“Let her go, dear,” Caldenia called out. “You will crush her.”

Orro released me and I sucked in a hoarse breath. Quillonian hugs weren’t for people with weak bones.

“Wonderful to see you moving around,” Caldenia said.

Orro retreated to the chair and turned away, suddenly embarrassed.

“Did you save the kettle?” I asked.

Her Grace raised her eyebrows. “Do you take me for an amateur?”

She stepped to the island, where a cake stand waited covered by a metal hood, and lifted the cover. The kettle still filled with ruby tea waited on the stand.

“Sadly, we are still unable to identify the poison,” Caldenia said. “But the Khanum provided us with another pot and I can tell you that there are definite chemical differences between the two liquids.”

“So the entire kettle was poisoned?” Just as I thought.

“It appears to be so. This was either very calculated or extremely sloppy.”

Or due to inexperience or desperation. “Thank you.”

“Whatever I can do to help, dear.”

I went to George’s quarters and knocked on the door. He opened it. Behind him Sophie sat on the couch next to Gaston. Jack leaned against the wall in his favorite pose, one foot propping him up.

“I know,” I told George.

An understanding showed in his eyes. “It is the only way,” he told me.

“You are despicable.”

“I will have to live with that,” he said.

“Yes, you will. We’ll revisit this later. I need to know when the Merchants were notified that the peace summit would be held here, in Gertrude Hunt.”

“On 2032, Standard,” he said.

The Standard galactic year had four hundred “days” or twenty five “hours” each. The days were divided into four “seasons,” each a hundred days long. The first of the four digits identified the season, the next three identified the day. Today was 2049 Standard. “You didn’t give them much warning.”

“No,” George said.

“Good. I will be back in a couple of hours. Keep the peace while I am gone.”

“Where are you going?” Gaston called out.

“To see the muscle merchant,” I told him and shut the door.

Wilmos’ shop was an island of calm in the chaos of Baha-char. As I stepped into its cool depth, the soft lilting melody of a now dead planet wound about me like fragrant smoke from an incense burner. Gorvar, Wilmos’s huge lupine monster, lay on the floor, sprawled on a pelt of long golden fur that no doubt once belonged to some ferocious creature. Gorvar glanced at me with his orange eyes, but decided moving wasn’t worth the trouble. I didn’t present enough of a threat.

Wilmos emerged from the back room, wiping his hands with a rag.

“You sent him to Nexus.”

“I’ve been expecting this conversation.” Wilmos pointed at a horseshoe shaped couch. “Let’s sit.”

I sat. “You said he was your life’s work. Then you sent him to Nexus to die.”

Wilmos growled under his breath. Yellow light rolled over his irises. “I didn’t send him. I tried to talk him out of it.”

“Not hard enough.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the impossible job. The one that killed every creature that took it. He had to have it.”

“Why?”

Wilmos sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

“Soldiers aren’t born. They are made. Under the right conditions, most people can be forged into soldiers. They follow orders, they respect the chain of command, and when occasion calls for it, they will perform heroic deeds for the good of the many. But at heart those soldiers hope there is no war. Given a chance, they prefer to avoid combat and when they fight so they can eventually go home. Sean isn’t just a soldier. He is a warrior. War is a thing he does as naturally as you breathe. It draws him like night insect to a flame.”

“But why this war? Why not any other war, the kind with an expiration date?”

“Because he wanted the roughest job I had and when I offered it to him, it had an expiration date. A six month tour. He did it for many reasons. He had to test himself. To know that he could stand shoulder to shoulder with his parents. In some way, if he proved to himself and them that he could cut it in the roughest war, it would mean that everything they went through to give him life was worthwhile. He wanted to make them proud. He wanted to be able to look his reflection in the eye and prove that all his skills and power meant something. You want to be the best Innkeeper you can be. He wants to be the best soldier he can be. I was a contributing factor to this. I told him to his face that he was the pinnacle of my work. That’s a hell of a lot of expectation to put on someone and if I wasn’t old and stupid, I would’ve recognized this. He wanted to show me what he was capable of. Sean hates to disappoint. You were a factor.”

“Me?”

“I asked him if he was leaving anyone behind. He said he met a girl with stardust on her robe, and when he looked into her eyes, he saw the Universe looking back.”

“He said that?”

“He did. I asked him if he thought this girl would wait for him and he said he wasn’t sure.” Wilmos sighed. “How do you think he felt when he met you? If I give you an obscure sentient species, I bet you can tell me their favorite color. You walk the streets of Baha-char and bargain with Merchants, you open doors to planets thousands of light years away, and you use complicated technology like you grew up with it, because you did. He knew nothing except what he learned on Earth. You weren’t equals.”