The Vampire & Her Witch

The wine was doing its work on everyone.

Not on Jocelynn, who had taken only measured sips despite Sorcha’s generous pouring, but on the room itself. The formal stiffness that had lingered after the courtyard was softening, dissolving in the warmth of the brazier and the easy rhythm of shared conversation. Sorcha’s story had loosened something in all of them, and the talk turned naturally from love and loss to the practical matters that occupied the lives of frontier noblewomen.

”I imagine handling heavy stone is a challenge,” Jocelynn said, turning her cup slowly on the table. ”Especially when dropping or cracking a block can ruin something so valuable. Getting it from the quarry to the river must be slow work.”

”Oh, it is,” Sorcha agreed. ”We’ve broken more carts than I care to count, and the roads through the hills aren’t kind to heavy loads. But once the stone reaches the river, the Otkers and their carters take good care of it.”

Charlotte straightened in her chair, her expression shifting from the dreamy softness of Sorcha’s love story to something more animated. This was territory she knew well, after all. Much better, in fact, than even her father suspected.

”We’re used to that,” Charlotte said brightly. ”Most everything that flows through Otker Canyon is bulky, heavy, or unwieldy in some way. For years, it was bales of raw wool from Dunn Barony, timber from Saliou, or giant sacks of grain from LeGleau.” She ticked the goods off on her fingers with the ease of someone who had grown up listening to her father extolling their family’s importance to each of the other baronies who depended on them to transport their goods elsewhere in the kingdom. ”The canyon isn’t kind to fragile things, but if you can pack it tight and strap it down, we can move it.”

”It must keep your people busy,” Jocelynn said mildly, as though she were just making idle conversation. Her hands kept moving, turning the cup of wine on the table without ever lifting it to take a drink.

”It used to,” Charlotte said, and a slight crease appeared between her brows. ”Though things have been shifting lately. The Dunns have started sending more bolts of finished cloth rather than bales of raw wool. The cloth is lighter, more compact, and worth more per wagon. It’s been good for them, but it means they need fewer wagons to move the same value of goods.”

She paused, and something flickered in her expression, a brief flash of the sharper mind that lived beneath her gentle exterior.

”Lady Ashlynn and I actually spoke about this,” Charlotte said, and her voice softened at the name. ”During one of her visits, before the wedding. She called it the ’Wheel of Wealth.’ The idea that when money moves faster, it creates more of itself, because every transaction feeds the next one,” she explained.

”She said the Dunns had figured out how to spin the wheel faster by finishing their cloth before it left the barony,” Charlotte said with complete confidence in the source of her information. ”She said that they’re capturing the value that used to go to the weavers and dyers in DuCoumont.”

It was fantastic for the Dunns. More money stayed in the hands of their own people, with everyone from spinners and weavers to dyers and even farmers who grew colorful flowers sharing in the prosperity of their booming industry. Those people all spent their money on things made in the Dunn Barony, or at most, elsewhere in the march, and that was a very good thing for the Dunns.

It wasn’t a good thing for the Otkers. The Wheel of Wealth spun faster for the Dunns, but on the Otker Side, the fees the dockworkers collected for unloading barges full of wool had dropped by two-thirds. The carters hauled less cargo as well, and they had to be far more careful with each load lest they ruin the expensive fabric they carried.

Charlotte’s father, Baron Serle Otker, had sworn bitterly that the Dunns were trying to ruin them, and if the other barons followed suit, sacrificing much of the wealth they gained in order to develop their industries, then not only would the Otkers lose out on the fees for taking goods down river, but fewer refined goods would be shipped upriver as well.

Some nights, when her father was deep in his cups and strong wine crowded his judgment, he even spoke of hiring men to smash the Dunn’s mills or salt their fields of flowers. He’d never given himself over to those dark impulses, at least, as far as Charlotte knew. But his resentment for the Dunns had only intensified in recent years, and he’d seemed uncharitably delighted by the misfortune the Dunns suffered when demons raided their hamlets and stole many of their herds.

”That sounds like Ashlynn,” Jocelynn said quietly, and the ache of it was gentle rather than sharp. It was a topic that she and Ashlynn had discussed frequently when Ashlynn was trying to find ways to help strengthen Blackwell County. Jocelynn had spent months learning to calculate the speed of the wheel, the number of times coins had to change hands to buy specific goods and the number of times coins were divided or diverted by taxes and tithes...

Her sister had never developed a strong feeling for the math that underlay all of these things, but for years, Jocelynn had confidently said that Ashlynn could leave the accounting of it to her. So long as Ashlynn could identify opportunities, Jocelynn was willing to work out the sums to understand if the opportunity was viable or not.

”Others are nervous about being left behind,” Charlotte continued, pulling Jocelynn out of her memories of long nights spent with an abacus and a ledger. ”Since the Dunns don’t need as many wagons, the older, smaller carters who used to make do with lighter loads and shorter routes are struggling to adapt to the heavier work the stone from Iriso needs. Some of them are getting on in years, and the work is harder on their backs and their horses.”

”What happens to them?” Jocelynn asked, raising an eyebrow in genuine curiosity.

”I’ve been trying to find ways to help,” Charlotte said, and there was no false modesty in it, just the quiet determination of a woman who had been raised by her mother to believe that wealth came with responsibility.

”Some of them can manage lighter routes if we break the loads down,” Charlotte explained. ”Others are better suited to warehouse work on either end of the canyon, sorting and inventorying goods before they’re loaded onto the barges on the far side. I convinced Father to set aside a small fund for the ones who can’t work at all anymore, though it’s never quite enough.”

Never quite enough was an understatement. Charlotte supplemented the fund from her pocket money every month, and she was always looking for ways to find the things people needed more economically. Recently, she’d taken over one of the warehouses that was no longer needed to hold bales of wool after they’d been unloaded, and she’d started using it to stockpile things she could convince merchants to discount for her as long as she bought enough of them.

She now had several years’ worth of winter wool socks, heavy blankets, and stout shoes to help people in the winter so they could save their snips for food. She had also been stocking wide-brimmed straw hats, lightweight tunics, and other goods that would be helpful in the summer, but it would be six months or more before anyone needed some of the things she was currently buying.

She knew that even with all that, there would still be too many families who used to rely on the fees they could charge for hauling lightweight, bulky items like the Dunns’ wool that went hungry in the lean winter months, but she didn’t know what else she could do.