The Vampire & Her Witch

”You’ll come to find that the Eldritch world is more sophisticated than you’ve been led to believe,” Ashlynn said, enjoying the expression on her cousin’s face. ”Erna thought that anything less than this was akin to traveling in poverty.”

”I’ve never seen the Royal Palace in Gaalen, but Erna’s palace in the High Fen makes Blackwell Manor look like a summer cottage,” she said, shaking her head as she remembered the opulent corridors lined with marble statues and plush, silk carpets, to say nothing for the extravagance of the guest suite where Ashlynn stayed during her visits to the High Fen.

”It’s very impressive,” Maela said, accepting a small cup of wine from Heila and taking a tentative sip. When she did, she found the flavor to be incredibly delicate, almost more floral than fruity with notes of sweet cherries and honeysuckle. ”The wine is impressive too,” she murmured.

”I don’t have many bottles left,” Ashlynn said as she took a sip of her own wine. ”Once the High Pass opens in the spring, I hope to be able to trade for this and many other things with Erna’s people.”

”Will they really trade with us?” Micheline asked, unconsciously using ’us’ rather than ’you’ as she imagined the sort of luxury goods that could be produced by a nation that had made such a refined carriage. ”Do we have anything they would even want or need?”

”Several things, I hope,” Ashlynn said, nodding to her sister. ”I’ll need to arrange an opportunity for Jocey to visit the High Fen, but they prize fine stone for statues of their champions. They may be very interested in the granite that comes from Wes Iriso’s quarries, and his quartz as well.”

”We also have the gemstones and precious metals of Airgead Mountain,” Ashlynn added. ”And even the wool from Dunn or the furs from across the Verdant Hills may find a market there.”

”That’s just the beginning,” Jocelynn said, smiling as she sipped the fragrant wine. ”All of those things are local. If Uncle Dylan joins us, then we can bring goods all the way from the sea. The High Fen is on a mountain plateau, so I doubt they see many goods made from whale bone or that they have the same sorts of fish that we harvest at home. If they find favor in the market, it could be worth the long journey to ship things across the mountains.”

”If Father joins you,” Micheline said, pulling back her enthusiasm. ”It’s still a very dangerous decision. Whatever his heart wants, he has to put his people first, even if that means standing on the opposite side of a border from family,” she warned.

”I know,” Ashlynn said. ”I think there’s more for the people of DuCoumont to gain from standing with us than there is for them to lose, but that’s a decision your father would have to make for himself.”

”That’s part of why I wanted to invite you here,” Ashlynn added. ”I’m counting on you to tell him the truth about who we are and how we live. Within a month, the rumors that spread will be wild and varied, and within two months, the rumors that most favor the Church and the Kingdom’s interpretation will be taken as fact.”

”You can count on the Church and on Duke Argidir to pay criers by the dozen to announce their version of what they’ve heard,” Maela agreed. ”And the people of Gaal are already primed to see the frontier as a wild and savage place. A few knights or squires dressed as common travelers, spreading tales in taverns near the border, will make it difficult to approach anyone in the Kingdom with open arms.”

”I’m hoping to preempt some of that,” Ashlynn said with a heavy sigh. ”But it’s going to be difficult. That’s part of why we’ve turned tonight into such a spectacle. The Eldritch resolve many of their disputes as contests between champions rather than going to war against each other,” she explained.

”I want people to see that tonight,” Ashlynn said. ”And I want enough of them to see it with their own eyes for the rumors that spread from here to echo each other. By the time the snow melts and the passes open, I want the stories told across the Verdant Hills to be as truthful and as positive as possible.”

”So what is happening tonight?” Micheline asked, opting to be blunt rather than circumspect in an attempt to learn as much as she could before they arrived. ”You’ve mentioned a duel between the Aleese and the Southern Steppe, but I’ll admit that I don’t know the frontier lords well enough to know who the Aleese are, and I’ve only heard the ’Southern Steppe’ in a few classes about geography to know that it lies to the south of Lothian March,” she said.

”Or, the Verdant Hills, I suppose,” Micheline said, correcting herself to use the term that Ashlynn had used for the lands she seized from Lothian rule. Much like when she’d left DuCoumont to live in Gaalen, there were countless things that locals thought of differently than people from further away, and if Micheline wanted to be effective while she was here, changing out place names was likely the least of the adjustments she’d have to make.

”Dirar rules all the lands from the southern border of the Verdant Hills to the coast of the Southern Sea,” Ashlynn explained. ”He’s willing, in principle, to join the Bloodroot Empire and to rule over his territory as one of our Lords of the Blood.”

”The problem is that he has to answer to his own lords,” Ashlynn said with a sigh. ”While the City Lords far to the south might be able to accept this, the Herd Masters who lead the large, nomadic bands of the Steppe have been fighting a tepid war of annual raids against the Aleese Barony for years.”

”For the past twenty or so years, Bors Lothian focused most of the march on raiding Airgead Mountain for its riches,” Jocelynn added helpfully. ”But he insisted that Baron Tybal maintain the southern border and that he didn’t give up a single acre of land that had been won in the War of Four Templars. It’s been a source of constant, low-level fighting between the Aleese and the Southern Steppe for a whole generation.”

”So the duel tonight is meant to settle old grievances so that you can build peace in your empire,” Maela said, nodding in understanding. ”Do you think it will work? If the Aleese lose, I don’t imagine it makes much difference to you whether you have to shift an internal border by a few leagues, but if the Aleese win and the people of the Southern Steppe gain nothing...”

”Lord Dirar is a reasonable man,” Ashlynn said more confidently than she felt. ”He wants this to work as much as we do. He believes that a war with the Kingdom and the Church is inevitable, and if he isn’t standing with us, he isn’t certain that the Southern Steppe could resist a Crusade by itself.”

”Whatever the outcome of tonight’s duels,” Ashlynn said. ”I think Dirar will keep his word and his people will come to accept the results.”

”You only say that because you want to visit the palace he gave you,” Jocelynn teased. ”The one full of books.”

”He gave you a palace?” Micheline said, blinking in disbelief. ”Like the one you mentioned in the High Fen?”

”Something like that,” Ashlynn said, waving it off as if it wasn’t important. ”And I haven’t made my choice yet,” she told her sister before turning back to Micheline. ”He has a palace in each of his six largest cities,” Ashlynn explained. ”As a greeting gift, he offered to let me choose one for myself to use when I visit the Southern Steppe.”

”Right now, it sounds like they’re residences for his concubines,” Ashlynn added with the most neutral tone she could manage. ”So, um, you can understand why I’m in no hurry to make any decisions.”

”You don’t think he’s implying that he wants a marriage alliance, do you?” Maela asked. Her expression grew dark as she considered everything that had happened as a result of Ashlynn’s previous marriage alliance, but Ashlynn’s response quickly put her mind at ease.

”Nyri would break every bone in his body the instant he made the suggestion,” Ashlynn said confidently. ”Dirar knows better than to risk offending her. But really, he’s as sophisticated and educated as you would expect any king to be, and from the sounds of it, the six cities he rules over are no smaller than Gaalen.”

”He even speaks the king’s common tongue reasonably well,” Ashlynn added. ”So you can speak with him directly tonight and form your own conclusions,” she offered.

”I, I may just do that,” Micheline said, struggling to maintain her composure at the thought of speaking directly with an Eldritch king. Not because she’d never spoken to royalty. She’d spoken to Prince Henri quite a bit and his father on more than one occasion.

But speaking to her own king was one thing. Speaking to the king of a nation that had been at war with Gaal for nearly a century, as a noblewoman from Gaal and a friend of its rulers... That was something else entirely.