The Vampire & Her Witch

”We have all heard about the actions taken by Inquisitor Percivus during my father’s declining days,” Owain said slowly, choosing his words with exceptional care as he threaded the needle between calculated rebuke and something that even a doddering old fool like High Priest Aubin would have to call blasphemy.

The cathedral had gone perfectly still. Even the knights who had been struggling with the aftereffects of the Stag Feast seemed to have forgotten their misery as they tried to figure out what their soon-to-be Marquis was doing. He was either one of the boldest lords alive to bring up something like this now... or an arrogant child poking an anthill with a stick.

The younger knights sitting in the pews tended to think it was the former, that Owain had the courage to confront even the Inquisition and that he was making it clear that he wouldn’t bow and scrape before the Church in the Holy War that drew closer every day. The older knights in the crowd, however, understood that the Inquisition didn’t suffer rebuke lightly, and they had dozens of methods at their disposal to bring an unruly ruler to heel if they needed to.

”I will not catalogue every crime the man committed while he sheltered under my family’s roof,” Owain continued, gripping the edges of the pulpit as though he were gripping the rails of a ship’s helm in rough waters. ”The suffering he inflicted on Lady Jocelynn, on Confessor Eleanor, and on countless others who fell beneath his heel is well known to all of you.”

He paused, letting the silence do the work that words would have cheapened. Every person in the cathedral had heard the stories. They didn’t need to hear them again from the pulpit, and by refusing to repeat them, Owain positioned himself as a man who respected the dignity of the victims rather than exploiting their pain for dramatic effect.

Besides, the last thing he wanted before his wedding was to remind the audience that his bride-to-be had spent several days in chains at the mercy of another man. He couldn’t have the march thinking that he’d only acquired Jocelynn as second-hand, damaged property if he was going to project the image of a heroic ruler, loving husband and valiant father once his sons were born.

”What I will speak of,” Owain said, in a colder tone that lacked any trace of the warmth a ’loving husband’ or ’valiant father’ would possess. ”Is the betrayal that struck at the heart of this march. The betrayal that hastened my father’s decline and robbed him of the clarity he needed to protect the people who depended on him.”

He turned his gaze toward Abbot Recared, and the full weight of Owain’s stare settled on the crimson-robed man like a millstone hung around his neck.

”Inquisitor Percivus was summoned to Lothian Manor to investigate a conspiracy against my father’s life,” Owain said. ”Instead, he became the one conspiring against my father and the whole of Lothian March. He used poisons to worsen my father’s illness, clouding his mind in his final days until the man who had defended this march for thirty years couldn’t tell friend from foe, couldn’t distinguish between a loyal servant and a phantom conjured by the venom that coursed through his blood.”

Owain clenched his hand into a fist, lightly thumping the top of the pulpit as he let a moment of genuine fury seep through his mask. His fool of a father, who nearly ruined his Jocelynn by summoning a monster like Percivus to interrogate her, had gone far beyond an inability to tell friend from foe, and because of that, Jocelynn still flinched at his touch, even after he’d helped her claim her vengeance against the beast who tried to defile her.

It was infuriating.

”He did all of this,” Owain said, his lips pulling back from his teeth in an expression that was too sharp to be called a smile. ”And he did it while wearing the robes of the Holy Lord of Light’s most trusted order. He poisoned a dying man’s mind. He tormented innocent women. He executed loyal servants on false charges. And he did it all while claiming to serve a higher purpose.”

Owain let the words hang in the air of the cathedral, heavy as incense smoke, before he turned the blade.

”I am grateful to Abbot Recared,” Owain said, and the gratitude in his voice was laced with something that made several of the nearer barons shift uncomfortably in their pews. ”For his cooperation in addressing the failures of his order. When I brought Inquisitor Percivus to account for his crimes, the Abbot was among the first to acknowledge that the man had strayed beyond the boundaries of his authority.”

”Thanks to Abbot Recared’s quick action,” Owain said with a respectful nod of his head toward the man in crimson and gold robes. ”My father can begin his journey to the Heavenly Shores, free of the burden of knowing that his tormentor walked free, sheltered beneath the robes of his office. Thank you, Abbot Recared,” Owain said. ”Because of your help, my father can truly go in peace.”

Several people sitting near the abbot shifted uncomfortably in their seats, sliding just a little bit further from the man who had evidently become Owain’s willing tool. The story of what Owain had done to Percivus and his acolytes had spread through Lothian City like fire through dry grass, growing more vivid and more horrifying with each retelling.

Everyone knew that the two acolytes had been paraded through the market square, blinded and broken, their ruined bodies displayed for the citizens of Lothian to see. Everyone knew that both men had died of their injuries mere hours after they were paraded through the market, their bodies too shattered to sustain the meager life that Owain had allowed them to keep.

And everyone knew that Percivus himself had met an even worse end, his corpse staked out on a hillside beyond the city walls where the crows had feasted on his flesh until nothing remained but sun-bleached bones and the iron spikes that held them in place.

Yet the Church had said nothing. Had done nothing.

And that silence was the loudest sound in the cathedral right now.