The Vampire & Her Witch

Valeri shuddered at the mention of Lady Ashlynn’s vampires. Even now, days after she’d taken Lothian Manor as her own and appointed herself as Marchioness, no one had seen the second vampire she claimed had aided in her assault.

There were some who believed that there was no second vampire, and that High Inquisitor Ignatious was the only one she’d brought with her, but few people put much faith in that wishful line of thinking. Instead, Valeri and perhaps Tulori as well chose to believe that she was keeping a hidden blade in reserve, waiting for the first lord to assemble his knights to move against her before revealing the trap she’d set.

It was one of the things that made an active act of rebellion in the manor so unthinkable, and it was all the more reason that Valeri had to escape before it became impossible to do so.

”I confess, Telent, I hadn’t realized the Rundel coffers had run so dry that you’d demand coin from a friend in his hour of need,” Valeri said as he allowed a short, ugly chuckle to spill from his lips. ”Has Brighde’s cleverness not kept you as flush as you’ve been claiming all these years?”

”The silver isn’t for me,” Telent said, keeping his voice smooth and calm even as Valeri needled him. ”A man fleeing across the frontier in winter needs to buy silence, beds, fast horses, a boatman who won’t look too closely... You’ll have several needs in the coming weeks, and you can hardly meet any of them with a Leufroy banknote.”

”The silver will be returned to you when you go, to smooth the road,” Telent said, looking down his nose at Valeri as if he were explaining things to a child. ”But won’t have you crossing the manor with a fortune sewn into your cloak for some sharp-eyed guard to find. I’ll keep it until the time is right to pass it back to you.”

It made sense. That was the worst of it. Everything Telent said made a clean and reasonable sort of sense. Suddenly, Valeri found himself wondering if this was what Telent’s life was like... dancing on strings like a puppet while Brighde trotted out one ’reasonable’ request after another until he barely had control of his own hands and voice.

There was no trace of her in this room, or their children, yet as Telent’s well-prepared arguments echoed in his ears, he couldn’t help but hear them in Brighde’s polished, well-educated voice.

”Fine,” he said, retrieving the small purse he’d prepared after receiving Telent’s note. ”It’s all there, no more and no less than you asked for,” he said, tossing the purse on the table with a heavy -CLINK.- ”Anything else you didn’t think to mention in your note, Telent, or can we get on with this?”

”One last thing,” Telent said, ignoring the bag of silver and focusing on Valeri instead. ”I require your signet ring.”

The moment he said it, Valeri went completely still.

”No,” he said flatly, instantly rejecting the demand.

Across the table from him, Telent waited patiently, once again looking at Valeri the way he’d look at a misbehaving child.

”That ring has been on Leufroy hands for more than a hundred years,” Valeri said, his voice climbing higher despite his best efforts to control it. ”It was crafted by the royal jewelers in Gaalen, and unlike the Hanrahans, we’ve never lost it. You have no right to demand it from me.”

”What do you think I need it for?” Telent said. ”You think I want a trophy or a prize? One I could never show anyone without implicating myself? Or do you think I mean to write out decrees in your name, as if anyone would obey an order from a disgraced baron who’s about to lose his throne?” Telent snorted.

”I’m doing you a favor, Valeri,” Telent said, tapping the table beside the scroll and the bag of silver coins. ”Your signet will be returned to you, along with your silver, when the time is right,” he promised. ”But in the middle of your escape, if it’s on your person, the odds that you lose it are greater than the odds that you keep it. So let go, Valeri, or I can’t help you.”

”You’re asking too much, Telent,” Valeri protested. ”There has to be a way...”

”There isn’t,” Telent said, setting his hands on the arms of his chair as if to rise. ”Go back to your rooms, Valeri. Wait for Lady Ashlynn to send for you, or not. The risk to me is already greater than your secrets are worth. I won’t put myself in more danger for a man who can’t part with a trinket to save his own neck. We’re done here.”

”Wait,” Valeri said, the word slipping past his lips before he could stop it, and they both heard the broken surrender in his voice.

For a long moment, he sat with his thumb pressed against the warm gold of the ring, against the worn crest he’d kissed the day his dying father pressed it into his hands. It wasn’t just an irreplaceable treasure made by the finest craftsmen in the Kingdom.

For more than a hundred years, it had passed from father to son in an unbroken line stretching back to the Second Crusade when his ancestor had fought in Caun Lothian’s vanguard, delivering some of the greatest victories of that bloody campaign and winning the right to select some of the best lands in the newly established Lothian March to build the Barony of Leufroy.

And now, to save his own life and the hope that he could one day reclaim his lands for his bloodline, he would have to give it up.

”If something happens to me, and you still have this, you swear to me that you’ll deliver it to Tulori,” Valeri said as his fingers closed around the ring. ”You swear it,” he said firmly.

”I have no interest in your family’s heirlooms,” Telent said. ”But if it helps you to hear it, then I swear it. Your signet will be returned to you when the time is right, and if it can’t be, then I’ll deliver it to Tulori. Is that good enough for you?”

”Good enough,” Valeri said, twisting the ring free and sliding it off his finger. The cold air against the pale band of skin beneath felt obscene, almost like a wound, but he ignored it and set the ring on the table beside the bag of silver and the scroll.

Telent swept all three, scroll, bag, and ring, into a small iron-banded box, turned the key, and tucked it somewhere out of sight.

”There, that seals our deal,” Telent said. ”Now, it’s time to make you disappear...”