The Vampire & Her Witch

”What could I do for your barony that would be worth such a heavy cost?” Isabell repeated, savoring the question the way she’d savored the mulled wine. ”That’s a fair question, Baron Dunn. But before I answer it, I’d like to ask you a few questions of my own. Would you indulge me?”

”Of course,” Loghlan said, settling back into his chair and gesturing with his cup of wine for Isabell to continue. Many of his reservations about working with Lady Ashlynn’s people had already melted under the warmth of his conversation with Ignatious, and the wine he’d consumed had filled his belly with an extra layer of warmth that left him feeling slightly fuzzy at the edges.

”How many people live in Dunn Town?” Isabell asked.

”Dunn Town proper?” Loghlan blinked. He should have expected that an engineer would start with facts and figures, but he’d expected something more general to begin with. Still, it was hardly a secret that needed keeping, and he answered easily. ”Around four thousand, give or take. More during the shearing season when workers come in from the hamlets.”

”And where do those four thousand people get their water?” Isabell asked as she swirled the mulled wine in her cup, seemingly debating whether she wanted to top herself off or not.

”The River Cledd runs along the western edge of town,” Loghlan said. ”There are wells too, a dozen or so scattered through the neighborhoods. Why?”

”Because I talked to your son about this at some length,” Isabell said, setting her cup down and folding her hands on the table. ”And what he described concerns me. Your town draws drinking water from the same river that your tanneries discharge into, correct?”

Loghlan’s expression shifted. Not quite defensively, not yet, but with the wariness of a man who could see where a road was leading and wasn’t sure he wanted to follow it.

”The tanneries are downstream of most of the town,” he said with a heavy sigh. ”But things that were downstream in my grandfather’s days, when the town was smaller, are well within the walls my father built. We’ve moved most of them as far south as we can manage while keeping them within the walls where they’re safe from raids,” he said, frowning slightly as his tone grew sharper.

It was a challenge that every lord in the frontier faced. Not just tanneries but the dyeworks, slaughterhouses, and a number of other businesses all had waste that affected the water supply for the town. In an ideal world, such places would be well separated from the town, downriver, where they couldn’t spoil the water the town relied on for drinking.

The problem was that anything located outside the town’s stone walls could be attacked by the Eldritch. In places like Keating that hadn’t known an Eldritch raid in a hundred years or more, it was easier to set up industrial districts beyond the walls of their fortresses, but in the frontier, doing so risked catastrophic losses, and the raids that Lady Ashlynn’s forces had already conducted this winter demonstrated just how vulnerable anything outside strong walls could be.

”Baron Dunn,” Isabell said gently. ”I’m not interrogating you. I’m trying to understand the shape of the problem so I can show you the shape of the solution. I hope that keeping your businesses safe from raids becomes a thing of the past, but we both know that even if you join with Lady Ashlynn, you’re close enough to the northern border that you may only trade one enemy for another,” Isabell said bluntly.

”The way the Church fights, using their holy flames to burn down whole villages,” Isabell said, giving Ignatious a brief, complicated look. ”I can’t say that it’s unwise to keep your industry within your walls. It’s not an impossible problem to solve, if I may continue?”

Loghlan’s jaw tightened as he imagined confronting the forces of the Church. He was convinced that Lady Ashlynn’s forces could overwhelm anything in Lothian March or even the neighboring Crew March, but eventually, the Church would come with their ’Holy Warriors’ from across the sea. Once they arrived, his people could very well find themselves embroiled in a war that would churn their farms to muddy battlefields and their homes to smoldering rubble.

He hoped that day would never come, but if it did, his people would curse him fiercely if he’d misled them about building their homes beyond the safety of the city walls. But, since Isabell seemed to be every bit as aware of the danger as he was, he did his best to let go of the arguments that sprang to his tongue and nodded for her to continue.

She said his problem could be solved. He wanted to know how.

”Your wells,” Isabell asked, turning to the next item on her list of facts and figures to catalog. ”How deep are they?”

”It varies,” Loghlan replied, frowning as he tried to recall the last survey of the wells through the slight fog of wine. ”Twenty feet, some of them. Thirty for the deeper ones near the market square.”

”And during a dry summer,” Isabell asked pointedly. ”How many of those wells still produce clean water by the end of the season?”

The silence that followed was answer enough, but Loghlan met it head-on. He might not like the answer, but hiding from it wouldn’t solve the problem.

”Four, maybe five of the twelve,” he admitted after taking a long swallow of wine. ”The shallower ones go dry or turn brackish by midsummer. We ration during droughts and bring water in by cart from the river.”

”From the river that your tanneries discharge into,” Isabell said.

”From upstream of the tanneries,” Loghlan said, and there was an edge in his voice now, the edge of a man who knew his answer was inadequate but who also knew that he’d spent years trying to solve this problem with the resources available to him. ”We might live on the frontier, but we’re not fools, Master Isabell,” he said more sharply than he’d intended.

”I understand, Lord Dunn,” Isabell replied, narrowing her eyes at the sharpness of his tone. ”You’re doing the best you can with the circumstances you’re in. But how many people fell sick after the drought two summers ago?”