The Vampire & Her Witch

”A square?” Emmie asked, wiping the tears away with a sleeve and stumbling over the unfamiliar human word. ”What’s a square?”

”A squire,” Ashlynn corrected, emphasizing the middle of the word. ”Where I come from,” she said, standing up and walking around her desk so she could sit on the floor and be on eye level with the young, horned girl. ”Brave warriors who serve lords and rule over villages in their name are called knights. Some people become knights because their parents were knights or lords, but others earn their title through bravery and valor.”

”Are, are you a knight then?” Emmie asked Heila. ”Because you’re the bravest warrior I know besides Father. But he doesn’t serve any lords so he can’t be a knight,” she added, trying to make it clear that she didn’t think that her father and Heila were the same kind of warrior.

”I’m not a knight,” Heila said, shaking her head and holding back a small laugh at the idea. What would Sir Thane think if he heard that she’d been mistaken for a knight? ”I’m Lady Ashlynn’s lady-in-waiting. Just like she’s Lady Nyrielle’s Seneschal and serves her, I serve Lady Ashlynn.”

”But you’re a witch! And a champion,” Emmie protested. ”How can you be a servant?”

”I was little more than a chambermaid when I met Lady Ashlynn you know,” Heila pointed out. ”I used to fetch and carry water, wash the linens, scrub the floors. I wasn’t always so powerful,” she said, reaching out to rest a hand on the young girl’s knee. ”When I was your age, I never thought I’d be like this, but sometimes, you meet the right person and everything changes.”

”I take it then that this ’squire’ is a kind of servant?” Kurtz asked, frowning slightly at Ashlynn, uncertain whether or not he liked the direction the conversation was taking. He’d only planned on letting Emmie meet the Willow Witch but now things seemed to be getting quickly out of hand. ”One that normally serves these ’knights’?” he asked.

”In a manner of speaking,” Ashlynn said, focusing her attention on Emmie rather than Kurtz. In a way, this was a test for both of them. Emmie needed to understand what Ashlynn was offering well enough to make her case to her father.

At such a young age, Ashlynn would never pull a child away from their parent unless it was to rescue the child from an unfit parent, but Kurtz seemed to be overly doting on his young daughter more than anything. Since that was the case, Emmie would need her father’s permission before she could do anything.

”A squire follows a knight, tending to his weapons and armor,” Ashlynn explained. ”They also tend the knight’s horse, mend his clothes and ensure that the knight is always ready to do his duty when the time comes. In exchanges, the squire learns the ways of weapons and armor, how to fight, how to ride, and eventually, when they’re old enough, they learn the other things a knight must do as well.”

Though she kept her explanation simple, Ashlynn hoped that that Kurtz and his young daughter could understand the tradition. The Vale of Mists had already adopted a number of distinctly human traditions, particularly since Thane, Nyrielle’s first human progeny, had been a knight himself. Now, Ashlynn hoped to build on that by inviting someone who had grown up outside of the Vale of Mists to participate in a timeless human tradition.

Eventually, she wanted this kind of sharing to go both ways, introducing Eldritch customs to human communities to break down the barriers of ignorance that made it so easy for the Church to sow the seeds of fear among her own people. Perhaps, if humans saw Eldritch knights with their loyal squires in tow, they could learn how both groups of people respected the strong and passed on their traditions to the next generation...

”But you said that Lady Heila isn’t a knight,” Kurtz pointed out, interrupting Ashlynn’s musings and pulling her back to the present. ”So what would Emmie do? What would she learn?”

”That’s up to Heila to decide,” Ashlynn said. ”But in the years to come, Heila’s responsibilities will only grow. She will need someone at her side that she can trust, just as much as I trust her at my side.”

”Emmie,” Heila said as all eyes fell on her. ”Do you know how to mend clothing? Or use a hot iron to press out wrinkles? Can you count money and shop in a market?”

”Um, I can count money, but I can’t go to the market by myself,” Emmie said, looking at Heila in confusion. ”But I know the eight lines of attack and defense with a sword, and I know the four postures with a spear, and, and I’ve been trying to learn how to use a whip,” she said, clutching at the chain whip at her hip. ”Father taught me lots of things about fighting so... so... can you just teach me more of that?”

”I can’t,” Heila said, shaking her head. ”I know less about fighting than your father does. I’m strong because I’m a witch, because I have a seed of witchcraft that Lady Ashlynn nurtured just for me,” she said, placing a hand lightly over the faint scar in the center of her chest. ”I don’t know how to use a whip that isn’t alive in my hands, and even though I have a small sword, I use it more like my wand than a true sword.”

”If you follow me, sometimes, it will be dangerous, and there will be battles,” Heila said. ”But most days, there will be chores. Not fun, exciting, magical chores, but simple, boring chores. I will promise you though, if you follow me, I will teach you some of the magical things that I can share with a person who is not a witch. You can still learn simple sorcery so I can teach you that as well.”

”Really? So I can learn sorcery like when you made the trees throw icicles?” Emmie asked, sitting up straighter with shining eyes.

”No,” Heila said flatly. ”I’ll teach you how to pick herbs and tend a garden. You may even be able to help me brew potions, and there are some medicines that don’t take much magic to make at all. You could learn to make a few of those. But you’ll still need to learn how to be careful about plucking very small leaves from stems or petals from flowers. It isn’t very exciting,” she said, trying to be as honest as she could.

In the Briar, she and Ashlynn had spent countless days wading through shallow water in the oppressive, humid heat of the Mother of Thorn’s home, collecting herbs, picking flowers and searching for traces of elusive insects. For all of the excitement of a hunt for a powerful beast, most days were filled with simple work, preparing the way for the magic to come.

Perhaps for Emmie, everything that happened in the arena was exciting. Her father was a champion, covered with glory and celebrated wherever he went in High Fen City. Even his pracitce sessions between battles likely looked exciting to someone as interested in arena battles as Emmie was.

But Heila’s life wasn’t glamorous or glorious, even though she’d achieved some fame in the arena. If Emmie really wanted to follow her, she would have to accept a life that was very different than whatever she’d imagined when she came here today.