Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(67)

“The responsibility must be crushing.”

Caldenia sighed. “It is, at times. But then this is what we do. And let’s face it, tearing down your enemies is a great deal of fun. You are a picture of restraint, but a part of you enjoys flexing your power when the occasion requires. Kosandion is much the same. An embodiment of self-discipline and decorum until it’s time to stab and rip the still-beating heart out of the chest of his enemy. It’s just that his stabs take a great deal of work and much preparation.”

The boy planned it beautifully… There wasn’t just admiration in her voice. There was familial pride.

“I have some bad news for Kosandion,” I said.

Caldenia stopped. “How bad?”

I paused. We’d come to an intersection of several paths, where they joined into a round patio.

“Politically difficult.”

“Tell me.”

I did.

Midway through, Caldenia started pacing. It was a violent movement, fueled by rage. She’d picked up a small branch somewhere, about the width of my finger, and she flicked her thumbnail across it as she walked back and forth, slicing perfect little sections off with each slide of her thumb. She was like the proverbial caged tiger, flicking her tail, looking for an opening.

I finally finished.

“You must tell him now.”

“I was planning to tell him in the morning.”

She stopped and glared at me. “No. Now. The sooner he knows, the better. I realize you have no obligation to share this information, and your innkeeper’s duty is to let him rest, but it is a matter of his political survival. Do this for me, please.”

“Okay,” I told her.

“Right now.”

“Right now,” I promised. “Do you want to come?”

“No. It is best that I interact with him as little as possible. But tell him this: Olivio teseres tares. He will know what it means.”





I knocked on the door leading to the Sovereign’s quarters. Next to me Sean looked alert and fresh-faced, as if he’d had a full night of sleep instead of 30 minutes.

“Enter,” Kosandion called.

The door slid open, and we did. The Sovereign looked up from the transparent screen in front of him. Nothing changed in his face or posture, but somehow it became instantly clear that he knew an emergency had occurred and was ready for it.

Sean placed the data cube in front of him. I pulled two chairs out of the floor. We sat. A moment later the floor parted, and a small table grew like a mushroom, holding a carafe of coffee, three mugs, and an assortment of creamers and sugars.

“Coffee?” I asked.

Kosandion didn’t seem to have heard me.

Sean poured two mugs, one for him, one for me. Sometimes coffee was truly a life-saver.

The results of Cookie’s fact-gathering appeared on the screen. Reports, video footage, testimonies… Ten minutes into it, Kosandion stood up, walked over to our table, poured himself a cup of coffee, dumped sugar into it, and went back to the screen. His face showed no emotion, but a storm had to be brewing inside. The Muterzen pirate had barely covered his tracks. Everything in his dossier indicated that long-term planning and attention to detail never made it into his bag of tricks. He was impulsive and careless. His assumed identity might have passed a superficial check, but the top candidates were rigorously vetted. The moment Kosandion’s people started to dig, the warning bells would’ve gone off.

If it was negligence or incompetence, the blow would’ve been bad enough. Kosandion would look like a fool who was unable to hire the right staff and properly supervise them. An inept leader who allowed a notorious criminal accused of monstrous atrocities to come within one step of becoming a parent of the Dominion’s next ruler.

Sadly, it wasn’t just incompetence. It was much worse.

Cookie’s briefing ran its course, and the recording of Sean vs Pirate Cruiser rolled on the screen. Kosandion viewed this grand epic with the same dispassionate expression. His own private view of Kolinda was directed at a different section of the ocean. If he had been out on the balcony during the attack, he might have seen some flashes to his far right, but the void field ensured that he would’ve heard nothing.

On the screen Sean tore into the pirate vessel.

Kosandion’s eyebrows rose a millimeter.

The cruiser broke in half.

“Once Clan Nuan started digging, the pirates realized that their prince’s cover was about to be blown,” Sean said. “Since we cut off all communications between the candidates and the rest of the galaxy, they couldn’t warn him. They chose to attack the inn. Entering our solar system wasn’t an option, so they opted for Kolinda. If the inn functioned like a typical hotel full of VIPs and was equipped with a portal, as soon as the attack began, the guests would have been immediately evacuated. The pirate prince is a scumbag, but he isn’t stupid. The Muterzen crew counted on him putting two and two together and slipping away in the chaos.”

“Whoever fed them the intel about Gertrude Hunt does not understand how the inns operate,” I added.

Kosandion leaned back and studied both of us. “There is more?”

Yes, there was.

Sean put a small dark crystal onto the table in front of Kosandion. “Their log.”

Somehow, in the middle of all that killing, Sean had paused long enough to retrieve the cruiser’s log. It showed the entirety of their communications, every incoming and outgoing message, and all their maneuvering. I’d been thinking about it, and I was pretty sure that getting that log was the reason he’d launched himself at the spaceship in the first place.