The Vampire & Her Witch

Ahead of her, Jocelynn went up with one hand on the banister. From behind, in the deep blue wool dress, the change in her was plain in a way it had not been in the foyer; the dress hung where it should have sat, and her shoulder blades stood out beneath it like the frame of a kite.

If Micheline’s hair were lighter, the two could pass for sisters. Her parents and her aunt had said it often enough, and Micheline had always thought it was true. Now, as she watched Jocelynn climbing the stairs, she found herself imagining what the past year must have been like to change her cousin so much, and if she could have survived the harrowing things that had left such visible marks on Jocelynn...

Micheline looked away from her cousin, suddenly very uncomfortable with the years of comments about how similar the two of them were.

The staircase split at the landing. One arm opened onto a gallery that ran above the common room, where a guest might stand and look down on the hall and be looked at in turn. The other continued upward toward a series of exquisitely carved doors.

Jocelynn took the second one without pausing, and Micheline and Maela followed wordlessly behind her.

The room at the top was not what Micheline expected either.

It was large for a private dining room, large enough to seat eight without crowding, and at its center stood a long oak table with an intricately carved chair at every place. Micheline let her hand trail across the back of the nearest one as she passed. Vines and leaves wrapped around a frame that had been carved to resemble the bark of a tree while small woodland creatures hid beneath the leaves.

It was clearly the work of a craftsman who had been given time to produce a masterpiece and had used all of it, yet there was no gilding anywhere on it. Not on the chair’s back, arms, or feet.

Downstairs, a man had bolted a hundred gilded skulls’ horns to his front door. Up here, where his wealthiest guests actually sat, he had spent his money on the carving and let the wood be wood. Micheline was certain there was a reason for it, but she couldn’t make the vulgar, almost gaudy display of wealth in the common room fit alongside excellent furniture that felt almost incomplete without a bit of gold leaf or at least neat rows of silver nails holding the upholstery in place.

And then she saw the wall, and stopped thinking about the chairs entirely.

The whole of the far wall was a single painting. It showed a river taking a wide, lazy bend between low green hills, with tall grasses along the water and alders standing in the shallows, and the light of a full moon and star-filled summer sky shining down on all of it.

There was no city in the painting.

No wall, no gate, no manor on the hilltop. No docks, no bridges over the small tributary streams, no quarter of merchants’ houses stacked up the slope. Only the river, and the hills, and a heron standing in the reeds where the North Gate should have been.

Micheline had walked the halls of the Royal Gallery in Gaalen on four separate occasions and been made to name the painters. Now, she stood in front of this one and could not have said which great master had done it, but if someone said that it had been the greatest work of that master’s life, she would have believed it.

It was a work fit for a palace, yet it was hanging in a private dining room above a restaurant on the frontier, where perhaps twenty people a year would ever see it.

And whoever had commissioned it had paid a master’s price to be shown this place with everything the Lothians had built on it taken away.

”Micheline?” her aunt said from her seat at the table.

”Coming,” she said, turning back toward the table to take her seat. But when she did, she selected one on the side of the table facing the painting while she tried to puzzle out what its presence here meant.

She didn’t have long to puzzle over the painting, however, before a second door into the dining room opened to reveal Ashlynn and Sir Ollie Heartwood carrying platters piled high with food for their feast.

”We’ll need to make a second trip for the main dish,” Ashlynn said as she set down a serving platter that must have weighed as much as a hunting hound, though she moved as if it weighed nothing at all. ”But you’re welcome to serve yourselves the sides while you wait for us to bring the rest,” she said as Sir Ollie Heartwood set down a platter that was just as large and included a small, covered iron pot that still radiated heat from the fire.

Michelin’s stomach grumbled, and her mouth watered in anticipation as the aromas of the feast tickled her nose.

”Ash,” Maela said, staring wide-eyed at the array of dishes before them. ”The two of you made all this?”

”This wasn’t really the hard part,” Ashlynn said modestly as she lifted the lid off the iron pot, seemingly unbothered by the heat. ”I pulled in a netful of panfish this morning after Jocey caught the main course, so I had plenty to work with. This is a simple soup with flaked fish, potatoes, and a generous amount of black pepper to give it a bit of a bite,” she explained before she turned to the next dish.

”The roast cabbage salad isn’t anything fancy either,” she said. ”I just roasted the cabbage in the drippings from the bacon in the salad and tossed it with light vinegar, walnuts, and dried cranberries.”

”What are these?” Maela asked, picking up a small, brown, misshapen lump from the top of a pile of similar lumps. ”It feels like a kind of bread or fritter?”

”Those are special,” Ashlynn said as a smile blossomed on her face. ”Jacques taught me how to make those in the Briar on the far side of the Umber Mountains,” she explained. ”’Dere ain’t no dish dat soothes de weary spirit de way a fish fry do, cher,’” Ashlynn said, imitating the absent Jacques’ distinct accent as best she could.

”There’s fish inside the breading,” Ashlynn explained. ”And the whole thing is boiled in beef tallow. I was missing a few of the spices Big Sister Amahle grows in her garden, so I made do with what I had here,” Ashlynn said, provoking a puzzled frown from her mother when she referred to some unknown person as ’Big Sister.’

”Once I’ve had a chance to settle my own garden with the seeds I brought back, I’ll cook this for you again,” Ashlynn said. ”Assuming you’re willing to come visit my home in the Vale of Mists...”