The Vampire & Her Witch

Ashlynn let the court absorb the sight of the new arrivals, listening to the whispers spread and the connections form in the minds of every lord and lady present. She gave them time. She had learned long ago that a revelation that was allowed to settle did more work than one that was forced, and the people in the Great Hall had already been forced to absorb a great deal.

Then, when the murmurs started to die down as people shushed their neighbors to hear what the new arrivals would say, she spoke.

”You see, Baron Otker,” Ashlynn said, looking at the portly baron with more jewels set in his finery than the next three barons combined. ”There’s no reason for the court to be deadlocked. Dame Sybyll Hanrahan may not be here, but in a case like this, I’m certain she won’t mind her cousin acting as her proxy.”

”Dame Sybyll?” Owain said with a frown as confusion swept through the hall. ”Hugo’s cousin? What nonsense are you talking about?”

The title ’dame’ had very specific usage in the Kingdom of Gaal. It wasn’t granted to the wife of a knight or the daughter of one. To bear the title, someone had to bestow knighthood directly on the woman in question, and it happened so rarely that Owain could likely count all the women who had ever been knighted in Lothian March on one hand if he’d ever bothered to learn their names.

He’d been willing to make an exception for the Blackwell engineer, Isabell, because she’d become the linchpin of negotiating with the remainder of the Blackwell merchant guilds, and because his father had forced the issue. So far as he knew, once she became ’Dame Isabell,’ she would have been the only living dame in the whole of Lothian March.

”What is your father playing at, Hugo?” Owain asked, turning his ire on the cowardly bastard. ”Where is Ian Hanrahan or your brother, Bastian? Every other baron came personally, but they couldn’t be bothered?”

”For that matter,” he said, turning his gaze on Inquisitor Diarmuid. ”The last time I saw you, Inquisitor, you were accompanying my brother to track down the strange demons who raided Hanrahan caravans. So where is he? Where is my treasonous brother? Waiting in the corridors for another of Ashlynn’s tricks? Bring him here,” Owain commanded.

”If this is all part of his scheme to seize the throne from me,” Owain said sharply. ”Then bring him out now, and we can put an end to it!”

”You should have patience when you sit on a throne, Husband,” Ashlynn said, using the word ’husband’ like a verbal knife between Owain’s ribs. ”Since it’s clear that you don’t know what’s happening in the march that bears your family name, we can explain matters to you, but only if you’re a good boy who waits his turn to speak,” she said in a distinctly maternal tone, as if she were addressing a small child.

At the Otker table, Charlotte had to cover her mouth to keep herself from snickering at the way Lady Ashlynn handled Lord Owain, and her mother, Melsinde, smiled openly at the way Owain’s face twisted in fury as his wife mocked him openly before the court.

They weren’t the only ones laughing, either. Chuckles rippled across the Great Hall, accompanied by a few pointed comments from the lords and ladies of the land.

”No wonder he tried to kill her,” one of Baron Rundel’s knights said to his neighbor. ”If my wife spoke to me like that, in my own great hall, I might do the same...”

”Are all the women in Blackwell this fierce?” a knight at the LeGleau table said, looking from Ashlynn to Jocelynn and back to Owain’s fuming face. ”I almost feel sorry for Lord Owain...”

”Speak for yourself,” another knight at the LeGleau table said. ”If I could find a woman like that to marry, I could take my ease and let her slay the demons!”

Sitting on his throne, Owain stewed in the laughter and the jokes at his expense, caught between remaining silent, appearing to comply with Ashlynn’s patronizing orders, or shouting at his subjects and appearing to be just as petulant as her command made him appear. In the end, he chose silence, but only after forcing down the urge to step down from his throne to slap Ashlynn for mocking him so publicly.

The time would come to pay back this humiliation, but he could still wait for the moment to ripen. He still had that much restraint, at least for now.

”Hugo?” Ashlynn prompted. ”You can explain, or I can,” she offered.

”It, it’s fine,” Hugo said, swallowing down the storm of butterflies that threatened to escape his stomach as he stepped forward to address the Great Hall. He could feel the weight of Owain’s stare between his shoulder blades like a knife at his back, but even though Owain had asked the question, it was the barons of the march who most needed to hear the answer.

The barons were the ones Ashlynn would need to rely on after tonight. No matter how much he wanted to shrink under Owain’s glare, Hugo forced himself to stand up straight and reminded himself that his former master could no longer harm him...

Lady Ashlynn was standing right beside him, and she’d endured worse from Owain than he ever had. If she could stand here and confront her murderous husband so directly, then so could he.

”Dame Sybyll Hanrahan is my father’s cousin,” Hugo started. ”The daughter of Baron Brighton Hanrahan and Baroness Caitlin.”

”That’s a lie!”

The voice of Baroness Betrys startled everyone as Valeri Leufroy’s wife stood up from her seat. Even her husband looked startled that she’d spoken out, but he nodded in approval and stood up beside her.

”Betrys is right,” Valeri said loudly. ”Baroness Caitlin was a good friend of my mother, and even years after the Baroness died, my mother mourned the fact that her friend was never able to bear a child. I won’t have her name used to...”

”You shut up!” Hugo snapped, startling everyone who had known the bookish Hanrahan bastard with the fury of his response. ”You more than anyone else cannot speak,” Hugo said as tears formed in his eyes.

”My grandfather was a murderous coward,” Hugo said bitterly. ”A murderer and a usurper who killed his own brother when he learned that my great aunt, Caitlin, was with child. That’s how my father came to ’inherit’ his throne,” Hugo explained.

”But you, Baron Leufroy,” Hugo said, giving the bottled-up feelings in his heart free rein as he chastised the startled baron. ”Aunt Caitlin barely escaped my grandfather’s soldiers, and it took her years to cross the march to seek shelter from her ’best friend,’ in Leufroy. Do you know what happened when she and her daughter finally dragged themselves to your door? Do you?!?”

”I, I... what?” Valeri stammered. ”I never heard anything about this. What are you talking about?”

”I’m talking about the soldiers of your manner assaulting a helpless mother and daughter,” Hugo said darkly. ”Because they, like you, refused to believe that they were who they said they were. So don’t talk to me about how important Aunt Caitlin was to your mother... You don’t have the right.”

”Valeri,” Betrys said, turning her eyes toward her husband as she clutched his sleeve. Betrys owed a great deal to her mother-in-law, who had welcomed her into the frontier like her own flesh and blood when she and Valeri married, and her deep affection for Valeri’s mother was why she’d spoken up in the first place. ”If our own men hurt mother’s closest friend...”

”If this is true,” Valeri said, trembling as his hands closed into tight fists. ”If this is true, then i swear I’ll find the men responsible and...”

”Don’t bother,” Hugo said, shaking his head at Baron Leufroy. ”Cousin Sybyll isn’t the sort to leave anyone who harmed her alive. Those men died years ago, before the War of Inches began,” he explained.

”It’s just that avenging Aunt Caitlin took her a bit longer,” Hugo said as he turned his gaze to Lady Ashlynn. ”Because the person who finally murdered Aunt Caitlin was my father,” Hugo said, unleashing another wave of startled exclamations in the Great Hall. ”And in order to hold my father accountable for his crimes, she needed to borrow one of Lady Ashlynn’s armies to capture the Town of Hanrahan.”

”Hanrahan fell to Dame Sybyll and Lady Ashlynn’s Second Army more than a week ago,” Hugo said to a Great Hall that had gone suddenly silent. ”And after the battle, my father was executed for his crimes...”