The Vampire & Her Witch

”What about the Dunns?” Owain asked, even though he already knew the answer. He had received the message two days ago, after all, and there’d been no news since. ”And the Hanrahans?”

”No change, my lord,” Gilander said with a heavy sigh, as if something had finally gotten through his emotional armor. ”Baron Loghlan’s courier confirmed that the Dunn household remains occupied with the search for Lord Liam, but stressed that they would be here for tomorrow night’s banquet. There’s been no word at all from Hanrahan.”

No word at all from Hanrahan.

The Dunns, at least, had offered an excuse. A thin one in Owain’s opinion. A father searching for his missing son was sympathetic enough to deflect accusations, even if the timing was convenient for a family that might prefer to avoid swearing allegiance to a new Marquis before the old one was even buried.

Owain didn’t fully believe the excuse, but he understood the game. Baron Loghlan was hedging, keeping his options open while events unfolded, and if the search for Liam proved genuine, then the Dunns would arrive late with apologies, and the matter would be put to rest.

But Hanrahan’s silence was something else entirely.

Baron Ian had never been what anyone would call reliable. The man was a miser and a fool, more interested in squeezing silver from his tenants than in maintaining the obligations of his station. His only legitimate son and heir, Bastian, was even worse. He was a soft, incompetent manchild who had somehow inherited his father’s worst qualities without any of the cunning that had kept Ian in power.

It was entirely possible that the Hanrahan household was simply in too much disarray to manage the basic courtesy of sending word.

But Owain’s mind, which had been trained by years of reading the intentions of men who wished to conceal them, could not stop turning the silence over like a stone in his hand.

Silence could mean chaos. It could also mean conspiracy. And with his brother Loman still unaccounted for, with the western frontier burning under demon raids that grew bolder by the week, and with two of his vassal houses failing to appear at what should have been a celebration of his authority...

The silence from Hanrahan felt like the opening move of a strategy that Owain could not yet see the shape of. The fact that his own Steward, Hugo Hanrahan, had also gone missing, along with Sir Rain Aleese, only added to his worries.

He hadn’t taken his brother, Loman, for the sort of man who could convince men to betray their oaths and join a rebellion against the rightful heir of the march, but perhaps he’d underestimated his pious brother. Or perhaps he’d underestimated the Church that stood behind him.

Either way, he couldn’t stand by passively while the western edge of his domain fell to chaos and disorder, or worse, outright rebellion.

”When we return from the hunt,” Owain said quietly, and his voice had taken on the cold, precise quality that men who knew him well had learned to recognize as dangerous. ”I want riders sent to Hanrahan. Not messengers. Riders with armed escort. I want to know why Baron Ian has not answered his summons, and I want the answer brought to me before the Grand Ceremony begins.”

”I also want men searching the wilderness in Hanrahan for my brother,” Owain added. ”Loman isn’t the sort to ignore news of our father’s death. If he’d received the messages you sent, he should have sent a reply by now.”

The fact that Loman hadn’t sent word that he was returning for their father’s funeral could only mean that Gilander’s messages had failed to reach him. The winter weather had been wet and dreary, but it wasn’t cold enough to prevent messenger birds from flying, so Owain could only assume that the men Baron Ian Hanrahan sent to find Loman’s demon-hunting party were too incompetent to track a man through freezing mud.

Or perhaps they were just cowards, too frightened to venture into a wilderness infested by demons who were strong enough to challenge knights to do a duty as simple as carrying a message. Either way, Owain refused to allow his brother to become a loose end while he was consolidating his power over the march.

”Yes, my lord,” Gilander said, nodding obediently. He’d already made preparations to do exactly that, but he’d learned better than to offer up any suggestions to the young Marquis. Instead, he simply made the arrangements he was certain would be necessary and waited for Owain to arrive at the decision on his own.

It wasn’t the best way to handle the soon-to-be Marquis, but it was certainly the safest one. Seeing the sort of lord that Owain was shaping up to be, Gilander understood why his old friend and liege lord, Bors, had been considering appointing Loman as his heir. Owain needed tempering and the voice of an experienced mentor in his ear if he was going to become a lord who could match up to his father.

Gilander had thought that he could step into that role as a final act of service to Bors. The aging knight might only have been responsible for a single village in the Lothian countryside, but he’d stood at Bors’ shoulder through a number of crises, and he would have been happy to pass on the things he’d learned in his long years of service.

It seemed, however, that Owain was unwilling to listen to the advice of such a junior nobleman, so Gilander could only hope that other men, like Baron Leufroy, would have better luck securing a position in the Lothian Court to advise the young marquis.

Owain drained his cooling cup of wine in a single, long pull and set it on the porch railing with a sharp click of metal on wood. The wine was warm but tasteless, and it did nothing to settle the slowly churning discontent that had settled into his stomach.

He would deal with the absences later. He would deal with all of it later; the Dunns, the Hanrahans, the hedging barons who sent their sons to take their measure of him rather than coming themselves. After the Grand Ceremony, once the crown settled on his brow and the title of Marquis was officially his, there would be a reckoning.

But first, there was a hunt to lead.

And if nothing else, this bull elk that his huntsman had found would provide a satisfying opportunity to give vent to the fury simmering in his chest.