Houses guarding the planet are paid by the Anocracy to keep you exactly where you are, and you have no way to pay for the passage from a trader. The cost to smuggle you out is too high. You barely earn enough to keep you and your demon from dying of thirst. If you’re waiting for an outsider to come to your rescue, their craft will be shot down the moment it enters the atmosphere.”
She stroked the hilt of her sword under the table.
Renouard leaned forward, taking up his side of the table and some of hers. “I’m your only chance. Take my offer.”
“You want me to sell my own daughter to the slave market.”
“A vampire-human hybrid is a rarity. She’s worth some money. I promise you, in a month, she and the planet will be a bad dream.”
If she threw the cup at his face, he’d jump to his feet and she could drive the knife on her left hip under his chin and into his mouth. Hard to talk with your tongue impaled.
“If you don’t want to sell her, leave her here. She grew up here. This hellhole is the only place she knows. She doesn’t remember House Ervan. Void, she’s probably forgotten her own father by this point. Leave her here. It will be a kindness.”
She felt the sudden need to take a shower to wash off the few molecules belonging to him that happened to land on her skin.
“Come with me. We’ll burn our way through the galaxy. I’ll keep you too busy to brood. I’m quite good at making women forget their problems.”
He reached for her.
She thrust the sword between them under the table. The point grazed his thigh.
“It seems you’ve forgotten what happened the last time you failed to keep your hands to yourself.”
His affable expression was completely gone now. An ugly snarl twisted his features.
“Last chance, Maud. Very last chance.”
“You have a shuttle to catch.”
“Fine. Rot here.” He rose. “I’ll be back in six months. We can revisit it then, if there is anything left of you to bargain with.”
Maud watched him walk away.
Helen slid into the booth next to her. “I don’t like him.”
“Neither, do I, my flower. Neither do I. Don’t worry. He won’t bother us again.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
Helen looked up at her from the depths of her hood. “Will somebody really come for us?”
The fragile hope in her daughter’s voice nearly undid Maud. She wished so badly she could say yes.
Two weeks ago, when they stopped at the Lodge for the night, she had run into an Arbitrator. The galaxy, with all of its planets, dimensions, and thousands of species, was too large for any unified government, but the Office of Arbitration, an ancient neutral body, served as its court. To meet an Arbitrator was rare. To meet a human one… Up until two weeks ago Maud would’ve said it was impossible.
Humans didn’t get out much. Through a twist of cosmic fate, Earth sat on the crossroads of the galaxy. It was the only twelve-point warp in existence, which made it a convenient hub. Instead of squabbling over the planet, the interstellar powers, in a rare moment of wisdom, formed an ancient agreement with representatives of humanity. Earth would serve as the way station for the galactic travelers passing through on their way to somewhere else. They arrived in secret and stayed at specialized inns equipped to handle a wide variety of beings. In return, the planet was designated as neutral ground. None of the galactic powers could lay claim to it, and the existence of other intelligent life remained a secret to all human population except for the select few families who minded the inns.
The few rare humans who made it off-planet were like her, children of innkeepers, all marked with a particular magic that allowed them to defy the rules of physics within their inns. The Arbitrator felt different, suffused with power, unlike any human she had met before. She had stood by the bar, trying to figure out if he was Earth-born, when he turned to her and smiled. For a second, she stumbled. He was shockingly beautiful.
He asked her if she was from Earth, she told him she was, and he casually offered to deliver a message to her family.
She’d frozen then while her mind feverishly tried to find someone to whom she could send the message. When she was pregnant with Helen, her brother Klaus and her younger sister, Dina, had come to House Ervan to tell