Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles, #1)(54)

"No last name?" I asked.

"No. Used to be more complicated than that. Used to be you had a tribe and would list your ancestors for four generations after your name. But when the war started, it was decided that short was best. Besides, it didn't matter much who you were anymore. People died so fast it only mattered what you did. I was the thirty-second Gerwar in my Fang. It was a long war."

Wilmos took the glasses and the pitcher to a small table and invited me to sit. I slid onto the padded bench. Beast curled by my feet. Wilmos filled the glasses and pushed one toward Sean.

"No thanks," Sean said.

Wilmos took a swallow from his glass. "This is Auul tea. I know a former Boom-Boom --that would be heavy-artillery gunner --who owns land in Kentucky. He's got five acres of this stuff. Exports it to a half dozen dealers, what few of us are left in the Galaxy. I wouldn't poison you. And I would never poison an innkeeper." He held the glass out to me. "We all need a refuge once in a while."

I took a sip. The tea tasted tart and refreshing and strangely alien. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was a hint of something not quite Earth-like about the flavor.

Sean took the third chair and tasted the tea. I couldn't tell by his face if he liked it or hated it. His gaze kept going to a spot in the corner. There, under the blue glow of a small force field, lay a suit of armor. Dark gray, almost black, it looked like a chainmail made of small, sharp scales, if chainmail could be thin like silk. On the shoulders, the scales flared into the plates. The faint image of a maned wolf marked the chest, somehow formed by the lines of the interlocking scales. It looked like a suit of armor, but it couldn't possibly be one --it was too thin.

"I'm fourth generation," Wilmos said. "My parents were werewolves and their parents and theirs were also. When I was young, I never thought I'd have to serve. We had beaten Mraar. I was looking toward a peaceful future. I was a nanosurgeon. Then the Raoo of Mraar reconstructed the ossai and made the Sun Horde. Damn cats. Our secret weapon was no longer secret and we knew the end was coming. It would be long and bloody, but it was inevitable. Most people turned to work on the gates. I was working on those who would keep the gates open."

He drained his glass and refilled it. "There were two dozen of us, geneticists, surgeons, medics. We bred the alphas from scratch. Anybody ever call you probira?"

"No," Sean said. His gaze darkened. "Maybe. Once."

"Before the war, Mraar's main export was cybernetics. You know what Auul's was? Poets." Wilmos laughed. "We were big on arts and humanities. It was all about family and proper education. Our civilization had produced thousands of books on how to properly rear your offspring so they would become 'beautiful souls.' If a child hadn't composed a heroic saga by age ten, the parents would take him to a specialist to have his head examined. Even in war, we'd win a victory and then spend twice as much energy writing songs about it. Moon-gazing and soul-searching was highly encouraged. When I was a little younger than you, I spent a year alone in the wild. Only took a small backpack with me. I felt like I was too soft and wanted to see if I could be hard. Almost like I needed to punish myself, you understand?

Sean nodded. I guess maybe he did. I'd never had an urge to live in the wilderness by myself, so he was on his own there.

"Your parents were conceived and brought to term in an artificial environment. What's the saying on Earth?" He glanced at me.

"Test-tube babies."

"Yes. That. We'd tried implanting embryos into volunteers, but the new modifications were simply too different. We had reengineered the ossai, and this new, improved alpha ossai conflicted with the ossai already inside the surrogate mothers. When we were lucky, the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. When we weren't, it killed the mother." He paused. "There were those who had serious doubts about the wisdom of growing babies outside the womb. They questioned their... humanity."

Sean's face turned hard. "What does probira mean?"

"Soulless," Wilmos said.

Ouch.

Sean nodded. "I thought as much."

So that's why the other werewolves shunned them. Made sense.

"They called us the monster makers. Parents of subhumans. There was a lot of discussion about whether it would be better to perish than to chance releasing something soulless into the universe. But in the end everyone agreed we needed alphas or none of us would make it. For all our grandstanding, we are a selfish lot. Nobody expected the alphas to survive. Or breed. I always had hope."

"Why?" Sean asked.

Wilmos leaned on the table. "I was with your parents' generation until they were five. I watched them smile for the first time. I helped them take their first steps. They were as real and alive as any normal children. A soul, if such a thing exists at all, doesn't filter into you at birth through your mother's umbilical cord. Souls come from the people who shape you as you grow. The alphas were children. My children. And I took care of them the best I could. All of us on the team did and all the while we knew we would be sending them to the slaughter. They would be the last line of defense. Bullet meat."

Wilmos shrugged and smiled. It looked forced. "As I said, we tend to brood. It was a long time ago. We all made sacrifices. You never told me who your parents were."

"You don't need to know that," Sean said.