The Vampire & Her Witch

Diarmuid’s questions pierced through the smokescreen of Ian Hanrahan’s blustering like a beam of pure white light, shining down on the ugliness beneath and revealing it for everyone to see.

While the common man might not be aware of the laws and customs that surrounded handling an incident like the one that occurred with Dame Sybyll and her mother, once Diarmuid pointed it out, it became plainly obvious that the Baron had exceeded his authority.

”Inquisitor,” Ian Hanrahan pleaded. ”You have to understand the damage that wild accusations like theirs could have done...”

”Oh, I do,” Diarmuid said calmly. ”But by every version of the story told so far, hers and yours, the woman claiming to be Baroness Caitlin approached you privately in your own chambers instead of confronting you in public during the feast. That suggests she had not only an awareness of the severity of the issue but also a desire to handle the matter privately, where the ’damage’ could have been minimized.”

”That alone suggests that the woman was Baroness Caitlin,” the inquisitor continued. ”A scheming con artist would have confronted you in public, forcing you to render judgments in front of a crowd of your people. The fact that she reached your chambers unobserved by others also suggests that she is aware of at least a few of your keep’s secrets in order to move about unseen during a day when so many people were your guests.”

”There are dozens of ways to explain that. She could have seduced one of the...” the captive baron started to say, puffing his chest up with excuses ready on his tongue, but the inquisitor spoke ruthlessly over him, denying him any further opportunity to muddy the waters.

”Silence!” Diarmuid shouted, hurling a small ball of flame toward the puffed-up baron that exploded in a shower of sparks near the man’s feet and sent him scurrying backward several paces. ”I told you that I was only interested in hearing the truth from you, yet still, you try to fill the air with your obfuscations,” the Inquisitor bellowed.

”Even if you didn’t bring them to the Lothian Court,” Diarmuid said sharply, placing a hand on his chest for emphasis as he spoke. ”You could have called for a member of my order to question them. We could have helped you to sort out the truth from lies, and if there had been a demonic scheme from the beginning, we would have found it!”

At this point, it was hard for Diarmuid to ignore the fact that tonight’s tragedy and bloodshed seemed to flow almost entirely from Ian Hanrahan’s decisions so many years ago. Dame Sybyll brought a demon army in order to claim the justice that had been denied to her for her mother’s death. But if Ian Hanrahan had simply turned the mother and daughter over to the Lothian Court or the Church back then, how many of tonight’s tragedies would have been averted?

”Dame Sybyll,” Diarmuid said, turning to face the woman sitting casually on the gilded throne. She looked calm and relaxed, but from where Diarmuid stood, he could see that her sharpened fingernails had dug deep gouges into the armrests of the heavy throne and the gilding had flaked off in several places to reveal the wood beneath it.

Clearly, listening to her cousin slandering both her and her mother hadn’t been easy for the powerful Crimson Knight to endure, but she’d done it, honoring her word and allowing Diarmuid to take charge of the questioning. In the back of his mind, he raised his estimation of the powerful vampire, and the faint feelings of sympathy he felt for what she had endured in her life of hardship were joined by a dim, grudging kernel of respect.

”It’s clear that Baron Hanrahan will not speak a word of truth tonight,” he said, issuing his first judgment on the matter. ”While there may be some reason and logic to his statements, and a thin veneer of truth clings to a few of his words, what little truth is there to be found has been blended thoroughly with fabrications, deflections, and speculations.”

”By your leave,” he said, clasping his hands respectfully and bowing his head, even though his words were still as sharp as knives. ”I would have him gagged in addition to his bindings so that he cannot further poison the minds and hearts of the people of Hanrahan tonight with his deceit.”

”Granted,” Sybyll said, smiling for the first time since her murderous cousin had started to speak. ”Captain Ultrech,” she began, only for the smile to falter as she realized her mistake. ”Under-captain Saltaen,” she corrected herself, addressing one of the boarish men who still wore his heavy armor from the battle in the plaza. ”Muzzle me’ cousin, an’ if he struggles, be as rough wit’ him as ye need ta.”

”Thank you, Dame Sybyll,” Diarmuid said, ignoring the frightened baron as the demon soldier roughly dragged him to his feet before shoving one of the baron’s own handkerchiefs in his mouth and using another to bind it in place. ”Now, if you don’t mind, I want to ask a question of Ian Hanrahan’s sons,” the Inquisitor continued.

”I told ye,” Sybyll said from her position on the gilded throne. ”He doomed himself wit’ his own deeds. Ask what ye’ need to bring his secrets out in ta’ tha’ open.”

”Lord Bastian, Lord Hugo,” Diarmuid said, turning his attention to the young lord in chains and the one sitting near Dame Sybyll. ”Has your father ever mentioned Dame Sybyll to you, or the details of his encounter? Has he ever revealed any knowledge about Baron Brighton Hanrahan’s death and his father Aiden Hanrahan’s role in it?”

At this point, everyone in the hall seemed to be on the edge of their seats, though the crowd was split between people who were leaning forward, eager to see justice done, and the people who were leaning back, as if they were afraid that they’d be caught in the Inquisition’s flames once their dealings with the bound and gagged baron came to light.

One thing was clear to everyone in the hall. The Inquisition’s centuries-old reputation for the relentless pursuit of truth and its punishment of evil wasn’t exaggerated in the slightest. If anything, the famed inquisitors with their Holy Flames were even more terrifying than they’d been led to believe.

And this one, this Diarmuid who had come all the way from the Holy City, wouldn’t hold back in the slightest in his quest to discover the truth... Even if it meant offending one of the most powerful men in Lothian March to do it!