The Vampire & Her Witch

Owain broke the seal on the first decree with a practiced motion, the blue wax cracking cleanly beneath his thumb as he unfurled the parchment and held it at arm’s length before the assembled court.

”In accordance with the traditions of Lothian March,” Owain said, adopting the formal cadence used for reading formal proclamations. ”The Marquis has decreed that the following debts and obligations are hereby absolved, in recognition of loyal service to the march and the Lothian family.”

He read the names clearly and deliberately. A wealthy grain merchant who had extended generous credit to the Lothian treasury during the lean months after the War of Inches. The widow of a minor knight whose husband had died fighting demons on the frontier and whose family had been drowning in the debts he’d left behind. A bladesmith who had supplied arms at a steep discount in the early days of the War of Inches before any of the wealth of Airgead Mountain had begun to flow into Lothian coffers.

Each name was a thread pulled taut, tying someone of wealth or influence more firmly to the Lothian throne through the currency of gratitude. The debts being forgiven were real, but the forgiveness was a transaction, not a gift, and everyone in the cathedral understood the terms even if they were never spoken aloud. You have been relieved of your burden. Remember who relieved you.

Owain set the first decree aside and reached for the second, allowing himself the faintest trace of a smile as he broke the seal.

”Furthermore,” Owain said. ”My father has decreed that in recognition of a lifetime of faithful service to the Lothian Hunting Lodge, the title of Knight Errant is hereby bestowed upon Master of the Hounds Fabel. He is granted the right to bear a personal coat of arms featuring a boar spear amidst a brace of hounds.”

A ripple of warm surprise moved through the cathedral. The title of Knight Errant couldn’t be passed to descendants, but for a common man who had spent his entire life in service, it was an extraordinary honor. Somewhere in the middle rows, a weathered old man with hands like knotted rope gripped the arm of the woman beside him, his eyes bright with disbelief.

”Master Fabel’s hounds,” Owain added, departing from the formal text to address the court directly. ”Were instrumental in tracking the fourteen-point imperial bull elk that I had the privilege of taking during the recent hunt for tonight’s feast. Without his years of dedication to breeding and training the finest tracking hounds on the frontier, such a magnificent beast would never have been found, let alone brought to bay where I could face it with sword in hand.”

Owain cared little for the old man who bred the hunting lodge’s hounds, but when he found the decree sitting among the pile on his father’s desk, he seized it for the opportunity it really was. Since many of the barons gathered here today had refused to attend the hunt, they needed a reminder about the sharpness of his blade... And that there would be rewards waiting for those who helped his blade find its next target.

He set the second decree aside and lifted the third.

”The Marquis has also decreed the establishment of an Academy of Trades within Lothian City,” Owain announced, unrolling a longer parchment that bore not only Bors’s seal but several pages of detailed plans in his father’s cramped, unsteady hand. ”The Academy will train skilled tradesmen in crafts essential to the prosperity of the march, reducing our dependence on the guilds of Keating and the Royal Capital.”

This one had been Jocelynn’s doing. Owain was certain of it. She’d spent weeks at his father’s bedside before the old man’s mind deteriorated completely, and her influence was written into every line of the proposal. The emphasis on commerce. The detailed projections of increased tithes from better-trained craftsmen. The careful language about ”investing in the people of the march” sounded so much like Count Rhys Blackwell’s philosophy that it might as well have been written in the man’s own hand.

Owain had been tempted to burn this one along with the others he’d consigned to the hearth in his father’s office. Empowering merchants and tradesmen risked creating the sort of prosperous, independent-minded commoners who might one day forget their place, the way Master Isabell and her ilk had done in Blackwell County. But Jocelynn had shown him the figures, and the revenue the Academy would generate was too substantial to ignore. He could always dismantle it later if the merchants grew too bold.

He allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction as he set the third decree aside. Three decrees read, three messages sent. Mercy for the loyal. Honor for the faithful. Vision for the future. Each one painted a picture of a thoughtful, generous lord who valued the contributions of every citizen of the march, from the highest baron to the humblest kennel master.

Now it was time to show them the other side of the coin.

The remaining decrees sat on the altar in a neat stack, but it was the one at the bottom that Owain had been saving. The one he’d placed there last, so that it would be the final thing they heard before they filed out of the cathedral and into the cold winter air to light his father’s pyre.

But before he reached for it, his mind drifted briefly to the decrees that weren’t on the altar. The ones he’d burned.

The Inquisition’s expansion. A permanent Chapterhouse in every barony, co-signed by Percivus himself. Owain had taken particular pleasure in watching that one curl and blacken in the flames. His father had been a fool to invite the Inquisition deeper into the march’s affairs, and Owain would sooner burn the abbey in Maeril to the ground than give the Church more footholds in his domain.

And Jocelynn’s marriage to Liam Dunn. The decree that would have handed his prize to the heir of a frontier baron, all because his father was too afraid that Jocelynn was a scheming, manipulative woman who conspired against her sister in order to seize the throne of the Marchioness for herself.

Bors thought that a woman who would betray her own sister would just as easily scheme against her husband until Owain was little more than a puppet dancing on strings pulled all the way from Blackwell County. As if Jocelynn were that clever or shrewd.

She’d shaken like a leaf in the wind the first time he put a knife in her hands to deal with Percivus... the woman didn’t have a scheming, calculating bone in her body, and the decree his father had written to give her away to another man, to Liam Dunn no less, had been an insult to everyone involved.

That decree had been the first to burn, and Owain didn’t regret it for a single heartbeat.

He reached for the final parchment on the altar, and this time, he didn’t bother to conceal the steel in his voice. He’d been building to this ever since he began speaking from the pulpit, and now it was time to put the barons in their place... And he’d use his father’s final words to do it.