The Vampire & Her Witch

”Virve, that’s enough,” Ashlynn said before Loman could respond to the Oak Witch’s threat.

”Loman,” Ashlynn said with a heavy sigh. ”I’m glad to see that you can admit your family’s role in sustaining this tragedy, but when I asked you what you were willing to give up in order to obtain peace, this isn’t what I meant.”

”This isn’t one of your father’s banquets,” Ashlynn said in a firmer tone. ”Nor any of the ones you have attended in the duchies. I brought everyone together tonight so that we could share time together and perhaps understand each other more, not to broker power and negotiate concessions.”

In the world that Ashlynn had grown up in, the very same world that Loman came from, the high table of a nobleman’s banquet was little different from a battlefield. The participants might have traded swords and armor for sharp words, spoken while they hid behind polite smiles, but the outcome of those feasts on the lord’s territory could be just as extensive as the results of winning a battle... or losing one.

Ashlynn had no desire to see this gathering turn into something so tainted. She had gone to Liam Dunn to discuss his family’s surrender before this meal precisely to prevent it from becoming a topic of conversation during tonight’s banquet, and she had similar motives for visiting Hugo. Though in the latter’s case, she’d also done so to prevent him from feeling pressured by others when he made his decision.

”You still don’t know enough to negotiate effectively with the Eldritch,” Ashlynn added pointedly as she looked at her wilting brother-in-law. ”If you’d taken the time to listen and learn, you would have known better than to bring up your father’s fate tonight, but you pressed forward anyway because you have yet to see the other people at this table as your peers, or even as people,” she said as her own fury started to mount.

For a moment, she’d thought that Loman had come to offer something priceless to Nyri. An honest, genuine apology for the transgressions his family had committed over the years. Now that Nyrielle’s heart was capable of feeling more than it had in the century since her parents’ death, Loman’s apology could have become a balm for her wounded soul.

Instead, he’d wounded Nyrielle in one of the few ways it was possible for a man like him to do. He’d trotted out a performance of contrition and then couched it in a bargain for his father’s life, reducing his apology to a political prop, spoken before a small audience that included none of his own people. It was a cheap prop that cost him little, and Nyrielle knew it, which made the sting of it all the worse.

”You can’t just approach the most powerful people at the table and try to treat with them in order to get your way,” Ashlynn said. ”That might have worked for the son of a Marquis or the disciple of an Exemplar, sitting at the tables of counts and barons who are accustomed to ruling over their vassals with an iron fist, but here, you’ll only doom your cause by making the attempt.”

”Your friend Liam had good advice for you,” Thane added as he slipped silently from his chair, appearing at Loman’s shoulder in an instant and placing a hand on the young man’s back to guide him back to his seat. ”Master Georg has prepared a feast the likes of which you won’t be able to enjoy again for some time. Take this evening to enjoy it, learn what you can about the world you’ve entered, and reflect on what went wrong tonight.”

The words were kinder than the young man deserved, but Thane wasn’t about to make things any worse than they already were. Both Nyrielle and Ashlynn had made their stance abundantly clear. Now, all they needed was for someone to remove the annoying fly from the soup so they could return to enjoying the evening, and he was more than willing to play that role.

”Perhaps, perhaps I should go,” Loman said quietly, turning his wounded gaze to Ashlynn and ignoring Thane’s hand on his back. ”You warned me, and so did Lord Liam. It seems like I’m the only one here who hasn’t figured out how to make peace with the situation,” he added, turning his head to look at Inquisitor Diarmuid, who had abandoned his vestments before joining the gathering. ”So I should just...”

”You can leave, Disciple Loman,” Ignatious interrupted. ”But doing so means failing in your struggle and sacrificing half of your paths to redemption. Perhaps your only path to freedom. The Great Prophet never promised his followers an easy path, but when he had doubts, to whom did he turn?”

”The Saint Teacher,” Loman said automatically, thinking of the legendary figure that scripture claimed discovered the Great Prophet and guided him in his early years. It was said that the Saint Teacher, Anwir Esau, had refused all titles in life and claimed that the only reward he needed for his service to the Great Prophet was the right to be heard, even when his lessons came with burdens too great for an ordinary man’s shoulders to bear.

”Are you saying I should turn to you, as the Great Prophet turned to the Saint Teacher?” Loman asked, suddenly furious at the notion. He’d been curious about the legendary High Inquisitor who, according to Lady Heila, could still wield his Holy Flame Blade and summon Holy Fire, but not curious enough to forgive the man comparing himself to the second most sacred figure in the Church!

”I’m suggesting that, despite my appearance,” Ignatious said calmly, refusing to rise to the bait. ”I’m nearly a hundred years your senior, and I know what it’s like to struggle to keep your faith when you’ve been taken prisoner by your enemies.”

”But if anyone here resembles the Saint Teacher,” the fallen priest continued. ”It’s Commander Aspakos, who charts the heavens just as the Saint Teacher taught us to. He’s worried enough about you that he asked to be included in tonight’s dinner, even though none of the other commanders are present, and he brought Artificer Erkembalt with him for your sake.”

”Foolish notion,” Erkembalt muttered under his breath as he looked at the idiot who had single-handedly brought dinner to a screeching halt after only a single course. Couldn’t the stupid priest at least have waited until after Georg had delivered something more substantial than a winter salad?

”He’s blind to half the sky and choosing the wrong half to keep at every turn,” Erkembalt continued darkly. ”He’s not cursed, you don’t need me to set him straight. You just need to give him the whipping his father or mother wouldn’t, and Lady Heila can do that,” he said with a snort.

”You don’t have any enemies here, Disciple,” Ignatious said, smiling slightly as Heila blushed at Erkembalt’s muttered suggestion. ”Even your former opponents don’t wish you any ill. But there are people here who care for your future, and if you run away from them now, you really will lose half the sky.”

”The choice is yours, Loman,” Ashlynn said. ”If you wish to go, I understand. This may be too much for you right now and there’s no shame in leaving. I needed time to think after my first meal in this dining room,” she said with a slightly embarrassed smile on her lips as she cast an affectionate glance at Nyrielle.

”Nyri had to bribe me with one of Georg’s desserts to get me to stay and listen that night,” she admitted, even though it made her sound childish. ”I think there are things that you should still hear tonight, but the choice is yours. You’re still welcome here, or I can have someone show you back to your chambers, and we’ll speak again in a few days.”

”I think,” Loman said with an expression on his face that looked like he’d swallowed something just as bitter as the greens in the salad. ”I think I can stay to listen,” he said, swallowing heavily around the lump that formed in his throat with the eyes of so many powerful people staring directly at him.

”Thank you, everyone,” he said, giving an apologetic bow to the entire table before allowing Thane to guide him back to his seat between Aspakos and Liam Dunn. ”And I’m sorry,” he added as he took his seat. ”For disrupting such an extraordinary meal. I, I’m looking forward to learning what else Master Georg has prepared...” Loman said, though whether he really meant it, or the words were just polite courtesies, only the man himself could say.