The Vampire & Her Witch

”My Lords and Ladies,” Ashlynn said as she stood up to address the assembled court. The gathering was smaller than it had been the night before, but this time, there were no divisions between those who stood for Ashlynn, those who stood for Owain, and those who stood aside.

Hugo’s seating arrangement had blurred the lines between the camps. While some people, like Serge Otker, looked intensely uncomfortable sitting next to Sir Padraig Wyndan, who had stood for Loghlan Dunn, most of the hall seemed to have found a reasonable peace with their neighbors.

”The first person to die for me was a guardsman named Andrus,” Ashlynn said, taking many people in the hall off guard. ”I should have been safe that day. I was sightseeing with Heila, my lady-in-waiting, and a local lord with only two soldiers to stand guard over us. It was bitterly cold that day, and we’d cut a hole in the ice for fishing...”

Ashlynn’s voice grew strained, and her eyes misted slightly as she remembered that day in the High Pass, but she pressed on because this moment was a precious, fragile thing and she needed to plant a seed now, at the beginning, if she expected any of her plans to take root today.

”We were fishing for sturgeon beneath the ice, and Andrus and Heila had just reeled in a fish more than half the height of a man when we were attacked by Tuscan giants,” Ashlynn explained. ”There were four of them and five of us, and Andrus was the smallest of us all, but he was the first to charge across the ice, just so he could buy me the time to escape,” she said, pursing her lips together as she blinked back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes.

By now, the hall had gone completely still and quiet. Last night, whispers had spread from room to room, filling the halls with speculation of where Lady Ashlynn had been in the months since Owain attempted to murder her and what she had done, and now they were hearing a piece of that story for the first time.

”Last night, people died,” Ashlynn continued as she addressed the hall. ”Baron Preden Saliou lost his life to the dark sorcery of the Lothian Throne, along with Sir Berian Taaffe of Saliou, Sir Aron Sayer of Rundel and Sir Brychan Dey of LeGleau. Like Andrus, they fell to a force they couldn’t possibly resist, and this morning I ask that we take a moment to remember them.”

”Andrus was brave and young and brash,” Ashlynn said. ”He came from a large family with seven siblings and more than anything else, he wanted to travel and see the world. I’ll always remember his courage and how excited he was to claim victory over a fish he called a monster. Who has a tale to share about the men who fell last night?” Ashlynn asked, turning first to another person at her own table. ”Baroness Tosha?”

The eyes of the hall shifted, this time to the widow who found herself in a position reminiscent of Lady Ragna Fayle’s. When Lady Tosha’s husband had died, at least her father-in-law, Preden, had still been available to take back up the throne of the barony, giving Tosha time to both grieve and raise her children until Riwal could inherit in a few years’ time.

Now, however, there was no one else who could bear the burdens of her husband’s barony for her, and to the lords of Lothian March, Lady Tosha looked incredibly vulnerable and alone as she stood to address her fellow lords and ladies. To Ashlynn, however, she looked like a woman who had found her purpose, and while her shoulders drooped with the weight of the burdens she carried, her spine was stiff and straight when she stood, and her voice was loud and clear.

”I’m sure that many of you remember Father-in-law better than I do,” Tosha said as she looked out over the crowd of knights and lords and their ladies. ”Some of you fought at his side, and many more of you came to him for lessons in the sword or the spear. Whenever I talked to people about my father-in-law, they always told me what a good knight he’d been in his youth, and how fortunate I was to have him as a protector to look over our family after my husband fell...”

”I was fortunate,” Tosha said, lowering her head as tears flowed freely down her cheeks. ”Not because he was a good knight or a good lord, but because he was the best grandfather I could have asked for for my children,” she said. ”That’s how I want him to be remembered. Not as the Hero of Rastin Ridge, or as the Third Baron Saliou... I’ll remember him as Grandpa Preden, who taught my Riwal how to saddle his horse and who read bedtime stories to all my little ones when I was too sick with grief to do what a mother should...” she said as her voice broke with a soft, strangled sob.

”And remember him we will,” Lady Mairwen said as she stood and folded the younger mother into a tender embrace. ”He was good to you and yours, and we can all remember that,” she said soothingly as she tapped Erling Fayle’s shin with her toes before gesturing at him to trade seats so she could sit with Ladies Tasha and Ragna.

For a moment, the hall sat in a heavy, awkward silence, uncertain what they should do. This wasn’t a Lothian custom, and it wasn’t really a Blackwell one either. The Blackwells were known for telling tales of their fallen while they sang songs and drank to the memories of the fallen.

In Lothian, things were more... subdued. The Frontier was hard, and it claimed lives every year. Whether it was skirmishes with demons, sickness that too few healers could treat, starvation in the wake of a lean harvest, or the collapse of homes that couldn’t withstand the harsh winter weather in the foothills of the mountains, every year in every village and town across the march, people died, but few people beyond their immediate families had much time to mourn.

Funerals had already been arranged to take place at sunset when the pyres would be lit... so just what was it that they were supposed to say now at the start of the day?

But even the hardest heart wasn’t made of stone, and some were more tender than most. After a long, heavy silence, young Juhel LeGleau stood to speak...