The Vampire & Her Witch

”Ignatious,” Ashlynn said as she took her seat, glancing briefly at the High Inquisitor sitting next to High Priest Aubin at the table the Blackwell retinue had ’liberated’ from the Inquisition.

”Of course, Your Dominion,” Ignatious said smoothly. ”Pardon me a moment,” he added, placing a hand gently on Auboin’s shoulder before crossing the central aisle of the Great Hall to arrive at Lady Adala’s side.

”Young Lady,” Ignatious said with a warm, polite smile as he offered an arm. ”Please, come sit with us. You have nothing to fear for speaking up, and you have Lady Ashlynn’s protection for as long as you require it. Even your father cannot force you to return against your will,” he said, speaking loudly enough that the entire hall could hear.

”Th-thank you,” Adala said, trembling slightly as she placed a hand gently on the Inquisitor’s outstretched arm.

She knew that she crossed a line when she stood against her father, but she’d never expected Lady Ashlynn to move like that, to physically manhandle a baron and throw him to the ground! And then, to send a High Inquisitor to come act as her, her body guard, and to do it simply by speaking his name...

Once again, Adala was confronted with proof that Lady Ashlynn had risen far above the station of her birth. The way the Inquisition treated Jocelynn was proof that being the daughter of a count wasn’t enough to keep them at bay, much less command them. So just what had Lady Ashlynn done since Owain attacked her for people like High Inquisitor Ignatious to follow her so... obediently?

”Lady Adala,” Lady Ashlynn said from her seat at the High Table as Ignatious led the young woman back to the Blackwell table. ”Please, we’d like to hear what you have to say.”

”O-of course,” Adala said once she’d reached the Blackwell table. Jocelynn offered her a fragile, welcoming smile, and the silver-haired engineer sitting next to the pregnant woman gave her an approving nod as well, which helped to settle her nerves. Even High Priest Aubin seemed relieved that she would be joining them.

”I’ve waited on Father and Abbot Recared before,” Adala began after drawing a deep, steadying breath. ”When they wanted to discuss things that servants shouldn’t overhear, I attended them with food and wine,” she explained, hesitating for a moment to reassure herself that no one would try to stop her from telling her story.

The traditions around noblewomen taking the place of servants during sensitive discussions was nearly as old as the Kingdom of Gaal, and every noblewoman in the hall had been taught from a young age that the things they overheard must never be shared... What Adala was doing right now proved that she couldn’t be trusted with her family’s secrets, but clearly, some things were more important to Adala than protecting her father’s reputation.

”Recently, when the Abbot visited, he brought notebooks with him,” Adala continued when no one seemed willing to silence her after seeing how Lady Ashlynn had handled her father. ”He had notes about knights and barons, and he’d ask Father if he knew who was close to those men or what they treasured...”

”Father didn’t always have an answer,” Adala said, keeping her focus on Lady Ashlynn and pretending she couldn’t see either of her parents sitting a few seats away from Ashlynn at the High Table. ”He doesn’t know every knight in the March, but he knew many of the older ones who fought in the War of Inches. If he knew someone, he never held back what he knew about them.”

”You’re saying that your father helped the Abbot find people who could be used against the knights and lords of the march?” Diarmuid asked. ”Men like Baron Otker’s bookkeeper?”

”That too,” Adala said, nodding in agreement. ”But Father also complained to the Abbot about knights and noblemen who weren’t ’doing their share’ to support the coming war. He’d suggest things that different lords could contribute to the war, like the quartz Baron Iriso has been mining. He thought that it could be sold to the soldiers from across the seas at a high price, but only if it was blessed by the Church and sold as a ward against the demons...”

At the high table, Wes Iriso nodded in sudden understanding before standing to speak up.

”Your Grace,” Wes said, bowing toward Ashlynn. ”I apologize for interrupting, but what Lady Adala is saying explains the letter I received from the Abbot before I left home. He asked that I bring a quantity of freshly mined quartz for his inspection. He wanted to see if the stone could be used to protect people from ’dark influences.’”

”He never tried to extort any from me,” he added. ”But that’s likely because he hadn’t yet determined if Baron Leufroy’s plan was viable.”

”Quartz is a useful stone for manipulating light,” Ashlynn said, pursing her lips as she wondered where Leufroy had gotten such an effective idea. She hadn’t learned much about crystals in her time with Amahle, but she knew enough to understand that a crystal like quartz had the potential to be very useful when combined with the light sorcery of the Church. If not for the Church’s bias towards ’Holy Sunstone, ’ they might already have recognized how valuable the stones in Baron Iriso’s mines were.

”What else was the Abbot looking for?” Ashlynn asked. ”And who else did your father offer up?”

”Better to ask what the Abbot wasn’t looking for, Your Dominion,” Adala said, adopting the form of address she’d heard Ignatious use. She might not know what it meant, but since she’d decided to make a break with her family, she felt like using the strange honorific would help to make it clear where her loyalties lay.

”If it wasn’t war materials, it was wealth,” Adala explained. ”Because wealth could be transformed into war materials, or sometimes it was favors, promises to provide lodging, or the construction of a bridge where men would need to ford a river during the rainy seasons.”

”As to the people Father offered up,” Adala added, taking a deep breath. ”Your Dominion, I have more than two dozen names...”