The Vampire & Her Witch

Around the table, several people bristled at Isabell’s cold pronouncement that their town had no value. Even the people at the lower tables, who had been cowed into silence by the barbed exchange between the engineer and their liege lord, began to mutter darkly about this arrogant woman who felt that their homes and businesses should be torn down.

So long as it was a matter of trading insults between an outsider and their lord, the common people would hold their tongues. Even if some of them happened to share Isabell’s dim opinion of Baron Hanrahan, none of them would dare to speak in support of her or laugh at their lord’s expense. After all, no one wanted to risk incurring their lord’s wrath over something so petty.

But when she expanded her insults to encompass their homes, all but calling it dirty and squalid in her scathing critique, that was a different matter entirely, and many at the lower tables turned eagerly to their lord, waiting to see him put the arrogant engineer in her place.

”What, just because the roads are in rough shape and the buildings are a bit old?” Baron Hanrahan said with a snort. ”Typical of a woman. You give up at the first sign of trouble and look for something better to try instead. Maybe we should replace our thatch with slate? Or tiles? Should we paint our new roofs red this year and blue the next?” Baron Hanrahan snorted.

”You’ll never be happy with it, no matter what hard-working men give you,” the baron sneered. ”You just whine and complain and demand something newer, shinier, and more expensive that your husband will have to mortgage his soul for, just so you can grow bored of it in a few years before you move on again.”

”After all,” he said, pointing at her with a thick, sausage-like finger. ”Isn’t that why you’re trying so hard to buy your way into the aristocracy out here in the frontier? It was too hard for you to make something of yourself back home, so you’ve come running out here where you think it will be easier.”

”My Lord Baron,” Jocelynn said, placing a hand on Owain’s thigh to give him a reassuring squeeze under the table as she leaned forward to interject in the conversation. Her seafoam eyes widened with practiced innocence as she attempted to place herself in a position to play a somewhat naive voice of reason. ”Perhaps you’re being unfair to Master Isabell and Master Tiernan. They’ve come all this way at brother-in-law’s request, after all, and we all want to strengthen the march for Lord Bors.”

Turning toward the guild masters with a thoughtful expression, she paused for a moment, as if choosing her words carefully to find a way to act as a bridge between her aristocratic peers and the powerful commoners from her hometown.

”I know it must be something of an adjustment for you both compared to Blackwell County,” she said diplomatically. ”I’ve only been here for a few months and I’m still adjusting myself. Out here, on the frontier, men of arms and action, knights and lords like Baron Hanrahan hold absolute sway. The merchant associations out here don’t approach the power and prestige held by the guilds back home.”

”Your point, Lady Jocelynn?” Isabell asked cautiously, and doing her best to blunt the sharp tongue she’d allowed to have free rein on the frontier noblemen who looked down their noses at her. It was obvious that Lady Ashlynn’s young sister was attempting to cool the temperature of the discussions, but something about her approach felt... off in a way that Isabell couldn’t quite put a finger on.

”The frontier offers different challenges,” Jocelynn explained, her voice taking on a wistful tone as if she were musing aloud rather than following a carefully rehearsed script. ”But also different opportunities. In Blackwell, everything of value has been claimed for generations. Here...” she said, allowing her words to trail off, letting the people gathered at the high table fill in the blank themselves.

”The problem is that, in order to win over men of arms and action in the frontier, men like Lord Owain and Baron Hanrahan,” the golden-haired young lady said. ”It requires achievements made on the field of battle. I think that’s the real source of friction here,” she said, turning her innocent-looking seafoam eyes to regard the portly baron.

Jocelynn knew that Baron Hanrahan’s days as a fighting man were long behind him. The War of Inches had been fought before Jocelynn was even born, but by all accounts, even when the war had been fought just outside his barony, Ian Hanrahan had functioned more as an administrator of a staging ground than a soldier on the front lines. What glory had been won in that war had been earned by the knights who were his vasals and other men who followed Bors Lothian’s banner as he raided Airgead Mountain for its wealth.

But to hear Jocelynn speak of him now, Ian Hanrahan had been every bit as brave and bold in his glory days as Owain Lothian was now. It was pure fiction, of course, but propping him up as a warrior and hero in the brutal lands of the frontier gave the baron an edge that she was certain he could exploit now that she had given him the opportunity.

”Exactly, exactly so!” Baron Hanrahan said, thumping the heavy banquet table with a fleshy palm. ”The knights under my command are all battle-tested men. Men who have spilled blood and risked their lives to defend their homes and purge the lands around us of wicked demons. They are worthy to be called knights!”

”But you,” the portly baron said, shaking a thick, sausage-like finger at the sharp-tongued engineer. ”You have never once stood on the field of battle. You know nothing of war and a man’s courage. So how can I respect you as a knight when all you intend to do is buy your title?”

Sitting beside Owain, Jocelynn did her best to keep her features calm and neutral, even as she wanted to stand to applaud the baron for playing his role so well. Of course, there would be opportunities to fight in the coming war and gain martial glory, but Master Isabell could only do that if she accepted lands and a position that would place her in the midst of the conflict that was sure to come to Airgead Mountain the following year.

The bait was right there, and the trap was nearly perfectly set, all she had to do was suggest...

”I know nothing of war?” Isabell said, leaning back in her chair and laughing so loudly that it startled Jocelynn out of her thoughts. ”You might be able to say that about my good friend here,” she said, placing a hand briefly on Tiernan’s shoulder before her eyes grew cold and she directed a piercing stare at Ian Hanrahan that made him feel as though the woman in silver spectacles had transformed into a great owl eyeing her next meal.

”But if you think I know nothing of war,” Isabell said coldly. ”Then I’m afraid you don’t know me at all.”