She spoke with an unfamiliar but cultured accent. “I don’t like to be angry, George. I work very diligently to avoid that emotion. You should leave.”

“I need your help,” he said.

She turned around. I almost never got envious of other women. When I did, it was usually because I had gone grocery shopping. I’d stand in a checkout line, bored, and People magazine or some tabloid would catch my eye and I’d buy it, because I felt too guilty about putting it back after flipping through it. I would look at the actresses and models while drinking my tea and sometimes wish my eyes were bigger or my lips were fuller. But actresses and models were abstract people, half reality, half air-brushed perfection. This woman was real, she was my age, about my height, and she was incredibly, shockingly beautiful without any Photoshop assistance. Her skin was a light, golden bronze, her mouth was full and perfect, her cheekbones high, and her eyes, huge under nearly black eyebrows, were dark like bitter chocolate. When you saw her, you wanted to keep looking at her.