Oh Little Light I Saw You Ohhh Never Saw It Coming We Were Aways Running Be Here We Are Again

"Practice you call back the information is real?" Sean asked.

We were walking through the brusk dim hallway side by side.  Beast trailed me, and Gorvar trotted by Sean's side.  The two animals had decided to ignore each other's being, concentrating on guarding us instead.

"Kosandion is Caldenia's nephew, so he's devious enough to manufacture this energy reading and use it to manipulate us. But why bother? He could've simply asked me to hand the ratings off to Caldenia.  I would do it considering he is a invitee.  Instead, he felt that there was a value attached to me running this errand, and he compensated me for my effort."

Sean'south frown deepened.

I had taken the data to Caldenia right after my conversation with Kosandion.  I found Her Grace enjoying a lovely breakfast on our back patio.  I'd placed the cube on the table and told her Kosandion wanted her to take information technology. She raised her eyebrows and said, "He did, did he?" She scanned the cube with her reader, then she smiled with all her teeth, and I'd been depression-primal haunted past that smile ever since.

Nosotros stopped before a nighttime wall blocking our way.  Sean's eyes were still grim. I reached over and squeezed his hand. "I'thousand sorry."

He blinked.

"We don't really know anything. We don't know who is behind the corrupted advertizing-hal that took Wilmos, why he was taken, if he is all the same live, and the non knowing is awful. I know that y'all really want to get and expect for him, and instead we have to practice this."

"It'due south not that. I'm used to the 'do A to go B,' considering that's what I want or need to do. This is unlike. All of this is because of me. I got us into this mess, and it keeps getting worse and worse."

"Nothing actually changed," I said.  "When we took this job, we knew we had to proceed Kosandion safe. This assassination plot doesn't alter that. We knew Caldenia and Kosandion take a complicated history. Predictably, their nowadays human relationship is complicated."

He made a low growling noise in his throat. Gorvar's ears twitched.

"And that's exactly what I find surprising. What is the nature of their relationship? Is she plotting to kill him? Did he pick our inn because he is planning to punish her for the murder of his father? If I were him, I would arrange to be here and provoke her until she snaps and makes her play. When she fails, you and I will accept to expel her from the inn. She would be done. The bounties on her head are still sky-high. I checked."

"Sometimes yous say things that make me wonder well-nigh you."

"No demand to wonder. I'grand a simple man. I love y'all and I will protect you, even if I have to murder everyone in this inn to do it."

I stood on my toes and kissed him. "What if nosotros don't murder anybody?"

The corners of his mouth curved. "No promises."

"Are we ready?"

"Equally ready as we're going to be."

I touched the wall in front of us with my broom. Glowing dots of calorie-free pulsed from the broom, cartoon an outline of a huge double door in the wall. The once solid surface divide downwards the middle and the two halves of the door swung open, letting a alluvion of sunshine bathe us.

A big round arena spread before us, bordered past a raised amphitheater that was divided into fourteen sections, one for each delegation, one for Kosandion and his retinue, and the last for the observers. Each section was freestanding, raised thirty feet above the arena's floor and separated from the adjoining sections past a thirty-pes gap. A short prophylactic wall secured the sections. We had shamelessly stolen the idea from the Sometime Arena at Baha-char.

Ideally, I would have encircled each department by an impenetrable barrier, the aforementioned mode I had secured Kosandion'due south balcony. Unfortunately, maintaining that many barriers simultaneously was beyond Gertrude Hunt's capacity. They too acquired a distortion in the sensors, and since the whole thing had to be recorded, I settled for the broad gaps and bringing Gertrude Hunt to loftier alert. If the delegates as much as twitched toward each other, the inn would pluck them correct out of their seats and toss them dorsum into their respective quarters.

"What almost the moderator platform?" I asked.

We needed a moderator for the contend, and Sean volunteered to make a special platform for him.

"I'm working on it," Sean said.

He raised his head to the vivid blue heaven and squinted at the sunshine. In reality, the arena was deep inside the inn. I had done some serious damage to dimensional physics. The heaven above us was existent, just if someone flew a drone over the inn, they would find only the worn roof of an ordinary ornate Victorian.

Even a year ago, expending that much free energy would have been impossible for me. Each inn had a finite capacity for free energy storage. That's why a constant stream of guests was better than occasional large groups. A steady flow was much preferable to the feast or famine scenario Gertrude Hunt had to endure for the concluding couple of years. Our reputation was spreading, and nosotros'd had more visitors in the past few months than e'er, each of them more troublesome than a typical inn guest simply very much welcome. These guests allowed our inn a gamble to abound, but its energy reserves were still insufficient to contain the massive influx of this event. Information technology was a use it or lose it situation, so I used it to requite the trials a wow factor.

