I looked at my cup of coffee. I didn’t want to do anyone any favors. I wanted fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time with my refrigerator. I barely ate last night and I had just downed a whole cup of coffee on an empty stomach. But I had a job to do. Maybe it would be something simple.

I smiled at the Arbiter. “How can I help you?”

“If I give you coordinates to a particular world, could you open a door to it?” George asked.

“Which world?”

He raised his cane. A set of numbers ignited in mid-air written in crimson. The first two digits told me everything I needed to know.

“No,” I said.

“But I have seen you open doors,” he said.

“It’s not that simple.” It never was. “Why don’t we sit down?”

We walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table. Orro swept by me like a silent blur of brown and suddenly a plate holding two tiny crepes filled with cream and sliced strawberries materialized in front of me. I didn’t even see him slide it there. Our kitchen was staffed by a ninja.

“Thank you,” I said. Orro nodded and went to the stove.

George quietly waited.

“The inns are not well understood,” I cut a small piece of crepe and tried it. It practically melted on my tongue. “Orro, this is heavenly.”

Orro’s needles quivered slightly.

“We live within them, we use them, but even we, the innkeepers, are unsure about why they function the way they do.”

Jack and Gaston walked into the kitchen.

“It is easiest to imagine them as trees. An inn, like Gertrude Hunt, begins with a seed. The seed is weak and fragile, but if properly tended, it sprouts. It sends roots deep into the ground. What we see,” I made a small circle with my fork, encompassing the kitchen, “is but a small fraction of the inn’s form. As it grows, it begins to spread branches through the Universe. These branches don’t obey our physics. Some puncture our reality. Some transform and evolve beyond our understanding. A single inn of some age, like Gertrude Hunt, may reach into other worlds.”

“Like Yggdrasil,” George said.

“Yes, like that.”

“What’s Yggdrasil?” Jack asked.

“A holy tree of the ancient Norse,” George said. “It extends into all nine realms of their mythology.”

“The problem is that innkeepers have no control over the direction of the branches,” I said. “We know when the inn extends into a particular world and after a while we can access it, but we can’t make the inns open a particular door. Most inns instinctively seek out Baha-char. That’s usually the first world that opens to us. But we don’t know why. People sometimes say that the seed of the very first inn was brought to us from Baha-char and that all of its descendants instinctively seek the connection to their homeland the way salmon travel hundreds of miles to reach their spawning grounds. We simply don’t know. I can tell you that I know every world this inn has reached so far and your coordinates are not among them. Furthermore, you are asking for a portal to a world that is very similar to ours. That world exists in its own tiny reality, splintered from majority of the cosmos. It’s like reaching into a pocket on the Universe’s coat. I don’t know the capabilities of every inn on Earth, but I can tell you that my father always told me that creating a door to an alternative dimension like that could not be done. It would collapse the inn.”

George leaned back in his chair. I ate my crepes, enjoying every single bite.

“But you can open a portal to Baha-char?”

“Yes.”

“If you get caught, there will be hell to pay,” Gaston said.

“I’ll have to take the risk.” George rose smoothly. “In that case, I would still be grateful for your assistance. I would like you to escort me to that world and back. I can find a way to it from Baha-char but I will need you to lead me back to the inn.”

I rubbed my face. “You’re asking me to leave the inn while it’s full of guests.”

“Yes. I take full responsibility for it.”

“I don’t understand. You’re an Arbiter. You possess the technology to find the inn from Baha-char.”

“I don’t want to use the technology at my disposal for personal reasons,” George said.

“There is something you are not telling me.”

“He wants to go to a world that’s forbidden to us,” Jack said. “Our home world. If he uses any of the gadgets provided to us by the Arbitrator Court, he can be tracked. They’ll have his ass.”

I took a moment to mourn my empty plate and to think what I was going to say next without completely alienating the man in charge of signing the check. “So you want me to endanger my guests by leaving the inn and escort you on a mission that could potentially cause you to be sanctioned, derailing the peace talks and my payment and ruining the reputation of this inn. Could you help me understand why I should do that?”

Gaston laughed under his breath.

George sighed. “I’m just as invested in the success of the peace summit as you are. As matters stand now, I do not believe the peace talks will succeed. The problem is Ruah, the bulletproof swordsman.”

Aha. Was he implying that Gertrude Hunt couldn’t handle one otrokar? “Do you doubt my ability to suppress him?”

George grimaced. “That’s not the issue. I know that you can subdue Ruah. The problem is the otrokar mindset. The otrokari acknowledge that a single vampire is a better rounded warrior; however, they have an unshakable faith in their own supremacy through the use of genetic specialization. They choose their specialization in adolescence. As they undergo rigorous training in their chosen specialty, their bodies develop to match it. Ruah is the pinnacle of that process. They believe he is unbeatable with a sword. As long as he reigns supreme, he makes them feel invincible. I have to shatter that faith. I have to prove to them that he and the Horde are not infallible and I have to do it in terms they will understand.”