The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn had managed to send everyone to bed, though the beds themselves left a great deal to be desired.

The Gilded Horns was a restaurant, not an inn, and while Marcel’s establishment boasted private dining rooms with plush furnishings and even a few chaise lounges that the wealthiest patrons used to doze off after a rich meal, it was never designed to accommodate nearly fifty people overnight.

Ashlynn had done what she could, emptying several of the second and third-floor dining rooms of their tables and chairs to create spaces where people could at least lie down on blankets and cushions spread across the carpeted floors.

Most of the Blackwell contingent had been far too agitated to rest. The revelations of the past few hours, their lady alive, the Inquisitors who were apparently allies, and most shockingly, an alliance with the fearsome Demon Lady of the Vale had left too many minds racing to allow for easy sleep.

So Ashlynn had visited each room with a pot of tea that she’d prepared herself, sitting with small groups and speaking gently until the warmth of the tea and the comfort of her presence eased the tension from their shoulders.

If anyone noticed that the tea had a slightly floral quality that they couldn’t quite place, or that their eyelids grew heavy within minutes of finishing their cup, they didn’t remark on it.

Now, with the morning well underway and the sounds of the city filtering through the shuttered windows of the Gilded Horns, Ashlynn gathered the people she needed in the common room. The fire in the great hearth had been built back up, and the carved timber pillars cast long shadows in the warm light as Ollie, Liam, Hugo, Isabell, Diarmuid, Elgon, Devlin, Beathan, Morwen, and Cadeyrn settled into chairs and benches around a cluster of tables that had been pushed together.

The servants were still sleeping, and Ashlynn intended to let them rest as long as possible. The work ahead was for soldiers, not chambermaids and stable hands, and it would be easier to manage the reactions of a smaller group of people as she laid out what must be done.

”My lady,” Morwen said as she began setting a hearty breakfast on the table in front of Ashlynn. ”Sir Ollie prepared enough for everyone this morning,” she said, nodding to Cadeyrn, who was ladling a hearty oat porridge into wooden bowls at a table beside the hearth.

”Thank you, Morwen,” Ashlynn said with a gentle smile as she looked at the breakfast Ollie had prepared for what amounted to a war council, though it felt a bit grand to call it that. The porridge had been liberally seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg, along with a healthy amount of dried cherries and chunks of walnut. Beside it, several slices of cold, cured ham accompanied colorful strips of pickled sweet peppers, carrots, and radishes.

It wasn’t a luxurious meal, but if there was one thing Ollie had learned in the kitchens of the Summer Villa, it was how to feed a soldier who would need their strength for a battle that might or might not come, and the meal that Morwen and Cadeyrn were passing out would do just that.

”Before we get into the plan,” Ashlynn said, stirring her porridge while nodding to Ollie and Liam, who stood near a pair of heavy wooden trunks that had been hauled up from the cellar. ”I have something for you.”

Ollie lifted the lid of the first trunk and began pulling out neatly folded gambesons, each one crafted from quilted layers of linen and wool in a striking pattern of emerald green and midnight blue arranged in a harlequin diamond design. The stitching was tight and precise, the padding was thick enough to cushion even a heavy blow from a sword, and the colors were vivid even in the warm lamplight of the common room.

Liam opened the second trunk, revealing more of the same, along with belts, bracers, and padded hoods in matching colors.

”These are well made,” Elgon said, lifting one of the gambesons from the trunk and testing the weight of the padding between his fingers with the practiced assessment of a man who had worn armor for decades. ”No, not just well made,” he said as he realized that the innermost layer of the armor was made from a tightly woven silk that would resist being cut by most kinds of arrowheads.

”This is exceptional,” He held it up against his chest, checking the fit, and then frowned slightly as the colors registered. ”But this isn’t Blackwell,” he said, looking at the emerald green and midnight blue pattern. ”Cerulean and white are the colors of the county. These are...”

”Mine,” Ashlynn said simply. ”I’ve taken up a new banner for myself and those who follow me. Blackwell will always be my home, but what we’re building is larger than a single county, and I need the people who see us tonight to understand that.”

”I also need to make it clear that we stand together,” she added, pointing at Liam and Hugo with her spoon. ”And apart from other noblemen in the great hall. It’s a thin layer of protection to offer Loghlan’s knights, but if it gives Owain and his men a moment pause about whether Liam is rebelling or his entire family is, then that’s a moment we can use.”

”Were you expecting us, my lady?” Devlin asked, pulling a gambeson from the trunk and examining it with an appreciative eye. The craftsmanship was better than anything he’d seen before, even from armorers across the sea, and the idea that Ashlynn had dozens of these ready and waiting raised a number of questions about the scale of her preparations.

”I wasn’t expecting you specifically,” Ashlynn admitted. ”But I was prepared for a number of scenarios, including the possibility that Owain would turn Loghlan away at the gates for arriving late and we’d have to borrow his men to fight our way in.”

”I’m glad it hasn’t come to that,” Ashlynn said. ”If we had to fight our way through the city to reach Owain and Jocey, it would have been difficult to prevent innocent people from getting caught in the middle of it.”

”We were lucky in Hanrahan,” Hugo said, nodding in agreement. ”Or, rather, Lord Hauke’s blizzard did a good job of keeping people in their homes and out of the streets while we fought our way from the gates to Hanrahan keep. Things could have been much, much worse,” he said with a shudder as he thought about how close some townspeople had come to attempting to join the fray even after the battle had ended.

As the knights and Templars began sorting through the gambesons, finding sizes that matched their frames and testing the range of movement with experimental stretches and practice swings, Elgon stepped closer to Ashlynn with a look that carried the weight of something he’d been chewing on since the night before but didn’t know how he was supposed to broach the topic.

Still, he could tell that Ashlynn had put a great deal of thought into handling the reactions of the Lothian Court, and she intended to use them to seize control of the march once Owain fell. If Countess Maela were here, perhaps she’d have broached the topic with her daughter, but since she wasn’t, Elgon supposed that it fell to him to say something...