Tony had shaken his head at the arena and told me I was working likewise hard. According to him, a higher auditorium would have been "appropriate and fine" for the effect. However, this spousal selection was broadcast beyond multiple star systems. The reputation of the Earth'due south inns was on the line, and I had no doubt the Innkeeper Assembly was watching information technology and evaluating our performance. As Caldenia once told me, life gave us few opportunities to put our best pes forward, then when a gamble to shine presented itself, information technology was best to take it.  A fiddling bit of showmanship didn't injure.

A chime pealed through the arena. It was time.

Sean tapped his spear on the floor. Huge screens descended seemingly from the clear heaven offer each section a hazard to view the activity upward close.

I planted my broom into the stone tiles, formed a tunnel between the closest section and House Meer'south quarters, and opened their doors.

#

"Greetings, my fellow beings!"

Gaston cut a stunning figure in the centre of the arena's floor. He'd traded his trademark black and white clothes for a stunning white and grayness outfit, embroidered with silverish-blue thread that complimented his silver eyes. It fit him like a glove while still projecting the air of what he called "gentlemanly menace."   He looked like a space pirate before.  Now he looked similar a infinite pirate prince who had done very well for himself.

His voice matched his new for-Tv set persona, resonant and smooth, equally it blasted from the hidden speakers.  It took him exactly 4 words to get everyone's attention. Sean a few yards abroad might likewise have been invisible, despite his robe, his rather obvious spear, and his tendency to loom.

"Welcome to the First Trial!" Gaston announced.

The 12 delegations cheered, stomped, and fabricated species-appropriate noises. Fifty-fifty Kosandion in the chair to my right clapped politely. Gaston clearly missed his true calling.

Sean's vocalism murmured in my ear through the communicator. "If the words 'are you ready to rumble' come out of his rima oris, I'm pulling him out."

I hid a grin.

"I know all of you lot have been waiting to find out how our contestants will showcase their talents today.  Are you ready?"

I braced, merely he didn't add rumble to it. Good that he stopped in that location.

The delegations roared to indicate they were most definitely ready.

"He's turning it into a spectacle," Resven murmured.

"It is meant to be one," Kosandion told him.  "People dearest a good show."

"Today's challenge is…. DEBATE!"

The conflicting equivalent of "wooo!" was rather loud.

Gaston waved them on, inviting more noise, so fabricated a sweeping gesture that somehow brought instant silence.

"Our spousal candidates will face off in randomly selected pairs. Both candidates from a single pair volition be asked the aforementioned question.  One will answer first, and the other will reply. The winner will be adamant by a combination of pop vote, Sovereign's opinion, and feedback from our esteemed contend moderator."

He gave them a moment to digest and went on.

"Our debate moderator is truly a scholar of great renown. He has devoted himself to contemplating the mysteries of the universe.  Beings from every corner of the Galaxy travel thousands of low-cal years to seek his communication."

The floor behind Gaston split and an SUV-sized metallic egg positioned on its side with the narrow end toward the centre of the loonshit rose from nether the floor on a metal stalk.

He didn't.

Yeah, yes, he did. As soon as this debate was over, I would find him, and I would brand him pay.  There would exist no escape.

"Recipient of the Starlight Quill, Sage of Dandy Tree, Vanquisher of the Sphinx, Outset Scholar Thek!"

The stone egg split in half lengthwise.  The top one-half retracted, revealing the First Scholar in all of his glory, property his didactics stick, his hat firmly on his noggin with the glittering white feather attached to information technology. His ii assistants dutifully stood behind him, looking down and playing the role of modest disciples.

"An egg?" I hissed into the mike.

"Information technology's funny."

Ugh.

The arena greeted the First Scholar with resounding adulation. He nodded to them, waving his hand-claw benevolently.

The original moderator had encountered unexpected travel delays because his second wife kidnapped him and now his other 4 wives were having their own debate on the merits of rescuing him.  We needed a substitute in a bustle, and First Scholar Thek was the talk of the Milky way after the Sphinx escapade. Orata practically drooled when Sean suggested him.

They didn't have to twist Thek'southward wings. He demurred at first, but I had a chat with Orata prior to her visiting him, and once she told him that information technology was a adventure to illuminate millions of minds with the wisdom of scholarship, he was all in.

"I continue waiting for his hat to slide off," Sean murmured.

He was right, the headdress should've slipped off his feathers past at present. "Whatever his disciples did, it seems to be working."

"Peradventure they glued it."

"Universe, I hope not."

The First Scholar preened at the show of support and waved his teaching stick. His voice rolled out of the speakers.

"Let u.s. begin."

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Source: https://www.ilona-andrews.com/2022/chapter-14-part-1-5/