Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles #4) - Ilona Andrews Page 0,60

to be homeschooled. Even if Maud could alter her daughter’s outlook on life, there was no way to disguise the fangs, or her strength, or the way her eyes caught the light at night. Growing up at the inn was interesting and fun, but it had its lonely moments. All three of them, Klaus, Maud, and Dina, had dealt with it in their own ways. Klaus left the inn every chance he got. He and Michael, his best friend and another innkeeper’s son, went on excursions, to Baha-char, to Kio-kio, and every place they could possibly reach from either of the inns. Maud had burrowed into books and spent way too much time practicing martial arts with their father and then various tutors. And Dina went through phases when she tried to pretend to be just human and attempt to go to public school to find friends. Friendships built on lies never lasted.

Maud hugged Helen tighter. There were no perfect options.

She wanted to fix it. If she could wave a magic wand and streamline the galaxy for the sake of her daughter, she would do it in a heartbeat.

“It doesn’t have to be here or the inn,” she said. “We can try living somewhere else. We can open a shop at Baha-char. We can get a ship and travel the galaxy.”

Helen’s harbinger chirped. She poked at it with her finger. “Ymanie says there are baby birds on Tower 12.”

Maud sighed. In the end, Helen was just five years old. “Would you like to go and see baby birds?”

“Yes!” Helen jumped off the wall onto the balcony.

“Go ahead. No heroics, Helen. No touching the birds, no climbing up dangerous high places, and no—”

“Yes, Mommy!”

Maud closed her mouth and watched her daughter sprint inside and to the door.

Right now, baby birds fixed all of Helen’s problems. But she wouldn’t be five forever.

What do I do? What’s the right thing here?

In this moment, Maud would’ve given ten years of her life to be able to call her mother.

She went inside. Her harbinger glowed. Great. A high priority message, ten minutes ago. At least it didn’t sit there for too long.

Maud touched the screen. Lady Ilemina’s face appeared.

“Lady Maud,” Arland’s mother said. “Do join me for lunch.”

11

Lady Ilemina had decided to take her lunch in the Small Garden. Small, Maud decided, as she walked down the stone path, was a relative term.

The Small Garden occupied roughly four acres atop a tiny mesa that thrust out of the living rock of the mountain. There were many such mesas on the grounds and the castle simply grew around them, incorporating them into its structure. Some supported towers, others provided space for utility areas or other parks. Her harbinger informed her that there was a larger garden, imaginatively titled the Large Garden, almost twice the size of the small one; also the High Garden, the Low Garden, the Silver Garden, the River Garden…she stopped reading after that.

Vampires loved nature, but where on Earth a garden meant a carefully cultivated space, organized, planned, and often offering a variety of plants from all over the planet, a vampire garden was basically a chunk of preserved wilderness. It was a carefully tended wilderness, pruned, managed, and well loved, but every plant in it was native to the area. The vampire gardeners planted extra flowers and encouraged picturesque shrubs and native herbs, but it would never occur to them to transplant flowers from one continent to another. If they saw a Chinese butterfly bush in a British garden among the native bluebells, they would’ve pulled it out as a weed.

The exception was the vala tree. The Holy Anocracy brought them to every planet it colonized.

The garden around Maud showcased the best this biozone had to offer. Tall trees with narrow turquoise leaves and pale bark rose on both sides of the path. Their roots lay partially exposed and knotted together as if someone had taken cypress trees and decided to try their hand at macramé. Under the roots delicate lavender and blue flowers bloomed in clusters, with five petals each and a spray of long stamens. The flowers glowed slightly, their leaves shimmering with a nacre sheen. A frilly emerald shrub, its leaves tinged with brighter green, crowded around the roots. Between the trees, where more sun penetrated through the canopy, other flowers bloomed. Tall stems supported narrow blossoms shaped like rose-colored champagne flutes stuffed to the brim with a wealth of white stamens. Translucent flowers, as big as her head,