Sweep of the Blade

Chapter 14



Maud ran.

She had heard two words: poisoned and medward. She didn't wait for anything else. She just sprinted. Hallways flew by, the doors flashing one after another. The air in her lungs turned to fire, but she barely noticed. Karat chased her but had fallen far behind.

The medward loomed ahead. There were people in the antechamber, Ilemina, Otubar, Soren, but they might as well have been ghosts. Getting to the door was all that mattered. She tore past them and burst into the triage chamber. Maud saw it all in an instant, the image was seared into her mind in a fraction of a second: Helen lying on a medbed, tiny and pale; a dozen metal arms hovering over her; the spiderweb of an advanced iv drip; and the medic sitting next to her, his face grim.

She charged to the bed, and then Karat was on top of her, pulling her back with all of her strength, and the medic was in front of her, holding his arms out, saying something. She fought her way forward, dragging Karat, and the medic rammed into her, pushing her back, his voice insistent.

Finally, the words penetrated. "...do not touch..."

She had to stop. It took a few more seconds for her body to catch up with her mind. Maud stopped struggling.

"...stable for now," the medic said.

Her mouth finally worked. "What happened?"

Karat gently but firmly pushed her back to the antechamber. "Not here."

"I need to see her."

"Stop," the medic said. "Look at yourself."

Maud forced her gaze away from Helen and looked at her armor. She was smudged with Arland's blood. She'd washed his arm and sealed the wounds, but some of it must've gotten on her when he kissed her. "I've got her stabilized," the medic said. "You're carrying a horde of germs and you're covered in blood. You can't help her by going in there. You can only hurt her."

Maud had to walk away. Everything in her screamed to get back into the room, as if just walking up to the bed would magically fix everything, and Helen would sit up and say, "Hi, Mommy." But it wouldn't.

It didn't seem real. It felt like a dream, like some nightmare, and she wished desperately to wake up. She wanted to undo this. If only there was some button she could press to rewind it all back to normal. "Come with me," Karat said.

There was nothing she could do. Maud turned and walked into the antechamber. The medic and Karat followed.

"What happened?" Maud asked again. Her voice sounded strange, like it was coming from someone else.

"Helen was at the lake with other children," Soren said. "The bugs were there as well, swimming in their designated area. After a while, the chaperones made the children get out of the water to take a break, warm up, and snack. The children ate and decided to play hunt and run."

Hunt and run was the vampire version of tag. Helen would've loved it.

"Helen ran close to the tachi," Soren continued.

"Then one of them bit her!" Ilemina snarled.

"Helen collapsed," Soren said. "She was rushed here, to the medward. The tachi was apprehended, and the rest of them are confined to their quarters. We tried to question him, but he refuses to talk. None of them are talking to us and harming him is out of the question until we know if Helen will survive."

That "if" hit Maud like a sledgehammer. She wanted to sink to the floor, ball up her fists, and scream. But she had no time.

"He bit a child." Ilemina's face was terrible. She bared her fangs, eyes blazing. A primal snarl shook her lips. It was like looking at rage personified. "I will slaughter every single one of them. I will decimate their planet. Their grandchildren will tremble when they see a vampire coming."

From anybody else, it would seem like grandstanding. But Ilemina meant every word. Otubar snarled in response. Karat gripped her blood sword. The entire room was a hair away from violence. This was how wars started. "It's more complicated than that," the medic said. "We have data on tachi venom, but there is a synthetic compound in her system that is inconsistent with what we know of the tachi."

The sharp, jagged pieces snapped together in Maud's head. Vampires cherished children. There was no greater treasure. They cherished Helen, too. They considered her one of their own. And then a bug bit her, like she was prey. It had awakened a primal response, the collective racial memory of Mukama, of invaders who devoured vampire children.

"Where is the tachi now?" she asked.

"Across the hall," Soren told her. "You can't hurt him, Lady Maud. He may hold the key to your daughter's recovery."

"I need to speak with him." She sank steel into those words.

"Come with me." Soren marched out of the room and into the hallway, to the door opposite the medward.

Maud followed him, aware of Ilemina, Otubar, Karat, and the medic directly behind her. The door slid open, exposing a small cell. Inside it, a male tachi sat on the floor, bound in a captivity suit. Made from tough polymer and weighted, it wrapped around him like a straitjacket. His exoskeleton had faded to barely visible gray.

Maud marched into the room, dropped to her knees in front of him, and released the lock on the captivity suit. It fell away, and he sprang up to his full height above her.

She jumped to her feet and bowed her head. "Thank you for saving my child."

The tachi turned brilliant indigo blue. "You're welcome, daughter of the innkeepers."

***

"Somebody better explain this to me," Ilemina growled.

