The Vampire & Her Witch

”Against a man like Marcel and the people driving this carriage? If he really intended to kidnap or betray us? I don’t think there’s anything we could do at all...”

A range of emotions flickered across Micheline’s face when she heard her Aunt Maela’s statement, ranging from shock to fear and indignation to confusion. For someone who had just said they were as good as hostages or prisoners, her aunt seemed far too comfortable, and there was something about the smile on her lips that made Micheline feel like she was back in the Royal Academy again... and she’d just missed a very important point.

”You aren’t bothered by this,” Micheline said, making a statement more than asking a question.

”No, I’m not,” Maela agreed.

”Why?” Micheline asked. ”Is it because you believe everything that we’ve been told? If the letter from Cousin Ashlynn was forged...”

”It wasn’t,” Maela said. ”Or if it was, it was forged by someone who knows my daughter every bit as well as I do, if not better, and aside from my husband, I don’t think such a person exists,” Maela said confidently. ”But the letter isn’t everything.”

”What else am I missing then?” Micheline asked, refusing to believe that a woman as intelligent as her aunt had accepted things on blind faith, no matter how much time she spent in the convent in DuCoumont.

”Work it out from what you know,” Maela challenged, seemingly eager for the distraction of schooling her niece as the carriage clattered down the frost-covered road. ”Start with what you know about our mysterious messenger sleeping beneath the floorboards,” she said, using the tip of her soft leather boot to tap on the hidden door at the base of the carriage that Marcel had vanished into before sunrise.

Despite changing carriages multiple times, every one they’d used had featured such a compartment. Small, cramped, and fitted with locks on the inside, Maela would have taken it for a smuggler’s compartment for illicit cargo were it not for the nature of the locks.

If Maela had needed any proof that Marcel truly was a vampire, short of watching him drink the blood of the living, seeing the lengths he went to just to hide away from the sun while they traveled would have gone a long way to convincing her.

”I know that he used you to get to my father,” Micheline said, starting from an uncharitable interpretation of Marcel’s actions, framed as objectivity. ”He brought ’evidence’ that damaged Father’s trust in his vassals, which made it easier for him to insist that we travel without an escort of Father’s men.

”He also...” Micheline started, only to cut herself off and give her aunt an awkward look.

”Go on, you can say it,” Maela encouraged.

”He exploited your grief over Cousin Ashlynn,” Micheline said apologetically. ”For the chance to meet the daughter you thought was dead, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do, and I don’t think that’s really wrong,” she said quickly.

”But... Since you were determined to come,” Micheline continued. ”You became a lever to move Father, and now he’s carrying a letter to Duke Argidir that’s supposedly from Ashlynn. It could just as easily be from the Demon Lady of the Vale, the vampire who fought the Lothians for a hundred years.”

”Run that all the way out,” Maela said. ”If Marcel is kidnapping us to use as leverage against your father, what should we expect from him?”

”He... oh,” Micheline said, looking suddenly embarrassed. ”We’re more useful to him alive than dead if he wants us to keep being levers to manipulate Father. He can make us disappear, but that only works for so long.”

”Father will want letters from us,” Micheline mused. ”And he’s expecting to see me again after I’ve spent three months in the march learning what’s happening here. If I don’t return to him, then Marcel won’t be able to manipulate him as easily... The fragile trust will shatter, and he’ll become an even worse enemy than he would have been otherwise.”

”Not bad,” Maela said. ”Seven out of ten.”

”Only seven?” Micheline said, frowning at her aunt. ”What did I miss?”

”Quite a bit,” Maela said. ”Think back. The first two days of this journey, you were actually excited by it all. It’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done and all the mystery and the new places we went... It was very exciting. You even called Mister Marcel handsome once or twice,” she teased.

”But...” Micheline started to protest, only for Maela to speak over her.

”After that, the journey defeated you,” Maela said. ”You stopped being excited and gave in to the fatigue. The campfire meals lost their novelty, sleeping in a carriage or a rough bed was hard, and your spirits started sinking. That’s when you stopped paying attention and stopped thinking,” Maela chided.

”If you’d been thinking, you’d have realized why we’re moving so secretively even now that we’ve entered territory that my Ashlynn supposedly rules,” Maela said. ”You’d understand that things in the march have only just begun. We’re not avoiding villages and traveling through the night to shake off any men your father might have sent in secret,” Maela suggested.

”We’re doing it because Ashlynn doesn’t control all of the villages and towns in the march yet,” Micheline realized. ”That’s why we’re keeping to the back roads...”

”Marcel was very clear about one thing,” Maela said, nodding at her niece. ”He’s trying to stay ahead of news. He had to get us through Otker Canyon before Duke Argidir could order it sealed. Now, he’s trying to get us to Lothian City without encountering villages that may oppose Ashlynn’s rule.”

”Think about it,” Maela said. ”For all that Marcel has called me ’Your Majesty’ when he speaks to me, and acts like I’m the mother of a crowned empress, he refuses to bring us into any town or village along the way. If Ashlynn had consolidated her grip on the march, he could easily roll into a village and announce that the mother of the empress had arrived and receive flattery and fine accommodations for us along the way.”

”We could ride in a carriage with an imperial crest,” Maela continued. ”And an escort of half a dozen knights with a dozen servants and two dozen soldiers. We’re not doing that. He’s keeping us hidden from everyone... That means the situation is tenuous at best, at least out here in the countryside.”

”I, I didn’t think of that,” Micheline admitted.

”It’s your first time being in the middle of a grand story instead of reading about one,” Maela said with an encouraging smile. ”At least this time, the assassin seems to be on our side, and no one has died on the journey,” she said, taking a deep breath as she shook herself free of a memory that had come to visit her all too often since Marcel appeared in her life.

”The most important tool you have is your mind, Micheline,” Maela reminded her. ”You have no armor, no sword, and no hope of overcoming the men we’re traveling with if they turn out to be captors rather than escorts. When you’re tired, uncomfortable, lost, and afraid, the one thing you can’t do is lose your wits,” she said.

”You’ve been through things like this before?” Micheline asked, staring wide-eyed at her dignified-looking aunt. ”Truly?”

”I was young once,” Maela said with a slight smile and a twinkle in her eyes. ”And whether you believe it or not, my suitors when I was your age included Duke Huchon Trevarthen... You don’t know what things were like back then,” Maela added. ”With Huchon’s oldest brother dying and Trevarthen losing a whole village to the red cough...”

”I read about it in school,” Micheline protested. ”The outbreak happened while the acolytes in the villages were preparing for the Holy Festival of Light in Trevarthen, and Vicelin had visited the village where the outbreak happened. It was a tragedy, and the Trevarthens were lucky to have had three sons or the line would have broken when Lord Bryce fell in a hunting accident...”

”Tragedies like that happen, Micheline,” Maela said. ”But more often than not, it’s because they were made to happen. When those tragedies extend their claws toward you, the only thing that will keep you alive is being able to learn very quickly who you can trust, who your enemies are, and what motivates them,” she said.

”I don’t like Mister Marcel,” Maela said bluntly. ”I wish he would be more forthcoming with us. But I think we can trust him, at least for now,” she said. ”And if I’m wrong, then it’s too late to regret the decisions we made back in DuCoumont.”

One way or another, they’d know soon. When Marcel climbed into his locked chamber beneath the carriage floorboards, he’d told them that today they would arrive in Lothian and Ashlynn could answer all their questions, and within an hour, they spotted the first thing on the road that wasn’t a farmhouse...