The Vampire & Her Witch

While Ashlynn slept the morning away in Nyrielle’s arms, sharing the burdens in her heart, another couple in Lothian Manor faced a dilemma of their own.

Lady Brighde’s appearance this morning was immaculate as always, with her long, golden hair styled into carefully looped braids and an expensive cream-colored dress that clung to her svelte figure. Few people looking at her would believe that she was old enough to have two sons who were nearly fully grown, and the contrast with her husband only served to make her look more stunning.

”I’m told we had visitors after the funerals,” Brighde said, looking across the small dining table at her husband as she finished the last of her breakfast. She’d sent both of their boys to have breakfast in the Great Hall this morning. That way, she could speak to Telent in private to determine how they should navigate their way through the dark forest of decisions they found themselves confronted with.

Still, she couldn’t decide anything until she knew what her husband had learned while she had been busy gathering information of her own.

”Onen stopped by to see if we would be sending the boys to the academy that Lady Ashlynn intends to open in the Vale of Mists,” Telent said, poking at his plate and moving bits of smoked fish around without taking a bite. ”It seems like he intends to send all seven of his brats there eventually, and Lady Ashlynn intends to welcome them.”

”So he’s tying a noose around his own neck and offering up his children as hostages,” Brighde said with a snort.

”It’s not a bad offer,” Telent pointed out. ”If not for your family’s support, at most, I could have sent one son to the academy in Keating. The expense is just too great and the returns, for a lord in the frontier, are too tenuous.”

”The returns of a proper education are anything but tenuous,” Brighde said sharply. ”How large has the Rundel treasury grown since I exposed your old Steward’s mishandling of your accounts and ledgers? Not to mention the merchants and craftsmen who were skimming off the top of everything you paid them to maintain our home and town, or...”

”I know, I know,” Telent said, holding his hands up helplessly. ”Even out here, a keen mind is worth more than a strong sword arm,” he said, repeating a line that had become so commonplace in their arguments that he’d given up questioning its truth.

Over the years, he’d come to appreciate his wife’s keen mind, and he knew that it had been sharpened by the academy in Keating. She was proud of that, and she had every right to be. But while she’d been ’helpful’ in raising the standard of living in Rundel Barony, she’d also doused many of the relationships Telent’s family had carefully cultivated for generations in oil before tossing a lit match onto them.

The men who were ’overpaid’ for their services had been loyal in lean years, or had earned the Rundels a measure of favor with the Lothians for supporting campaigns against their demonic enemies. Telent wasn’t ignorant of the value of services he received, but he’d employed a system of patronage that rewarded long-term loyalty over transactional efficiency.

Still, it was hard to argue with Brighde when her methods produced results, and for the past several years, each year had been more prosperous than the one before it.

”Faelan should have had an even greater opportunity,” Brighde said while pushing her tea cup across the table so Telent could refill it. ”Part of me still wants to send him away to the Royal Academy so he’ll be safe and away from all this trouble until things are sorted out in the march.”

”Isn’t that just offering him up to become a hostage of the Crown?” Telent countered as he poured hot tea for his wife, carefully measuring half a spoon of coarse ground sugar for her and stirring it in before sliding the cup back across the table. ”At least the Vale of Mists will be far from the front lines, no matter what happens, and he’ll be closer at home. And Breok can go with him, he won’t be alone...”

”Perfect,” Brighde said, pausing for a moment to sip her tea before she continued. ”We can send both our sons to a dubious academy that has yet to be built, where they can learn ’sorcery’ from demons and witches instead of studying the classics of literature or modern administration. Onen LeGleau may be excited to send his little ones off to this ’academy,’ but we all know that’s only because he can’t afford a real education for a fraction of his family.”

”Be that as it may,” Telent said, giving up the argument as one he was unlikely to win at the moment. ”We don’t need to make decisions about where we send the boys for schooling until the spring, and much may change between now and then. And Onen LeGleau wasn’t the only person to visit last night,” he said.

”Honestly, I wish you’d come back from the chapel a bit earlier last night,” Telent said as he finally started eating his smoked fish, though he barely noticed the flavor as he chewed mechanically. ”Valeri Leufroy dropped by. He wants our help to reach your cousin, Lord Argidir.”

”So he’s giving up on his barony here and running away like a beaten dog,” Brighde said, shaking her head at how far the man who had once been Bors Lothian’s right hand had fallen. ”This is exactly why I always said currying favor with the Lothians was less than worthless.”

”In Lothian March, Valeri could strut about like a cock in the henhouse,” Brighde said, refusing to pass on an opportunity to remind her husband where the real power in the kingdom lay. ”But all the time he spent fighting demons and scheming with the Inquisition couldn’t win him the respect of the duchies or the Royal Court.”

”If he’d learned from you,” she added in a tone that almost resembled praise. ”He wouldn’t have had to send his daughter all the way across the sea just to find a match for her.”

”I’m sure that he’s regretting his lack of backing outside the march now,” Telent acknowledged. ”That’s why he came to us, hoping we could help him escape the manor so he could flee across the border to your cousin. He’s convinced that the duke will be organizing a response to Lady Ashlynn’s treason, and he’s looking for a way to reclaim his power by helping your cousin.”

”What help could he possibly offer?” Brighde snorted. ”Does he intend to stuff himself back into his antique armor to ride against Lady Ashlynn’s demons? I’d almost be willing to help him just to see the sight of it.”

”No,” Telent said solemnly. ”Evidently, he has access to some of the ’notebooks’ compiled by the Inquisition, and he also has the support of the Inquisitors in Keating. He intends to offer up some of the secrets he’s collected over the years, along with his knowledge of the march and its defenses in the hopes that your cousin will take him on as an advisor of some sort.”

”He’s also offering some of those secrets to us,” Telent added. ”Assuming that we’re willing to hamper Lady Ashlynn’s efforts the same way we undermined Lord Bors...”