"Tachi venom isn't lethal to most species." Maud stepped aside, giving the tachi room to stretch his wings. "It's meant to put the prey into a suspended state, slowing down its life functions to preserve the freshness." Karat winced.

"If he wanted to kill Helen, he would've just sliced her head off," Maud continued. "As soon as you said he'd bitten her, I knew it wasn't an attack."

Ilemina turned her glare onto the tachi. "Why didn't you say something?"

The tachi spread his indigo appendages. The gesture looked so much like a human spreading his arms in a Gallic shrug, as if to say "None of this is my fault; I didn't mess it up, you did. Deal with it."

Ilemina turned to Maud. "What does that mean?"

"It means he thinks you are a xenophobic species prone to rash and violent reactions, so he saw no point in explaining himself. You wouldn't have believed him anyway."

Ilemina's eyes narrowed. She pierced the tachi with her stare.

"I can't make it simple for you," he said.

Ilemina flashed her fangs. "Try me."

The tachi turned to Maud, switching to the Akit dialect. "They think I killed the child; the royal is angry. Now they know I saved the child; she is angry. I do not comprehend this species. How have they ever managed to achieve interstellar civilization without self-destructing?"

"Could you please tell me what happened to my daughter?" Maud didn't even try to keep the desperation from her voice.

The tachi's color lightened for a moment. "Yes, of course." He folded his arms in an apologetic gesture. "I will use short thoughts. We were bathing. The children were running and making excited noises. Your child ran close to us. She was not afraid like the other children. They could not catch her. She ran too close and almost ran into me. Then she apologized for disturbing my tegah."

Maud had given Helen a primer on tachi manners. Until now she had no idea any of it had stuck.

"She is such a polite child," the tachi said. "We spoke. Something hit her in the neck, on her left side. She fell. I caught her. I saw a wet spot on her skin. It smelled wrong. Her eyes rolled back in her head. I knew I had to act. I bit her to keep the poison from spreading."

"Which way was she facing when it hit her?" Soren asked.

"She was turning away from me to rejoin the game. She was facing the rest of the children. The lake was on her right and the castle was on her left."

"A sniper shot from the bluff," Otubar said.

Karat bared her teeth in a grimace. "There is a clear line of sight from the western edge of the game grounds to the lake. They distracted us with the krim match, then goaded Arland into a fight, and while we were watching, they shot Helen." "Pull the video feed," Ilemina ordered. Karat took off at a run.

There were implications and conclusions to be drawn from all of this, but right now, none of them mattered. "Did you recognize the poison?" Maud asked.

"No," the tachi said. "I would know it again. It smelled strong."

The vampire medic failed to identify it and the tachi didn't know it. The tachi coma wouldn't last forever. It could fail at any moment. She had to do something now, or Helen would die. There was only one place she could turn to. "I don't have anything to trade."

Everyone stopped and looked at her. She realized she had spoken out loud.

Before she could explain, a half-dressed Arland rounded the corner, somehow managing to look angry and confused at the same time. "What the hell is going on?" Soren blinked. "Why are you out of armor?"

"Maud?" Arland closed in on her.

She looked up at him, feverishly rummaging through the list of her meager possessions in her head.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Helen has been poisoned, and I don't have anything to trade."

"Will someone explain this to me?" Ilemina demanded.

Understanding sparked in Arland's eyes. "But I have things to trade. They will trade with me or I'll twist their heads off."

"Who?" Ilemina snarled.

"Explain things to your mother," Otubar boomed.

"No time." Arland grabbed Maud's hand and pulled her down the hallway. Behind them the sound of a pissed off Preceptor shook the air. Arland sped up.

"How are you still walking?" Maud squeezed out.

"Booster. Activated it before you took my armor off. I had plans. None of which involved a sedative."

"Arland Roburtar Gabrian of Krahr!" Ilemina roared. "Stop this instant!"

Arland ignored her. They were almost to the bend in the hallway.

Suddenly Arland braked, and then the lees flooded all available space, their veils swirling, their jewelry shining, tails and ears twitching. Maud saw Nuan Cee in the center of the lees mob and reached out to him. "Helen..." Nuan Cee took her hands into his furry paw-hands. "I know."

The rest of the lees rushed past them, washing over them like a wave, and rolled down the hallway, parting around Ilemina, Otubar, and Soren.

"I have nothing to trade," she said.

Nuan Cee's turquoise eyes shone. He grinned, displaying sharp, even teeth. "I am sure we can come to an arrangement."

"Get out of my medward, vermin!" the medic screamed.

"Do not worry yourself." Nuan Cee patted Maud's hands as a mob of lees carried the medic out of his medward. "All will be well now."


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