The Vampire & Her Witch

Winter days should be short, yet this one felt like it had crawled past on its hands and knees, and Valeri Leufroy had crawled along beside it, minute by agonizing minute.

He’d spent the hours the way a condemned man spends his last, pacing the narrow span of his chambers, gathering up the words he meant to offer Telent Rundel, discarding them, gathering them up again. The note he’d received from Telent after breakfast made it clear that he’d have to offer up something, but he’d be damned before he gave the oily baron everything he wanted.

That whole time, Betrys had not come to him, and neither had Tulori. Even his own knights had found small, urgent reasons to be elsewhere, until at last there was nothing left in the room but Valeri, the scratching of his quill against parchment and the fading light of day.

As the sun finally kissed the tops of the western mountains, he gathered his hair back into a neat ponytail at the base of his neck, smoothed his doublet, and went to beg for a way out of this nightmare.

Of course, he didn’t think of it as begging. He told himself again and again that this was a negotiation between peers, and that Telent needed him as much as he needed Telent. After all, a man with secrets was never truly without leverage, and Valeri held plenty of secrets.

Still, his hand trembled when he raised it to knock on Telent Rundel’s chamber door, and he hated it for the weakness it revealed.

”He’s expecting you,” the aged manservant who answered the door said as he stepped aside, gesturing for Valeri to enter. The Lord of Leufroy bristled at the man’s tone, and even more at the way he’d been addressed.

It wasn’t ’Welcome Lord Leufroy,’ or any other polite greeting for one of the most powerful men of the march. It was just ’he’s expecting you,’ as if the manservant saw Baron Valeri as little more than an errand boy his lord had summoned. A month ago, Valeri would have dressed the servant down on the spot and threatened to have him flogged on his master’s behalf for the disrespect. Now, he could only swallow the insult down and get this over with as quickly as he could.

Telent waited in the same armchair he’d occupied the last time they spoke, with a single candle burning at his elbow and a decanter of dark wine breathing on the table. He didn’t bother to rise to welcome his guest; rather, he gestured to the chair across from him, and Valeri lowered himself into it with as much of his dignity as he could still cling to.

”It’s good that you made the right decision,” Valeri said, frowning at the calm, almost anticipatory look he saw on Telent’s face when he looked at the other man. ”Or do I have Brighde to thank for thinking it through for you?” Valeri asked, hoping to put the smug-looking baron of Rundel on his back foot where he belonged.

It didn’t work.

”I’ve decided that you might have something of value,” Telent corrected. ”Helping you comes after you prove that you really have something to offer.”

”You think me a liar?” Valeri fumed, slamming a meaty fist onto the table hard enough that the decanter of wine shook with the force of his blow. ”When have I ever...”

”I think that only fools and desperate, cornered men make deals without inspecting the goods,” Telent interrupted, refusing to allow the burly baron to gather momentum. ”And I’m neither of those things, so stop pretending that I should be grateful for whatever crumbs happen to fall from your place at the high table.”

”Bors is dead and gone, Valeri,” Telent reminded the fuming lord. ”So is your pet abbot, Recared. Your days of ’glory’ fighting in the War of Inches buy you nothing now, so think carefully about how you should treat the few allies you might still possess.”

Valeri’s face turned a brilliant shade of crimson as he swallowed his fury, but he couldn’t deny the truth of Telent’s words. The pillars of support he’d spent three decades cultivating in Lothian March had almost completely crumbled beneath him. But that didn’t mean he was completely toothless, and he refused to roll over like an obedient dog, showing his belly and begging to be spared.

Reaching into his doublet, Valeri extracted a slender parchment scroll, bound with a crimson ribbon, which he extended toward Telent.

”This is a taste,” Valeri said. ”Names, debts, a few of the uglier things certain lords or their ladies would pay handsomely to keep buried,” he explained.

”The rest is in Leufroy, locked where only I can reach it,” Valeri said, leaning back in his chair as he watched Telent examining the scroll. ”Get me to my own manor, and you’ll have all of it. Try to take it before then, and you’ll find I’ve a poor memory for where I hid the best of it.”

For several moments, Telent said nothing as he scanned over the list, raising his brow when he noticed the names of two of his own knights on the list mentioned in connection to some sordid schemes of Ian Hanrahan’s.

”It seems like I have some housekeeping to attend to,” Telent said with an expression that turned briefly sour before he rolled the scroll back up and secured it with the silk ribbon.

”This is acceptable as a ’taste,’” Telent said, smoothing out his expression and returning to the calm, composed demeanor he’d projected since Valeri first entered his sitting room. ”But the rest of what you offer me had better exceed its value by several times or you’ll find our ’partnership’ coming to an abrupt end,” he emphasized.

”Did you bring the rest of what I asked for?” Telent asked as he set the scroll aside. ”We still have much to do, and I’d like to get this settled before the sun sets and Lady Ashlynn’s vampires emerge from wherever they hide during the day...”